Hello & Good Morning!

[MarineMom]

There is nothing really like that in Lawrence any more.

However you do have a very good shop in Lawrence that I have never been too in person but have shopped on-line quite a bit over the years. Its called Brits and I shop there when I am feeling homesick and rich at the same time

[kdfrawg]

Oh, gosh, Brits is wonderful. It is now more or less in cahoots with a place called Au Marche which carries specialty foods from the rest of Europe. The owner, Laura, has made it grow from a tiny little place on a side street, through a fire and a lot of street work out front, to a very sizable store right on Massachusetts that sits right next to Brits. My German mother-in-law buys a lot of things there. It's a very fun place. Massachusetts street is one of the wonderful things about Lawrence. Five block of stores and restaurants, almost all local, and a very busy place year around.

Downtown Lawrence makes me happy.

[kdfrawg]

Well, I guess that it is afternoon again while I write this, but I thought that I would give you a weather report even though it is not affecting you at all.  ;o)  We have been getting torrential rain here today. However, said rainstorms are lasting about six seconds. I don't know that there has been much actual precipitation to measure.

Checking with the National Weather Service site, I see that we have gotten two bursts of rain that measured .01 inches each. It's going to have to do that a lot of times in order to do any good.

Maybe we always think that the weather is odd in whatever year we're in, but it does seem to me that the last year or so has been a little bizarre. It hasn't really been bad, just slightly abnormal, at least in my mind. I think that they are onto something with Global Warming, but they might get a little more attention if the called it Global Weather Pattern Disruption, which is a more accurate description in any case.

Global Warming sounds sort of cozy and pleasant, until you really think about it. Global Weather Pattern Disruption sounds more like a threat that you could mobilize people behind. I wonder who I should talk to about this?

As I speak, we are having another gully washer. Maybe this one will last long enough to get the gully clean instead of just streaking the gully dirt.

[Janet Harrington]

Update on baby Charity.

Charity has improved much over the weekend, so thank you for your prayers.  She is now eating and is slowly being weaned from the IV's.  She is still on a ventilator, but the doctor thinks he will wean her from that this week.  Pray that she will not have to be intubated again.

Her daddy got to hold her.  They have taken the bandages from her eyes, so mommy and daddy got to see her eyes this weekend.

I have attached new pictures from my friend, Maria, the mommy.

Please keep this family in your prayers.

[kdfrawg]

That sounds like great progress. It's always nice to hear the good news. I think there's more of it than people let on. Premature babies just look like the most helpless little things in the world and I always hold my breath for them. It looks like Charity is doing well, and I'll keep my fingers crossed.

[flo]

well, I have been swimming also.  I attended the evening swimmercize and had a blast.  There were 5 of us, with 2 ladies being from Moline.  As I pulled and tugged at getting that bathing suit on, I was thinking to myself "sure hope there's no closed circuit cameras" at the pool.   

[Wilma]

I can't believe my good morning is the first today.  Everybody must be busy.  I have just finished my hour outdoors.  My project today was spraying weeds and other undesirables.  Probably should have been mosquitoes.  I found a few sprigs of poison ivy that must have survived last year's spraying.  And I sprayed corners that the lawn mower can't get to.  Feel like I have been in a sauna.  Tomorrow I will go back to trimming the climbing roses that daughter and I started yesterday.  She had to go to Wichita today.  What are the rest of you doing today?

[MarineMom]

the rain has been good for the broccoli and I have just spent the morning picking blanching and freezing some of it. You are right it is like a sauna out there and in my kitchen, whoever invented the air conditioner should be nominated for sainthood Don't know how any one living in Kansas could preserve fruits and vegies without it,  come to think of it all those ladies who did it without the a/c need to be nominated right along with the inventor 

[kdfrawg]

From all I can tell, the Plains of Kansas were not very pleasant places in winter or summer back before modern conveniences. It does take me slightly aback when I complain about the weather, with my modern heating and cooling systems, to think what it was like without it. I fear that we have become a less hardy people.

[Wilma]

We kept the windows open and tried to create a circulation by having opposite windows open.  The Kansas wind usually cooperated and the humidity was sucked outside.  Exhaust fans don't do as good a job as that south wind did.  It didn't seem as hot then as we didn't have air conditioning to compare it to.

In winter, of course, the windows were kept closed.  Even then the old wood stove didn't circulate the heat too good.  My parents bought a circulator.  This was a wood stove with a surrounding shell.  The theory was that the heat rising from the stove would suck the cold air off the floor, up between the firebox and the shell and create a circulation.  I think it worked but we still had to stay fairly close to the stove.  And when the fire went out while we were gone, the house would be cold and Daddy or Mother would have to build a new fire.  It seemed like forever before we could feel any warm except right next to the stove.  I did my share of canning, heating wash water on top of the stove, feeding the heating stove, etc.  I am very thankful for the AC and central heat.