Two Down...Two to Go

Cam getting his diploma
Originally uploaded by KwanYin

Though blurry, this is Cameron receiving his high school diploma from Apex High School. He's already moved out on his own, is working full-time and is planning to go to school full-time as well. If anyone can do it...that kid can.

Kelsey's Spring Concert

Kelsey during Spring Concert April 20, 2007
Originally uploaded by KwanYin

Kelsey with the Apex High School (Mixed) Chorus on April 20, 2007. Kelsey is a member of the Honors Chorus and they combined with the Men's Chorus to make up the Mixed Chorus.

Ellie Mae 6 1/2 weeks old

Ellie Mae 6 1/2 weeks old
Originally uploaded by KwanYin

We just got a new puppy. I was missing Shasta but was not ready to have a new Husky and David had always wanted a Bassett Hound, so here is our new Bassett Hound, Ellie Mae. We figured that she needed a Southern Name. She is a real sweetie but going through the "Alligator" stage of puppyhood where she wants to bite everything. We've also spoiled her already. She thinks she belongs on the couch with us and we have been taking turns sleeping with her (since she is not housebroken yet) and so I'm sure that she is going to assume that she needs to be sleeping on the bed with the people as well. That's not so bad when she only weighs 10 pounds...but when she weighs 60 that might be an issue!

Daffodil Thinks She is a Shoe

Well, I came across this picture of Daffodil (our baby cat) and I just had to post it. It's a few years old...she's much more tubby now. But she is so sweet (David thinks she may be "simple" but that just adds to her sweetness) and looks like a little stuffed animal. Her legs are on "wrong" (she is bowlegged and her feet turn out as well), her tail is too long and her ears are too big. But she is just the sweetest cat and thinks Whisper is her friend. Whisper actually seems to be in agreement with that.

The Prom

Well, I'm still catching up a little here. The Apex Prom was May 12 and Kelsey went with her boyfriend, Elliott and a bunch of her friends. With a dress that I bought her on eBay and a limo, she and her 10 friends went to The Melting Pot, the Prom and then spent the night at her dad's house (he got "coolest parent" award from the kids and the other parents). It's hard to fathom how fast she is growing up. She will be a senior in just a few weeks and then...off to college!

Shasta (The Wonder Husky) 1994-2007

Today I had to put Shasta to sleep. Two years ago she had a tumor on her leg and we had it removed in May of 2005 and again in Feb of 2006. But, the tumor came back late last year and the doctors didn't think she would survive the surgery. So, we've just been trying to keep her comfortable but it had become harder and harder for her to get up and down the stairs. She'd lost over 20 pounds over the last two years and finally it was decided that it was time. I took her in this morning to see if there was anything else to be done and the doctor suggested that it was time to let her rest. So, now she's with Saffron (Saffy)...her "bestest" friend. Saffy came into the house in July of 1995 at 12 weeks old and Shasta came 3 weeks later at approximately 14 months. Even though I'm not sure Shasta wasn't always in agreement, Saffy decided that Shasta was just some really big furry cat and basically decided that Shasta was her friend. Saffy would constantly rub up against Shasta and lay across her feet when Shasta was lying down. Shasta would just look up at us with those long-suffering eyes and you could almost hear her sigh with having to put up with that goofy cat.

Saffy died of septis in November and Shasta's tumor had reappeared about the same time. I kind of thought to myself that they came into the house together and perhaps they would leave together...but Shasta made it another 6 months...but now Saffy can lie across Shasta's feet again and rub against her face. Won't Shasta *love* that!

We miss you both and we are happy to have had you in our lives.

April 2007

After Kelsey's birthday we had my birthday (We went to Red Lobster!) and a Spring Chorus concert, Band Banquet and Kelsey's trip to Chicago with Honor's chorus. In the midst of all of that, Kelsey had an accident in her del Sol and totalled it. Fortunately, she and her friend, Elliott were okay. The car hydroplaned during a rainstorm and she ran into the back of a Acura SUV. The poor little del Sol finally had had enough:

Kelsey was very specific about what car she wanted to get in place of the del Sol (she had the insurance money as her base) and it took about 3 weeks but I finally found her a 1993 Toyota Celica Convertible on eBay and David and I went to pick it up on April 29th. (I will post pictures when I get them downloaded)

More of March

Duncan had surgery on his hand on March 12th...right before he turned 20 on March 20th. Fortunately, it turned out to be a benign tumor http://www.childrenshospital.org/az/Site1078/mainpageS1078P0.html). and he came through surgery fine. Kelsey went to DisneyWorld with the Apex High Marching Band at the end of March and got to march in the DisneyWorld parade. Here is a picture of the Color Guard waiting for the bus to take them to their Color Guard Workshop:


While she was there, she and her friends had one of those custom pictures done. They chose "The Munsters" and decided to have all boys be girls and all the girls be boys (Kelsey is Grandpa Munster):


She had a great time and got back in time for her 17th birthday. Her friends took her out for a birthday party at Chuckie Cheese

Catching Up-March 2007

In March we went down to Laurinburg, NC to participate in an Autocross with the 84 Targa. We decided to make a weekend of it and also visit some country seats. See our county seat blog for updates on that...( http://countyquest.blogspot.com/). After finally finding the airport, David found that he had been scheduled for the first heat which had already started so he had to wait until the end of the 2nd heat and participate in the Fun Run. Here he is getting ready to run:








And here he is taking off from the starting line:


His time was about 95 seconds and he's looking forward to running the Autocross in April to better that time.

After the autocross we drove around a little and then went to our hotel. The next morning we heading towards Rockingham (a county seat) and found these ruins on the way:
Turns out they are the ruins of the Great Mill that burned to the ground in 1972. This is what it used to look like:

It's amazing to see these ruins just sitting my the side of a major street. Spooky and wonderful all at the same time. There is a waterfall behind the mill (seen through one of the windows):
Better view of the Waterfall

The sound of the rushing water was so beautiful. We spent about a half an hour just walking around and made a point to do some research on the mill. It's nice to see a piece of history even if it is no longer "pristine".

Blogger problems

Well, Blogger has been a pain to log in to. I've had to come through the "back door" by posting a comment to my blog and then getting to dashboard through that (thanks to someone on the Help Forum who suggested this). The Help Forum has been useless as far as response from the Blogger people. Everyone's computers could not have gone "blooey" all at the same time. It's got to be on the Blogger/Google end. And the "customer service" attitude has been sadly lacking as well. They also seem to think that because only 100 people are complaining that it's a small problem. They apparently don't know that statistically for every 1 person that you hear from, 10 more are having the same problem but not complaining.

Porsches and Country Clubs

We've been very busy with "home" stuff so we haven't had as many adventures as we typically have in the 2 months since I've posted here. But on Feb. 24 we went with the Hurricane Region of the Porsche Club of America (http://pca.org) to visit DC Automotive in Rocky Mount. They are a huge parts warehouse where they salvage parts from old Porsches. I wasn't sure how many people would be there...I was thinking about 10. Turns out we had over 60 people and over 51 Porsches! (Though ours was the only 912e).





After the tour, the club provided lunch at a nearby country club. Since we had so many cars, a police escort was provided. That meant that we could go through stop signs and red lights!

Here we are going through some of the red lights.

We were waving at the people on the streets and they were waving back (or vice versa). It's probably the first time that people had seen some many Porsches in one place. They probably thought some car nut had died and this was the procession for his funeral (since we had our lights on and our flashers going).

Once we got to the Country Club we basically filled up the parking lot.

All in all, we had a great time (though I was only 1 of 5 women there) but I'm still not sure that I'm covertible with being a "Porsche" owner. That just seems to me to be someone a lot more sophisticated!

San Jose

I recently went out to San Jose to attend some training for the document control software that I use at work. I hadn't been back to the Bay Area since I left in 2000, after Frank and I permanently separated, so I was both excited and anxious about being back there.

The good news is that I got to connect up again with my friend, Kathryn. Kathryn was a Godsend during my separation and divorce from Frank. She always knew when to propt me up and when to leave me alone. I don't think that I would have made it through those 2 years without her. I ended up being the Matron of Honor at her wedding in 1999 and while we have sporadically kept in touch, I hadn't seen her since she had visited San Diego in 2000. We had a really nice evening together where I got to meet her wonderful dog Inka, and then we went to Max's Opera Cafe http://www.maxsworld.com/ and I had a Niagara Falls Cake (dark chocolate cake with white buttercream icing)...something that I had thought about for 6 years! It was so good to see her.

I also did a little tour of memory lane...going by the house we had live in when we were last in Mountain View at 320 Palo Alto Avenue

and I noticed that they still had the screen door that Kelsey and I bought all those years ago (and Kelsey still remembers how we tried to bring it home in the Suzuki and the wind caught it and I had to put her in the back of the trunk to hold out to it so we could get it home!). I also went by our old house at 1797 Pilgrim Avenue where we lived from 1990-1991. It was still there and looked basically the same as well. I went by the old Target that the kids and I always used to shop at (and found See's Candies on the way!) and stumbled across my favorite restaurant on the West Coast:


I then went by where Adobe Systems used to be during the time that Frank worked there. I had been there so many times (especially as Emerald City Software, his previous company, had been located on the same street). Well, Adobe is no longer there and Google has taken over the old Adobe buildings and about another 10 blocks as well! It's amazing how many buildings Google has!

I guess time marches on! (and that was the Bad News!)

Lastly, I tracked down the Seti Institute for David (http://www.seti.org). David runs Seti on his home computer and I knew that it was in Mountain View so I went to find it. Unfortunately, they don't do tours, but at least I could get a picture for him. (They actually share office space with Symantec
All in all it was a nice trip...and makes me more appreciative of North Carolina.

Saffron

On November 21, 2006 one of our kitties died. Her name was Saffron, more commonly known as "Saffy". She was about 11 1/2 years old and had been adopted by us in 1995 from Kitten Kaboodle here in Raleigh. Frank and Duncan picked her out as Duncan wanted a cat of his own (Cameron had Flower at the time and Kelsey would soon have Misty) and Frank liked her as well so he said he would take partial responsibility for her. (Of course, you know who ended up taking the most care of her!). She was the sweetest cat that I had ever met and she immediately took to Shasta who came into the house just a few weeks after Saffy:
[insert picture of Saffy and Shasta here].
While Saffy had been born in North Carolina, she flew to California in 1998, rode in the car from Mountain View to San Diego in 2000 and took a cross country trip back to North Carolina in 2001. She was a well traveled cat and except for "p**ping" on herself during the Mountain View to San Diego trip (which the kids still vividly remember) she always did quite well. She even recently weathered the middle of the night evacuation (in October) of Apex due to the EQ plant exploding!
But, when David and I got back from Reno on November 14th, she wasn't in the house and the kids didn't think they had seen her since the day before. I finally found her out in the yard on the evening of the 15th and while she looked a little thin, I thought it was just from being outside for 2 days. She seemed okay but as the days went buy I noticed that she was not eating and that she was hiding herself away from everyone. I took her to the emergency clinic on Sunday (the 19th) and they found a tumor in her stomach. They said it didn't look good, but she was still as friendly as ever. I took her to her regular vet on Monday evening and by then she was fading. She still would come to you and talk to you, but she was weak...and refused to eat. She died very early the next morning at home. Duncan heard her crying and went out to check on her and came and told me that she was crying and growling. By the time he got back downstairs, she had died. We had her cremated and she will join the remains of Ivy, Flower and C.B. on one of the kids's bookshelves (probably Duncan's if he wants her). The vet said that it turned out that she had Sepsis and probably the tumor had burst at some point and the bacteria from the dead tissue had gotten into her bloodstream and basically slowly shut her organs down. I'm sorry that she had to suffer and if I had known we would have had her put to sleep, but we kept hoping we could find someway to get her health turned around as she was only 11 1/2...she should have been with us for at least another 5-7 years.

So Rest in Peace, Saffy. We miss you and we won't forget you. Jewel is still looking for you and doesn't understand where you have gone.

The Mother Road and the Porsche

For about the last year, we have been looking for an ice green metallic Porsche 912E. The 912E was only made one year, 1976...and only 2099 were made. So, the chances of finding one that was the color that we were looking for with the sunroof (which I wanted) was kind of slim. We had only found one in the last year and it was too expensive. Well, imagine my surprise when perusing the 912 registry www.912registry.org and seeing an Ice Green Metallic 912E for sale in Reno, NV. David called the gentleman who owned it, a decision was made, tickets were bought and we were on our way to pick up our new car. (For those of you wondering, the Corvair will be sold in order to help pay for this new "toy").

We arrived in Reno on Saturday, November 11 and after picking up the car we headed south as there was snow forcast for the northern route. The first night we stopped in Kingman, AZ (we would have stopped in Las Vegas but there were no rooms available in our price-range [less than $300]). The next morning we headed out on Route 66 towards Flagstaff. Most of it is bascially desert, with little tiny towns tucked here and there. That night we stayed in Tucumcari, New Mexico...and old stop on my parents's trips across country. The next day we went through Texas and Oklahoma


and that night we stayed (we thought) in Ft. Smith, AR (where Frank grew up) but it ended up that we were actually in Van Buren. The last night we stayed in Nashville, TN because we wanted to see the Parthenon the next morning (www.nashville.gov/parthenon/):


The Parthenon has a full sized gilded statue of Athena within its walls:




We arrived home safe and sound 4 1/2 days after we arrived in Reno. And now we are a two Porsche family!