ORANGE SEASON!

Our friend and fellow dancer Len Dombras has a great Nikon digital camera and took these photos of us at the Orange & Black themed Halloween Dance at the Senior Dance Club. Of course many folks had costumes, but this worked for us!

As you can see, we were decked out in all the orange we own! So now we can put away our orange tops until next year!

UP TO NO GOOD WITHOUT A PADDLE

No photo for this, just to let you know that in the 4-week "rowing contest" at Baxter, I managed 67,600 or so meters of rowing! The champs were rowing 400,000 meters plus, but to me those 67,000 seemed liked allot! So to celebrate, I took off this week to do yard work...no photos of that either, but here's some of the results.

I came out of the pucker bushes in our front yard with some residue of the oat grass stuck in my visor. Mr A thought it was pretty funny.

A raised bed covered with shade cloth and lattice for the winter "rest".

My indoor garden work area...love having a dry place to pot up. Skylight is very nice since there is no electricity in the building. But I'm always trying to turn out the light when I leave!

Part of my menagerie of garden characters...those wabbits just keep multiplying. My garden fairie Sonia keeps watch over them all.

DANCE FEVER

Here we are at the 4-Mayor's party on a very slippery dance floor.

Lots of folks got out on the floor and attempted dance. The band was good but too loud, as per usual. We didn't take our db meter, but it was at least 100+ db. Oye! My ears are still ringing today.

DANCE SHILLS

Not only is it "high season" for dance...it's high season for fund raising events, apparently. Since we've been back in the valley, we are getting offers of freebie tickets to events that have a dance component.
The Mayors United event is our style...wine, beer and munchies, but NO boring, too-filling banquet and not too many speeches...well, since 5-mayors are involved, SOME speechifiying will be in order. But we're there to "salt" the dance floor. We get up and start dancing right away when the band starts and others will join in. Since the event planners are going to the trouble to rent a dance floor and hire a band, they want folks up and dancing, so they'll remember WHAT FUN it was and come again next year. Works for us! Maybe we'll even get someone to snap a photo of us dancing...stay tuned!

LAYING LOW TODAY

Our black & white, carbon-based unit (as they used to say on Star Trek) is taking it easy today after a too-close encounter/territorial dispute with the new cat on the block. (We think). Got a good claw hit above her right eye. Like some of us here, she's not as fast as she used to be. Luckily we have good antibiotic ointment, but it bears watching for infection, which kitties are prone to. A nice cat weekend indoors will suit us, even if it doesn't make her happy!

TOMATOED

I happened to look in between my tomato cages yesterday and I found this one stem with 6, count'em, 6 ripening tomatoes. These are the Brandy Boy hybrid (a cross between the heirloom Brandywine and Burpee Big Boy tomatoes. So they are as yummy as Brandywine and far more prolific like the Big Boy. You get the best of both! So it's tomato glut season here in the Rogue Valley...not quite frost time but getting close, so we are picking most all the red ones we find. Still lots of green and pinkish ones remaining. We keep the tarps close at hand for threatened nighttime frosts. So far, so good!

PEPPERY, PEPPERY!

We finally got some ripe pimento peppers. There are still many green ones left on the plants. We hope they'll ripen before the first frost.

I like to grill them to get the skins off. Makes the eyes water, but the skins come off so easily after you "sweat" them in a plastic bag. Then I pack them in EVOO, vacuum seal and freeze 'em. Bon apetit!

WE CUDA DANCED ALL MORNING!

The results of having a great time and showing off for the spectators!

This year the Medford Jazz Festival organizers finally figured out that dancers are people too! We were able to have a great dance venue with a large floor.
Our favorite band (16-piece Southern Oregon Jazz Orchestra) was scheduled to play at 9:30AM (for pete's sake). We got ourselves organized and headed down to the venue by 9AM. TURNS OUT WE WERE THE ONLY DANCERS THERE. It was just too early for most of 'em I guess. So we had the floor to ourselves...good for having lots of fun and entertaining the folks, but grueling for dancing for 2-hours straight. You see, nothing makes a dance band more unhappy that NOT having anyone dancing, so naturally we felt obligated to dance EVER SINGLE NUMBER THEY PLAYED! OYE! So we put on a good show for the sponsors (Anna Maria Creekside - a retirement residence). They loved watching us and we loved performing for them! So we Fox Trotted, Waltzed, Rhumba-ed, Swung, West Coast Swung, Cha-Cha-ed, Salsa-ed and even Tango-ed ourselves right into oblivion.

This year's event hosted 16 musical groups with over 150 performances.


Happily for us, our dance students (Tom & Joy Lowell) sponsored a venue, so we got free badges! That's a savings of $140!

So, yes, we DID have to show them our s--- badges, frequently. So you're wondering why we don't have any photos of us dancing? Photography was not allowed unless you were an "authorized photographer" for the event. We do know that many photos were taken of us performing, but we don't know if we'll ever see them!

BIRTHDAY BASH

Yes, it's that time again when our chitlins have birthdays...both are October kids. Since they showed up last weekend, we had an impromptu party for them.

Susan is showing off her new top from Coldwater Creek...yes, they do have petites!

Now the "Doctor is in" in Chico, too, as Chris has his very own engine stethoscope!

Happy birthday to you! A triple chocolate loaf from Freddies made a good birthday cake.

FUNGUS AMUNG US!

Our 8' x 10' plastic storage building developed a severe case of floor rot, complete with mushrooms up to 10" across. We put off fixing this problem until the fall when the weather wasn't so hot and we weren't so beat up for all our other projects to rehab the house. Luckily this building is modular. so we were able to disassemble it quickly.

Rotted MDO floor

Mark & Jack taking down the roof in a large piece. We ripped up the floor and also the subfloor. Here Mr. A is spending some quality time re-leveling the whole damned frame...we splurged and treated ourselves to a real level from Harbor Freight.

Wall is behind Jack...they used duct tape to keep the plastic panels in one big piece. Here he is putting on the NEW plywood floor. It took 2-1/2 sheets of plywood which we sealed with good old Thompson's Water Seal.

Putting it all back together...ooh good, the doors will fit again! How lucky is that!

Yeah, for the first time ever, I have an indoor potting area. I'll be able to store all my stuff and pot up in style in the spring. Thanks, men!