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Nancy A. Murdock January 30, 2011 - Here are the decisions re where we will be living. 1. We have decided to stay where we are. 2. We really don't want to have a $200 per month bill to pay each month. One of my happy achievements was to pay for the whole shot before we moved in. I cashed in everything and paid the full price for the house and yard. It seems to be working very well. 3. Ironwood is really an interesting place to live. It will take us a few more years to check it all out around here. 4. We bought a new set of appliances: electric stove, refrigerator, washer, and dryer. We would like them to give us more years than only one. 5. I have started to do a better job of making friends, and I feel that I'll be able to build on this small beginning. I had a nice talk with one of the workers at the local quilt fabric store, and I hope to add to this start. She is in my guild. 6. We've done pretty well at finding places to purchase needed items or find workers to help us with projects on the house. 7. We've settled in with doctors, etc., and it will be easier to continue with them rather than getting a whole new set of medical help. 8. Bob has figured out all the places to get what we need, and fortunately, he loves to go shopping. 9. We are at home in our church here. 10. We're all settled in, regarding trash pickup, etc. 11. We have a LOT of belongings which it doesn't thrill us to consider re-packing. 12. We are two elderly people who are used to the way things are now, and we aren't eager to get used to a change in our living arrangements. 13. We like our telephone setup. If we call long distance, there is no fee beyond the usual local payment. 14. Although we had a lot of help in moving, we still lost some small items and also had some damage to various items, such as a batch of casters. If we stay here, we won’t have to search for anything that we haven’t already found. 15. We notice that the weather info is not much different between here and New Hampshire. That was a bit of a shock to us! It was heartening to see that you also have lots of snow covering your yard. 16. It took us quite a while to find everything after the move, and we’d just as soon not go through that again. 17. Some close friends have found their way here from Tokyo and from Baltimore, and we’d like to have them visit again without having to go through the same process of finding their way. 18. We have a lot of photo albums, and we don’t want to lose any of those photos. So this way, we don’t have to juggle them from one house to another. Well, that's enough for now. We hope you will come and visit us sometime, now that we have tested our arrangements with Jean Ogawa and Colleen McKay. I am hoping to put in a Victory Garden this year. Now that we’ve had good luck with small tomatoes, we’ll try a few other foods. If you have put in a good garden this year, maybe you can give some advice to us for next summer. The first thing we will need to consider is how to get all the snow off the backyard, which is where I plan to plant this wonderful garden! At present, we have tons of snow covering all the green areas. See you at the family reunion. We will look forward to a good turnout! |
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Colleen McKay I am thinking about visiting you [Easter weekend, April 21 to 24]. I will rent a car and drive from the Rhinelander Airport. On Christmas day, I will be in Tempe AZ with my parents. It will be 74 degrees. |
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Nancy A. Murdock December 28, 2010 - You might think all of the excitement was over with, today. However, it doesn’t pay to think we’ve got it all wrapped up. The newest adventure began, I would say, when I got up after sitting at the computer a while and finding that I could barely walk. My RIGHT hip was in great pain. I finally did get around the basement enough to be able to go upstairs and get out my old crutches from the front closet. (I had obtained the crutches when I damaged my left knee.) Sure enough, with the crutches, it was MUCH easier to walk, and my right hip stopped complaining! My plan was to take down the VERY LARGE, sharply pointed icicle that had formed as part of a group of icicles across our bedroom window. I figured then I wouldn’t have to worry about losing someone from getting stabbed to death. So I put on my big green winter jacket and carried my camera and the crutches out to the icicles. After taking a good look at what might be the best way to do this, I swung one crutch, top first, from left to right and brought down the huge, scary stabber with one blow. Ah, TRIUMPH! Then I decided it would be a good idea to knock down some of the sister icicles. I bashed them with one more swing, which is all it took to remove about four or five of the sharply pointed, skinnier ones. I can’t tell you how pleased I was with the results of using the crutch. I’ve been looking for a couple of weeks at those sharp points and wondering what to do to make our walk in front of the window safer. Who knew that an aching hip would point me in the right direction. In fact, the hip feels fine right now, so maybe I won’t need to walk with the crutches any more today. And if you come to visit us, you won’t have to bring a baseball bat to make your arrival safer. On January 14, I will turn 79 years old. With all the things that have been happening lately, I think it isn’t going to make any immediate difference. We will welcome you - not with big, clumsy crutches, but with big, happy hugs. It’s been an interesting series of holidays. I can only guess at what will happen next. We are still at the point of finding that we can’t really always guess at what happens next. With love and hugs for you, Nancy A. Murdock (and Bob) |
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Gene Murdock Birthdays are fun! Yes, they certainly are. I started mine off with a birthday gift to myself, two new collections from the Great Books. One is titled: “The Physics of History” and describes how modern science can now measure the age of anything with analysis of the atoms it consists of. I was particularly intrigued to see that there is a chapter on dendrology where tree rings are measured and compared and can make a chain of climate effects back around 12,000 years, a practice I used while I was a Master Gardener on the Scottsboro Tree Commission. The other collection is the “Philosophy of Religion,” which involves standing back and looking at the whole concept of religion. On the day before my birthday I took myself out to dinner. I had planned to go out to West Omaha and recreate a fabulous meal that I had once eaten at an Italian restaurant. But time and distance dictated a shorter trip so I went to Council Bluffs and had a meal at Long John Silvers that would have made my doctor shudder. I had nice greetings at home at Linnwood Estates, where I was greeted with cards, songs and hugs. They put a picture of celebrants on the bulletin board and Mary G. came down to the room to take it. When she got a satisfactory one, she came over to my chair, squatted beside me, held out the camera with one hand and took a close-up shot of the two of us cheek-to cheek! Wow! Birthdays sure can be fun! My health remains good as can be expected, perhaps better as I start to accrue the benefits of my treadmill. I have my portable DVD player hooked up so I can watch it while I walk, and it is quite convenient that the lectures are all half-hour length, which is the time it takes me to walk a mile. But when I went in for a recent eye exam the doctor said “I’m really surprised you can see as well as you do, what with the increasing amounts of cataracts that you have!” But, that’s life! Love, Gene |
Polly and Stan |
Polly Joubert Feb. 3 - It sounds as if you have a nice place, the basement, for your computer. With limited space ours is in the front room which would be a second bedroom. This room faces the street and we have two large windows to watch the comings and goings as well as weather and birds. I also have a double window on my right looking toward the other house and down the street. I am aware of a flock of bluejays flying back and forth to the porch to pick up the bread and cheerios Stan put out. We also have the bird feeder on the edge of the porch roof.We had put it where we could look straight out from the living room windows but the snow is so deep I couldn't get to it, so we moved it. The birds love it as they are sheltered by the porch roof and the very large shrubs on the side of the porch. Do you have a bird feeder where it is visible to you from the living quarters? It's nice that your old friends still come to see you even if you did move so far away from everyone. It would be nice if you would come to stay with us in July when John has the get together. We have room and would love to chauffeur you around. I could also pick Nan's brain about easy quilting as I need something to occupy my days. I miss working.. Well, I guess I need to get something to eat as I've had two gigantic cups of coffee and nothing to eat with it. Feb. 2 - Well our weather has been less than likable. Our trash, like yours, is picked up on Wednesdays. We have a young lady who drives a truck and picks up all the trash in this community as it's paid for by the Jensen Community folks. Generally one of us takes the recycle material to the center on Saturday. We had a lot more when we subscribed to the Concord Monitor but have dropped that. Our latest snowstorm dumped about 14 or 15 inches of fluffy light snow so it wasn't too bad clearing the cars. I guess in MA they had some rain which may freeze on the surfaces tonight. That will be a real mess.. Oh, my latest news is I have ordered a new computer. I have a laptop I am now using but really wanted a desktop again. I ordered it with Office Suite 2011 and Quicken for keeping track of our finances. (not that there's much to keep track of) I do online banking and hope I can get one to talk to the other. Will you be doing a Muse online again? We would love to see pictures of your new home and all the snow you have. Maybe this summer we can take a trip to Michigan to visit you both. I say summer as I want to make sure there's no snow...... Jan. 30 - I am sick of this snow as it just never ends. It seems that every Wednesday we have another substantial snowfall. Tomorrow it is supposed to be nice but colder, then Tuesday a little snow, and Wednesday yet a larger storm. I am wondering what the hedges will look like when all the snow is gone. Right now they are literally buried in the snow and they are generally about my height but now much higher with the snow. The birds love it as they can get inside the bushes to hide. We moved our bird feeder to the end of the front porch as we couldn't get to it where we originally put it. It's nice, as we can watch all the birds flock to the feeder and eat off the floor and porch rails. We have juncos, sparrows, chickadees, and a pair of cardinals. I feel truly blessed they found us and continue to come back. We had a small woodpecker on the suet yesterday, but I haven't seen him yet today. Well I think I'll close for now, as my teacup is empty. Jan. 25 - Yikes, I can't wait till spring... I've been looking at real estate in Florida. I'd love to find a house not in a park, but own the land etc. We are having a miserable winter so far with lots of snow and very cold. I'm going out for my daily car sweep and shoveling of the "dusting to an inch". Rennie and Dianna came and shoveled the roof and shoveled a good path to the shed, so I'll try to keep it open. If we get another big storm on Thursday, I'll ask them to come back for shoveling. We have a man who comes to snowblow the driveway and shovel the front walk, but it has to continually be shoveled or swept. Since I'm not good about exercising, this is a good substitute. I sent away for some nice leather mittens with rabbit fur lining for me and some leather with other linings for Stan. We get cold fingers, so this should help. Well, I'm still sitting here in my bathrobe and it's 11 am, so guess I'd better make the move to do something.......... |
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Bob Murdock Here's what we know about the rest of this year: Colleen McKay plans to visit us in Ironwood over the Easter weekend. Polly and Stan Joubert may visit some time this summer. We hope that Jean Ogawa will come again from Tokyo. The Howlett Family Reunion will take place at John and Cathy's house in Chichester, NH on Saturday, July 9. If all goes well, we plan to spend a few days in New England. We have reserved a week at Dolphin's Cove resort, Anaheim, CA , from August 20 to August 27. While in California, we plan to have a West Coast Reunion of Howletts and Murdocks. probably on one of the Saturdays. Becky has volunteered to set it up, and it may be in the Whittier area. |
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