Week Two

Three weeks of fun and frovility and family. I’m still trying to catch up on sleep.
There was the kiddles and pool fun of my previous post. Then the return of the sister from her outpost in Flagstaff, AZ. Followed by a much needed trip to SF for me that included museums and wandering favorites haunts in the city and time spent with girlfriends who I miss daily. Topped off by the big celebration of birthdays for all the Virgo’s as well as recognition for the 40,50,60,80 decade birthdays that occurred this year.

It has been years since we’ve seen my middle sister so it was quite a treat to have her and my mom in Carson City for the long Labor Day weekend. Nothing, besides her great-grandchildren, makes my mom happier than having her three girls in one place.

We are each 5 years apart, we are each very different and that can be entertaining in and of itself. We took a trip up to Virginia City for lunch and a saunter through the old town where candy shops were where we dropped our money. This is a family trait: forget ktochkes, bring on the chocolate. One cannot go to Virginia City without the requisite old time photo. Annie Oakley’s got nothin’ on us.

We had lunch at the Nugget in Carson City the next day and indulged in some video poker which we failed at miserably. There was gut-busting laughter (which is a given when we are all together, you just don’t know what will set it off...but it will happen...always!) While my mother tangled with a determined guy with a walker and oxygen tank headed for his favorite machine. There is a joke (MMspouse is a jokester by trade) about the proliferation of oxygen tanks in casinos where smoking is the norm and those things could go off like a torpedo...which I shared with the girls minutes earlier, so being chased by one set us off and then to make matters worse we encountered several more within minutes which kept the uncontrollable laughter going at a fever pitch....from then on "oxygen tank" was all it took. There was lots of catching up and lounging around and I was happy to see my Arizona sister looking healthy. The last time I had seen her she still had the shadow effects of a year of Interferon therapy on her and it was distressing.
Once my mom and sis departed for the airport I collected my stuff, packed and hit the road the following day for my own escape to my beloved SF/Bay Area.

That’s my next post.

This week I start a new djembe class which will include Dununs, a drum you play with sticks. West African rhythms are designed for these two drums to be played together and it adds such a wonderful deep melody with the djembe that I can’t resist trying my hand at it. I’m starting a beginning web publishing class to see if I have any interest or aptitude for the genre. Since I spent most of today tweaking my new MySpace page it seems there is a little interest or curiosity there for me...onward I say!