My Book………………….LILAGCS (47)

Monday September 15, 2014

Blog For A Day!

Time to write another Blog. I wrote one 5 days ago so now I need to put on my thinking cap and write another one. Our daughter will have a birthday this coming Friday the 19th.

                                 

She will be 23 years old. She is mildly retarded but does a good job at most things. She loves to work with small children as you can see above. I think I will have to write more and finish this Blog tomorrow.

Tuesday September 16, 2014 I had to go to the next day to continue.

My Blog is a reflection of what I am dreaming about and based on my past memories.(I guess you probably already knew that!)

My first house was an interesting thing. Denny Wessels, who I wrote a tribute to a few Blogs ago, was involved in getting me set up with a contractor that he knew and was helping him with some of his construction challenges. His friend was in the process of building a 3 bedroom ranch-style home in the Northwest part of Fort Dodge. (21st Avenue North) to be exact. I went out there to observe the house and the workmanship. I had helped a contractor build homes as I was growing up in high school. I was taught good construction and poor construction. For example poor construction was when the builder used 2X6’s rather that 2X10’s for the floor joist and ceiling rafters.

 

I also learned to check the basements for possible water seepage. A good contractor will make sure that the basement walls are well coated with tar to seal them from the water.

                                 

There were many more things I learned to look for but they are too numerous to mention. I was convinced that this builder was doing a very good job. He was not finished with the wood trim, doors and windows on the inside. He also had not used any flooring other that the wood covering the floor rafters. He also had not done any outside yard seeding or landscaping yet.

     

I then had a great idea. Maybe he would lower the selling price if I did some of the finishing work. The house was priced at $21,950. He agreed to lower the cost to $19,500 if I did the finishing work. The materials would still be furnished as part of the building.

 

Finishing wood trim on interior of house…

 

It was a very cost saving move on my part and we spent our time doing all the finishing, painting and varnishing, finally it was done and ready for us to move in. We also did all the yard work. We seeded the front yard and sodded the side and backyard. The seeding took longer but was actually a better looking yard than the part that we sodded.

   

We were then ready to move in to our new 3 bedroom house. We enjoyed it very much. We put indoor/outdoor carpet tiles in the dining room and kitchen areas

Keeping it clean was pretty easy and if we spilled something really bad, we could replace the tile where it was ruined.

One interesting sidelight was that years later after we had moved to a different house there was a tornado that went very close to our street. Our original house had little damage but the houses around it were totally demolished.

See you at the next Blog.

My Book…………………LILAGCS (46)

Wednesday September 10, 2014

A Look At the Past

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I was just sitting here thinking about what I would write for my next Blog. I am waiting for my “Dave’s Blog” in the Spencer Daily Reporter to be published. It is only early morning on Tuesday there in Spencer, Iowa so it may be later in the day when it gets put in the Blog section of the paper.

I thought it might be good if I shared how I put all of my “stuff” in order when I made the decision to go to the Philippines. Below is a photo showing some of the things I had to put somewhere.

 

           

 

     

       

The first two photos above are pictures of my Living or Front room the last is a photo of my bedroom.

As you may see, I had a lot of stuff to find a place for or get rid of. I was able to rent a storage place not to far from where I lived. It was about the size of a small garage. Josh Guffey and his lady friend helped me with a lot of the moving of my “stuff” to the storage garage. We were able to move most of it in her small VW car. It took a lot of back and forth trips.

                           

Above is pictured a small Yellow VW like the one we used to move most of my things from my apartment to my storage unit.

I also gave some things to the Salvation Army an some I just gave to friends. By the time I was ready to go to the airport for my flight to the Philippines I had everything removed from my apartment. A friend from my men’s Bible study group from the Coralville Methodist church that I attended was picking me up at 7 AM the day my air plane was to depart. He was on time and off I went on my journey.

                                

I had two “carry-ons”, my laptop computer and a small bag. Then I also had a larger suitcase with wheels and a handle which was stored in the air plane’s storage area.

I went through an extensive check-in security check when I was ready to proceed to my departing Gate. I even had to remove my shoes to be checked.

                          

Once all the security checking was done I was told I could proceed to my departing gate.

My flight to the Philippines took me to Detroit first, which was actually East, then from Detroit I had a direct flight to Manila with a stop in Nagoya, Japan for fuel and plane cleaning. I didn’t  have to change plane just wait in the DC-10 I had been riding on.

                     

After about a one and a half hour lay-over we took off for Manila where Evelyn had told me she would meet me for our trip to Cebu City.

That’s about it for this Blog. I made it through all the checking stations and met Evelyn which made me very happy.

My Book……………………LILAGCS (45)

Thursday August 26, 2014

Trip To Boston Memorial Hospital

Her it is September 4th already and I have been idle in writing or actually finishing this Blog.
I went to brother Jim’s to be a caregiver when he got a detached retina in his “good” eye. I refer to it as his good eye because he had gotten detached retina in his other eye 3 times. He didn’t follow the directions of his doctor. He was not suppose to lift anything over 5 pounds for at least a year and then take care doing any lifting.
He is a ceramic arts teacher and mixes his own clay. The clay comes in 50 pound bags and he has to carry them to the place where he dumps the powdered clay into a tank for mixing.
                                  
It was while he was doing this that he had the problem before.
He now had only one eye that worked well as the eye that had 3 detached retinas has lost a lot of vision. I made him impossible to drive his car and he needed to go to the Hospital in Boston (photo above) to visit his eye doctor.
                               PT Cruiser
I had decided to go back, after being there the previous November for Thanksgiving.I knew how to get there this time and used the same route to do that. This time I avoided the long delays and layovers and took me only 14 total hours to travel from Iowa City, Iowa to Amherst. Massachusetts by Greyhound bus.
  
Jim’s Chrysler PT Cruiser was easy for me to drive and I had very little difficulty maneuvering it around.
Jim was able to direct me to the parking place where we parked the car and walked to the hospital where his doctor was. His doctor was a Chinese doctor and she was very strict that Jim needed to not lift anything and stay calm all the time the eye was healing.
  Detached Retina
I was to drive Jim wherever he went and watch that he stayed calm. and do no lifting at all.
We finished with the doctor and by then, Sarah, His daughter was there and she took us to lunch there in Boston. We finished lunch and headed back to Jim’s place to relax and get out thoughts together.

My Book…………………….LILAGCS (44)

Tuesday August 26, 2014

One thing that keeps me going and keeps my mind alert is to recall special events in my past that I really had a Great experience doing. This is one of those events.I decided to go to my brother Jim’s for Thanksgiving. I made the decision to take the bus because of the low cost. I had some very interesting things happen as I will now share with you in the Blog below.

Bus Ride to Massachusetts 2004

Sometime in late summer 2004 I made the decision to visit my brother in Massachusetts for Thanksgiving. It had been a long time since I had done any traveling. I did a lot of traveling with my job at LeFebure back in the 1980s when I was in charge of the company’s banking trade show participation.

                                   Banking Equipment

I had pretty much decided I was not going to do much traveling after I finished with LeFebure. I was living in Cedar Rapids at that time. I moved to Estherville to work with Golden Sun Feeds for about 3 years then to Perry, Iowa where I commuted to Des Moines and I went to work for Wallace’s Farmer magazine.

         

One of my main concerns was I would have to leave all my “stuff”. I didn’t have that much but what I did have I was not wanting to leave it. Finally after a lot of talking to myself and answering lots of questions that were on my list of reasons why not to go I made the decision to close my eyes and just go.

The bus terminal in Iowa City , where I lived, was close to the Senior Center where I went quite often. I quickly made friends with the bus terminal employee and was soon convinced he was going to do his best to guide me through the bus ordeal.

I would leave Iowa City about 1 PM and arrive in Chicago to catch my connecting bus.

            

What I didn’t know was the delays and extra time it took to get to Chicago. To my dismay when I got there, my connecting bus had already left. The bus terminal was so crowded it was crazy.

 

      

I finally ask enough people that I learned that I needed to go to a place that scheduled bus trips and get a new route and schedule. I called Jim and alerted him to my situation and he said, just to cool it and go with the flow. (The flow wasn’t going any where!)

I was able to keep my traveling bags and large suitcase with me and I found a place to sit and wait. I had a 6 hour wait until my connecting bus would leave. I had two choices. To go through New York City or take another route that was about 2 hours longer but just passes through smaller Cities, It took me through Cleveland, Cincinnati Ohio, Albany, New York and on to Springfield, MA.The only bus change I would have was in Springfield to Amherst, MA. The others were all stops to rest, have a snack and continue on. There were 5 or 6 other short stops where we stayed on the bus while they “let off” or “took on” passengers.

Again I called Jim from Albany to let him know where I was. He told me that someone would be at the depot in Amherst to meet me. It wasn’t much, just a business where the bus stopped.

              

He told me it would probably be his friend “Dave” that would meet me and drive me to where Jim lived.

I got to Springfield and transfer to a “Peterpan Bus” and had a short wait until we made the 30 minute trip to Amherst.

                      

Just as Jim had told me, His friend Dave was there to meet me and took me on to meet Jim.