While the cat's away

There is a big fire in teh mountains just at the east end of 1300 South. They have been evacuating some houses at around 3040 rast (that's where Jon Hintsman lives) and cannot send up the planes because it is night. They will be fighting the fire all night from the ground and I hope the wind does not change. Right now it is blowing north and tonight started moving west into the houses. Hopefully the wind keeps it away from our neighborhood. Actually, now that I think about it, we should be OK because Parleys canyon should protect us. Although the fire jumps a few hundred feet at a time in all the dry brush. I think it is the hot embers that can cause the biggest jumps. So hold thumbs that Parleys will be a big enough fire break. The smell of burnt grass is terrible.

I spent the night washing dishes, laundry, doing ironing, and eating. So much to clean and so little time!

Rieks just passed on an address of family of ours on the van Rensberg side. He has written a book on his grandparents (and great-grandparents) and we will try to get this book. Rieks sent me his email address as G requested.

We will now see what kinds of skinder stories there are about my family?

I'm trying to pull you, butt you're too heavy!

Somebody made an offer ....

C&N are about to embark on a new phase of their life.
N called me yerterday and said, "What are you doing right now?" I said that I was tryinhg to see if there is a daylight savings time setting on my blackberry. C&N wanted me to meet them at a house they want to make an offer on!
This is the first house they looked at a week ago and after hours of house hunting with Cheryl Wood, decided that THIS IS THE PLACE.
Tons of planning, discussing, pricing carpets for replacing, and signing papers, they made an offer on the house with a deadline of 12.00 miday today for a response.
We are all waiting for the next chapter in the house saga.

I called Marissa today and she is cleaning her place in prep for M coming over tonight. She is also in stress mode with the hundreds of things she has to get done before xmas when her plane leaves and the next phase of her life starts. It is only 3 months and between the university, her Honours degree, packing up her home, making the most of her last little time with friends and family, and getting some SLEEP, there is no time to think!
She did have time to go to dinner with a guy she met and today found out he is the former head of Ciskei. Mmm, we will have to arrange for M to meet our mayor, Rocky Andersen or perhaps the govenor Jon H.

Parking is just not a problem.

AJ cruising in for a healthy breakfast.

AJ and I went for coffee this morning. I arrived in my little car, had coffee, cream, and a muffin. AJ came on his bike, had a cool drink, yogurt and some protein. He does tend to sedt the pace for us with his exercise and healthy eating. Shen has left this morning for Connecticut. G told me that they received such lovely flowers from Shen and AJ. A l;ovely basket with white flowers arrived and G saind they looked spectacular. Thanks for such a lovely gesture.

I also notice that Shen is now leaving comments (thanks Shen, and it was a pleasure) and is showing how she can navigate blogs. Shen does seem to give the impression tht she is not 'good' with using computers, but I am starting to suspect that Shen is great in doing what she needs to do on the computer.

How can someone so lovely be so much work?

All aboard for the rainbow sled.

Didn't we do that the last time Tansie was in SA?

yes this is all mine.

Come and get it! You and I are the only meat-eaters today.

The mouse ran that-a-way.

Well, it's my blue and yellow shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missile.

I think someone put some of my dad's chipotle on this chip ..

I'm going to send my rocket right into that Heli.

Who's flying this thing in any case?

Dinner with Susan, David, Lucy and Eli consisted of all the mexican delights one can imagine.  While David was cooking the meat (not for Susan), we had some totilla chips with threee kinds of salsa:  hot, medium, and a variation of medium and washed it sone with Negro Modelo (provided by me at least). 

I brought my helicopter to play with, Lucy brought her rocket and Eli stood at a short distance with his green ball and watched the experiments in flight. I managed to get the heli up, and Lucy took pot-shots at the heli with her rocket … no mid-air collisions thank goodness.  I got so confident that I decided I could land the heli on a small coffee table.  Big mistake.  I missed the table and crashed the heli, Eli started crying, and Lucy did not have a target anymore!

By then the food was ready and what a feast!  Tortillas (corn), rice, beans, guacomole, salsas, veggies (perppers, etc), a number of other dips that were really good, and more beer. Susan has made a start on her thesis and is happy to have around 3 hours a day to work on it. She has decided to do the thesis on AIDS elEgies, which, for the uninformed, are poems about death and dying.  I will have to read the thesis to understand myself.  She is focussing on the changes and differences beween then and now both in terms of the elegies, the motivation and maybe the intended audience changes.

It may sound as if the conversation dwindled to morbidity, but that is not so.  We had a great evening with lots of livlely discussions, and even the elegies were light-hearted with all kinds of facinating anecdotes mixed in.

We also had a chance to see all the wild animals:  There was the hottentots-gog, called Beauty; the two hummingbirds (twins both called Beauty), and then we hunted down a mouse roamiong wild in the veggie garden.  Could this be the Tooth Mouse?

Later, Lucy read to me from her Spanish book and she knows tons of spanish already … by the way those parents have the Spanish up to speed as well because I heard them helping out even without looking at the book.  I suspect that they have been through the book a few times because they could recite words and phrases from the page we were looking at without even seeing the page numbers we were looking at.  Una, dos, tres.  What color is your dress? Rosa Y amarillo, does not make a mess. Asd you can see my Spanish is not bien.

Susan and I took tons of photos and I will be sorting through them tomorrow and posting some here. 

My dearest Tomcat:

I love the way you tell all you do while I'm gone. Or am I just too gullible now that jetlag has finally set in? My mom's funeral service was today. It was held at House Verdi where she lived. I got up (after only two hours of sleep, having awakened in the middle of the night realizing the tribute I prepared was going to be the only one from our family instead of just one among several. I rewrote it between 4:30 am and 6:30 am, all the while accompanied by Boshoff who was staying up in front of the fire with 2-year old Barend who could not get to sleep again in the strange house. It was strangely cosy and comforting. By 9 am Boshoff and Tertia and I went to the flower market to buy more flowers -- Tertia and B had already bought masses of roses and tulips so they could open. The flowers are so fresh at the market, the blooms are tight little knots when you buy them. We bought a completely over-the-top amount of flowers -- the whole back of the combi was full. At Huis Verdi, Lana, Boshoff, Tertia,10 yr old cousin Michelle arranged about ten huge vases of flowers -- the two tallest arrangements were about 5 1/2 ft high. Boshoff also fetched some of my mom's paintings and leaned them up against the vases. On the table in front of the podium he arranged some nature items from my mom's room -- a piece of driftwood, porcupine quills, a candle, and tons of proteas. It was an amazing sight. The predikant was really lovely and spoke very briefly.
It won't let me write longer. More in another one. Love, G

 Carel's son Reuben played Amazing Grace on the recorder. He looked both vulnerable and dignified in a beautiful pair of dark pants, white shirt, and bow tie. He was the first to set everyone off crying.

 Peter, Wally and Elrine came! And when the predikant asked people to pay tribute to my mom, Wally spoke beautifully about her computer skills at age 70 plus. Oom pieter, my mom's brother, spoke movingly about his sister. I then gave my tribute,giving my mom's thoughts from a meditation on her life that she wrote, and people responded to it with great emotion.

Afterwards we had tea and snacks -- which in SA means a major meal -- and hung around with all the people who attended. An amazing number of people from the old age home came too, and many relatives and friends. ON the way back Tertia said, "One isn't supposed to think of it this way, I suppose, but I think everyone enjoyed Ma's funeral very much." I definitely think so too. I'm SO glad I could be part of it.
I'm so curious about N & C's house, the aftermath of Samie's disillusionment with our financial situation, what our friends are up to, and all the rest. I love you, my own small nuclear family, and all our wonderfully supportive friends.
It's hard to get to the computer since the house is full of people and the computer is in Mickey and Tertia's bedroom, where her kids sleep since they both gave up their rooms. But I think of you all the time, Peter, and really missed you today. I was the only sibling without a spouse, and I felt the hole at my side where you would be with deep loss. But I also felt you in my heart.

Love to all, keep blogging, it's wonderful!

A book is being written about multi-media and kids learning and the author was at Cheryl’s office today.  They loved her work on diagrams used to show how the equipment works that they asked to use the graphics in the book.  We are all hoping that Cheryl will get listed by name as a contributor. 

Thai leftovers made a great dinner tonight, even though I only managed to get it all together by 8.00pm.  My day job is just taking over my life and then on top of that there are SO MANY jobs to do around the house … bed, dishes, food, mail, Sami & Co, etc etc.  I need a rest!

I found a new firmware upgrade on the web for the TV and installed it tonight.  This supposedly fixes the problem I am having and so will keep my eyes open.  I will also cancel the planned visit by the TV technician.  In any case I reported the problem to Best Buy at the start of the week and their local Techs can only make a visit by Monday earliest.  What a pain. 

I called G today and she sounds a million times better after some sleep in a proper bed.  I will be thinking about all the family at the funeral tomorrow.  Oh to be a millionaire and flit anywhere in the world when you need to support your family. 

Lucy has named her new backyard pet 'Beauty'.

That great big plasta screen TV is causing me some problems and so I have a call in to BestBuy to test how good their extended warrantee is.  The story goes that they will fix the problem or give you a new TV with NO HASSLES.  We will see. I called yesterday, today I got a call back, the plan is for a local Tech to come over on Monday, and then what?   I know that he has ZERO chance of fixing it, so why the HASSLE. 

Updates to follow:  Is it worth the money for an extended warrantee?  The doubts are starting already!

I had a great Thai beef curry with AJ tonight. I had beef, AJ had vegetarian, which is why he is so slim and trim, methinks.
After donner, AJ intended to break open a nice bottle of red wine but accidently picked up a bottle of Amantalado sherry. We quickly put it back, thinking that someone may have kept this for a special occasion and we could not justify that. So we found a nice red wine and then sat down in front of Shen's compueter to see if we can get it to work. The poor machine had been raped by a nasty virus and was using up 98% of the CPU doing nothing useful. The virus got killed (no antibiotic, of course), the antivirus and security suite was reloaded and configured to automatically run every night to chase away the nasties, and we connected Nick's MAC via the wirelessw lan to the great world wide web ... source of endless entertainment and countless vagrants.

I had a good long discussion with Shen and AJ on the merits of the 'Tuff Shed' vs Sami's great design. On the one hand, it looks great, on the other hand it costs a lot; on the one hand, it fits with the modifications, on the other hand it costs a lot; on the one hand it has style, on the other hand it costs a lot. AJ was figuring the cost of the material and trying to persuade me that "we can do it". But I was not ready to tackle a job like that. Not even close!

C and N went to look at their first potential new house! They are pretty excited with all the features but are taking the well thought-out approach of now first going to look at some more houses. "We are not going to buy the first house we see, no matter how nice", says Cheryl.

I am home with a doughnut and coffee and after all the wine I will not be able to update the system design I thought I will still do tonight. Oh well, tomorrow will have to do.

Or amybe this should be titled "What happened to my WIFE".
She is still on the plane and my life has become so busy I have no time to sit on the easy chair and have someone bring me a cup of coffee.
G called this afternoon and said she is safely in SA and had a good trip. It started off pretty badly because once the plane had taxied out, the pilot announced the smell of smoke and returned to the parking spot. Whatever the prtoblem was, it was fixed after an hour on the ground and G's connection in Chicago is only 2 hours from landing. So she worried, fretted, and finally called the air-hostess who spoke to the pilot and was assured she will make it (just). Well she did make it and had no further problems.

I am off to a Thai dinner with AJ tonight and am looking forward to that.

This afternoon I went to see our architect, Sami, and he almost threw me out of the office when I mentioned Tuff Shed to him. So-o-o-o now I have everyone on my tail and feel like a gom-tor with no style or class. G, call me.

We're here to help ...

We called Newton and Cheryl on Mopnday morning to let them know about ouma and soon Newton arrived with some lovely flowers from the two of them and Zorro, and said, "I am herre to help." He had taken the day off work and helped enormously with all the small errands and work Gerda needed to do to get ready. Cheryl arrived at 3.00pm with a crock-pot full of meat and potatoes which we finally had for dinner. We are so lucky to have this wonderful support at a time like this.

Just after midnight on Sunday we got the news that ouma Susan has died. We were all expecting this to happen but it still came as a surprise and marks the closure of an era: All our parents are gone.

Gerda and I called to make reservations for her to go to South Africa imediately, but the reservations clerk politely told us that we need to call when more people are available to make the reservations. So we had a cup of tea, spoke some, and went to bed again.