Family Mellmann

When the kids were in elementary school and were going to have an extended break (winter break, spring break, etc.) I would plan some activities for us to do during those days.  We did craft projects, baked, went to the playground, walked on Church Street, or spent an afternoon at Pizza Putt (now closed) climbing, playing mini-golf, and trying our hands at arcade games.  If there was snow on the ground, we might go sledding or build a snowman. The kids are grown now and plan their own activities, but as a teacher (volunteer though I may be) these breaks offer a new opportunity to work on projects or do things I don't always make time for during a "normal" week.  I spent yesterday working on chores and riding out whatever bug is trying to get me down.  Today I hit the grocery stores (yes, stores - plural - it takes three stores to get my groceries these days) and then came home and baked cookies. Several years ago I received a recipe box that belonged to my maternal grandm

As anniversaries go, this year was quiet and easy.  Fighting a belly bug, I spent the morning resting, knitting, and futzing around on the computer.  Patrick decided he wanted to go ice skating and invited us to join him.  I haven't been on skates since the kids were little but I didn't want to miss out so I went along.  My feet is all you get see of this adventure, other than a nice shot of Patrick gliding by as I sat in the ice arena penalty box, but rest assured I did make it around the rink a couple of times and I never fell. The real celebration came at dinner time.  Joerg and I have gone out for sushi on our anniversary for years.  When the kids were little we would hire a sitter, later that sitter was Patrick, and now they both like sushi and prefer to go with us.  We have gone to the same place for years (even during COVID when we had to do carry-out sushi) so the owner, who is also the hostess and waits tables, knows me by name.  I suppose the fact that we order a lot

Well, maybe not outside.  But INSIDE the house, I'm doing my best to bring in some spring color.  Between our very short growing season and the critters who like to eat my bulbs, I haven't been able to grow spring flowers since Katherine was little (last picture; little Katherine and my last spring flowers). Last year I tried layered bulb planting in large pots by the front door.  Not only did nothing bloom, when I dug in the dirt to plant summer flowers, there were no signs that I had planted a single bulb.  What a disappointment. So, last fall I decided to try my hand at forcing bulbs.  I bought some bulbs, packaged them up, and stuck them in the bottom(coldest) drawer of my refrigerator (much to the chagrin of my family...my refrigerator is already a bit short on space) where they stayed (several are still there) until early February when I put them in two test pots by the patio doors (south-facing). In a week's time I already saw little green bumps appearing.  Now there

Last fall, as I was beginning a photo-related project, I discovered that our personal cloud had fallen victim to a ransomware attack (our own fault).  From the company that manufactured our cloud system, we got some help decrypting the files (almost entirely photos) but what they gave us was a jumble of files with no rhyme or reason to the sorting and it appeared to be almost entirely thumbnail sized images (small, low resolution, and low quality).  It turned out that we actually had both full sized and thumbnail but since they were all unorganized, unsorted, and missing any kind of recognizable file name (like katherine-piano recital) I really couldn't advance on my project.  Until I could summon the will to set aside the time required to filter through all those images and try to put them back in order...the files just sat on an external hard drive. Over the summer, a "techie" skilled friend came for a visit and worked some programming magic sorting the pictures into so