{"id":41654,"date":"2019-11-14T10:36:06","date_gmt":"2019-11-14T17:36:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lilesnet.com\/dailydiary\/?p=41654"},"modified":"2019-11-15T09:10:03","modified_gmt":"2019-11-15T16:10:03","slug":"approaching-normal-finally","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/lilesnet.com\/dailydiary\/?p=41654","title":{"rendered":"Approaching “Normal”, Finally!"},"content":{"rendered":"

I grew a beard, thinking it would say “Distinguished Gentleman.” Instead, turns out it says, “Senior Discount, Please!”<\/strong><\/p>\n

It must be the season as I woke up thinking about my family growing up. My folks were simple people from Oklahoma and Arkansas. They had a rough life but I never heard a complaint.\u00a0 They grew up without cars, no TV, and their first radio when they were teenagers.\u00a0 Both of them came from large families.\u00a0 Dad’s family came to California and stayed around.\u00a0 Mom’s family came to California but dispersed throughout the USA.<\/p>\n

The picture below is from 1995 and it was a holiday get together as you can see the long table set up in the foreground. We loved these times together and thanks to my fantastic wife, every time was special.\u00a0 My family readily adopted Sue as their own, it was the best of times.<\/p>\n

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I thought a lot about these people today. My family 20+ years ago!<\/p><\/div>\n

From left to right:<\/p>\n

Uncle Otis (not really related but a friend of my father since they were in the 4th grade in McRae Arkansas in the 1910s) was very special to me. Otis was terrific as he took care of my mother for twenty years after dad’s passing.\u00a0 He was a real man; a person I looked up to growing up! Otis passed in 1998.<\/p>\n

Kat Robinson, my cousin, passed in 2011 at the age of 93 and was quite a lot of fun. She was never married and had a penchant for singing, piano playing, and creative writing,\u00a0 In her retirement home, she was quite a personality. After 1988 (when I married Sue), she spent most holidays with us and we did a lot of adventures together!<\/p>\n

Aunt Edith was one of Dad’s older sisters.\u00a0 She did not get along very well with her daughter, but she sure got along with us.\u00a0 From 1988 through her passing in 2008, we were together every holiday, traveled the world together, and were great friends. She has a unique sense of humor which we got to appreciate over the years!<\/p>\n

The two little girls in the picture are Cassie and Jackie, two of our nine grandkids.\u00a0 They are now in their twenties and Cassie, who just turned 25, is a mommy of two of our great-grandchildren!\u00a0 Wow, time does fly!<\/p>\n

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Remember being at “The Kids Table”? The two little girls are Jackie and CAssie and the year was 2000 at our annual Pumpkin Carving Party!<\/p><\/div>\n

As of this morning, we have made 3,989 posts to this blog! The God of Boring must be thrilled! But, they serve a purpose because now we can search back twelve years and get a precise date something happened. That’s rather neat!<\/p>\n

I have been listening to bits and pieces of the impeachment travesty, and frankly, it reminds me of when I was Student Body President of Los Angeles City College. These self-important, pompous nincompoops we call “politicians” act like they just got out of high school. Childish behavior rampant and the people invited to testify are embarrassing (and that is polite). I am ashamed of our government!<\/p>\n

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Turn back the clock to a nicer time!<\/p><\/div>\n

So the timepiece indicated lunch was imminent and we took a vote, Indian\/Himalayan got the nod today!\u00a0 Off in the Silver Ghost arriving at 12:30 PM.\u00a0 The wait staff knows us well and as they passed by they said “The regular?”.\u00a0 We did the regular and it was perfect plus we have enough vittles to last us a week!<\/p>\n

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We are talking outstanding groceries here!<\/p><\/div>\n

As my dish was served the camera caught Sue in the cloud of smoke wafting from my red-hot iron skillet!\u00a0 Listen to it roar!<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.lilesnet.com\/videos\/chili-lamb-tikka.mp4<\/a><\/video><\/div>\n
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Visibility is down to six inches<\/p><\/div>\n

We struck up a conversation with two ladies at the next table and it was their first time dining Indian.\u00a0 They ordered and then when ours came, they asked about the dishes.\u00a0 We had so much food, we asked our waiter to get some small plates and we shared each of our plates with them.\u00a0 Lots of fun!<\/p>\n

Back home and time for PT.\u00a0 I popped over to Old Ranch to take care of some business arrangements and returning home, I checked for light-leaks for about 90 minutes!<\/p>\n

No Phoenix Club tonight as we have to save up energy for Topper’s on Friday and Starlighter’s on Saturday.<\/p>\n

I was thinking about this website and I looked back in the Way Back Machine. This was our front page on the web eighteen years ago!!<\/p>\n

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Many moons ago!<\/p><\/div>\n

We watched some TV and by 10:30 PM, we were goners!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I grew a beard, thinking it would say “Distinguished Gentleman.” Instead, turns out it says, “Senior Discount, Please!” It must be the season as I woke up thinking about my family growing up. My folks were simple people from Oklahoma … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[184],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-just-us"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lilesnet.com\/dailydiary\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lilesnet.com\/dailydiary\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lilesnet.com\/dailydiary\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lilesnet.com\/dailydiary\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lilesnet.com\/dailydiary\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41654"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"http:\/\/lilesnet.com\/dailydiary\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41654\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41685,"href":"http:\/\/lilesnet.com\/dailydiary\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41654\/revisions\/41685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lilesnet.com\/dailydiary\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lilesnet.com\/dailydiary\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lilesnet.com\/dailydiary\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}