Paul & Mary's Daily Diary

Just a little history: lilesnet.com (our website) was registered on Tuesday, 26th of December 1995, 30 years, 9 months, and 18 days ago, or 11250 days ago!

We have another full day, starting with a visit to the Elks for Girls Night Out, then a visit to the Muck.

Before leaving the Elks, we made reservations for Mamma Mia at the Elks. Friday, we will have us, Dianne and Fast Eddie, Robin, and Bob & Donna.

Get ready to say “Mamma Mia!”—it’s the Lodges’ annual Italian Night! Doors swing open at 5:30pm , and we will be greeted with hand-passed prosciutto and melon balls, plus bruschetta on grilled baguettes—more toasted than your uncle at a family reunion.

The Italian buffet kicks off at 5:30pm and rolls on until 8:00 pm, serving up spaghetti and meatballs, penne pasta Alfredo with chicken, Italian beef with onions, bell peppers, and marinara sauce, spinach raviolis piccata, shrimp scampi swimming in white wine and garlic butter, rice pilaf, veggies, and a pizza cart that’s rolling around like it owns the place, offering a smorgasbord of freshly baked pizzas. I can already see the bathroom scale getting nervous!

Pair it with the house Chianti for just $5 a glass. We will top it all off with spumoni ice cream, Italian cookies, and coffee!

Then dance it all off from 6:00 to 9:00 pm with DJ Ronaldo. Note to self: Wear dance shoes!!

After getting home, we took a short nap. At 4:30 pm, we heard someone come in through the garage door. It was our grandson Zachary

Zack, bless his soul, came by and started our 10KW generator since the weatherman is forecasting significant wind activity this weekend. That means we are likely to lose power! We know more wind is coming based on our gazebo, which blew its top off this morning.

We headed to the Muck at 4:00 pm, knowing it might take an hour. We got there, and the band was doing their “sound checks,” so we got some additional entertainment, albeit in small spurts!

Tonight it was just Vicky, Jim, and us! The four of us gab like school children, laughing and giggling the whole evening.

We, of course, came with a “Mary Basket,” meaning the picnic basket was bottomless; she found sandwiches, T-bone steaks, a whole watermelon, grapes, veggies, and, of course, six bottles of vino!! The basket is haunted!!!

The band played non-stop for 90 minutes, and we were stomping our boots and yelling “HOW-DEE” until we were hoarse.

At 9:30 pm, we headed home, but our GPS waived us off the freeway and took us down side streets to the 90, which is Imperial. Our GPS showed the 91 Freeway lit up red, so we avoided a long wait!

There was ZERO wind at the Muck, but by the time we got home, the wind was howling!

I emptied the trunk and went into the house on full automatic—which is how I ended up hanging the car keys on their hook without realizing I’d brought them inside. When I went back out to lock the car, the keys had vanished. Mary and I searched every bag, coat, and corner of the house. It was a mystery worthy of a detective show: How did we start the car, drive home, and somehow arrive without the keys?

I locked the car manually! Meanwhile, the keys remained at large. Probably hanging out on their hook, enjoying the drama.

We gave up and went straight to bed. It had been a long day, and the wind whistled outside like it knew where the keys were but wouldn’t tell. At least we were safe: Zack had started the generator, and it was out on the ship—right where I could get to it.

I knew the keys were somewhere and figured out the house was being haunted! It is that time of year!

Then I got to thinking, always a dangerous situation. I went to the key hanger in the closet, and there, smiling a toothless grin, were the keys playing hide-and-seek.

Good night y’all!

Being a homeowner is so much fun! Yesterday our ice maker died! With tools in hand, I got to work, but alas, after digging out all the ice to make sure it wasn’t frozen, I determined the unit was internally busted. So we called our handy-dandy appliance service, and after a few negotiations, they will be here Monday morning to replace it. Poof!!

As if that weren’t bad enough, it is torture day! Yes, self-induced bodily harm comes our way this morning as we enter the gymnastics twilight zone where simple, harmless-looking machines come to life and begin to twist and turn body parts into unnatural positions. It feels unnatural!!

While we were working hard, two visitors appeared in the corner of my eye. One looked suspiciously like a gym buddy; the other, one of our fitness instructors. Both wore red devil costumes, grinning and hiding their pointy tongues. They seemed delighted to watch poor Mary and me get tangled up in the torture equipment—apparently, even Hell has a spectator section.

Being curious, we had to take a closer look!

We were lucky to escape with our lives! From the gym, we flew by home and headed to Huntington Beach for our every six-week appointment to get our ears lowered. We grabbed a small bite next door at the Black Trumpet, and we filled up so we wouldn’t need dinner since we have a board meeting at our house tonight.

While gorging ourselves on delicious food, we kept thinking about the two devils, and then POOF, Mary changed! Since the Black Trumpet was dark, Mary decided to bring her own lantern!

She was so still I started to worry—until I asked her to move. Sure enough, it was Mary, using her lantern to signal the waitress for a glass of wine. Even in a crisis, she knew how to flag down service.

We went from the Black Trumpet to Casa Valencia at 34.3 times a broom’s speed.

When we arrived, so did our cleaning crew, and Domi knew she had to be done by 5:30 pm, so she worked fast. She and Maria finished around 5:35 p.m., and our Fearless Leader, Bob Z, showed up a few minutes later to get ready for the meeting. Getting ready consists of sipping a small glass of wine!

Mary finished off the kitchen island with all sorts of goodies. The famous spider eggs were on display, and several were devoured by the board members (the rest will come tomorrow, even in a picnic basket at the Muck)

The buffet was ready! We should weigh everyone in and out and charge by the pound for the difference as they leave,

The meeting opened for business with Bob, Vicky, and Mary as the main active parties. We finished in about 90 minutes, covering all the Starlighters’ business. Since we are all good friends, discussions go fast.

We have fun, and the meetings are NOT boring!

Mary kept us on track and took the meeting minutes.

As the meeting ended, Bob told us about the wonderful jacket he got for his 80th birthday from Fast Eddie. Bob is now the envy of several old motorcycle guys!

I, of course, immediately went to ChatGPT and explained what I was seeing in my mind!

After everyone left, Vicky and Jim unloaded their trunk into our garage with supplies for the upcoming festivities.

As Vicky got cleared for takeoff, Jim grabbed the dashboard in a death grip, and the White Thunder—Vicky’s racing car—blasted off. After the dust cleared and the neighborhood dogs stopped barking, Mary had a brilliant idea.

Mary decided it was warm enough to take three victory laps around the hood in her modernized Halloween witch-mobile. She was thrilled to have the battery-powered model. I was thrilled too: no more connecting every extension cord in the neighborhood and standing in the street as Mary attempted to escape last year’s model like a tangled-up witch on a leash.

Mary and I headed to the TV room and watched two more episodes of The Way Home before calling it a night. When sleepiness started closing in, I made the long trek to the back of the house to brush my teeth, take my nighttime pill, and fire up the breathing machine—basically my evening pit stop.

While I was there, I finished today’s entry. That brings us to 6,482 entries since we started in 2007: about 324 posts a year, or nearly one a day. At this rate, I’ll have enough material to bore future generations for centuries.

Today is Tuesday, so my favorite artist will leave Casa Valencia at noon and take the Silver Fox for a ride to the Tustin Senior Citizens Center. That also means I will work around the house on my personal to-do list, which keeps getting bigger and bigger! You can see her work in Mary’s Loft!

Sometimes we call her Dr. Messy!!

Here are some interesting facts about watercolors:

• Watercolor paint is made from pigment and a binder, usually gum arabic, which helps the pigment stick to the paper.

• The paper often provides the white areas in a painting. Artists commonly leave parts unpainted instead of using white paint.

• Watercolor is usually transparent, so artists can layer thin washes of color. These layers are called glazes.

• Water controls the effect: more water makes paint lighter and more fluid; less water creates richer, more concentrated color.

• Once a wash dries, it can be reactivated with water, though some pigments lift more easily than others.

• Gouache is a related water-based paint that is generally more opaque than traditional watercolor.

• Watercolor has a long history, but it became especially popular for landscape painting and travel sketches because the materials are relatively portable.

• The paper matters a lot: watercolor paper is designed to handle water without buckling as easily as ordinary paper.

• Artists use techniques such as wet-on-wet (painting onto damp paper) for soft edges and wet-on-dry for sharper details.

With Mary gone, I’ve been tackling my personal to-do list—which appears to reproduce whenever I’m not looking. Today, I organized the TV Room components, hid the wires, identified the remotes, and labeled them, so we can smoothly switch between Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas movies on CD or streaming. Naturally, I also did the laundry, fixed the Roomba, repaired every flashlight in the house, and downloaded photos from our recent trip on the Sony A6000.

I got to see the work of art for 30 seconds before I was whisked away to the market, since we are expecting the Starlighters Board tomorrow at 6:00 pm, and Mary is putting on a spread.

We went in for “just a few things” and somehow left $280 poorer—with some excellent steaks for Her Nibs and me, plus a couple of nice bottles of wine for our guests. So, really, the groceries practically paid for themselves.

When we got home, Mary went straight into homemaker mode: whipped up an amazing dinner, then got started on her specialty—egg spiders! Of course, making Halloween deviled spider eggs requires two things: the right costume and an appropriately spooky background. It’s in the recipe. Somewhere.

For the rest of the afternoon and evening, we watched TV; we are almost halfway through The Return Home. I did some work on the computer, ran into a Facebook gift offer, and stopped dead! How did they know? We can hardly wait to go visit Rory on Monday!

Later that evening, I started thinking about Halloween, which is coming up soon, and I decided to ask Charlotte to join us, at least for the first two hours! I was reminded of the Halloween Ball when I got the Elks bulletin about decorating the Lodge for Halloween!

At least we have our costumes picked out, and they are ready to be unleashed on the world!

Finally, Mary will get to wear her new dirndl as we were back east when the Elks had Ocktoberfest. Below is a brief history of the dirndl:

The dirndl is now closely associated with Bavaria and Alpine festivals, but its history is more recent—and more complicated—than the idea of an unchanged “traditional” dress suggests.

Early 19th century: In German-speaking Alpine regions, rural people wore practical clothing shaped by local materials, work, climate, and custom. These clothes varied considerably by region and social class. They were not one standardized outfit called a dirndl.

Late 19th century: Wealthy urban visitors and artists became fascinated with Alpine life and its clothing. In the 1870s, Munich department-store owners Moritz and Julius Wallach helped popularize a fashionable version inspired by rural women’s dress. The garment’s name is linked to Dirndl, a Bavarian-Austrian word for a young woman; Dirndlgewand originally referred to a maid’s or working woman’s dress.

Turn of the 20th century: The dirndl became fashionable as both a holiday outfit and a symbol of regional identity. Clubs and associations promoted local dress, or Tracht, often formalizing styles that had previously been more varied and changing.

Nazi era: The Nazi regime promoted selected forms of German and Alpine folk culture, including traditional dress, as part of its nationalist imagery. This period politicized some forms of Tracht, but the dirndl itself was not invented by the Nazis; its modern fashionable form had become popular decades earlier.

After World War II: The dirndl was widely worn at regional celebrations and became a familiar symbol of Bavarian culture, especially through tourism and events such as Oktoberfest. Over time, designers and manufacturers adapted it for changing tastes, using different cuts, fabrics, and embellishments.

Today, the dirndl can be ceremonial regional dress, a fashion item, or festive clothing. Its details—such as apron style, bodice, skirt length, and decoration—may reflect particular local traditions, but many modern versions are contemporary designs rather than exact reproductions of historical work clothes.

We finally crashed around 10:30 pm. Tomorrow is another busy day!!