A Trip to the Mall

Yesterday Dee went to Contours and I went to Treesdale to play 9 holes. However, when I arrived I learned they were having a tournament and the club was closed. So I hit golf balls at the range for a while. When I got home I took Bonz for a nice long walk. Dee did a little shopping before returning. We had lunch and then decided to go to Ross Park Mall.

I drove the back roads to the mall past the North Hills Community Baptist Church. I wanted to be certain of how to get there for Friday night's dinner, and it was a very scenic tree-lined route through North Park. I found the sized watch batteries I needed at a Kmart along the way. We love these smoothies at Mr. Smoothie at the mall, so Dee treated me to a cappuccino one. Yummmm. It was nice to be able to just walk around and look in stores (Brookstone is one of my favorites) without having any agenda. The mall was very quiet with not many people there. That was nice.

As we drove home, I took a different route, and we stopped at Patron's Mexican Restaurant for some enchiladas, tacos, burritos and tamales. We'd been there a couple of times and enjoyed it before.

Later we watched a little television ( Bruce Willis movie) and then had a couple of glasses of wine and relaxed in the hot tub. I sure like those rope lights that come around the deck and down the steps. They provide just enough illumination at night. As I sat in the hot tub I could see the neighborhood houses across the gully behind our place. They remind me of the little Christmas village Dee puts up at holiday time, with their little lights on in them.

We talked with Kerri earlier this week. She started her new job. She still works at the same place, but will have different responsibilities in the same line of work. She's looking forward to the change. Dee will be off to work Friday morning, so that leaves me and Bonz to get things done around the house.

From Cassette to MP3

Yesterday we continued our emptying of boxes and consolidating of items from those boxes. I found a couple of books I knew I had but didn't know where they were and even the power charger for my PDA which I haven't used in 9 months. Amazing !

Dee went to work and I tried to figure out how to convert audio cassettes to MP3 and WAV files on the computer. We have a Christmas Barbershop tape of songs we sing, but few people have cassette tapes in their cars any more. I found a great website that had a free trial download of software that makes the conversion. Here's the URL: http://www.polderbits.com/recorder_uk.htm

The site has pictures of how to hook up your cassette player with your computer. I had the right cable for mine (It had a 1/8 jack on each end). I used the cable that I use to connect the ipod with the car radio, and it worked just great. I tried it and IT WORKED ! I made several discs that had all the songs on one track. Now I'm going to try and make separate tracks for each song, and then put them all on a CD so that people can select a song and play it back over and over if the want to. The software program costs about $35 so I don't know if I'll purchase it or just use it for the fourteen day free trial. So cool.

I went to Rotary for lunch. The meeting was held at Pine Richland Upper Elementary School. A state-of-the-art new school. It had Promethean boards (smart boards) in every classroom. The school was configured with 4 classrooms into communities and neighborhoods, with fourth, fifth and sixth grades together in a neighborhood. And they had a common collaborative area and 24 laptop computers for each neighborhood. There were trees growing inside the hallways and even an auditorium with theater seats. The seats could be rolled back (like the old bleachers of long ago)and the floor space used for other kinds of events. Every classroom had an overhead LCD projector etc. The whole place was one big WOW!

After lunch I stopped to see Dee at work to say hi, and then headed home to complete my chores. After dinner, Dee and I sat on the deck and just enjoyed the stars, our new rope lights and relaxing conversation. As it got chilly, we come inside and watched some of our favorite television programs that had been prerecorded to suit our schedule.

A Voice Acting Class

Yesterday we continued the process of emptying boxes and condensing their contents in the basement. Our shredder was busy as well. I distributed and delivered the mums to those who so graciously supported our Bogmeister Barbershop Harmony fund raiser and then went golfing at Treesdale. I only played 9 holes but it was best round to date! There was no one behind me, so I was able to take additional practice shots and really enjoyed the nice weather. Man, what a deal.

During the afternoon we sat on the deck and read our mail. Dee said, "I sure did miss sitting on a deck. This is so nice."

In the evening I went to a class at Butler County Community College. The class was a one evening class called "Getting Paid to Talk - An introduction to Professional Voice Acting." The instructor was John Gollogly, a voice actor and producer. His team does voice over recordings for Discovery, TLC, Woman's Entertainment Network and HGTV channels. He pointed out that only 10% of all "voice acting" jobs are in the "commercial" industry. The rest are in the "narration" industry, which includes everything from audio books, to training videos, to voice messages on telephones and a thousand other areas. It was a great intro class to the field.

When I returned home, Dee had emptied and consolidated another couple of boxes. What a trooper !

The MUMs are here !

On Sunday after church Dee went to a reunion of her elementary school friends. Five of them gathered for a luncheon at Dingbats in Butler, and then reminisced for about 3 hours. She had a wonderful time getting caught up and re-acquainted with them. Laughing and crying together.

I on the other hand went to a Baptist church and saw some people I knew there. I've been asked to help with the "credentialing" of new American Baptist pastors, so it's important that I remain connected with a local Baptist Church.

Afterward, I went home and had lunch there and then began doing the little chores that needed done. I began installing some shelves in the back side of the basement (which I completed on Monday.) Dee continued the process when she came home. We're trying to get rid of the cardboard boxes, and consolidate important tax papers etc. into larger rubber made type boxes. It's slowly coming together. On Monday we looked for a new battery for my drill. The old battery won't recharge much any more. I've also decided to get a GPS system for my car. The On Star "turn by turn" system is costing me too much per month for all that I use it. So if you are reading this and have a "car GPS systerm" let me know what kind you have and how you like it. I'd like to get one in the next couple of days.

Later, I went to Bogmeister practice and picked up the mums friends had ordered from our fund raiser. We did well and raised needed monies so we can purchase new music. Our practice was on the Christmas music. I hadn't seen the music before so it was all new to me. Fortunately, there are guys in my section that know it by heart, so that helped a lot. We have to get ready for our open house in two weeks. And, we are going to be doing holiday concerts during the winter months. When I got home, we watched "The Great Escape" with Steve McQueen and James Garner. It was long so we fast forwarded it off and on. A good story.

Kerri is in Austin Texas on work and flies home later today.

An International Food Fair

On Saturday I golfed at Treesdale for 18 holes ! This is the first week since retiring that I went golfing three times. I'm actually starting to develop some consistency and feeling more confident on certain shots. It was a beautiful day. When I was waiting for the people in front of me to finish out the hole, I would look for lost golf balls in the rough. I found two dozen balls yesterday. It's cheaper than buying new ones. And they're almost always new ones.

When I returned home, Dee had been consolidating some of our unpacked boxes and rearranging the storage area of the basement. She'd bought some new shelves to store things on. I pitched in and helped her by building the new shelves and hanging some pictures that were in the way and needed to at least be on hooks on the wall until we find a place for them.

Afterward we went to the International Food Fair being held at the church in Cranberry. It was very well done, and the food was excellent (all home made from Greece, Italy, USA, Britain, India and France). They had passports for everyone to use when selecting food at the various nationality tables. Each table would check off your passport each time you selected a food item. You could go back as much as you liked. All the money raised was to support future mission trips for members of the church.

On the way home we stopped at Barnes and Noble bookstore, but it was closed. Their power is still out from the storm a week ago. It seems there are still many people without power 6 days after the winds blew through her. We were fortunate in that we were hardly affected at all. I talked with a neighbor doing work for people in Zelienople. He said it was the first time he'd ever seen corn fields flattened by wind. They must have been pretty power winds to cause that to happen.

We finished the evening by reading on the deck into the darkness. I turned on the new rope lights I'd installed and they worked fine. The provided enough light to read by. I'm about 2/3 way through "The Shack" a fantasy story about a man whose daughter was kidnaped during a camping trip and who receives a mysterious note telling him years later to go to the shack where blood stained clothes were found. At the shack he meets (in human form) the Father Son and Holy Spirit. Interesting reading with lots of good theological conversation.