Milestone day

Today is Hubby's 81st birthday. That sounds almost impossible to me. It was 'just the other day' that I met him at college (61 years ago!). Now here it is almost 59 years since we married that November 21st, 1950. We thought we were "So old" ! At 22 and 20... oh my goodness... I guess we knew it all already - or thought we did. It's amazing how much we've learned since then!

We'll be going 'out to dinner' this evening for a quiet celebration this year. Last year's 80th was the Biggie for him. Our children and grandchildren collaborated to make an outstanding Event of that day, with almost all of the whole family present for the birthday supper and birthday cake.

Each one of our children came up with an unusual gift - in multiples of 80 ! THAT was amazing in itself - 80 pieces of his favorite candy, 80 one-dollar bills rolled into a special package to pull out in one long stream, a gift certificate to the Book Store for $80 in books, gift certificate for the local hardware store, and on and on.

Yesterday was unreal in that the SUN actually came out and there was no rain in our immediate vicinity the whole day....contrary to the previous ten days, when anywhere from 1/2 to 3 inches fell during each day or night. Records show that the first three weeks of September 2009 saw over 7 inches of rainfall here. The normal measurement is 2.25 inches for the whole month.

Everyone is Tired of rain. Mushrooms and toadstools are springing up all around yards and flower beds. Grass is growing, but is usually too wet to mow. Rain gear and shoes barely have time to dry before being soaked again in the next outing. And this is directly opposite to last year's August and September - the drought time. We had no rain for almost 2 months in 2008.
Friends and relatives in different parts of the country are reporting similar unusual weather patterns. TV reported SNOW in Denver yesterday ! (I'm glad our rain was not the white stuff, or we'd have had blizzard conditions already.) Today's forecast keeps rain in the picture, but I keep hoping that the members of the women's club will be able to get to the meeting and get home again without getting soaked.

Yesterday's meeting of the Book Store Volunteers was well attended. The manager's two-year term is drawing to a close, and the new team will be taking 'command'. Housekeeping items were discussed, mainly reviewing our standard operating procedures. Transition will be smoothe and seamless, thanks to everyone's cooperation. The big Fall Book Sale is coming up fast now, for the first weekend of October. The sales take a lot of prep work, but the teams have organized their work so everything runs smoothly, and the actual sale days net around $6000.00 - all of which benefits the Library in some form.