Tennesee/Port Aransas

We had our summer vacation. It was awesome!! It was probably the best vacation I have ever had. We went to Tennessee first and spent time with Cliff's family. His step-mom is so nice and she is a great cook. I swear I gained about ten pounds while we were there - which I definitely did not need! I've been good and have been going to the gym pretty regularly though. We also got to see Cliff's mom and grandparents which was really nice. His grandfather's health is deteriorating and he is in a nursing home now so I am glad we got to visit with him. He was having a good day when we visited so it was a nice visit. Anyway, we were in Tennesse for about a week and then went to Texas. The day after we arrived in Texas we went to Port Aransas with our friends. I think it was about a five hour drive. I don't really remember. I read my book or played Lemmings the whole time. I don't really play video games but I love that game!! The condo we rented was really nice. It was bigger than I had expected it to be so even though there was ten of us we didn't feel cramped at all. It had a fully equipped kitchen and a washer and dryer which was really nice. It also had two swimming pools and was right on the beach. Unfortunately, the evening we arrived the boys all went to the beach and our friend Chris got stung by a sting ray. We hadn't even been there an hour! So, he and Cliff ended up having to take the ferry back over so he could go to the ER and get it taken care of. Luckily, the barb hadn't broken off in his foot so all he had to do was soak his foot in hot water to relieve the pain from the toxin. It took a few hours though, so we had a late dinner that night. That's probably the only complaint I had about Port Aransas - none of the restaurants we ate in were that great especially considering the prices we were paying. I was really disappointed. If we go back, I'm going to stay out of the tourist joints. We ate in a little hole in the wall Mexican place one day and the food was pretty good and didn't cost an arm and a leg.
Once we got back to Harker Heights we spent a lot of time at our friend Mark's house. He has a pool so that was a lot of fun. The bad thing was Allissa slipped and knocked her head on the cement a couple of days before we left. We ended up taking her to the emergency room at Ft Hood because she had been unconscious for a second or two and then she seemed like she couldn't remember things that had just happened. She had a huge lump on the side of her head. At least they kept giving us ice for it while we waited TWO hours to see a doctor. By that time, she was fine and he just told us to keep an eye on her for a couple of days.
We are now officially Texas landowners. We bought the property next to Chris and Angela's new house - which is coming along very nicely. We also went to someone to draw up the floor plans for our house. We found a plan on the internet that we mostly liked and are basing it off of that with some modifications. Cliff is going to have his "man room" and it will have a little alcove with a wet bar. He's already bought two flat screen televisions for it. Right now we have one in the living room and one in the office, but he's going to hang them both side by side on the wall of his man room. He like to do that kind of thing so he can watch two football games at once.

DMZ

I've been here three years and finally made the trip up to the DMZ today. The South Korean guards are scary!! They don't even move. The first guy I saw, I thought he might be a mannekin or something. They stand there in this defensive posture with their fists clenched and look like they'll beat you down if you do the wrong thing. It's really impressive when you're looking straight at them. Unfortunately, although we could take pictures as we walked through, we weren't allowed to stop, so I didn't get any really good pictures. We got to go in one of the buildings which are half in North Korea and half in South Korea and the doorway to the North side is guarded by a ROK guard while it is being occupied by people from the South side. The tour guide told us we could go anywhere in the building, but we couldn't go behind the guard. Well, my friend Jo was getting her photo taken standing next to the guard and Myrna was going to get in the picture too. Without thinking about it, Jo went move to his other side and instead of going in front of him she started to step behind him. He didn't even say anything, but he immediately moved to block her. That was the only time we saw any of them budge except when ordered to post. It was a pretty good tour, but it was rainy and foggy, so I didn't get any good outside photos. I wanted to get a picture of the huge flag and flagpole the North Koreans have. They used to have a smaller one, but then the South Koreans put up one that was larger so the North Koreans put up one that is 160 feet high. The flag on it is 30m (about 90 feet) long. It weighs 600 pounds! I wouldn't want to be on that flag detail. All in all, I'm glad I made the trip. I'll post some pictures once I get them downloaded.

I know, I know. It was a short lived spurt of blogs and then I slipped back into my old ways. Really though, nothing changes much in the good old ROK so you're not missing anything. I've had a lot going on in the last couple of weeks and just didn't manage to get on the computer that much once I got home. We had a nice long weekend over the Memorial Day Weekend. Our friends Letty and Jerry came over on Memorial Day and we had a cookout. They brought their dog Pedro over. He's so cute. Charley seemed a little afraid of him even though Pedro is maybe a third his size. Charley's a big chicken anyway. He always gets scared and barks at himself when he sees his reflection in the window. Jerry proposed to Letty while they were on leave and we were really excited about that. They are such a nice couple and I'm very happy for them. They plan on getting married in Austin in Sep 2007. It would be nice if we're in Texas by then so we can be sure to make it to the wedding. Am I being presumptuous by assuming we might be invited? : )


Allissa is doing well. She is anxiously awaiting the end of school and beginning of our summer vacation. She hasn't been getting her allowance the past few months because she asked me to put it into her savings account so she would have money for the trip; otherwise, she wouldn't have anything because she's a spender. I'm trying to teach her to curb that impulse and learn to save money for things she really wants instead of spending it frivolously. She has gotten much better about it, but still has a ways to go.

I finished the cross stitch project I've been working on the last couple of months. It's one I did for Allissa. It's of two mermaids and it was actually fairly quick to stitch. It turned out ok, I think. It has a lot of beading which I've never really done before, so it probably could have been a little better. Some of the beads didn't seem to want to lie in the right direction. I don't know if it really matters that much or if that is normal. I'm hoping the framing turns out ok. The problem with getting things framed here is that I like to get my work double matted and they just don't have a good selection of mats. I end up having to use colors I wouldn't normally choose and that I don't think are exactly right. Grrr. It's a little frustrating. Nothing's been bad so far although I was majorly ticked off when I got my last project framed. The framing was good and they actually had mats that went well with it so I liked the end result. But... It was a project I had done for my mom. It was of a mother working on a quilt and her daughter is standing next to her. Well, the mother is holding a needle and the chart called for a long, loose gold strand to connect the needle to the quilt she was working on. When I went to pick it up, I immediately noticed he had cut off the gold strand. What? Did he think it was a mistake? If he had looked at it instead of just grabbing scissors and snipping away at things, he would have realized why it was there. It should have been obvious that it was deliberately placed there. Even if it had been a mistake, you don't make changes to people's work without their permission!! It really, really made me angry at first. It was a large project with about 45,000 cross stitches. I spent months working on it and now it looks goofy because she's holding a needle in the air with nothing attached to it. You can see where he cut it too because the cut ends of the gold thread is sticking out a little from the rest of the stitches. Oh well. There are worse things that happen in life, so I shouldn't get bent out of shape over a cut thread. I realized that and calmed myself down before I threw a big conniption fit over it. I have thrown a few in my day, I am ashamed to admit. It's hereditary - that darn Dufrene temper. ; )



Where's my darn thread?

Charley is so happy with his short hair. Cliff thinks he looks ridiculous, but he really doesn't look as bad as it seems in the picture I posted. Even if he did, it is getting hot here and he would be miserable with all that long hair. He was already starting to pant a lot before I got it cut. Of course, I wasn't running the air conditioner yet so that could have had something to do with it too. : ) I was trying to conserve energy and just had the windows open since it wasn't too hot yet. Electricity is expensive here. We get a certain utility allowance for the month which includes water, electric and gas. They average your monthly usage over the year, so if you go over in a month it's not that big a deal as long as you're not way over and you were under in other months so that it balances out. If you go over your allowance for the year, you have to pay the difference. Cliff doesn't care, he'd rather be comfortable. I agree with that - to a point. But if you go over by $100 a month at the end of the year you're going to have to cough up $1200. I'd rather not, thanks!

Allissa and I were on the way to the beauty salon last weekend to get her hair trimmed and highlighted and we were talking about our trip. Cliff had mentioned that we might not go over to his dad's the night he gets in because he gets in kind of late. I told him we could probably just spend the night at his mom's and then go to his dad's the next day. Then, I started thinking about it and figured, "Hey, he's just getting home, I haven't seen him in six months, it might be nice to have an evening alone together." So, I told Allissa that we would probably drop her off at her grandmother's and we would go somewhere else for the night. She said, "I know, you're going to go get jiggy with it." It was so unexpected that I just cracked up, laughing. It probably wasn't the most appropriate parental response, but I couldn't help it. She said, "Come on, Mom. I'm not five." Nope, I guess she's not.