Tales of a Shoebox Princess

It's Saturday and I think I pinched a nerve in my hip or something. I'm taking it easy on the walking today so I have time to share a few pictures and thoughts on the blog. On my mind lately: HAYLEY IS GRADUATING AND SOON. Babies are always supposed to be babies, right? Sigh. Thursday was the end-of-the-year band awards night and they do a senior slide show. That's the reason we went: to see Hayley's pictures. (because seeing her in person every day is not enough?) She got a couple of laughs when the baby picture was revealed. 3D glasses and a Teletubby make for good slide show material. You can always pick these two out in a crowd. They also really like to make stupid faces. When I compile Hayley's high school photo book, I am going to have a section dedicated to Hayley's various hair colors, and another section for her making faces. The above picture will be in both sections. In graduation party news, we have a date and time set: 6-9 p.m. J...

The robotics club KING TeC (don't ask me why they employ the uneven capitalization), of which Matt is a part, recently had its award banquet. I was happy to go. I like going to school things like this where I can watch Matt interact with his friends while I eat. (They usually have really good cookies at these school club award banquets). It's a play date for teenagers. It was really long (3 hours). Thank goodness I brought my knitting. Matt got two awards, one for being a reliable FLL (I have no idea what that stands for) mentor. I do know that meant that he got an award for coming in on Tuesdays during the fall and helping one of the freshman FTC teams build their bot. He also got an award for Critical Support with regards to the FRC robot--the big guy, "Sir Percival." He was the parts guy. The mother of one of the Robotics team captains told me that her son said Matt was the best parts maker on the team. If you wanted a part done right the first time, you asked Ma...

Servo has been in a box all day. I tried to get him out of the box, but he, even in his post-surgical state, jumped out of my arms and back into the box. He normally does like an occasional box-sit session, but he's never had one of this length. I'm blaming it on his shirt. He has to wear a shirt until May 17 to protect the stitches from the removal of the giant cyst of grossness on his shoulder. That cyst was literally a handful. It was gross to look at, gross to touch, and gross to even think about. Now the gross cyst has been replaced by 5 heavy duty stitches in a cut 5 inches long on shaved kitty skin. He hates the shirt I'm making him wear. He hated the other two I sewed for him as well, hated them enough to lick them to death. I have modified this latest version so that he can't unravel it (it's made out of ribbing) and he's mad at me. I tried taking it off him for just a little bit, but he immediately started hacking at his stitches until I fed him a bit ...

I'm still thinking about the trip. I got an email message from Captain Bob, the owner of the boats, asking how we liked the tour. I gave him a glowing review on tripadvisor. It really was a good time. The tours are designed for cruisers, so they try to pack the sights and the snorkeling all into a specific length of time. We weren't limited by time, but 6 hours cruising on a speedboat was enough. The last bit of the tour is the jet flyover at Maho Beach. We had stopped at some resort beach that had such clear blue water, but we were only there a minute (and already one guy had jumped off the boat into the water), when our captain, Roddick (a French person), looked over his shoulder and shouted out, "The plane is coming! If you want to see it come in, we have to get going!" (all with an outrageous French accent) Everyone, including the guy already in the water, agreed we wanted to haul boat butt over to Maho for the flyover. The swimmer climbed back in the boat and w...

One thing we didn't do when we went to Florida Keys back in 2013 is go boating or snorkeling. I take that back, we did travel on the catamaran to Fort Jackson, Dry Tortugas. But we didn't snorkel, and while we were at Fort Jackson, I was sort of jealous of the people I saw snorkeling. They said it was great fun and they saw all sorts of neat (and even keen) things. Well, dangit, while on the island, we were going to snorkel, even if it killed me, and I was worried that it would. I do love being in the water, but I wasn't sure I could handle the mask and snorkel; that I would feel claustrophobic, or that it would bug me not to breathe with my nose. But I thought I wanted to try anyway. Jim, who doesn't much like being in large bodies of water, said he would try it too, even though I gave him an out by saying I wouldn't be offended or think anything of him staying in the boat. Jen and Mike recommended a day trip that included snorkeling with Soualiga Tours and we ...

Panoramic photo of Nettle Beach. Such relax........ Happy selfie...waiting for more French food Sunset view from the restaurant in Grand Case Happy Jim our table was right up against the railing, which was right on the sand, not 15 feet from the ocean panoramic pic of sunset dessert, a profiterole  SO DELICIOUS moonlight on the deck of the villa I thought I would start off with pictures. We spent Wednesday walking around Phillipsburg. I'll have more picrures of Phillipsburg later because we went back on Friday. The big deal of this day was the dinner in Grand Case. Our guide book says that Grand Case is the culinary capital of the Caribbean. For such a dinky little town that is difficult to get into (seriously we took wrong turns several times), the title is well-deserved. The only issue we had was that at the time we wanted to eat, most of the restaurants were closed. I swear we are old people. We were looking around for places to eat along t...

On Tuesday I actually spent the morning in the seminar for dental practice management. It was very good, especially the presentation from the guy who had gone to jail for insurance fraud--his presentation was "Stay Out of Jail". He taught us all how not to get caught at it (HA not really). I tried very hard not to make jokes about everything because I was sitting next to my boss (He's also the reason I am tempted to make jokes and stuff). I took notes on the hotel-logoed pad of paper given to us as a freebie by the hotel. The hotel pad that had 3 sheets of paper on it and a fine cardboard backing. Yes. 3 WHOLE SHEETS OF PAPER. And it was warped from water damage. Boy, did the Westin go all out or what??? But you don't want to hear about the conference, which was held in a windowless room so we couldn't be distracted by the view of the beach. After the conference, Jim and I had lunch in another French restaurant called Le planteur. It was very uncrowded. Jim an...