Where Do I Start?

After returning from Ottawa last Wednesday, I did laundry and loaded up my suitcase again to head to Sarnia for the 75th anniversary reunion of St. Patrick's High School where I taught for 11 years - mostly in the 80s. Thursday night was a staff get-together. About 80 of us assembled and enjoyed swapping reminiscences and catching up on the last 21 years since I left.

Friday evening, was a gathering at a local restaurant and bar. There must have been 500 people who showed up. My niece, Tay (in yellow), enjoyed some chat time with some of her friends.

Brian and Jody finally arrived from Akron, OH where they both work as academics.

I attended their wedding back in 1997 or so and have kept in touch on Facebook with them on and off over the past few years.

The next morning was the official ceremony and flag raising out in front of the school. Then I went for a leisurely lunch with Karen, one of my favourite former students.

That night was the 'big bash' at the Lambton College cafeteria. There were hundreds of people there.

Here is Karen flanked by Darryl and Jason Cole.

The whole weekend was a lot of fun. I'll be 81 at the 100th anniversary.

When I got home, our new fence was almost finished. Here's what it looked like before...

(taken in June 2008)













The yews on the neighbour's side were overgrown and spindly on the bottom. The 4-foot fence was also tilting towards their side. Last week, the neighbours cut down the yews and when the fence came down, it looked like this...

We definitely needed a taller fence. So our neighbour, Mike, who happens to be a high school tech teacher, agreed to put in the fence himself saving us both quite a bit of money. When Mike took the posts out we learned they had only been put in about 18". They should have gone down at least 3'. No wonder the fence was tilting.

Skip and I helped Mike finish it up. It looks awesome. Mike and Charlene were thrilled to get an additional 6' by 18' of grass where the yews had been taken out.

Ta Da!

It looks SO much better.

In knitting news, I finished the Latvian Dances socks.

I have started the Filigree socks with the Tanis Fiber Arts fingering weight hand dyed yarn.

I tried doing the garter stitch cuff and it stretched out too much so I decided to do a Latvian Braid cuff instead.

I think they're going to look very spiffy.