dear ones,

that is how my relatives addressed letters to our family when we lived in various places and the grandparents and aunts lived in florida.

it's 7:30 am and i'm dressed for either the y or shopping for yardwork to plant flowers and to ready the vegetable garden which THIS YEAR WILL BE SUCCESSFUL because i plan to prepare the soil early.

dear ones,
i think of you often every single day.

since this is the site designed to fill you in on my day, don't hold your breath for the ensuing discourse, cause you'd pass right out.

yesterday after five, i met david at home after we looked at films we might see that evening. "the last king of scotland" was available at 7:10 so we defaulted to the bistro for a premovie glass of wine, despite no laurie and no karin.

but ho! it wasn't mercutio, but mary in yon telltale red truck. so what started as a date ended with dinner at french market grill, with various and sundry friends and acquaintances at the bistro and the restaurant.

(mary is my rotary friend, red curly headed former NOW woman of the year, home builder.
she had moved to aug in the 4th grade from germany, an army brat. she graduated from the second class of butler high school and then uga, moved to atlanta, got married, had two daughters, got divorced, was single for more than ten years. (does this sound familiar?) her job moved her to minnesota, where she met tim and married.

mary and tim were awaiting the arrival of - knock me over with a feather - kathryn and billy. since they are both my friends, separately, and i had introduced them, i was momentarily stunned. (i know: that's not stunning. i'm easily buffaloed..) since billy and tim work at the marble palace, in i.t. and accounting respectively, and mary and kathryn had met at wba, they were meeting for dinner.

which is how we ended up.

at the bistro as we were leaving, in came amy and doug nesbit. doug wrote down y'alls blog addresses. we've got to have them over when you come home. the entire family. fyi, their elizabeth still should have been named diana, amy assures me.

at fmg : krista lamar and waylon. i must speak to krista about how i missed her at efm. (wba, eyc, efm...ahem) we six find a place at the bar to wait for a table. in comes brian and patsy phelan, so we have a long talk about hip replacements, children, and a smattering of what-happens-when-you-are-faster-than-your-once-fast-walking-husband.

then, baxtuh and lynn bailey. more children talk. lynn is a rock star with our group, since she also works at the marble palace, head of voter registration for years and therefore quite familiar with the bodies and where they are buried. turns out, her department was once under billy's and they are old friends. baxtuh waxes eloquent to david about how wonderful augusta's economy is poised to be. david seems unimpressed.

(aside: when paul's car hit elizabeth's car in the prep parking lot, i spoke to baxtuh for the first time.) (i am using the phonetic spelling- maybe it's really baaaaxtuh)

we are seated, cruising by foghorn leghorn and his lovely wife, and i don't stop to talk to them about their own rock star, patrick, because...well...ahem...nuff said.

so we are seated...there in the booth across the way.....linda and david!!!

lordy mercy.

okay. so that's my exciting augustah evenin.

today my right arm is sore from yesterday's typhoid shot. david and i went to the richmond health department yesterday in lieu of lunch, and got hep a and hep b. this took considerable time. i was unhappily reminded of my upbringing as we passed from one desk to another, and then waited in chairs with a number. david's mcg appointment for the rest of the innocs, at 1:45, was shot, and he still had a 2:40 3 month followup with the hip surgeon (which did nothing but tell him what he already knew: your right hip is good and your left hip is bone on bone) so i went to MY mcg appt at 2:15. why i expected something different from the county i'll not know. it was bureaucracy again, waiting and miscue and more waiting. the ppl at the health department were more adult than the guy who gave me meningitis, yellow fever and typhoid shots at mcg. i mean really. you had to be there. but enough about that.

now i'm loaded for disease-carrying mosquitoes, tainted blood, and fecal poisoning. ready to do bloodstream battle with these varmints.

so, dear ones, i hope your weekends are bright. please do tell. i check your blogs often, and hope for an unexpected google chat.

i love you so much.

oh: david mailed off a package to bingham yesterday, and i ordered three books from amazon: the river one, the mennonite cookbook and the lonely planet/ethiopia. i am really looking forward to all of them. especially "more with less."

ta ta!

mutti