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We just spent two weeks out of the country. We did a cruise out of Copenhagen, Denmark. It was a 10 day cruise on Holland America. I enjoyed myself…A LOT! We flew into Copenhagen about 2 days before the cruise, then stayed 3 days after the cruise. We were lucky enough to find a direct flight from our area straight to Copenhagen. That made the trip a bit easier – no worry about connecting flights. But it was also harder – 9 hour flight. At least we could sleep through part of it. And I must say SAS business class (expensive) was worth it.

We actually did the cruise with a group of people all interested in Opera. It was a group of about 75 people, that was just our small group within the cruise ship. We met lots of people. It was a lot of fun. We had a couple of group meetings and learned about “divas”. We also had a couple of group excursions – in St. Petersburg, Russia to the Hermitage and to the Marinsky Opera house to see Tosca and an excursion in Helsinki, Finland to hear a recital at the opera house and to see the home of Jean Sibeius. Since I’m new to opera this was all new stuff for me, fun and interesting.

The cruise started in Copenhagen, then went to Tallin, Estonia. From there it was off to St. Petersburg where we had an overnight stay. We also went to Helsinki, Finland, Stockholm, Sweden, Arhus, Denmark, and Oslo, Norway. I’d never been to any of these stops so all of it was new and fascinating to me. I will say the people overall were friendly, helpful and wonderful to meet. I also tried new foods when I could. Some were interesting, fun but interesting.

I took a lot of pictures but still have load them, so it may be a while before I get them up.

07/22 Pictures are up.

We made it to WA. The weather had been cool which is so much nicer than San Antonio. Today was warmer, and we are expected to have a couple more warm days. But warm here is different. Its warm, 80’s but you have a cool feeling breeze along with it so it is so nice to be outside. Though of course you do need your sunscreen so you don’t get a sunburn. Today was so nice I grilled chicken for dinner on the deck.

When we got back to WA we had one of our decks replaced. It was noisy but worth it. We also replaced our cars, something we knew we needed to do. We also have spoken to a guy who will be replacing our retaining wall. They had hoped to start this week, but they needed to have lines marked. When you dig this kind of way, you have to know where things like underground power lines or water lines are. So we are waiting for them to come and do the marking. So they expect to start the retaining wall early next week.

We’re also getting ready for our cruise next month. It should be fun and I’m looking forward to it. We will be doing a 10 day cruise starting in Copenhagen, Denmark. I’ve never been there so I think it will be interesting. We leave for it shortly after my school class ends. Talk about good timing.

Its been some lovely spring days here. Today we had over 1″ of rain in about 20 minutes. Some thunder and lightning with it. Had a similar day last week. And we expect more of the same around Thursday. Lovely spring weather. At least the plants are getting well watered. And those plants are growing. That’s good. But man can it rain. Needless to say, with all this rain we are under flash flood watches. Last week we even had some short power outages. Such is life in San Antonio.

Here is a link to some birds in our backyard. I’m not sure what the yellow bird with the black back is, but he enjoys our yard. This is in Quicktime, no sound and lasts about 25 seconds.

Its been a while since I’ve posted. We’re still in San Antonio though we did get back to Seattle for a week. Everything was fine there. The only not-so-good problem we ran into was my car. I drive a car that is a few years old (10 years old) and I like the car. But I had noticed a while ago (2 years or so) that depending on the weather, condensation builds up on the inside of the car. Not good. With the car in storage over winter we got back to find mold is starting to grow in some places in the car. The seats have a fine layer of mold and they are cloth seats. We are seriously thinking about replacing the car when we return this summer.

My hubby and I recently celebrated our first anniversary. Its been a long year but we’ve made it. Also he got me a Panasonic camcorder for an anniversary present. I’ve been playing with it. Its fun to play with. I have Final Cut Pro so between the two I should be able to actually make a video (SHORT!) and publish it on this blog. Don’t expect it too soon, but I’m working on it.

Today may be Easter but here in San Antonio it is cold. Last night I saw a friend and we colored Easter eggs. When I left her place around 10 PM it was only 32 outside. At 1 PM today it has made it up to a whopping 42. Hopefully tomorrow the weather will warm back up to something reasonable. We’ve been doing gardening work here and I would like to get some more done. But not when its too cold. Its just not good for the plants. Up until this cold front we’d had some very nice and warm weather. My roses are blooming, the nasturtiums came up, my jasmine is growing all because the weather has been warm and sunny. We even planted some day lilies and agapanthus. I’m sure if it warms up soon I won’t lose much of anything. At least I’m hoping so.

My only other fun news is I signed up for another online class at school. So don’t be surprised if you get little snippets of that here online.

The link should take you to some pictures of our cruise to the Caribbean. Just click on the title that says Pictures of cruise. It will take you directly to the page with pictures.

We just got back from a cruise to the Caribbean and it was wonderful to get away. Its not that bad here in San Antonio but it was nice to get away. The weather was great. We cruised on Holland America out of Ft. Lauderdale, FL. Our ports of call were Tortola, Grand Turks, St. Thomas (USVI) and Half Moon Cay. I even found some jewelry (small pieces) that I liked in St. Thomas. I don’t often buy jewelry but it was nice to find some pieces I liked.

I did take my camera with me and I hope to get some pictures up. I’ll put up a link as soon as I get those up.

We are still working on the house and actually had some work done while we were away. They’ve been putting up new lighting, molding and painting. Its making a tremendous difference. Before we left we did order a new couch, love seat and coffee table. We also ordered some drapes and carpet. That is why the painting was done while we were gone. They are painting a couple of rooms so furniture has been moved around so they can paint. But once the painting is done the carpet will be installed. Hopefully shortly after that the furniture will be available and we will have more of the house done. It won’t be the end of the work, but at least we keep getting closer.

After our last bit of work we had a couple of oops’. We sprung a leak in the ceiling in two places. Found those one night when it rained pretty continuously. But all in all it is coming along. Its a lot slower process then I expected. Its been an interesting learning experience.

We made it through Christmas and New Year. It wasn’t as bad as we thought it would be.

Things here at the house are slowly coming along. We got a lot of stuff out to Goodwill. We started working with a decorator to get furniture. We had renovations started. Those we started are now done, but that means we have to get started on more that need to be done. This will be a process that will take some time. We have to do some in stages – the most important ones first.

Yesterday and today San Antonio has been in the grips of a small ice storm. Not that any ice storm is really small, but this isn’t what I would call huge. It has closed down a lot of the freeways, lots of business, etc. Its now in the afternoon and some things are starting to melt, slowly, very slowly. But I’m not expecting much melt today. Sunset is in a couple of hours and we’ll start cooling down again. Since the current temperature here is 32, anything that has melted will get the chance to refreeze again tonight. By sometime Fri. we should be doing better.

Take a look at just a few pictures from this storm. These are from here at the house.

It figures, my husband just came down sick. I have yard people finishing up the yard (they’ve been here a week) and the painter is patching ceilings. I’m making the “executive decisions” without him. I can’t do too bad of a job, I know most of what he wants, just not some of the fine details.

But we went to a family Xmas dinner on Sunday. It was interesting. It was held at a country club. The service was awful. It was like a comedy of mistakes. The carrots were so rubbery you could bend them in half. The rolls showed up at the end of the dinner. The turkey was good, but they didn’t have enough gravy. The coffee was so strong my husband was choking on it. I refused to eat any of the pie it looked so bad. They said the apple pie was rubbery. The punch tasted like kool-ade. You just had to laugh at all of it. But it was good to meet some of the family members I had not met before. And of course there were kids. Hopefully my husband didn’t catch something from one of them.

I’m hoping this is just a 24 hour stomach flu sort of thing. That’s my hope. We’ll see.

FOLLOW UP: This was no 24 hour bug. It took him a week to get over it. We were told it was just an intestinal bug. Thank heavens I didn’t get it too.

Well San Antonio really doesn’t know what winter is like. Its cool, its chilly, but it is hardly as bad as can be. The worse part about the cold here is the wind. Now that part can get to you. Though we get colder temperatures in Seattle, they can get a wind here that makes it much worse. But at least here it doesn’t stay this cool for long. This past week its been cool, a couple of nights near freezing (not below), but the middle of next week its supposed to be in the mid 70’s. This definitely is not Seattle.

Now for the house. Work has been started. Fri. they preped the master bath for work and Sat. they came in and put in a new access space in the ceiling. They’ll be back on Mon. to continue that and get started on the master bathroom ceiling. On Tues. they will start the kitchen ceiling. The house is a mess but I figure that’s okay. When they’re done this will be nice. Also on Mon. we are supposed to have a crew come in and get started on the trees outside. They are supposed to thin out the dead braches, cut back a hedge and reshape it, cut ground cover from around trees and put in a gravel/rock walk path in the back yard. Work inside the house will take a while, not sure how long, but the outside work is expected to take about a week.

It’ll take a while but we’re getting there. Its a good feeling to get it started.

Winter has finally arrived in San Antonio. I arrived at 5 AM. How do I know that you ask? At 5 AM the temperature dropped from the 70’s to just below 40 in one hour. What a way for it to arrive!

But its not that bad. We did get wind, gusts to 43 here, but that’s all. It is still sunny and clear. And where the weather has cooled down, and the nights will stay below 40 for the next few nights, early next week the daytime temps will be back in the 50’s and 60’s. Most places would not consider that cold, but here it is definitely cooler than it had been. Actually it was nice to go out to a brisk morning. It sure beats the warm humid nights we had.

I’m actually glad to see it cool down. I kind of miss that change in weather. But we’ll see what else this area has to offer. Since I’m new to the area, we’re still learning.