Catching up with the blog.....again!

I know that I have been negligent in maintaining my blog. Sometimes there is simply nothing to report and other times I've been too busy ........or lazy.

Last weekend we had my son and two grandsons over for the weekend. Kyle needed to work on his pinewood racer for his Cub Scout project.

No, that's not Kyle in the picture, it's Keaton and my son, Paul Jr., or PT.

This is Kyle, working his butt off hauling trees to the burn pile. He worked harder than anyone and he kept it up for the two days.

He graduated to using the wheel barrow and really started to move the wood. Sometimes his enthusiasm overwhelmed his muscles as he'd load the barrow so high that it would tip over. It didn't slow him down too much though.

The real joy for both of the boys was keeping the fire going and adding more and more wood to the pile. My leaf blower died, so I was just using a fan until I get another. A lot of wood was burned over the weekend, but only a small fraction of what we could have burned with a leaf blower.

Here's Kyle "on the wagon", taking a well earned rest.

PT dressing the fire.

Helen with Keaton, Kyle, and PT.

Same picture with me taking Helen's place. The other picture is better.

That completed our weekend as we drove the boys home Sunday evening. Everyone got a good workout. Helen and I really enjoyed the boys for the weekend.

Monday, January 31st Helen and I joined a bunch of other campers at a lunch at Smokey Bones Bar and Fire Grill in Lakeland. I got an email from Donna (Froggi) McNichol inviting us and we went. It was a very nice group of mostly full timers who are in this general area for the winter. WE met a lot of interesting people and we hope to cross paths again sometime. I don't know where they all will go when the warm weather comes, but I expect most of them will return to the area next winter. I should have taken a bunch of pictures, but I was too busy talking. Here are a couple of places to visit should you want to see who were there. Ralph and Donna have an excellent blog, go back to January 31st to see the pictures and blog.

Tuesday February I started my tour of duty with AARP TaxAide. I put in a full day at the Floral City Library. It was a very quiet day since this is the first year that we're using that library. It is still rewarding to do a tax return for someone with a very limited income who paid a lot to have a national tax service serve them in past years.

Wednesday I worked at the Lakes Region Library and that was a different story. This library has been used for many years and people know it. We had a full slate of appointments without a single empty slot. Still, this is my favorite place to work. It's the library that I use and the people that I work with are a joy.

Today Helen and I went to Lowe's to get new faucets for the main bathroom. The old ones are in perfect shape, but Mama says the bathroom needs an upgrade. I also picked up a valve for Barbara that I will install the first chance I get, within reason.

I mentioned that We all worked very hard on the weekend. Actually, I started before the weekend, but the only effect was to make me tired. However, I woke up Monday morning with a very sore heel area on my right foot. On the internet, we finally diagnosed it as achilles tendonitis, and there's not much you can do except take ibuprofin and rest. I took the ibuprofin, but I still went to the lunch in Lakeland and worked the two days for AARP. This morning, the heel hardly hurts at all, but now my instep hurts much more than the tendon. I may have caused the problem by walking the way I did to favor the achilles tendon. Getting Old Sucks!!

Later.