A day trip to Olana

 

RQS and I planned to visit Olana for a long time, but couldn't get out of bed early enough to make the drive to Hudson, NY.  Today was the day we finally made it.

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The first thing on my docket for the day was a Zoom meeting that took up the better part of an hour.  I had gotten dresses in a red floral dress I bought from Target a year or two ago.   When I had come out of my bedroom (this is where I usually work on the computer), I found that RQS had decided to wear the exact same dress in her size!  Today, we would look like the Bobsey Twins whether we planned to or not. This would be my first time at Olana since I was there with XGFJ several years ago.  My visit with RQS would be different - we'd be able to see the second floor of the house as well as the main floor. 

Instead of driving straight up Route 9, I decided to cross over the Hudson at Newburgh, and then speed up to Catskill on the Thruway, instead of getting caught in slower traffic on the East side of the river. This was a wise choice, as we were able to make it to Olana by 2 pm.  Given that the house tours end at 3:45 pm, I figured that we needed the extra time on site if things were busy.

For those unfamiliar with Olana, it is a 250+ acre site that was landscaped and developed by one of the leaders of the Hudson River School of painting.  Frederic Church was extremely successful at his craft, and had the money to make this site both a work of art, and a masterpiece of site location - it is impossible to get a scenic view that isn't fantastic from this property.

With Olana's setting in mind, Church's house is priceless.  .For the most part, it looks exactly like when it was lived in by the Church family, and New York State was lucky to acquire it when it did.  (Could you imagine Church's artistic studies and his own art collection being sold off at auction?  I can't.)  

However, the house was very warm when we visited, and I needed to cool down within an hour of starting the tour.  (Don't worry, I saw everything, missed nothing, and chatted with the docents quite a bit.) So RQS and I got in the car, and started our drive home through scenic rural landscapes.  Eventually, we reached Poughkeepsie, where we stopped to eat (too much), then drove home.

All in all, it was a good summer day, and we had a great time together.... 

A chat with my niece

 

It's been a while since I've been able to chat with my niece.  So it was a refreshing opportunity to talk with her again.  

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One of the things we always seem to be talking about is how the Orange Snowflake is F'ing up America.  Now that she's living overseas, she's relatively immune from the insanity that's hit this country.  This chat was no different.  One of the things I mentioned was how a former Fundamentalist Christian, Benjamin Covey, could argue that the Orange Snowflake is the Antichrist. Her dad still accepts the rhetoric that the snowflake has successfully closed off the borders to illegal immigration, when statistics showed that things were slowing down before he took power.  We talked about the random sweeps of immigrant communities, where any person of color is rounded up - not just those who are here illegally.  Foreign citizen legal residents are being rounded up, detained, and illegally sent to foreign prisons without justification.  In short, America has become a police state.

We talked about family issues as well.   Luckily, my brother was away from home, as this was a video call and I was already dressed as Marian, as we were going out for the day and I wanted to wear a nice, comfortable dress in the warm weather.  All too soon, the call had to end, and we scheduled something for next month.

 

Game Night - and I won a game for a change!

 

If anyone decided to organize a 43 Man Squamish league, I'd be first to buy season tickets.  Mind you, with the history of this fictitious sport, the league would have to pay me to attend its games - if they were ever played. 

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Tonight was Game Night in Yonkers.  Our host and his family took June off to have a nice vacation.  I was surprised to find them scheduling 2 nights for this month.  So, I marked myself as going, and made sure to keep my schedule up to date.

My niece called me up at the last minute and asked if I wanted to drive down to Long Island for dinner with her and her dad.  I'd normally have done so, as she's in town for only a couple of days before she flies home.  But, I made commitments with others, and apologized profusely.  So we'll do a zoom meeting in the AM.  

There was supposed to be two meetups going on tonight, and I planned to only attend the dinner one, as I had already seen the movie people would go to afterwards.  Well, the meetup was cancelled, and DS suggested we meet for dinner before game night.  I said yes, and we split a pizza at Frank Pepe's in Yonkers.  Being that this was a Thursday night, we had our choice of tables, and we caught up on what was going on in each other's lives.

When we were done with our pizza, I drove to Stew Leonard's to pick up a cheesecake for Game Night.  And then, I was off to play games.  Arriving there at 7:30, the host and hostess brought out some games, and I won the first game, and then was on the winning team for the second.  This was a pleasant change for me.  But what I was most interested in was the conversation.  The host's family had gone to Europe, and we talked about cruising for a bit before the games started.  After the games ended, I chatted with the hostess about how her family was affected by what's going on in DC.  (She's more afraid than I am, and has an equally good reason to be this way.)  I said that if things go really sour, I'd be glad to help take care of things I won't mention here.

The gathering ended up early, and I was chatting with RQS on the way home.  It's nice to know that she'll be here tomorrow.  But it will be a short weekend for us for the next 2 weeks.  Such is life. 

Another lunch, another friend....

 

Today, I had another lunch date on my docket.  This time, it was with CCS, my friend from the Census. One wouldn't know it looking at her, but she and her husband have had successful careers.  They just live modestly, save for the upper middle class area in which they live.  (She's a perfect person to have as a friend, as I'll bet that she could smell pretentiousness and BS from miles away.)

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I got dresses and met CCS at the Mexican restaurant down the hill.  And as usual, we caught each other up on what has been going on in our lives.  Again, I recounted the story of our "Moved Over" cruise, and dealing with the summer heat.  While having lunch, I received a call from our co-op's managing agent.  They didn't have copies of our meeting minutes for 2025.  So I left lunch more quickly than I'd have liked and sent 7 months' of minutes to him 15 minutes later.

Now that I had nothing to do until a zoom meeting later in the evening, I decided to look for a summer weight cotton blanket for my bed.  It's hard to believe that after Bed, Bath and Beyond closed its stores, that these blankets seem to be only available on Amazon.  So, another item will get added to my Amazon shopping cart soon.

Once home for the night, I started up a Zoom meeting with our Texas friends. First, I told the story of our "Moved Over" cruise, then I encouraged RQS to recount the trip into NYC to see Rakugo.  Later on, RQS noted that it was much more lively than usual, one of our friends opening up more than usual  It was good to know that I could lay back a little and let someone else chat for a change.... 

Lunch with a friend who I used to work with.

 

The docket for the day had me lunching with SJM.  We skipped our monthly lunch in June, as she had too many things pop up that got in the way - right before the cruise we were supposed to take.  So we had a lot more to say than usual, but less time than we wanted.

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For some reason, my CPAP turned itself off last night, and it wouldn't turn back on.  I wondered why it did.  So, I switched the transformer and power cord (I have an extra in my CPAP travel bag) and it worked.  Now, I had to check out the original transformer and power cord.  This time, I plugged it into a different outlet - and everything worked!  Because I can't explain why things happened, I will need to swap the original back to my CPAP machine and make sure it works - then keep it that way for a while.

Now that I was wide awake, I decided to eat breakfast and nap until 11 am.  At 11:15, I started to get showered and dressed for lunch.  Making it to lunch at 1 pm, I met SJM and sat down for our meal.  I told her about my cruises, and she told me about what was going on with her, her sons, her husband, and her "headaches" with everything.  Her older son has the problems that one would expect from someone who needs more real-world experience before he can safely be completely on his own in life.  The other is willing to take on more challenges than his mom is comfortable with.  All of her problems share one detail - she is not a superwoman who has a solution for every problem. 

All too soon, lunch had to end and we parted.  I then checked in with my brother and found out that I still needed to get a document so that we can submit paperwork needed to rent out our house.  Tomorrow, I'll call up the town, and get things done.  But first, I would stop by the local Walmart to buy myself some anti-chafe slip shorts to wear under my dresses.  By the time I was home for the night, it was 7:30 - just enough time to get a load of laundry done.

It was a nice day to spend as Marian.  Soon, I'll have to switch back to Mario mode to get some paperwork notarized.... 

Donner und Blitzen (That's "Thunder and Lightning" to us Yanks.)

 

The "Highlight" of the day was the thunderstorm.  Although I had lots of things I could have done today, I decided to do only a small number of them.  And I'm glad that I did what I did....

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I started off the day with the "Blahs".  Nothing seemed to interest me that much, and all I wanted to do was watch videos on YouTube.  The most interesting of these was a cruise blogger talking about her Northern European cruise to the land where the sun never sets in the summer.  Both RQS and I wish we were cruising there this summer.  Yet, we are grateful to have been able to sail to the most interesting of the Norwegian ports before they were shut down to conventionally powered ships. 

Why did I watch YouTube videos instead of my "normal" news channels?  Well, I get sick when I see the Orange Snowflake make an ass of himself and show how America has fallen. As I've said in other posts, I try to limit my exposure to the evil this man sows, so that I retain my sanity.  These days, he keeps trying to distract people from  his association with the Pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, and even his base is calling him out on it.  Are there any files or not?  Either way, he will be caught in a lie.  And when it involves underage females, even his base has a line that it will not cross.

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Originally, I was supposed to go to TCL's place and have lunch.  With today's rain, it was smart of me not to drive to her place.  It was raining "Cats and Dogs", and I hate driving in this kind of weather.  The last thing I would need is a flat and have to call for help in this weather.  Instead, I stayed home and waited for an Amazon delivery to come.  Now, I have a new wig stand, more breast form cleaner, and a new shaver for my female "to go" kit.  (Next, I need to find a cheap carry-on to finish my female "to go" setup.)

While at home, I started taking care of paperwork needed to formally rent out the family homestead again.  Although it's not complete, I'm hoping that we'll have the house rented by September, and that I can again focus on issues in which I have no emotional interest.

In short, it was a "Blah" day kept "Blah" by rain, thunder and lightning. 

The return home (a short post)

 

Since my car was parked on the wrong side of the street (for alternate side of the street parking rules) and that I had things to take care of at home, I had to leave RQS's place today.  However, this didn't mean that RQS and I couldn't take advantage of this.  My car could be used in a shopping run, as long as I didn't have to park it again.

Around 2 pm, RQS and I drove over to the local supermarket.   The market was packed to the gills, but the quality of the meat and fish on display made me wish I had this kind of food store near me. (If I'm willing to drive 30 minutes, I can always go to H-Mart or Wegman's, but that's a headache for me.)  We found everything RQS needed, but it took forever to make it through the checkout lanes - the cashiers were also bagging the groceries.  This is very inefficient, but it can make a perverted kind of sense in preventing shrinkage.  Eventually, RQS and her groceries made it to the car, and I dropped her off at her apartment.

Driving home, I knew I would want to take off my dress and rest a while.  But I knew I had something to take care of - my own shopping.  After a chance to rest, I did just that.  $95 later, I was on my way home for the night. Tomorrow will likely be a Mario day, so sometime tonight I will have to change wallets for the day.