Catchin' Up or How I Spent My Summer Vacation

Since we quit fulltime RVing and settled in here at "The Farm" I haven't kept up on the blog. It was initially started so that our friends and family could keep up with us in our RV travels and that isn't necessary anymore. However, I do still plan to occasionally post a blog as to our comings and goings.

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

This was our second summer here on "The Farm" and since we are now finished with remodeling the old farmhouse we were able to kick-back and enjoy ourselves at a more leisurely pace. This was easy for me considering my Type B personality but not for Teddy who, as others can attest, is a perfect archetype of the classic Type A. She mostly filled her days tending her flower gardens and volunteering at a local thrift shop. I spent a lot of time with my photography and exploring the internet on my MacBook Pro. Also being an avid reader I have read over fifty books thus far this year. I decided to read all of Elmore Leonard's books as well as Robert B. Parker's with an occasional other author thrown in for variety. Teddy also reads but not at such a furious pace as me. We both read on our iPads and find it to be more pleasurable than reading printed books. In July we signed up for a series of Shakespeare seminars reading A Midsummer Night's Dream. It was held weekly over five weeks at Interlochen. Teddy was somewhat reluctant to attend at first but in the end we both enjoyed it immensely.

Traverse City is the home of the National Writers Series, a nonprofit organization that brings in prominent authors for an evening with the author at Traverse City's historic "City Opera House". The evening features  the author speaking and then participating in a lengthly on stage interview followed by a question & answer session. Earlier in the summer we bought advance tickets to two of these events and just last week we attended the first, "An Evening With Lee Child."  With his series of action adventure novels featuring a tough retired Marine named Jack Reacher,  Lee Child is one of my favorite writers. We also have tickets to an upcoming program in November, "An Evening With Michael Connelly." I am doubly excited by this program as it is to be hosted by Bryan Gruley, another of our favorite writers who will introduce and interview Connelly and moderate the Q&A session.

In other news, on 9/11/12 we accidentally purchased the bright red 2010 Toyota Prius shown here. I say accidentally because we were on a grocery shopping trip to Traverse City and had no intention of buying a car. However, I had dropped Teddy off at the "Women's Resource Center" where she sometimes volunteers for a couple of hours when in TC and was driving past an automobile dealership when I spotted the Prius. I pulled in to look at the window sticker and was surprised to see that it had only 23000 miles. Of course a salesman came out and......well......you know the rest of the story.

Linda, our faithful 2009 Yaris Sedan, is now sitting out in front of the house with a for sale sign on her.

And that takes us up to the 2012 first day of fall autumnal equinox.

Oh, I almost forgot. In keeping with my early adopter mentality as everyone who knows me can attest, I of course am now the proud owner of an iPhone 5.  You knew I would!

Bye for now.     ;-)

Update 9/26:
The Yaris has found a new home. She was adopted by a little old retired English teacher. They took to each other right away and I'm sure that she will be happy with her new master.