Thank Goodness It’s Friday (or February–almost). Fridays don’t mean quite as much once you’re retired except that you get to spend time with people who aren’t retired. This, of course, only holds true if they are traditional Monday-Friday employees. My daughter works twelve-hour shifts and her days off are always changing, so I never know when I get to spend time with her.

But more importantly, thank goodness it’s February (almost) and we’ve made it through what I consider the worst month of the year. I know that February will still be cold but we are much closer to Spring. Have I ever mentioned I hate winter?

When this week started, I looked at my calendar and I saw what I enjoyed most, several days with nothing scheduled. Those are my favorite days. I can get involved in all kinds of things like going through an old toy box and finding this…and of course I had to stop and put it together.

Melodrama practice is in full swing. Our play this year is “How the West Was Worn”. My character, Helen Back (in disguise as Purity Chaste), is one of four villains who are out to swindle a town hoping to be chosen for a new railroad. The play isn’t for another six weeks and thank goodness for that. I don’t have a ton of lines, just enough to make it interesting.

About twenty years ago I compiled historical crime stories from local newspaper articles printed in the 1880s-1930s. I put those in a two-volume set I called “Crime Beat”. (You can see those articles by clicking the Crime Beat Tab). I’ve been a member of the historical society for several years and I’ve tossed around the idea of writing a story about the numerous bank robberies that occurred in our county and the surrounding counties in the 1930s. I’d had an article printed in their quarterly journal in 2010 and that tickled me so much, I want to try again. You can read the four-part article by clicking on the link in the caption below the photo.

There’s a meme that goes around on Facebook about travel; you are either the one who concentrates on the minutiae of the travel plans or the one who just packs a bag and waits by the door. Which one do you think the Great Hunter and I are? If you guessed he’d be the one standing at the front door waiting to be told what to do next, you’d be right. Our youngest is graduating with his Bachelor’s Degree in Aeronautics from Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia in May and he’s asked the Great Hunter if we wanted to go. Well, of course, we want to! He and his wife are driving cross-country in their new truck pulling their new camper and are going to stay at a campground. The Great Hunter and I are just too old and so is our truck and camper to haul it that far so we’re going to fly. I’ve spent several hours over a couple days trying to find the best travel deals, either by myself or using one of the online travel sites. Of course, the Great Hunter is just waiting to be told to pack his bags.