BRIGHT EYED AND BUSHY TAILED

I guess that the weather is nice in Stuttgart, too! It certainly looks like the fathers are having fun using the strollers as seats as the children play. It was very nice in Desert Aire today also. I played golf with friends and enjoyed my beer, although it was Budweiser, on the Deck. I'm getting a new computer tomorrow. It is a Quad Processor and has a lot of goodies on it. I'm sure it will be faster and more fun it play with. It also has Windows 7 and that will be fun to learn. We have a big Senior Golf Event on Wednesday. We have players from around the area coming here to play. We have 124 signed up. That will fill up the course. We have 12 golf courses we play each year and this is our turn. We will have Hamburgers and all the trimmings after golf. Annette said yesterday, Did you realize that it is only six weeks till we head for Kansas? I knew that. We are looking forward to seeing all of the cousins. But, for right now let's just keep the sunshine coming every day.

There's a Rainbow round my shoulder.

There's a rainbow round my shoulder. That's a song that my mother used to sing and yesterday we truly had a rainbow round here. These pictures were taken about 7:30 PM. We had been to Yakima in the morning and the surgeon said get out of here and play golf. It rained most of the day and in the late afternoon it got pretty nice. All of a sudden I looked into the sky and there it was. You could count all seven colors and you could see the double rainbow above. It was truly a beautiful sight. We had it for about a half hour. We had visitors from another course today and it was a great day. We had 74 golfers and played in the morning. We served lunch afterwards. I had a good day, shooting an 83 and getting a closest to worth $36.00. The shoulder feels good and I know that I have to continue to work it to get the strength back. No more traveling for therapy though, so things are looking better. Maybe I'll even get going on a garden. More later.

Yesterday was a beautiful day in Desert Aire. We reached the mid-eighties. I was on the 6th tee-box watching for a hole-in-one. This was the annual couples tournament. One of the Cart Dealers of the area puts up a cart each year for the prize of the hole-in-one. And again this year no one succeeded in getting one. We are getting ready for summer. It seemed to be a long cool spring. We have no garden started, but that might come later. I see the surgeon on Tuesday and hope he takes me off the therapy. The drive to Yakima twice a week is getting old and expensive. They say that I have full range of motion back and am improving as I go along. I still do not have much strength in the raising of the arm. I guess that will come with work. I spend abour 45 minutes to an hour a day on working out the shoulder. The golf game is coming back. It doesn't hurt to swing, so I am a happy camper. More to come.

The Glockenspiel

These pictures were taken in Munich and this is the famous Glockenspiel. If you have been there you know what a great experience it is to watch as the knights challenge each other in a joust that unseats the loser. It was raining, still a great sight. The entire process takes about ten to twelve minutes. It doesn't run every hour, just 11 AM, 12 N and 5 PM. The crowd gathers to watch. If you haven't seen the glockenspiel, go to Google and write in glockenspiel. Select the one from Munich and you will have the opportunity to watch as many people have placed this viewing online. The weather is finally warming up here. Wore shorts for the first time this year on Friday. Golfing is getting better. I very happy with how the shoulder is doing, but it will be quite before the strength is back. We had a Mother's Day Brunch with Cindy in Wenatchee. Went to a Bed and Breakfast called The Wild Ivy. The owners are friends of Cindy. He used to be a chef in California. Wow what a meal. We dined on the patio in the sunshine and thoroughly enjoy the food and the champagne. Talked to Kathleen yesterday morning. They had been to the Wilhelma Zoo and Bier Garten as it was evening over there.

These are two pictures from Heidelberg. The one on the left is a bridge over the Neckar River. There is a lock just above this bridge. The picture on the right is the local castle of Heidelberg. We spent the day there our first weekend. It is truly amazing to see the buildings that were built before the USA was even thought about. There is a high water mark on the bridge dating back to 1539. It was the highest mark of all. That must have been a wet year. I know that there is much more to see, so we'll probably have to go back.

The Food Was Good Too!

I asked Jim when we were going to have snitzel and he said how about tomorrow. We went to a little hole in the wall in Stuttgart called the XXL Snitzel Paradise. As you can see from the picture the servings were ridiculous. What you can't see is about 5 or 6 potatoes cut up and cooked with onions and gravy under the two snitzels on my plate. Jims's had mushrooms and gravy. Annette's was just the snitzel and the salad bar. There was a small guy at the table next to us that finished one of these. The three of us had about four big pieces left and we took the potatoes home for hash browns the next day. The two guys behind us looked pretty stuffed at the point of the picture. On the right you can see that Annette enjoyed the grits also. She did eat the whole thing. She said later that it wasn't very big and the bun was thin. Oh, and the beer was good as always.

Back from the Ashes

Here it is Derby Day and you can see we have already run the race and Zmo won by a nose. It was a wonderful trip and we really enjoyed spending the time with family and seeing a new world. It was an eventful trip from the start. We were an hour late leaving Wenatchee and were the last two seated on the plane to Amsterdam. The plane pulled out about five minutes after we sat down. During our second night in Stuttgart, they had an electrical fire in the elevator area. We had to go to the outside. What a Chinese fire drill. Imagine waking out of a deep sleep and going outside to hear only German. We had no idea what was going on. Jim kept us up to date. We finally got back into the apartment about 2 AM. The problem caused no phone or Internet from 4/8 to 4/23. We were in the dark about what was going on in to outside world. Annette and I traveled by train to Munich on the 14th for three days. When we got back, Jim said that maybe we would be staying longer. He was right. We got an extra five days in Stuttgart and the weather was wonderful. In the high 60's or low 70's each day. We enjoyed the extra time, but I'm sure that the household is more settled since we've gone. The top right picture is the apartment complex where Jim and Kathleen live. It was built in the early 1970's. They live on the fourth floor of the middle building. The building on the right has a top floor restaurant. We ate there one night. Very good food and you can see a long ways. The shoulder is continuing to improve and I am playing golf regularly. Annette has two quilts to finish for customers, so we are keeping busy. I will add more later.