~Sunday~ Since I stayed in last night and was in the bed fairly early, I was up early after eight hours of sleep. It was Sunday morning, so you know what that meant. I really liked this particular PostSecrets entry of this week’s lot, as it reminded me of my friend Steve.
I traveled with Steve, who was a grade school teacher at the time, on vacation to Provincetown for two or three years in a row several years ago. The first year, my jaw just dropped when we met someone new and they asked him what he did for a living, and without missing a beat, he said, “I’m a state trooper.” And the year after that, “I’m a high school principal.”
Ever since devising and delivering a eulogy for, and by request of, my dear friend “Jeanie-baby” back in 2008, I’m especially interested in them, particularly from a genre perspective. To that end, I listened to all three eulogies delivered at Elizabeth Edwards’ funeral this weekend, one give by a best girlfriend (Hargrave McElroy), another by a best male friend (Glen Bergenfield), and the third by her eldest daughter (Cate Edwards).
All three of them were well written and delivered, but I especially loved the one given by Glen. It was just so, so sweet. It was obvious that he had a deep, deep love of her, and as someone said when I was explaining it to them, “Almost like maybe she’d married the wrong man.”
Holiday greeting cards have begun to roll in, with my first being last Thursday I think it was. It was a photocard from The Myers family (beautiful!), which is usually the case. I wish I were as prompt with mine as they are with theirs each year!
I’ve mentioned in the past that my mother always gets me the most loving cards and that she is an extreme underliner. This year’s was no exception—note the underlining:
Inside Left Side
Inside Right Side
It was the perfect, perfect weather—overcast, cold, and drizzly wet—for a nap, even after a full eight hours of sleep, and I took one from 1:00 – 3:00.
As soon as I got up from that, I headed to the gym, where I intended to do ab crunches, an upper body workout, and then 30 minutes of cardio to make up for missing yesterday and the inordinate amount of junk I ate.
I started with my 300 (15 sets of 20) ab crunches, and then did my 40-minute upper body workout. At that point, I really didn’t feel like staying there another 30 minutes, as it was a little after 4:00, and I had to head out to Chapel Hill at 5:15, making a dip to take, as well as showering before going.
Tonight’s Mostly Social Book Club was held at Janet’s home in Chapel Hill, where we had a potluck consisting of: with courtesy of Suzanne, some Eggplant Parmesan (for Mary, since she’s now a vegetarian, although she ended up not coming); a fruit plate courtesy of Sharon; chip and dip, courtesy of me; and asparagus, a salad, and cake and ice cream courtesy of Janet. It was all good.
We only briefly talked about our current book, The Help, since I hadn’t finished it and Mary wasn’t there. The plan is to discuss it at our January meeting. I need to get on the ball with it. Hopefully my week off between Christmas and New Year will afford me some good reading time.
After dinner, we looked at a slide show of a subset of the hundreds and hundreds of pictures Janet and Beth took on their recent three-week visit to Nicaragua, which included several pictures of Janet’s broken nose right after it happened. Ouch.
I stopped by work on the way home, where I spent a few hours. When I left, at around 1:30 AM, I walked outside, shocked to find snow flurries swirling about.
This was a surprise for two reasons: 1) The media hadn’t made a circus out of predicting it, and 2) It just didn’t feel that cold out. In fact, I checked the temperature once inside my car and it was 34° out. You go, snow!
I was reminded of this favorite holiday song by Robert. Love me some Dolly. Thanks, my sweet!