It is time for my annual cleaning of the junk drawer of our little blog.  Like anyone’s junk drawer at home, ours tends to accumulate to overflow capacity in a very short amount of time and it becomes necessary to throw some things out – eventually.  Here there is a lot of “this and that” and a few “thingamagigs” along with several “doo-dads”.  Lets take a look inside.

Going Home.  First up we find this little item.  We are going home.  After being here in Ohio since early May, we have been home only once and that was a very quick overnight trip.  This upcoming Labor Day weekend allows us to be home for a few days and it will be good to see everyone.  Can’t wait to see Conner Jack and Agnes (the family dog).  Oh yeah – It will also be good to see our other family members.

It takes us a couple of months to make friends.  Everywhere we have traveled with Lisa’s job we have made friends.  Lisa and I realize that it usually takes us a couple of months in one place to really make friends that we are comfortable hanging out with.  I don’t think we are hard to get to know or are unfriendly.  It just takes at least that long to know who we want to befriend.  There is a selection process that takes place in settling in with people and at the risk of sounding snobbish, there simply are some people we just don’t connect with as well as others.  Now that we have been here in Cambridge, we have made friends and they are people that we care about and who care about us.  Nothing makes us feel more at home than that.

Pumping Up.  Lisa has now got us involved with an exercise program through the hospital where she works.  We went for a preliminary assessment and are now involved in the program twice per week.  Her assessment determined she was in the moderate or mid-range category as far as fitness.  I tested out in the “low” category.  Well, of course I did.  Lisa only bragged on that for the next four days.  The problem for me has always been that dreaded BMI chart that has determined that at five foot seven I should weigh about 160.  WRONG!  I have not weighed 160 since the sixth grade.  One of the things I inherited from Tom Lea was a set of legs that look like tree stumps.  Each one of those suckers must weigh seventy-five pounds.  I’m not saying I don’t need to lose weight.  I do.  But to get to 160 will require amputating something.  Anyway – we have scheduled our thirty minute work-out appointments and Lisa was first to experience the thrill of starting the journey of getting into shape.  She returned from that first work-out looking like she was about to pass out and could barely lift her leg to get into the truck.  My thought was – how bad could thirty minutes be?  Let me answer that: BAD!  Holy Crap!  Josh, our really nice, Christian, fitness trainer turned out to be pure evil as he put my body through torment that only Satan himself could appreciate.  I came close to punching him in his smiling, enthusiastic face as he urged me on from one very simple exercise to the next.  The thirty minute work-out felt like three hours and it was all I could do to walk to our truck and drive home. Yep! I’m out of shape.

Doing the Right Thing.  Some of our family visited a couple of weeks ago and during a trip to a local department store, Lisa’s dad, Vernon, discovered someone had left their wallet in one of the stores electric scooters.  He and I went immediately to the service desk and turned it over to the store manager.  We were unable to find a phone number but did find the owner’s name.  The wallet contained several thousand dollars in cash and we saw that he was a veteran.  Our daughter, Heather, found a web-site that could locate a phone number and she paid a two dollar fee for that information.  We left a message with him that we had found his wallet and had left it at the store where it could be picked up.  We also left our phone number and address with the store manager in case he had questions.  About thirty minutes later we received a call from the man.  I was expecting him to thank us for our honesty but instead he accused us of taking some of the money. I explained that we never counted the money but could see there was a significant amount of cash.  I further explained that we had paid two dollars to locate his phone number.  None of that seemed to convince him that we had not stolen anything.  The question remained: Why would we leave our phone number and address if we stole your money?  No ‘thank-you’ was given – he just hung up on me.  I wonder if the original good Samaritan got a thank-you?  P.S.  We later learned that the man had sent a “lady friend” to pick up the wallet for him.  Maybe he should check her pockets.

New RV!  New RV!  Yes Lisa is still chanting those words on a regular basis.  We drove to Columbus this past weekend to scout out the new models.  All I can say is:  I wish I had kept that man’s wallet.  Would have made a nice down payment.

Coming Home!  Love, Steve and Lisa