Musings for the Week - Trips, Trade-Ins and Twilight

1. I have a month off from book club due to a huge book signing event in December, so this may be the month to dive into Twilight. My sweet girl, Elise, has lent me her copy, complete with dog-eared pages of her favorite parts. I'm always late to the party with phenomenons like this, but given my lack of a focused read this month, it's time. Maybe it's my resistance that, as a hopeless romantic, I don't need to be swooning over a vampire named Edward that apparently knocks the socks off the young ladies. Now, if it was Tony Stark as played by Robert Downey, Jr, I'd swoon all over the place. I'll let you know if I'm captivated by a vampire.

2. Our church has set a goal to pack 300 boxes for Operation Christmas Child. If you haven't heard of this organization, check out the web site. They provide shoe boxes filled with toys, school supplies, candy and toiletries to children around the world that otherwise wouldn't receive anything for Christmas. My Sunday School class hosted a "Build-a-Box" party where we all bought multiples of the same items and packed many more boxes than we would have done individually. Couple that with good food and great conversations and we had a wonderful time. Our class is a quirky bunch and most of the humor that exudes is mostly funny in the moment and far from understood if you aren't present...making us that much more quirky. Thankfully birds of a feather enjoy flocking together.

3. I planned on blogging about the demise of my cell phone, Violet, but life just got too crazy. As many of you techno geeks may have heard, T-Mobile's Sidekick phone suffered a huge hit the first of October when Microsoft servers came crashing down and we were left without data service and all of our information....for three weeks. Long story short, T-Mobile was very good to this 10-year customer and gave me a new phone, a G1 Android, for virtually free (net $5) with no impact to my contract. I almost went with this phone back in June when I purchased Violet, but the purple color captured me. Moral of that story: Never buy a phone based on its color. I absolutely love my G1. It is far superior to the Sidekick...I have touch and a qwerty keypad...and, best of all, Pandora radio streaming! As my normal modus operandi, I named my phone Pepper....for it's color (black) and in honor of Pepper Potts, faithful assistant to Tony Stark aka Ironman. Oh how I'd love to be Pepper. This post is slowly becoming "Musings about RDJ"...

4. Saturday afternoon I was blessed to celebrate my Aunt Goldie's 90th birthday. My Dad had seven siblings, and of those, only three are still living...one of them, his older sister, Goldie. Booth women are stunning. I wish I'd gotten a little more of those genes because even at 90 she looks fabulous. All of my Dad's sisters were strong-willed, beautiful women who dripped with intelligence. Every one of them outlived their husbands...and even husbands two and three in some cases. Aunt Goldie is no exception. I'm thankful I got a slice of those genes. The funniest line of the day was from my Dad's normal dry wit. He leaned over at one point and said "You know, being around all these old people is depressing." Priceless coming from a handsome 84-year old who looks about 65.

5. Thursday I step on a plane and fly east to visit the Roederer family. Yes, my life of living trip to trip continues. I haven't had time to really let the trip sink in just yet with all the busyness of my life, but I know once I get there, the time will pass all too quickly. I can't wait to have uninterrupted face time with Julie...life is so busy we haven't had time to really talk in ages. I can't wait to see the boys...Clayton, Jackson and Daniel (who hopes I'm cool). And, of course, Rod, the rock of the house. Julie asked me what I wanted to do, and I told her I just wanted to spend quality time...to me, that trumps any activity. Yes, Virginia, I am low maintenance.