Blast from the Past -- June 18, 2000

Nothing to enter today(June 18, 2005) ; I sat at my desk all day editing the Stacy ms. I’ve kept a daily journal for ages so, just for fun, I decided to see what I’d been doing five years ago today.

Here a copy of my posting for June 18, 2000 :

This morning we met Coconut, a huge white talking bird that lives on Forbes Street. As we walked from the bus stop to church we saw this enormous bird perched on a house gate and we thought it was a ceramic figure until it raised a ruff of feathers on its neck and said, "Hello".

We were so surprised.

The bird's owner -- a beautiful, stacked young woman in a halter top with no bra and a significant set of raised nipples -- came out and introduced us telling us that Coconut is a macaw. She lifted the bird from the gate and let me hold it and it walked along my arm up to my shoulder. What a nice surprise to find on the way to church.

Since the sanctuary is being restored, service was held in Craig Lounge where the pastor preached on the Trinity. In the Roman's class the teacher, Wes Basset, expounded his view of what happens to unsaved people after death; but I feel suspicious of any doctrine you have to know Greek to believe.

Gin & I enjoyed a pleasant walk home and spent an hour reading the newspaper and browsing through the comics.

We spent another hour cleaning the sidewalls of the pool, playing and splashing around. Then Ginny went inside to spend a little alone time in her office.

Last time we went to the library I checked out a book on topiary, the shaping and training of plants into geometric figures or statues. I have long wanted to try this, ever since I read The Children of Green Knowe and Stephen King's The Shinning.

We have a waist-high cedar tree over near the tool shed and I decided to shape it into a spiral form I saw in the book. Following the step by step instructions in the book -- didn't work.

So I reversed the process, and using a stuff copper wire I'd found along the railroad tracks and my clippers I turned out a charming cedar spiral! It looks even better than I envisioned it. I am delighted. What fun!

We are already training a climbing rose around a vertical hulla-hoop and, of course, we have our 12-foot tall Confederate jasmine cross; now, with this cedar spiral, we plan to take on a giant figure of a green man next. I'm excited about that project and spend hours daydreaming about how to do it and what it will look like.

When Ginny came out the spiral delighted her.

We sat a few hours on the deck reading our separate books. I studied Burns' TIC-TOC technique -- that means task-interfering-cognitions/ task-oriented-cognitions. After my appointment with Ray tomorrow I plan to work on the will of God book beginning at 1 p.m.

When it began to rain, we came in and ate Salty's leftovers for supper then read till bedtime.

Patricia called to wish me a happy fathers day and set up a picnic with us for next Saturday.

That was today five years ago.