These photos may take a while to load, I don't have Photoshop on this laptop and don't trust Paint to shrink them down to quality photos.

I spent the weekend in Harrisville, MI for Harmony Weekend.   This was started 50 years ago by a couple of barbershoppers (singers) and has continued every year since then.  Now it's mostly Sweet Adelines, but there are also some male barbershop singers here.  Details may come in a separate blog, but this blog is dedicated to the AWESOME views up here. 

We found this great bed and breakfast right on Lake Huron.  Here are some of the photos we took.

Waiting for the sunrise.

Sun coming up over Lake Huron.

Wave breaking near the beach

View off the balcony

Sunrise our first day

The night of the blue moon

We were going to go camping this weekend but my friend, who made the reservations, got the dates wrong.  So instead we are staying at a bed and breakfast about a half mile south of the campgrounds.  It sits right on Lake Huron and has a private beach.  It's a beautiful place, and now I am really looking forward to going.  I wasn't all that keen on camping.  Roughing it, to me, is having to stay in a 3-star hotel.

This has been a whirlwind summer.  I guess that comes from living in the Midwest, where we have about 12 really good weekends to do stuff.  And when you have more than 12 friends and family, it's amazing how quickly those weekends fill up.

Labor Day weekend I am going camping 'up north'.  (Which, to most Michiganders, is any place north of Saginaw.)  It's a musical weekend, reminiscent of music camp when I was a kid.  It's called the "Harmony Classic Weekend" and this year is the 50th anniversary.  This was a weekend started by  four male barbershop singers fifty years ago and eventually included the Sweet Adelines.  Now it's pretty much exclusively Sweet Adelines.

I am really looking forward to this.  It will be a weekend filled with singing: practicing, performing, workshops, concerts, etc.  There is also a huge arts and crafts show that I am looking forward to visiting.

I am just sorry it's already coming up on Labor Day weekend.  I need about 6 more summer weekends before I'm ready for fall!  Hopefully the weather will hold up for that long.  We've had such a hot summer (more 90s and 100s than I EVER remember) - except for the previous two weeks where the highs were in the 70s and the lows were in the upper 50s and I turned OFF the A/C and opened up the house.  We're back to A/C and closed windows again because the highs for the past few days were near 90.  Maybe I AM looking forward to the fall weather   Could be the reason why I just bought two new fleece jackets at Sams Club! The light one is actually light lavendar.  The darker one is a dark teal.  Both will work for fall until it starts getting down into the 30s.

I'm just venting.

There are five adults living in my house.  Two of them are Roger's sons.  They don't do jack shit around here and I'm getting tired of them freeloading.

In one year Roger lost his mom, his oldest son, his wife and his dad.  He is afraid to make his kids 'mad' at him so he won't do jack about this.

We bought a pool table and some regular bar-style cue sticks.  We also bought ourselves nice sticks with cases.  We keep them in cases under the bar.  The other day I saw both of them standing up against the wall.  I did not give anyone permission to use my stick.

I've only asked for one thing when someone plays pool.  When they are done, they cover the table back up.  Almost every time I look down in the basement the day after they have played, the table is uncovered.  Maybe I need to just hide the freaking cue ball.

The other day I went down there and while the plastic cover WAS over the pool table, there was also a computer and computer parts on the table.  That pissed me off.

We have a fairly new sofa and loveseat in the basement, in the area we set up with the TV and surround sound.  The arms are all broken - both sides of both!

The other day I was sitting out on the deck.  Three of my chairs are broken. (That's four altogether - we repaired one.)  From people leaning in them and putting all the weight on two legs.  And I'm not talking about lightweight people either.  One of his sons is around 300 pounds and the other is well over 200.

Sometimes I feel like selling this house and finding a place of my own.  That's what I thought I was getting when I bought this house.

So I have four guitars and can't really play (an Epiphone electric, a Washburn and Martin acoustic, and a Yamaha classical).  I dropped my lessons.  The guy brought in the music for "Over the Hills and Far Away" by Led Zeppelin - this is WAY TOO ADVANCED for me!  Then he was talking about bar chords and stuff going up the neck of the guitar.  I decided I needed a more classical method of training.  I am going to teach myself.  I did it before - 25 or 30 years ago.  I could play pretty well, but stopped when I had to sell my guitar to get money to drive from Florida to Michigan to move in with my sister when I left my first husband the first time.  I forgot almost everything I taught myself.

I bought a really nice CF Martin guitar a couple months ago, and in my lessons we found that the 8th-9th fret had a problem and that the guitar 'buzzed' when playing there, so today I'm going to take it back and hopefully just exchange it for the same model.  I really like the looks of it.  While I'm there I"m going to look at method books and see if I can find something that will work for me.

I also bought an electric piano recently and haven't played it much.  I bought several method books and realized that I could already play everything in them, so I might look for something a little more advanced while I'm at the music store today.

I need to get back into learning more of this!  I really want to be able to play proficiently enough at both instruments so that I can accompany myself singing.

Speaking of singing...  We have a performance coming up this week at a very posh event - it's the Republican Women's Dinner something or other at a club called "The Heathers" in the wealthiest city in the state.  Apparently our group sang for them a few years ago and they liked us so well they asked us back.  We're singing mostly patriotic songs.  We're throwing in "My Guy" - barbershop version, of course - with the introduction to the song being something along the lines of "We all have our guy that we want everyone to vote for".

I am having fun singing with this group. 

I should probably even take my clarinet out of its case - I've hardly touched it in about 35 years.  Right now it's being used to hold my bedroom door open.

I think I am going to have to schedule time in my week for music - time to practice uninterrupted.  It's so hard to cut into my World of Warcraft time, though LOL

I didn't realize I hadn't posted about this!

A couple of weeks ago I posted about my great test results.  One thing I hadn't gotten yet was my A1c.

For anyone who doesn't know, A1c is a test to determine how well controlled the diabetes is.  Here is how it works:

• The A1C test shows how much hemoglobin in the blood has a glucose molecule attached (by percentage)
• This test tells the average blood sugar level over the last 2-3 months
• It is not the same as the finger stick blood test used to monitor current blood sugars
• Frequent higher blood sugar tests lead to higher A1C test results
• High blood sugar levels force more glucose molecules to attach to the blood’s hemoglobin
• The attachment is permanent, but the blood cells are replaced every two to four months
• New blood cells produced when blood sugar is near normal, will result in lower A1C levels
• An A1c of 5.7% is an indication of diabetes (non-diabetics will have A1c levels lower than this.)

The American Diabetes Association recommends an A1c of less than 7.0% to avoid complications of diabetes.

The American Society of Endocrinologists recommends an A1c of less than 6.5%

Since my first diagnosis of diabetes, my lowest A1c was 6.6%.

Last week I had it tested again!

6.2%

This is my lowest result since diagnosis!

Good Morning America - Are they so leftist that they have to tie the Republican party to the shootings in Colorado?  Can't it just be some whacko nutjob who did the shootings?  Sometimes I'm embarrassed to be American - especially in an election year.

Link

That might describe what I am going through.

I can't get motivated to get any work done.  I'm paid a lot of money to work from home and for the last couple of weeks, I just couldn't get motivated.  My current work is to create a training manual for training I need to do on July 30.  I've hardly started it.  I can't jeopardize my position because I will never find another job like this one.

I don't really feel anxious.  More like restless with a bit of lethargy thrown in.  Like I feel like I want to do something, anything, but don't feel like getting out of this chair, which makes me even more restless.

I've also been in a shoe buying spree.  I think I'm done now.  I hope so.  I've run out of room to put them.

Maybe I need to get back on the Welbutrin.

All I really ever feel like doing is reading and sleeping.  And since reading often leads to sleeping, I don't do it much.  So I sit at my computer playing games.

Last night Roger and I went down into the basement and hooked up our guitars and started playing some songs and singing.  His son's band was over and they came down and joined us so we jammed for a little while.  But I didn't practice what I should have, which is the stuff for my lessons.

I also haven't felt like practicing my choral music.  And our director expects us to be "off the paper" this week - meaning we know the music and now just need to work on perfecting it.

Got the picture back that a Xanga Friend made for me.  Had it framed in a Walnut frame that was 2" thick and used museum glass on it so there would not be much glare. There is a bit of a reflection from the window in the corner.  This looks GREAT on our yellow wall!