Miscellaneous

Happy early (VERY EARLY) Monday morning. After saying I would leave the laptop at home, we decided at the last minute to pack it along. The main reason was not checking email for 4+ days would nearly guarantee I'd have a ton of email & lots of spam when we got home. So basically I'll probably just be checking email, but I'll try to pop into the blog if I can. We had a very rainy ride up the interstate this morning going from SC to NCarolina, where our family's home is. Unfortunately, due to the rains, we had our gathering at the Fellowship Room of our 'old family church' rather than at the Homeplace. My parents, grandparents, great grandparents on both sides, 2 brothers  & plenty of uncles, aunts, & assorted kinfolks, are laid at rest at this old church. Sadly we didn't have as many relatives show up for the reunion, but it was still nice to see those who did. So many of the folks who loved to attend, are no longer with us; most of the youngsters don't have a lot of interest in keeping up the reunion. One of my older cousins who was there today, wondered out loud "I just don't know where everybody is...." in such a bewildered voice (and she still has all her marbles too! <g>.) I told her "Look out the windows" - (the room faces the cemetery!). She laughed and said "Guess you're right". Usually my brothers & I pay a visit to our loved ones' graves to stand together for a few moments in quiet. It was just too rainy to do that today. My 2 oldest brothers & their wives were there today, but we all traveled separately as we each had different plans afterward. The youngest brother (who is older than I) lives in California, and they couldn't make it back East just now.

We headed up towards Virginia, driving in rain all the late afternoon. At the moment we are in a little Virginia town about 2 hrs south of Washington. The plan is to get up in the am, wait until the work rush traffic time has passed, then just amble on into Washington, and find the hotel. GPS systems work great...WHEN you can program in the address. Our truck will not let new addresses be keyed in while the vehicle is in Drive. The engine will be on, but the vehicle must still be in Park. You have to give voice commands when the truck is in Drive. Unfortunately, DH does NOT have the knack of saying addresses properly! Our Miss GPS does NOT like southern accents (and he's not really southern either!). He will say "Twenty three 0 Four" instead of "Two Three Zero Four", no matter how many times I tell him that's not the correct way to say it. He also insists on saying "ADD-Dress" instead of "Uh-Dress", and the GPS won't recognize the word! We can set up a voice profile so that the GPS learns your voice patterns - but we've not done that yet. (guess who was reading the owner's manual when she wasn't sleeping). So when we get back home, and before we take our trip out west later this summer, that is one chore we MUST get done. Also we can program 2 user profiles, because GPS won't recognize my passenger voice either. So I have to fiddle with the thing manually. We did purchase a new Road Atlas for this trip, and it came in real handy today!!

So that's it for this morning. Hope I gave you a chuckle or two, imaging Heckel & Jekyll (2 cartoon crows from my long-ago childhood) trundling along the interstate, trying to find their way!! Have a wonderful day, and catch ya later, gators. Hugs