We celebrated Independence Day by saying goodbye to Amelia. She took some basil and other herbs. I picked more tomatoes and a few more berries. The mornings are quite pleasant for a couple hours. I made potato salad, but I decided not to put in the mayonnaise.

We picked up my parents and went to swim in Becky's pool. It was lovely and cool. She had snacks for us: drinks and chips and carrots and dips. We all really enjoyed it. It began to thunder as we were leaving. We took my parents home and went on to Le'Ann's, where there were many people, most of whom we had known a long time ago, including ther two children, now adults. There was lots of good food, but we were all crowded in the house because of the rain and it got pretty warm in there. It was great to hear her talk about teaching with Janna, although a little depressing. I told her I would come volunteer in her class when she needed me and she said she would call me. We were home before 6 and had time to sit around for awhile. I ate some leftovers and a little frozen yogurt. We watched fireworks on TV (and Steve Martin playing banjo) and went to bed early.

Yesterday was mostly good. Picked a few tomatoes, made a special eggplant quiche for lunch. We went to the Fellowship. Ray had to do the sound, but Amelia and I were specatators in a service involving members of the congregation sharing readings about Freedom. There were fewer people there than usual.

My parents joined us for lunch: the quiche and a salad made of beans from the freezer with an herb-y dressing. There was also some leftover birthday cake and very ripe peaches, and iced tea my Mom made. We chatted a bit and they left. Amelia and I went to see Bertha, bringing a quilt Amelia had made. She had bought Bertha's sewing machine and has lots of her tools and materials: scissors, threads, bolts of fabric. It is a little easier to talk to Bertha now. Janna asks her questions and waits for her to answer, which she usually does, although it clearly takes an effort. I talked some with Amelia on the way home about my recent philosophical wrestling with questions involving quality and length of life, in a world with limited resources.

We came home and had a light supper Ray made: a delicious kidney bean and onion salad. We added some garden lettuce and cucumbers and cherry tomatoes. Then we went to Buffalo's to play trivia, meeting my parents there. We had won there once before. It is not our favorite setup, but they have a Sunday night game. We won again! One of the things we don't like about it, is we won $35, but in $5 coupons that must be used one at a time, not on a trivia night. We would not willingly eat there, so we don't use them. Last time, we were in a separate room in back, but now they have the tables in the regular dining room and it was hard to hear. A group near us was not playing, so naturally talked through the questions. And Ray was very angry, because they added up the scores wrong and we didn't really win. I had to talk him out of telling them. I just thought it would be unpleasant--and it was possible he was wrong and had misunderstood or miscalculated himself. What do you think? Is it unethical to take advantage of the moderator's math error? I felt useful; I knew some of the answers, even one that no one else in our group knew. Can you name the four railroads in Monopoly?

We had a long chat with Molli on Skype before we went to bed. This morning I woke up with these thoughts about Holovetsians in my head; I guess I was dreaming about them. Check out the link and add your ideas to mine. 

Holovetsians are very precise. They live in tidy houses that are all set back the same distance from the lane, with walkways centered exactly in front of their front doors, which are in the precise middle of the house, up a certain number of steps, with a front porch running the width of the house. They are painted in bright colors, the significance of which has not yet been determined by space anthropologists. The edges of the walk and the front of the porch are planted with bright flowers, and the sides of the house with vegetables. The backyard is fenced, the fencing uniform and shared by the neighbors beside and behind, and is used for their outdoor family games. No measuring devices have been observed. They appear to have an innate ability to measure distances accurately without any tools.

Each Holovetsian couple has two children, except for the Head Couple. They are required to maintain the size of the community by having as many children as it takes to replace any couples who do not reproduce. Sometimes these children are given to other Head Couples to do not have their own children, for whatever reason. Occasionally, the Heads will award some of these additional children to a couple who already have two children as a reward for outstanding community acts, but this is rare.

Holovetsians wear colorful clothes and pointed red hats, which they have never been seen to remove. It is not known if their heads are pointed, or how the hats stay on. They are shorter and smaller than humans and thus, their houses are smaller. It has been difficult to observe the interiors as of yet, but they appear to be two stories, with a full basement.

If you know any additional facts about Holovetsians, please post them for everyone's enlightenment.

It's too bad I can't seem to enjoy Amelia's visit as much as I should, feeling sad about her leaving again while she's here.

We had a lovely time yesterday, starting with breakfast and checking out the garden while it was still cool. By 9:30 it was really too hot to be out. My parents spent a couple hours with us. Amelia mainly worked on the cake for Gloria's sister's birthday. She left at 12:30. Ray and I cleaned up some, ate some lunch, and read or otherwise relaxed for a while. I started on a fancy eggplant quiche for today.

Amelia came home about 4:30 and told us about the party. Then we put on our swimsuits and headed to the Dunns' pool. Gloria was working on food for all of us, but the life of the party was Loretta, Amelia's friend Becky's daughter. Her name is Loretta Amelia, and Amelia is her godmother. She is almost three and very cute, with long blond hair and bangs. Her Mom had a floatie for her to wear and we all encouraged her to come in and swim with us, but she mainly sat on the steps and splashed people. Even so, we mostly didn't do anything but watch her!

At 7:30, just as the food was being served, we left for the National, where 4 of our friends were meeting us for dinner after they saw a movie. They were excited to see Amelia and talk to her and the food was very good. It was a little loud in the restaurant and hard to hear across the table. 

We came home about 10 and went to bed. 

Amelia's home!

She was at the beach in Panama City, on vacation with Kevin's family, and I had a vague notion that she would be passing through Athens at some point and we would get to see her briefly. When she called at 10 Thursday night, I was half asleep and didn't really take it in.

Yesterday, when I got to the Land Trust a little before 10, Nathan was back from his vacation in Maine (jealous!) and I moved to Nancy's office for the time being. There was a volunteer (Daniel) waiting that I knew nothing about. Nathan put him to work at the office, raking leaves and doing outside work. I was a little miffed that someone told him to come on when I had two other people working already and broken equipment. But George never showed up after working 5 hours on Wednesday. And Daniel was able to restring the weed-eater after Kate told me that was all that was wrong with it.

I had to go get the van from Kate's house (no air conditioning), have Daniel put the mower in for me, and drive it to the repair shop. They were busy there. When it was my turn, they took it out for me and assured me that they would let me know by next Friday if it could be fixed inexpensively. I got a chicken sandwich from McDonald's and a fruit smoothie and made copies of some keys for Heather. I also talked to her about interviewing potential homeowners and taking more responsibility for them.

I left at 3 after conversations with Ray and Amelia and went to EarthFare to buy some things. When I got home (it was in the 90s), I looked for a recipe I wanted to make for Amelia, but couldn't find it anywhere. It was a bean salad and a ratatouille-like salad with eggplant that I thought she would really like and I was frustrated not to be able to locate it. In the end, though, I decided that since we already had ratatouille, there was no need to make more. I just marinated some beans and the broccoli my parents had picked. There was also corn on the cob at the store (although it turned out to be old and not very good). We tidied some and made the beds. Amelia got here a little after 7, in spite of the holiday weekend traffic, so that was really nice. I gave a bag of home-grown tomatoes to Gloria and she was excited. I told her there were many more and she assured me she could eat them as fast as I could grow them.

After dinner, Amelia made a large birthday cake (sheet cake) for Gloria's sister's birthday. Trish is in hospice. She has cancer and diabetes and COPD and this is her last birthday. Gloria is bringing people to the nursing home where she is to celebrate. I am not sure that is what I would want, but I hope she enjoys it.

Looking sunny and hot already this morning, but the AC is running.

Yesterday morning, I was at the office by 9, to meet a new volunteer. I was surprsed to find lots of other people there. Apparently there was a big garden meeting at 9:30.

There was a note for me: Have her water the plants out front first thing. So I did, and she did. And filled out an application for me. Then we took the lawnmower and the weedeater in the old van and drove to a couple vacant lots. I left her there with water and insrructions to call me if she needed anything. It was going to be another hot one.

I had been back at the office long enough to do everything useful I could think of when the phone rang. She had hit something with the mower (a piece of rebar, it turns out, sticking out of the ground) and it wouldn't start. If I had a screwdriver, she was sure she could fix it. I couldn't find a screwdriver. I went to a hardware store and bought some, but the cord is broken. Meanwhile, the weedeater worked okay for a while, but then it stopped cutting too. Eventually, we loaded everything back in the van and came back to the office. It was not very productive. I felt completely stupid. I have never used a weed-eater or mowed a lawn and don't know how to fix them. Other people at ALT were busy and it didn't seem worth interrupting them. This morning I will have to find out about getting them fixed.

Meanwhile, I headed home about 1:30 to get something to eat. Homegrown tomato with cheese sandwich. Ray and I spent the afternoon appreciating the air conditioning. I worked on another review for Patch. Later, we made dinner together. It was good, but too hot. We pretty much only want cold food now. I have to make more main-dish salads. I went outside for a bit, but it was still over 80 and I sweat a lot. Picked more tomatoes and some broccoli.