...10.4...Over the Weekend...

...the weekend started late Friday evening with the smell of freshly mown hay...

...and Saturday morning when I left to pick up the InstaCart groceries the hay lay drying sweetly in the sun...

...I got a few groceries...so Jack-Jack inspected them thoroughly when I got home...

...I don't think there's anything of note...maybe the 7th generation dish soap...that's new...

...I put in the InstaCart comments that I wanted half 'ripe' bananas and half 'regular' bananas and we actually got some of each...and they weren't all GREEN...haha...and the Man got his favorite deli blueberry bagels...

...for lunch we ate the last tomato that the Man's mom got for us when we were visiting last weekend...it's a pretty heirloom yellow red one...

...and then...in the afternoon...this big box arrived...

...so Jack inspected that for me too...

...it's a new keyboard...

...so a little bit of history...this is my current piano set-up...it's in my 'office'...aka ..."Kitten's Room"...

...the Nyman piece is taped to the wall...because it's 6 pages long...(page 6 is on the keyboard) you'll recognize it as the theme of "The Piano"...I love this piece a lot and so it's usually my warm up piece...I've been playing it for probably 10 years or more...

...this keyboard was a Christmas gift from Mom and Frank some 20 years ago...Our Airman was very little...and we didn't have a 'real' Piano so I used it for regular practice...and it was also the 'piano' that Our Airman started playing when he was about 4 years old...and even when we had a 'real' piano...I kept this one in my office and played it a lot because I could play 'silently' with headphones and not disturb anyone else watching TV or such...but recently it's gotten static-y and some of the keys don't work all of the time...and if you're wondering how I played the Nyman piece or any other piece with a big octave spread...it has a neat function where you can shift up or down by an octave...I had to shift down for The Heart asks Pleasure First...and up for the Nutcracker...and Für Elise...

...here are a bunch of piano related posts:

North Dakota Piano
Our Airman's sweet school assignment My House...I thought it was so sweet and funny that he included the piano in things that were great about his house...
Our Airman playing Let it Be
Our Airman plays Poker Face...
...when we moved to West Virginia...we left the piano in the Parsonage in North Dakota...but then we received another one as a gift...
...and here's a final little clip of Our Airman playing that one...

...so...on to the unboxing...there is a manual...a purple velvet cover...and headphones...

...a single sustain pedal...you can get the three pedal one with a Sostenuto pedal and a Soft pedal...but this one will be fine for me...

...and here she is...with all 88 weighted keys...

...and luckily it fits in the same space...and the same stand...so then I spent the rest of the afternoon playing...haha...

...and then I covered her up with her fancy velvet cover...

...and drove into town to pick up take out from a new Thai place...because our favorite one sadly closed because of the pandemic...I liked the new one...

...Sunday afternoon they came and raked the hay...

...and one of our parishoners brought us a nice bag of muscadines...

...they look like jewels...and also like the Horta eggs on Star Trek...haha...

...and then Sunday evening...with rain in the forecast...they came and baled the hay...I'm so glad they got it in before the rain...

~Wishing you a lovely start to your week!

...Over the weekend...

...I had taken Jack to this little State Park near our home every night this week...

...so the second I got his leash...he ran straight for the car...they learn so quickly...hoping he won't be disappointed if we don't make it every day now...but...he's certainly happy in the moment...

...the path was super nice...I love fall...and it's still pretty early fall here...the leaves are really just starting to turn...

...not sure if you can see it....but this is a persimmon tree...they're not terribly common around here...but some of the ladies make a persimmon pie and/or pudding for Church covered dish suppers...(not vegan though... )

...this is the bottom of a two tiered lake system...I love the reflection of the sky and trees...

...on the way back to the car...we passed the persimmon tree again...

...and this time I couldn't resist plucking a ripe fruit...

...I remember Daddy talking about eating wild persimmons...but I think this is the very first time I've ever tried one...I liked it...but found it rather odd...the texture of it felt kind of like a cross between a tomato and a peach...and the flavor was just sweet and mild...not peachy or tomatoey...

...have you ever tried a persimmon?...

...I had gotten up super early...so I could take care of my dog-sitting commitment...and get the shopping done so that I could meet up with my dear friend Amy here...at the Gibson Mill Antique Mall...I had never been...but it was the venue of Scout and Our Girl's prom...

...it was super crowded...

...but we went in and wandered up and down the crowded aisles...I actually found some of my Liberty Blue plates at a good price and we lugged them around (taking turns)...but in the end...the queue to the check out was so long that we put them back...

...anywhoo...we had lunch at the little deli in the mall...and they had lots of vegetarian options...so I got a panini and asked for no cheese or butter and the guy cheerfully offered to add avocado instead...so nice...

...then early afternoon...we decided to wander around the little town...downtown...and we passed this crazy Halloween decorated house...there was quite a crowd of people 'admiring' it...

...and we went to the little chocolate shop...and got a delicious vegan cake...we were going to get vegan ice cream at that shop too...but we were too full...

...it was such a fun afternoon...Old friends are the BEST!

...then Sunday after Church...this happened...

...just a few people left and we were about to lock up...when we walked up the hall to the exit and smelled electrical smoke in the Handbell room...there's really not much in there that could be on fire...but the fire department was called and quickly arrived...and this being a small community and all...everyone stopped to offer assistance...and find out what was going on...

...so here is the crowd gathered around the culprit...an old cd copying station...that's not used anymore since the AV equipment has been upgraded and is all digital now...but the AV person used to take the master cd from the old system into this room and they could make 5 copies at a time on this old system...and it was just left plugged in in there and nobody was using it...and the power supply caught fire and burned up the inside of the PC...

...we were really super lucky that it happened on a Sunday afternoon when people were still around...

...and that's all the excitement I have for now...

~Wishing you a lovely start to your week!

...Stone Church...

...driving home from my Sister's I spied this pretty church and thought I'd share it with y'all...

...there are several Churches in the area that were built before the 1800s...this one was established as a Reformed Church (a.k.a. Calvinism) in 1795...

...remembering that our country is fairly young as far as countries of the world go...

...I'm always amazed when I get to see a building that's over 200 years old...traveling in Europe will put it into perspective too...as some people are still living in houses that are hundreds of years old...

...but this building is pretty old by American standards...

...it's just really pretty...

...as I asked the Man if he knew anything about the Church...and he said that he'd been in it once for a funeral...and there's a three sided balcony inside...I'd love to see that...

~Have a lovely day!

...Sister's Day...

...My sweet Sissie only lives a couple of hours away from me now...physically, the closest we've been in years...

...so...we decided to take advantage of that...and meet for lunch yesterday...

...and on the drive over...I passed a couple of those brown roadside signs...one for the small aviation museum...and one for a covered bridge...

...so I asked my sister about them...and of course she'd seen the aviation museum...she's a pilot after all...but she'd never been to the covered bridge...

...and as we were just goofing off...visiting for the day...and didn't really have an agenda...we decided to stroll around the museum...it's normally closed on Monday...but Karen knows the museum manager...and he happened to be doing some work in the office...so we got a private tour...it was fun...

...there were old WWII cars...

...a Swiss airplane...named 'Meine Geleibte'...my love or my beloved...sweet...

...and a posh small passenger plane...

...pretty posh...

...and an army trainer...

...and a sister selfie...

...then...it was back to the main building...which Karen was telling me started as strictly a World War II Museum...

...an old signed flag from an air base in England...

...a whole wall commemorating the Battle of Brittain...

...President Truman's 1950 Limousine...

...President Truman sat here...

...and the Museum Curator told us a funny story...about the fact that he's a cigar smoker...and how sometimes when he's in the building alone he smokes a cigar...and a lady who was touring the museum poked her head into the limo...and said 'Oh Wow!...I can smell his cigar'...funny because it would have been 60 odd years ago that the President might have smoked a cigar in this car...

...I left the info large so you can read about the Limo...

...a torpedo that they parade through town on parade days...it's bigger than you think...

...a pretty red plane...

...and a pretty yellow one...

...and a really tiny little one seater...that actually flew...

...lots of small memorabilia...

...and a bi-plane trainer...

...medals on display...

...and uniforms too...lots of uniforms...and they look so small...I guess that's why we call them our 'boys' in uniform...

...it was a great tour...

...so then we drove...and drove...and drove...it was a lot further than we thought...to the covered bridge...

...we looked for a plaque explaining the history of the bridge but did not find one...strange...

...but a quick internet search gave us the following information...

This historic structure, one of NC's two remaining covered bridges, was built in 1911 at a cost of $40. The bridge is 54 feet in length and crosses the West Fork Branch of the Little River within the Uwharrie National Forest and is a direct connection to the county's past mode of transportation when horse and wagon were common and automobile travel was in its infancy.

...I'm so happy that we found it...it's just not every day that you get to see a covered bridge...(but I have posted about another covered bridge)

...Sister Selfie #2...

...then we had lunch at a super nice little Mexican restaurant...lots of fun and funny talk with my sissie...and I should have taken a photo of my vegan food...and the AWESOME special guacamole we gobbled up...

...it was such a fun day!...

~Have a lovely day!