Roaring, Romping and Rippling

Yes, I've finally reached the letter R in my alphabetical list of possible duplicates. I got through Q pretty quickly despite a lot of music related titles beginning with the words Quintet and Quartet.

As usual, summer is passing by too quickly. It is roaring, romping and rippling through my life. Also, as usual, summer has been very busy. There was a 3 day trip to Lenox to see Twelfth Night and The Taming of the Shrew performed by Shakespeare and Company. They always do such a wonderful job.

An added bit of pleasure during the Lenox trip was lunch with an old friend. H and I worked together at UMass/Amherst when the library was in Goodell. We weren't great pals, didn't hang around together, but were friendly at work. Several years later, when I was Head of Technical Services for the Western Mass. Regional Library System, I attended an OLAC (Online AudioVisual Catalogers) conference. H introduced herself and reminded me of our shared employment many years earlier. We spent some time together at the conference and went our separate ways.

Then a few years ago while M and I were in Provincetown, waiting in line to see a Tennessee Williams play, I spotted H! There was a flurry of "Hellos" and "How are yous" before entering the theater. She also told me that a mutual librarian friend of ours, R, was also at the TW festival. During the next few days, we kept running into each other and catching up in bits and pieces. It was fun to actually sit down with her and spend some un-rushed time together. We'll both be at the TW festival at the end of September with our spouses and may have another lunch date.

M and I have lived in our home in Hatfield for 21+ years and have talked repeatedly about hosting a street-wide (or is that street-long?) party. Two of our neighbors have done so in the past and it's fun to meet the people you live close to but only see as you're driving by. We live at the far end of the street, so we see everyone else's houses, but only one other couple, the one who live beyond us, ever sees ours. There's not a lot of turnover on this street, but there is some.

Well, tomorrow is the big day. Two of the newest people will be coming along with others we've met before. Weather forecast is for hot and humid with a slight chance of showers. M and I try to have parties (small and large) on a regular basis. It motivates us to keep the house and yard looking good and is the incentive we need to tackle all those little projects on the "to-do" list.

The little pond/waterfall sprung a leak last year. Guess what? It's FINALLY fixed and running.