Beaches

Once again the weather this past weekend was just wonderful. I had the privilege of joining high school friends on boating adventures that took us to New Point Saturday and Winter Harbor on Sunday. Saturday's excursion was in honor of my friend Glenda's 50th birthday, which was a blast.  

Sunday, her children (and she, but they made the phone call) 

invited me to join them on another boating/beach adventure.

(I've grown so fond of her children these past two days, I'm drawing up adoption papers.

Son will be leaving for college in a few short months, this works out perfectly.)

Glenda and Billy

The first shot above is from Saturday's New Point Birthday Extravaganza.

(Many more photos from that day and a little story about a boat ride gone almost awry will be forthcoming.) 

The rest of these are from Sunday's Winter Harbor Beach Day, which was much more low key but just as much fun and included friends Lisa, Craig, and their children Malia and Luke.

My thanks to Glenda and Billy (and to Glenda's adorable children) for inviting me along for the ride.

I definitely enjoyed it.

Hope your weekend was a great one.

The Gate

Today's riveting topic has to do with lanes.

Or driveways.

Specifically, the entrance to a driveway or lane.

Which my friend from high school

always called the gate.

(She'd call the entrance to this driveway a gate, even though it's not gated
and you can barely see the driveway--or the deserted house.)

It was a gate whether or not an actual gate existed.

My high school basketball teammate LaRue (aka Smith, real name Tammy LaRue Smith) lived down the way from me and occasionally needed a ride home from practice.  She lived along Route 198 just around the bend in the road between Mathews Chapel United Methodist Church and Ebenezer Baptist Church.  (She now lives in Richmond, but every time I go by her house--which is between five and fifteen times a week--I think of her.)

Her driveway had no gate or fence; in fact, there was barely a driveway.  There was just enough space to pull in and back out onto Route 198.

No matter.

Each and every time I took her home, she said, "Vogel.  Drop me off at the gate."

Well, she meant drop her off at the end of the driveway and keep on going, but I had to pull completely into her driveway to turn around and go back in the other direction. Every time.  So there was no dropping off except into her front yard--after pulling well past what she would consider "the gate."

No matter.

She still insisted I drop her off at the gate.

These pictures were taken in the Mobjack/Bohannon/North area of the county, where there are many long driveways with very pretty gates.  I tell this story because I don't know anyone in my midst these days who equates the end of a driveway with a gate, whether it has one or not.  I find it all fascinating.

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In unrelated news, the Mathews boys are all done with their season after losing to Surry Friday night at Lancaster.  Although it was a tough loss, they had a tremendous season.  I had fun at the game even if we didn't walk away victorious.  On Saturday, Daughter and I spent several hours at the Intermediate School (aka Thomas Hunter) watching rec league basketball.  Daughter kept stats for my friend Alda's daughter's game, which was great fun to watch.

In still more unrelated news, yesterday's temperatures reached the 70s, but today we're under a winter storm warning.

Cardinal

This lovely house lives on the way to Mobjack in a part of the county known as Cardinal.

Several friends of mine from high school lived in or near Cardinal,

so I passed by this house more than a few times back in the day.

Back then I didn't have time to stop and admire this house though.

Speaking of high school, Saturday I traveled to Charles City with Alda and Catherine, two classmates of mine, to watch the Mathews High School girls and boys basketball teams play in the conference championship games.

The girls put up a very strong fight but lost to Charles City by only! four points.  Although I thought we were done for the season, Daughter informed me that because we came in second we advance to the regional games. Tuesday night we play again.

The boys, however, won their game by one bucket in the last second of the game.  The last minute of that game was some of the most exciting basketball I've seen in a while.  

Other than basketball, the only other newsworthy topic is the weather, which reached the low 70s yesterday.  I spent most of the day picking up and burning sticks and pine cones--in shorts.  Although picking up pine cones doesn't sound very exciting--because trust me it isn't--just being outdoors inhaling fresh air, feeling the cool breeze and sunshine on the skin, and hearing the song birds and the frogs off in the distance was enough to make me happy content.

So there you have it, all the sordid details of my wild weekend.

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Welcome to the last week of February.

March can't get here soon enough for me.

Christmas Parade Part I

This weekend was a flurry of flurriness* starting with the Mathews Christmas parade on Saturday.

John Deere made an appearance or two in the parade.

Our Grand Marshal

Among other things, Nelda handles the county's Meals on Wheels program.
Her driver Mr. Gibbs was my high school geography teacher.
They are both wonderful people who also happen to be avid runners.

Heavy duty farm equipment followed by the Gloucester Chic-Fil-A cows.

Mathews High School Class of 1982 is always well represented in this parade.
This is Glenda Burroughs and one of her two beautiful daughters.

Daughter Two waves.

This was one of my favorite entrants.  A boat with pirates.
And parrots. And turtles. And....

CRAB HATS!!!
This group gets two claws up from Chesapeake Bay Woman.

In this picture is Craig Lewis (brown jacket and hat, click here and here for 

past posts featuring his mad boating skillz); 

Scooter Ransone in the blue jacket; and in the far background wearing the red jacket talking to bystanders rather than 

marching in the parade is MHS Class of 1982 representative #2, Sterling Ransone.

(He's also known as Dr. Ransone.)

Not until this float went by did I notice the best part.

This child's body language captured what a few of us on the sidelines
were feeling due to the drizzle and the cold.

This was my favorite.

Mathews High School Class of 1982 Entrant #3:  Alda Hudgins Barnett.

Looking befuddled.  Daughter Betsy looks on.

Yes, here in Mathews we still have (in the background) signs boasting "high test" gasoline.

Miss Betsy Barnett

At this point during the parade it started to sprinkle, hence the blurred spots in the picture above.  Nevertheless I kept taking pictures and will share them, along with pictures from Saturday night's Holly Ball, later this week.

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*Flurriness is a word I just invented which, loosely translated, means too much flurry for one's own good much less one weekend.

Sunrise at Aarons Beach

These were taken at sunrise from Aarons Beach last week after I dropped off Daughter at cross country practice, which started at six thirty.

Six thirty, and sunrise, were only three hours later than when I went to sleep Sunday morning after my mini class reunion aboard the Spirit of Norfolk Saturday night.  Although we all were nervous about the late (to us anyway) start time of Midnight Thirty, we used toothpicks to prop our eyelids open used the aerobic activity known as dancing to help keep the blood flowing to ensure nobody nodded off.

Our friend Lucy (click here for a post with our picture) did an excellent job organizing the event, which wasn't without its obstacles, and we've vowed to plan regular activities to force us out of our stale normal routines which almost never include dancing on a boat in downtown Norfolk from 12:00 - 2:30 a.m.

How was your weekend?