Life at a slightly slower pace

Since the Jazz Festival we have tried to limit ourselves to one “event” a day. Sunday, immediately after the festival we did not stir from the apartment at all. Monday we had dinner out at a friends and we drove even though we would normally walk. Carol had made a dish that would have been an adventure to carry the 2 miles or so down East and Park to Barrington. We were with Barbara and Robert and Bobbi and George. It was a pleasant evening with a relatively early end (anything before midnight is early).  And so it went one event per day until Saturday when we went to Torah Study and had Lorraine and Don over for dinner and to walk over to the river to watch the fireworks over the river for the 4th.

And time keeps flying. A week later and I am just now making some time to write. Nothing significant has happened other than some wonderful get togethers with friends, old and new. That “old” refers to length of the friendship and is not meant as a comment on anyone’s age. Although if we have known these people for 30 or more years it does say something about their age 🙂 New is people new to the community, our Rabbi Peter Stein and wife Amy, and some people we just have never met to sit down and chat with even though we have been in the community all our lives.

We have taken some walks in the neighborhood and even came across a lovely “pocket park” we must have walked and driven by many times without giving it any notice:

This garden is located at the corner of Court Street and St Mary’s 
next to St Mary’s Church in the background
In the realm of nothing much, I went to Rochester Speech and Hearing Center at Julian’s suggestion (made a year ago after I told him my otolaryngologist thought I could use hearing aids!) and had a further evaluation of my hearing loss. I will be fitted with hearing aids this coming week and maybe will stop saying “huh?” or “what was that?” quite as often. Also I suspect our neighbors will no longer hear the TV 🙂 I seem to be joining a large number of people my age, now that I mostly don’t need glasses, replacing that need with hearing aids. 
I am rambling on a bit I know. Summer is here with Corn Hill Festival – we walked almost 5 miles yesterday to and through the Corn Hill neighborhood and Park Ave soon to follow, although we will be gone then. Our departure for Greece and OAT Crossroads of the Adriatic is closer than we think, 16 days actually – yikes! Hope we can still use Euros when we are there. 
A quick recap of our travel schedule may be in order here: We return to Rochester from the OAT tour on August 24 and we do not expect to leave until October 11ish. Our general route will take us to Charlottesville from the 12th until sometime after Corey’s Bar Mitzvah on the 24th. Then further south with a stop in Red Bay for anything we think might need service before turning west – or further south to see Carol’s brother and sister-in-law who Carol is visiting mid September. We expect to base ourselves in Jojoba Hills SKP Resort after our trek across the country with a stop in Las Cruces NM. From there we we will fly to New Zealand March 29 with further stops in Australia and Hawaii before returning to the coach mid May. We will stay in the area through July 2 for Avi’s Bar Mitzvah, the last of our boys! We are not sure where we will be to fly out to Ultimate Africa August 25. Maybe we will have made it to Rochester by late July and stay thrh toughe Holidays which are so late as to expose us to cold before we trek south and west again.