For a class as huge as ours, my high school classmates are extraordinarily close. We have a bond seldom seen in a graduating class. I’m not sure why but classes before and after have reported they aren’t nearly as close as ours. The gals gather every month for coffee therapy and every other month or so, we have a class dinner. Then at the end of summer, we have a class picnic which is always well attended. Yesterday was our picnic and around thirty of our classmates gathered for three hours of fun. We’re starting to see more health issues, more deaths. But we are also seeing joyful achievements and the first arrivals of great grandchildren. Ok, we’re WAY too young for the great grandchildren thing….just sayin’! This particular group that gathered seem more like family, than classmates. When one hurts, we all hurt. There’s not much we wouldn’t do for each other. I love that closeness we have.

We drove into Richmond yesterday and looked around the Depot District. We went around the block and found this really cool alley with paintings on all the windows and old doorways. I love little surprising art finds around cities and towns. We wandered through Two Sisters Used Books where I found The Prayer of Jabez a couple years ago. We browsed through a huge furniture store and stopped at a coffee shop. Then headed for Oxford, Ohio.

I’m beginning to really like this state. I have been to Bloomington in the south. I’ve been back and forth along the I-70 corridor countless times. I spent a weekend here in Richmond in December 2015 when my daughter graduated from Miami University. And now I’m on my third camping excursion here. We picked TOW-Wanda up yesterday and she’s pretty as can be. They detailed her after putting on the new axle. I checked the hub temperature with my new infrared digital thermometer after driving a few miles and it was right around 97-98°. It may give me a false sense of security since the service guy told me “if it’s too hot, it’s too late.”

The other evening, I was sitting out on the front porch and hear something fall in the woods on the other side of the driveway. I looked up in time to see a green ball come shooting out of the woods onto the lawn. Curious. I sat, scanning the trees, and pretty soon another came down. I noticed a quick movement out of the corner of my eye and saw a squirrel darting from branch to branch. Now, I’m pretty good with identifying the fauna on the farm, but I’m not as astute with the flora. I watched to see what tree the squirrel settled in then got up to inspect the green ball. As it turns out, there’s a hickory tree on the bank, and a nice sized one at that. I gathered up a bucket full before I mowed the lawn yesterday and I’ll set them out to dry then take the husks off when they’re dry.

Ok, move along…nothing to see here. Just a boxer in some goggles…looking uber cool, I might add! This is Chloe. I met her and her human, Kelly, at Point Park yesterday. All weekend I’d been poo-pooing this whole eclipse madness as though the entire world had gone ‘round the bend. I was on my way back to the farm yesterday…fully intending to go home and mow, when I got a call that something I was having repaired was ready for pickup. I hadn’t gone far out the two-lane so I turned around and headed back. Mr. FixIt called and when he found out where I was, he came to join me. (Mr. FixIt would crawl through glass to see me. He told me so. ?) So, there we were, nothing to do, with a nearly total eclipse about to occur. And…I went silly!

Well, no…it’s not. I read a tweet yesterday. Teachers announced to the children there was going to be a total solar eclipse and the entire student body looked up and yelled, in unison….“NOOOOOOO!!!!!” I had dinner with a dear friend last night. He said one of his granddaughters is scared to death about the eclipse. She is convinced something horrible is going to happen because all she has heard is the urgent warnings not to go outside and look up.

They’ll chase an eclipse…clear across the ocean if they have to. They are umbraphiles. The Shadow Lovers. In 1972, Marcy Sigler chartered a ship, gathered 830 of her closest friends, and took off across the waters from New York to Nova Scotia to chase the eclipse and make it last as long as possible. There won’t be another total solar eclipse viewable in the continental United States for 180 some odd years so there are, as you well have seen, a gazillion umbraphiles coming out of the closet.

This is not my photo, but isn’t this a magnificent creature??? Mr. FixIt and I went for a short walk after supper last night. It was just getting dusk and we heard the familiar trill of the screech owl. Their name is misleading as they do not screech…they trill and whinny. I’m including a link to a YouTube video where you can learn more about them.

I received an e-mail from Camping World late yesterday afternoon. TOW-Wanda is fixed and waiting for us to come get her. I refuse to go Monday as that is heading right into eclipse country and I don’t want any part of that craziness. I saw a photo of what to expect in our area as far as coverage of the sun and it’s pretty darn close to complete so I’m not too worried about staying here. There is also a forecast for cloudy skies. So, there ya go. We’ll go Wednesday and come back Thursday.

Ok, this eclipse thing is like, a really huge deal, apparently. I’ve been hearing for weeks that the swath of land cutting through the middle of the country where the total eclipse can be seen is going to be crazy. I mean, crazy…like, gridlock, no food or water, insufficient restroom and health facilities. Mayhem…THAT kind of crazy. When someone tells you something’s gonna get crazy, it’s hard to imagine just HOW crazy. But, this? This is really certifiably over the top. This picture is just the “early ticket holders” on private land where the Oregon Eclipse 2017, or QE17 as it is known, is getting up to speed. This is just the “early ticket holders”! Holy cats!