May

This has really been an unusual May. Since January 1, the longest string of days without rain is six. That happened in April. We've had two three day stretches. We have had 67 days with rain. We are a little more than ten inches above the average rain fall for this time of year. The sun shone for a little while yesterday and peaked out a little today but as of now it is raining. The winds have been fierce also on some days. Our tree lost a limb and so did Tommy's. It has been very cool also, not too many days in the 70's. I'll get this out and read it in July when I'm complaining about the heat. Weather's the weather, whether or not.

I had an e-mail from Shannon with a slice of life in Japan. She wrote about an evening out with some of the people on the base. She said they went to another small town near theirs and ate at a restaurant. They had shabu shabu. She gave the directions for making shabu if anyone would like to try it. She said you must first ask the butcher to thinly slice either beef or pork for you. Then you ready a pot of boiling water and drop the slices of meat into the boiling water. Use your chop sticks for dropping the meat and for lifting it out when it is cooked. Use a scum skimmer to skim the scum off the water so that you can see what is cooking. Drop a few bites of seaweed in and leave it for flavor. She said the taste is rather strong at first but mellows out as it cooks. When the meat is cooked, dip it in soy or a mix of mashed seseme seeds and oil. (She said they make their own and mash it in a bowl with a dowel. ) Serve with gohan (rice) and a lot of vegetables and root looking things. Her advice is "Ganbatte" (go for it!)

They were at their neighbor's house for a First Communion celebration and the host had taken the hot dogs off the grill and placed them on a serving platter when low and behold a large hawk flew down and snatched a hot dog off the platter! Lenny had their dog, Kelly, on her leash and was so distracted by watching the hawk fly off with the hot dog that Kelly saw her chance and took a couple of hot dogs off the platter too. Seems all the neighbors thought that was very funny. Shannon said she was up three times in the night letting Kelly out in the back yard because of her hot dog induced belly ache. The next morning they noticed that all the leaves were gone from the pepper plants that Shannon had planted. They were puzzled about how an animal could have stripped the leaves off without damaging the stalks. After sometime, they finally decided that Kelly ate the leaves to relieve her belly ache.

Shannon was bemoaning the fact that that she will not be here for the Fitzgerald Family Festival. She said they will be back in the states in October and she hopes when we have a festival next year she can join us. She misses seeing family. It gets lonesome for her.

More later.