Marilyn and I both just did the treadmill, in order to get our steps in for our Fitbit. It's pretty hard when you spend most of your day in the house to get enough steps by just walking around. For whatever reason, I got dizzy after walking. I was yawning so hard my eyes were watering. Go figure!

Fitbit Update: Marilyn did 5,700 and I did 3,066. (Her daily goal is 5,000, and mine is currently 3,000. We both plan to increase this over time.)

This was an amazing day! We left the house around 11:00, and headed to Starbucks, then directly to the office. We did a few things, while waiting for Angel and Adeena to join us. Then we all got in Angel's car and headed out. We stopped on the way and got Subway for lunch, taking it to Anne's house.

We were meeting with Anne, who is 90-years-old, and was a Rosie the Riveter during World War II!

This year Marilyn and Angel decided to create a NEW Living History character, who will be portrayed by Adeena. Adeena will be our youngest ever Living History character -- most of them have been older adults. Deciding to cover the 1940’s, this creation of a Rosie character is inspired! Marilyn wants to also make this character a connection to the Vanport flood, which took place on May 30, 1948.

Anyway, Candee (who is one of our other Living History characters -- she portrays Queen Thelma as an older woman, during the 1950's) hooked us up with Anne, so the goal was to meet with her and find out what it was like for a woman who lived the life of a riveter during WWII.

What an experience! and this is so cool: Anne was 19 when she started her job back in 1943, and Adeena is currentl 19! afterward, Adeena said she felt a real connection with Anne -- that she had things in common with her. Pretty wonderful for a woman of 19 and a woman of 90!

Anne was incredible! Her mind was very, very sharp, in case you're wondering. She may have had some memory lapses, but what the heck, so do I! She shared about why she went out for the position (she needed a job, and was very patriotic), what the interview was like (they took one look at this tiny woman who only weighed 98 pounds, and then asked her what she could do -- and she told them about changing tires and using tools in her father's shop, and they hired her on the spot), and then she told us details about the actual job. It was fascinating!

She mentioned being in high school when the war started -- and how they didn't have a lot of normal things during her Senior year, like yearbooks and so on. Everything was geared toward the war! She mentioned Victory Gardens, rationing and collecting metal. She said that kids would pick up old cigarette packs and keep the foil, turning these into huge balls. She said: "We didn't waste anything. We reused things."

She kept referencing a stack of materials that she said she had gathered from the internet (but she did give some credit for the research to her daughter).

It was fascinating to hear about the actual work. Anne was clearly quite good at it. She was partnered with a man named Darcy, and said that they became very good friends. But she did talk about the men grumbling about women on the job -- and how the men would constantly be trying to get her to go out. She was especially bothered by married men who wanted to date the women.

On the other hand, she did have a boyfriend that she worked with! A handsome man who was a few years older than her, and was her supervisor.

The riveting was clearly a hard physical job. Anne said they made scaled down tools for the women to use. She was often sought out to reach into small places the men couldn't get into -- sometimes to retrieve dropped tools. She described being able to do certain tasks because her small hands could fit really well. Anne's shift was 7:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., and she worked Monday through Saturday. The plants ran 24 hours a day, seven days a week -- and Anne said they even worked on Christmas Day.

At one point they opened a new plant, and Anne was selected to go there to help with the training! Again, it was very clear she was good at the work. When the war ended, women mostly left thw work. Anne said this was because many of the small plants were closed, plus men returned from war and re-entered the workforce.

It wasn't totally clear, but Anne may have been asked to move to the Burbank plant, which would have been an hour commute. But she wanted to go back to school (college), so perhaps she didn't really even consider it. Anne talked about how things were different in those days. She said you would do things close to home. Go to school and church and work in the local area. Not like now, when we'll go long distances to shop or work.

We took some photos, and she took Adeena and me in to see her amazing (huge!) bedroom. Adeena and I visited with her, talking about her daughters three cats, and about her recent injury (she broke her ankle, then had a fall and re-injured the foot). She was getting around with a walker, but was clearly annoyed that she needed it.

We were there for hours. A once-in-a-lifetime experience with a very special woman!

I'm probably leaving out a lot. I didn't take any notes (Marilyn and Angel both did), so all of this is off the top of my head...

After that we packed a bunch of things into Candee's car that Anne had given her, then we got back in Angel's car and went back to the office. Then we all headed for home.

Anne is speaking early next month, and we're going to go listen to her. I'm excited to see her again.

In other news, we're watching a lot of Australian Open tennis.

Marilyn goes in at 8:00 tomorrow morning for a root canal. I keep praying that they'll be able to save this tooth. Your good wishes and prayers are greatly appreciated!!!

Anyway, I do NOT expect her to be able to go into work at all tomorrow...

Thankfully the weather was mild today, and it was NOT pouring down rain, as it has been recently. We've been having horrible amounts of rain.

Today Marilyn and I drove over to Oregon City to visit with Clayton and his wife Jackie. Clayton was the CEO (then called Executive Manager) of the festival when Marilyn first worked there. Eventually Marilyn became his executive secretary.

We knew Jackie quite well, as she was very active with the festival and was around a great deal (unlike other wives of the various CEOs since Clayton). and Clayton always had a delight sense of humor. Marilyn and Clayton used to play some really amusing pranks on one another! One time we filled his large office with balloons! He had photos of that among his keepsakes today.

Clayton wanted to give Marilyn a bunch of his festival stuff, so we went there to have him pull things out and share the stories with us. He and Jackie are a remarkable team -- when he can't recall a name or person, Jackie always can.

We were there for hours. Clayton, Jackie and I had wine, and Marilyn had a cup of tea, while we visited. We used our GPS (on my phone) to find their home in Oregon City. Worked like a charm. They just moved into this new home a month ago. They'd been living at the beach for the past 19 years. Their house was just finished in 2014. Really very lovely.

Such a trip down memory lane! Jackie had bought a scrapbook from the early years (1900's) with large, lovely photos of festival floats that I can't wait to scan! And she gave Marilyn this lovely, delicate glass keepsake with 75 in the center. It was made by a vendor at the festival center during the 75th year, and given to Jackie, and she wanted Marilyn to have it.

There's a ton of items, including stacks of souvenir programs, something we're always on the lookout for. Clayton and Jackie know that Marilyn and I are very protective of the historical items of the festival. Marilyn is truly considered the historian of the festival. she knows so much about it.

I think it's wonderful that they wanted to pass these things along to our care. I can't wait to start sorting through all of it.

It was EXHAUSTING, though! We stopped on the way home to get a bite to eat. Then after having our dinner, we both took a long, long nap.

Tomorrow we need to go shopping. (We'd thought we might get to it today, but the visit with Clayton and Jackie ran much longer than we'd expected.) We also need to get manicures. Anyway, we have some errands to take care of tomorrow.

Marilyn and I were actually home by 6:30 tonight (!!!) if you can believe that! She had SEVEN (!!!) meetings today -- I can only imagine how hard that must be.

I tried to set a meeting with Rich to get him started on the images project (using the huge external hard drives) -- which was supposed to be started last month, but it just wasn't happening. Not sure if he's just worn out from being sick or what. He told me he was feeling better today -- and he even looked better. But when you're sick -- or you've been sick -- it does weigh you down.

Funny note: I got several compliments on my fringed mini-boots made out of suede today! No, these are hardly new. I bought them at Thanksgiving in 2012, so they've been around. But I'll take it, thank you.

During part of the day I was CLEANING UP, CLEANING OUT AND ORGANIZING in the IT Room, in the IT Cabinet and the area that surrounds it. I boxed up two large boxes of stuff to recycle or whatever, that includes a number of old P2 keyboards (as opposed to USB keyboards) and old P2 optical mice. I just dumped a bunch of old software, too. We had kept the old finance software -- but NOT the old finance data that went with it! So what was the point of keeping the software???

I was even going through some of the folders on the I: drive on the Server -- where we store our Programs for installing. There was a TON of really old stuff there, too -- things we haven't used for years and years. Considering we pay to do (expensive) cyber backups of the Server now, we need to avoid keeping things that just don't make sense to be backing up...

I was also working on typing up the NEW version of my OLD IT Manual. I used to be so religious about keeping it up to date. But it's tedious stuff and I've covered it with hand-written notes and just never found the time to work on it before today. In the long run, it could really help us to be more productive, so I'm anxious to get it all in better order...

Funny note: The toilet seat is BROKEN in my favorite stall in the women's bathroom! This stall is larger (with a higher toilet), so it's probably used twice as much as the other stalls. So little wonder the seat broke (though it's hard to imagine it actually breaking off a chunk!!!). This was part of an amusing conversation, where Marilyn basically ordered Christine to BUY a new seat so Steven could install it. The City (our landlord) is notorious for NOT doing maintenance, so if we waited on them it could be months and months before this was fixed. And you know, is really uncomfortable sitting on that broken seat! Hahaha.

Didn't talk to sister Sue all day! Not even after "Jeopardy." I hope she's taking it easy... (sigh)

We're going back and forth about heading to the beach house this coming three-day weekend. There are reports of mud slides on roads and we're expecting two large storms -- one Thursday into Friday -- that would make these worse. Don't much like the picture of our car all packed up with stuff and the two cats, getting stuck somewhere between here and the beach house! Maybe we'll just stay home. We still need to go buy a new fridge, anyway...

Funny note: We're far from the only ones dealing with ANTS right now! Marilyn told me that Caitlin also has them in her bathroom. And when she mentioned having several, Caitlin mentioned having a hundred (!!!) or more! Rich has them, too. So clearly they're just all over the place here. I've always said if you lifted the sidewalks and driveways in Portland (and the surrounding area), you'd find ants everywhere. And I really think that's true! Hard to believe those tiny little ants can be such a pain, but they certainly are!

I got Caitlin's NEW computer (PRFA92) DONE today (!!!) -- go me! So it's in place and she's using it. On a not-so-happy note, I wasn't able to make the dual monitors work (sigh). But Donn is in on Friday, so he can fix them then -- and she was fine about waiting. That means all four of the 'assistants' (which includes Marilyn's assistant and the three seasonal assistants) have GOOD computers now -- and these are fast machines. So none of them should have any complaints about their machines...

Good to remember that back in the Centennial year (2007) -- when everyone was putting in unbelievable hours and doing TONS of work -- that Marilyn's assistant at that time had an old machine that took twenty minutes to boot up (!!!). And yet somehow she 'muddled along' and did her job, even so. Yeah, people are pretty spoiled in many ways now, there's no doubt about it. At the time I was NOT running IT and there was not the attitude that everyone should have decent machines to help them to be more productive.

Marilyn and I had a discussion about dual monitors. I have to admit, I wasn't supportive of these in the beginning -- I felt they were frivolous. But I now believe they really make everyone more productive. I don't know what I personally did before I had them (and I now have them at home and at the beach house, as well as at work).

That brought us to a discussion of the desire to be able to have TWO Apps open on the iPad at the same time. Wow, would that be handy! Going in and out of Apps is such a constant pain. This is where Windows really makes sense, obviously -- the whole idea of easily moving between applications...

We were supposed to go shopping tonight. I nixed the idea, because I'm too damn tired to face it! We'll manage to live somehow until tomorrow night. And I'll try and do a decent grocery list tomorrow (which did NOT happen today)...

Colin was acting really funny tonight when we got home. Kind of jumpy and racing around. Then he got up on the TV table and was staring at the big screen TV and freaking out! Not sure what had him upset.

Of course, I had a message from Hector that he was going to work on the roof today. Maybe that happened, and it spooked the cat. Hard to know. I went outside to try and see, but it was way too dark. I'll have to check tomorrow.

Funny note: We've been having FOG clinging to the river by the office! It's downright SPOOKY, like something out of a horror flick. I don't know what's causing it, but we've all noticed and discussed it.

OH!!! Before I forget to mention it, Marilyn finally got her movie to upload properly at YouTube -- with the audio and video actually matching up. (I need to share a link...) We're closing to launching the 'Search for Thelma' that's happening this year -- it's going to be very cool!

Christine had someone write in about a trophy -- a loving cup -- from 1914. It was related to a boat parade from that time. In helping the person to research this, she managed to talk them into DONATING this item to the festival! Saw a photo, but can't wait to see the real thing. Very cool! It's lovely that since the years right before the Centennial, people have been interested in helping to restore items from our history. I still dream of the day we might have a museum. Who knows? That dream might come true...

Off to bed (again) now. Goodnight all!

Marilyn and I spent a very quiet Saturday -- it was lovely!!! We've had a couple of tough weeks and it was nice to have NOTHING we really needed to get done today.

Tomorrow we actually do need to go to the office, though. We both have email that's out of control, and we need to do something about it...

For us, email is our 'To Do List' -- Marilyn uses her Inbox for this. And I use my Unread. So when we get to more than 100 items, we feel pretty swamped.

We watched the zombie movie "Deadheads," (a 2011 American zombie comedy film created by brothers Brett and Drew Pierce), with Michael McKiddy as Mike Kellerman and Ross Kidder as Brent Guthrie. (It was pretty bad, but I still managed to enjoy it.)

Tonight we watched a couple of Christmas shows: The Christmas Hope," starring Madeleine Stowe -- it was quite good and made me cry. (smile) Then we saw "The Twelve Trees of Christmas" (on the Lifetime Channel) -- which was entertaining, if somewhat annoying...

Saw the trailer for Lifetime's upcoming "Bonnie and Clyde: Dead and Alive (which the Lifetime website calls Bonnie & Clyde). Can you believe they're doing another movie featuring these two? Mom and Dad BOTH hated the original movie ("Bonnie and Clyde" -- starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway and featuring Michael J. Pollard, Gene Hackman and Estelle Parsons), which Marilyn and I both LOVED. But they could remember what it was like when the real criminals were frightening the entire country, so it's not that surprising. And in those days Marilyn and I didn't really know the history. The movie made quite an impression on us -- and the whole neighborhood 'played' Bonnie & Clyde with us. (grin)

Okay, that was pretty random, I know. Hahaha.

Today has been a good day for us to play at Instagram. Marilyn's Revenge account is up to 600 Followers now (!!!), and my The Walking Dead account is up to 224 Followers. We're having a lot of fun, I can tell you that! Marilyn's Edits are STUNNING. Wow, I can't get over her ability with Apps like Leonardo and PhotoShop Touch... We're both learning more all the time, too.

June phoned to tell us about the "Vanport" musical being put on at Jefferson High School (last night and tonight). She knows about Marilyn's fascination with Vanport, so it was nice of her to mention it to us. We don't take the paper anymore (haven't for ages), which is where June saw it...

We weren't willing to go out, I must admit. We hadn't been out of our jammies all day long. Actually, I did throw on something and dash up to the corner store to get hot dog buns for our dinner, though. But I wonder if we'd known about the play in advance if we'd have tried to see it -- especially considering it was a musical (and we love those). Oh well...

Guess I'll go watch the rest of SNL with Marilyn...

It's 1:30 p.m. and I'm still at home. Marilyn is supposed to come and pick me up and take me in for the Fall Board Meeting later today. (This is mandatory attendance for Staff, but I always want to be there, anyway!)

I'm SO DAMN TIRED.

I've been taking my iron (and vitamin C) and resting, resting, resting (lying down, lying around, napping and actually sleeping). I don't really know what else I could possibly do. But I drag around and yawn, yawn, yawn. And fall asleep sitting up I'm so tired. This fatigue that's been bothering me much of the year seems WORSE right now. Note that the Prednisone should actually be counter-acting the fatigue -- which it can do any time now, thanks very much!

Oh well. I've been dealing with this for ages, so I just need to keep pushing on through, I guess. I'm sucking down a cup of coffee as we speak, believe me! And I'll drink more before I'm done. Hahahahaha.

It's a GORGEOUS autumn day -- the sky is very blue and the sun is shining. Lovely! I'm not really out there to enjoy it, but it's amazing.

We never did do our manicures -- or did I already explain that? What the hell -- we'll go this weekend...

I plan to go to the office tomorrow with Marilyn -- and she said we could go for Chinese food for lunch. (woo hoo) Okay, okay -- right now it's a lot about food. I'm just HUNGRY every second, too! (Another effect of the Prednisone, by the way.)

Just had someone send me an email forward. It read: Television and graffiti were words without meaning. And naturally, history buff that I am, I jumped all over that! Regardless of WHEN people may have become aware of television, graffiti has been with us since ANCIENT times!!! I always think about Roman graffiti, personally -- but the Egyptians had it and the ancient Greeks, as did the Mayans, Vikings and Celtic peoples. Look, there's nothing basically wrong with all these forwards. Often you can find something interesting or new -- or even learn something. But you MIGHT learn things by checking out the original email content. The graffiti thing pushed one of my hot buttons!

You know, there was some clever graffiti during the Great Depression -- so it's odd to see someone who is 'discussing' (writing about) the 1940's ignoring that. But there's been clever graffiti since we've had a written language, just so you know (in case you didn't, that is).

Marilyn's on her way to get me, so I need to go finish getting ready! More later (I hope)...

Marilyn and I started off our busy day at the beach house with a walk in the misty morning. It wasn't full out rain, but enough precip to get wet, anyway. I had worn my blue festival jacket, because it had a hood -- but it was far too warm (!!!) a day for it! Marilyn bought me a new hoodie in Seaside -- neon green. (I love neon clothes, by the way!) I'd tied the blue jacket around my waist on the way to the ocean and had nothing on my head, so it was nice to cover my ears (they were getting quite cold).

The full walk (which included a stop for the new hoodie and at McDonald's to get sausage biscuits and iced coffee) took just slightly more than an hour (maybe an hour and 15 minutes). Not bad, considering the distance and the weather -- plus the fact that I'm pretty out of shape.

I've come to believe that my poor body is starved for exercise, and that I need to try and get what I can no matter how else I'm feeling. I struggle with my health this time of year, due to serious seasonal allergies that always strike me in autumn. But I want to exercise, anyway.

After the walk (and changing immediately out of our wet things) -- and eating our breakfast -- Marilyn washed and did her hair. I was watching tennis on TV and I fell asleep in the middle of it (!!!). The nap was nice, believe me!

Marilyn woke me in the early afternoon so we could drive to Astoria to attend 'Talking Tombstones' (put on by the Clatsop County Historical Society from 1:00 p.m. until dusk at the Greenwood Cemetery). It was POURING DOWN RAIN as we drove there -- and after we arrived! Marilyn had on a light-weight jacket with a hood and I had my new hoodie. Needless to say, after standing out in the pouring rain listening to various actors, we ended up soaked to the skin. But we honestly didn't mind, it was so much fun. A really different thing to do.

And as we love history, it was fun to hear the various stories! As I mentioned HERE, we enjoyed visiting the Seaside Museum not long back. One of the stories we'd heard there was also one of the stories we heard today about a sheriff who was killed and is in the cemetery...

After that, we stopped to shop on the way back home -- and couldn't wait to get out of our very wet things and into dry clothing! After changing we went to Norma's in Seaside for dinner, which was very nice. We even had ice cream for dessert (we often don't eat dessert out). I loved my chowder and fish (skipped the chips)! Delicious!

This evening we watched "The Walking Dead" and "Revenge" (I actually Tweeted during TWD). I also dried a bunch of wet clothes in our dryer. We don't do laundry here much -- the appliances are only the small, stacked type. Usually we take things home, instead. But the dryer seems to work fine when we really need it...

We spoke briefly to our neighbor John (catty-corner across the street from us) when we headed out this morning, letting him know we were staying for Halloween. He's a nice guy -- very friendly. The waitress at Norma's was very friendly, too -- especially when she heard we had a house here...

Marilyn and I are not being fanatics about our diet, but we've really improved what we're eating -- and how much we're eating. I think we're both feeling positive about it, anyway. So that's a good thing! But we did have loads of in-the-shell peanuts this evening, plus some candy (but not a lot). Well, it's Halloween, after all!

Tomorrow? We both have work to do, plus we need to finally decorate for Halloween -- we brought a bunch of stuff along so we could do just that!

We did buy some Halloween cards to mail tomorrow, so hopefully we'll get them ready early and send them off. We got our friend Shari a cute Halloween 'activity book' with stickers that we're sending her. She already sent us both cards for Halloween that we got last week. (Sweet of her.)

We have to tie up the bush in front of the house tomorrow, too! It's falling over and blocks walking up to our front door without brushing against it -- and we don't want anything to make kids avoid our house on Halloween night!

We need to get someone out here about the furnace. I wonder if that can happen on Tuesday or Wednesday? I want to call Radio Shack tomorrow, too (about a charger). And MUST phone the pharmacy about my meds -- they neglected to refill my Metformin, which is my main diabetes medication. (sigh) They may have to call the doctor about that...

I need to clean the cat boxes (ugh) and Marilyn wants to clean house a bit, too. Busy, busy!

So we've got loads to get done, it seems!

As I'm typing this (in my upstairs office), it's just pouring down rain outside, yet again! And the wind is really blustery! It's even howling around the house. A great night to be snug inside, that's for sure.

During the Halloween movie fest, Marilyn and I saw part of the Vincent Price movie, "Tower of London," the supposed story of King Richard III of England.

Shakespeare's play has shaped the way most people view Richard III, but as Marilyn and I always point out -- the victors write history, true or not.

I first encountered the stories about Richard III in grade school and high school, and was surprised to discover he wasn't the man most people believed him to be!

It's very unlikely he was at all physically deformed, for example. That comes from the fact that during the time when he lived, people believed that those who were deformed in spirit (evil), would be deformed in body, too. Henry Tudor (the father of Henry VIII) defeated Richard at the battle of Bosworth Field -- then made himself king. To make people more willing to accept him in the role, he needed to make Richard as unpopular as possible. He had portraits (paintings) of Richard III altered to look as if he were a hunchback. And he spread a lot of unsavory rumors.

By the way, there's good reason to question whether or not Richard killed his young nephews, regardless of what you've heard to the contrary.

Those who want to learn more can check RichardIII.Net (the official website of the Richard III Society) for more information.

Remember, Shakespeare based his play on what was commonly accepted to be true. And whatever Thomas More may have said about Richard III, he was very much Henry Tudor's man -- so it's natural he would see things the way he did.

Naturally, as Marilyn say, few films portray history in an accurate fashion. I get that. But I love being stirred to LEARN MORE because of a movie I've viewed. I haven't gone off on the Richard III thing in many, many years -- so it was actually fun looking it up online. (smile)

There are so many people in history who have been viewed in a bad light because they LOST to their enemies. Yeah, I could start a list, but why bother? I'll probably go off on some other people at some future date. (grin) Several others jump to mind, believe me...