Catching Up

We went from HOT to cold. The beginning of the week it was so hot, then Wednesday evening a breeze came in. It actually got quite cold Wednesday night and Thursday morning. Thursday the sun was out, yet it was breezy. And then this morning we had rain. Just a trace according to the weather service. There was new snow in the Sierras. It stayed cool and periods of being overcast and the sun shining. The weekend is suppose to be nice, in the 70's.

I haven't done anything exciting for dinner the last couple of nights. Last night I made some hamburger patties, after I browned them I mixed a can of mushroom soup with some water and added it to the patties. They simmered until the meat was cooked through. Tonight we had left over hamburger patties and left over ribs from Wednesday night.

I went down to The Paper Garden (the stamp store I shop at) and did a make 'n take. It was a gift card holder. We have a few high school graduations coming up besides my grandson's so wanted to get the template to make these. They are pretty easy to do. I'll take a picture of the one I made and put it on my card blog. I have a card to post over there too. Hopefully, I'll get to it tomorrow.

I stopped at Nagato's Sukiyaki for some lunch after I left The Paper Garden. The Paper Garden is in the Town and Country Village at Fulton and Marconi in Sacramento. Nagato's is in the shopping strip across Marconi from Town and Country.

This restaurant has been in the same location for over 30 years. I am not sure exactly how long it has been in business actually. My younger sister and her family lived in Sacramento in the '70's and early '80's. I was living in Fresno at the time and Denise and I would come up to visit my sister before we moved here in 1980. A couple of times my sister, her husband and I went to Nagato's for dinner when I'd come for a visit. The first time Gerry and I went out to dinner by ourselves before we got married was to Nagato's. It was the test to see whether or not he would eat rice and Japanese food or any kind of Asian food for that matter. Obviously, he passed the test. :) We started going back to Nagato's a couple of years ago. It hasn't always been convenient to go there from where we've lived. They are one of the few authentic Japanese restaurants in town. It is family run. One of the waitresses there has got to be in her 80's. She has been there the whole time I've known about this restaurant. The service is slow, however, the food is pretty good.

I've been having some episodes of being light headed. I forget what I'm not suppose to do like bend my head back to look at something up high or bend over looking down. I took a Dramamine last night before I went to bed. It is such a pain!!

Last night I chatted with a friend who is in Korea right now teaching school. Actually Lee Ellen is the daughter of some friends my ex and I knew when we lived in Oceanside, John & Sharrill Johnson. At the time they were in the Marines and had been stationed in Hawaii. They attended the church my mom went to and I had met them on one of my trips home. They got transferred to Camp Pendleton and bought a house in the same subdivision where my ex and I lived. In fact, lived across the street from us. We became very close friends and Sharrill and I spent a lot of time together. They had 2 children at the time, Jerry and Debbie. The day Sharrill went into labor with Lee Ellen, I sat at their kitchen table with Sharrill timing her contractions. John barely made it home from the base to get Sharrill and take her to the base hospital. She delivered soon after she got to the hospital. The road to the rear gate of Camp Pendleton was narrow and bumpy and we use to laugh that it was traveling that road that caused her to deliver so quickly. It was also quite a ways to the base hospital from where we all lived.

Lee Ellen became "my girl". I would go over to see Lee Ellen every chance I got, holding her the whole time I was at their house. If she was asleep, I'd go in and take her out of her crib. I told her last night I spoiled her rotten. :) Four days before her 2nd birthday Denise was born. We were in the hospital for 5 days and when we got home, Sharrill, her mother, her sister and Lee Ellen were Denise's first visitors. Sharrill held Lee Ellen up to see Denise laying in her crib and said "say hi to Denise". Instead of saying "Denise", Lee Ellen said "Neceey" and that became her nickname. She doesn't like to be called that now, sometimes I slip up and call her that. :)

Some 20 plus years ago, Lee Ellen was in college at Pt. Loma Nazarene University. During their spring break the choir that she was part of came to the church we attended at the time to do a concert. I went up to her when I realized she was in the choir. I hadn't seen her since she was about 2 and a half or 3 years old. She remembered who I was. Unfortunately, we lost track of each other. I saw her as a friend on a young lady's Facebook who use to go to our church. Jody had grown up in the same church that the Johnson family attended in Garden Grove, CA and knew Lee Ellen.

She's been in Korea for 4 months teaching conversational English to 6th, 7th and 8th graders in a public middle school and all girls Catholic school. She is there on a program through the country of Korea that the Korean Nazarene College coordinates. She lives in one of the dorms on the college campus. She is enjoying it, however, was really homesick and so we chatted for quite some time last night. We have a lot of years to catch up. I've emailed Sharrill and Lee Ellen said she was going to email her mom so hopefully I will hear from Sharrill.

Well, I think I am going to go to sleep. Have a great weekend and will be talking to you later!