I graduated from highschool in '68. Songs I remember from graduation... Mrs. Robinson, Simon & Garfunkel Hey Jude, Beatles Harper Valley P.T.A., Jeannie Riley Midnight Confessions, The Grass Roots Born To Be Wild, Steppenwolf Magic Carpet Ride, Steppenwolf Sealed With A Kiss, Gary Lewis & The Playboys The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly, Hugo Montenegro (sp?) Love Child, Diana Ross Sittin On The Dock Of The Bay, Ottis Redding Summertime Blues, don't remember the artist (?) Foods we ate... I lived in SoCA & we lived on combination burritos & pizza. Mom made lots of Jello salads. Our soft drink of choice was RC (Royal Crown). A&W Root Beer was popular as was Dairy Queen. Mostly, I remember 1968 as a watershed year that changed my life. It was hard to be a carefree SoCA surfer girl after 1968. In 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. & Bobby Kennedy were assasinated; the Tet Offensive; President Johnson's 'Guns & Butter' speech; Jackie Kennedy married Aristotle Onassis; Nixon was elected Nov. '68; lots of race riots; lots of womens' rights marches; Arlo Guthrie released 'Alice's Restaurant' (I still sing that song!); the Green Bay Packers beat my Oakland Raiders in the 2nd Superbowl; Rowan & Martins 'Laugh-In' started; Lisa Marie Presley (daughter of Elvis & Priscilla) was born; I'm pretty sure it was in '68 that the US Mint stopped buying gold/silver & we went off the Gold Standard (?); there was some kind of a "to-do" at the summer '68 Olympics regarding American athletes at an awards ceremony & the national anthem (can't remember exactly what happened ?); Apollo 7; Peggy Fleming won the gold in figure-skating at the winter Olympics (my heroine); I remember minimum wage was $1.60/hour (I made $2.50/hr. & was 'rich')...I can't remember anything else. It was a BIG year. /tricia

I was the last of 3 siblings to marry. My younger sister married first to her college sweetheart a month after graduating. She had a nice wedding at her alma mater (which is also my father's alma mater), not extravagant, but nicely done. My brother had a simple affair in the church hall. Mine was probably the fanciest of the three, but still not extravagant. Funny though, my mother during the initial stages said, "You know, if you prefer to elope, we'll give you the money we would have spent on your wedding to put toward down payment on a house." She was half-kidding. I would have considered it, however, dh was the first of five siblings to marry in his family. HIs mother was DYING for this day. To top it off, dh is a grad of the U.S. Naval Academy which has an absolutely beautiful chapel that MIL was so hoping her son would marry in one day. Fortunately for MIL, her son ended up meeting a local girl (I grew up near the Naval Academy) though we didn't meet until after we'd both graduated college. As the old tradition was that you marry the home area of the female, this worked out well for him - the church I grew up attending was a modern 70s church that I had no love for, so I was open to the idea of marrying at the Academy chapel. I figured it was probably a good idea to start my relationship off with MIL on a bright note and not disappoint her by going off and eloping! I say that in jest, b/c my father loves a party, so if I had taken my mother's offer seriously, I'm sure my father wouldn't have been happy either. So we ended up marrying at the chapel and let me tell you, it has an incredibly long center aisle that is very daunting for a somewhat shy person to have to walk while everyone is watching closely! One of my fondest moments of the ceremony was when dh and I left the altar to give flowers to our mothers and the priest stepped on my veil as I walked away, tearing my veil off my head. There was a gasp in the crowd but I laughed it off and everyone then had a good chuckle. Our reception was limited to 150 (thankfully!) b/c we had chosen a location on the water that could only seat 150. I was totally okay with that as I'd have preferred smaller - we had four guest lists, dh's, mine, my parents, and MIL/FIL. Of the four, mine had the fewest! And considering that dh's family was coming from the West Coast, and his friends were scattered all over the country and world (many in Navy), it was surprising we had so many people. But it was a good size - my parents only invited friends of theirs that I knew (they were hosting the reception). It could have been smaller and fine, but I wouldn't have wanted it any larger. And we were blessed with beautiful weather despite being in July in the typically hot/humid weather of the mid-Atlantic. I wanted to marry in September but dh was teaching at the Academy at that point, so if we wanted to go on a honeymoon, we needed to marry in the summer. I couldn't believe it when I woke up that Saturday morning to a breezy, sunny day with temps in the 70s and no humidity (just two days prior, dh's West Coast friends arrived and played a round of golf in the hot, humid 90s and asked how he could stand to live here!). Chicagoans, funny you suggest camping. A week after dh and I got engaged, we bought a car on the West Coast and spent the next 3 weeks driving across country to see the U.S as we were moving back to the East Coast at that point. We are not campers, but spent many a night pitching a tent to save money. We hiked 10 miles down into Havasu Canyon (part of the Grand Canyon) only to hike back out the next morning after sleeping in a tent next to the Colorado River. One of the hardest things I've ever done! We were not experienced hikers either. Another night was at a campground alongside a rural highway somewhere on the outskirts of Badlands National Park in South Dakota, with 18 wheelers buzzing by all night. LOL And we still wanted to marry each other when we arrived on the East Coast, so maybe there is some truth in your observation! We are still happily married 18 years later. But as far as weddings go, I will encourage my kids to have a non-extravagant wedding. I'd love for them to have a party/celebration if they choose rather than elope but not the bridezilla freak shows that have become weddings of today. You can still have a nice reception w/o going into debt or throwing away money on frivolous things.

Jenn and I rode to the Oklahoma FreeWheel, and then rode FreeWheel together in 2012. I had gotten a divorce the year before. She was heading to a divorce. Well, all that was done, she met Curtis. I ride with Mel all the time, and Mel knows both Jenn and Curtis too. I found out, Jenn was getting married in August. She would not let anyone know more than that. I friended her son, and pumped him for info. I was planning on flying there. Mel got wind of it, and said, he wants to be a wedding crasher too. Thus, we drove down together, had a BLAST, crashed the wedding which was a BLAST, and had a BLAST on the way home. Curtis (groom) told me before Jenn came down, we were the BEST surprise we could ever have done for Jenn. More pictures will follow. For some reason, I could not post one today. I was out of town yesterday and most of today. Did not see this post till now. :) More to come Moni

It is crazy. We were so wet, and flooding, and with fungal and bacterial diseases breaking out on every shrub, tree, weed and grass. Now the green has gone brown and dry. This happened a few years back. I think it was in the summer of 2008. We'd had all that rain (and flooding, sound familiar?) in 2007 and the 2008 started out pretty decently. We seemed green and wet and it was nice enough, and then it was like we hit a brick wall and suddenly were hot and dry. This month reminds me very much of that year, and from what I remember of 2008, we ended up miserably hot, dry and back in drought with tons of wildfires through April 2009. I really don't want for this year to end up like that year did. I did water the garden today. I left the gate open and the chickens were all over the place. They like the damp mulch, and they weren't really bothering anything. Since I've been letting them into the garden for a few hours a day, the grasshoppers are disappearing. If they start pecking tomatoes (which they haven't done at all yet), then I'll have to keep the gate closed and ban the poultry from the garden.