On Wallin Pond

I need to get into the habit of grabbing my camera when I go out the door. It would have been nice to have pictures of several things we did this week, but I didn't have my camera. So you'll just have to believe me when I tell you what I did.

On Wednesday evening after work, I went to the church for a Ladies' Night Out. We had an Ice Cream Social where those who planned the event served the others. We were dressed in pink visors and white chef's aprons to dip the ice cream. It was really a fun evening.

Thursday, I didn't have to cook dinner because we were invited to a wedding rehearsal dinner. We are very good friends with Jim & Marcia and they asked Andy to marry their daughter. The wedding was planned for Friday night, so the rehearsal was Thursday night. After the wedding rehearsal, we went to the dinner. Unfortunately, I was still not feeling well, so I didn't eat anything. No, not one thing. Also unfortunately, the dinner was outside, and the mosquitoes found me. They always do. So they ate plenty - lots of my blood. So now not only do I have unhappy intestines, I also have itchy mosquito bites. Life is hard!

On Friday, after work, we went to Melinda & Phil's wedding. It was held on the 2nd floor balcony of the Indian Springs Country Club. It was an idyllic setting right on a golf course. It was a little windy, but the sun was shining and it wasn't hot. Melinda was a beautiful bride. (And I wish I had a picture to prove it.)

This morning Andy had another bike ride planned with 4-5 other guys. He left at 5:00 am and I slept in. When he got back, he started working on the front porch again. He got a lot done today. Two walls are completely done and he thinks he can finish the block work on Tuesday.

One completed wall

2nd completed wall, which was done after picture was taken

I just finished reading a tome: The Great Terror.

It's a history of the Stalinist period in Russia. He was a horrible dictator who killed an estimated 20 million of his own people in the 20's, 30's and early 40's. I'd like to quote a paragraph from the book that gives an idea of what was going on in Russia at that time:

"...The Party Central Committee be informed that there is in the NKVD (secret police) an as yet not liquidated center which is craftily manufacturing cases, which forces innocent persons to confess; there is no opportunity to prove one's non-participation in crimes to which the confessions of various persons testify. The investigative methods are such that they force people to lie and to slander entirely innocent persons in addition to those who already stand accused. He asks the court that he be allowed to inform the Party Central Committee of all this in writing. He assures the court that he personally never had any evil designs in regard to the policy of our Party because he had always agreed with the Party policy pertaining to all spheres of economic and cultural activity."

So people "confessed" to crimes that were entirely made up, just so the government, or more accurately, Stalin, could get rid of people he thought were a threat to him. It must have been an awful time to live.

I didn't read it straight through because it got quite tedious in spots. Plus trying to make sense of all those Russian names was impossible. I read several books in between, but I can now say I've finished it, and I learned a lot about Russia at the period of her history.