Spring Baseball

Tee and Joan arrived home Thursday evening. The week of spring baseball was delightful; they saw two Boston Red Sox games and two Minnesota Twins games. In the process they spent warm (sometimes hot) afternoons in four different ball parks soaking in baseball and sun. Good thing too as the sun was scarce at home. The only drawback to seeing those four stadiums was the bus rides to and from. The new facility that the Phillies have in Clearwater, Florida is a lovely place and it was great fun to sit and watch a ballgame there. The Twins stadium in Fort Myers is also very nice, but not brand new. Sad to announce that our Twins lost both games that they saw. The Twins fans were a minority at this elderhostel and the Boston fans saw four games that Boston played including one in which Dice-K (their new pitching phnom) pitched six innings.

Besides seeing games there were speakers that talked to them about baseball. Tom Giles taught about the written, verbal and non verbal languages of baskeball. Leon Harris, who had been a player in the Negro League, told about his experiences there. Leon had been a pitcher with the Kansas City Monarchs in the Negro League. Currently there is a one man show taking place in Sarosota titled "Nobody Don't Like Yogi". David Howard who plays Yogi came and spoke to the group about Yogi and did a piece from his show which everyone enjoyed immensely. John O'Donoghue who had been a pitcher with Kansas City, Cleveland, Seattle and Montreal was very entertaining with his stories about pitching in the major leagues. He had pitched in the Mickey Mantle era. Our final speaker was Jeff Torborg who was a catcher for the Dodgers for many years. He was involved in some real history making games; Sandy Koufax's perfect game, and the fifth of Don Drysdale's six consecutive shutouts. Later he caught for the Angels and had the privilege of catching a Nolan Ryan no-hitter.

Here is a photo of Tee and Joan outside the Twins stadium in Fort Myers.

The Bluebird Has Landed

With that heading, we heard late last night that Pat is now home from the hospital--"back in her nest after over three months," as her daughter Sara informed us. She also said how wonderful it was to have dinner around the family table again and to watch movies later.

We are all thrilled to hear this. We have marveled at Pat's positive attitude throughout all of this ordeal. Talk about making lemonade out of lemons--well, she has definitely done it (sorry that I couldn't think of a bluebird comment!). We will definitely keep in touch with her and look forward to seeing her out and about as she continues with her rehab.

What a wonderful day!

Quick Updates!

It appears that no one has really updated lately, so here is a short summary of what has been happening to some of the WT's:

Mary is in the busy part of her seminar season. She is off to Richmond, VA, this weekend and has had several very successful trips in the past couple of months. We always look forward to her reports when she returns. She told us one VERY funny story about her trip to Washington and some of us are still smirking about it--too bad it is a little too risque to share in our 'Blog!

Tee and Joan are in Florida at an Elderhostel. This should be a pretty interesting one--Spring Baseball. They will be seeing a couple of Minnesota Twins' games and we are sure they will come back with stories about some of our favorite players.

Sharon and her husband will soon be off to St. Louis to the NCAA Frozen Four. They are BIG hockey fans and will certainly enjoy themselves.

Pat is still in the hospital but might be getting out soon. Her husband is home and she has been able to go home to visit. They even had sort of a "date" last weekend--the two of them and their son and daughter went out to eat. Hey--who cares who went along? Just to get out like that was a real treat!

Emily is off to visit her mom out East next week. The latter has been having some health problems. She (Emily) and her husband also have some other trips coming up soon to visit children and grandchildren.

Irene is going through some tough times lately with a sick spouse. Our thoughts and prayers are with her daily.

Lorraine is still recovering from her pre-Christmas tumble. She has been driving down to coffee on a regular basis.

More later . . .

A New Era Begins!

Now that Jodie is moving (in May) and will not be as involved with the Walkie Talkies on a daily basis, it is time to "pass the pen" to someone else. Today, she gave the instructions to Joan to give to Lorraine and Mary. Hopefully, among the three of them, someone will take up the writing of this 'Blog so that our loyal readers will, once again, be able to keep up with what is happening with the WT's.

We Are Taking (Have Taken) A Break!

As our loyal readers can tell, we have not been very diligent lately about keeping you up to date on our shenanigans. Your intrepid blogger has been "on vacation" (if one is retired, is there such a thing as "a vacation?") and the rest of the group has not fed her information. Since the above-mentioned blog-writer will also be moving away in a few months, we need to get someone trained to handle "the techie things," as Pat put it yesterday.

We will get up and running again soon, so please check back in a week or so. We have not been sitting around and there is plenty to write about!

Thanks.