Notes - coming along / quiet wit / heart

       Mid-afternoon. You have located two people for work. One is for hanging two new lights, one over the dining room table and the other is to inject material into three cracks in the basement walls. - Amorella

       1518 hours. I would have had to rely on someone else to hang ceiling lights in my younger days and although the small cracks were little more than cosmetic it will bring peace of mind to potential buyers. All basements have cracks of one kind or another. In our case it is cosmetic for a peace of mind legal guarantee on the basement walls and floors to the next owner.

       Thus, you are on schedule for a showing sometime during the latter half first week in April. - Amorella

       1525 hours. I just want this selling business to be over with so we can go back to our normal life.

       Post. - Amorella

       You are home from errands and a Graeter's. Yesterday Gary called you had lunch; today Carol had lunch with Ann F. You are relaxing a bit more this afternoon after finishing the chores that Susie G., your realtor, told you had to be done. The house is almost ready to show pending on the work for the lights and three cracks on two basement walls. You both have begun packing winter clothes in boxes for taking up to Kim and Paul's and as such the closets are much less tightly packed. - Amorella

       1639 hours. This last weekend I had a good time playing chess with Owen and Brennan and at their request I put to 'free' chess apps for beginners plus on each of their iPads. Kim suggests we also play by email. I made a couple of careless errors each game with each but still won (I should have). One learns very little to nothing by winning a chess game. I told them that once we move we can play chess more often. They both seemed enthusiastic. They like all kinds of games but Owen is beginning to realize there is much more to a chess challenge than the other games that he knows and plays regularly. I don't want them to play too much on the iPads because it is two dimensional. I told Kim I insist on them learning to play, if they are really interested, on the board the same time they are on the electronic screen. You need to learn the board and pieces in your head so you can anticipate the opponent's move. This interest in chess may wane fast, that's okay. Later, if one or the other is interested we'll work on it at that time. I remember being introduced to the game in upper elementary (grades 4, 5 and 6). A few of us played in junior high but it was sporadic. I played some in high school and college but really, really took an interest when we were in Sao Paulo. I had never met a world class player before. It was wonderful to sit at lunch and watch Vlad R. (once a philosophy major imprisoned by the Soviets; taught math in the summers at Columbia U.) play a few faculty members for fun (not much fun for him) but he obliged both faculty and especially students and their parents. At parent/faculty gatherings he would play as many as twenty people at once (twenty boards with players) and he would briskly walk from one board to another making one move after another. At lunch they/we would play five minute chess. I only played Vlad a couple of times. I didn't want to waste his time. I mostly played Roger A., my closest friend and older colleague, the French teacher who had lived with his wife and many children in a commune in Paraguay for over twenty years. I admired Roger most. He was so fully human at all times -- brilliant, exacting and fully of subtle and not so subtle humor about the human condition and experience. He and his family were Quaker (he, French, spouse, English) and they left Europe before the outbreak of World War II). Several at the school, white and black, left their homes in South Africa for Brazil (a freer place) during apartheid. People such as these have a character different from most, to give up what they had or hadn't for a better, freer system. I learned much from them through their actions, speech, quiet wit and silences. (1711)

       You get caught up from time to time into what is really important in your mind and life and Carol's too for that matter. She had witnessed more growing up in Korea and South Vietnam. You can learn a lot by just observing servants and people in open markets. That's what you think. Post. - Amorella

        1734 hours. I know I have written about my colleagues at Escola Graduada de Sao Paulo before, probably said the same things. My passions are ever aroused by their memories. 

        When the human heart of heart speaks time does not exist within the moments. Post. - Amorella