Here I am at Anne Guerin's birthday party at the Fairfax Country Club having some fun with the boy from Anna, Ohio. The first time we met I said I was originally from a small town in Ohio. He said I'm originally from a small town in Ohio. Then I said I'm from such a small town in Ohio that I'm dead sure you have never ever even heard of it. He then said well please tell me the name of the town and when I said Russia, Ohio he said yes I have heard of i! My high school is Anna and we played your high school in basketball and baseball in the fifties and sixties. Then we both marveled at what a small world it is sometimes.
This nice gentleman from Anna is a retired Air Force Colonel and Air Force Pilot and his name is Gerald Westerbeck. I know that some of you Ohio folks must know some of the
Westerbecks in and around Anna, Ohio. Gerald
Westerbeck even spent many years in the Air Force stationed at Wright Patterson Air Force Base close to Dayton, Ohio. After retiring from the Air Force Gerald has gone on to a military consulting career with Logistics Management Institute and he currently lives in
Oakton, Virginia.
We started talking about how we keep up with the news from back home in Ohio. Gerald said he always reads the
Sidney Daily News, especially the sports page and the obituary page, Me too, me too, I replied. I just might recognize a name in the obituary column I exclaimed. And then I told him that I had hoped he would be at Anne's party because I had printed out a website for him that I knew he would enjoy reading on the
internet: the very famous
Fish Report. I showed him my printout and pointed out all the neat newspapers and Ohio sports sites listed on the front page of the
Fish Report. I then pointed out all the cool sites about Russia, Ohio and St. Remy Catholic Church on the front page of the
Fish Report. Why my golly you can even go to my blog from the
Fish Report! It is listed as
Joann's Blog.
Then the boy from Anna High School and the girl from Russia Local High School decided to pretend that they were really in a rage over the last Anna-Russia basketball game. So we took two dinner knives from the table and pretended to stick it to each other.
The only problem was that we were standing there forever while my husband figured out how to take our photo with my camera! Just look at us! Oh, goodness gracious, this is going on way too long. Wouldn't you hate to be a movie star and keep posing for all those pics?
I was ready to hand the camera to my girlfriend Joyce who was sitting at the table looking at us and laughing out loud. I also admit that a few other folks at this birthday brunch were looking at us strangely and wondering what in the world was going on with those two and the knives! Judy Westerbeck who grew up in Dayton and is Gerald's wife was one of those folks giving us very strange looks.
Finally my husband Jack said that he had figured out my camera and had taken a couple of pics of Gerald and I so we could relax now and put down our knives.
And so we did.
Note: Come back here tomorrow and I will tell you about Jack's first boss in Virginia who was from Bloomer, Ohio. That's right, there is a town in Ohio called Bloomer and it always makes me think of lady's bloomers, ahem, underpants.
Fold and stuff, fold and stuff and get that money into the pig. Jack's second party was Saturday morning with all his little friends at the moon bounce. And his third was Saturday afternoon when he got to open all the presents with his parents. he got from his buddies.
See the sign on the fireplace mantle. Later in July Jack Aidan will have his fourth birthday celebration up on Cape Cod with his paternal grandparents and his first cousins. Also, in this photo Jack is checking out his birthday card from us that turned into two cars from the Cars 2 movie that he went to see the other week. That was his first movie experience in a real theater.
Jack is getting good at ripping into presents and finding the gift inside.
Daddy, help me play this new pattern game from Grandma and Grandpa.
