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Staff Sergeant David Thatcher, center, is saluted as he enters the USS Hornet before a news conference to commemorate the 70th Anniversary of the Tokyo attack by the Doolittle Raiders in Alameda, Calif., Saturday, May 5, 2012. Survivors of a daring World War II aerial bombing of Japan are gathering in Alameda on the 70th anniversary of the attack. The "Doolittle Raiders" have been credited with lifting the nation's spirits after Pearl Harbor. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)
Staff Sergeant David Thatcher, center, is saluted as he enters the USS Hornet before a news conference to commemorate the 70th Anniversary of the Tokyo attack by the Doolittle Raiders in Alameda, Calif., Saturday, May 5, 2012. Survivors of a daring World War II aerial bombing of Japan are gathering in Alameda on the 70th anniversary of the attack. The "Doolittle Raiders" have been credited with lifting the nation's spirits after Pearl Harbor. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)
Lt. Col. Edward Saylor, right, talks with USS Hornet volunteer Roger Felton as they look at an old photograph before a news conference to commemorate the 70th Anniversary of the Tokyo attack by the Doolittle Raiders on the USS Hornet in Alameda, Calif., Saturday, May 5, 2012. Survivors of a daring World War II aerial bombing of Japan are gathering in Alameda on the 70th anniversary of the attack. The "Doolittle Raiders" have been credited with lifting the nation's spirits after Pearl Harbor. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)
Major Thomas Griffin, seated at right, shakes hands with Lt. Col. Chu Chen as he enters the USS Hornet before a news conference to commemorate the 70th Anniversary of the Tokyo attack by the Doolittle Raiders in Alameda, Calif., Saturday, May 5, 2012. Also pictured at left is John Fu. Survivors of a daring World War II aerial bombing of Japan are gathering in Alameda on the 70th anniversary of the attack. The "Doolittle Raiders" have been credited with lifting the nation's spirits after Pearl Harbor. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)
Staff Sergeant David Thatcher, from left, Major Thomas Griffin, Lt. Col. Edward Saylor, and Jonna Doolittle Hoppes, granddaughter of Gen. Jimmy Doolittle, are shown before a news conference to commemorate the 70th Anniversary of the Tokyo attack by the Doolittle Raiders in Alameda, Calif., Saturday, May 5, 2012. Survivors of a daring World War II aerial bombing of Japan are gathering in Alameda on the 70th anniversary of the attack. The "Doolittle Raiders" have been credited with lifting the nation's spirits after Pearl Harbor. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)
ALAMEDA, Calif. (AP) ? Three of Doolittle's Raiders who helped boost American morale during the early days of World War II recalled the dangers of their bold bombing attack on Japan mainland.
Airman Edward Saylor didn't expect to come back alive when his B-25 set off on the 1942 mission.
"Some of the group thought they'd make it," Saylor said Saturday. "But the odds were so bad."
Saylor and the other 79 Doolittle's Raiders were forced to take off in rainy, windy conditions significantly further from Japan than planned, straining their fuel capacity. None of the 16 planes' pilots had ever taken off from an aircraft carrier before.
Saylor and two other raiders, Maj. Thomas Griffin and Staff Sgt. David Thatcher ? all in their 90s now ? recalled their daring mission and its leader, Lt. Col. Jimmy Doolittle, at a commemoration Saturday aboard the USS Hornet in Alameda, across the bay from San Francisco.
Their mission has been credited with boosting American spirits at a critical time, less than five months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and with Japan sweeping through the Pacific. The bombing inflicted only scattered damage, but lifted spirits at home while shaking Japan's confidence.
But it did not come without a price.
Three raiders were killed while trying to land in China. Eight were captured by the Japanese, of which three were executed and a fourth died of disease in prison.
The Japanese also killed Chinese villagers suspected of helping many of the airmen escape.
Griffin recalled ditching his plane when it ran out of fuel after the raid and parachuting to the ground in darkness.
"I got out of my airplane by jumping real fast," he said. "It was a long, strange journey to the land down below."
Griffin landed in a tree and clung to it until daybreak.
Saturday's event was held in conjunction with the 70th anniversary of the raiders' April 18, 1942 mission. It also included: Doolittle's granddaughter, Jonna Doolittle Hoppes; two seamen aboard the carrier the raiders left from, the USS Hornet CV-8, Lt. Cmdr. Richard Nowatzki and Lt. j.g. Oral Moore; and a Chinese official who as a teenager helped rescue the raiders, Lt. Col. Chu Chen.
The American airmen remembered Doolittle as a great planner who knew his aircraft and fought alongside them.
Hoppes said her grandfather, who was born in Alameda and died in 1993, was very proud of the men on the mission.
"I grew up with 79 uncles in addition to the ones I really had," she said. "He was just very proud of how they turned out."
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off the face of the earth - yet. It's just summer. And it's hot. Really hot and humid - and who feels like doing anything much in that sort of weather? I've been working, reading, clearing out closets, reading a little more, getting rid of stuff I haven't used in forever, reading - and well, you get the picture. Since I finished up reading M.C. Beaton's Agatha Raisin series, I started in on Hamish MacBeth. I've read the first eight - but I'm waiting on the ninth book, which is on its way from a used bookstore somewhere in the UK. Any day now, I keep telling Aggie and Pete. In the meantime, I've been tidying and rearranging stuff. I used to be a mad furniture mover in my previous life (and home). It was much easier with wood and tile floors - not so much with carpet. And I somehow seem to have lost my former ability to move heavy objects single handedly. I am not sure when that happened. At any rate, I now content myself with rearranging stuff: the shelves, the kitchen counter, my desk. Incentive to dust the place every now and then. I was also hoping that messing around with my stuff would be good therapy for writer's block.Not yet - but I am hoping for a breakthrough soon.
since I've actually blogged about anything of consequence. My friend, Tom, asked me why and I replied, "The mully grubs." Isn't that a great expression? I mean, I thought it was some kind of big-assed Texas bug when my friend, Linda, wrote about cleaning until the mully grubs were gone, but it really just means being down in the dumps - a blue funk as it were. Sometimes I'm like Mr. Monk, bogged down in the OCD details of obsessing over perfection, or the lack thereof. For the past couple of months, my whole house looks like each room has had some sort of minor explosion; I start a project, get distracted and move on to something else. Well, I am happy to report that today something finally got done!
Tom and Al came by to do their monthly sales tax report, drop off their bookkeeping paperwork for October and put up the living room curtain rod. You know - the one Richard and I puzzled over, cursing the engineer who designed it, until I realized after he left that the decorative ends of the rod unscrewed... Duh! They also brought me a case of Greek yogurt and a can of pumpkin from their morning trip to Costco, but I digress...
It didn't take long - since they know what they are doing. You can see Al supervising the finishing touches once the rod was up and the valance was in place. There was great gnashing of teeth and more than a few expletives deleted in the sewing room last night as I sewed the wrong edges together and had to rip it apart and start over. I've been dithering over this thing for a month, worrying about ruining the cheap daybed quilt I bought to turn into this fabulous window treatment!
Of course, there's always too much light when you don't need it - but you get the picture. 
You can see that the valance matches the quilted throw and pillow on the chair - and it doesn't clash too badly with the lamp. Thank you, guys - thank you so much!I love it when a plan comes together.
I am really happy with the fabric and the wall color coordination - and it was really a happy accident. Like most of the really good things in life.
for the last month, I haven't been to the grocery. My well-stocked pantry and hoarding of household supplies has finally come in handy! Of course, there is nothing in my refrigerator at this point that could possibly be described as fresh - so Ariela offered to take me to Publix this morning so I could stock up again. Shopping is always fun, but I've never gone to the market with a five-year-old before - so this was an adventure. Baby was already a little hyped up from whatever sugar he consumed with breakfast, but I may have made matters worse by alerting him to the fact that he could get a free cookie from the lady in the bakery. I mean, who says no to a free cookie? I'd also forgotten how unique a child's point of view can be. When we got to the dairy department, I reached for a container of sour cream and as I went to put it in the car, Baby stopped talking mid-joke to shriek: "Taco butter!" and wanted to know why I was buying that. I guess sour cream isn't part of a child's vocabulary, but he knows it's something you put on tacos. I laughed, the guy who was stocking the yogurt section laughed and Baby laughed, too - although I'm not sure he knew why. I also discovered that Baby is a person of vanilla sensibility. Ice cream was on sale - I chose peach because it's summer, I asked him to choose the flavor he wanted to take home and share with his dad and sisters. And do you know what he chose from the plethora of yummy flavors available? Yep, vanilla. Maybe I'm just a choco-holic - and while I don't have anything against vanilla in principle, I would certainly have chosen something more exciting if I were five. When we got back to my house, my sweet friend brought the groceries inside while Baby spun around in my chair and regaled Aggie with a highly embroidered tale of our morning adventure. Thanks to Ariela, I now have lettuce, tomatoes, veggie burgers (on sale!) and peach ice cream. Friends are a good thing!
When I got my new camera, I also tried to find a camera case that would protect the thing without being too big and bulky. I really wanted something I could just slip into my purse or tote bag and everything I saw in the stores or online was either too small or too big with lots of straps and extraneous stuff I didn't want or need. Etsy to the rescue! One day I was just 
I just got home from my weekly 
I meandered around taking photos and having strange, yet generally entertaining, conversations with people with whom I had gone to high school, but didn't actually know well, and the parents of people with whom I went to high school and did know well.
There was a little satellite gallery in what is now a chapel, but was once a sheep pen?
See the dude in a red shirt and what looks like an umbrella? He directed traffic all night. Teenagers.
A lovely evening and event.
LB's mother brought us all funny glasses, which we wore throughout the day. RPM went with the martini glasses. 
This lady also did my hair. As a woman who doesn't own a blow dryer, I wasn't entirely sure how much information or direction I needed to give her. Or, rather, I wasn't capable of giving that much information or direction. But I had discussed my hair preliminarily with LW and MP in the office, so I did say that I was hoping for a low chignon and some sort of braid component. You'll see my hair soon enough. The four stylists did a really great job, I don't feel like they rushed any of our looks, and even though my hair was done by 11, it held up for the remainder of the day and all the way into the evening. 
LB's hair took many more steps, which befits the role of bride. So there were a lot of moments when we just congregated around her as she was blown out, curled up, sprayed etc. 
In addition to glasses, there were also snacks and mimosas for us, but somehow I took zero photographs of the spread. 
I did, however, make sure my glasses were documented. I was the only one who didn't think to wear a button down shirt, which became a challenge when it was time to put on my dress without ruining my hair. I managed. I also managed to forget a very important undergarment at my apartment, which led to a anxious period of time when my hair was still getting done, but all I could think about was catching a cab, getting home, picking the item up and returning before everyone else's hair was done. It turned out just fine. 
J. gave LB a massage, which LB loved...but she was quite shocked by just how strong J.'s hands were. 
BC was also rather amazed. 
My hair. 
LB's hair in transition. 
Cuties. 
LB's hair in a light hairspray mist.
Once a good number of us had our hair complete, we started a migration back to the Union League for the next part of the journey: makeup. While this day was totally not about me, I gotta tell you, my makeup was really quite good. But somehow I didn't think to ask anyone to take any photographs of me when it was fresh, and even throughout the night I didn't really get as many photos as I should have. Actually, I was so concerned about what to do with my camera during the ceremony that I handed it over to LW hours earlier than I should have, thus missing out on many of the best stages of the prep process...I took photos with LB's camera, but that means I don't have them to share. In any case, here is LB getting her makeup did. 
There were also snacks and champagne in the suite while we all got made up and ready. Here, RPM and AP both enjoy a hearty laugh about something while sitting near the unpictured food...man I really just wiffed the food aspect of this day. 
The prep process went by in such a funny way. Time stopped, expanded and contracted. One moment it felt like there were so many hours to go before the bridesmaids needed to put their dresses on, next thing you know V. and I are in her room getting into go-mode. Funny aside, while I originally forgot the crazy brassiere that I purchased for the dress, I had brought two additional strapless bras just in case I had a wardrobe malfunction. Turns out that both of those bras were ultimately needed by two other bridesmaids. I'm quite pleased with my own weird craziness...I think most would agree that you don't need to bring three bras for one dress/night. And yet, actually, you do. 
I hope that I turn up in a few of LB's pro photos so I can just give you a better sense of the overall look etc.