Roadtrip to visit Jim

As promised, here are the pictures from our recent roadtrip to go see young Jim in DC.

Click on the photo to link to the slideshow. If you want to see the captions for the photos, you'll need to click 'back to full album' on the slideshow page.

We started in Cleveland, going to Jacobs Field to see the Indians play (beat) the Tigers. Then we went on to DC. We stayed in a posh Westin in Embassy Row, right off of Dupont Circle and the Metro. Saturday was spent sight-seeing around Washington (you'll know where we went when you look at the pictures) and on Sunday we went to the Nationals new ballpark to see them play (beat) the Reds. We were in the second row right behind the Reds' dugout and had a GREAT time!

It was so good to see Jim and get to spend time with him. We had lots of lively and non-confrontational discussions, too. Thanks for showing us around, Jimmy!

I love Detroit (Part 2) or Where did they find an orange jumpsuit big enough for the big guy?

I know that I have a couple posts I should be working on -- like Christy's long-overdue HAPPY BIRTHDAY THAT ENDS IN A ZERO (August 1) and putting up our pictures from the trip to DC.

I can't pass up the newest development in the continuing story of Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick: his first night in jail. Tomorrow he'll appeal the decision, but State Attorney General Mike Cox will probably charge him with a felony assault on an officer of the court.

The whole thing has become an embarrassment to the city of Detroit and the state of Michigan. He really should resign!

As to those other posts -- I'll catch up on them this weekend.

Happy Birthday, Charlie!

Well, since I had a current pic of Danny for his birthday last year and a toddler pic this year, I thought I'd reverse the process for Charlie. Look back here (under August 5) to see his toddler picture.

Happy Birthday, Charlie!! I'm so happy that you're loving your job and you're really feeling good about life right now. I'm also REALLY happy (and blessed) that you're back in Michigan!

I love you, Char!

iPod

Listening to: Wear Your Love Like Heaven - Donovan

Young Jim gave me his iPod, loaded with 800 songs, and I've been having such a good time playing with it. I've added a lot of my own and have been going through the ones already there to see if I like them or not. In the process, I've learned a few things:

• iTunes is so much fun (and I think it could get expensive if I'm not careful)! I've downloaded lots of songs, including the essential Donovan collection and Quinn the Eskimo (the Kinks' version, not the Dylan one). I didn't know you could get that crusty old stuff on iTunes.
  
  
• My newest favorites are Robert Plant & Alison Kraus -- I love Raising Sand (especially Please Read the Letter, Killing the Blues and Gone, Gone, Gone! I can't get over how beautifully their voices blend and I never would have expected it. I'm really in danger of listening until I'm sick of them.
  
  
• In the end, most of my favorite music is the stuff I listened to in my teens and twenties. I've added some new artists I like very much, but Crosby, Stills & Nash (and all their bands before and after) and the Beatles are still the best! I also still like everything Dylan did, but he REALLY can't sing -- his Quinn the Eskimo is painful to listen to!
  
  
• For the most part, everything Elvis Costello does sounds the same. I really only like 3 of his songs.
  
  
• For some reason, most of the music I listen to lately makes me sad -- either because it's inherently so or because it reminds me of the passage of time. The saddest song for me in the entire collection is one of Jim's -- Iron & Wine's "Upward Over the Mountain." I don't think I'll ever listen to it again.
  
  
• It's a funny thing that I'm just now getting an iPod, when the rest of the world is moving on to iPhones. We didn't get a laptop, either, until Charlie gave us his old one. It seems that I always depend on the kindness (and electronics) of family members!
  

Thanks for the iPod, Jim!!!!

Happy Birthday, Danny!

I looked for a good grown-up picture of you, but couldn't top last year's! So here's my favorite little-Danny pic instead. Hope your birthday is a great one!

Finally -- an update

I haven't posted in over a month! I know that the three people who read my blog have been wondering where I've been, so I guess I'll just have to do a bunch of posts to catch up.

I'll start with some pictures from our trip to Florida (in April!) to go to Charlie's graduation from SDGA (San Diego Golf Academy). We had a great time -- the luncheon was lovely (at one of the Disney Resort hotels), we got to meet his friends and then in the evening we had dinner at Ruth's Chris with all the in-town family.

Charlie's graduating class
Charlie & friends after graduation
The graduate
Charlie, Jim & Don at dinner
Cousins at dinner

I got to spend some really quality time with Christy -- an entire day of just the two of us at Epcot's Flower and Garden Festival and then another day with her and Lily hanging out and going to a wonderful fabric shop (sorry, no pictures from the shop).

Cockatiels made of flowers

We rented a convertible for the week and went to Cocoa Beach one day. We had perfect weather and even though we didn't stay long -- just long enough to have a drink out at the end of the pier, sitting in the sun & watching the surfers -- getting there & back was half the fun.

Convertible Unc

Cocoa Beach Pelican at Cocoa Beach
(You should have known I'd get a bird picture in somehow!)

We passed the Red Bug Lake exit every time we drove back to Altamonte Springs, so one day we went there just to hang out. We saw some big carp and some moorhens, but not a single red bug.

Red Bug Lake

Moorhens at Red Bug Lake
(I think they were nesting in the rushes to the right)

Anyway, that's it for the April trip to Florida -- more later on what's going on here in Michigan.

I love Detroit!

I haven't posted in such a long time and I could break my blog-silence by posting about the things that have kept me busy lately: Charlie's graduation & our trip to Florida, my garden & life's stuff (I'll get to that later). Instead, I'm choosing to post about...

Detroit's mayor, Kwame Kilpatrick! Here's a man who has "allegedly" been involved in bid-rigging, a sex/text messaging scandal & a secret whistle-blower lawsuit settlement (check out all the stories here) and because of Detroit's city statutes, the city council can't get rid of him. So...they finally passed a resolution to request Governor Granholm's removal of him as mayor. What happens next, you might ask???

Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick VETOED the city council's resolution to request the governor to remove him from office! That should stop it. And, just 2 weeks ago, Mayor K. announced that from now on, all text messages on city-owned cellphones will be considered private. Hmm - a little late on that one.

All chuckles aside, this is really sad for Detroit...

Honk at your own risk. . .

Happy Birthday, Don!

Theme blogs are very popular and this seems to have inadvertently become a birthday blog! I hope it's just because we are related to so many people who have birthdays in the spring and that I can soon get back to the business of my very-interesting observations about the unimportant.

But before I do, Don has an important, ending-in-zero birthday today and I won't say how old he is, but it's amazing to think that we're all reaching such advanced ages. I remember when my parents turned as old as he is and I thought they were ancient! He's not over the hill, but is certainly standing on the summit. Hope your birthday is a happy one, little Donnie -- we love you & will see you soon!!!!

Anyway, I wanted to post this pic because it was taken at one of my favorite places (who can guess where?) If you can't guess, follow this link or this one.

Happy Birthday, Tahbee!

Since I've only been your auntie in recent years, I don't have any embarrassing old baby pictures of you to post . . . so I had to settle for one of the few (the only) picture I had of you where you were the only adult in it.

I'm so happy you're a part of our family! We love you and wish you a HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Early Easter

This is interesting, though pointless. . .

This year is the earliest Easter any of us will ever see the rest of our lives, and only the most elderly of our population (95 years old or older) have ever seen it this early before. None of us have ever, or will ever, see it a day earlier! Here are the facts:

The next time Easter will be this early (March 23) will be the year 2228 (220 years from now). The last time it was this early was 1913 (so only those 95 or older were around for that!).

The next time it will be a day earlier, March 22, will be in the year 2285 (277 years from now). The last time it was on March 22 was 1818. No one alive today has seen it any earlier or will ever see it any earlier than this year, barring some Star Trek-like miracle of science that keeps us alive for centuries!

Nothing New Under the Sun

I've posted before about the joy of being the help desk at my work. Now I've come to find out that the problems and frustrations I face are nothing new at all . . .

I'm tired of winter. Why is it that the shortest month, February, always feels like the longest one?

Happy Birthday, Lily!

It's hard to believe Lily's a year old -- the time has flown by! Happy Birthday, little one!

New Mentoring Website

Our mentoring program now has a website -- http://www.lc2ndchance.org/. Check it out! The more hits we get, the higher we'll go on search engines.

I voted

I voted today . . . which may not sound like a major thing. This year we had to sign a paper stating which ballot (R or D) we wanted and that information will be given to the party whose ballot was chosen. Many people didn't vote, either in protest of that loss of privacy or because both parties were upset with Michigan for moving the state's primary to January 15.

So I vacillated -- I won't ... I will ... I won't ... back and forth -- and in the end, I voted. I couldn't stand the idea of missing a presidential primary (it would have been the first national election I had skipped in over 30 years of voting)!

Does my vote matter? I doubt it. Do I care that the Republicans think I'm one of them? Absolutely! They'll find out, though, when they start spamming me. 11 months of political phone calls and junk mail are in my future -- imagine my delight!

Happy New Year

Well, the crazyness that is Christmas (and especially Buehlermas that follows) is over. Though the trees are still up -- because I haven't had the energy to take all the decorations down and put them away -- I figured it was time for a recap of the highlights of the season.

Probably the best thing was having all the guys home for extended periods and in pretty relaxed moods. I know that they got bored, which was unavoidable because there isn't much to do here, but it meant so much to me to see them! And an added bonus was that we had *almost* 3 weeks without a fight . . . only one or two notable skirmishes and apologies were actually spoken (or attempted)! Considering how passionate we all are about our faith, politics & our own particular points of view, that was a Christmas Miracle.

Here are the rest of the high(low)lights, with some illustration:

* I had fun decorating this year. It was, perhaps, my best Christmas house ever. I really enjoyed having an extra week to get ready.

* I didn't bake enough kinds of cookies. There will be more next year.

* The divorce-gate (the piece of trash I dragged home -- actually, which I had 3 other people help me drag home -- and which was the evidence that I'd "gone too far" and which put Jim over the edge) was FINALLY up and even decorated in time for Christmas! Unfortunately, I didn't take a picture of it until the snow day. The blob to the left of it is a lovely lighted grapevine tree that Kally made for me.

* We all had fun at Grandma's -- holidays have definitely improved now that the littlest little is in 4th grade. Cathy looked stronger and like she felt better than she did at Thanksgiving and that made me very happy.

* I got the stomach flu in the wee hours of Christmas morning and pretty much missed Christmas. I couldn't eat for 3 days, which probably was a good thing.

* Everyone, except Paul, made it here for Buehlersmas. We really missed him & I hope he reads this sometime to know that. It just wasn't complete without him. I felt like this Christmas was especially precious because last year neither he nor Christy & Tom could come and you never know how many more years we'll all be able to be together. It was such a blessing and I had a real sense of cherishing every moment.

* I got to spend time with Lily, which was great. She doesn't know me, except that I look vaguely like other people she does know, but it was fun anyway. She's a real sweetie & did very well, considering that she'd been away from home and living with non-stop stimulation for 3 weeks!

* Danny & Jim got to meet Lily for the first time, which was very cool!

* We had the best Bucket of Doom ever and a great pre-Bucket show. An unknown neighbor even yelled at us to "KNOCK IT OFF". Bethany got to bond with Christy, Tom and everyone else -- and survived!

* Young Jim was awarded his trophy as the winner of the 2007 UncFL. I know all his office mates at U of Maryland will be impressed when they see it.

* Gene fell on their second night here and broke her wrist and Jim and I made a 4:30 am run to the hospital with her. They couldn't set it -- just put a splint and wrap on it -- and she took it like a real trooper for the rest of the visit. She's amazing for 85!

* We all learned how to play Mexican Train Dominoes and it became the game of choice for the week. Gene did fine with that, too, one handed.

* On New Year's Day, we were welcomed with over a foot of snow. It was beautiful!

That's all, and that's enough. Happy New Year, everyone.

Happy Birthday Jim!

Happy Birthday to Jim -- 28 years today. I can't post a photo, since I'm not at my PC and can't get to my save CDs, but you know who you are and what you look like anyway! I love you, little Jimmy!

Snow!

All my guys are starting to come home for Christmas & I'm excited to see them! Dan was going to fly out today to go to Orlando & drive home with Charlie, but we got 12" of snow last night & today, so all flights were cancelled. I'm sad that he won't get to go to Florida, but happy because I'll get to see him more and Charlie that much sooner! Not only that, but the snow is beautiful... if only I didn't have to drive in it tomorrow.

As unhappy as I was about Christmas last year, I am excited about it this year. I'm definitely in the zone, as my guys say! I've already made 5 kinds of cookies, am all decorated, almost finished with shopping and wrapping and there is still a week and a half left.

Dan brought his new kitty, Little Dice, with him and she's really sweet and friendly! She's a black and white semi-long hair and I find it interesting that all of our pets -- Turner, Leo, Dan's Little Dice & Jim's Simon -- are black and white. They all look great in our kitchen (or would if they weren't afraid to come out of the basement).

Is Europe a Country?

Unbelievable...