Today's Fashions Really Suck

Today I thought would be a good day to buy some new clothes. Most everything I have is worn out and almost threadbare. It might be because I really don't like to shop for clothes. The plan was to go to JC Penny and check things out there. I did not set my expectations too high on finding anything I really liked. Just maybe a couple tops, a pair of jeans, or shorts.
With me and my low expectations, I start wandering around the store looking at this and that. There were several tops I liked but every size they had was small or medium. In today's world a women' s size small would probably fit my 8 year old granddaughter's.
Ok, so this is starting to tick me off a bit. "Leave the store now!" said one of the voices in my head. Ignoring the warning, I continue on my quest. It seemed like every they had was in bright pink, lemon lime, orange orange and so on. I don't think I want to look like an Easter egg this spring. I just want something simple in normal colors. I don't like the empire waist type shirts either. Anyone who has big boobs knows that seam is suppose to be under your boobs, not smack dab through the middle. Oh and since we're on the subject of boobs, I prefer mine to be inside my shirt. It's hard to find anything that keeps the girls from showing off. No luck finding tops here. Then I went over to check out the jeans. Bad idea. The good part was that most of them were on sale at a decent price. The bad part is that some fashion genius decided that women should wear low rider jeans now. Only a small percentage of young girls and women actually look good in them. The rest of us end up with muffin tops and the crack of our ass's exposed. I prefer the crack of my ass to be covered up. I could go on and on about low rider jeans but I won't. (in my day they were called hip huggers)
The thought of trying on a million pair of jeans to find one pair that would fit was not what I wanted to do at this point. Now I knew I wasn't going to find anything today. It was time to leave the store now.

You Know You're Getting Old........

When the highlight of your day is going to the post office to mail letters.



When you put on your jammies at 6:00 in the evening.



When you'd rather stay home on a Friday or Saturday evening to crochet.

When you say something to you kids or grandkids and hear your mother's voice blurting out of your mouth

Hurricane Ike in Ohio?

Last Sunday started out to be a nice, warm sunny day. There was a wind advisory out, but that's not unusual around here, especially after a hurricane from the south. Later that afternoon the wind really picked up. I mean really picked up. As in trees, awnings, patio furniture and anything that wasn't literally nailed down. Later I found out we had wind gusts up to 70-78 mph. in surrounding areas.

Earlier that day I put a roast in the crock pot and decided to take a little cat-nap. Not long after I laid down, I woke up to the sound of what I thought was rain pelting against the window. I got up, looked outside and this is what I saw.

This is our neighbors house across the street. Thank God it didn't fall on her house. When that happened everyone came out of their houses to check things out. Then we heard the sirens and soon the ambulance
arrived on our street. It passed by us to the other end of the street and this is what was going on there.

If you look past the truck, you can barely see the ambulance.

What happened here, a woman was getting a tree limb out of the road when another one fell on her. Later we found out that she suffered a broken leg or ankle.

In the meantime, we were out in the neighborhood walking around looking at all the damage. I might add that it wasn't a smart thing to do because the wind was blowing so hard that at times it was almost knocking us off our feet. Like the weather guys and gals reporting in hurricanes.

We lost power for about 2 hours. We were lucky. By Sunday evening more than 200,000 homes and businesses in the Miami Valley were without power. Traffic signals have been out for days,causing many accidents. As of this posting the number of outages are down to 60,000. This as been one Dayton, Ohio's worst natural disasters in many years. Crews have been called back from Galveston, Texas and neighboring states have sent crews to our state to help restore power. One of the main problems of restoring the power is, trees have fallen and tangled throughout the power lines. They have to remove the tree debris before they can repair the electrical lines. They're slowly gettin er done.

What disappoints me is, there hasn't been any national news coverage of this that I know of. I guess political news is more important than all of the people who are suffering from Hurricane Ike's wrath.Thankfully the temperatures here have been comfortable. It would've been awful if there had been a heat wave or freezing rain and snow.
The pictures I posted are nothing compared to some of the damages that are in other parts of town.

This is my nephew's house. At least it was a small tree.

One block over from us.

Clean up begins on our street.

Oh, by the way. The roast I had in the crock pot was still cooking even though our power was out. Mike was worried that he wouldn't have any supper that night but that's whole other story right there. Anyhow the roast was very good and Mike went to sleep with a full belly.

You Might Be a Dumb Ass If.....

Today started out like most days, I got up ,drank my coffee, got caught up the news and so my day began. Like most multi-taskers I usually manage doing several different things at once with no problem. Except for today. I had laundry going, I was doing dishes, sweeping the floor, watching a program on T.V., and in between all of that I would get on the computer to check stuff out. So you're thinking what's the big deal about that? OK I'll tell you. I looked out the back door at the humming bird feeder and figured I might as well make some fresh food for them.
I boiled the water, added the sugar and let it cool. A little later when I put in a couple drops of red food coloring it turned a rusty - yellowish color. Yuk! I thought maybe the pan I boiled the water in was dirty or something so I washed it out and made another batch. Now it was time to add the food coloring. What the f#%k!... It happened again. I know the food coloring hadn't gone bad, so I looked at the label on the bottle and it said Pure Vanilla Extract. Duhhhh! Well now I have batch number 3 made up and in the feeder. Now I'm just waiting for the humming birds to get here. I also put the vanilla extract far away from the red food coloring.

Computer Nerd Blues

Last Wednesday My new computer arrived. Wohoo! I didn't get to hook it all up until Friday though. It took most of the day to take down the old computer, get the new one set up, and get online. It just sounds a lot easier than it was. The next day was spent getting the printer installed and transferring files which didn't take too long. The main thing was getting all my pictures moved over. So next was getting the printer going. That's where all the fun began. It's a multi-function printer (scanner, copier, fax, blah blah blah) and even though it's five years old it still works great. When I put the CD in to set up everything the stupid Vista message comes on to say that this program is not compatible with this system. What the f#%^! It better be compatible because I've just spent two days bent over inside a small closet hooking up wires, plugging shit in, unplugging , now every thing's good to go and they say it won't work on Vista. Huh! we'll see about that. At least it sent me to the Canon website where I found a patch to make the printer work. With that done , it was time to get Mike's Lawn Service stuff transferred over. The program I have is QuickBooks Invoice Manager, which is all I really need for Mike's Business stuff. I did what the destruction's said to do for making a back-up copy. Then when it came to restoring the files on the new computer, it just wouldn't work. Damn!
OK, now I have to go to the website and try and figure out how to do this. Of course it takes another hour to find out what to do. All the information they had there was for QuickBooks and most of what they said wouldn't work with the Invoice Manager. Now I'm really getting really pissed. By around 10 o'clock Saturday night, I was burnt out and I quit messing with it.
Sunday after lunch I spent about 3 more hours trying to get it to work and still didn't get anywhere. Now I'm extremely pissed. So the only thing I can do for now is to just forget about it until I figure it out, or get someone to help me with it. In the meantime I guess I'll have to do the invoices on the old computer. It still pisses me off. UGH!

OK So I Can't Crochet

My friend Doris had a brainstorm awhile back. Oh yeah she really did! She had been talking about maybe starting a knitting and crocheting group together at our Eagles club. The idea was that anyone who knew how or wanted to learn how to crochet and knit to meet once a week to do that. So now we're meeting on Tuesday nights to make baby hats and booties to donate to one of our charities which is Touching Little Lives.
Before we started doing this I was telling Doris that I use to crochet all the time but it's been over 25 years since I've done it. Oh I use to make hats, afghans, scaves, doll clothes and all kinds of stuff. So I'm thinking to myself that I could probably whip out a bunch of baby hats and booties in no time.

WRONG!

My first attempt at crocheting. Keep in mind that I haven't done this in over 25 years. This is suppose to be a baby hat. I tried to follow the pattern but had a little trouble. (obviously) What's up with that knobby-thing on top? I have no idea how I did that. Well if you turn it sideways it could be a bra cup.

This is my second hat. It's still not right or maybe I'm not right. Notice that the knobby-thing isn't as bad. I think it'll go to the grandkids doll named Naked Baby. The girls haven't put clothes on the doll in 2 years and they just like calling her Naked Baby. Go figure.

Now I'm getting the hang of it. Using a different pattern helped. Thanks to a little internet research I can understand the crochet lingo. Sort of.

Now I'm on a roll. Getting better all the time. I learned how to make a pom-pom (again)

These were suppose to be booties. Some of the patterns I had, I couldn't figure out what the destructions (instructions) were, so I made some mitts instead. They're so cute.

So I try to crochet booties again and it just didn't turn out. Then I found this baby sock pattern which I like better than booties. Eat your heart out Heather, you're not the only one in the family that can make socks now. Not bad for making one for the first time. One is all I made because I ran out of yarn. My next challenge is to make a pair of socks.........both the same size.

Sad & Happy New Year

Hello 2008. I don't know what's in store for this new year, but I have a feeling it will be a good one. This past holiday season seemed to be pretty hectic for some reason, but it was still a good one. Then again it was a sad one because we lost a couple good friends. Right before Thanksgiving a good friend and neighbor, Ronnie passed away on November 11th. It wasn't really unexpected since he suffered from dementia and his health went down hill after that. Poor Ronnie, he hated being in the condition he was and it was just as hard for Jean and Barb. Now he's in a better place and life goes on. We'll miss you Ronnie.

On the Friday right before Christmas our dear friend Larry died unexpectedly. What a shock! We last saw him on Wednesday at the Eagles Christmas party, alive and well. He was suppose to stop by our house the next day for a care package after he was done at Angela's. When he didn't show up at his daughters house on Thursday, she went to his house and found him on the floor. He was rushed to the hospital where they found out he was in pretty bad shape. By Friday they were going to do surgery on him, but I guess it was too late, he didn't want to hang on for that. He had a lot of health issues in the last few years, but never thought it was life threatening. Well that was Larry. He would tell you when the doctors said he was doing good,yet he would never tell you when he was feeling poorly. Shame on you Larry!

At least I know one thing for sure. The last hours of Larry's Life were happy ones. That Wednesday at the Eagles Christmas party, Mike and I won an Ohio State Buckeyes leather jacket. Mike is not a football fan and I'm not either. We didn't even discuss anything about who would wear the jacket. We both knew that we would give it to Larry. Oh, he was sooo happy! He almost started to leak*. You see, Larry was the one who use to give and do nice things for his friends all the time. Though in recent years because of his health and financial situation he hasn't been able to do those kind of things anymore.

Larry was so proud to have that jacket not because it was one of his favorite football teams but because his two good friends that knew he should have it. One of the last words to his daughter was "Look what the Boy** and Caroline give me"
Larry, I'm sure up in Heaven there with Little Mommy proudly strutting around your new coat. I believe my last words to you were and to this post are:

LUV

My dear friend Larry

October 15, 1942 - December 21, 2007

* Larry's term for sheddin a tear or two
** Larry always called Mike "the Boy"