Author Archives: Dianne

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About Dianne

Domestic goddess, wife, mom, gardener, paper and collage artist, geocacher, local traveler, cross stitcher, baker, crafter, Facebooker, blogger, decorator and photographer.
Nov18

Consumer power

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Never be afraid to write or talk to someone about anything  that doesn’t seem right to you. I have abbreviated names for privacy.

From: D. C. (me of course)
Sent: Friday, November 16, 2012 9:33 PM
To: B. L.
Subject: Cleaning at your restaurant

Hello,
I think you have a beautiful, inviting place and we have enjoyed our visits here for dinner.
Tonight I happen to be sitting with my husband in the middle section near the fireplace, but at the end near where the food is made. I saw a cloth that was used for cleaning off tables fall to the floor and the worker picked it up and used it to wipe off tables anyway. I don’t know if he folded it again, but to me he should have gotten a new cloth. You can never be too careful that way.
Thought you’d like to know,
Mrs. C from Avondale, PA
Reply:
I DEFINITELY want to know! Thank you so much for bringing that to my attention. I will make sure that never happens again.
I appreciate you taking your time to give us feedback.
B. L.
Also, when we got home from our furniture shopping trip, Brian saw that the store had a $50 off coupon. He filled out a form and got a coupon code. Whether it’s just for online shopping, I’m not sure, but we sent the code to the guy at the store. He had said earlier since we were buying a chair too he would cut us a deal, didn’t see that. Crossing fingers.
Nov17

Retail therapy

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It was time to get a new sofa and chair. The cushions are too flat on the bottom  and the back cushions got too lumpy.  My poor back gives me grief almost everytime I get out of it. The recliner doesn’t work right anymore. When I got up this morning, I saw an ad for a furniture place mixed in with the food store ads.  I had been admiring the sofas with the mixture of leather/pleather and fabric and the one featured was half the price of ‘R&F’. I asked Brian if we could go check it out and he agreed. I think we tried out 15 couches. Of course the ones with the recliners are nice, but we don’t have the room to have them open as we have a big coffee table which usually is home to the laptops. We did look at this first and sure enough, I went back to it. I figured if the back pillows got flat, I’d get some new pillow forms or make new pillows! The seat cushions are nice and firm. I love the Victorian look (I guess it’s close to that).

So then I said, let’s look at chairs. Brian went right to the recliners and we’ve had two now. I happen to see this:

It’s a pretty burgundy. Larry, our salesman, ran back up to the third floor to grab a pillow to see if it matched this-nice! It’s velour and hits your back in all the right spots.

The store was opened by Larry’s great grandfather in about 1902. It’s nice it’s been around so long! I know all the sales ploys-they show you the more expensive pieces, etc.  It’s funny I went back to the one in the ad! : )

We should get them in a few weeks-nice Christmas gift!

Nov16

It’s been a long week

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I just want to get this kind of post out of the way as I sure don’t want people to think I actually ‘want’ to post about this kind of stuff. I decided to get some testing out of the way this week. Tuesday I went for blood work ordered by the doctor in September for last month. Then I went to the school and will have off until the 28th. I am still trying to get the place in shape for Thanksgiving. I then had my yearly mammogram yesterday. It was an hour wait for that which was crazy. I also called my regular doctor and said I’d really like to get checked out for this hip and back pain. The receptionist said she thought I should just got to a orthopedist and suggested a place across from that office. I was able to go there today. They took an x-ray of my hips, but I had told them I had lumbar (spine) x-rays at the beginning of October. So I have arthritis in my back and hips and they suggest I try physical therapy for a month. I can’t take Advil and anti-inflammatories or a prescription medicine, so I’m stuck with taking Tylenol. If the physical therapy doesn’t work, maybe they will give me something stronger. I really tried to up the exercise this summer and I think it helped me in a lot of ways. But since I have Lyme Disease, it had sped up my other problems. When the PA checked off sciatica on my chart, I wanted to cry. That’s what my mom has been suffering with for about 9 years.  I don’t plan to give up my geocaching, but I sure need help with stuff around that house that requires a lot of leaning over. Getting up from a sitting position or from lying down is like a knife in my back. Not fun in the middle of the night.

I’m not going to talk that much about it, but that’s what’s going on with me. I will give you updates on my physical therapy to let you know if it is helping.

Brian and I took a little drive to try to be ‘first to find’ at a cache near a cave on the PA/DE border. We saw the cave and then had to walk through rocks and leaves to get to the cache location. I did pretty darn good! We get up there and I open the log and two other people had been there (as a couple) before us! They have thousands of caches too. Darn them! I had to use the navigator and my  camera battery ran down, so I couldn’t take many photos except of the caches. Bummer. Streams, waterfalls, a covered bridge-I’ll be back.

We went to a gourmet pizza place next. We were served lukewarm pizza as I think the waitress let it sit there a bit. She took it back and it wasn’t that much warmer when we got it back. We found a few shopping center caches, one we had looked for before and I had gotten a hint on. The next one was a bit trickier as it looked like an abandoned beer cap-but the little container was underneath it. Fun stuff.

Nov11

Cleaning or geocaching?

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Yesterday was a nice day for being outside, but not raking leaves! I can’t do that anyway as my hip is so bad, so I took Brian away from his yard work.  When I go out in the car, it’s hard for me to get in and out all the time and I really hurt by the end of the day. There was a book sale at a nearby school to raise money for the Kindergarten. Oh how I’d love to work there in that centuries old building, but I bet it’s a bit on the chilly side. Just like last year, there weren’t too many people there. I was able to pick up a few books for the school where I work for a few dollars.  They seem to read the same ones all the time, so I found a few cute ones about sharing and Jamie Lee Curtis’s book ‘Tell me again about the night I was born’.  I found a few novels for me and the lady working there helped me find a few for my mom via mom on my phone’s speaker.

I decided to see if the William Penn tree near the parking lot there was a waymark and filled out the form on the website. People need to find the London Grove Friends Meetinghouse and take a photo of themselves in front of the 9 story, 330 yr old white oak!

So then we drove around the immediate area for a few caches. The scenery was so gorgeous-rolling hills, horses, cattle, trees….I’m so glad there is still land like this close by. Where I live, housing developments have popped up all around us.

The first cache was on Tapeworm Road-what a name-it was indeed a wiggly road! It wasn’t too hard to find-Brian used his geosenses and saw a pile of wood near one end of  the fence-bingo! After this find, my phone went wonky. There was one down the same road that we missed! We found one near another horse field but inside a tree. Then there was a covered bridge one. The navigation took us in a big circle when we only needed to go to the end of Tapeworm Road and make a left. Hate to waste gas like that.

We get to the covered bridge and it’s closed-a truck obviously ran into one side as there is crumbled cement and a support beam there. We could tell there had been some flooding in that area as dirt was pushed around near the stream with heavy equipment. We mainly looked inside the bridge and didn’t see anything. I PAF (phoned a friend-actually wrote an email) and he said we should have been underneath. Opps-it was a muck factory under there. Maybe some other time.

I  mentioned about a nearby ‘gastro-pub’ (refers to a bar and restaurant that serves high-end beer and food) where we went last year called ‘The Whip’, so we went. I got sausage and red pepper quiche and salad. I’m not a big fan of sausage, but this was heavy on the nutmeg and very moist. Brian got a chicken salad wrap. There was a cache around back in a guard rail that took minutes to snag.

Brian near where the cache was with The Whip behind him.

The last cache was in a cemetery way out in the boonies. It was fairly easy to find, so we walked around the cemetery. I wondered what the stones were at the end of the newer part of the cemetery and they were for babies. : (

Near the church were stones for a Collins family and the names were facing the church instead of out. That was a bit strange.

Here’s a  satellite look at the church and cemetery… I was checking out that feature on Geocaching.com last night. It will show you where the cache is! See the smile face!

We even went to church after all this. Today I’m tired, but I have a lot to do. I couldn’t find some of my pants and they were still up in the attic. So now I am sorting through clothes again. I also put away most of my Halloween decorations except for my owls.

Sean’s girlfriend and daughter are coming out for Thanksgiving. I am hoping to get something for my hip pain by then so I can pull that off. It will be nice to meet her 6.5 yr old.

I have some testing this week, so please send me some good vibes.

Nov9

Daylight savings is getting in the way

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I was looking forward to grabbing a few caches late this afternoon as it has been a long time since we’ve gone searching. I’m still feeling pain in my left hip and lower back. I thought a little walking may do me some good. Well by the time we rolled out of the driveway, it way after 4 with a little daylight left. Rats! First I had to wait on Brian as he was leaving work, grabbing a few groceries and hitting the bank. When he got home, his dad called complaining about his car not running. This has been going on for a week. He got a new battery, but it was dead today. The vehicle is almost 24 yrs old now too.  He talked to him a bit and went to hang up the phone and it fell behind the computer desk. He tried to retrieve it, but couldn’t. He’d get back to that.

So we headed near a campground cache. It was suppose to be a fast grab and dash, cache and dash or whatever. We parked across the street near the train track and headed over. The GPS found it right away near an evergreen-had it in no time. But we happen to catch the engine coming in and since they had to cross a street-they pulled the whistle. We were right there and it almost blasted our socks off! Two guys got out of the engine, climbed into a car and took off.

The cache was neat! It was a pet food container with the swag beginning in either bowl. There was a separate log.

The next cache was near an abandoned building and the Brandywine creek area. We scared a few deer, but I believe we were about 200 feet too far away and it was getting dark, so we gave it up.

So we will not go out cache hunting so late this time of year. It’s just scary. I’d love to find a night cache where people use reflectors, etc.. I have yet to find one listed.

Tomorrow is a book sale-we got excellent buys and had almost the entire place to ourselves last year. Wonder if that will change? I got Christmas gifts then too. And I know there are a few caches in that area too!

Nov6

Check one off the bucket list

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Just a photo…words will follow later as I have a very busy day ahead.

On Monday, I asked Brian if we could go out to Montgomery County Community College to see former President Bill Clinton. It was always my wish to see a President someday. I missed a chance many years ago to see my favorite President, Jimmy Carter when he had a lecture at the college where I attended. This was about 15 yrs.  I really admire what he did after he left office from writing books to helping to build homes for people through Habitat for Humanity.

He may have been too nice to be President. He’s a very intelligent man with what they call an encyclopedia type memory. Ask him something, he can tell you about it.

So we got stuck in traffic very close to the college. The doors had opened at 2:30 and we got there about an hour later. When we were in traffic, we heard sirens and a mini motorcade went on our left-police and a few SUVs from Maryland. I bet that was Prez Bill!

So many people wanted to come to the event, they moved it from the gym to outside. We were a little cold, but okay. We heard from about 4 local politicians first, heard a 14 yr old girl sing the national anthem beautifully and then Bill came out! We were in the back. People were holding up signs and cellphones. It was really an honor for me. When he was President, I got a Christmas card from him and Hillary and the Gores for 8 years. That was a treat! I should take photos of them sometime.

So it was a good 15-20 minute talk and he had the crowd in the palm of his hand!

My viewpoint at one place in the crowd.

Nov3

Yes, these are new collages!

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I need to live up to my blog name. I have worked on these for a week or so. Some aren’t even finished, but I thought I’d share. I like the lady with guitar a lot.

I’m trying to utilize rubber stamps that I have a ton of too.

Photo Hunt–Seasonal

This was taken last year at Longwood Gardens in mid November-

Look at all the leaves on the tree then!

Bright yellow leaves

My father-in-law got his power back after 4 long days. On Tuesday we had called PECO and they said it would be until 11 pm Friday. We found a hotel room for him right away and Brian went over to take him to the room. He wouldn’t budge out of the house. 4 people and two policeman could not make him move out of his cold, dark house, so there he stayed with a dying cellphone. Talk about stubborn. Brian will have to make him promise if something like this happens again, he will heed to his wishes of being safe in a warm room. The man is 89 years old and a bit frail. This made us all stressed out and tense all that time. I would never do that to Sean.

Nov2

Giveaways for Christmas

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I just came back from seeing the great giveaways that will be offered from Nancy at ‘The Victoria Motto Sampler Shoppe’ blog coming in the month of December. You have to go over there now and leave a comment to sign up for some awesome prizes like cross stitch charts and floss trims and custom dyed fabric. Yay, I knew that would perk you up! There will be 25 giveaways for 25 days-so check in each day to see if your name is mentioned. Sounds like a good deal. Thanks Nancy!!