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.
Oct2

Another job op!

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This afternoon, I just heard back from the lady at the local church  in reference to the preschool teaching job I emailed her about a week or so ago. I had no idea who it was at first, but did I perk up quickly. She said she couldn’t get through to me via email so she was calling me. I’m going in tomorrow (the 3rd) at 9 am and I’ll probably help them too. It’s about 10 minutes away, once a week from 9 to 11:30 am.  One door closes, another opens. And this could give me more connections-babysitting, etc. Crossing fingers I’m hired. It’s a very nice upper middle class area too. People ask me how long it’s been since I’ve worked with kids…well, it may not be yesterday, but I’ve worked with 100s of kids since I’ve been 10. I think I can handle them and they seem drawn to me. Kids always smile at Sean too. : )

It’s a rainy, miserable day. I got birthday things ready to mail for a little pal and a bigger pal. I need to finish up the stuff  I started earlier-bed making and clothes sorting. I must pick out a conservative outfit for tomorrow. I will be reading Bible stories like I did to Sean so many years ago.

Oct2

FTF-finally!

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Yesterday I saw that there was a new cache located up in the next town over. I quickly got dressed and went out the door. I got to the area and went wow! It was in a memorial garden with a pretty moderate traffic flow. It’s a good thing the butcher/deli was closed today. I had the car pointed right in front of the cache, only had to cross the street. I got to GZ and it’s a big rock with a plaque on it commemorating the War of 1812.

Below this were pebbles, in the front of it about a 30 foot long garden space, like a tapered triangle filled with roses, etc. I ‘evaluated’ the area and felt a lot of eyes on me. I looked at the traffic pole and street signs-they were really tall….and the fire hydrant.

So….

I went to the chiropractor at 2, a younger Alex Karras (remember him) kind of guy. I lifted, he lifted…thinks my left hip is out of alignment. I will get an x-ray soon. His receptionist is a nice wheel chair bound lady with a big black, fluffy service poodle.

We decided to go look for some caches (Brian’s day off). We headed to a local park where we had found a ammo-one of the first ones. Well this one was a bugger….near lots of rocks, branches and cement ruins of something. We almost gave up and I kicked a rock and there it was- looked like a playing card box! The log wasn’t in a bag and it was wet and icky.

I asked Brian if he wanted to try the one from this morning and he said ‘why not’! So it was around the corner and he zoned in on the fire hydrant and again there it was-‘our’ first to find in geocaching! How cool!

Tiny!!!

So we were sitting in the car and a truck pulls up next to us. The guy motions to roll down the window, so Bri did a bit. He says, ‘so you found it?’ It was the cache owner! He said he had read my entry and was going to put in a hint and we told him not to. It made sense it was on the fire hydrant. I don’t know how he would put it on the plaque itself.

We headed to Applebee’s and starting talking about geocaching to the hostess-she knew all about it and her brother had hide the one we had just found in the park! Small world.

We headed for another cache down the pike, but it looked like too much brush to tackle. We tried a gazebo one again, no luck. We didn’t check one spot where a busy yellow jacket nest was-good thing!

I found another listing down a back road and part of a orchard/farm series. The Navigator took us to a back road, but we saw a field of cows.

The GPS said it was 1/4 mile away-the main entrance to the dairy. We drove up and there’s a little barn where they sell their goods, on an honor system (mostly). We were told this later. We didn’t have cash at this point or a check. We’ll have to go back as I saw coconut ice cream! : ) The man there knew about the cache and we thought the place was closed, but he let us look. More people came along anyway to buy goodies.

The cache was down between two fenced areas. One side contained two sheep (we got sheep kisses) and the other side was goats and sheep. They were a little interested in us for a while, but we didn’t have food, so off they went.

I think that’s the cache pole!

 It was on a corner pole! I had to lean over to unscrew the bison tube and retrieve this.

We went to a park near here too-it was getting dark, but we found the container under an evergreen. I had to chuckle at the logs of seasoned cachers complaining about this one. It wasn’t hard to find…big babies! : ) I see a few names of my new pals on this log.

I see I need to burn a CD for my geocache computer folder. It’s taking up a lot of room! My phone made me clean out a few apps too. Sean never had that problem when it was his phone.

One for the road! Moooooooooo!

Sep30

Fun times with the Class of ’77

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I think I can speak for many in our humble, but mighty class of ’77 that our reunion was great! I got so many smiles and hugs that my head is spinning. I brought my camera and took some candid shots, but when Brian came after dinner for a visit, I was able to get in a few of them too!

Before we left.

There were 4 of us there from Mrs. Davis’ Kindergarten that was held in the basement of Sandy Bank School (now Walden). This was 1964-65! Yeah for Carol, Bill, Rona and me!

That’s Bev-we were pals over at Springton Lake Jr. high and Carol (mentioned above)is in the middle.

BTW, I loved my dress and shoes! I was comfy all night until the darn chairs put holes in my stockings.

My pal John was saying that there were lots of the same names last night-John, Carol, Bill, Janet, you get the idea. That could make it a little confusing.

We had our famous alumni, a very nice guy Todd who is a film director, screenwriter, etc. out in CA. His new movie is coming out next year-Phantom (The haunted Captain of a Soviet submarine holds the fate of the world in his hands. Forced to leave his family behind, he is charged with leading a covert mission cloaked in mystery). Cool…a submarine movie!

Todd and his sister Traci rode our bus and his mom was the guidance counselor at school. Todd was showing us his cute little nephew. He’s a proud uncle and says having a little one sure gives the family some energy.

This is horrible of me.

Then we have the couples who met in high school and got married and are still together. Margie (dark hair) and Karl are going to be grandparents next year. Both Francy and Margie have open invitations to Longwood Gardens.

My old pal Lil isn’t into blogging or Facebook, but she and another former classmate Kathy (not in attendance) have become world travelers! I asked the first place they went-Alaska! They are going to New Zealand soon. Kathy lives in CA and Lil in PA.

We had a classmate John come from Sweden to the reunion. He was sporting a cool braid and sandals. He brought his girlfriend (from Denmark) who hasn’t seen the east coast.

(Julie’s photo-thanks!)

We had the host of our beach get togethers come up too. Jim also installed one of those big satellite dishes for us many years ago-long gone. I swear it’s a small world.

A few people hadn’t come to a reunion for 25 yrs.! So nice to see the star of our senior play Sara and her hubby.

Lots of dancing and loud music…but I didn’t dare dance until I get my back checked out. My back has been better!

I sat with Darcy in the silver top and her hubby John-good pals. John and I were in more classes back in junior high.

Pretty marble staircase. I was waiting for Brian to come along.

We have lots of nurses, doctors and teachers in our group. : )

Libby and I went all the way through school together. Patty in the middle is a vet in Florida.

So in a few months, we’ll have a couple of mini reunions-one a bonfire that I haven’t attended due to the fact it was on Black Friday. It’s now the next day Saturday!

Until next time-cheers!

Thanks to Scott D and his helpers for always showing us a great evening.

Sep29

My 35th Reunion is tonight!

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We all say…time flies correct? Feels like those 35 years were in a zip file-compacted over time. But as I said before, Facebook has brought me back in touch with so many of my former classmates. It’s now neat to hear about not only their children, but their grandchildren. My pal Harriet lives in Lancaster County and she did the blood test when Brian and I got married (1984). Harriet’s a new grandmother-little Addie was born a few days ago and let me tell you, the messages were so cute from her on FB. Her son even said at one point that his wife hadn’t seen the doctor yet. : )

We have a very dedicated ‘Reunion guy’ in Scott D. I have helped him a few times remembering who people were, etc. I heard at last count 80 people have signed up to go and at first there were only 20! I decided to go with a pal Heather as Brian kind of just sits there, though he knows a number of my classmates. I went to his 35th a few years ago and as the years go by, more and more people go stag. I think at Brian’s reunion only a few other wives who attended.

I will probably share photos later.

Brian and I did a little late in the day geocaching yesterday-trying to stay limber. We headed to Rockford Park and it was a little tricky to find at first, though I have been there with Sean for the Wilmington Flower Market. My GPS never works correctly between our house and DE. I write down the directions now. Bri drove right past the turn at first and then the GPS kicked in and lead us to the park. One of those few times I had to find a restroom and we had to ask. Thank goodness it there was one near the Tower of Tower Hill. This is the private school Dr. Oz attended.

We found the trail marker and again the GPS was stuck. I began walking down the trail while Brian was off the trail and the numbers started to go down.  We found one of those nice DGT boxes!

New sneaks and top. : )  This was what was left of some building. Will get my arm checked out on Monday too. Seems when I dust (shaking out the static brush) it aggravates it. It’s not too bad right now as is my back.

Then we headed down to Brandywine Park…there seems to be a few Brandywine Parks in this area, but this one had a little zoo! It was too late to find the cache in the zoo, so we headed to one near the railroad area bridge.

We had to drive over a white arched bridge that had cobblestones on each end. There was a rose garden, waterfalls, a walking trails, fountains and of course the zoo. We need to go back!

So the cache hint was said it was to be under the ‘state tree of Delaware’. I saw a few large trees and holly ‘bushes’. Well can you guess which is considered the tree-the holly! The cache was suppose to be under a rock-so I’m thinking it’s a fake rock-didn’t see it. I came home and saw where someone had taken a photo of it. I can’t see the photos a lot of the times on the phone.

So we only found 1 cache and we were gone 4 hours-go figure. We stopped for pizza and salad. which took time.

We did get to meet Sean’s girlfriend Mary. She’s pretty, chatty and nice. He wanted to take her to Newark, DE to meet another lady pal and Mary drove out to our house for the first time.

Sep26

Didn’t work out

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Hey pals,

Just to let you know that I tried the merchandiser job and while I was okay with replacing and tidying up the magazines, I could not lift the 40-50 lb crates for the new ones or returns. The man that hired me did all the lifting today. The second time we went in the stock room, I told him I was having doubts about being able to lift. I’ve been hurting with my arm and lower back lately. He said he had told me lifting was involved and I thought I could get around that part by unloading the magazines without lifting the crates. No room and not the right carts. So I told him I’d have to pass on the job. : (

On an up note, Brian is interviewing with Kellogg to place their merchandise at local stores. Their products are not dead weight like magazines. He needs to figure out what he could handle, if he could do two jobs.

I shed a few tears in the parking lot as the guy made me feel bad about myself saying a lady in her 60s use to do the magazines where we just were working. I bet she had to have someone lift those crates-she had to! So I will do something to earn money whether it is eBay or something.

Sep25

Smileys with Sean

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It’s been a while since Sean an I went out to dinner. We had planned to go sneaker shopping first, but I mentioned The Olive Garden and he said yes. His night class had been cancelled as he thinks his professor’s wife was delivering their baby! : )

So we almost had the restaurant to ourselves and got the ‘endless’ pasta bowl special. He ordered two and brought most of the second serving home. I couldn’t finish the first one.

I mentioned there were a few geocaches right in the vicinity and he said, let’s go for it. With mapping being his planned occupation, I thought he’d be more interested, but he has a full plate right now. So we headed around the back of a Shop Rite. The cache was called ‘Taking Care of Business’ which is the store’s motto. His iPhone has an excellent GPS and it zoned in on a guard rail. I knew it was probably in the end where it curved and I saw it right away-it took him a bit longer.

Then we went to one that was off a turn on to a planned  entrance/road which abruptly ended and cement barriers were in place. I guess a planned shopping center never went in. We didn’t need it, I’ll take the farmland. So he is walking around and then finally he stops and says his GPS says ‘it’s here’. I look down and kick a stone or piece of asphalt out of the way, and there is the cammoed pill bottle. Ha ha! He is learning.

We hit Kohl’s for some awesome sales. I ‘saved’ more than I spent-really! Deep discounts on tops and summer stuff. I got some black FILA sneakers with an aqua trim. I have to toss the shape up ones. Also got brown leather shoes with top straps-I think Naturalizers. I suffer with my feet without proper footwear. These both are comfy. Sean got a few pairs of  sneakers for the same reason.

I feel good about tomorrow-it will be an earlier day than I am use to, but glad to have a job after 9 long months. I’ll let you know how it goes. And I may add photos to this post.

Sep23

Happy Birthday Mom!

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We got in a few hours ago after seeing my mom on her big day. She wasn’t up to par and feeling blue, but I had gifts I had found that I knew she would enjoy.

First we stopped off for that one geocache down in a Quaker Cemetery in Concordville. It was right near where the Delaware County Community College use to be in the 1960s to early 70s before they build the new place where I attended and enjoyed.

So Brian had to play monkey man and climb a tree for the cache! He did well, but I didn’t want him to take a tumble.

Can you see it?

It’s green and up high in the middle.

So we got to mom and she enjoyed the gifts we brought. I found a 1939 World Fair book, not in good shape, but she liked it as she was 8.5 when she went!

I got her some marker pens she asked for and a few other little things.

 

My phone camera was a little wonky here.

Looke at the beautiful St. Bernard’s my great grandfather William painted. He painted signs for a living. He was a wonderful artist and I wish we had more of his work, though not sure if he did a lot of works like this.

My brother invited us to a roast pork, eggplant parm and mac and cheese dinner with Strawberry ice cream roll and chocolate mousse cake.

So glad we went down for mom.

Sep23

Geocachers Picnic on the Brandywine

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It turned out to be a nice day here in the low 80s-almost perfect for a picnic! I have been having lower back issues for a few days and it really began bothering me after that 2+ mile walk last weekend. I thought my feet were going to fall off after the trail walk, then we kept going and that final walk up the hill at the Brandywine Battlefield did me in. I did start to house clean my kitchen a few days later, but I have been wearing those ‘walking shoes’ all summer by Dr. S. I think they are throwing me off too much. I plan to get new sneaks soon.

So anyway, after I used the heating pad, we headed to the picnic, not too far away. It was so neat to match those cacher names with faces! We talked to people who work right near my garden cache hide in our town.  Another nice fellow, got a hint from me about that same hide. He had told us about a hide in a sign down the road.

The couple in the green had travel bug shirts on-I logged them. I am up to 14 as I got some off of cars and they had a big bowl of them and I took a couple and left one.

Here’s helpful Tony

I find it amazing how cachers know so much detail about the caches they have found, even when they have found thousands of them-wow! I noticed that a lot of them are left-handed too. We had a bingo game where we had to mingle and ask people if this was ‘their first event’, or ‘they cached in a snowstorm”, etc.-and they added their name to the appropriate box. I was able to say ‘first time at event’, ‘did over 5 challenges’ and ‘have a travel bug on my car’ (that was put on yesterday). When we got all the boxes filled in, they went into a drawing. We didn’t win anything. : (

The park is so pretty! And get this the ‘owner’ is the host of the event as he is a cacher also!

Waiting on the door prizes, etc. Didn’t win, but two of the people in the first photo with me did win. They had a few ammo boxes there too.

Signing in…should be above the last one.

They had burgers, hot dogs, bbq chicken and pulled pork along with mac and cheese, broccoli salad and cole slaw. The soda was out of dispensers, mistake-it was like  yellow jacket heaven.

We could have gone tubing, etc. They had a large chess and checker boards too!

The animals were staying put in their shelter.

Cute sitting area

I got a few travel bugs off of cars

Brian and I came home and changed and decided to go down to California Tortilla for dinner. We looked for a cache behind this area-an evil one….a fishing line hanging off a metal fence that is about 300 feet long. We knew we were expecting rain, and felt drops as we looked and looked-they gave up.

We went in the restaurant and got very yummy fish tacos. So we are watching the now pouring rain (and got stuck in it going in) and I see two ladies come in from the picnic! They order their food and they see us and came and sat behind us. So we found out they were caching in that shopping center and got the ‘evil one’ earlier! I told them we had been looking for it and  they said after they ate, they would help Bri and me. So true to their word, they drove around to the back (one has a white PT Cruiser!) and they had to really look for it again and helped us find it! Crazy hide. I may have some lady buddies to cache with-both in their 50s and live in the Wilmington area. Cool huh?

My nails

Geonails!

On Friday Brian and I did a little local caching down the road (got help from Tony above) a few towns over. The one down the road was so tiny and easy to miss. It was a tube about 1 inch long! I was too short to get it and Bri barely could.

We went to West Grove, PA and the cache was near an ice cream shop. The GPS bounced from one side of the street to the other. It bounced near mailboxes-I didn’t think so. We got some ice cream and was asking the lady if people ever asked her about Geocaches, and she said she really didn’t know what they were when people did ask-so they did! So we told her about it and if I found it, I’d show her. So lo and behold, I walked by this metal tube thing on a telephone pole, but there were cobwebs over the top and I did find the keybox stuck inside-right near our car (right opposite the mailboxes). And I did show the lady at the ice cream parlor. Every piece of paper for the log was rolled in a ball, so I smoothed them all out. Very strange.

We then went to a park where there was shredded rubber tires on the path-wonderful to walk on.

Nano on the fence-Bri has a good eye for them!

Then we went to a Quaker meetinghouse/cemetery. It would have been nice if the CO had put the cache under a step (see in photo), but they stuck it under rocks in a wooded area in the back.

We’ve had a couple of busy days!

Today (now it’s the 23rd) is my mom’s birthday. We’ll be seeing her shortly.

Sep19

Tidier upper

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This past Monday (the 17th), I met the area ‘manager’ (recruiter?) for the company that supplies magazines to the local stores. I had to wait for him at Walmart, which was good as I was early. I spent most of the hour I was with him filling out paperwork-ugh. I was really zonked, I think from the exercise over the weekend and I was restless all night. But I wasn’t nervous really. I think I’ll get on to it fine. I went and looked at the magazines, which looked orderly to me. Sean works in Walmart and said the crates from the company are in the store room-he said about 15 of them. Well I’m thinking there isn’t 15 crates worth of magazines, so they must divide them up by what kind they are. Makes it easier for the person loading and unloading them.  Anyway, the man Jim liked me and I am starting next Wednesday. He will train me. I am hoping to learn fast as I may not need 4 days of training.

Yesterday he said all the documents and paperwork went through except he needed my declaration page for my car insurance. I got that to him a few minutes later, then didn’t hear from him all day. I heard this morning about the hours-9 on Wednesday and 10 on Thursday.  It will be nice to know Sean will be in the store a lot of the same times I will be there. Of course the money will be nice, even if it’s only a few days a week. As I said a few days ago, I hope to sell on eBay and etsy again. Wish me luck for a strong back and legs.  Sean said a lady in her 60s use to do it, so I have a few years before I get worn out.

; )

Sep16

Hiking along the Brandywine Battlefield

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We have lived in the Brandywine Valley for 26 years and are surrounded by the rolling hills of  this area where the great battle that defeated  the Americans by British and Hessian troops occurred on September 11, 1777. So almost to the day, but 235 years later, we took some time to check out this area while we did some geocaching.

I always route out our geocaching excursions and try to keep them to a few hours and close by. Of course I should count on some taking longer than others, which was the case for a few of them yesterday.  We looked for 9 and found 7! Not to bad for 4.5 hours. Some had us walking through terrible high grass  and prickers and I get itchy and nervous because of ticks and bees. However, the first one left us ‘stinging’ all day and evening. The cache was a few miles away in a roofed sign post. Underneath here, but no place else, was a big patch of Stinging Nettle. We saw it and tried to avoid it, but it found us! Ouchies. We should have gone home to take care of that, but we didn’t do that. And no cache to be found. The same person hid this one and the one down the road that we never found (though someone told me where he thought he found it,  just haven’t gone to look again).

So the next stop was a ‘dog park’. We think we missed the entrance and parked near a back entrance to a business along Rt. 1. We had to bring along a liter of water. There was bushwacking from the road and then some to the cache, leading me to think we missed the entrance. Always nice to see this:

We had to cross a little platform and climb up to an area that use to be fenced off as Brian spotted the cache below.

We were to fill up the PVC  pipe with water and the bison tube on a float was suppose to come up to the top-there was nothing in there. Bummer. The cache owner knows about it, but it would have been neat to see this happen. Brian even questioned if it was the right thing-we saw nothing like it and the GPS went to like 8-10 feet, so I think so. LOL  We did count it as a find.

The next cache lead us to the Birmingham Quaker Meetinghouse. It was actually a Letter box, but I forgot my rubber stamper. It was hidden in a cut off tree’s big stump.

Look at this octagonal building on the property. It looks like someone lives here.

Then we looked around the road to where the next cache was. We were to take a 0.8 mile hike to find it (a multi-cache-but we never saw the sign for step 2). We could have driven that, but we knew the cache was in a hollowed out tree along the way, plus who wants to drive? I would eat those words coming back, but we had a mostly nice walk seeing a heron, horses and blue birds.

See the heron taking off?

Bee keeps!

Bri retrieving the cache along the trail

The last leg back, while enjoying the frolicking bluebirds was very hard on my feet. Brian however made a new pal!

After I revived a bit, I remembered the house from ‘Marley & Me’ was around these parts. We didn’t see it yesterday, but it was within a few thousand feet of the Brandywine Trail cache! Rats!

Then we did a ‘cannon’ run. The first one was right down the road from the above.

The nano (micro container) was under the mount on the other side.

Another nano on this one. I didn’t take out the log in the first one as it was too tight, but as you can see I did with the Vietnam Memorial one.

We ate some Arby’s and headed for a few more!

Can you see the green bison tube? This was called ‘Twin Towers’ although the other one like this is gone now. Not sure what this was part of in the past-wells? Anyway, as we walked up near this in terrible overgrown weeds, etc. A snake fell down on top of the cache! Then he slivered back up inside! Eek!

Next we found one in a hollow of a tree in a neighborhood park. Finding the park was the hard part!

So it was getting dusky and we were about to pass the Brandywine Battlefield park. I haven’t been there in years. In fact, my memory of it is as a toddler getting yelled at for floating a Styrofoam cup down a stream! I think this is that area…

Sean’s been there for school, but we only drive past it coming home from my mom’s house. We pulled in and there is a big hill to climb. They had the parking roped off, but people were still there taking walks. We got to about 350 feet and the GPS wanted us in the grassy area. I couldn’t win with not going in tall grass today. It was even darker in there and we think we needed to go in the woods  higher up, but we decided to quit (past post mentioned animal carcasses, etc). We saw an overturned  ‘ancient’ outhouse and one of those broken benches with cement sides. Very unexpected and why don’t they get rid of them?

And a pretty sunset was to be witnessed