Category Archives: Brian

Feb12

Just plugging along

Posted on Tuesday, February 12, 2013 by Dianne

Since last I updated, we have all had colds, Sean getting the worse of it. I missed work as I was just too achy to even try go. A week makes a big difference!

The three of us went out last night (Monday) which doesn’t happen often. Sean drove in the rental car. His car is ‘still’ in the shop as there is a suspension issue they are trying to get the insurance to check out. Sean is pretty sure he hit a curb as the jeep took out the entire left side of his car. We drove by the restoration place last night and Sean’s car was sitting outside. It’s been 3 weeks. The guy who did this had hardly anything happen to his vehicle-someone who made an illegal u-turn didn’t have to go through all this!

Anyway, we had a gift card for Bertucci’s and went to one near Wilmington, DE. Earlier in the day, here had just been a shooting just miles away at the courthouse-the gunman shot his estranged wife and another woman to death and the police got him. It was a custody issue and two lovely ladies were killed. Crazy!

We also went through a 5 Below store which has cuter and cuter things each time I go there.

I mentioned that a geocaching friend had a hide near a British pub, so we went like 1/2 mile down the road. The cache was said to be decorated for the local Philly ice hockey team the Flyers-in orange and black. We looked at benches, near pipes, behind signs, etc. with no luck. This was all in a dimly lit area. I think we didn’t look low enough! We may go back on Thursday for dinner as it’s a nice place to eat and we had eaten there before. We headed down to a big ‘cement city’ shopping area and after sinking in mud, found a little camouflaged box (fake leaves glued to the top). We looked for one more and again we didn’t see the travel mug holder. We shopped in Trader Joe’s for healthy goodies and came home.

Remembering President Lincoln on his birthday

When I got home I decided to look at the satellite for a number of geocaches along the route where we just were and wrote down info for 10 of them, one being south bound and the rest north.

I had some insurance issues with blood work I had done in November. Brian and I went over to the doctor yesterday to pick up blood work and ask why they haven’t submitted info to the insurance. Boy did they hustle! The office manager was very nice. Asked me if I was stressed out, yes I am! My blood pressure has been a little high lately. I know stress can make you feel a lot worse than you are! My blood work wasn’t too bad. I do have a bit of a Vitamin D deficiency so I will be taking mega doses of it once a week for 3 months to get my numbers up. People are usually deficient in the winter, but I may have trouble absorbing it. I sure hope it helps. Maybe my joints will feel better too!

Feb1

Goodbye January!

Posted on Friday, February 1, 2013 by Dianne

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Glad to see such a blah month zip by. We had so many days of gloom and fog as you saw in my previous posts. We did try and take little drives, etc. to help with cabin fever. And of course we helped Sean deal with his accident and the breakup of his girlfriend. Sean’s car is still in the shop and won’t be ready for another week. He is driving a nice rental which helps us a great deal.

I like February a little better because it’s a short month and Valentine’s Day breaks it up in the middle. I already got a couple of gifts from the hubby…a pretty storage box and ‘Downton Abbey Chronicles book’! I happen to be fascinated with that time period because my grandmom Ruth was a teen in the 1918s-1920s.

I’m still suffering with aches and pains when I overexert or stand too long. I have an appointment with one rheumatologist in March, but I was trying to get an appt with another. They haven’t returned my call yet. My right knee bothers me the most as does the original hurt from a year ago on the left hip side.

I’ve been trying to clean out the picture files on my laptop. I just did the geocaching adventures one and there were over 400 photos over the last 9 months! This was one Brian took at the Brandywine Battlefield (incidently the day my back ‘really’ complained) and I added a verse for a Kenny Loggins song to it.

We may be going with Sean to Los Angeles in a few months. One reason I want to get to a doctor. I’d love to have something to ease the aches so I could sit all that time on the plane and walk around and sight see!

When Brian is off, he is nice enough to drive me down to my mom’s house for a visit. We usually take her shopping and the last few times have been Home Goods. She had a gift card and used it. Sean had given me a cute tea cup and strainer, so I got some ‘Tiesta’ tea and had some when we got home. It was delicious! There is nothing that compares to loose tea. I went on the website and ordered a few more small bags of it!

We also took mom to a little Chinese restaurant where she enjoy shrimp in a mustard coconut sauce which sounds weird, but is good. I had beef and broccoli and Brian had something similar to me but with chicken and shrimp too.

We looked for a cache with mom in the car. Of course it was dark, and I thought we were going to a parking lot by the cache description. I figured it was probably a sign as we saw no parking lot in the area. Mom thought we are crazy, yet we drove through a neighborhood she had never been to before. That’s one of the fun parts about caching-going to new places! We made a note of the cache to check again sometime, dropped her off and tried another and it would have been looking around a wooded area-nope. I am up to 221 caches now!

Jan19

Winter sunshine

Posted on Saturday, January 19, 2013 by Dianne

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This Friday and again today, I headed down to the neighboring town’s yearly huge book sale. They advertise that there is over 70K books and I do believe them! Being the book lover I am, I can’t pass up a sale. There was even a geocache in the parking lot to look for. Too bad it was so cold yesterday. I had looked at it via the satellite shot a month or so ago and didn’t I sit down ‘across’ from where it really was at the end of a bridge. The problem is I couldn’t reach right for it. I actually wondered up and down the bridge for about 15 minutes. I went back on the website and emailed a guy who had found it after 3 tries. He sent me back a detailed explanation. Today I had Brian. I swore it was the ‘right’ on my side, but it was on the other side! Then I couldn’t find my pen, so had to use a pencil in the SUV.

We didn’t go hog wild book wise. In fact Sean didn’t buy anything.

We decided to go to the New Castle (Delaware) Farmer’s market, but took a detour so Sean could see the old area of the town. Brian and I had been there a few times. I got out and took a few photos, this being my favorite:

See the trio of tree and fence tops?

We then headed to the farmer’s market. I was having major hurt issues with my knee down to the back of my calf. Think I did something Friday night getting out to retrieve a cache. (That’s an entirely different story!)

At the market, we found young Amish people selling donuts. They were much more in cost than the ‘DD’, but they are larger and fluffier. Best I ever had! Have to be careful eating those!

We also went to ‘The Hut’ and when we pulled in the parking lot, we saw Sean’s old Taurus that he traded in 1.5 yrs ago! Someone who works there owned it. I think Sean was super surprised. He took good care of that car (his 1st car) and when he saw it, he said ‘that car took me back and forth to Penn State many times’. Where he traded it in for his newer Taurus is about a 1/4 mile away. But the chances of us seeing it again, just wow.

We went to get gas, found another guardrail cache at the station next to it (drove in circles a bit, guess the attendant wondered what we were doing) and then hit the Goodwill where I found a few bird tchotchkes, one of which is a Marjolein Bastin for Hallmark.

I mainly bought crafting books at the sale earlier, ribbon embroidery and drawing for my mom and a few historic fictions along with crafts for me.

It was nice to have Sean along. He was a little depressed at first, some job issues going on in the family and I guess he feels that his time in the sun isn’t coming along fast enough in the job field. The economy is still not great and I think Sean will have to move away from here when he is done with his schooling.

Jan5

Christmas Revisited!

Posted on Saturday, January 5, 2013 by Dianne

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I happen to see that it was my pal’s 25th wedding anniversary on Facebook (I gave her a thumb’s up) and clicked through to her sister’s wall. Her sister was up from the south visiting and went to the National Christmas Center and a photo she showed piqued my interested in going to a place we have passed dozens of time going to the Lancaster, PA area. It’s right in Paradise, about 20 miles from here. We had until this Sunday to go as they would have weird hours until this Christmas.

Ma, you going bye byes again?

Brian was off (unfortunately, his hours have been cut at the store), so I had even mapped out a few geocaches in the area-most were those ‘lifting the skirt’ kind, but we just couldn’t find one in a tree on a short road. We stopped at a thrift store where I had consigned things in 2011. They were having a sale, but we didn’t linger. I got an adorable gingerbread man wreath for $2.50.

The center was a lot bigger than we thought. We read that the owner started out with 3 displays and grew to 10 or so.

This guy greeted us, though he looks a bit frumpy.

This is perfectly decorated.

We took over 100 photos!

The Norwegians use to wrap their trees with cotton batting to make it look like snow!

The Woolworth store display! This is the photo Olivia’s sister showed on her page.

This was the German Santa, the ultimate ‘toy maker’ The room had a number of wax Santas-they looked so real! I didn’t care for the children or the elves-creepy!

This was part of Tudor Towne, an animated story with different animals/creatures telling the story about how they almost didn’t have Christmas. We took Sean to his display, but in Delaware when he was a little boy!

There was a display about the time Jesus was born, down to cobblestones…most of it was very dark, but this was very beautifully done

Here’s Virginia, the little girl who wrote a letter about the existence of Santa (I think her face looks old). Be glad you can’t see the father’s face. But it was interesting to see how the turn of the last century looked (when my grandmom Ruth was born) and they had a loop on the monitor of the real Virginia reading her letter and reply from the newspaper editor.

The workshop where Santa greets the children was special too. Not sure if the owner of the center does that job, but he sure looks like him as we saw him go to the phone and talk to someone about a music box for the center. He turned them down.

Creepy elves

Brian loved the trains. We heard they will be redoing this, it looked pretty nice to us!

I will be unloading all the photos to Flickr sooner or later, so I will add the link here when I do.

Makes me want to not take down the tree, but it’s been up a month now, so I’m thinking dust factory.

I hope you enjoyed these.

Found 4 out of 5 geocaches! Ate at Pizza Hut-it’s been a long time and it was just as greasy good as I remember it. ; ) Got some 60% off goodies at The Christmas Tree Shoppe (store) and because I signed up for email, I got $10 off my total .

We also stopped at a Dutch market. The prices of their meat and lunch meat cant’ be beat!

Good day!

In closing-the neatest ‘cache’ of the day!

Oh I wish I was an Oscar Meyer weiner-lol! Those Lancaster caches had over 200 logs!

Dec26

Goal reached-200 geocaches found!

Posted on Wednesday, December 26, 2012 by Dianne

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Saturday night (Dec. 22nd), the three of us went to our church. It’s been a while for all three with the guys’ work schedule. Afterwards, we enjoyed some cheese steaks (Brian and me) and Sean got a white pizza. I looked on the phone and there were a few caches I could find to make it to 200 total. Now it is dark and rather chilly and the guys both agreed as they know I enjoy caching so much. Sean hasn’t been on many finds, but he has the app on his phone too! The first place we looked was in a housing development with large homes. It was in a wooded area behind a playground. I sent Brian in with the phone, he had no luck and I then came in. It was just too dark to find. : (

So I remembered a lamp post one in a nearby parking lot that we had to avoid in the summer as wasps had taken over it and were all over the area. This time Brian looked and couldn’t find it. I got out and it was ‘under’ the base, very wet and almost too difficult to sign. I didn’t have my geo bag with me, or I would have replaced the log (I did the log replacement on 12-12-12 for a bison tube one. I had printed out an assortment of them). This was #199. We were in Delaware caching.

Ok…where is #200? There was yet another lamp post one not too far away. Brian missed the turn, we went and looked around the Christmas stuff at Kmart-hardly any sales, so we came back to the cache area and drove around the different parking lots until we pin pointed the exact one. So I found a cute little cache box and took a pewter keychain that says ‘I love Dalmations’ which my brother happens to have! I left some coins and here I am posing under the lamp post!

Dec25

Merry Christmas 2012

Posted on Tuesday, December 25, 2012 by Dianne

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I hope everyone got to spend time with their family and loved ones this year.

Last night we headed to my mom and brother’s house. They outdid themselves with decorating. Don’s been wanting a lighted village display for a year and started collecting them, from yard sales and eBay. they are really hard to take a photo of without a tripod, but what a great job he did.

This is the seaport. The other one is across the room there. Then there were some on the bookcases and sofa table…and dining room!

Mom and some of her new white tree.

Silly dog Kelsey!

Sean’s girlfriend Mary and her daughter came over for a little bit. K. loved Kelsey and he was kissing her like crazy!

We decided to attend a midnight mass service at a Chadds Ford church. It was very nice, they had singing and a trumpet soloist, new to us. Think we’d go back!

Today we slept in, ate the hash brown casserole I made the day before. Made one for mom and Don too. As I was making these, I bit into a cookie and a tooth crown came off! I called the dentist right away and he couldn’t come into the office to glue it back in. I will probably go in on Wednesday, but the weather is suppose to be bad. My luck! Yes, I endured both Christmas eve and Christmas with this issue.

I made a nice brisket dinner with roasted veggies, mashed potatoes and sticky toffee cake. My mom and brother were suppose to come out and open their gifts and eat, but my brother wasn’t feeling well. He had made appetizers to dessert last night and also did last minute tidying up which wore him out and gave him a racing heart. Sean was going to see his girlfriend, who lives a few towns over, so he dropped off their dinners and gifts to them. Brian also took food over to his dad along with gifts.

I got to use the iPad app, Facetime to watch my younger brother and his family open their gifts and then Mom and Don later. That was neat!

I’m now relaxing, enjoying my tea in my blue glass mug (from Sean and a set of 6) and my new book from Brian called: Local Treasures: Geocaching across America. : )

Sean in front of our tree-only shot of our Christmas-just so busy!

Gifts from Sean. Love both!

My new book, Some sweet Pier One bird canvases. a Vera Bradley wallet and two sock monkeys.

Sean got his dad a new laptop! Bri is getting use to it and having a little trouble with it.

Dec10

Having fun with Instagram

Posted on Monday, December 10, 2012 by Dianne

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I am feeling better today. I’ll take more days like this! I have been using the heating pad off and on and I do believe it’s loosening up that sore, stiff muscle (or two). Brian suggested it. He saved me by buying yogurt as the medicine was going to give me issues and it helped too.

Sean helped me get some Christmas things from the basement and I did the front bay window and we strung lights outside. I took a few photos with the phone app ‘Instagram’ tonight. It’s like a Polaroid-you get a square photo and can use different effects.

This is part of my front window display. I have 3 sweet Christmas dolls. We put white lights under ‘snow’ and put the girls in a gold sleigh with Ernest Elf and Snowy owl. Yes, the owls are even dominate for Christmas as I got two of them for my birthday. I’m not finished all the way with the window. There are also shots of the mantel here.

You can’t see the one Richard Simmons doll.

I have some glass jars this year on the mantel. I need to get some candy for a few of them. The bright red lights are holly berries.

And a view from outside

Tomorrow Brian will take me to get my hair done as I am still a little nervous about using my right side to drive. I decided to skip the school too but the director said they are doing all Christmas activities on Wednesday. I may swing by there to wish them Merry Christmas. The Bible study will resume on January 9th.

Nov25

Get togethers

Posted on Sunday, November 25, 2012 by Dianne

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My friend Angela (who I met through a local pal on the internet about 13-14 yrs ago) was down in southern Chester County to go to….can you guess? Longwood Gardens! She arrived in the afternoon of Thanksgiving when I was a tad busy, but Brian and I were able to have dinner with Ang and her hubby Bob the next evening. We had a nice Italian dinner and they really enjoyed it as that’s the kind of food Bob likes the best. We exchanged birthday gifts. Angela made me from sweet items, a little book made with cardboard houses and she decorated each front differently. And she made some cute hanging decorations, one with a ‘D’. I’ll have to photograph them. I gave her one of the 4″ x 4″ collages of with an antique print of a lady and child and birds in a pretty frame.

Here we are after dinner

Brian has a little problem with the camera phone,

because with the same camera I got this shot last night:

Brian is standing there in the white and red hat looking like he is getting ready for Christmas!

A fella from my high school has a bonfire event at his house each year, but usually on Black Friday. He switched it to Saturday and boy did he have a crowd. There were people from many different years of high school, but I only knew about 8 people at the time we were there. That fire sure got hot. There were about 3-4 large tables of food-barbecued meats, chili and mac and cheese, desserts. I took a bean dip and finger foods not knowing what I brought would be such a small amount. Bill was so nice. He said they have a little cooking competition with the chili and when we left he hugged and kissed me, thanking us for coming. : ) I saw a few of the same ladies who were at the pumpkin carve a few weeks earlier.

We stopped by my mom’s house as she wanted me to get some birthday gifts. I had asked for sheets and she delivered. Also got a big red mercury glass owl and Brian had gotten me a smaller one. I see a Christmas vignette in the making. We had a good time, and Brian seemed to loosen up a bit at the bonfire. It’s been a rough year for him. My brother had decorated the front windows of my mom’s house with clear lights and mostly red decorations. Inside he had started to set up his lighted houses-a harbor scene-very nice!

Nov19

Mercury Retrograde Birthday

Posted on Monday, November 19, 2012 by Dianne

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Mercury’s retrograde periods can cause our plans to go awry. However, this is an excellent time to reflect on the past. Intuition is high during these periods, and coincidences can be extraordinary. (Or things just start ‘happening’ for no reason…..)

I was telling people on Facebook how my day has had it’s ups and down. A pal who is a psychic (it says spiritual as occupation) said it sounded like I was being affected by the Mercury retrograde which is occurring for the next several days.

I woke up not feeling well, so not sure if it was sinuses or a cold. I’ve been ‘deep’ cleaning a lot, so I’m thinking it’s the dust factor. I’m glad I digging deep, but it happens almost every time.

I had a few knocks on the door-good stuff was delivered!

First from my friend Angela from NY

So pretty and perfect for the autumn!

The Fed Ex came and these Peruvian Lilies were from my mom. I had sent her some and they lasted a long time.

Sean wanted to take me out to lunch and I had a Livingsocial.com voucher that would fit the bill. It was a British Tea Room over in Delaware.

We were a wee bit late and Sean was like deer in headlights. There were mostly women, but a few teenagers who ogled him like he was a teeny bopper singer. : )

We both had Christmas teas. I had like a coconut, vanilla and Sean had a chocolate mint.

I had to order the ‘High Tea’ as part of the voucher. I had an entire pot of tea plus this and a salad.

egg salad, chicken salad and cucumber tea sandwiches on the lower tier; Cherry scone and a sausage biscuit in the middle and dessert-mostly pumpkin enhanced. I shared many of these with Sean who had a salad, egg salad, pasta salad and fruit salad.

That cellphone would prove to be the first mercury retrograde of the day. More later.

He looks thrilled, doesn’t he?

Look, another guy Sean!

There were a few geocaches found. It’s fun with Sean. The first one was behind the shopping center where we had lunch. We went up a little hill near a ball field. There was a cement barrier. We saw it inside a log!

We got gas and there was one near the lamp post-ha ha.

We decided to go to Kmart. Brian needs new clothes now. I got him a shirt and jeans and a few other things. I had left my phone in the car to charge up and I went to look at it and it was completely dead. I can usually get it to start up again. We had saved our tea and Sean had gotten a drink from Subway (for his dinner as he has class) and I had to hold the now lukewarm tea. Brian called twice on Sean’s phone and the second time he threw it at me and the tea went all over the mat (my car). It had a lid on it too. So I drove home with my feet up. It only got wet around the edge of the rug.

We went out to dinner as I had gotten a birthday pack with assorted, mostly restaurant coupons, so I picked (www.birthdaypack.com) a place down in Hockessin, DE. I ordered a Denver steak, medium well and it came almost black on the outside and mostly red on the outside. I complained and I got my wine for free.

I came home and plugged my phone in and it started to reboot (I had even called T-Mobile and was told to get a new battery). I did order the battery anyway.

On top of all that I am just plain grouchy-I really tried not to be too.

I’m waiting for Sean to come home from class to have cake.

Got a call from my brother Ken and niece Tori, so that made me feel better.

It’s been an interesting day for sure!

Nov16

It’s been a long week

Posted on Friday, November 16, 2012 by Dianne

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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.