Category Archives: celebs

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.

Aug10

Seeing The First Lady of the USA!

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What an exciting day we had up in Montgomery County, PA yesterday! I got an email, said to pick up the tickets and come on up to see First Lady Michelle Obama. Brian literally held the camera over the heads of other people (zoom lens). We arrived late, got our purses searched and walked through a metal detector. We had to stand almost an hour to wait for Mrs. Obama. The school (Upper Dublin high school, about an hour from here) only had the one side of bleachers open. Thank goodness my mom had a fold up chair, but that little lady had to walk from a field.

Not too bad right? We only got a few clear ones. We took my almost 82 yr old mom along as none of us has ever seen a First Lady before…just their inaugural gowns in the American History museum. Sean has seen both Barack Obama at a Penn State rally and Bill Clinton.

The First Lady is a very thoughtful, intelligent speaker. People tend to forget that both she and her husband come from humble backgrounds. Barack was raised by a single mother and his grandparents (I was raised by my mom and grandmom). I know she probably repeats this speech a lot, but it was interesting to the 1,800 people there.  We all had to go pick up the tickets to be able to go in.

The school band

The people on the bleachers

Send some good vibes as the hubby got a phone call yesterday while we were out for a job interview!

Jul31

Not finding caches but spotting Charlie

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This was indeed a weird day of caching for us. We headed out about 2:15 or so and decided to stop off at an unplanned cache retrieval. I don’t like to do that as I then miss hints. Poor Bri is driving back and worth across a busy road. Finally I see the description where it said ‘permission by chiropractor’-so I then went around the back, spread some branches and it was in the nook of a tree. Whew!

Then our trip kind of went downhill. We did find the Stroud Preserve

and it was pretty, but a bit on the warm side and in the middle of nowhere. I think it was 1/2 mile hike in-all flat,but in the sun.  It did get a bit steep in one spot. We saw this:

Well we were so close, but no cigar. We went near a  tiny deck and there was mucky water to cross-but no thanks. We didn’t know where to go then. We saw a strange box which Brian checked out and he said it was an open container. We were looking for a ammo…

Near the parking lot…I was so ready to get in the a/c

So after that we headed down a few roads and ended up in another wooded area near where my cousins lived at one time. We got out and it was at 125m. We walked to about 30m and again didn’t see the ammo box. The GPS was so jumpy.  We spent a great deal of time at both areas and walked about 1.5 miles today.

We went to a local shopping center to look for yet another cache-the CO is one of those kind will set up a decoy. We looked around a guardrail, which happened to also have bushes nearby and gave up.

There’s a nice pizza place in the shopping center called Brother’s. I was a bit bummed by then. I was happy to get the exercise, but it’s discouraging as I had some new swag to add the those big containers. : (

We got to near the door and a young fellow came out-and before he stepped off the sidewalk I said to him, ‘are you on that tv show?’ I mean he could have been anyone…and he said ‘yes’! I was a bit dumbfounded and said ‘oh so nice to see you’ or something like that and he said ‘thanks’. I’m talking about West Chester, PA native Charlie McDermott who is on the popular (and one of my mom’s favorite shows) ‘The Middle’.

Recognize Axil Heck?

Seeing him boosted my spirits, so thanks for wanting Brother’s pizza tonight, Charlie. : )

After dinner we stopped at a park near where Sean goes to grad school. We headed toward a gazebo and we never had luck with them. Then we looked under it where a stream was-nope. I suggested we look ‘on the other side’ and bingo, found it under a stump. Yes! I left some cute swag-an Olympic #1 winner medal and a bracelet.

I reallly wanted to grab a virtual in front of our county courthouse. We got out and parked, walked across the street and found the statue ‘Glory’ and also who sculpted it. I had to send that info to the CO.

I noticed there was an interesting one a few blocks away. It was near a train station. The cache was a huge metal box and from the photos, there were two caches inside. I was excited. We had to put a combo in the two locks-messed the one up (beginning of north for the one and ‘end’ of west for the other-we were also putting in the beginning of the west). People were saying it’s a bugger to get open. It was getting dark, so we’ll bring a screwdriver (!) next time. It hadn’t been open since the end of May. Can’t wait to go back, but I hope the CO looses the lid a bit.

That was our adventure for the day. Hope to go to my mom’s one of these days. : )

Jul14

Lights and Music pt 2

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I got my mom on Wednesday and wanted to treat her to dinner at Texas Roadhouse. I’ve been to the one in Lancaster and found some of the sides a bit salty. This one is halfway between mom and me, so we stopped. Lucky for us we got  the ‘early bird’ special for $7.99 each. We got a 6 oz piece of sirloin, two sides and roll for that. We also got onions and mushrooms-$2 more (each). Very good steak. We like deals like that. I think it’s Monday-Wednesday, but double check. And were the sides salty-the green beans had ham in them and they certainly were.

Yesterday I took mom down to the Habitat resale store and she enjoyed looking at the books for 10 cents each or 10 for $1.00. I only bought 3 books, a stainless steel serving bowl and a Birthday bear. I will buy a bear once in a while if it’s really cute-and it was $1.

We went over to Longwood Gardens around 6:15 or so and Brian came too. We got mom a chair and we headed over to the little cafe. She couldn’t decide what she wanted. I knew I wanted the cream of mushroom soup and I got some cold lo mein which I didn’t care for.  Bri got half a large ham and cheese and mom finally got mac and cheese and a hot dog (from the kid’s menu). I didn’t know she had eaten a Hershey bar until I found the paper left on the sofa! She had eaten it beforehand and I think it killed her already weak appetite.  We all nibbled a chocolate pecan tart.

We then went over to the main Conservatory and saw this:

Well that’s the lovely Conservatory

Part of the Bruce Monro light show exhibit…I’ll have to come back to see the Conservatory when it’s darker outside

They like Proven Winners plants here-that’s a big thumbs up!

The lake lights were starting to look pretty-we saw them a few days ago when it was pitch dark, so neat.

The Italian Water Gardens looked neat at night-sat this on a wall.

They also had CDs made in water lily shapes

I sat this on the side of a life preserver case as the shutter was getting so slow

It was a hike to ‘The Meadows’ to see this display:

These are plastic water bottles!

The last part was really hard to photograph without a tripod-it was the woods to a tree house dotted with lights similar to the lake lights. Someone said it looked like ‘The Wizard of Oz’

I think my mom enjoyed being pushed around! It was about a 2 mile walk.

Brian and I took mom home and we headed to a few geocaches on the 13th. This was after hitting Chick-fil-a. We didn’t know it was free sandwich day if you wore a cow costume! So… I knew where one was as a fellow cacher told me. We got to it and it was basically out in the open. The other one, which we tried to find a few months ago was right were I thought it was. We then went to a ‘new’ one and that was so neat! We were near trash bins-ugh!! A cache would never be on one of them. There was a fence there and I leaned over and saw a wooden thing in the extreme corner. I touched it and it moved-it was so cool-

I was so pleased with myself!

We skipped dinner and headed to the Maria Muldaur concert up in Kennett Square. She is a spunky, sassy and bluesy 68 yr old now. I don’t think she enjoys singing ‘Midnight at the Oasis’ that much, though I think it was her biggest hit. Afterwards she went to a counter to sign her CDs and didn’t act too thrilled with having to do so. I have seen a few other artists smile and thank people-not her. I didn’t buy one. We went for some pizza and had the place to ourselves.

We had a busy week! More heat expected too. My flowers are just shriveling up. : (

Jul11

Magical night of music and lights

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Our concert ‘finally’ came up. Don’t think we weren’t worried about it being a warm night, but it turned out fairly nice with lower humidity. Wow, it was pretty cool to see an actual movie star like Kevin Bacon, and he’s quite a musician. He came out playing the bongos, but switched to guitar and also harmonica. His brother Michael (age 63) not only plays the guitar, but he played the Cello in a few songs-what a treat.

Sean’s Instagram-really good! We were about 9 rows back, but you can see the view I had of the hugging couple. I also had a 40-something Madonna like lady who couldn’t sit still and had gotten up right at this moment.

The show was about 75 minutes (one encore-Bob Dylan’s ‘I Shall Be Released’).

This was a song about being a mummer’s son-called New Year’s Day. It’s a Philly thing, but what happens is the mummer’s who are in the New Year’s Day Parade, go around and recite the part of this song…

After the show was over, we went to the left through the gardens instead of to the right near where the exit was. Well little did I know, we were ‘allowed’ to go see the Bruce Munro light display down by the lake! It was so magical and like a fairyland. I am taking my mom to see the rest of it on Thursday night.

This was one of the teaser displays out front.

We got some ice cream on the way home, so it was a nice evening for the three of us!

Apr18

New Year’s Eve will never be the same

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I was saddened to read that legendary tv host and producer Dick Clark passed away today from a heart attack at age 82. He had suffered a stroke several years ago and had made a few appearance on the Rockin’ New Year’s Eve show. He looked good this past January, though of course he never regained that wonderful voice of his.

So this is what he looked like when he lived in suburban Philadelphia back in the 1950s:

He just happened to live in the same apartment complex that Ed McMahon did. Less than thirty years later, I was to move in the Drexelbrook Apts with Brian as our first home as newlyweds. I thought it was pretty neat that they lived there during their Philly connections.

Wiki’s Drexel Hill page: Television personality Dick Clark resided here from 1954 to 1956 at the Drexelbrook Apartment complex before moving to Wallingford, Pennsylvania (which is close to where I grew up)

We lived on the second floor (they all looked pretty much like this-we had a two bedroom one) which got harder for me as I got more pregnant with Sean. We moved from here to this house about 6 weeks before Sean came along. We had noisy neighbors below us. The nice thing was the sidewalks that wound all around that I used for exercise.

Historic marker in Philly:

The last time for Dick:

Mar19

Sparked a memory

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What I really love about the iPad more than the games, are the info apps with articles from topics of your choosing. The app ‘Zite’ is one I enjoy reading. I have the ‘Film and TV’ section and there were candid photos of old time Hollywood celebrities and their directors. I guess before I was even 10, I thought the movies showed us how people really lived, like in ‘There’s No Business Like Show Business’-singing and dancing their way through life and everything was peachy keen in the end. And if the movie was in black and white, it had to be real, right? (Thinking home movies were mostly b&w). I mentioned There’s ‘No Business…’ as one summer way before VCRs, Blue ray and on-demand, we had to watch tv and watch the movie when it came on. That movie was shown once a day at say 1 pm for at least a week. My brother Don must have watched it almost every day. It was either too hot or rainy and I remember Ethel Merman singing her heart out.

Anyway, seeing all the old photos like this also sparked another memory for me (Here’s the site with more photos):

They say it’s very unusual to see Joan and Bette smiling so broadly, especially in a movie where Bette is playing a kook.

The game we played constantly off and on for many months called ‘Movie Moguls’

This is not our game, it may be long gone. You were to collect the stars from the different movies on the board-it was like Monopoly. I remember playing it at night down in Wildwood, NJ when my mom and grandmom went to play bingo!  My mom always enjoyed movies and celebrities, so I guess it rubbed off on us. We were probably 13 and 14 when we enjoyed this game.

It’s based on 20 movie productions. Players take turns moving around the board and have the option to buy various productions of older movies like Casablanca, High Noon, or A Streetcar Named Desire. There are title cards to represent ownership, with a list of three actors on them. If someone lands on your production they pay “studio fees”. The amount is dependant on the number of stars you’ve collected and any awards you’ve collected.

There are several ways to acquire stars. The cards are nice with b&w photos of actors such as Humphrey Bogart, Marilyn Monroe, and 58 others. Once you’ve completed the production, you are eligible to receive rewards and there are several ways to get those. There are also Production & Publicity cards much like chance and community chest in Monopoly. Bankruptcies occur if you have to pay more than you have. The short games last about an hour and there are three variations.

Regular game is two to three hours. Reviewed by Rex Reed for a finishing touch.

The above description is from Gameboardgeek.com found at the Monopoly link above.