Category Archives: pals

Aug15

Oh what a night!

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Totally messed up a good photo, originally uploaded by DianthusMoon.

Few legends are born that you get to see in person. Sir Paul McCartney was part of a group that changed music on so many levels. He was part of a song writing duo that produced hit after hit. They arrived on the scene just when we needed them. I was 4 going on 5 in 1964 when the band played Shea Stadium in New York. Within a year or so, my older brother was playing their hits. When I turned 13, I absolutely loved the lp ‘Band on the Run’ and Paul! So imagine me at 50 and my husband a few years older getting to see a legend this close?
I was misty-eyed when he sang ‘Jet’-why this song, it was near the beginning of the concert. Sir Paul is a young 68 and his fellow guitarists are 55 and 51!
Paul and guitar band mates

I thought they were in their 30s they were rocking so well! Hearing so many hits by both The Beatles and Wings (and solo I guess) was a dream come true.
So this concert was definitely meant for us to attend. The place was packed-thousands of people-and I look to my left in a section over, and there is my friend and maid of honor standing there! I hadn’t seen her in years, though we talked on the phone a few months ago. And she isn’t a computer person, so she didn’t know we were going to the concert. During a break in the second encore (when Sir Paul signed a lady’s back as she was a breast cancer survivor and you know his first wife Linda wasn’t) we went over to see my friend Linda. She was so surprised! We took this photo before we went to see her as I was afraid I’d miss a chance to talk with her.
I spotted my friend from college in the crowd!

The couple next to her had left, so we stood next to her for the remainder of the show and she got a few hugs and we got to see the big screen we couldn’t see where we were sitting. I took some videos and spliced them together and will burn a copy for Linda and share here too.
The most exciting part of the concert-the piro-techs for the song ‘Live and Let Die’. If you know the song, there is a very loud part-fire shot out of the front of the stage in about 4 cyclinders! It was awesome! You could feel the heat from our seats! And the fire came out twice.
He did lots of tributes-to his first wife Linda, John Lennon and George Harrison-he played a ukelele for George-Something in the Way She Moves.
The concert lasted almost 3 hours! No intermisson! Over 25 songs and two encores!!! I thank Sir Paul for waving the Pennsylvania flag, but not for people handing out brochures about how badly chickens are treated before the show-ugh.
We had to wait a bit to get out of the parking lot, but when we did, we saw a white stretch limo-wonder who was in it?
Great photo from Brian
We were a bit ‘behind’ the scenes, but I’d rather be 75 feet away to grab a photo like this then way in the back of the place where they had to look at the big screen. We couldn’t see the big screen where we were, just a few smaller ones, but who wanted to look at them anyway?
Bri found this video that showed our section of the audience. We are marked with an orange arrow (we are both in black t-shirts) and my friend was behind the guy in the blue shirt a little over on the right. Cool!
Our point of view of the concert!

Jun23

Dianne and Jennifer went cross stitch shopping

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I finally meet Jennifer who is a Pennsylvania girl down in Ocean City, MD. The 6 of us (Brian, Sean, her husband and 8 month old son) had a nice lunch at an Irish pub place. Her little boy is so adorable and laid back and a total pleasure to spend time with as he laughs, makes fun vocalizations and smiles up a storm!
After lunch, Bri and Sean went to the beach and Jenn and family went 3 blocks up to the cross stitch shop Salty Yarns. We bought some charts and forgot about the fabric room! By time we looked in there, we were tuckered out from chart shopping. It was a great visit.
We had a pretty good time during the day in Ocean City, MD, but the nights were rough as the beds were so hard and flat. It was a great room we got for a great price right on the beach too. Sean had his own room and tv. I have some arthritis in my right shoulder blade area and by the second night, I had to pull out the sofa bed and try to catch a few winks. I even dozed on the way home and I never do that.
Off to bed. I’ll upload my photos to Flickr tomorrow.

Dianne sticking toes in ocean at night
Crossing something off the bucket list, sticking my toes in the Atlantic ocean at night!

Mar1

This thing called blogging

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I have noticed that many of the people in my blogroll aren’t keeping up with their blogs anymore. I think I know the issue-many are also my Facebook friends and I think Facebook is their main way of communicating now. I would say it’s probably easier for a few pals that are new moms/moms to pop on Facebook and show photos of their adorable children. Nothing is wrong with that. I just miss their blog posts. I do visit about 3 friends faithfully every day and only one doesn’t have a FB acct. I guess it’s what floats your boat. I’m finding it hard to know what to post about myself-one reason it’s the dead of winter, I’m not doing a lot of crafting and I’m not taking a heck of a lot of photos. If by a slim chance I get to go to the Philly Flower show this week, I will indeed post more snapshots. Thank goodness the Longwood orchid show is at the end of the month.
I’m getting my hair fixed in a couple of days-it so needs it-that spruced up feeling helps the winter blahs. And hopefully, if all is well, I’ll see a few of my FB/PHS gal pals for lunch on Saturday. Ah girl talk-I so need that too!

Feb15

Congrats to Julia!!!

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I just did a random drawing using the online random generator and Julia from my blog roll (My Adventures and Antics-a great blog too)won the One World, One Heart contest! She was #70 out of 314 comments. Julia, please contact me by the end of the day. If by chance she passes on this (I hope not), I will do another drawing. Since I know Julia has 5 children under the age of 12 (I think that is correct), I may have to put something in the box for the two little boys. ; )

Off to the dentist in a few hours to get a few chipped teeth fixed-lucky me!
And-if my chance I win anything-you can leave a comment here-crossing fingers!

Feb1

Grammys 2010

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I was watching this year’s music awards and enjoyed many of the performances like the duo between Sir Elton John and Lady Gaga; Greenday and other singers doing ’21 Gun’ and Pink doing her ‘swinger and singer’ act on a twirling silk scarf that went toward the ceiling and then sprayed water on her. I had to fish around for my 3D glasses (saved from a game Sean had) but didn’t get to see much of the Michael Jackson tribute. His eldest two children Prince and Paris very eloquently accepted the award in his name.
I was very sad to learn that Kenny Rankin, one of my favorite singers had passed away last June at the age of 69 from lung cancer. His voice fit into so many genres-pop, jazz, folk. I had many of his records.

This is how I remember him-with his big mustache.
Also Dan Seals passed last year. Remember England Dan and John Ford Coley? He’s also Jim Seals younger brother. Their big hit was ‘I Really want to See You Tonight’.
Three singers in the last 12 yrs I have admired have passed: John Denver, Dan Fogelberg and now Kenny. I got to see John and Dan in concert. Kenny and Dan had cancer, John died in a solo plane accident.
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Sean is getting use to Wally World. It’s hard being on his feet a lot, but he seems to work two days and is off two. They have him working 30 odd hours, is that part time? If he is called by the Census bureau to work, he’d have to work something out with Wally World as it’s just for a few months.
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I am so dry today and it lead to a coughing attack. My sinuses started draining and it was hairy for a few minutes. I swear I have food allergies too. We had some of that rice (Dirty Rice) that you just heat up in it’s own package. I’m wondering what was in that too. Sometimes it’s a pain to cook everything from scratch, but if something is loaded with MSG, it’s going to bother me.
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I’m amazed by all the comments for my One World, One Heart entry! Wow!! Thanks everyone for visiting. I still need to visit lots of the other blogs myself, but I get eye strain so easily. I’ll do my best.
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Congrats to my friend Rachel and her hubby Mike on the arrival of their son Connor last night, just before 11 pm. He came on his due date and is home already. Rachel’s blog is Willing Hands on my blog roll. She has photos of his nursery. I have some goodies to mail off to her (she only lives in Abington, PA and I have met her once). Better get busy!

Jan14

I can see clearly…

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…now that my eyes are undilated! It took a good 5+ hours for my ‘cat in the dark’ pupils to go back to normal. But I am happy to report that the new eye doctor didn’t think I needed new specs. She even had the stylus right at that office to measure the thickness of my corneas again. If you recall I had to go to another office for that with the specialist doc. The corneas are still thick which makes the pressure in my eyes seems higher than it is. The doctor was probably a bit younger than me, but I enjoyed chatting with her. I asked her about my mom and she says mom’s left eye will probably ‘take over’ for the right, but of course with driving, there is going to be something missing.
Brian and I went out to dinner tonight to Apple*bees. It was good, not as good as a few weeks ago and rather noisy. I just needed a break. All the lights on the way there were like stars from the dilation. Ugh. Have a little eyestrain right now.
Tomorrow Sean takes the test for the census job. He could probably work something out between doing that and working at Wally*World since it’s only PT.
I saw an article in Woman’s*World about making extra money and I followed a link to Cha*Cha.com to be like a human search engine. People call or text in a question (or comment) and I’d be like the middle woman and screen the questions to see if they can be answered or passed on to the specialist (they have a previously asked questions data base and a section for jokes,etc). I viewed the training videos and took some quizzes (call me ‘Ms. 80%’). I just need to take the readiness test. You get one shot and that’s it. I didn’t feel like doing it last night (info overload) or today. I’d like to review some of the videos again since I was asking myself questions in my head and couldn’t figure out what to do-not good. It’s one of those places where you have to just use the site and get comfortable with it. The pay doesn’t look that great, but it does looks like it would be fun to see what kind of questions people ask. Of course they want to know crude things and they say you have to be discreet about what is moral and all. There are a few other places I will look at too. I needed a change, this may be it.
And how could I forget this awesome news-my friend Lorin is treating me to a ticket to see James Taylor and Carole King in June! She asked if I wanted to go! Of course yours truly fretted about it as Lorin can’t drive at night and I’ve never driven to the Wachovia*Center outside of Philly. Also, Lorin lives a distance from me. I wrote her a note of concern and she said her son would drive us! Woo! I said I could be waiting like 20 minutes from the center (that’s about how far a certain mall is). We’ll work it out. This will be the 5th time I will see JT (1979, 1982, 1997 and 2006). We are planning on making t-shirts (well she is as she’s an artist) and trying our darnedest to meet him! : ) What a treat it will be.

Nov27

Good stuff

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Thanksgiving was mostly pleasant. Sean and I arrived at my brother’s house around 2:15 so I could get our turkey cooked. Then I helped out when Colleen needed me, and almost fell asleep!
Brian came down later as he was going to bring dinner over to his dad who refused to come to over even though he would have been driven back and forth to the my brother’s house.
My middle brother, who is moving in with mom is feeling the pressure of packing and trying to get a room painted. Sean offered his assistance to move boxes and he said ‘no’. I think in the next week he’ll need Sean more.
My brother and his family presented Don and me with a birthday cake (Don’s is the 28th and he’s a year younger than me) which was nice.
The cheesecake was popular and I believe there is only a sliver left.
Today I got a much needed smile maker.
Thanks to Carole over at ‘Pea’s Corner’ for this delightful framed snowman print; and some heavenly bath powder and body lotion.

Here is a photo of my brother trying to figure out what his gift from me was:

Take a guess and I’ll tell you tomorrow! (You can click on this and make it bigger)
Here is my sweet niece and me. I gave her the outfit she had last Christmas. Her mom gave her some sweet Shirley Temple curls. I’m wearing the earrings that Brian gave me for my birthday.

Here’s a photo I had my nephew take-not bad for the first time using a fancy camera. This was taken for Jennifer F., but I’m mailing a snail mail form to you!

And finally, I was making ornaments for a swap and I think I’ll make some for gifts as they were challenging and fun to do-plus I have the template now!

By the way, the serviceman never came to fix my oven today. No courtesy call to say where he was. Brian called them three times! They rescheduled for Monday. If one hour goes by without a ‘I’m on my way’ call, I’m calling Maytag up as they send these idiots out. I didn’t go shopping, too tired. Sean did go out and said Wally World was crazy. We aren’t giving each other too many gifts, just can’t afford it. We got an almost $300 plumber’s bill and we are disputing a $50 charge for ‘misc’ as they had to use a big roto-rooter. Come on, isn’t that part of the $160 service fee? They at least came right away on a Sunday.
Have a great weekend!

Oct23

Days fly by

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I don’t want to lose interest in my blog and wanted to stop by and touch base. Not too much new. Went to the doctor for an annual yesterday and was able to schedule the mamm and ultrasound for next Tuesday. I may be getting a procedure to make my life easier. I’ve been going to this particular office for at least 6 years and it was the first time I saw the head doctor, a nice man from Jamaica. I had to tell him my gr, gr grandfather was a French doctor in Jamaica (one of the first). If you saw my old photos last week, I’m talking about gr grandmom’s dad.

Today I am going to a bookstore with a coffee shop area to meet a lady I went to high school with to talk about possibly writing a children’s book together. She is a published author. We found each other on Face*book and since I mentioned one of my dreams would be to write a children’s book, she said we have to get together to brainstorm. I have a few ideas. I rather not discuss them here, but Lorin told me what the publishers are looking for and I live in an area where there is a large ethnic population of a certain group of people. Lorin has also found a few leads for Sean as she helps her students locate jobs. Needless to say, I’m a bit is shock and of course doubting myself about coming up with a good idea. Lorin is also an artist and could illustrate the book.

We have been following our Phillies and will cheer them on in the World Series for the second year in a row. A few nights ago, Sean and I were watching a game on pins and needles when Jimmy Rollins hit a 100 m.ph. ball in a gap to help the team win the game, we were jumping up and down. It’s a talented bunch and we feel they are going to win again for Harry*Kalas, one of the team’s announcers, who passed away this year.

Other than that, I’m working on getting my clothes sorted. I have a large space*bag of slacks to go through in the living room and found a few bins of clothes I haven’t looked at for a few years.

Have a great weekend, and I promise not to be a stranger on my own blog!

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This is a wooden tag that I made using my gr. grandfather’s photo.

Oct10

Photo Hunt-Sports

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Mall sports bar, originally uploaded by DianthusMoon.

This is a SPORTS bar and restaurant at the mall in Atlantic City, NJ. My guys almost lost their eyes when they saw all the tvs that were all tuned in to some kind of sports. My mom and I did tolerate it for the short time we were there although it was very loud. The big screen did have a ball game on. The bar was nicely lit too. Unfortunately this mall is getting known for people falling off their very steep escalators with very bad consequences. It’s happened twice in a year now.

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If you happen to like to cross stitch and are looking for new stash, my friend Barbara is selling off some of hers here. Mosey on over if you please. I think I’ll put up a few of mine too-I actually have more than a few, so watch here.