Category Archives: world events

Nov22

50 years gone by

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Being a little girl of just 4, I don’t remember too much about this day. I know my mom and grandmom were quiet and the black and white Zenith was on all day long for several days showing coverage that  3 and 4 year old children aren’t very interested in.

Several years later, in 5th grade, I would write a paper about President Kennedy, travel to Washington, DC and then see the Kennedy grave.

Signs pointing to the graves of the Kennedys and Unknown soldiers

Grave of President Kennedy

There were some things about the assassination that I didn’t know and am sorry I had to see…like that lost film footage of the actual fatal shot.

I also didn’t know that they took seats out of Air Force One so the President wouldn’t have to go in the cargo area. Also didn’t know that Johnson wouldn’t have the plane take off without being swore in as President first. Mrs. Kennedy sat with the coffin the entire way back to the nation’s capital.

Eternal flame on Kennedy's grave

When Brian and I were first married, we traveled up to New England on a car trip that took us a week. We saw the Kennedy compound from a far in Hyannisport, MA.

Kennedy Family compound

We also went to Newport, RI and decided to see Jackie’s home ‘Hammersmith’ and took a tour. It was where she and the President had their wedding reception in 1953.

Hammersmith Estate fall 1984

Back of Hammersmith with me

These are from 1984, so not the best quality (and a scan)

Brian is the same age as Caroline and my brother is the same age as John, so you see we grew up with them. When John got killed in 1999, it was like losing a brother.

Life goes on, a new generation of this family may or may not take the limelight. Senator Ted Kennedy was the last of his generation. He was popular and outspoken until the end of his life.

Just recently Caroline became Ambassador to China. This is very interesting. She’s written several books of different genres.

I just heard the pink suit that the First Lady wore on that terrible day won’t be seen by the public until the year 2103 as requested by the family. I don’t blame them.

Sep11

Solemn

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When you come here you are led through security and then it’s a bit of a walk to the memorials (we were here in Feb. 2012, but I am thinking it’s still the same). It is quite overwhelming. You of course remember that day in 2001 and look up to the sky, then at the two ‘holes’ in the ground that are now the memorials. Then you look at the other people and wonder are they just tourists or relatives? There are too many names to read. I don’t even think we went over to the other one. After 20 minutes, it was enough…you feel like it’s suppose to be here as a memorial, but you don’t really want to be there anymore-it’s too damn sad.

After this, we went to the museum/gift shop a bit away which was equally heartbreaking.

sweetgb

Hundreds of trees will be planted at the World Trade Center, bringing new life to the rebuilt site. Among the species of trees will be Sweet Gums, with leaves that change to colors of brilliant red & gold in autumn. These ornaments are molded from the leaf of a Sweet Gum tree, specifically selected from within a 500-mile radius of the World Trade Center site. The trees will serve as graceful and hopeful symbols of life and longevity.

At a little restaurant near ground zero, we saw this:

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The new building 1 World Trade Center is almost completed. A new awakening. Other buildings will follow.

1worldtc

Apr21

A week we all want to forget

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Well it certainly was a week from hell. We will never know what those two brothers were thinking up in Boston, but I will not give them more thought than they deserve. I know 4 innocent people are gone and almost 200 injured. When the younger one got captured, we had a storm going through, and then sat in the dark for 3 hours. That was really strange.

I was thinking just this past Wednesday how lucky I have been with not getting a cold for a few months. I was sitting in the car on the way to the preschool. A few nights before I had been in a crowded room with up to 30 people at one time. I watched the thermostat go from 67 to about 71! So on Thursday I woke up with my second really red left eye in a few weeks. Yesterday I went down and took my mom to a book sale, so I was around old books and pollen. Today I was walking around outside a little when the pollen count was 10.3 out of 12. I’m asking for trouble! I got it-post nasal drip, congestion and sneezing. Ugh.

We went to our second geocaching event in a year Thursday, a get-together in a Chinese restaurant.  We chatted with a few people, but you could tell which people knew each other better. We were given coords for new caches, but I didn’t have my device to plug them into it, and I don’t know how yet. We did go and find about 3 of them that were just in the area-easy ones!

So when I went to mom’s, we went up to my hometown and we ate lunch in a place called Sligo’s. There was some amazing Celtic stencil work in there, so I took some photos of it.

Sligos

Sligos2

Today we went to church and after we grabbed a few hoagies at Wawa, I asked if we could find a geocache down the road (Delaware). We were lead near a big sign and it was magnetic. Lo and behold it was yet another cool reflector cache stuck to one of the metal supports of the the sign! It looked rather new and it was!

Then we went to find one in a neighborhood park. At first we couldn’t find the entrance and we finally did! It was deserted, so we had the place to look for ourselves. We went right instead of going left and when we got close to ground zero, I saw a weird piece of wood and flipped it over and the box was attached via magnet! Under the wood and under the lid of the box! It hadn’t been found for 7 months. Here is a cool tree we saw near the cache:

MillCreektree

I made a nice pork loin dinner tonight. The guys were both working late. Hate eating along, but Brian got in after 7.

We have tickets to go to New York on Thursday to see the Rachael Ray show. I confirmed it-for the third time, but doubt we will go. They made it earlier to check in, so a friend who has seen it said to get there 2 hours before that! So we’d have to get up around 6 am, leave 8 or so, grab the 10 o’clock train and go stand and wait until 1:30 when they let us in the studio!  And you are not guaranteed to get in after all that! Sean and I went to see a Philly show, got there late, were last in line and made it to the second row and on tv a few times! We got to see Phillies pitcher Cliff Lee and comedian Kevin Hart. We have no idea who will be on RR.  Plus driving there (gas money to a train station in NJ) and the train round trip for two is $60. If we feel good, we may good. It’s really hard to get tickets to shows! I really miss NYC too.

Dec15

How can there be Christmas this year?

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With the events of the 14th, I just couldn’t turn on the tree or lights yesterday. It didn’t seem right that I was enjoying my Christmas tree and 20 little children weren’t enjoying their holiday excitement.   I don’t know how many more places will be rampaged by those who get their hands on guns.  The 2nd Amendment is about militia-time to get real with that.

This lovely young lady was protecting her students

CTVicki

guncontrol

On a personal level, I went out in the car on Tuesday and Wednesday-set me back a bit. I have been trying to do things which leads to more discomfort. Last night was really bad. I had been sitting on a cushion Brian’s dad sent over and when I got up, the pain was excruciating. I took a pain pill (I wasn’t given many, so watch how many I take) and it took 2.5 hours to kick in. I was feeling  blah all day and reviewed about taking Aleve with my hbp medicine and it’s not advised. All during the night, I made sure I stayed off my right side and iced it. Not good sleep, but less pain. It’s still hurting, so I have to figure out what to do. I’ll take it easy today, but our insurance isn’t paying for hardly anything! Says I have a ‘pre-existing condition’. Doesn’t seem fair that we are paying out of pocket every month and not getting help. I think the insurance kicks in after a year (May), but too bad if you have an issue before that.  My GP tried to get the insurance to pay for my September visit, but alas, got a bill in the mail yesterday.

 

Jul28

Looking for abandoned relatives and caches

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Friday seems to be our day to go out shopping and caching. A antique mall down in Newark, DE had a sale going on and since I haven’t been there for a few months, we headed on down. It’s near where we bought our Mariner and we kind of forgot where to go. Anyway, found some great old photos and a big bag of vintage greeting cards and some little figurines. I got between 20-40% off. My ‘prize’ was a trio of photos of a little girl (back in 1921) named Irene posing. She may be someone’s abandoned relative, but at least she has a name. I’ll share photos soon. I may redo the frame and matting and I will hang it up.

As for cache hunting…we (well me, but Bri too) wanted to find #50…and we did! It was a funny looking vial, I don’t even know what it’s for and don’t want to know.

The next one was near a mural in the town. I think it was on some traffic signal sign right where people were zooming by…passed that one, but the mural was cute. Didn’t take a photo, but will if I look again sometime. This was a noisy, going in circles kind of area. And it was hot, so not fun as it could be. I do like the town as it has some cute shops…will come back when it’s cooler.

I happen to see there was one right near a fountain at the University of Delaware, a very nice campus. We looked in the blazing sun again for a nano-those tiny ones, no luck.

Found the below in a cemetery. We were all sweaty after 10 minutes!

Bri’s getting good at spotting these little containers. Glad it was blue!

We did drive-thrus in few shopping centers on the way home. The one may have been in bushes, but again I looked, but didn’t dig deeper as there was a ton of traffic in that area. I lost the GPS at the other shopping center. These are some in shopping areas we go to once in a while. so we will look again. I am liking the big ammo boxes and down in Delaware we can find quite a few along the Delaware Geocaching Trail.

We stopped for a yummy cheese steak sandwich in a shop that was too warm. A few doors down was a cupcake place…yeah, I splurged ($2.25 each). I got one with Carole/Pea in mind as she’s at a tribute event for Elvis this weekend. I tried half-it’s a banana cupcake with peanut butter frosting and bacon. I thought it needed more of a contrast between sweet and savory. The other I bought was a Key lime with coconut cake-nice.

We watched the Olympics-nice opening across the pond in Great Britain. Some of those countries need to rethink how they dress their athletics. Many were comical to say the least.

We are planning a few activities-a ghost tour in Philly-but Brian and me. We are going the 15th of August, so pray it’s cooled off by 7 pm. They last about 1.5 hours.  This is a Livingsocial deal.

And we are thinking about the Beatlemania event that is held over Labor Day weekend that we went to last year in Maryland. Just one night and there are a few ticket deals online. We had fun last year and Sean said he’d buy his own admission too. Got to get that booked.

A photo from last year…

Jul22

Fluttering around the yard

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Not only are these gorgeous yellow Swallowtails fluttering here and there, Brian and I were doing some much needed yard work over the weekend.

Saturday we were pulling weeds out of flowerbeds and Brian did the sidewalk. I thought it would be wise to get the weedwacker out on Sunday, so I fished around the shed and found it plus the extension cord. I started and Brian finished, though he ran out of cord. Big improvement!

It was one of the most pleasant days we had in a long time. I even got the iPad to work sitting outside so I watched an episode of  Web Therapy with Lisa Kudrow (remember Friends’ Phoebe?) She is really good with her prim and proper voice, but ‘her web practice’  looks like she has ulterior motive like maybe fooling around with her web patients!

With the events of Friday-the shootings in Aurora, CO…we’ve been walking around here with a sick feeling in our stomachs. An artist connection on Face Book said an old friend of hers lost her granddaughter Veronica, age 6. This is a nightmare. The public shouldn’t get their hands on assault weapons capable of firing round after round of bullets. Wasn’t it enough last year in Arizona to start regulating weapons like this? Sean was at a midnight screening of  Batman in Delaware, but who is to say why couldn’t that have happened in any theater?

 

Aug26

Getting prepared

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This is a scary, bustling time here.  Definitely the calm before the storm. Today I was moving plants and stacking chairs up. I filled both watering cans, a metal bucket and the garden cart with water. When you have a well, when the power goes out, so does the ability to flush a toilet. We learned the hard way back in 1998 when we didn’t have power for 3-4 days. Brian was getting water from the stream out back to use. Not a pleasant experience. I am making ice, but bought a bag for the big cooler. I did get to the store. We have several groceries stores within a 5 mile radius, so I chose one outside of Kennett and it wasn’t bad at all. It’s funny what people buy when they think they will be stuck inside. Other than water, lots of canned nuts were gone. Not a lot of meat was purchased. Like me, they are worried about wasting money on food that may spoil. I bought tuna, soup, crackers, pudding, celery, and other things that may be easy to eat. I figure we could do soup on the grill. I’ll have to be really hungry to eat it that way though. ;  )    I cooked half a dozen hard-boiled eggs and also some bacon. I boiled up some pasta. I think we will be okay, much more prepared than all those years ago. We have lots of bottled drinking water. I’m more worried about my two large windows. I told Brian we need to make sure there isn’t any metal that will be flying around the yard. Of course another thing is 6-10 inches of expected rain that may have no where to go. We just had a lot of rain yesterday. Last year we had an issue with water pouring out of where the hole in the wall is for the well, not fun. I was thinking if we used the big funnel (we have) at the end of a hose and had the other end in the big sink in the basement, that may work or help. We have a few things to figure out, but I am worried about all the stuff in that basement. I’ve been wanting help to clean it out for years, we do a piddly clean up and stop. I do have a terrible dust allergy and I got pneumonia after putting Christmas stuff away last year. Not sure if that’s a connection, but it could be. It’s been smelling musty, so I put on the portable fan and spray Lysol aroun.  If you don’t hear from me for a while, you know we lost power. I will try to ‘tweet’ until the phone battery goes (I’d have to charge it up again in the car) which shows up in the left side bar. Please keep us in your thoughts and prayers as I will you who may be affected by this monster storm.