Sep27

Photo Hunt-View

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Scenery from the top of the lighthouse, originally uploaded by DianthusMoon.

New Jersey’s tallest lighthouse awaits you at Pacific and Rhode Island Avenues in Atlantic City (walking distance from Showboat Casino). (Third tallest in the states).

Take an amazing journey into time and above it all as you ascend the 228 steps of the Absecon Lighthouse, one of the oldest lighthouses in the country. You’ll see breathtaking views of the Atlantic City skyline and up top you’ll come face-to-face with the original first-order Fresnel Lens, first lit in 1857.

My son and I climbed those blasted steps. We stood on the outside under the light and I got this shot. I was proud of myself for doing this being that I’m 48 and it was a ton of stress on my legs and knees.

That’s Brigatine you are seeing across the inlet there.

Sep25

Show and Tell #11

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Stitching girl, originally uploaded by DianthusMoon.

This is one of the several porcelain dolls I have around my home. I got her at least 10+ years ago and she sits on top of my hunter green roll top desk in my living room (I forget her name). She is a stitching girl (opps-where is her needle!) She came with a little stitched piece that had a few letters of the alphabet stitched in it. I found the little basket of flowers I did several years ago and swapped it with the piece it came with.

Since I love cross stitching, she is very dear to me. She has gorgeous auburn ringlets. I love the little pinafore she is wearing too.

Behind her is one of our ‘Tree of Life’ prints. We have one for Brian’s birthday month-March and mine-November. We’ve had them for over 24 yrs.

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My mom is still here. She is staying in Sean’s room. Yesterday really wore her out and she napped for 2 hours during the afternoon. She’s not use to all the fresh air and 2 hours of walking. I made a pot roast for dinner and even roasted a butternut squash in a dish in oven along with the meat. I have her eating more. I know if I lived closer she would weigh about 20 more pounds. Brother #2 is suppose come out and get her on Saturday. He hasn’t been here in many years.

I’m proud of Sean for getting help writing summaries for very dry reading material. He usually sends me stuff to proof, but since it was over my head a lot, he got help on campus. He sent me his latest paper and it was very good, I didn’t touch it. Yes!

Sep24

Early Autumn Day

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Mom and I ventured over to Longwood Gardens a few hours before it closed. That was just enough time for me to take 99 photos! Mom did really well walking around, I think better than me as I am knee to toe Icy Hot right now. We finished the day with a Philly cheesesteak. Here’s the link to the slideshow if you are interested. : ) I just noticed how badly the tops of a few of these need cropping. Geez.

Mom poses near the walk of flowers. It was so nice, around 72 and sunny.

Ornamental orange peppers and bronze-orange mums

Lots of real pumpkins and gourds of every shape and variety. These are grown here. It really wasn’t as dark as it looks.

We happen to peek in a room in the conservatory and there was a gorgeous display of handblown  pumpkins, gourds, acorns, etc from a couple in the San Francisco bay area:

This was the front of a huge cornucopia.

We almost had the entire place by ourselves. Pretty neat.

Sep23

Media shots

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The photos are some scenes from my hometown. This is the Trader Joe’s I go to when visiting mom and is located in the old Infantry building. I have to say it’s pretty neat.

Trader Joe’s in the 11th Infantry Building, Media PA, originally uploaded by garyhymes.

I brought my mom home to stay here for a few days. She really loved her gifts from us and the canvas I made for her. She cried when she saw Sean’s portrait. Though we both had tummy issues, we did go out to dinner to The Olive Garden and then looked around a Border’s and then Michael’s craft store. I thought I was getting Sean a neat book on the earth ( his birthday is next) and when we got home, mom saw he had it on his bookshelf! Good eyes there mom. I’ll have to return it. We also visited my brother’s house and I showed my niece my Flickr photos on their computer, which she enjoyed.

Everybody’s Hometown, originally uploaded by hhsc/Greg.
They leave the lights up all year round-I believe they were up the last time I looked.
Sep23

Mom’s birthday gift-Portrait of a Lady

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Mom’s birthday gift-Portrait of a Lady, originally uploaded by DianthusMoon.

To my mom Jeanne, this is your birthday card on an 18 x 20 recycled canvas!
I hope you see the special meaning in this collage, from the choice of flowers to the various images. It wasn’t that easy, but it also helped get my mind off my back.
Thanks for teaching me about music and creativity, things that have been a flagstone in my existence.
I pray for your eye to improve so you can see the beautiful colors of the world. I know you feel like the weight of the world is on your little shoulders, but it really isn’t when you have me.
Lots of love,
Dianne

Sep22

High Def Heaven-finally

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After waiting 3 times, 4 turned out to be the charm, though the tech showed up over an hour late. He was just a young guy, one you’d be a bit afraid to let in your house as he wasn’t dressed in a uniform (at least a shirt or hat), from the company. It’s like night and day with how clear the picture is. All the major channels are high def (if they said on ‘The Insider’ that their Emmy coverage was HD once, they said it 50 times-geez!) Since we have to keep this system for 2 yrs, we went ahead and added 50 more channels for only $10 more a month. Bri says he doesn’t watch much tv, but he is the king of channel surfing. Not too many channels are HD yet, but just wait.

I enjoyed all the glitz of the first hour of ‘Dancing with the Stars’ and then switched over to ‘Heroes’. It’s been forever since that’s been on. Some of it was rather nasty in HD, but I like the show, what can I say.
When the news came on, one of the top stories was this:

MEDIA Pa – Sarah Palin threatened to steal the show from running mate John McCain as she warmed up the crowd at their joint appearance at a rally on Monday in Pennsylvania.

“Sarah, Sarah, Sarah,” chanted the crowd as the Republican vice presidential candidate stepped on stage in the town of Media.

“I see a lot of hockey moms out there for McCain,” she said as the crowd roared its approval. She went on to introduce her family, calling husband Todd ”Alaska’s First Dude,” before pointing out their daughters Willow and Piper.

Palin quickly launched into criticisms of Democratic Sen. Barack Obama, whom she said “likes to point the finger of blame but, tell me, has he ever lifted a finger to help?”

“In order to get others to say ‘Yes’ to change, has he ever told his own party ‘No?’” she asked. “When it comes to reform, he likes to say, ‘I will,’ but has he ever been able to say, ‘We did?’”

The two Republican candidates go their separate ways again on Tuesday, when McCain campaigns in Ohio and Michigan while Palin meets with several foreign leaders in New York.

Well isn’t that special? My hometown got quite interesting visitors. Media is the county seat. They’ve been mostly Republican, but for a while they had a Democratic mayor. Joe Leiberman was even there. This is such a hot story, the local news haven’t undated their websites about it. Thanks Reuters. My favorite Palin ever-Michael Palin from Monty Python’s Flying Circus. ; )

McCain Palin Rally – Media, PA, originally uploaded by H1GHTOWER.

McCain Palin Rally – Media, PA, originally uploaded by H1GHTOWER.

Sean interned around the corner from the courthouse here.

And from a few days ago (my one brother is there somewhere):

PA Media 9-17-08 Joe Biden Visits, originally uploaded by Barack Obama.

Man, I love that Flickr for photos! : )

Tomorrow is my mom’s birthday and I am going down to take her to dinner. Bri has been complaining about a sore throat on one side and he found an ulcer under his tongue. He doesn’t feel that great in general. Mom wanted to come out for a few days, but we’ll see how Bri is.

Sep21

Yeah Tina Fey!

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i’ve been waiting for this! Tina Fey as Sarah Palin, originally uploaded by jenn hsu.

I don’t know Tina Fey personally, but she grew up a stone’s throw away from Media, in Upper Darby, in the same county. How awesome is it to see a talented person win 3 Emmys (I think I got that correct) from this area? Alec Baldwin won for 30 Rock himself. A week or so ago, a ‘best of’ episode show had when he was role playing as Tracy Morgan’s parents during a meeting with a psychologist. It’s one of the best scenes ever——>see vod pod!!

So I did watch the Emmys. I missed all the pre-shows as I decided playing around with paper crafts was more relaxing to me. The show had a rough start where the five nominated hosts for reality shows didn’t know what to talk about. That’s pretty lame. They wasted time and first winner Jeremy Piven gave them a dig about that.

The funniest moment-when Steven Colbert came out eating prunes with co-presenter Jon Stewart (they both won) and of course he was comparing prunes to a certain presidential candidate.

And I enjoyed a skit when some of  the cast of ‘Laugh In’ did a bit announcing nominees through the old psychedelic doors as their most famous characters (yeah, I’m aging myself, but I was under 10 when this show was on) . Lily Tomlin, Joann Worley and Ruth Buzzi were perfect. The announcer-Gary Owens looked and sounded good, but Alan Sues-he was a little shaky, the poor guy.

And the guy who played Ben Franklin won an Emmy for John Adams, an HBO miniseries I didn’t see. We don’t get channels like that.

What I’ve been doing mostly this weekend is rearranging my 46 photo CDs-yes that is correct. I am going through them for Flickr and uploading ones I couldn’t add when I just had the Yahoo account. Also I’m uploading the highest resolution on ones I had downsized and want to replace as they aren’t clear.  I want to rescan some old photos of mine too. When I read on a blog that a lady from Texas lost her wedding photos, well, I didn’t want to ever lose the last 6 yrs of my life. I have tons of film photos. I don’t know if I’ll ever do all of the ones I really love, but I will eventually scan cute baby shots of Sean, etc.

Here’s hoping #4 will be lucky for the guy showing up from Dishnet. We asked that they come in the morning, but they decided to do afternoon.

<<<<<<<<<CLICK for free mammograms! They only have a few days left in their fundraiser and are just over 50%.

Sep20

Photo Hunt-Road

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Roadview of Allegheny Mts, originally uploaded by DianthusMoon.

I could have showed our snow covered road from a few years back, but I remember I took this on the way home from State College last year-through the windshield. It’s to remind me that Sean is between mountains and over a river away from home.

I did this last year. A few friends and I were photoshopping photos for fun!

Missing Sean

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By the way, the tech didn’t show up for the 3rd time and we were going to let him in at 9 pm to do the conversion on the tv. He didn’t even call to say he wasn’t coming. I can’t get over the sucky service. Dishnet better get some better subcontractors! It’s going to be either tomorrow morning-not holding my breath as I still have to call or Monday morning. Complete idiots. Go elsewhere people!

Sep19

Show & Tell #10

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Here’s the little cabinet I mentioned previously. Bri did not like that I put ‘my stuff’ on top of it. He wanted his stuff there. He can get out his handy dandy tools and 2 x 4s and make a shelf  unit for the top. I like the rough texture and the white washing on it. We have a lot of that honey maple color in the house. I bought it for CDs and it hardly fits any-only a pile of about 10 on their sides with space around. Time to downsize the CDs anyway. They will mysteriously be downsized someday soon. : ) Oh, and please excuse the stuff  stuck around it-I need to tidy this area more.

What’s on top-  I made the cross stitched box cover. I had started it many years ago and finished it last year and added it to the box this year. I just bought the sunflowers yesterday which are in a red glass martini pitcher (I think). On the other wall (out of view) is Van Gogh’s sunflowers painting. I want to do that in cross stitch someday. That may be my next big project!

And for my stitching pals….my little ‘Sleeping Kitty’ is coming along! My friend Nancy just sent me the Q-snap cover! I’ll have to figure out how to make them as they are awesome!

Sep18

Proofs

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We got our portraits today and I’d thought I’d tease you with showing you the proofs. Our church is making up a directory and one of these will be in it too. That’s the main reason we had them taken.  I will show the excellent shot of Sean as we are calling it his graduation photo (May 09). We also purchased one of the two of us to represent our 25th wedding anniversary coming up in April.  I did buy some Christmas cards with one of these also. Can you guess which two we used? And the seat belt mark is softened (my neck) on the 8x10s as is Sean’s shiny head, but they didn’t get rid of the string from my upper dress (like my Liz Claiborne?). You’ll have to look at these in larger mode. I didn’t wear my glasses so I wouldn’t have nose marks and then I get the selt belt mark! I personally like the one with #26 on the end of me and the one with  #18 on the end of Bri, but I had my eyes closed (we didn’t use them)!

I love this photo! Look at the cute dimples! His shirt is green, though looks gray for some reason. This is the air-brushed one. As I mentioned last month, it was the last shot the young photographer took when Sean was more relaxed. I can’t believe my baby looks so grown up here.

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Went to my mom’s on Thursday (I am writing posts late at night now) and took her to lunch at one of our favorite restaurants. They had the nerve to change their chicken salad recipe which I have salivated over for 26 yrs! They added tarragon, almond and grapes which doesn’t go in a club sandwich at all. Shame on them!

We then went to AC Moore craft store, another disappointment. Before that, we had gone to say ‘hi’ to the rescue kitties in Pet Smart. They were so cute. I fell in love with a black and white one with long fur and a pink nose who seemed playful. Most of the other kitties were around 7 and miserable looking as I guess they had to be taken from elderly owners.

We also went to another shopping center. Mom was having problems with what she thinks is a floater, but I think it’s the tail of a stitch. It’s driving her batty. I went in a Home Goods store and bought a little 3 drawer cabinet for CDs for my family room. Guess what, it barely fits any in the drawers! I asked Bri if he could make a shelf unit for the top and he half- heartedly said ok. He’ll have a spot for his collectibles then. I’ll show you the little cabinet in my ‘Show & Tell’ post.