Apr4

And then a hero comes along…

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…John Wood.

John Wood-book crusader

I almost didn’t watch Oprah today. I turned it on while our girlfriend was interviewing Mr. Wood about his program to end worldwide illiteracy called Room to Read (second is linked to Oprah).

Room to Read

 A former big wig at Microsoft, Mr. Wood went to Nepal on a trip and found poor conditions in a school there-overcrowded and most of the pupils couldn’t read. He vowed to go back in a year with books and he kept his promise-I was in awe with him-got the warm fuzzies big time!  Now his org is building libraries and schools all over the world. Many people in the small communities are learning to make bricks and to build themselves! Check out the link and maybe make a $5 donation (I plan to donate something).

For two days and for a few hours,  I did garden clean up. Brian cleaned up the piles after dinner each night. I think I am wearing him out! Last night we moved the big hollyhock that was across from the front door. It broke into 3 pieces so hopefully I have three new plants. I know a tree near where we just planted it gets rust or whatever fungus it is and hollyhocks are prone to get it. We planted the hollyhocks in my iris bed. The iris have spread a little. I am hoping to give some to my mom as I have some gorgeous ones. This is reminding me to go order from the same company as I won their photo contest last year (Aug. 06) and I better use the coupon soon!

Getting my hair done late in the afternoon. I think my mom is staying over to go to the gyn with me. I could go by myself, but she wants to lend support. I have some issues, but just doing all this yardwork has made me stronger (and a bit achy) over the last few days.

Apr3

$1.98

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is how much these gorgeous roses cost….

Gorgeous and cheap

Another view
It was so nice outside today-71 and sunny. I got out the rake (the plastic one that doesn’t retract or expand-blah) and worked on a few of the gardens. Bri cleaned up the piles after dinner. I also grocery shopped and ran across the flowers above.
We had a nice dinner of fried boneless chicken breasts with an eggy kinda dijon sauce (followed a recipe) ,asparagus, stuffing and stir fried spinach-not bad!

Apr2

Something for me?

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I love yellow flowers and Bri saw these in the Home Depot on Friday and brought them home. I appreciate his thoughtfulness, but I need a a rake too and there he was in the Home Depot. I have these in the kitchen and I had an ant on me Friday night-wonder where that came from? ; )
Bri took this photo. I have taken lots more and he’s the one who was buying all the camera magazines like he was dying to get into photography again. He’s always on the computer googling stuff it seems.
Anyway, I’ll plant these bulbs out front probably. Maybe they’ll come up again. Our anniversary is coming up-23 yrs!!!

(BTW, I have a collection of mostly Mary’s Moo Moos that  have something to do with food on my windowsill there. Good eye there, Zoey! One is holding a pie, one has a lemonade stand, etc.) From Brian
BTW, stopped the medicine after 4 days-I couldn’t function and we had the concert last night. I feel better though, just achy in spots. Still deciding what I’m going to do about myself-same problems for years and years and they just tell you to live with it.

This is nice news-my brother Ken really did a thorough clean up job at my mom’s for the past few days! He and a couple of pals were cutting down a tree, trimming branches, getting rid of debris-looks a whole lot better.

Apr1

Feeling cultured

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Woo-hoo! I’m the blog of the minute on wordpress as I type this. : ) **bows** Hey is that April Fool’s maybe?

SO, last night the three of us headed to Wilmington, DE to hear The Delaware Symphony Orchestra at the Grand Opera house. The ride there is very scenic, and I don’t know why we don’t go to Wilmington more often. All the years we lived here and we never took Sean to the Brandywine Zoo! They say three is the charm (how many times Bri and I have been to the GOH) and we didn’t get lost, we actually got there 40 minutes early. A requirement for Sean’s History of Western Music course was for him to hear a professional concert of classical music. We were thinking of Philly, and then the instructor mentioned the DSO. I also have an Entertainment coupon book and we have one for the DSO and got $13 knocked off of one of the tickets-Sean was only $10.

I can’t really remember hearing a symphony orchestra. I have heard orchestras with stage plays though. We sat in the balcony and it was awesome up there. Many of the other patrons were elderly folks. A few kids were mixed in.

The guest pianist was a man named Christopher O’Riley. He was wonderful. First he played a awarding winning composer’s ode to Liberace. After that he played Strauss which was what Sean came to hear. He reminded me of a shorter and brown haired Conan O’ Brien.

Christopher O’Riley

I would recommend anyone going to hear a concert like this. It’s interesting to watch the musicians play and to distinguish the different sounds of the instruments.

We amazingly didn’t get lost going home. It’s always good to have directions printed out, but we just had to back track.

Mar31

Photo Hunt-WATER

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I knew taking lots of photos at the Philadelphia Flower show would come in handy!
The first is a 3-4 foot glass ball that had a hole at the top and had rapid water pouring out of it. We did different exposure settings of it. There is another one of the sphere on the 11th . The next photo is a koi pond that was also set up at the show. They were some big fish!

PSHunt
Grab the Scavenger Hunt code.Photo Theme. Join the blogroll. Visit participants.

Water ball flower shop

Koi Pond flower show

Mar30

Venturing out

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I drove for the first time since I’ve been taking my medicine. I felt ok, not 100%, but I had to mail off 6 packages for my spring exchange. I then wanted to get some Easter cards for family. I didn’t get them all, but the creative side of my noggin is telling me to make some instead of spending $2-4 dollars on one alone. I got one for my mom that needs embellishing. I didn’t take my medicine until I got home. I don’t think it’s really helping as I don’t think I have an infection, I think it’s a lady thing. I may be hitting the road to the gyn next week.

I had the cat out today and even though we had the bagger on the mower, leaves need to be raked out of my flowerbeds. My metal expanding rake broke, so I need to go to the store near mom’s and get another. The daffodils are almost all blooming.

White daffodils almost opened

I’ve been doing stitching and making art cards to keep my mind occupied. I really want to take a nap all the time.

Sean is going to bring home pizza for dinner. It’s still Lent and I’m not in the mood for tuna or eggs. Afterwards, there is that biannual book sale in the big barn down the road that I’d love to go to as I resold a few things I bought in October for a big profit.

Have a great weekend!

Mar29

The decorating Danes are back!

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Congrats to my cousins for the rebuilding on their flagship store, Dane Decor in less than a year. Lightning hit this 19th century building that originally was a church last June and gutted it-I believe I mentioned it happening in this blog. A fireman happen to see the lightning and knew it had struck something and got to Dane Decor before the siren went off. The 4 guys’ grandmom Kate and my grandmom Ruth were Hasselberg first cousins. (for those of you good at geneology-what does that make my relationship to these guys-3rd, twice removed?)Their mom Gloria (passed away in 2000) taught my mom when she was a student teacher and she also came to my wedding. I still use the teak tea cart we received as a gift almost 23 years ago, from Dane Decor! The last time I was at Gloria’s house, Sean was a little baby and I had a severe gallbladder attack the next day. Weird.

Here’s the story about the reopening-(the link may or may not work, but wasn’t at the time I wrote this).

And I’ll have to go visit sometime to say hello as my one cousin Drew would like to chat with me (he said so on my blog last year). Also at the link from last year, another cousin I don’t know left me a message-his name is Sean!

I love that the guys are ‘tree huggers’ and saved an old maple that was part of the store when they enclosed a courtyard for space.

Mar29

Stuff from Nov. 19th

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Saw this on Pea’s blog and thought I’d give it a try. I know a lot of weird stuff happened on my birthday.

1) Go to Wikipedia
2) In the search box, type your birth month and day but not the year
3) List three events that happened on your birthday
4) List two important birthdays and one death
5) One holiday or observance (if any)

1863 – American Civil War: Union President Abraham Lincoln delivers the Gettysburg Address at the military cemetery dedication ceremony in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

1997 – In Des Moines, Iowa, Bobbi McCaughey gives birth to septuplets in the second known case where all seven babies were born alive. (this could be under birthdays too-these kiddos will be 10 this year!!!!)

2006 – Launch of the Nintendo Wii.

Birthdays

1917 – Indira Gandhi, Prime Minister of India (d. 1984)

1959 – Allison Janney, American actress-the exact year too!

Death

1988 – Christina Onassis, daughter of billionaire Aristotle Onassis (b. 1950)

And holy ‘crap’

Holiday or Observance:

World Toilet Day, see World Toilet Organization.

Mar28

Pollen is really bad…

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 I can attest to this as when I was out in the strong breeze, I sneezed like crazy.

 Thanks to Channel 6 for this:

March 28, 2007 – Several South Jersey fire departments received calls from people seeing what they thought was smoke in the forest.

As it turned out, what they were seeing was pollen flying off trees.

Just touching the branches of a Red Cedar tree unleashed a thick cloud of pollen. When the wind is strong enough and the cloud is big enough, it easily be mistaken for smoke

Between 7 and 9:30 Wednesday morning a dozen 9-1-1 brush fire calls were reported, mostly in Gloucester and Atlantic counties. Malaga Fire Company responded three times, but in each case fire was not the cause. It was pollen smoke.