[	Tags	|	crafts, reading, writing	]
[	Current Location	|	home	]
[	Current Mood	|	creative	]

I checked a book out of the library titled "Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln "  thinking I would read it, absorb some of the knowledge about Lincoln and the time period preceding and during the U.S.Civil War, so that I could do more work on my novel,a portion of which was published on this very blog some time ago. But I've been distracted from it all week. When I feel really brave again, I'll take a look at it.

I've been messing around with some crafts. I felt like I was at camp again, with sticks, leaves, feathers, glue and scissors. A collage of all the above (save for the scissors - but I did use them) and a cover with a collage of the sticks, etc. for a box that had brie in it previously was all I got accomplished this afternoon. That I called it a box  was a bit of overstatement. It's a circle of very thin wood for both the top and the bottom, with a piece of cardboard sort of stapled to it. The don't really put enough of the staples in either part so it isn't exactly round. Here's the lid. I got a little carried away with the twigs...

And this is the collage - the "ladybug " at right is made from a leaf; the leaf and the tiny flower above her are from my basil plants and the green leaf at the top is sage. The off looking bit at far left is my thumbnail holding it up.... I hope I can frame it so it doesn't look like a second grader's camp project....Or maybe I can do another one tomorrow....

Woodgie proved to be an inside cat, even when outside. It may have been that she was on a lead, but anyway...

We were walking around the house and were in the back, when I noticed a rabbit off to the side. I said,"Look, Woodgie, a rabbit!" She looked everywhere else and finally I picked her up and took her to where she sat not 10 feet from the rabbit. The rabbit didn't budge. I said, "Look, Woodgie, a bunny!"  She stared at the rabbit, the rabbit stared back. They both stood, looking at each other for about five minutes. Then Woodgie sat down. I know, you thought I was going to say that she chased the bunny. No, not this cat. She sat down and looked at the rabbit, who kept checking us out, too. Then Woodgie looked around to see if anything else was going on and the bunny did, too. I was the middleman, so to speak. I said, "Woodgie, Bunny. Bunny, Woodgie." Neither one of them would make any move at all (except Woodgie's tail kept swishing back and forth). Finally, I had enough and took another step toward the bunny and said, "Shoo!" and the bunny took off. Woodgie just sat there, until I tugged on the lead and told her we needed to walk again.

She's just stubborn. If I hadn't wanted  her to chase the rabbit, she'd have been hauling me across the yard....                   

Here's Lazybones today.                                                                   

[	Tags	|	heat, manicure, mom, opi	]
[	Current Location	|	home	]
[	Current Mood	|	contemplative	]
[	music	|	none	]

Thank goodness... I talked to Mom this afternoon and she sounds okay, but concern that there's now something inside that will mess with her heart is in her voice... I'm glad she's back home. I'm also very thankful that my brothers can take care of things for her.

I went to get my nails done today at Bella Salon and Spa, here in Verona. It's not much of a spa, but the pedicure chairs are terrific. They have massage controls built in and it made my back feel good! I changed my polish color from pale pink to Opi's Ladies and Magenta , which, unfortunately, they don't make anymore. I took my own polish, like I did before, so I can fix nicks and scrapes until I can get them done again. Fingers need redoing once a week, toes every two or three weeks. I think the manicures are helping my nails stay nice. They don't seem to break off as often (touch wood...) or as short, when they do break.

My haircut feels too short now, but I guess it's a good thing. The weather said it was 91° around 8 o'clock...It's supposed to be hotter tomorrow. We have air conditioning on today.

And so have other people. My DH's mother has been in the hospital with internal bleeding and my mother goes to the hospital tomorrow because her heart rate is funky...

I have gotten over my cold and the related coughing ( having given it to my mom and Jenni - sorry about that - although Mom wouldn't have found out about the funky heart rate if she hadn't had the cough) and my work schedule is back to, ick, normal.

I got my hair cut, courtesy of a lady who comes in to the library and had the greatest haircut - she gave me a 100% discount certificate at  Panico in West Caldwell, NJ. The guy who cut my hair was a real sweet guy named James (much cuter than his picture in the website). It turned out pretty good, although it didn't look so great after dealing with my CPAP headgear.... I colored it this morning (Golden blonde - would you believe it? No change...). I looked great - and blonder - when I left the salon. I also went to Marshalls and got a few things to wear. I got Doc Martens Thongs - for my feet, a nice bra, and a red v-neck top. I also got a little purse and a tin of lemon drops - very nice!

So, on Saturday we went to the Simbols house for a "graduation/hey, we got a grandkid" party. The grandkid is Haiden Anthony Lombardi. Here's his picture from the announcement, cropped to just show him.   He looks just like Erica, his mother. Althou

gh his father has dark hair, too. How they got him to open his eyes that big was beyond me until we met him. He's a curious little guy, always looking around. He's 1 month old today. The graduation part was for Danny, who graduated high school the end of June - but with Erica being there and the general chaos with the Simbols, they just got around to his graduation party. It was nice.

Yesterday, Steve and I made the annual Meadowlands Fair excursion. It was fun. We saw the pigs race, won a couple of stuffies, saw the animals ( the poor kangaroo is always asleep) and I rode a camel! And of course, I got hypnotized again....It's sort of like a dream that you know is a dream, but you can't wake up.... I'm hoping this is a slow week. Summer is going way  too fast.

[	Tags	|	6 flags	]
[	Current Location	|	home	]
[	Current Mood	|	bitchy	]
[	music	|	Theme from Batman	]

Reading an article on MSN about new additions to Theme Parks. Guess where we'll probably go at least once this summer? Six Flags in Jackson NJ....

Just a hunch....

This is me morphing into a Giant (heh, heh) Panda, courtesy of You Wild.org

http://www.youwild.org/personal/Q7tvW45nVWPNFiVYSBxJvHAtMjk3NDU-

And I truly wish it were over... First ,there was Derby Day - sad...Then Mother's Day - fair... Elysha and I went to our favorite (well, one of them anyway) restaurant - TGIFriday's in West Orange. We had a coupon to skip the line (heh, heh, heh) and got right in, but that didn't help a lot... Sigh. I complained online and the manager called to apologize and said he'd try to get us some comps so that we'd come back. So it worked out ok. I had a nice dinner, even though it wasn't what I ordered. :-) Elysha also got me a nice necklace earring set that was on my wish list at Amazon.com - and a Maddux St. sign (also from the list - LOL). She said she didn't want to just give me jewelry. I liked that. I got a nice card from Jenni - that was what she can afford, so that was nice. I called my mom and sang "Happy Mother's Day" - and also sent her flowers).

The day after I went to a meeting at church about the fill-in pastors for the summer. I am one of them, being the local lay speaker, I volunteered to take one or more of the Sundays, since I don't have to be paid and the "real" ministers do. So my Sunday is Memorial Day Sunday and the congregation may amount to maybe 5 people - that's a few less than this last Sunday, but...Our pastor is getting married to his Divinity School sweetheart this Saturday(the 24th). She's from Williamsburg, Virginia, so they are getting married in her home church, but with his home pastor. So this week, I'm noodling with church bulletins (I am having a time trying to get it to print right - I inserted a picture into a Word template and it all prints correctly except the part where the picture, the name of the church and stuff have been placed), prayers, litanies and, of course, the sermon, which the General Board of Ministries suggests should not be about Memorial Day, since that's too close to the "separation of Church/State". It advises use of Justice and Social Issues hymns, rather than the "Onward , Christian Soldiers" and "God Bless America" songs of yesteryear... My message is titled "What, Me Worry?" The Gospel lesson is Matthew 6:24-34, the piece that reads: “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? ²⁶Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? ²⁷And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? ²⁸And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, ²⁹yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. ³⁰But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? ³¹Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ ³²For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. ³³But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. ³⁴“So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today."   So, the title is a good start, Alfred E. Newman notwithstanding... .

Other than that, looks like the rest of the month will be pretty boring, as usual, although work has had its moments - nothing like last month, but hey, we can't keep the police busy every Thursday night. :-) Somebody - well, a bunch of somebodies - have voiced their issues with the library on nj.com's Verona forum. I'm wondering where their kids are after school...Or how many of the library's books their mothers or their kids have at home - some that weren't ever checked out - or never returned. There are a few families who have pushed so many buttons that they've been banned from taking things out of the library. One family that claimed flooding destroyed over $100 worth of Children's books (which is what the forum people are complaining about) - when they were overdue and every member of the family had over $5 worth of fines (that's a lot here, since the fines are only 5¢ a day and top out at $2.00). There's nothing they can do about it, other than tell them they can't check anything out anymore. Sorry, that's a rant.

Anyway, Elysha and I are renting a car and going to my mother's house in June for Mom's birthday (and to avoid a briss, we hope). So we want it to be June soon!

Cleaned the kitchen today and threw out stuff in the cabinet that had been in there for over 3 years... I also woke up this morning with my left shoulder feeling like I had pitched for the Yankees yesterday (and I'm not even left-handed). It was from toting my lunch and two drink bottles in my nifty sling bag that I got from Penny~Farthing Press when I bought two of The Victorian  books (which I have yet to finish reading and then figure them out... Sigh). After ibuprofen and rubbing in some Sore No More, I started on my kitchen projects. I baked Monkey Bread - without the brown sugar glaze (not as morbidly sweet), chocolate chip cookies, and blueberry muffins (Paula Deen's recipe, which she says make the best damn blueberry muffins), not necessarily in that order. It's been a long day.

It was a nice one though and Woodgie and I went out for a while. She allowed herself to be herded back in - dogs were being walked by our house!

[	Tags	|	carmine infantino, emotes!, fawkes, nycomic con, pbrane, super, uglydolls, woodgie	]
[	Current Location	|	Home	]
[	Current Mood	|	uncomfortable	]
[	music	|	Blinded by the Light - it's in my head	]

Well, a week after the Comic Con, I'm finally getting the time and energy to sit and write about it. I haven't many pictures - I forgot my camera. However , Robbie, who went with us, bought a one use film camera at the drugstore in the Port Authority and took some pictures. Unfortunately, he didn't think to use the flash, figuring it was bright enough without. Most of his pictures, sad to say, did not turn out.
I did have my pictures taken at a booth with stuffies, called EMOTES!
The big blue guy is Super - just a coincidence that my t-shirt is the copyrighted DC comics "Superman". I bought the smaller version of Super. DC  was also there, and Batman, with the upcoming Dark Knight movie coming this summer, was also all over the place and Elysha and I had our pictures taken with two different statues of the Dark Knight, which were in the bright lights!

I wandered the hall all day. Bought some books and toys - the Super EMOTES stuffie and an Ugly Doll - Gato Deluxe, which I thought maybe Woodgie would like to play with. Woodgie seems to be unimpressed... Steven and I (before I lost him and found .. Well, I'll go on about that a little later) had our pictures done by a company doing a film - we became extras, in a manner of speaking, in PBrane: the Green Man. 
We're supposed to be afraid of monsters. Steven looks like he probably would if faced with a real monster - impressed that he finally got to see one in real life....

But we split up and took our separate ways when I found Carmine Infantino wandering around in aisle 800, apparently lost. I recognized him and asked if I could help him find something. He said he was looking for the Vanguard booth. So, ever helpful geek that I am, I went over to the Information booth to find a kid, maybe 13, behind the desk. I told him I had a lost artist and asked where the Vanguard booth was. He hands me a map. Sigh....I look up Vanguard and find that it's booth 1810 and Mr. Infantino is way off and limping to boot (no pun intended there). I volunteer to walk over with him and scout ahead to find the booth. He tells me as we're about halfway there that he has to go in for knee surgery the Monday after the Con. Sigh...We finally found it, after schlepping quite a ways, me inquiring at various booths to people who not only didn't know where Vanguard was, but they didn't seem to know that Carmine Infantino was/is a legendary artist! I got him to sign my Greatest Comic Book Artists book (he had before - some years ago -just Infantino) and he said I deserved first in line. I had him sign on the same page Jim Steranko had claimed earlier at another con. I find, on the Vanguard page that Steranko did an introduction to Infantino in the book that he was there to plug and sign (once we found the place). Carmine also called me a "doll ". Made my day.

It was fun, tiring and weird. The kids left early and brought home real samurai swords on the bus. We brought home our assorted stuff, including Steven's win, Fawkes, a Tonner Toys doll from Harry Potter.

The talk is that they will move the NYCC back to February - the 6th through the 8th- next year. It might be that we give it up next year since it will be even earlier than the previous two years. The first of February is pretty cold, to say nothing of the likelihood of snow being worse then than later in the month. They should try to move it to a more convenient space than the Javits Center besides. But that's just my opinion. They may have an inside deal for the Javits... What do I know?

Lots of fans - each year so far, over 50,000 people converge on Javits Center and look at comics, comics related books and toys, meet artists and authors, buy and sell things, play new video and card games, have Star Wars laser sword fights, dress up as super-heroes, fantasy figures, get lots of freebies and buy lots of stuff. Elysha and Robbie both bought Japanese ninja swords - and took them home on NJ Transit - through the Port Authority! Guess a sword doesn't carry the authority it used to - well, they were wrapped in plastic... I bought a lot of books and a lot of freebies - about 50 pounds worth. We had a good time. Steve won  a lot of stuff, including a phoenix from Harry Potter. He said a little girl dressed as Supergirl picked his number...I even got a Ugly Toys cat for Woodgie...

I'm too tired still to write much else...

On the local front, Woodgie had what I’d call a tizzy fit last night. I got a Morris the cat toy (with catnip) from a friend. She investigated it, then proceeded to stick her head through a plastic bag handle. Then she went bananas, screeching , running/falling down the stairs, racing around, coming back up the stairs, bouncing around the bathroom and my room until she finally wound up in the corner of my room behind the comic boxes, sitting beside Batman – still with the bag around her neck (not tight, just around her neck). Mommy comes in and tries to coax her out- she growls. I go in and reach for the bag, she hisses and spits. So Mommy comes back in, sweet talks her for a few minutes , than stretches over and grabs the bag , which comes right off in her hand. So there Woodgie sits with Batman. Mommy coaxes her out , while Gramma stands there, watching everything and guarding the door. Woodge finally comes out of the Batcave , her tail all poofed up, but she allows us to pat her and soothe her down. She’s okay this morning, but I’m going to make sure all’s clear if she gets near catnip again… It scared us all...

I aimed to get to bed early, then went "shopping" at Drugstore.com. $50 and three hours later, I'm still here at the keyboard, after having placed my order, gotten an e-mail from MyPoints, saying I could get a free card from Snapfish. So I uploaded some pictures of Woodgie, who's been bugging me to go upstairs fro the last hour and is now decided she'll just go to sleep by the computer. So I'm going to give up and go to bed, too.

Goodnight kiss for her nap buddy, Rosie the bear....

Moonwise: New Easter Dates

2160 - 23 March

Yep, that's when Easter will be this early again. Today was pretty nice, considering how early it is in the year. Not much special at my house. I went to church and brought home the usual daffodils to plant later ,as well as a geranium, which hasn't bloomed yet (it has a ribbon instead of flowers). The church was very pretty - there were at least 91 plants, ranging from geraniums and hydrangeas to tulips, daffodils, and lilies. I wish I had taken my camera to get a picture. I was liturgist and could've gotten a good shot before church of the altar.

I tried to put this on Blogger, but it refused to put anything up today. Guess I broke it. The plumber who usually pops up when Blogger is broken did not show up, so it's probably  just me...

Happy Easter!

(No, it's not Woodgie - it's an "Internet friend" of ours - his name is Scotty and he lives in Florida)

Today was a loooooong day - worked 9-5, had the psychologically challenged in at the library most of the day and just didn't sleep too good last night. It's also very windy. Sounds like the siding could blow right off the house. Wish it would....Well, tomorrow's gonna be another day....

[	Tags	|	bingo win, football, pocmont, trees	]
[	Current Location	|	home	]
[	Current Mood	|	tired	]
[	music	|	Find me somebody to love - Queen	]

Well, another Thanksgiving at the Pocmont is over. I got a lot of nice little things. I also won big at bingo! Thanksgiving night, I won the coverall Bingo of $90. But I had to split it with some kid. Steve had also won the B+O bingo and got $10. Then yesterday (Saturday), he won the straight Bingo for $5 and while the University of Kentucky was in its fourth overtime against the University of Tennessee, I won the coverall again! I had to split it with 3 other people, so it was only $13.75.Pretty impressive, since we usually lose big... I took a couple of shots of our room.

And, no, that isn't the cat on the bed, it's my purse. We did our usual flea market shopping and I had a foot treatment by the massage lady. That felt terrific! It's always nice out there and the Fallsview's game room is always a bit of fun, too. I also took pictures of some of the trees on the way home. I wished I had gotten a picture of the "creek" - in Pennsylvania, they seem to know the difference between a creek and a "river". According to New Jersey, the little stream that goes through Verona Park is the Peckman River and is about half the size of the two creeks near the Pocmont.

Outside our room...On the back road...

From highway 80, I think... The trees all looked very pretty. Even passing them at 40 or more MPH...