Halloween with Emmy

We are so lucky to be able to go out "Trick-or-Treating" with our grand-daughter, Emily. She is the happiest child imaginable. Everything is a game, funny or just plain fun. This year she dressed up as a cat. She loved the outfit....she kept rubbing her belly!

Before we left we had to take all the obligatory pictures. Emily loves her beautiful Mom, Kara!

She's all set to go out with her Daddy and Mommy.

Memere and Pepere are ready to go. And Emily's other Nana came along as well.

Emily really did "get it" this year. She went up to the first house and the person had to put the candy into her pumpkin, but after that, she picked out the candy (or a couple pieces) by herself. She wasn't concerned with what kind of candy it was.....she picked which color wrapper she liked the best!

Auntie Jamie came along too. Emmy had to walk this year....no running.....so as to avoid the same situation as last year - namely a face-plant so bad she had an egg on her head! Towards the end, we went to a house that was playing spooky music with screaming, etc, and Emmy was a bit freaked out by it. We told her over and over that it was a silly ghost. She was tired and wanted Nana to carry her.

She had a wonderful time and so did we. It's a real blessing to be out trick-or-treating again, especially on such a beautiful night and with such a fun-loving girl!

Attitude Adjustment

Yep....that's what I needed. An attitude adjustment. Yesterday was a very......shall we say......trying day at work. There's only about 6 people in our office and I really like 5 of them. Do the math. And which group do I chose to dwell upon? The 5 fun, happy, delightful people? Or the one PITA? Unfortunately I let the 1 annoying, irritating, aggravating person ruin my whole day. Aren't a lot of people like that? They let one person, or one situation, or one incident, color the rest of their day. Luckily for me, I have a kind, understanding, patient and insightful husband who listened to me rant and rave, then discussed options with me, and gave me his experience and opinion. And thankfully, I'm smart enough to listen to him. Today I went into work with a new attitude. I'm not going to bow and scrape to the PITA, I'm not going to be her BFF, I'm not even going to listen to her. I'm going to block her out, ignore her, and walk out to the room when she gets to be too much for me. And I'm going to surround myself with the people I enjoy.....the 5 other people in the room who are delightful. And hopefully, I'll go home with a bit of joy in my heart.

The Soup Nazi

Every year, about this time, when the leaves are turning gorgeous colors and the air gets nippy and I have to turn the heat on, my thoughts turn to.....soup. I like soup. Only home-made soup though. I like making it from scratch. I like trying new soups. My plan this year, as it is every year, is to make a big pot of soup for dinner on Sunday night and use it for lunches for the whole week. When I was a kid, we had soup on Sunday nights. One week my Mom would make soup, the next my Memere would make it. We ate it with buttered Hi-Ho crackers sitting in front of the TV watching wrestling. Memere liked wrestling. Unfortunately, as with most well-laid plans, I've never followed through and actually made soup on Sunday nights all winter to have for dinner and then lunches. THIS will be the "Year of the Soup". I've written it here, on my blog, therefore it will happen. Anyone have any good recipes???

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs

Hubby and I got to babysit our 9-year old niece last night. We figured we'd take her to the movies and have a little outing at the same time. My first idea was to take her to see "Where the Wild Things Are". The movie theater closest to us had it at 7pm.....with IMAX. Or, at 8pm without IMAX. I didn't want to do the IMAX because A) it's $4 more per person and B) more than one person told me not to see it in IMAX cause it'd make me seasick. The movie theater a little further away had it without IMAX at 7pm.....and it's a smaller movie theater and therefore about $2-3 per person cheaper. We picked up a very excited Laura and drove to the theater. When we got there, we saw that "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs" was playing there as well. "I really wanted to see that," she tells us. Hey...it's HER outing, so we let her pick whichever movie she wanted. I almost fainted when the woman at the window said it was $29 for the three of us to get in. WHAT???? The movie is in 3D, and so therefore is $2 per person extra. Huh. What? They don't have enough extra cash to provide 3D glasses for everyone? Even though they're not the cardboard kind and you return them at the end of the movie? Whateva! It was awfully fun to see a movie in 3D again. It wsa funny to see Laura reaching out to grab things as they came towards her from the screen. The movie had nothing to do with the book, except for the fact that giant food came down and threatened to annhilate the town. But it was fun, and entertaining. We ate candy and a giant box of popcorn.....okay, Hubby and Laura ate candy and I ate the giant tub of popcorn. We like babysitting.

It's winter......no...it's summer....no...it's fall.......

New England is being it's typical self and can't decide what it wants to do. Notice the previous post with pics of snow coming down in mid-October. Today it will be 70 degrees out. ???? I've decided that if I were Queen of the World, there would only be a work-day if the weather was bad. Anyone want to vote for me? I'd get up in the morning and check the weather and decide whether or not there'd be work. Then I'd Twitter/Facebook/Blackberry/Whatever everyone and let them know if they should go to work or to the beach. Of course, I'd need someone to train me on the aforementioned things cause, frankly, I have no clue. Speaking of training ( and having no clue) I have to go to training today. I'm going to be doing car loan applications at work. This training is for "Extended Warranty Coverage". I haven't had the training on the actual car loans yet, but I'm doing this training first. Go figure. Should be clear as mud by the end of the day. We're babysitting my niece this Saturday night and we thought we'd take her to a movie. I noticed "Where the Wild Things Are" is playing. However, it's in "IMAX". Which sounds like fun, although I don't really care if it is or not. The problem is.....it's $4 per ticket extra for "the IMAX experience"! On top of the $10 for the basic ticket!! Is this ridiculous or what? AND of course you have to buy popcorn and/or candy and drinks.....cause they won't let you bring anything in. Hubby and I don't go out to the movies much. In fact, we just signed up for Netflix. I don't know how much we'll use it. It took us three weeks to send back the first two things we borrowed. We'll be Netflix's best customers.....pay the money but hardly use the service. Kind of like having a membership to the gym.

We are the kids our mother told us not to play with

Remember when you were little and your mother used to yell at you for being too stupid to come in from playing out in the rain? That seems to be me and my brother. My brother John got us free tickets to the Patriots game on Sunday. Who can so no to free tickets? I've only been to one other Patriots game before in my life......come to think of it.....it was rainy and cold that game too! When we saw the weather report, there was still no hesitation about going. We'd both had some pretty fearsome outdoor experiences ( a canoe trip officially named "the canoe trip from hell" and some whitewater rafting in the snow).....so we figured we can handle it. We're New Englanders....we're hardy. Right? We knew it would be a good 1 1/2 drive to get to the stadium and park. Of course we didn't want to put on our heavy clothes until we got there. When we did get there, the wind and rain was like a monsoon..... we didn't want to get outside the car to put our winter gear on. So we did it inside the car. Go ahead. Get the visual. Let your imagination run wild. Sexy, huh? After donning mountains of clothes, we braved the elements to meet up with John's friends, Steve and Dawn. They were tailgating. Or trying to tailgate. Their EZ-up canopy had blown away, they couldn't get the grill started and their matches were all wet. We ended out sitting inside their SUV and eating BBQ chips and granola bars. Finally, we went into the stadium and bought some food. As we were eating in the wind tunnel beneath the stands, we glanced out onto the field and saw that it was..........snowing. In October. The game was unbelievable. The Patriots were winning 45-0 at half-time. We couldn't do anything wrong and the Titans couldn't do anything right. New England broke record after record. I got to see my Tom Brady up close and as personal as I'm ever going to.

Most of the people there, including us, left at half-time. I had brought dry clothes and changed into them.....again inside the car. Good thing the windows were foggy.....although I doubt anyone trying to get out of that parking lot cared about me in my skivvies.

We listened to the rest of the game in the car on the way home. The Patriots went on to win the game 59-0. It was an experience I'll never forget. Truly.

Woodstock....40 Years Later

On Sunday of our vacation, Hubby and I went to Woodstock. Neither one of us went to the actual event 40 years ago. I was only 9 .... Hubby was 14 and would have gone if he could have had someone go with him. He was....and still is....a hippie. Whoever designed the building did a beautiful job. It's gorgeous. Unfortunately, you could not take photos inside. I was very impressed with all the amazing, life-size photographs from the event, as well as some videos. The thing that amazed me the most was that Woodstock was not just "thrown together". There was tons of info about how much planning went into the event. Besides the museum there is an outdoor ampitheater and they have some very serious artists come to put on concerts. Hubby and I would like to go back next summer and see a show.

This is the view of the field where the original concert was actually held. The gravel area at the bottom is where the stage was.

They also have a placque memorializing the site.

There are several little dives in the area that cater to the Woodstock tradition. We had to go inside this one and see what was up.

That night we went out to eat. Hubby wanted to try the Italian place. We were horrified to see white cloth tablecloths when we got there. (We have a serious aversion to white cloth tablecloths....just too classy for us.) Despite the tablecloths, the place was empty except for some very loud, very boisterous people at the bar. After perusing the menu (and seeing the prices for this "fine dining" ) we surreptitiously left the table and went to the Fat Lady Cafe down the street. Much more our style.

Where Have I Been?

We got back from our vacation on Tuesday and our computer when kerfluey on Wednesday. "Nuff said about that. We left on Saturday morning about 9am for our big adventure. We wanted to stop in Hartford for breakfast, since that was about two hours into our trip. That's the only thing I didn't plan, and the only thing that went wrong. As we came off the exit, I had visions of a waffle with fruit and whipped cream for breakfast. However, it was not to be. There was McD's, BK, Wendy's, etc. But no Pancake House, no IHOP, nothing. We ended out at McDonald's. Yep, McDonald's for breakfast. Except that it was past 11am so they don't serve breakfast any more. I had a chicken sandwich for my breakfast. Ugh! It's against my religion to A) eat chicken for breakfast, B) eat at a chain restaurant while on vacation and C) especially McDonald's. And that was the ONLY thing that went wrong on our trip. The rest was golden. On the way into New York, we stopped in a place called "Sugar Loaf" that had an artists' colony, and the artists' colony was doing a street fair. There was music, art and food. I had the most delicious home-made potato chips, hot out of the fat! Mmmm!! Hubby spent all his birthday money on records. Remember vinyl?

From there we went the rest of the way to Bethel, where we found our Bed and Breakfast, called "Puravida" which means "Pure living". Our host, Steve, was very hospitable, as were his two dogs, Jake and Oliver. Steve's favorite saying was, "No worries" and "You are home". He gave us free run over his entire house...the kitchen, living room, outdoor deck overlooking the river where you could sit in the deck chairs and watch for eagles.

That night, we went to "Benji and Jake's" for dinner. It was a nice little pizza place that looked like it was housed in a converted mill. We spent $11 on a delicious pizza and $14 on two scrumtuous brownie and gelato desserts.

Back at the inn, we played the card game "Hearts" with the other couple staying there.....Stephen and Maria. We laughed and had some wine and played cards until bed-time.

I'll tell you all about our visit to Woodstock tomorrow.

But Don't Be A Sour Pickle!

We went to a workshop today at work called "Give 'Em the Pickle!". These workshops were begun by Bob Farrell. The story goes.....he had a string of diners. One day he received a letter from a loyal customer. This customer would go to Bob's diner 2 or 3 times a week and always asked for, and received, an extra pickle, free of charge. One day the customer went into the diner and was told he'd have to pay 75 cents for a "side of pickles". The customer was upset that he was treated that way, and told Bob that if that's the way he was going to run his business, the customer would quit going to his diner. Bob wrote the man back, apologized, offered him a coupon and asked him to come back. And thus was born Bob's method of customer service: Give 'Em the Pickle. In other words....make them happy, go above and beyond, bend over backwards to make sure your customer leaves satisfied, happy and with more than he expected. It was a good workshop. Problem is.....I think some people are "Pickle People" and some are not. Some people love to serve, make others happy, and get satisfaction from doing their jobs well. Others do not. Those are the sour pickles.

What We Did on Our Weekend

Weekends are much too short. Working on Saturday morning just cuts your weekend down to one day. So we try to make the most of it. After I worked on Saturday we relaxed in the afternoon then went out to hear some friends play guitar and sing. We went to Savoury Lane, a tiny little venue that has delicious home-made food.

We listened to our good friends "Cooper and Kenneally"

We also got a chance to listen to one of our favorite duos, "Two Cat Folk".

It was a relaxing and fun evening of good music and good friends.

On Sunday we went to Nashua for their Art Walk. We have to go out of town to see or hear anything the least bit cultural because Salem, NH is a vast wasteland when it comes to live music or art.

We walked around downtown Nashua stopping in different venues and seeing artists and musicians. It was pretty quiet but lots of fun.

Tonight we watched the Amazing Race, one of only two shows I watch regularly....the other being Survivor. Because there's nothing good on TV, Hubby and I just signed up for Netflix. So Hubby is watching "Woodstock: 3 days of peace and music".

This is in preparation for our weekend away next weekend to Bethel, NY, the site of the original Woodstock Music Festival.

Peace Out.

We Need to Support Bouncy Boobs!

I hope everyone knows that October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Many of you know that my beautiful Mom battled and beat Breast Cancer two years ago.

Now it's that time of year again to do what we can to raise money and awareness to eradicate this horrible disease.

If you possibly can, please donate to this worthy cause. Just give up your coffee money for one week...your lunch out.....your new pair of shoes or blouse. Help make it possible that your sister/mother/daughter/grand-daughter will never have to face what so many woman have had to face.

And thank-you, in advance, for your support.

Make your donation here.