Check this out......

When Hooterville was here last week, we were out at Burdette Park, and this silly little warbler would not leave my car mirror alone. He kept flying and perching on the door and pecking the mirror. He did this for the longest time. I was sitting in the car, he wasn't scared of me at all. We went back to Burdette the next day, and here he came again, pecking the mirror over and over again.

This time I shot video of him, Jean uploaded a little clip of it it to YouTube today. Here he is, the Prothonotary Warbler, straight from Heavensville.... Enjoy...

Wow

This is absolutely incredible. Watch the little clock counting down on the bottom right of the UTube screen, when it gets to 2:45, the tricks the girl does are amazing...

Getting serious for a minute....

I've never, as my Mother was always fond of saying, "set the world on fire." I haven't had boundless energy, I've never been one of those people who constantly push themselves to the point of exhaustion, and I've felt horrific guilt because of it. It took getting older and wiser for me to realize that this isn't a conscious decision on my part, but a predispositioned genetic tendency.

It all comes down to discipline. When you have children, and you are working, you have to discipline yourselves, so I did have years that I did push myself. As a child, I didn't, I would much rather lie in the grass, looking up at the clouds than clean my room, or organize my possessions. And as I'm older, it's so easy to "do it tomorrow." My days are spent playing on the computer, cuddling Maggie a gadzillion times a day, talking to my friends on the phone, and when weather permits, Mags and I going to the creek on Milly to sit by the water and just enjoy the quiet. The difference, now that I'm older is that I don't feel the guilt I once did. As I look back on my family tree, I'm so like my father and most of his family. They didn't "set the world on fire" either. They were very easy going people, who laughed a lot, ate a lot and enjoyed being with their families.

Mother's family, however, were totally driven people. Work, work, work, no time to play, you have to work. Were they happy, not particularly, they were too busy pushing themselves to laugh and enjoy their life.

I know there has to be a balance, but I'm not so hard on myself these days. I would much rather enjoy the days of my life than to drive myself relentlessly to do the things that really aren't that important anyway. I'm not a slob, on any given day you could come in my house and I wouldn't panic, it's always orderly, but I wouldn't pass the white glove test. Somehow, it's just a lot more fun to pet my little dog and sit in the garden than it is to chase dust bunnies around the house...

I updated what's on my bedside table...

I have really neglected to update What's on my Bedside Table (left sidebar). I need to be more diligent about keeping this current, as I read some awesome books, and some that are stinko's, that I forget to tell you about. I've got a great selection by my bed this week.

We have online newsletters at our library, maybe you do at yours also, I get several weekly, new fiction, nonfiction, romance, etc. I even receive a newsletter that tells me who was on what talk show promoting their books in the current week. From these newsletters I can instantly link to add my name to the wait list, and the little Library Elf emails me and sends me a message to my cellphone when they are ready to be picked up. If you aren't familiar with this newsletter feature, you might want to access your local library online to see if you can do the same. I read all the new stuff and it's all free. The library, it's a good thing....

Here's a link to Library Elf, it's a nationwide service that tracks your library books by linking to your local library. Library Elf even tells you when your books are due. Another good thing... Check it out here!

Well I'll be damned....

Why didn't I think of this... I could have saved myself a ton of spilled and/or stale chips...

Construction Zone...

I'm updating the blog, it may look a little screwy for a few hours. The text will be readable, but the rest of it, who knows...

ummm, knowing me it may look a little screwy for days...

patience, dear hearts...

Heads-up Ladies....

Ryan (pharmacist son) informed me earlier this month that Generic Fosamex is now $10.00 at WalMart for a 90 day supply. This is a huge deal, huge deal, as the price range previously for this drug was $124 to $306. Also on this $10.00 list is Pfizer’s urinary incontinence drug Detrol. This is the real meal deal with Detrol, not a generic - it previously retailed for between $36 to $551.

So, if any of you take either of these drugs and weren't aware of this, you are in for a huge savings! My past experience at CVS is that with their $4.00 prescriptions they will price match WalMart. I don't know if they will with these drugs, but it might be worth checking into.

Hillary

I've been watching The View this morning, the AP erroneously reported that Hillary Clinton will concede this evening, her campaign later issued a statement saying this wasn't true, but to the women on the panel and in the audience's credit, when they made the announcement that she would concede, there was no clapping, no joy, just a community of sadness.

You all know that I have supported this woman, but if you can somehow try to separate her from her politics, which I know is next to impossible, you must surely admire her chutzpah. She has been relentlessly hammered by the media, dealt blow after blow, yet she bounces back again and again and surges forward. She has fought a valiant fight, showing an unflagging energy admiral for a woman of any age, let alone a woman in her sixties.

I commend her for her tenacity, focus, determination, and for the fact that she doesn't give up. In my opinion, she has fought a campaign worthy of any man.

I'm sure that her daughter is extremely proud of her mother, something that all of us want from our children. When the dust has settled from this historic election and the history books are written, I hope they treat her more kindly than she has been treated thus far.

I would welcome your comments on this, not her political views, but her strength and determination as a woman running for office against insurmountable odds. I think she did us all proud....

Once again, Hooterville is on the cutting edge....

Hot damn, Hooterville did it again. She always scouts out the good stuff for us. I think I'm going to make her our roving reporter here on The Dish.

She instant messaged me first thing, telling me that Starbucks, starting tomorrow, is going to be offering free Wi-Fi. Free Wi-Fi - finally!!! I've wanted this to happen forever. Panera Bread has had it for eons, but it's across town, and I never go there alone, but I'll be down at The Bucks with lappie and Mags in her Sherpa Carrier, listening to their smooth jazz, sipping a cuppa and surfin' the net ASAP. I'll be blogging from Starbucks, gang. Whoohoo!!!!

There are just a couple of little glitches, nothing biggie. You have to have a registered Starbucks card to use their Wi-Fi, and you can only use it for two hours per day. I called them and asked them what a registered Starbucks card is, it's just a gift card! So you buy yourself a gift card, and then I'm guessing you will use the numbers on the back and enter info so they know you are "legimate" and presto, you're online.

I remember....

Summers as a teenager, growing up in Southern Illinois...

I was a tv freak, as most kids in the 60's. I loved, loved, loved soap operas. General Hospital was my favorite, that and Dark Shadows. Oh Dark Shadows was so scary, it really was. It had a resident vampire, and he would certainly give me chills on weekday afternoons.

Mother always sewed and tried to instill her love of sewing in me, unfortunately it didn't work. I do, however, have vivid memories of making two dresses, both of which I adored. I made these when I was about sixteen years old, the first one was a shift. Remember those? I made mine from "mint green" polished cotton, it was sleeveless and I smocked the yoke. An elderly neighbor taught me the art of smocking, and the finished product was pretty cute, if I do say so myself. The second dress was a tent dress. Tent dresses were the rage in the mid-60's, my fabric was hopsacking, and it was cream with burgundy polka dots. I still have the patterns for both of those dresses, some day I need to scrap a page and describe them in detail...

Warm summer days would find me sitting barefoot on the porch swing, wearing short shorts of course, drinking iced tea with my nose in a book. As I look back at my life, we didn't have the distractions that we do now. We had more time to focus on the changing seasons, and I think we were much more in tune with nature than people are today.

When I used the telephone, it went to a local operator who placed the call for me. I went to high school with the boy whose Mother ran the switchboard, and sometimes he would be working a shift, and we would chat before he placed the call. Egads, that seems like another lifetime. I can remember back to when I was a small girl having a big oak telephone and a party line. Our ring was two longs and a short... The phone ran on batteries and you would have to replace them when the ring started fading...

We had a big yard, an acre, and I mowed it with a push mower. I remind Ryan of this a lot this summer when he is complaining about weed eating his yard, a chore he doesn't enjoy. He loves to mow, just doesn't like the weed eating. He has an acre of grass to cut as I did, but of course he does it on a riding mower.

We always had a garden, and we would turn the soil over in the spring with a three wheeled plow. Mother had gooseberry bushes, and rhubarb plants, and there were apple, cherry and apricot trees in our yard. She canned hundreds of jars of vegetables, fruit, pickles and relishes to last us thru the winter, and all of this was done in a kitchen with no air conditioning or running water.

But it's all good memories. To some of you it probably sounds just horrific, but we lived in a valley, our yard was shaded with trees, we had good cross-thru ventilation in our house and it really wasn't that hot until the dog days of August.

One of my most vivid memories of those summers was in 1966 when Safeguard Soap was first introduced. Oh my, I thought it was the most amazing, freshest smelling scent ever. I still enjoy it to this day, and buy it often...

I enjoy remembering where I came from and how the impact of those early years molded me into who I am today. That's one of the pleasures of growing older, all the memories I've gathered over the years, I've learned to discard the bad ones and cherish the good...

Oh my, it doesn't get better than this....

Am I ever gonna cool off....

Jeez Louise, i'm like a friggin oven. I haven't had a visit from my little "friend" in five years, but I'm still roasting!!!!!! I was at my girlfriend's last night, she had her thermostat on 78. 78, how could she stand it??? I set mine at 72, 71 at night and I'm still dripping!!!

Will it ever end? Hormone replacement is not an option, Holy Schmoly, I can't afford to lose any more body parts, the thought of cancer makes me totally stay away from hormones. I've tried al kinds of herbie things, nothing helps.

And, this morning, I had not one but two zits. What's going on? I look old, my metabolism sux now, why doesn't my body realize the par-tay is over and it's time for the fat lady to sing. I need to just give it up already....

I got kicked out of the Verizon store today....

Yes, dear hearts, yours truly, this fifty-eight year old rebel without a cause got ousted from the Verizon Store today. And I might add, I went out kicking and screaming. John said I'm starting to sound just like my mother!!!!!

Okay, here's how it went down. I've been checking out those new Blackberry Curve phones. I love the look, love the icons, yeah, I'm all about the eye candy, and anyhoo, I got this letter from Verizon, saying that I could get it at a Verizon Store for $199, plus a $50 rebate - same price as I could buy it for online, but if I went to the store, I could have it today and I'm into instant gratification.

I've been in a crappy mood, didn't even want to leave the house, but Maggie was out of Grammy's Pot Pie dog food and I had no choice, so I had to trek to the other side of town to get it. I scooped her up, and out the door we went. I got the dogfood, and decided I would stop by Verizon and check out that phone. Nothing like a little shopping to lighten the mood, right?

So I'm in there for about a half an hour with Maggie - she was her usual big hit, the employees took turns holding and petting her, one of the technicians took her picture to send to his girlfriend on his cellphone - they called my name finally, and I went to pay for it. The girl at the desk informed me that I wasn't eligible for a new phone until November 08 - I could get one, but I couldn't get the $100 credit. Well I didn't want to do that, so I said thanks but no thanks, left the store, got in the car, read that letter and it clearly stated that my cellphone line was eligible for the phone.

So back into the store we go, the woman at the counter was busy, but there was this old guy named Scott, who I realized later was afflicted with short man's syndrome, and on a power trip to boot, and I asked him if he could check on this for me because the other woman was busy and I had already waited for-ever. He informed me that he was busy doing something else, which consisted of him peering into the computer screen with a vacant look on his face because he was too stupid to figure out what he was doing.

But then this other nice younger guy said he would look at the letter, and he informed me that indeed I was eligible for the phone and he started to enter the infomation into the computer. I'm standing there with Maggie tucked discreetly under one arm, and all of a sudden this Scott guy says, "you need to leave the premises with your dog." I said, "what?" and he said again, "you need to leave the premises with your dog." He was like a friggin robot, repeating the same phrase. He was just glaring at me and saying it over and over.

"I've been in here for a half an hour, nobody else had an issue with my dog or told me to leave, it's 85 degrees outside, I can't just lock her in the hot car, can't I just put her in my purse and finish my transaction?"

"No, he said, it's against company policy to have a dog on the premises." Well, of course I was getting my back up by now, even though I should have had Mags in her carrier and the moron wouldn't even have known I had a dog - I told him that it wasn't posted anywhere that dogs weren't allowed, but he kept sneering at me and repeating the same phrase. "You have to take the dog and leave the premises." Oh, he also said that she might jump out of my arms and bite somebody.

Well that was the stupidest thing I ever heard, this little scrap of a thing tucked under my arm - get loose and bite somebody??? And of course, I sarcastically said, "Oh yeah, right." The poor guy that was trying to tally me up was actually laughing out loud at this Scott doofus for saying such a stupid thing, and now here comes the store manager, very nicely telling me that I have to abide by what Scott says.

She was polite, polite is all I wanted, but did I just leave quietly, oh nononono, I wasn't going to let that little weasel get the last word in - I pointed my finger at the little man and told him I was going to call Verizon and report him, that he didn' have to be so rude to me that I would have gladly left without him acting so obnoxiously. I was a customer, after all. Then I scooped up my paperwork, and Mags and I were outta there faster than a New Yawk minute!

But all's well that ends well, and this story has a silver lining thanks to a nice Verizon rep on the phone. I got home, started to order the phone online, Verizon site was asking me all kinds of questions about what kind of service I wanted, yadayadayada - I didn't want to change my service, I just wanted to upgrade the friggin phone.

Enough of that, I needed to talk to a real person, so I called Verizon, this nice guy customer service rep answers, I told him I've had a helluva day and that my dog and I got kicked out of the Verizon store, he told me not to worry he would take care of me.

And take care of me he did - the grand total for my new Blackberry Curve 8330 is, are you ready for this - $106.99 plus a $50.00 rebate. So the phone is going to cost me just $56.99. That's a hundred dollars cheaper than the Verizon store, which by the way, I will never go into again - from now on I'm shopping from home!

So that horrid little Scott man can just take his attitude and stick it where the sun don't shine.

I know, I know, you are all reading this and asking why did I take Maggie in the first place. I take Maggie everywhere, it's just what I do - it's comforting to me to have her along. Can't you tell by now that Mags and I are joined at the hip? I'm just going to have to start putting her in her carrier so she travels incognito.

This man was absolutely right in telling me I couldn't have my dog in the store if was company policy, I don't have an issue with that, I only have an issue with the way he handled it. I've taken her so many places, and not only me, I actually see several women with little dogs in stores, and have never had a problem, except once when Trish and I stopped at Dollar General for camera batteries, and the store manager told me dogs weren't allowed. I respect that, I just don't respect overbearing men with an attitude!

And am I going to report this Scott a**hole to Verizon? You bet your sweet booties I am. I'm going to write them a scaathing letter about how impolite he was!!!! Men Schmen!!!

Once again, Hooterville came thru for us...

If you read this blog regularly, you know that my buddy Hoot finds the best stuff online of anybody. I'm serious, this woman scouts out the good stuff.

Well she's outdid herself once again, and we all get to reap the rewards, for free!!!

This time it's a soundscape program called Atmosphere Lite. It's like one of those soundscape machines, except on the computer. There are tons of categories to choose from, of course my favorite is Deep Forest. There are many, many sounds you can choose for it - and if you really love it, you can cough up $35 for the deluxe version. However, this free version has so many options, that unless you are just obsessed with it, you won't need the full meal deal.

It also has pictures you can click on and they become your wallpaper. I couldn't figure out how to make the wallpaper go away, she told me, duh, just right click on it, I did, poof it was gone, but the sounds stay.

This is a great program for masking out noise, or just relaxing - five stars on this one, it's a winner, ladies. Give it a try.

Thanks again, Hoot, you're a rock star!!!!!!

Here's the click for the download...

We lost a good one today, Harvey Korman, dead at age 81

Nobody played the straight man to Tim Conway like Harvey... This classic is too funny for words.

I don't give a rat's hiney WHERE Susan Sarandon lives...

Have you all heard about what Susan Sarandon is saying?

SUSAN SARANDON, who appeared in three films last year and won kudos for her TV movie "Bernard and Doris," is still not a contented soul. She says if John McCain gets elected, she will move to Italy or Canada. She adds, "It's a critical time, but I have faith in the American people

Like, do we care? Why does she feel the need to broadcast her views? Does she think people are going to vote democratic just so she stays in the country? Jeez lady, move already...

A little nostalgia for you...

I've always been a reader, as a little girl I just adored the Bobbsey Twins. I had several of their books, in fact I still have them, they're pretty shopworn by now, because I read and re-read them.

Children today would be so bored with these books and it's so sad, because the world has evolved to the point that these charming little reads would now be viewed as hokey by most little girls. *sigh* It's such a loss.

You can actually read The Bobbsey Twins in the Country in it's entirety online. If you have a little child that might be interested, Here's The Link.

And the following is a brief synopsis from Wikypedia. If you are of my generation, you are probably smiling right now as you remember your own childhood and summers spent reading about the Bobbsey's.

The Bobbsey family consists of:

• The father, Richard, a successful lumber merchant;
• The mother, Mary (referred to at least once as "Edith");
• Bert and Nan, slim, brown-eyed, straight-haired brunette, the older of two sets of fraternal twins;
• Flossie and Freddie, chubby, blue-eyed, curly-haired blonds), the younger twins.

Also living under the Bobbsey roof are Dinah and Sam Johnson, a black couple. Dinah is the Bobbsey family's cook and housekeeper, while Sam has been variously described, depending on the vintage of any particular book, as the Bobbseys' "man of all work," their chauffeur, a neighborhood handyman, or a truck driver at the Bobbsey lumberyard (in later volumes, Mr. Bobbsey's most trusted employee).

The Bobbseys live in the fictional city of Lakeport, on the shore of the equally fictional Lake Metoka, presumably somewhere in the northeastern U.S. The Bobbseys have relatives "in the country" (Richard Bobbsey's brother Daniel and his family, introduced in volume 2) on a farm near the rural town of Meadowbrook (in most books set there, that is also the name of the farm itself), and other relatives "at the seashore" (Mary Bobbsey's sister Emily Minturn and her family, introduced in volume 3), who live in the seaside hamlet of Ocean Cliff.

Here's my baby boy...

Just had to show you this picture of Ryan, proving that even though he's thirty-two now, the child still lives within him.

Lindsay snapped this today at Boyds Orchard. Hmmm, kind of reminds you of the male equivalent of Edith Ann, doesn't it?

We're having one of those rare days...

Heavensville is picture perfect today - 72 degrees, clear skies, no humidity, light breeze...

Give me books, fruit, French wine and fine weather and a little music out of doors, played by someone I do not know

~ John Keats ~
1795-1821