Christmas has started.

It was something like the 109th annual Christmas tea party in the forest. That's what they say; that they live in the forest. It was, actually and unexpectedly, impressive. Those old ladies can bake. There were tea sandwiches and cookies and punch AND tea and coffee poured in true tea style from silver tea services by old ladies. And the hall was decked out beautifully. I should have taken pictures. Next year.

Tuesday was the secret DHP party. That's all I can say or I'd have to kill you. No pictures allowed.

Come visit North Central Florida's largest indoor craft show.

Their words, not mine. It is big but this year was not as big, or as good, as it has been in the past. We still managed to spend a few bucks. I did very well; bought a huge gourd that is black and carved. We ate Backyard BBQ and shopped some more. It's in the O'Dome; view looking down from the second floor.

Pat and Tari post shopping frenzy.


Purchase of the day.

Thanksgiving.
That pretty much says it all. It was tasty. It was fun. It was over.

The cook. Her sister.Her neice. The kids...kind of. Tom, Brenda, Winnie. Lots more people. Lots more pictures of fuzz. Someone should just take my camera away and make everyones life easier.

Dot turns 70!

It was an elegant backyard affair. The weather was perfect and someone her sons managed to pull off a surprise party. This is Steve and one of the grandbabies.


There is another son named Keith and a wonderful daughter in law named Meagan (she goes with Steve).

Celebrating friends celebrated included...

Then it was time for the Friday night girls.

They arrived with pansys


and rosemary.


And the 'garden' clock.

For some reason I had been in a champagne buying mood that day so tho' we were a small group we were mighty with T-day leftovers, my Granny's Paradise Torte and the bubbly. Happy housewarming to me.

Lampshades and lamps.

I spotted two lampshades atop the trash pile in a neighbors yard. They looked good so I backed up and rescued them. Clean, well made and quite totally useless to me. I grabbed them anyway. For the record I did leave a third one that was huge, ugly and grubby. For the record.
The next night a friend said she had two lamps she was getting rid of. How DID she know? She said I might not like them. She was wrong. I think they are groovy in an Austin Powers sort of way.

The finished product.

I need to rewire but that can wait for the weekend. I LOVE them. And they look perfect; one in each bedroom.

Bird feeder extraordinaire.
A few Mardi Gras trinkets, a can of paint, an old dining room fixture and VOILA!

Geocaching vs Waymarking.Fam and friends are already bored to death with this but for those not in the know visit geocaching.com. One of the recent changes was to eliminate what used to be called virtual caching for something called Waymarking. Yesterday Morticiaand I drove to St. Augustine for a 'how-to'. We visited with old caching friends, learned new stuff, and came home re-energized to cache and waymark. Here's Mrs. Federation. It was the first outing with a new camera so Mr. Federation didn't come out too well. Suffice it to say they are a pair with kids and grands and really, in my eyes, Greg (Mr. Fed) is the father of caching for our neck of the woods.

Here are a couple other shots of participants,

the carousel,


and the cleverly disguised trash cans in the park where we lunched.

Recycling genius.

Is it her gum?

Or is it her iPod?

We'll leave the light on for you.

Me and the little black dog that is. Here are directions to TCF and a map of the grounds. I'm in 432. After you turn in, continue to the stop sign and veer left. Follow that road all the way and you dead end into my front yard. Driveway is to the right.

Feng Shui girlfriends.

What to do on a perfectly good Veterans Day off work? Hmmm, let's get the Feng Shui girlfriends to do their thing. Actually they were sort of a cross between Feng Shui and the Decorating Cents redesign segment. The only pictures I had hung was because there were already nails in the walls. Everything else was sort of propped around the house. These two went into full on mode and by the time we killed the Black Bean/Corn Salsa and Mojitos my house was looking 'shui-ed'.

Even the old ceiling tiles got hung. One of them anyway. There is another one but no one, me included is quite certain what to do with it.
Close up.
Closer up.
When I found them they were covered in layers of paint various colored paint. I stripped them, painted them, then glazed them. I think they are rather spectacular.

Lamps, lamps, lamps - many days and many more lamps than are shown here

My sister wanted to yard sale this old pitted, rusted, brass lamp that was my moms. I decided to keep it and rip the globe out to use for something else. Maybe to dangle in a tree or from the ceiling. Then Thomas told me about this paint than is sprayed right over all the crud. No sanding or anything. OK. Worth a try. It comes in black and brown. Since the lamp was already brass and because Edward says every room needs a touch of black that was my decision. Here it is all painted up. After many tries ended up with a shade from TJMaxx.
Thomas had said get a drum shade. I found a cheesy one in a thrift store for two bucks. First I covered it was fabric. Didn't like it. Next try, old lace curtains. Cute but not practical. Painted...not too cool. Back on the hunt and I found this beautiful handmade silk shade in prefect condition. It worked OK on the family lamp but
looked even better on another thrift store find now in my bedroom.

I'm voting for Fred Thompson.

Not really but that's what I keep telling everyone after the Florida Democratic Convention debacle. It's was clear to me why the other team keeps winning. Combined with the Disney venue it was a recipe for disaster from the beginning.

Except for JoAnn in party dress.
We did sit through a couple of hours on Saturday and Sunday that were packed with great info but other than that is was pretty much a bust. A well intentioned but poorly planned bust. You already know there were no candidates which was the big draw when we first planned this trip. Even the fact that Hillary wasn't coming that couldn't keep me away. Ever hopeful I just knew someone would sneak in (Bill?) and surprise us in an Oprahesque sort of way. Nope. The surprises were the lost and canceled parties, the confusion, the misdirection, the transport fiasco, etc.

Guess I should have gotten the front too. I'll work on that.

The best thing they had going for them was the 'poster' (see upper left) which wasn't really a poster. Or anything else for that matter except the background on the jumbotrons. I'm still hopeful they'll produce a poster or postcard. Maybe even a winning campaign.

I am the Anti-Disney.

My Disney days had ended long ago anyway but this trip really proved the bloom was off the rose. Our room (at a mere 160 a night) was dirty. There was a peg shelf that had a cotton ball and Q tip on it. Don't ask if they were clean or dirty. It was up high so we managed not to get close enough to look. The carpets were not only NOT vacuumed but needed shampooing as in shampoo, lather, rinse, repeat. The TV screen? Cleaned with furniture polish? No remote. Roll-a-way. No roll-a-way. No...roll-a-way. The list goes on. And on. And on.

Even worse (could it be?) was the non-service. We wandered around for ten minutes before we finally gave up the elevator search and bounced our luggage up to the second floor. When we called about the remote we asked about the elevator. It's in the middle of the building said the anonymous voice at the other end. No elevator showed on the emergency map but we persevered. Another call gave us a different anonymous voice who told us there was no elevator. What if I were handicapped? I'm not at the front desk the voice replied before hanging up.

It only went downhill from there. Ill planned and executed transportation to and from events and parks.

Suffice it to say my anti-Disney stance was only enhanced.

To be fair the food and drinks we had on site were all good. In fact, very good. Maybe a tad high but it was a convention center and probably to be expected. But not enough for me to ever, ever return to a WDW facility again.

And I did get to visit with Cadence. And Molly got her new pair of shoes. JoAnn did not get to see Epcot.

There is another Florida. Visit it soon.

Out with the old, in with the new.

Though it isn't quite the new year this old is out.

And this new is in.



Not only beauteous but comfortable. My movie watching butt is happy.

My new bike.

My years ago bike was a grab and go. I walked into Target, took the green one with the comfy seat, fat tires, six gears and rode off into the sunset for five happy years. It was a Huffy and it was stolen. I was ready for a better bike but I was devastated to loose that seat. My plan had been to move it to whatever new bike I bought. I wanted to upgrade to something better but between the lost seat and the selection now available I was immobilized. There was just too much to think about. So I stalled; for oh, I don't know, 3 or 4 years.

Why so long? Now I had biking friends to guide me and the knowledge base was overwhelming. Road bike? Mountain bike? Hybrid? What is a hybrid anyway? Fat tires? Thin tires? Hybrid tires? There's that word again. Gears? 6, 7, 18, 21, 24...OMG!

Well, here she is. JoAnn calls hers a Jessica Fletcher so I think this is like a Jessica on steroids.


It's a hybrid (yep, a hybrid...after all that) with an aluminum frame, front suspension and 24-speed Shimano/SRAM drivetrain which according to the salesman is 'smooth'. It also has the most important item of all, a suspension seatpost and plush saddle to keep me in the lap of luxury for miles and miles of comfort and fun. That's what the ad says. The lap of luxury. I'll let you know after a few miles.

Fourplay!

That's the name of my bowling team; fourplay not foreplay. As in four of us instead of five since we have five members but only four can bowl any given week. Coolest shoes in the place? Mine. They have stars that glow in black light. Not that we bowl in black light, mind you. But they are still the coolest shoes in the place.

The more important matter is my non-bowling. How bad? My handicap is 111! The first few weeks my goal was to NOT throwing any gutters in a game. I'm improving. Last night I finally bowled higher than my handicap by two pins. For two games. YES!

Here they are, the nice people who let me invade their Thursday nights.

This is Bill. He loves horror movies.
And Gerry. My dear friend Sandy's husband . He love dogs.And Ernie. He loves Rose. And here is Rose.

PRIDE.

I can't figure out how to make the word PRIDE a rainbow but here is a really bad picture of the rainbow balloon arch that was on the stage Saturday afternoon. Had I any sense I'd have taken pictures before the sun started going down and I had time to compose. But, as goes my non-plan I didn't think about it until they had dropped the canopy and all I could see was eight legs moving around beneath it. But they were out from under there before I could even focus that.

JoAnn and I covered the last shift at the GAAP table from 4-6. She also helped the guys take down the canopy. I sat on the back of the truck pretending to take pictures to document the event. HA! Here she is with CJ and Chaz.



And now the day is done and I'm going home because I LOVE my new house.

And there go the Thomas'.

As most of you know they were part of the great New Orleans diaspora of 2005. The last two years were spent in Houston while they figured out what they were going to do. Returning to NO was not an option so after a vacation last year to look at options they settled on Nashville. Here is their story:

Hi all,

Well we are here in Nashville and it was an eventful move to say the least. We picked up the moving truck on Sat morning and found out at about 3pm that it was not big enough so began the big give away, thanks to all who took so much off our hands, it beat hauling it to the street.
We finally got on the road at 3pm on Sunday and drove till 1am got room at a Motel6 from hell and slept till 7 and got back on the road at 8am.

The drive was uneventful till Thomas H. got a blow out on the F-150 about three hours south of Nashville, we had walkie talkies and I got on mine to ask him if he had seen that hubcap go rolling down the interstate behind us, all of sudden I hear, Static, PULLOVER, PULLOVER, Static, SOMETHINGS WRONG, Static, PULLOVER. (It was like one of those fighter movies), so I pulled over and sure enough he'd had a blow out, on the drivers side of course with a truck full of stuff (one motorcycle, two bikes, four cast stone flower pots, and two lions) so we called AAA and they came out and changed it, Thank you AAA!!!

That put us in Nashville at 6:15 and the office where we were to get our keys was open till 7pm, NOT, it closed at 6:00, so we found a slightly better Motel 6 and had dinner across the street at Hooters and called it a night.

Nine in the morning found us getting our keys and finally starting to unload the truck, when we opened the back it was packed so tight things started to spill out, but none of the new neighbors laughed or pointed and they even helped to move that monster entertainment center.
Today is Monday and Thomas H. had his first day at the new Whole Foods Market and I started to look for a job, well I tweaked my resume and filled out some on-line applications and Wednesday there is a job fair that I will attended with a hand full of resumes that I shall pass out to all with a smile on my face because I am so happy to be here....really, and I need a job, wish me luck.

If you want our address or phone number or email our sister can get it to you...Thomas & Thomas

Our house is a very, very fine house.

Finally, I moved; left the old trailer park behind to head into to Turkey Creek Forest, a 55+ community. Hahaha....never thought I'd see that coming. But it is nice to be one of the youngest in the joint.

It’s a little 2 bed/1 bath cottage, bungalow, whatever sort of thing that is very cute. The laundry room/utility room is at the end of the carport – so very 60’s Florida. There is also a screen and glassed porch that I’m sure I will use that a lot come winter. The yard is all mulched so I only have shrubs and things I want to plant but no yard to mow. Yippee.

I was planning ahead thinking that one day they would sell the mobile home park out from under me as they have so many others in this city and county. But while that was going on the park also turned very quickly for the worse. While the movers were loading the truck they watched two deals go down. I watched one not too long ago myself at the mailboxes. When Pam (and thank God for sisters with trucks and high energy) and I went back moving day evening to get the glider she got to see the action first hand as well. Hookers and dealers. It's sad because once upon a time it was a nice place to live. Not the high side of town but it was safe and well kept. Now it looks just as bad as it sounds. Probably worse. A friend thinks there was a major influx after the projects were shutdown. Whatever it was it went bad and it went fast so the looking to move thing was good timing.

Last year I bought a washer when mine went belly up but I decided to hold off on a dryer as long as I could. Moving seemed to be an ideal time to let Home Depot install a new one and leave the old one behind. The problem with that was that the owner DIDN'T remove the old washer/dryer like he was supposed to. I mean, really, one of the reasons for hiring a mover was to NOT have to deal with the washer. The owner insisted it wasn't all a 'built in' as it appeared. I wish I'd have taken pictures because HE WAS WRONG.

True to his word, realtor man showed up on delivery day to help knock out the 'not' built in shelves. Out came the first one, fairly easily too. Then we pulled the washer out (which was the hidden problem all along because it was 4 inches narrower than standard so mine couldn't just slide into the space it would leave open) and off came the sink that was attached to the wall. Water, water, everywhere! And I mean everywhere. We ran for the shutoff but not before a gushing mess in the utility room, down the driveway, and into the bedroom with the shared wall. I toweled and sopped while he pulled out appliances. Here's where a videocam would have been a good documentary tho' I suppose it would only gotten tossed aside to become a wet, muddy broken mess along with everything else.

Then it was time to call a plumber. Not a pretty bill but the owner paid half (he knew better, dang it), the realtor paid a quarter so, fair enough, I paid the new owner problem fee of the other quarter. When the new dryer delivery man arrived he kindly took the old washer along with the old dryer and and installed my washer for me. One bright light in the day.

Now the driveway was littered with utility room garbage and I was stressed. JoAnn to the rescue. She called Jocelyn and out they came with a truck and a plan. They started swinging sinks and cupboards and junk into the back of the truck and off we went to the dump. How cool is it to have girlfriends with trucks who know dump operating hours? Another camera moment. I really need to get one.

I also ordered a new couch and chair (red!). Hopefully the furniture will arrive in the next week or two.