Vindicated!

We beat that dratted couple of rascals Christina and Jim at Spades last night.
Last time we played, we set them right off the bat and sped ahead full force. They played sure and steady and beat us by one point at the very end. :(

Last night, we played after feeding them crab and shrimp and while sipping on Long Island Iced Teas. We set them right off the bat and again at the end to win by a whopping 40 points. YES! We are vindicated.

Randy has been purging and consolidating his file cabinets to make more room. We have decided to organize all our "stuff." Anyway, he keeps hauling out little goodies to show me before he throws them away and I grab them back and say we should keep them.
Things like old report cards and old blueprints he drafted. We can't get rid of those.
We definitely can't throw out the 4 molars he had pulled sometime in his 20's. (They are huge, roots and all -- great archaeological find.)
It's hard to get him away from his Pirate game. He enjoys pillaging and sword fighting and the bilging and sailing.
He became a citizen on a different island from the one he started on and lost his shack. His pet rat was in the shack at the time. So he had to go back and find his rat and claim him. The rat had been wandering the island all alone with no name until Randy found him curled up, sleeping on the floor of a store. Happy reunion. Randy picked the little guy up, named him, and hasn't put him down since. :)
Now he is out pillaging in order to make enough pieces of eight to buy a shack to call home on his new island.
I've been reading books. Last one I read was called "Breakpoint" by Richard Clarke. It's set in the near future and deals with cyber attacks, transhumanism and other technological gizmo's. Pretty cool reading.
We're going to visit Kara and Joel and Aidan and Theo and Auntie Mo in early February. Can't wait.
Love Mom

Cruising the Web

Super cool! Great Site!

http://www.thetrailermash.com/10-things-i-hate-about-commandments-comedy/

Just what you need to waste more time on the computer.

Your Mother's a Nerd!

Pure Nerd 69 % Nerd, 34% Geek, 30% Dork

For The Record: A Nerd is someone who is passionate about learning/being smart/academia. A Geek is someone who is passionate about some particular area or subject, often an obscure or difficult one. A Dork is someone who has difficulty with common social expectations/interactions. You scored better than half in Nerd, earning you the title of: Pure Nerd. The times, they are a-changing. It used to be that being exceptionally smart led to being unpopular, which would ultimately lead to picking up all of the traits and tendences associated with the "dork." No-longer. Being smart isn't as socially crippling as it once was, and even more so as you get older: eventually being a Pure Nerd will likely be replaced with the following label: Purely Successful. Congratulations!

Reunions

Hoo boy!
Snow in Denver--we know it snows there.
Why did it have to dump all at once in just one spot?
Melanie and Bebo we hope you can get out soon!
Jason and Leanne are expected to be here Friday night.
Hope their flight is not delayed because of repercussions from the Denver fiasco.
Megan is coming home tomorrow too. We just have rain here so she shouldn't have any weather preventing her homecoming.

Here's to hoping everyone gets home save and sound.

Love
Mom

Birthdays

I don't mind getting older, it's just that I don't want to do it while I'm still so young.

News from Home

All of you probably know already, but Caroline (Mike) & Susan (Brandon) are with child. Anyone else? You know how Cecile & I love surprises.
I think that my outside (between holiday) chores are finished. I got all the leaves in the compost. For the first time, all the leaves are out of the pool area. I have most of Cecile's rose bushes transplanted to the south side of the pool. (between the grasses) Most of the Cana bulbs are in the basement. If you want some, you can take them back w/ you at Christmas. The Christmas light are up. I had to buy 6 more strings of lights because the trees keep getting bigger. We are going up to see My Dad & Marge probably next weekend & take him his late birthday gift / early Christmas gift. Megan is home for the weekend YAaa. Christina comes home on Sundays and has dinner w/ us. I need to talk her into coming home for dinner a couple time a week.
It' a long story, but I have a new riding lawn mower. Take a guess how many lbs. of crab are in the freezer?

Change is sometimes good

The American people have spoken. That is what these elections across the USA have said. I hope & trust it will be for the best. There have been other times in history where one party controls the Presidency and the other party controls either one/both or the House & Senate. It might just be what this country needs. That is what I love about a democracy. We do have a voice, but it takes a lot of us. I don't say very much about politics or religion, but most of you are not shy about speaking your mind. A lot of what has happened to our Country is about growing pains & change. I could elaborate, but it won't help anything. People (just people) run our government. They do the same things to live, every day, just like all of us. They one way or another attained a position where they are deciding policy on things that affect our lives. That doesn't make them better, or smarter. Any of you in time could do what they are doing. I never wanted to be a politician, but I have wondered if I would have sucumbed to the same pitfalls that most of them do. Big business runs this country, or any other democracy. It is dificult at times to maintain what we believe, when the pressure is on. I have been in that position many many times.

Rare American Chestnut

The loss of these trees is considered by some measures to be among the greatest environmental disasters to befall the Western Hemisphere since the last Ice Age.
The trees could be giants. In virgin forests throughout their range, mature chestnuts averaged up to five feet in diameter and up to one hundred feet tall. Many specimens of eight to ten feet in diameter were recorded, and there were rumors of trees bigger still.

Native wildlife from birds to bears, squirrels to deer, depended on the tree's abundant crops of nutritious nuts. And chestnut was a central part of eastern rural economies. As winter came on, attics were often stacked to the rafters with flour bags full of the glossy, dark brown nuts. Springhouses and smokehouses were hung with hams and other products from livestock that had fattened on the harvest gleanings. And what wasn't consumed was sold.

The tree was one of the best for timber. It grew straight and often branch-free for 50 feet. Loggers tell of loading entire railroad cars with boards cut from just one tree. Straight-grained, lighter in weight than oak and more easily worked, chestnut was as rot resistant as redwood. It was used for virtually everything - telegraph poles, railroad ties, shingles, paneling, fine furniture, musical instruments, even pulp and plywood.

Then the chestnut blight struck

First discovered in 1904 in New York City, the blight - an Asian fungus to which our native chestnuts had very little resistance - spread quickly. In its wake it left only dead and dying stems. By 1950, except for the shrubby root sprouts the species continually produces (and which also quickly become infected), the keystone species on some nine million acres of eastern forests had disappeared.

Grandpa gave us a seedling and it grew. Our tree is now over 20 feet tall and bearing seed pods. But the seed pods are sterile and don't give us any nuts. So we planted another seedling from Grandpa and are waiting for it to mature so we can have two chestnuts with nuts.

Information taken from the American Chestnut Foundation Website

The autumn leaves are beautiful and Poncho is fat

How can we be so Booooring if we are so busy all the time?
Randy at least has end results for his time that you can see and feel.
He just finished another chess/Chinese checker board with drawers. It's beautiful. He's working on a Christmas gift for someone now and busy racking wine and mowing leaves and playing in the compost heap.
My time is spent on the... well .... intangible. :) And not very timely either.
Aunt Valorie and I are working on a project for Grandpa for Christmas. I bake pies and they disappear. I made two biiiiig pans of meatloaf thinking to freeze some, but it tastes so good that we are still eating it - every day.
Christina is in the process of moving to her first real apartment with a friend named Andy.
Her room looks more empty than Megan's even though Megan took more stuff with her.
Randy and I can never move, we have too much stuff. I try to throw something out and Randy scrutinizes everything in the trash and suggests other uses for it.
We would love to build an addition onto the house. One with room for storage. Think it's possible? The addition, yes. Room for storage, Ha! never enough room for stuff.
Gotta go bake some more pies.

My wonderful gransons

Two little bubbies sitting at their table
Being such good boys eating peaches and peanut butter and jelly.

Warm Feet

Cecile & I went to see Joel,Kara,Aidan,Theo, & Marissa over the weekend. We left Thursday morning (Megan (Cecile) Time) and arrived around 9:30 p.m. We played card games and Chinese checkers. We went to BW3 and watched the Michigan / State game. We also got to go to Chuck E Cheese. Sunday Joel & I donned our worst grubbs and entered the crawl space under the front of the house. Some of the things that we encountered will remain hidden forever right where we left em. I think it will be the start of "Joel the Handyman". He was a slave driver. He wouldn't let me take breaks, no naps, no drinks. We were is some tight spaces. Besides the sore muscles it got done. When we finished Aidan told me "Grandpa you need a shower" Most of it washed off. It was wonderful to see the Atances. Aidan is growing up so fast & Theo is walking all over the place. Marissa seems to be keeping her sanity. Kara probably needs more sleep. Theo is a eating machine. We came home through Columbus. It might have been a little shorter. We probably won't do it very often.

Randy

Dealing with Adversity

A young woman went to her mother and told her about her life and how things were hard for her. She did not know how she was going to make it and wanted to give up. She was tired of fighting and struggling. It seemed as one problem was solved, a new one arose.

Her mother took her to the kitchen. She filled three pots with water and placed each on a high fire. Soon the pots came to a boil. In the first, she placed carrots; in the second, she placed eggs; and in the last, she placed ground coffee beans. She let them sit and boil without saying a word.

In about twenty minutes, she turned off the burners. She fished the carrots out and placed them in a bowl. She pulled the eggs out and placed them in a bowl. Then she ladled the coffee out and placed it in a bowl.

Turning to her daughter, she asked, "Tell me what you see."

"Carrots, eggs, and coffee," she replied.

Her mother brought her closer and asked her to feel the carrots. She did and noted that they were soft. The mother then asked the daughter to take an egg and break it. After pulling off the shell, she observed a hard boiled egg. Finally, the mother asked the daughter to sip the coffee. The daughter smiled as she tasted its rich aroma.

The daughter then asked, "What does it mean, mother?"

Her mother explained that each of these objects had faced the same adversity: boiling water. Each reacted differently. The carrot went in strong, hard, and unrelenting. However, after being subjected to the boiling water, it softenend and became weak. The egg had been fragile. Its thin outer shell had protected its liquid interior, but after sitting through the boiling water, its inside became hardened. The ground coffee beans were unique, however. After they were in the boiling water, they had changed the water.

"Which are you?" she asked her daughter. "When adversity knocks on your door, how do you respond? Are you a carrot, an egg, or a coffee bean? If you are like the bean, when things are at their worst, you get better and change the situation around you."

The happiest of people don't necessarily have the best of everything; they just make the most of everything that comes along their way.

When you were born, you were crying and everyone around you was smiling. Live your life so, at the end, you're the one who is smiling and everyone around you is crying.

This concludes today's sermon.
Love
Mom

Frogs and snails and puppy dog tails....

Theo needs a puppy.!.

Mel's bed

Here is another photo of Melanie's bed. I am finishing up a checker board for my Dad. I am also finishing up a frame for a picture of Cecile & me that is going to work. Then I am going to start on a coffee table for our living room. Beside all that, life is routine in the bear den.

Eat Your Vegetables

Sunday we took a carload of "essentials" to Megan. Then we took her to dinner at a restaurant called La Shish. The menu was a blend of Indian and Middle Eastern foods. We ordered 2 entrees and they came with soup and salad. The salad was your typical greens with Greek style dressing minus the spinach leaves. Then they brought the bread which was the naan that Jason makes.
The main dishes were very delicious. One was rice with grilled shrimp and vegetables. The other was a thick ring of hummus surrounding a stew of lamb and vegetables. You dip the naan in the stew and hummus and eat it. Yummmmmmeeee.

We dropped Megan off at her photo lab and went to Whole Foods Market. The superstore for organic and health freaks. We love wandering around in there. Randy tastes the cheese samples and drools over the huge cheese selection. I search for all the different soy based products to stock up on. Like soy yogurt(it doesn't taste like yogurt but it's smooth and creamy and fruity).
Then we checked out their cafeteria and deli. Wow what a lot of yummy looking stuff. I got ideas for foods I've never attempted before.

Tonight's dinner:
Lembas (Elven waybread)

grated daikon radish, one
grated carrot, 3/4 of 1-lb bag baby carrots
minced onion, one
minced garlic, 2 cloves
sea salt and ground pepper to season
Steam 8 minutes.
Cool.
Add:
cilantro, 1 bunch leaves removed from stems

In separate bowl mix:
1-1/2 C. flour
1/2 C. cornmeal
2 T. olive oil
2 eggs, slightly beaten
1-1/4 C. soy milk
sea salt and ground pepper to season

Fold vegetables into batter. Mix well.

Put large spoonful on waffle iron or panini maker and cook until browned.
Serve with favorite condiments: butter, catsup, sour cream, Ranch Dressing or salsa.
It stores well and can be reheated in toaster oven.

To pan fry, use only 1 C. milk and fry in about 4 T. oil until browned on both sides.

A box without hinges, key or lid
Yet golden treasure inside is hid.

Answer: egg

Laters,
Mom

Fall Rituals

As the fall leaves are thinking about changing colors, mama & papa bear are preparing for something much worse. Angel dandruf!
Papa bear bought a large grass colored rug to put on the pond where all the animals bathe and drink. Hopefully this keeps all the critters & leaves out, especially the cats that can walk on water.
Today we are going up to the next valley where all the animals buy produce in larger quanities.
I have to get a couple of bushels of "Granny Smith" apples for you know what.
We are starting our fall ritual of eating less & more healthy, knowing that during the winter we don't get out as much and like to store up extra cellular structures that aren't necessary.
Tomorrow we are going to see baby bear and take her some stuff that she will need during the cold months ahead. They have a "World Market" in her valley not too far away from her cave. We will have to stop there and browse also. Gota go! "Growl"
Papa Bear

No Worries

For Labor Day Weekend we went to Grandma and Grandpas house to hobnob with the relatives.
Aunties Valorie and Tara were there working on homemade Christmas cards. When they weren't paperworking they were crocheting dishcloths. Aunt Valorie plans to open a craft store in the little barn on her property. She also plans to teach lessons in a variety of crafts.
If you have any little crafty objects you would like to sell, she is willing to take them in to her shop and put them on display.

Nellie was there and was busy knitting a sweater for a newborn girl she knows. She used a thick soft chenille yarn in pastels and white. When it was done it looked so soft and cuddly you just wanted to squeeze it tight.
Nellie has been taking monster antibiotics for the H.pylori bacteria that has given her stomach ulcers. Her 90 year old father is causing her a great deal of anxiety. She'll come home from work to find his tractor with its nose half up a tree trunk or the back end in the trout pond.
He'll extricate it and get it into another predicament the next day. She is in constant fear of what she may come home to one day.

There was plenty of good food as usual. Granpa rigged up a homemade chicken rotisserie for slow roasting his homegrown chickens over the fire pit.
His garden is huge. The corn stalks must be over 10 feet tall. He rigged an electric fence around the corn to keep the varmints out. It's a bare wire poked into the outlet of an extension cord! Mmmm... electric fried racoon.

Grandma's hand is still healing from the surgery so she has not done any sewing lately. She goes to therapy 2 times a week where they stretch it and press it until it hurts. The scars are in three places, the palm and two on the finger. They are not neat scars either, they are all jaggedy. It'll be a while before she has full use of it again.

Randy's toenail is still hanging on by a teensy bit of skin. He protects it with a bandaid. You can see the new nail growning underneath. It's grown out about half way.
We don't see Christina anymore. She gets up about when I go to bed and comes home just as I'm leaving for work. I'll have to settle with reading about her in her blog.

Until next time
Cec

Nothing Much

Nothing exciting going on with Randy or me.
I did watch Randy pull out tons of English ivy from under the old maple in the back yard though.
He's an animal! Grrrrr.....
He let me pretend to help by rolling the ivy up with the use of a pitchfork. Then he used brute force to yank the roots out of the ground.

It's been raining three days straight. Good for the saplings we planted. Grandpa gave me some American chestnuts and some acorns last fall. I planted them and voila! Trees!
The American chestnut we have is not self-pollinating so we planted a mate for it by the relocated compost pile. The oak is planted just in front of the back fence.
We are officially finished planting any more trees on our property. Within another 10 years we won't have any sunny spots around.

Now that the weather is cooler, and as soon as the rain stops, we will get back to work on our variegated brick patio. I don't know if I like it or not. But it will be a pleasant place to sit even if it looks strange.

Randy and I have been watching some ooooold movies. Black and white ones. Some Hitchcock and some Paul Newman ones. Some Shirley Temple movies just came in but I doubt I can get him to sit and watch those with me. :)

It's great to read your interesting blogs. Keep up the good work!
Cec

New again!

Here it is. Jason left a dark brown (stained) coffee table in storage when He & Leanne left for Washington. Megan & I went to storage to browse. She thought she might need a coffee table, so we took it home and she helped me strip it. It's just pine, but it should get her through the next couple years.

Baby bear - over the far hill

As the bears sat in front of the den last night, baby bear said, " I want to go back to Learning Academy" This will be her 3rd year. Papa & Mama bear don't know what else the old wise bears can teach her. She is getting so grown up. They decided if she is willing to learn, they must let her go. (maybe this year she will decide if she wants to be a public nurturing bear, a medicine bear, Pi-bear, or whatever she wants bear) They decided that they will take her over the big hill and get her settled in to a den with 5 other wild creatures. They don't know who will fix all the evening meals now. They will worry about her all the time. There are stories about those learning academies, and the wild "old honey" gatherings that take place. Well, Papa bear has got to go see what his friends, the bats are doing.
Papa Bear