Cousins

                         Joe and Howie

Guess What Famous Person Drew the Bee For the Sacramento Bee!

 After eating a lunch containing the last carbohydrates I will eat for the next six months, (promise), Mom, my two sisters, and I went on a field trip without any children!

 My sister, Pegi, works at the Sacramento Bee. This nice guy took us around.

 My mom is writing a book about the Commercial Appeal Newspaper of Memphis, and the trials they had during the Civil War.

 This is close to the type of printer they were using back then.  Her grandfather invented the method used to print colors in newspapers that was used until computers came along.  I guess that makes us sort of a newspaper family.

                More Linotype pictures.

                Today's printing metal "carbons."

 When we got to this printing room, Pegi was excited and relieved to see that HER add had made it into today's paper. (She turned it in just under the wire and was worried that it might not be in.)

 Later when we were telling John, my brother-in-law, about how we walked up just as this sheet was rolling off the machine, he said, "witches." sort of under his breath, like he always does when he thinks we conjure. 

                 Today's presses.

 A reeeally big roll of paper.  Tons.

 Here's the bee I was talking about.  Walt Disney drew him in the 1940's during WWII.

 The best part of the day... Pegi's cubical!  It is SO her!

Rancher Richie's Birthday

 Richie had a plan.  He didn't want anyone to mention his birthday to his son, Rob.  He likes to *Catch 'em Being Bad,* dontcha know.  But Rob made a dinner party for him at  the beautiful Anselmo Winery.  He called his boy, John, (my sister's husband, whom he loves more than any of us) and invited them up to dinner.

But first Rob came over at 4:30 the day before to take him fishing.  He had spent the week cleaning up the boat and rigging the poles for this event.

Turned out RR had a fine birthday celebration, as a man should have when he enters his seventh decade.

I got him one pair and Rob got him another. He couldn't decide which one to wear. So...I took this picture of his feet at the restaurant.  Yes. He is a handfull.

How To Torment Your General Practitioner In One Easy Lesson

Every time you see her or him, ask her to fill out the long forms for things you don't really need.   Works every time.
This has been Richard's hobby for over a year now.  On Thursday he got this.

Pink Science

http://www.wimp.com/pinklight/

No pink light?

Say it isn't so!!!

 Click on the link* above for the pinkest one minute science lesson you've ever had!


Then go see Bev at 

How Sweet the Sound

*borrowed from Minute Physics and Wimp.com

Moon Over Mount Lassen

                 Taken on Whitmore Road.

Girls Just Want To Have Fun

 This pretty place called to us and we said yes.  It is, of course, the Northern CA wine region called the Napa Valley. or Napa-Sonoma. Or Sonapa Noma.

 We ordered up a limo, driven by a patient man named Hector.  I'm pretty sure he had a horrible headache at the end of the day.  I would have WAAAAYY more photos to share but my camera stopped working, so I had to depend on the kindness of others.

The people above are my daughter, my sister, moi, my niece, my SIL, and my niece.

 We started with a serious tasting experience, including pairing with food (cookies with spices within).
We went to lunch next and had two bottles of wine and excellent food.  At our next stop, the wine grower fell in love with one or two of the younger beauties and he dumped wine into our glasses until, as Hector put it, "They are all toasted."

We didn't make it to the other three wineries we had on our schedule, but we had a great tour around this one in the back of the guy's pick-up.  We returned to our hotel after dark. We were singing drinking songs.
"She's Got A Drinking Problem and It's Me"
"She's Acting Single and I'm Drinking Doubles"
"I'm Taking Me A Whiskey Trip"

You get the idea.
There was another party left in the Old Girl!

The rest of the weekend went sort of like the first day.  I'll bet you didn't think this old lady had it in her.
I hope to be recuperated by next Friday.

A Corner of the Sitting and Reading Room

 This is , well, you can clearly see what this is.  Old photos.    The upper left ones are our chidlers.

 Ah! But behind the photos you see I keep my Jars of goodies from the garden of summer!  I decided I like looking at the jars more than the photos right now.

 Above and below were taken not long before we got married.

 These are from way long before we got married.

People Come To This Link Every Single Day From All Over The World. Pervs!

 I wrote a little post about this famous man in the Sears Catalog in 2009 and EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. people come to visit him.  --From Germany, France, Belize, and a lot of other places that I can't spell right now.   The world is full of people that I would love to hang out with!

http://itsajulything.blogspot.com/2009/11/man-on-page-602.htmlhttp://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5590469037415984465
Imagine the stir this caused back in 1975.  Geeze.  It was after the sexual revolution and after Woodstock!

Should Have Taken The Short Bus!

Last weekend my mama, sister, and I went on a tour of homes that were all Christmasified in Placerville, CA.  The tour was sponsored by the Assistance League.

One of the homes on the tour belonged to our favorite restaurant  (Cafe Luna) owners, Gary and David.  (Their home was the best, by the way.)

One group of gals hired this bus to drive them around.  We did not even know this existed!

The bus company is called, the Folsom Area Rapid Transit, or FART.  (sort of like BART?)

The girls who were riding the bus were having a rowdy party.  They were even pole dancing!!

Next time, Baby.  Next time.

From A "My Window" Type of Person

  Seesters

       
    I am one of those people who just don't instinctively know their left and right.  My sister and I share this affliction. 
    When we give one another driving directions – we employ the “Your Window, My Window Method” Turn left at the corner just won't work with us.
    For example when instructing one another which direction to turn.  It's like this,  “Just go your window at the next light and then go quick my window.” 
    It is a mild form of aphasia. We have learned to compensate, using the sister code.  When there is someone else giving the directions it can get ugly.  I stuck a little R and a little L on my speedometer of my Mustang.  That helped for eleven years, but I had to take a bit of teasing for it.

    The Hokey Pokey?  A chore.

    Oh, and that little trick of making an “L” with your left hand? Well my right hand makes an “L” too.  It's backwards, but my mind doesn't immediately see it as backwards.  I can also read upside down, and in mirrors, which came in handy when I taught kindergarten.

    When I was in School Teacher School, (which is what I called that year I spent learning educational jargon after I had my BA,) we saw a film about this very thing.  I remember one part of the film very well.
It was filmed with the fish-eye lens to make it scary.

    There was a child pretending to be the teacher, and he had a tea cup.  He held the cup up to the teacher, who was playing the child and asked, “What is this?”
The Teacher/child answered, “It's a tea cup.”
Then the child/teacher turned it upside down and again asked what it was.
The Teacher/child said, “A teacup?”
The Child/teacher said, “NO! Now it's something else!”

    Next he turned it around so the handle was on the other side, and the frustrated Teacher/child meekly said, “a teacup?” 
“NO!” Bellowed the Child/teacher.

    Suddenly, I understood what children went through learning to decipher the sticks and balls of the printed word.
I suppose I had learned to read in a less precise way, as I taught myself to read by deciphering the Sunday comics, before I went to kindergarten. I probably used the Right Brain method.  (I probably just made that up.)

    People who are dominated by the left hemisphere are practical, linear, detailed, and orderly. They process things from part to whole.  The see all the details when they enter a room.  They are the engineers and the scientists of the world.

    Those of us who are right brained dominate are artistic and impulsive. We see the whole room.  Furthermore we get a feeling from it.  Color and music are always involved.

    Needless to say the well balanced person taps into both hemispheres. The school district that employed me gave all of us a test to discover whether we were right or left brain dominated and I came out almost totally RIGHT.  Was anyone surprised?
      That explains why I was always having my students put on shows.

    They found that almost all of the teachers tend to be either evenly situated between the corpus callosum and if they were dominate on one side it was definitely to the left.

    So here's my question.  How did people who see everything black and white in politics become the right?  How is it that the unbending conservatives, the My Way or the Highway people become attached to the musical, interior decorator, mural-painting side of the brain?
Thank you Mercedes Benz for the brains.

Self Inflicted Trouble

Euw.
So. 
I was bored driving (riding) back from our Thanksgiving trip, SO I picked at my toe cuticles.  This particular toe became inflamed.

I was worried about the dreaded red strip that might appear and begin its journey toward my heart and therefore cause my untimely death, SO.  I took all my polish off and put a cloth into the microwave, (Do not try this at home!) and put it on my toe.

The cloth was a bit overheated and caused a blister, thus deforming my toe.

Realizing I was a stupid ass in over my head, I went off to visit my amusing doctor.  He gave me antibiotics and a much better story.

"No no no," he said.  "Never admit guilt." 
"You say, 'I was just walking along, minding my own bidness and through no fault of my own, these two dudes just jumped out and did this to my toe.'" 
He also offered an alien abduction story involving an anal probe.

So.  OK.  I was just walking along...