Looking Back

Just for fun, I decided to go back through my blog postings and reread everything that I’d posted since I started this blog just about 2 years ago.  Boy has it been a busy 2 years. 

1) There were the births of the babies in Aug/Sept of 2007.  Now the babies are toddlers, walking, talking and developing great personalities. 

2) My pseudo Brother Ben was deployed to Iraq with his unit and they served our country and the world honorably and returned to their families safely. 

3) I wrote 2 novels through the National Novel Writing Month.  I spent my “vacations” in 2008 and 2009 at Sturdy Memorial Hospital, but have made a resolution NOT to continue that trend!

4) I’ve been in my home for two and a half years now.  WOW!  Over the past weeks I even decided to invest in my back deck, so I bought some planters, and I’m now trying to grow tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplant and parsley.  (Plus I hung the Topsey Turvey Tomato Plant grower up, and filled it with dirt, so those tomatoes can be donated to the local food pantry.

5) We had another family wedding, which is leading to another birth (a boy), which could happen any day now.

6) The United States went through an election, unlike any other, which in the end gave us President Barack Obama, and California being in the middle of the battle for gay marriage rights.  (And yes, Jason and Chris’ marriage is legal according to the court in CA!)

and finally

7) The kids are getting bigger.  Addie is 9 and her family is expecting a baby brother for Addie in August.  Varnai is 6 1/2 and just finished first grade.  I went to her end of the year dance recital.  She was too cute up on the stage dressed as a can-can dancer.  Seth is 7 and also finished first grade.  He is a total Star Wars fanatic.  He can’t grasp that Karen Marie was around when episode 4 first came out in the movie theater.  (He thinks they were made in order 1-6.)  But he is highly impressed that I can name Luke’s friend Lando.  And Bella is one of those babies born in September of 2007.  Every time she sees me, she says “kay ree, chip eeezz”  which means, “Karen Marie, chips please.”  Too cute.

So hopefully life will be good enough to allow me to write about more things for another couple of years.  Thanks to all of you for coming back to read what I’m writing.

love you all lots

karen marie

A Wisconsin Joke…

This was a forward to me, and I laughed very hard at the truthfulness of it.  Go Cheeseheads!

COLD IS A RELATIVE THING. . . . . . .

65 above zero:

Floridians turn on the heat

People in Wisconsin plant gardens.

 60 above zero:
 Californians shiver uncontrollably.
 People in Wisconsin sunbathe.

 50 above zero:
 Italian & English cars won’t start.
 People in Wisconsin drive with the windows down.

 40 above zero:
 Georgians don coats, thermal underwear, gloves, wool hats.
 People in Wisconsin throw on a flannel shirt.

 35 above zero:
 New York landlords finally turn up the heat.
 People in Wisconsin have the last cookout before it gets cold.

 20 above Zero
 People in Miami all die.
 Wisconsinites close the windows.

 Zero:
 Californians fly away to Mexico .
 People in Wisconsin get out their winter coats.

 10 below zero:
 Hollywood disintegrates.
 The Girl Scouts in Wisconsin are selling cookies door to door.

 20 below zero:
 Washington DC runs out of hot air.
 People in Wisconsin let the dogs sleep indoors.

 30 below zero:
 Santa Claus abandons the North Pole.
 Wisconsinites get upset because they can’t start the Snow-mobile.

 40 below zero:
 ALL atomic motion stops.
 People in Wisconsin start saying…’Cold enough fer ya?’

 50 below zero:
 Hell freezes over.
 Wisconsin public schools will open 2 hours late

WordPress spelling error

Every time I write the words “Barack Obama” here in the postings on my blog, the spell check from WordPress says that the words are spelled wrong.  I finally got fed up and sent the powers that be a note stating that the 44th President of the United States name should be in the dictionary.  We’ll see how long it takes to be added!

It’s NaNoWriMo time again!!

For those of you who are new to my blog, I’m doing the National Novel Writing Month project again.  (Also known as NaNoWriMo)  The goal, and the pride of winning, is if you write a novel of 50,000 words during the month of November.  It averages to be about (for me) 3 writing hours a day and 1667 words a day.  It think with the font I used in Microsoft Word last year it turned out to be about 120 pages or so.  50,000 words is about the size of “Catcher in the Rye.”  I was successful last year, and I’m hopeful that I’ll win again this year.  My friend K, turned me onto this, and I’ve been waiting and plotting all year to do this again!

So wish me luck, and if I tune out for November, you’ll know why.  And if you think that this might be something interesting that you might like to do, let me know and we can do this together!

Facebook

Okay, I’m now horrible at this blog, because I’ve been spending any of my extra computer time on Facebook trying to catch up with old high school, college and friends I’ve made as I’ve travelled throughout the years.  My brother Dave got me started on Facebook because he kept saying that “so and so” says hi, so I decided to look them up for myself.  It is totally awesome!! I found a friend from Milwaukee that I went to 3 year old preschool with and we ended up graduating together from high school.  I’ve wondered what happened to her in the last decades (I haven’t gone back for any reunions.)  I’m primarily using Facebook to see what my friends are doing now, I’m not big on rehashing the past, so it’s neat to see who’s found the love of their life and who has kids and what people are interested in.  As I said this is really cool!

How to get attention (even if it’s bad)

I guess I’ve found the way to get my friends’ attention, and that is to do posts about Microsoft Vista.  I guess people could care less about politics, religion, the famous Lutheran dessert of lime Jell-O, and the words to ”Tessie” the unofficial Red Sox nation’s anthem.  So Vista.  I have been pleasantly surprised at all of the features of Vista on my computer.  So after the replies to the post, e-mails and conversations, I agree that XP really is so easy to use (in fact I’m keeping my old laptop with XP on it and explorer and the programs updated so I can use it if needed.) 

I realized that I haven’t noticed how slow Vista runs, is because I’ve upgraded the RAM in my computer, so things are simply running far faster than I’m used to any how.  I’ll let you know how the photo program I have chosen for Vista works.  Otherwise, hopefully Microsoft can figure out how to get rid of these kinks!

But as I said, anytime I have something really important to say, I should just put Vista in the title, and hopefully everyone will read that post. 

Windows Vista

The computer that I’m working on has Windows Vista.  I was totally ticked off that I was going to have to use Vista, but as the months have gone by I really like Vista, in fact I think that it’s better than XP.  I think that it’s because I have a very logical brain and I like things to be very ordered and straight forward.  Vista is really easy to use once you realize that everything is laid out in a logical way.  (Okay I used the word logical several times, but I’m too lazy to use the dictionary to find a synonym.)  Anyway I just wanted to put my two cents worth into the conversation about Vista vs. XP now that XP is no longer going to be sold on the PC’s.

The God Box

I don’t usually respond to e-mail forwards, but this one, which came from my friend Sarah, hit me right in the heart, because it was exactly what I needed to hear right now, so I’m going to share it with all of you!  Since it came from an e-mail I don’t know who the author is, but whoever wrote it…thanks.

To:  YOU
Date:  TODAY
From:  GOD
Subject:  YOURSELF
Reference:  LIFE

This is God.  Today I will be handling All of your problems for you.  I do Not need your help.  So, have a nice day.   I love you.. 

P.S.  And, remember…
If life happens to deliver a situation to you that you cannot handle, do Not attempt to resolve it yourself!  Kindly put it in the SFGTD (something for God to do) box.  I will get to it in MY TIME.  All situations will be resolved, but in My time, not yours.  

Once the matter is placed into the box, do not hold onto it by worrying about it.  Instead, focus on all the wonderful things that are present in your life now. 

Now, you have a nice day.

God

I am officially “cool”

I have never in my life been called cool.  I was and probably always will be considered a nerd or a geek, so when I was reading the blog of a friend of mine (Loki) and he called me ” someone really cool” I think I spit out the juice I was drinking at the time, because I began laughing really hard.  Loki was referring to the post about The Brick Testament Bible post of mine, where I reference the fact that someone did the Bible out of LEGO people.  ( I do want to give credit where credit is due.  So many thanks to my friend Faye for discovering this site in the first place and then sharing it with me, so that I can get the coolness award!)  Well, I’ve got to go think of more ways to display this new found coolness of mine.  I’ll let you know how I do! :0

Happy Day Dad!

Father’s Day was not always celebrated at our house when we were growing up, because my dad’s birthday usually falls around it.  This year was no different.  With me at my home still feeling sick, Dave in Taiwan (but moving to Talahassee, Florida and Florida State this fall to get his Ph.d) and Dad at his home, Dave and I phoned in/e-mailed our Father’s Day and Birthday wishes.  But I’ll post it here officially.

HAPPY FATHER’S DAY DAD!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD!

love your daughter, karen marie