What Kind of Pizza Are You?

Cheese Pizza

Traditional and comforting.You focus on living a quality life. You're not easily impressed with novelty. Yet, you easily impress others.

What's" Your Pizza Personality?

Wow. This hits the nail on the head. I only like cheese pizza, and I'm very much a traditional person in my lifestyle. Though I don't know how much I impress others!

Trip to Orlando

This past week I had the dubious privilege of traveling to the Orlando area to attend the annual Association of KFC Franchisees conference. Yes, that's right, Kentucky Fried Chicken. I wasn't sure what to expect - my company was sharing a booth with the corporate Yum! Brands folks (Yum! is the parent company for KFC, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut and others) to make sure the franchisees knew we were available to help with their recruiting and staffing needs. It turned out to be fun and interesting - the franchisees came from all over the country and even from Australia, Mexico and Canada. Many brought their spouses and children because of the opportunity to go to Disney World, so it was very much a family event. The other exhibitors (and there were MANY) were food service vendors, restaurant equipment vendors, sign companies, leasing/mortgage companies and so on. There were free food samples everywhere! Yum! indeed. We talked with lots of down-to-earth people and gave away hundreds of chicken-shaped squeeze toys.

That was the business side of the trip. I was on my own, no co-workers, so I was free to wander around the two resorts and take in the sights. I stayed at the Marriott World Resort, and drove over to the Gaylord Palms Resort for the convention. Both were very nice resorts - incredibly huge complexes with numerous restaurants, shopping areas, pools and spas. The grounds were equally nice - gardens, pathways, fountains, bridges over ponds, miniature golf courses and the like. I was thrilled to see all sorts of flowering shrubs and trees - great photo opportunities around every bend.

Palm trees have always fascinated me - the bark, the way they grow so incredibly tall without falling over with their own weight. Actually, I did see a number of trees propped up with 2 X 4's - I guess they don't want to cut them down until they really have to! There were also bamboo trees planted around the pool at the Gaylord - very dainty and lacy against the sky.

The first evening I was at the Marriott I went outside to take a walk at just the right time - the sun was beginning to set as I wandered around the pool area. Gorgeous! The view changed literally second by second as I walked.

The pool at the Gaylord Palms was graced by an enormous sea creature (an octopus on steroids?) that doubled as a water slide. Around the pool were numerous seahorse figures, some of which were spraying water. Giant snail sculptures looked as though they were crawling out of the sand (play) area. And I discovered that there were fountains inside and out as I walked around the complex. Beautiful! At the Marriott, the floors on the lower level (that opened out into the pool area) were tiled in colorful mosaics - too pretty to walk on but great to photograph!

All in all, a good trip - warm weather, sunshine and so many beautiful things to see - but I'm still glad to be safely at home with my people and my pets!

Her Bedroom is Her Kingdom

Things have changed a lot since I was a teenager. Back in the 70's we didn't have cell phones, text messaging, the internet, malls all over town, endless movies to go to, hundreds of TV channels to choose from, reality TV, and on and on. Our kids are exposed to so much, have so many more choices to make every day .... life for my daughter is incredibly different than the life I experienced in the early 1970's. She's busy and happy, has far too many clothes, purses and shoes, and has good friends. She's cute, smart and has boys calling her all the time (something I never had to worry about!). There are moments when I'm her best friend and then there are those times when I'm the Parent and the Enemy. When I look around her bedroom I see things that remind me she's still a child, and I see signs that she's really becoming a young lady - a really mixed bag! Here are some examples (don't be afraid, nothing graphic, just a big teenage mess - "this too shall pass" is my mantra):

She has nail polish, make-up, Q-tips, hair gadgets, earrings, bracelets, breath mints, pens, highlighters, lotions, perfumes, her pet fish, old Halloween candy, her cell phone bill - you name it, it's there somewhere.

Decor: Kelly and I painted her room several years ago, a beautiful combination of blues, now accented by the little string of blue lights around the ceiling. She's put up a row of fairies over the doorway that she sketched and colored. There are dried flowers, some peacock feathers and a couple of big round lights hanging from the ceiling at either end of her bed. The bed itself is draped with white netting, so she really feels like she's in a nest when she lays in bed covered with umpteen blankets and quilts to keep Her Highness warm.

Necessities in her life: Many purses, many pairs of gym shoes, boots and shoes, Rolaids for those times when life gets too stressful, and a tower of Kleenex boxes at her bedside used during the many emotional moments she's had with boys, girlfriends and others. Hint: Buy stock in the company that makes Kleenex. You should be able to retire happily in a few short years if her life continues to be filled with tear-producing events.

Gotta love her! I keep reminding my husband that we'll miss her when she's gone in few short years!

It's Gotta Hurt

I left work a little early today to pick up Tandie from the vet. Dr. Jeff had called me about 11:00 this morning to say that the surgery had gone well and gave a graphic description of the mass he removed from Tandie's side. I guess she was the talk of the vet's office today - it was a humdinger of a disgusting mess. He even took a Polaroid picture of it and presented it to me as I paid the bill. Ugh. It was good that we had the surgery done because the growth was deep and beginning to affect surrounding muscle; and it was getting close to her rib cage.

Dr. Jeff also removed a smaller growth from her right side, just to make sure it didn't become the same kind of problem in the coming months. So poor Tandie can't lay on either side without being on a sore spot, though the left side is by far the bigger incision. She has to go back in 10 days to have stitches removed, and she'll be on antibiotics and pain meds for several days.

She's still a little groggy, and after getting a good long drink of water, and limping outside briefly for a bathroom break, she's napping on the bedroom floor. Not laying on either side, but trying to doze with her head between her paws. Poor girl!

Chris has finally moved past all the Orientation business at Lowe's and is having his first real day on the job, working noon - 9 p.m. He dashed home on his dinner break to see how Tandie was doing, ate quickly and hurried back to work. I'll post a full report after he's got a week or so under his belt! He did get the second coat of paint on the hall this morning while he had some peace and quiet, so Phase One of the painting project is finished.

Several loads of laundry await - Happy Valentine's Day to All!

Another Whirlwind Weekend

Are there any other kind of weekends besides the crazy busy whirlwind kind? We don't seem to have any laid-back boring weekends any more. Every Friday at work, my co-workers (most of them single and living in the fun & fast lane...) talk about the coming weekend and inevitably someone will ask me about my plans ... and I always say that we don't plan our weekends, they just sort of "unfold" one hour at a time - the weekends happen to us, there's rarely anything that can be planned ahead of time.




The one event that was definitely on our schedule was a family birthday party on Saturday evening - Abby's 7th birthday! She received many wonderful presents with the biggest one being a new bicycle - with a banana seat in dark purple velour! And tassles hanging off the handlebars! How cool is that? She had to wait with her hands over her eyes while her dad carried it into the living room. She'll be the talk of the street as she rides around!

There were two other special birthdays on February 11th - my far-away niece Stephanie (above, about a year ago) in Montana and my best friend Jenny who I have known since 8th grade (that's 35 years to save you from trying to figure it out....) (No current pictures of Jenny) A big Happy Birthday Weekend for all.

Kelly went to the Valentine's Dance at school with a group of friends and came home at midnight tired and happy because she danced with .... I'd better not name him, but she's on a cloud. I never did see her in the lavender dress because she got ready over at a friend's house, and Matt picked her up when the dance was over. By the time she woke me up to say she was home, she was dressed in a t-shirt and jeans. But she loved how her hair was done - very un-Kelly but pretty, wavy with a sparkly butterfly pin on the side. She usually wears it in a pony tail or just stick-straight. Here's how it looked (I took these pictures when I was half-asleep, having been dragged out of bed to see her hair):

Now on to the guy stuff. We finally started the painting in our living room-dining room-hallway. Actually, we just started in the hallway because it's the smallest area (like any part of our house is BIG?) and we're doing this in stages to make it easier. In typical thorough Chris-style, the walls were patched, sanded, patched some more, sanded again, vacuumed down, wiped down and then finally given a quick dusting with a tack cloth. Whew. Lots of work for a dinky hall, n'est-ce pas? Then we commenced to doing the cutting in .... for being such a short hall, it has 5 doorways to trim around. I'm absolutely no good with the detail work so I moaned and groaned as I made a mess, while Chris zipped around doing all his cutting in FREE HAND in nice straight clean lines. I'm not the man for that job, for sure. Finally the rolling, which went quickly compared to the previous exercise. One coat down, one to go. Thankfully, Chris did a lot more of the painting than I did today, so it looks great thus far. The color is called Pismo Gold (what's pismo, anyway?) and is kind of a gold-tan shade. Very warm, and a very nice change from the pale green.

More snow flurries this weekend. Most of it's melting as fast as it lands which is OK by me. Another bad call by the weather forecasters - they were trying to get everyone whipped up into a frenzy by predicating a couple of inches of snow ... wrong again.

Someone starts a new job at Lowe's this week - Team Lead in the Lawn & Garden Dept. He finishes a second day of Orientation tomorrow and finds out his schedule for the coming week(s). I think he'll like this a job lot because he not only believes in great customer service ... he loves things like lawnmowers, chain saws and grills!

OK I need to wrap up, but I have to tell you the highlight of the weekend: we may have found the vehicle that hit Matt's car 4 weeks ago!! Chris and I drove back over to the neighborhood in Anderson Twp. where the accident happened with the intention of distributing flyers to homes on 3 streets in the immediate area of the incident. As we arrived in the subdivision we decided to just drive the streets to get an idea of the layout before we parked and started dropping off the flyers. We weren't in the neighborhood for 3 minutes before Chris spotted it: a black Hyundai Sante Fe, parked in a driveway. (We had narrowed it down to a Sante Fe because of the specific debris found at the scene, and a newly discovered witness who said it was a dark colored SUV.) BINGO!!! Chris quickly parked on the curb in front of the house, left the car running and told me to stay put. He walked up the driveway, made a fast inspection of the front end of the vehicle, and meanwhile, I saw a man come to the front door of the house, look out, then step out on the front porch. Chris continued to walk quickly back to the car, avoiding looking at the man, and we made a speedy getaway. He said it was obvious that the car had been re-painted and worked on because of less than perfect workmanship and some flaws in the paint job. I wrote down the address and license plate information while we discussed what to do next. We ended up calling the police, an officer met us at Schlechter's house (where the accident had happened 4 weeks earlier) and he took all the information. We're leaving it in their hands for the moment, hoping and praying that they try really hard to follow up and discover whether or not this is the vehicle. I bet if it is the man/vehicle we're looking for, he must know something's up! I hope he's a nervous wreck right now as he waits to be contacted by the police. I want so badly to believe that this story will come to a positive end. Pray hard!