One thing I very much regret is that I never got to relate to any of my grandparents as an adult. They had all died before I was 25 and out of college. When I was five years old, my mom’s parents were already 68 and 70; my dad’s were 65 and 69. This means that almost all my memories of them are from when I was a child and to a child, of course, even 65 seems ancient.
My mom’s mother, henceforth referred to as “Grandma” had five children. She did not have her first child until she was 28 or so in 1916. My mom was born in 1924. My mom waited until she was 27 to have her first child, me, so my Grandma was already 63 or so when I was born.
Here they are when I was probably about a year old:
Here they are when I was about three:
They had just come back from a vacation to Hawaii, the only vacation I ever remember them taking on their own.
And this next picture is around the time of my sixth birthday (my mom is on the right):
My Grandma made almost all here own clothes; she was a terrific seamstress. Here’s a typical outfit:
And here’s a shot of the outfit my Grandpa was most often found in:
I hadn’t had a pop-tart in decades up until a few months ago when I ran across a big box of them at Sam’s Club. They are, of course, a quintessential ‘junk food’, but they’re good-tasting empty calories and easy for mom to toast.
I remember my Nana fixing brown-sugar cinnamon pop-tarts for us when they first came out back in the 1960s. They weren’t frosted back then and Nana slathered them with butter before serving them. They were awesome!
But apparently there is a large controversy in the pop-tart universe about whether this is appropriate or not; some people feel it is blasphemy to butter this already fatty, sugary treat and others feel that slathering butter on just makes a decadent treat even better. This was brought out into the open when a character in the “Family Guy” cartoon sang a song about buttering his treat.
These days most pop-tarts come with frosting and are available in many flavors. I’ve never tried any other than the brown-sugar cinnamon ones and personally, I don’t see the need for frosting on them, but I take what I can get. And I was all ready to weigh in on the side of those supporting the “better with butter” option when I found out they were buttering the FROSTED side!
No, no, a thousand times NO. You should butter the pastry side, not the frosted side! The butter simply slides off the frosting (in spite of the few slashes in it) and is lost. The ONLY proper method is to butter the pastry side. The butter still soaks in to the pastry and, as the pastry side is a bit concave, can pool there without running off the sides.
I hope if you had any strong feelings about this debate, I have now shown you the only proper side to take!
Although my garage has never been particularly messy and certainly not dirty, I did have a lot of things lined up along the walls as there were no storage cabinets. Finally got tired of looking at all that stuff and had some cabinets built in. Wish I had thought to take a “before” picture, but you can see the results in the “after” picture. Now I just need to rearrange and rehang the pictures and paintings I had up. I love having everything tucked away.
I used Halloween-themed paper to make simple flowers for this bouquet. The “vase” is actually an electric candle filled with clear glass pebbles so that it still flickers when turned on.
We were having lunch at the clubhouse when this beauty showed up. He is on the putting green right next to the golf cart garage. If you look at the far left you can just see two kids on the green; the ram is very unconcerned.
Follow the dark pavers; they point straight at the sheep.
Tomorrow the official holiday season begins here in our household as I put up the Halloween decorations for one month. Then one month of Thanksgiving and one month of Winter holiday decorations. I really look forward to the fall!
Meantime, today I finished up some more flowers. Someone asked me if I could make her some Sterling roses and this is my best shot at it. Sterling roses are lavender but with a pinkish tone. I made these by using a pink and blush double-sided crepe paper covered with lavender Pan Pastel. I’m very happy with the way the color turned out.
I have been playing Microsoft’s TriPeaks solitaire for many years. It’s a great game when you just have a few minutes to kill, as it is untimed and can be played in a minute or two.
I play on the random setting, so some of the games are easy and others not so much! And some, no matter how I try, I just can’t get to work out. If you’re not familiar with the game, here’s the starting layout:
The idea is to clear the board by playing cards that are either one higher or one lower than card from your reserve pile. The Ace seen here is the starting card, I could play either a two, if there was one on the board, or either of the Kings. When I play a King, I can then play one of the Queens, then another King, then another Queen, etc., etc. As you uncover the cards below, they turn up and are then available for play. Suits don’t matter at all. If one of the deals defeats you, all is not lost, you have 2 more “lives” before the game is over.
The fun part is that you can redo each deal as many times as you want, trying different moves to see if you can clear the board. Some boards, however, just seem impossible which is the point at which you give up one of your lives and move on to a new deal.
In the screen shot above, I have a score of 268,500 with both of my additional lives left and I have cleared 15 boards. Years ago I would have considered this to be a fairly good score, but I have gotten better at the game. I began to hit 400,000, then even the occasional 700,000 before I would call it quits and give up on ever solving a game. Since it’s a random deal, I figure there have to be some deals that are just not doable and after ten tries or so I would just move on.
Early this summer I hit 800,000 with both of my extra lives left. Ah ha, I thought, I should be able to get to 1,000,000 with no problem. That, of course, is when I hit a wall and no matter what I did, I could not get past 960,000. Well, I couldn’t let that stand and have been working all summer to reach 1,000,000 (spending lots of time in waiting rooms is a great help).
So here I present to you the proof I finally hit my goal:
No matter how I’ve tried, I haven’t been able to get rid of that pesky Six. When I turn up that last card from my reserve pile, the game is over as it is not a Five or Seven. It’s been a good run, but I think it’s time to turn to some other game when I’m sitting in the waiting room later today!
Tuples and Attributes 