Tim actually had three days off in a row. To make things even more amazing, it was the same three days that I had off!

Originally, we were going to go to Niagara Falls, because my sister was going to be visiting her brother-in-law in Buffalo. When she had to cancel her trip, we decided Prudence said we should stay home too (who is this Prudence character anyway?). For much less than the price of a Niagara Falls hotel room, gasoline, meals, dog boarding and the tourist attractions, we could go out and have some fun locally and get some things done around the house.

So Friday we went to the ballgame in the afternoon. And then we went to the ballgame in the evening and watched the fireworks. The day was gorgeous. I got pretty sunburned, but every once in a while a storm cloud would come over and mist us. Between the games we sat at the gate and relaxed. It was wonderful (even though we lost both games).

On Saturday I cleaned the first half of the dining room carpet (hanging over the deck railing, I do one side one day, and the other side another day). Then we went out to lunch. A little later we went to the new Sands Casino over at the old Bethlehem Steel. We each had $100 to spend on the slot machines. We had a great time. When we cashed out the first time, Tim had $140 and I had $205. We put the excess in our wallets and played again. We played for about 8 hours with a stop at the Irish pub for Draft Cider, Bangers and Mash (Tim) and Mussels, and later for Sushi and Pizza at the Marketplace. One of the highlights was when I texted Liz with the message "I just won $105 on a 2 cent machine"... Shortly thereafter I texted "I just won $500 on a penny machine"... I got the biggest available amount on that machine. It was so much fun listening to it rack up 50,000 credits.

At the end of the day, between the two of us we came home with $673... Not bad when our purpose was to play until our $200 was gone!

Sunday morning I finished cleaning the dining room carpet and Tim scrubbed the floor, and then we had a yummy lunch of salami and cheese. We took $100 and bought shellfish - clams, shrimp, scallops and lobster - along with some artichokes, and had an amazing feast for dinner. I put aside $400 for the next one or two times we go to the casino, and still have a bit of spending money left.

At the end, our expensive trip to Niagara Falls ended up being an all-expenses-paid weekend at home which was one of the best weekends ever. I can't wait to do it again (although I am not expecting to ever come out of the casino ahead again).

Have a great day!

Twenty years ago today, Tim and I took our loaded 1984 Ford Thunderbird out of the Bay Area and left California for good. Our trip started off with a little fender-bender, but the pre-disastered trip was pretty good.

We took our rabbit, an English Angora named Louie Louie the Rock 'n' Roll Bunny, and as much as we could shove in the trunk and the back seat. When it came time to make a decision between the case of wine and the television, the wine won.

That day, we drove to Winnemucca, Nevada where we gambled away our life savings of seven dollars and twenty seven cents. We had been saving it in our change collection for just such an occasion.

----------------
Back in Oakland, we left a storage space full of stuff we thought we'd come back for some day. The Loma Prieta Earthquake flattened the Nimitz freeway that was a few feet away from our storage building just a few months later, rendering our china and crystal shards, and except for some books that a friend mailed to us (several cartons of which were lost in the mail) we never did bring the rest of the stuff to Pennsylvania.

It was a pretty good weekend.
( cut to save your friends page )

It's summer and there are no jobs for kids that are in their summer break between semesters. So what do you do with your kid?

Stretch her.

Although it sounds a little like medieval torture, we have high hopes that this will get Liz back to her happy self:
http://www.iddtherapy.com

How does IDD Therapy work?
IDD Therapy can isolate each lumbar vertebra (L1, L2, L3, L4 or L5) and distract the vertebrae surrounding an injured disc 5 to 7 millimeters. The 25 to 30 minute treatment provides static, intermittent, and cycling forces on structures that may be causing low back pain.

Negative pressure promotes the diffusion of water, oxygen, and nutrients into the vertebral disc area, thereby re-hydrating the degenerated disc. Repeated pressure differential promotes retraction of a herniated nucleus pulposus (the elastic core of the intervertebral disc).

The IDD Therapy treatment can
reduce pressure on the vertebral joints,
promote retraction of herniated discs,
promote self healing and rehabilitation of damaged discs,
thereby relieving low back pain.
Several sessions are required to achieve optimal results.


She'll have treatment every weekday for the next four weeks. She'll be pretty sore for the first two due to the fact that they need to stretch and strengthen the muscles around the vertebrae. I am hoping she won't go stir crazy, but the best position for her to sit in? Playing on the computer! Woot! She'll probably have to forego Nocturne for a few weeks, but in the long run, I think her dancing days are going to be back and with much less pain than she's had in the last two years!

WARNING... Do not have food or liquid in your mouth when you click this link.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8118257.stm

Well, not really... But we have a new resident in the habitat (read that back yard) and he was happily sitting on the North Stump eating sunflower seeds this morning. Then he went after the fruit bowl for apples, but knocked it over. By Scruffy's reaction, he's taken up residency under the shed.

Lately we've been seeing a lot of the woodpeckers. Some of them are Downies and some are Hairies. The Hairy Woodpecker family consists of a male, a female and a juvenile male, while the Downy family seems to be just one male and female, but since they're never in the yard at the same time and it's hard to tell the juveniles from the females, that is not a definite count.

The catbirds, grackles and starlings have all fledged. The juvenile starlings are comical, especially when the suet feeder is empty. I haven't seen any juvenile cardinals, and I wonder if their nest was disturbed when we cut down the mulberry and locust trees (they were saplings growing through the hedge and interfering with the overhead wires). Cardinals normally brood twice, so hopefully we'll see some fledglings in the fall.

So that's the backyard wildlife habitat update. Perhaps it will stop raining long enough to work in it this weekend!

Tim and I are going to be home this weekend to work on the house. Liz is going to stay in Philly.
I guess we should go to a baseball game!

Monday we get replica world series rings at the baseball game.

My sister is not coming out from California, so we're not going to Niagara Falls over the 4th of July weekend. I guess we should go to a baseball game instead.

Tomorrow I'm going to be home alone until late. Maybe I'll go to a baseball game.

Go Pigs!

I recently looked back at my journal and I've seen that most of what I've been posting lately have been Hawk and Willow and druidry related messages.

While the Hawk and Willow Seedgroup gives us the opportunity to celebrate the seasons in a non-religious (or multi-religious) setting, it is not the obsession in my life that my journal makes it seem as of late. It's just that I have not had time to post many other things, and I need to get back to that.

So in that vein, I've created a community specifically to address Hawk and Willow events and my ramblings on things that have to do with druidry. Please feel free to join or watch. You should be able to comment even if you don't join (let me know if it doesn't work), and if you're interested in our events, please either join the yahoo group or the LJ community http://community.livejournal.com/hawkandwillow/

I am hoping to make my jinglebellz61 journal a little more personal and more about other ramblings than the technicalities of keeping a seedgroup running.

I like baseball. I do. I want more.
That is all.

More later, but tonight I'm tired. The game was a blast tonight!



(yes, it lights up)

Rain Rain go away
Come again another day
Little Piggies want to play

P.S. I've still got three tickets left for tonight's game.

Last night was the most beautiful night for a meditation we've had in a very long time. It was not too hot and there was a little breeze. The fire burned brightly and the clouds wafted across the sky. The company was wonderful as was the mead (thank you greenmanrn). Rarely do I walk out of a peace meditation feeling so peaceful. Even though we left out a little part of the formalities, I think it went well.

So I feel a little better about the group after several frustrating months.
I do love an early June night out by the fire.

If you are unable to come to the meditation, please make a wish for peace when you see the beautiful full moon tonight.

May there be peace throughout the whole world.

I really can't be old enough to have a 19 year old daughter can I?

OK, just flooding every place she might look with birthday wishes!

I just found out that Liz's school starts on August 31, not September 8. That means move in date is either August 29 or 30 depending upon what floor she's on at Temple Towers. I'm so bummed. Have to find a way around this.

( Liz's B-Day Coincidence )

( Scruffy )

( Star Wars Night at Iron Pigs (Costume stuff) )

( Wherein I wonder about the future of the Hawk and Willow Seedgroup )

( Progress on the Habitat )

( Insects )

( flora )

( other fauna )

That's all (as if it weren't enough) for now. I suppose if I did this more than once a week, maybe I would have less to write about. Oh well.

This is where I went to college my first year. '79-80.

From 1981 - 1982 I worked for NASA on the Galileo Project:



All true... Giggle.

I responded to one of alagbon's posts, and decided I would put it down here in my journal because it made me very reflective.

---

My view of Fleetwood Mac is colored by adolescence. You see, I was in the band in High School. I graduated in 1979 from one of the top feeder schools to USC¹. (Yeah, we were the Spartans and wore Red and Gold and I'll bet our booster club had more USC alumni on it than any other High School), so a lot of my friends were in the USC marching band² on Tusk³. I suppose I listened to Fleetwood Mac about as much as ABBA back in those days, when we sat around drinking iced tea through red vines on warm afternoons and listening to Rumours and ABBA and watching Monty Python and M*A*S*H and talked about girl stuff over at Sue's house, while tormenting her little brother for being such a nerd.
I attended Fleetwood Mac's "final" concert at the Hollywood Bowl in 1980, and Stevie Nicks had almost no voice left, but she could still belt it out all the way to section W (even if she didn't have a microphone).

We still have a copy of Rumours (on CD now), which I think was their best album. I like to listen to it. It brings back memories of Los Angeles from a long-ago time.

---

Notes:
1 USC stands for University of Spoiled Children
2 USC's band's favorite football cheer was F-U- C L A. (quarter, quarter, triplet)
3 Tusk should have been spelled TUSC (Trojans, USC)

This has been an awesome weekend. It started Friday night with Tim making the most delicious meal of grilled littlenecks, peppers zucchini and filet mignon. Followed by a birthday cake (yes, he bought his own birthday cake, but I lit the candles).

Saturday was Star Trek on IMAX for Tim's B-Day (awesome fabulous wonderful SQUEE!), Shopping at the Plaza in King of Prussia, then Oysters and Wings at Hooters. I didn't know there was a Hooters there! (We'll be back!) Then a wonderful time in the evening with Annie, Mat, and everyone else. I haven't laughed so hard in a long time. Thanks again to Greg and Sascha for their hospitality.

Finally a mom and me lunch with Liz. We had a great time. It is always wonderful to be able to talk one on one and just have a friendly visit with just the two of us. I am looking forward to her coming home for the summer.

All is right with the world!