When they arrived home from the festival, my wife was excited to show me that she had purchased some hickory syrup from a vendor at the festival. Neither one of us had ever even heard of hickory syrup before, and she said that the booth caught her eye. Having lived in New England for much of our lives, she was familiar with maple syrup – but what was this hickory syrup stuff like? The vendor was giving out free sample tastes, and all three of them had a sample. They all agreed that it was quite tasty, and bought a small bottle of it to bring home to share with the rest of the family. They told me that there was live music, and a lot of vendors and free food samples. And lots of funnel cake booths! Back in New England we called them “Doughboys” and they are so tasty! I guess that the next time my wife extends invitations to go to a festival I should accept it and go along.

After the festival they stopped at a grocery store to pick up the fixings for lasagna for dinner, and when they arrived home they prepared a really nice lasagna and served it with garlic and cheese bread. We created our own dessert by combining lemon cookies and vanilla creme cookies – the combination of the two cookies was much tastier than either cookie by itself. We talked about putting some vanilla frosting in between the cookies to make them stick together, but decided against it for today. Maybe next time!

Apparently this is a game that is increasing in popularity, and it really surprised me! On the one hand it seems to me that it would be considered “lame” by many of the adolescents that I know. But on the other hand, it seems to me that it is a portable game similar to horse shoes, and I have seen quite a few people playing horse shoes lately. That in and of itself really surprised me, but there it is, what can you do?

I’m thinking that I’m going to have to try to find out if I can watch reruns of the show on the Internet of the show to try to see the episodes that I’ve missed so I can catch up! Geez, you get busy for a few months and then all this interesting stuff happens!

My kids were just not loving it in the city – they weren’t really making any friends and I didn’t necessarily feel safe with them walking long distances and things like that. I thought about it for a long time and I finally made the decision last year that it’s time for us to all move out here to the country for a different life. We’ve been here for about 6 months now and the kids are adjusting really well. We got a dog and http://internet.hughesnet.com internet so they could still get on Facebook and all that and I generally just feel more rested and less stressed being out here. My boss is allowing me to work from the farm most of the time which is great since it’s about an hour commute and I just feel good about the changes my family is making. My kids are great kids but they needed more room to thrive and I feel like now that we’re out here in the country they can really be who they were meant to be.

Now to be honest I have never seen a tuba adorned with whirligigs before, so I thought that was quite an unusual sight to see! The man was not dressed in any type of uniform, so I do not know if he was on his way to or from some type of marching band rehearsal, or if he was on his way to or from a gig of some kind. But seeing him walking down the sidewalk, with the whirligigs just spinning like crazy did pique my curiosity and made me smile. Just a few moments ago I went onto Google and tried to do a search for tubas and whirligigs, but got no results putting them together in the context of whirligigs on a tuba. That was surprising to me – I thought you could find just about anything and everything on Google!

Last night I was watching a repeat television show of My name is Earl. I’ve only ever watched that particular show two or three times in my life before because normally I am busy doing something else when it is on the air. But last night I was having trouble falling asleep and turned on the television just as that show came on. The show was about how tornadoes kept hitting the trailer park where the show’s characters were living, and that everyone’s possessions were strewn around. When the tornado subsided everyone was going crazy trying to take possession of the items that were strewn around.

In a way it made me think of a treasure hunt, people looking for the “best” find. They had a “finders keepers” rule – whoever gets it in their hands first gets to keep it. What was particularly humorous about this was that people were valuing some items that would hold the interest of most people. The adage “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure” was demonstrated throughout the show. The next time I’m channel surfing and see that My name is Earl in on, I think I’ll watch it again. It was a little bit slapstick, but funny just the same.

Shamrock on hat

Well, everyone is Irish on St Patrick’s Day.  Or so they say.  I see a lot of people wearing green today, but a few are sporting orange instead.  I’ve asked them why they are wearing orange and they tell me that the Catholics wear green, but the Protestants wear orange!  I had never heard of that before!  I wonder what the story is behind the Protestants wearing orange and not green!

Now that we’re all adults, we don’t color the eggs or buy the candy; we are all watching our weight and trying to lead healthier lives. But one thing that I DO like to do is to buy Easter Lilies to give to my mother, sisters, and my wife as Easter gifts. They are always very glad to see them, and are quite pleased that I would think to buy them a gift at Easter.

In addition there are the many different pool supplies and pool accessories to buy. I would want to get one of those automatic pool cleaners – you know the robot that goes around the pool and cleans it. I don’t like to think I’m too lazy to clean a pool, but I AM too busy to be interested in spending my time doing that. And yes, in theory you could ask the kids and/or wife to clean the pool, but reality is that will never happen.