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The Chronicles of Nani On Video

I am overcoming my inability to type with my ability to talk (and talk and talk and talk) I'll be posting a video every week on my YouTube channel. I'll be posting those videos here too along with an occasional regular blog in the mix. (As long as my hands are up to doing the extra typing.)

You'll be able to watch the videos here, but I encourage you to stop by my channel at YouTube once I'm up and running to follow me and get my numbers started!


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Contact Nani at
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Monday, September 29, 2008

Monday Mug Shot

HPS Office Systems
Putting food in my nieces’ bellies!

This one is not my mug, but it’s the mug I drank Sunday morning coffee out of! This is where my bother works, selling business machines that....He told me the “official” wording of what they sell. But, it’s photo copiers, photocopiers and other machines to offices.

Sunday was a GREAT coffee day. Why so? Because I FINALLY had my first cup of PUMPKIN SPICE for autumn 2008!!

Okay, Let me back up a little. Pop and Aunt Judy were trekking to Indy to visit my brother and the family there. There’s a polka party show on the last Friday of the month and Dave’s been trying to coax Dad out to see it. Not a hard sell. Let’s see, an evening of very old school music with accordion and the opportunity to see his granddaughters. Yeah, Pop was there the next last Friday after Dave told him about it.

David had an extra day off Friday, but while polka music is part of my heritage and music from my childhood, my honey doesn’t share that past or the warm fuzzies from the Warsaw Two-step! We ventured out for some different old-school stuff in Indiana on Saturday. The CSX line in the Lafayette area still uses working semaphore signals! We left at “Oh-God thirty,” headed for Indiana and we were in Peru by sunrise. Over the course of the day, I accumulated 25 trains on my memory card, including a few with those semaphores in them. The semaphores are so cool to watch! My opinion they’re easier to read too. But they are also much more expensive to maintain, which is why there are so very few still in existence.

On Saturday, we morning we spent a few more hours in the land that railroad tm preserved before heading to Indianapolis for dinner and time with the family.

Pop made cussione, which is an Italian spinach pie. I can’t think of a better way to describe it right off. They are pastry pockets with greens in them. The recipes I’ve seen call for onions and spinach, but Noni always used swiss chard and onions and of course, since that is our family tradition, that’s what my Dad uses. I love cussione, even though they are fried, I’ve loved them all my life. It’s comfort food. My father worries that I’m with a man who is not adventurous when it comes to food. “I know, ‘meat and potatoes’ guy. (Yawn)” he says. Pop was pleased that David tried the cussione. He didn’t care for them, but he did try and Pop sees that as “progress!” :)

Laura, the my girfriend-in-law, made a fantastic spice sheet cake that she frosted and Tori added decorations to. I brought my used candles and we put the #1 in the middle, putting one 4 in front of it on the ”Happy Birthday Dave” side and the other 4 after the one on the “Happy Birthday Rina and Tori side. How to make a 41 and a 14 when you only have one leftover 1 candle! LOL. I recited the greeting that goes with the used purple outlined candles on their cake for their September birthdays on the last weekend of the month:
“For a happy birthday you must have
Something late and something early,
something used and something purply!
Happy Halloween!”
Yeah, I wrote it. It completely fit the occasion of celebrating birthdays late with used candles! :) By the way, the life span of those number candles is 3 cakes! They’d all been used twice, once for David and once for me. The wicks, which do not run the length of the candles, were spent after this cake. Now we have a lonely 2 with only one cake-life left in it! Dave and Laura are planning to get married nex year, so maybe they could use it for their second anniversary?

We played Cranium until way too late, but it was fun. I say way too late, because David, Rina and I were doing some Indy train chasing before Sunday breakfast! We did manage to get up and out in time. It was a stop for coffee that awarded me my first real taste of fall! I walked up to the “cheat-a-accino” dispenser there in welcoming bold letters - “PUMPKIN SPICE!” NOW I understand why so many people rave about the Indianapolis Speedways!

After the trains, we headed back home for big Sunday breakfast. That’s when I had coffee in the cup celebrating Dave’s employer. It’s also when I enjoyed the best sausage gravy ever! Laura makes sausage gravy from scratch. I love sausage gravy and hers was phenomenal! I’m very pleased that Bro is keeping her!

Tori, Daddy and Rina - Birthday 414!

4 comments:

seamhead gypsy said...

Hey Nani!

I don't have anything significant to add here other than to let you know how much I enjoy reading your blogs. With the news coming out of DC the past week (especially today) I really look forward to some happy reads. And you provide that.

I'm having a hard time understanding why the morons in DC want the public to "get along" with on another, "work together", "tolerate" one another, yet when there is a crisis to be resolved, they go and practice bipartisanship.

I've been giving some thought to voting "against" every incumbent in office this fall. My own party affiliation be damned!!! I don't really feel that the morons in Washington DC really care about the rest of us anyway! But I digress.

Keep up with the "life story" shorts. Please!

By the way, did you receive the photos I emailed? I was having some connectivity issues that night and I'm not sure if you received them.

Edna B said...

Wow, did that picture of the birthday cake ever bring back memories for me!! When my kids were very small, for some reason unknown to me even to this day, they would not eat sweets. The oldest was around 5 before they would even eat ice cream. Never could figure this out.

However, when I made the birthday cakes, I used no frosting - just the candles, and left the cake right in the pan. They loved them this way. Your photo brought all that back for me. Thanks for brightening up my morning.
Hugs, Edna B.

seamhead gypsy said...

hooboy. do i feel stupid. regarding my above post the so called morons in washington are practicing partisanship, not bipartisanship. they SHOULD be using bipartisanship right about now. i guess maybe i'm the moron?

the bottom line is they are pointing their fingers at one another and playing the blame game instead of resolving the credit crisis that is preventing the short term loans. if things continue the way they are how long until the guy who owns the little store down the street goes out of business because he can't get a loan to make his payroll or buy new merchandise.

well, at least i have the baseball post post season to look forward to!!

seamhed gypsy

Nani said...

Edna, Birthday cake without FROSTING??? Perish the thought! To me, cake has always been, and stil is, a frosting delivery system! And you know how I feel about ice cream, second only to black forst ckae! (And the best ice cream is black forest ice cream!)

Gypsy, I totally missed that typo! I guess I knew what you meant, I KNOW about Washington and the plain fact that the, at least the incumbent, politicians out there are Democrats and Republicans. Unfortunately AMERICANS don't have any representation!

My cynics response to concerns about loans for small businesses is that the guys in Washington are much more concerned with making sure the big businesses are in fat shape. I mean, Walmart killing the small businesses to the point of them needing loans for payroll is good, right?