Rain, Rain, Go Away!

Welcome to a playoff rain delay. It’s not raining in Detroit right now. See? We needed to start at home. Stupid Angels.

I’ve been trying to talk David into a pizza, not much luck. So, I think I might make one of the fat free pizzas in the freezer. YUM!

Tomorrow is our official unofficial Photo Walk day. It’s going to be Sheri and me, a small, unofficial Photo Walk. It’s still going to be cool! Sheri suggested, rather sheepishly, considering renting a scooter or power chair for the day. She was afraid it would offend me.

That’s one of the toughest things about my disability, the things other people aren’t comfortable with. Kudos big time to Sheri for her suggestion. Honestly, all the “walking” for Photo Walk would have fatigued my arms to the point of pain pretty quickly. The sore arms would have wreck the photos, the reason we're going tomorrow! I just hadn’t even thought about renting a scooter for the day. It’s a great idea!

There are a lot of tools that can make day to day and even special day things much easier for not only me, but for the people I’m with. As the disabled person, it’s my responsibility to be sure my family knows what helps and know they can make suggestions. Even if it’s a suggestion that doesn’t work for me, I appreciate it because even suggestions I can’t use are made by someone who cares about me and wants to help. If I get cranky and say "no" all the time, sooner or later no one will want to be with me because I make them feel helpless. If there is another disabled person reading this, yes I’m saying that it’s our responsibility to show some decency and compassion to those that want to help.

Communication is key in every aspect of our relationships with other people. Harmonious relationships are key to being happy. I choose happy. That means I take a moment to realize that the pushiest or craziest suggestions are made with love. I have to realize that when someone else asks the same question or makes the same suggestion I can’t use as ten other people have, don’t get frustrated. It only means that now there are ELEVEN people that care enough to ask.

I have a responsibility to the people that want to help to let them know what I can do and what I might need help with. Like this weekend, I sent out the invitations to anyone that wanted to do the Photo Walk in Frankenmuth. I plan things and invite people. That’s what I do, always have. If I’m still planning and inviting, people will know that there’s a good chance I’ll say “yes” if they invite me. I don’t lose out on things and my family of friends doesn’t lose me!

So Sheri and I had the schedules that matched up. Sheri knows what my limitations are and made an awesome suggestion that will make our day even better for both of us.

Okay and now, the game has been postponed until tomorrow. It will pick up right where it left off. I think that sucks because the top of the second inning shouldn’t have been played and now, the wet Tigers get stuck with the top of the second innings while the dry Yankees will finish the inning. I think if a game is called for weather, it should start after the last complete inning.

Now, I’m going to go think about that pizza!

Photo Walk Page Is Up!

A short blog this morning. The Unofficial Worldwide Photo Walk page is up. Anyone who’d like to join us is welcome! Drop me an email and let me know if you’ll meet us in Frankenmuth or if you’d like to carpool with us from Brighton, MI. I’ll send breakfast meeting details in a reply email.

Here is the official unofficial Photo Walk page:
http://chroniclesofnani.blogspot.com/p/unofficial-worldwide-photo-walk.html

Oowataweek

What a week it’s been! I just finished my school assignments for the week. They’re due on Sunday, but I prefer to have them turned in by Friday so I get the weekend for fun. This week, I made it! Okay, that had as much to do with David working the late shift Friday as me budgeting my time well, but ya use what you’ve got, right? This week I had a Friday night on my own.


Baseball Countdown

It’s been a little nerve racking in the baseball world. I went through some emotional trauma to get us tickets for the first game of the Division Series in Detroit. The first really good thing that happened was the Tigers clinched the Central Division, so there was USE for the tickets! The tickets came in this week, a pretty Division Series logo, Comerica Park and Game 1 on them with our seat numbers. The date, time and opponent TBD, to be determined.

As things stand right now, well, as they stand right now they need to keep standing that way. In the Nanicentric world, The Red Sox will be in town on Friday. The replay of our first date and no matter what the outcome, ONE of us will come home a winner. I’ll add that in the Nanicentric world, Game 1 is in Detroit on Friday so we’ll see Justin Verlander pitch.

The trouble here is so many things that are threatening to go wrong, not according to MY script. The Red Sox have been slumping and even after that phenomenal winning streak, the Tigers slowed way down with the first loss. The Orioles haven’t been much help with recent games against both of our American League teams either. We even found ourselves cheering on the Yankees when they played the Devil Rays. Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows, huh?


The Hook

One delivery box that came in this week was from Fox Sports. I needed new Tigers earrings for the playoffs. I have a couple of older pairs that are posts. Well, that’s one of the MS challenges I have to admit I have. Post earrings are next to impossible to put in! I’m right handed and I have a lot of lost sensation in my right hand and it definitely takes two hands for post earrings. I can wear French hooks. I have a couple pairs of French hook earrings that I got when we went to the Reds game last month and I just love them! I especially love the flat silver hoops with the reds logo floating in the middle. I’d love them no matter what kind of wire, but they are French hooks too! I wore those one a lot on vacation.



When I was looking for Tigers earrings online, I came across the very same earrings, but with floating Tigers logos. THOSE were MY earrings. I had to have them. The other cool thing about my favorite Reds earrings is that they only cost $8.50. The Tigers earrings? Same thing. $8.50 and about that much in shipping. So, in order to justify the shipping, which I hate paying but was going to pay anyway for those earrings, I picked out a shirt too. It was still under $30. Happy Nani!



Staying Away From the Studio

The last round of the layout competition started yesterday and I went to see who was advancing and what kit the finalists would be working with. I closed the browser window and, I’ll visit the Studio again in a couple weeks. If I’d made it to this week, I’d drop out. They will be working with a “Halloween” kit. ::shudder:: It’s a kit with spiders, huge spiders and tons of them. And they aren’t drawings of cartoon spiders. They are extractions of the creepiest and most hideous arachnids to be seen! EW! I am still getting chills writing about it because the image of the preview is just burned into my brain. BLECH!

Of course, the layouts done with that kit will be all over the gallery and I want NOTHING to do with them. Yeah, I kinda feel like there was some horrible plague there now. I’ll get over that. It’s the scrapbooking site I really love, just right now, I kinda feel chased out. Someone needs to make a Spider Spray scrapbook kit to fumigate the gallery!


Facebook, What A Mess!

That’s been big news in the last couple days. Facebook launched a new version that is the most invasive version yet. It pretty much turned off all the privacy settings and you can go back and reset them, if you can figure out how. There are no more current news feeds on the home page. There’s a little box that scrolls with current status updates, including every little action anyone on my friends list makes on their cyber farm, notifications I HAD turned off before, every time someone “likes” something and every comment they make on someone else’s page whether or not I now that person or have a clue what they are talking about. It feels creepy, like I’m eavesdropping on things I’m not supposed to part of.

But wait, there’s more! There isn’t news from my friends in chronological order of them posting, not even an option for that anymore. Instead, Facebook thinks it knows what the most important news to me is. Today, that would be my sister-in-law’s new hairdo. That’s SO much more important to me than the silly updates from Scotty’s sister, Jill, with doctor reports while Scott’s in the hospital. Right now, tests have shown nothing super wrong, but he has pneumonia. I’ve got an in-room number to give him a call this afternoon. The point is that Facebook thinks Laura’s hair is more important to me than one of my best friend’s health. They’re DEAD WRONG!

Jill and I have been keeping in touch in a private message, so I don’t miss any of her updates because I don’t live on facebook hanging on every song my teenage friends listen to, restaurant my cousin eats at or croissant my fiends serve in their play coffee shops.


So, instead of changing the settings on everything I look at, I just took some of my information off my profile and locked out all of my photos. I still have friends who use facebook instead of email, so I can’t close the account, but I don’t have to USE it for anything but private messages. I did start an account at Google+. I have a few friends that have accounts there already and it’s a much cleaner and more private interface.



Worldwide Photo Walk

This is sort of a segue from the Google+ talk. One of the people I follow on G+ is Scott Kelby, the chief orchestrator of Worldwide Photo Walk! He and Matt Kloskowski are on Google+. They are both great photographers, Photoshop artists and digital creative masters! Matt actually wrote one of the books I used in my Imaging class Spring Semester. It is totally cool to interact with them and with others in the posts about Worldwide Photo Walk

Worldwide Photo Walk is next weekend, October 1 & 2. Our group is very small. Right now, it’s just Sheri and me confirmed, but we’re waiting for a couple other responses. For the photo walk part, you select an area, scenic or trendy, to photograph, walk and photograph for 2 or 3 hours, then meet the Photo Walk group for coffee or lunch and compare photos. What a totally cool idea!

We’re going to Frankenmuth, Michigan, on Saturday. They have sculptures on Main Street this year from artists from the Midwest. Just in case Frankenmuth, Michigan's “Little Bavaria” isn’t cool enough! We’re going to go to the Bavarian Inn or Zhender’s for chicken dinner after we shoot photos. This is an unofficial Photo Walk. We didn’t have it solidified that we were doing it until just after the deadline to apply for an official Photo Walk, but I’m going to put up a page with details and open it up to anyone who’d like to meet us in Frankenmuth for photography and fun.



Cats

For anyone that read the blog Carla posted at Behind Orange Eyes, Kaline’s eye is doing much better! We still have to put ointment in it through Monday. Kaline doesn’t like the ointment and is now pretty much suspect and ready to flee whenever we get near her and she senses it not just to pet her. She’s not a dumb cat. She knows when it’s medicine time and she spends time with us, just not when it’s “that time” I’m kinda looking forward to Tuesday Morning – no more ointment!




Links:

Join me on Google+

Worldwide Photo Walk Information

Frankenmuth, Michigan

Frankenmuth Art Walk

Behind Orange Eyes

Vacation Baseball

I’ve drifted off a little in some other directions! I was gone for 2 weeks and came home to everything still busy!

I don’t mind busy, not too much. Okay, I do wish I could get that magical week where the world sleeps while I catch up. I’ve just always wanted that week occasionally. Maybe I overfill my life-plate. It would explain a lot of things.

Yesterday, Rina and Tori turned 17 years old. It was their last birthday as kids! I’ll flash just a little bravado here. They were born into a world with no World Series and as their childhood completes, the team of the city in which they were born will be the World Series Champions. Come on! You have to admit that there is a great storybook ending with that!


While we’re talking baseball, we saw a bunch of it on our trip. Vacationing during the last month of the Minor League season is pretty cool. We saw a total of 7 games on our trip, which included a double header in Batavia due to a rainout the day before.



That first night in Batavia we got in a bit late because we hadn’t realized there had been a rainout and it was a double header. We may not have seen the first pitch, but the game went into extra innings, so it was like it started all over! It was the Batavia Muckdogs against the visiting Mahoning Valley Scrappers in the new York-Penn League. Batavia won the first game3-2 in extra innings, so our home-team-wins-in-the-second-half streak was still alive. Since we’d seen the Clinton Lumber Kings drop both ends of a double header in the first half, the home team winning both didn’t seem like much of a stretch.

Yeah, notsomuch. The streak ended with game 2. After a collision in the outfield left one player being carried off in a golf cart in a lot of pain, things just got collectively worse for the Muckdogs. They lost game 2 11-3.


Next game was six days later and the start of a streak of our own stretch of four games four nights in a row! We moved up from A-Ball to AAA for an International League game. It was the Rochester Red Wings at the Buffalo Bisons. The Bisons won 3-1


On Monday, August 29, we went to Jamestown, NY, back in the NY-Penn League. That picture of me is at the seats! It’s an old park and installing wheelchair seating meant they put in a ramp and set up the areas right at field level for chairs and companions. Close enough to smell the dirt hear the spits and get a close up view of just everything. VERY cool seats! See, if you know where to go, the chair isn’t a handicap, it’s a bonus!

It was the Jamestown Jammers hosting the Auburn Doubledays. We were right next the Doubledays dugout. The Jammers were down by three going into the bottom of the ninth. Rally time? You bet rally Time!

Okay, it was one of those rallies that is more excitement from capitalizing on mistakes than sheer skill, but it was still fun to watch in a “can’t believe my eyes” kind of way. The Doubledays just kind of had a meltdown in the ninth! Walks, errors and wild pitches were how the Jammers tied it up, a walk off single is how it ended.


Tuesday was the Pawtucket Red Sox at the Rochester Red Wings. Now, with the exceptions of The Mud Hens and the Lansing Lugnuts, I cheer for the home team at Minor League ball. I consider the Hens and Nuts to be MY home teams, so I'll cheer for them on the road too. David however was cheering for Pawtucket all the way. Okay, so I cheered for the Bats, AAA Reds, when we saw them, but we were in Louisville. It was still cheering for the home team. I guess I do get it though. Had we seen a Connecticut Tigers game, even if it wasn’t in Connecticut, it would have been hard for me to not cheer for a baseball farm team called the Tigers

Kevin Youkilis

We got to see Kevin Youkilis and JD Drew with Pawtucket for rehab after the DL. THAT was cool! David had gone to a Mud Hens game versus Pawtucket and cheered against the Hens once when Nomar Garciaparra was rehabbing. It’s a disturbing pattern, stalking injured Red Sox.

There were lots of complaints from us in Rochester. It started with traffic that was an uncontrolled and crowded mess. Then there were the flip down companion seats for the wheelchair rows. When the seats were flipped down, the wheelchairs no longer fit in the wheelchair spaces! For ballpark dinner we had barbecue form Big Red Barbecue. The service was poor, the food was worse! Maybe having had barbecued pork at the Reds game that was Montgomery Inn barbecue thoroughly spoiled me to begin with, but this was just the worst barbecue! It came with coleslaw made with old almost rotten tasting cabbage and “baked beans” that were refried beans with barbecue sauce on them. Yuck! Meal time was saved in Rochester by Labatt’s beer and Dippin Dots. Okay, not the healthiest meal, but, I generally travel with plenty of veggies, fruit and whole grains for snacking.

To David’s chagrin, the Red Wings won 8-6



For the last game of our four day tear, we repeated day two in a different park. We went to Auburn to see the Jamestown Jammers visit the Doubledays!

MORE BEER!


Okay, more beer is because it seems like every brewery in the US and Canada advertises at the stadium in Auburn! Our cup holders were sponsored by Molson!

You’d think that since the Jammers won at home, they’d return the gesture, not tonight. The Jammers won 3-2. Fortunately they have enough beer to keep the fans in the beer garden entertained.


At the end of the trip we spent a couple nights in New Jersey. Our friend Maria was close by, in Delaware. We called her, hoping she might join us for dinner on Saturday. She was leaving for her vacation on Saturday morning. I didn’t think we’d see her, but when we checked in to the hotel, Maria surprised us. She lives on the other side of the bridge from our hotel! We had brief visit, but one on one, well, one on two, time with friends is always a good visit!

Maria told us about the Carolina League’s team in Wilmington. She said it was a good time and told us about Mr. Celery. Legend is that the celery costume was left from another event and someone from the Wilmington Blue Rocks’ staff put the costume on and ran onto the field dancing when the home team scored. So began the phenomenon!

You can buy Mr. Celery everything at the team store, even a plush Mr. Celery! Along with my Blue Rocks shirt, I came home with a Mr. Celey shirt, a Mr.Celery button, keychain and of course, a plush. I love stuffed celery!


It was my first visit to Delaware and the ultimate first trip to any state is one where you see baseball!

The game was fun, it was just fun. They have incredible mascots that just milk it with their between innings performances. The visiting Fredrick Keys played along. The mascots didn’t give them a choice!

The Blue Rocks, energized by Mr. Celery, won the game 3-2.

We had a great baseball part of the trip!

How Far Have We NOT Come?

I was incensed when I read this story this morning.

Some real Shock and Awe:
Racially profiled and cuffed in Detroit

Shoshana and I both live in Ohio and have similarities in backgrounds. Just the father I look like doesn’t frighten the childlike minds of the paranoid.

I don’t say that to insult children, most of whom are smarter than the prejudiced fools who base “suspicious behavior" on how a person looks. Idiot adults have to teach children to be stupid.

We have to beware of the terrorists from outside out country and just as aware of the small-minded terrorism inside our country that will point out someone based on appearance while they don’t even see someone who looks like them actually acting suspicious on the other side of where they are sitting and pointing. In many ways the terrorists who attacked us ten years ago have won as long as their accomplices in this country point their paranoid little fingers without actually seeing anything, our way of life is disrupted and our freedoms have changed, many of them gone.

Please read Shoshana’s story and share it wherever you can.

I Love Mondays...

I’ve always loved Mondays. The start of a new week, a new beginning, new possibilities. There’s something I especially love about this Monday. Baseball! Tickets for the American League Division Series in Detroit went on sale this morning at 10AM. David and I had talked about how cool it would be to go to a post season game and the tickets, although more expensive than the regular season, weren’t as hiked up as I might have thought. David has never been to a post season baseball game. I was lucky enough to get tickets for a World Series game in 1984. It’s been a long time, but you don’t forget that electric feeling!

And that was the thing. I remember how cool that was, being there. As things stand right now, there’s a good chance it will be the Red Sox and Tigers. How could I not try, right? It would be so cool, me in my Tigers gear, including ears, and him in his Dustin Pedroia jersey and other Red Sox accents. It would just be TOO COOL! So, I clicked on the “Buy Tickets” button. I got a message that the site was busy, blah, blah, blah, what I expected. There was a 30 second countdown in the cyber waiting room that refreshed and started again, and again, and again.

The nice thing about a CYBER waiting room is you can do other things, check email, Tweet, sign in to my school account and check the assignment board, with that waiting room countdown in the corner. Then the unexpected happened, after 45 minutes of the 30 second countdowns, I got a pop-up that said “Congratulations!” I now had 5 minutes to find tickets enter my info and get out or the window would close and I’d lose my chance!

I found a pair of handicap row seats and chose them. I had to enter in two “words” of unrelated characters to go on. Next screen tells me the site is busy, on playoff sale day, busy, ya think? Then I had to re-choose my seats and enter more gibberish to prove I’m not a robot. I was getting stressed. I don’t type that fast, the time is ticking on me. So close! I reselected and typed in more gibberish 5 more times!

Then, the digital clouds parted over the Information Superhighway and a beautiful screen with a glowy white background appeared. It wanted credit card information and where I wanted my tickets sent. My heart was racing now. No time to claim victory, not yet. So close, but that timer was still ticking away at my five minutes, must type quickly. I got all the information in and clicked “Purchase.”

The screen came back. I forgot to check a box. What? I went through the form. THERE! NO, I don’t want to be texted with updates, that why I didn’t put my mobile number in. Uncheck the updates box, click purchase again.

The next screen…the beautiful next screen, was my receipt. With a half minute to spare, David and I are going to the ALDS.

Doesn’t It just Figger?

One thing that is all good and sun this morning is Carla! It’s Carla’s third birthday today! I feel a little guilty because I didn’t blog on Kaline’s birthday, but I did do a tweet with a photo for her. I don’t have kitten photos of Carla because she was adopted as an adult Cat. Truth is you wouldn’t know she is an adult when she plays, and she plays A LOT!

So, tonight will be “birthday cake” with Carla’s share in the birthday bowl. It will be a great evening in kittydom!


Let’s talk about the weather for a minute!

Rain. That’s SO the story today! Lee is coming in on the heels of the mess that Irene left in the east. There are places I was just last week that are under water now! We opted to not go to Hershey’s Chocolate World on the way home and they are closed today as there is flooding all over Central Pennsylvania, including “The Sweetest Place on Earth.” We’ve had Lee-enhanced rain here too. It’s been raining since yesterday but nothing like they’re experiencing in Pennsylvania, New York and all over New England and the East Coast.

So many places we just were are flooded or with rivers about to go over their flood walls! The Weather Channel is showing evacuation in Binghamton where the river is at the top of the flood wall. David said this morning that if it goes over, “they’ll be screwed!” He is so right, when it goes over, and they are predicting it will go over in about 2 hours, the water will just rush into downtown. Right now it’s expected to crest over a half foot above that wall.

Send a good thought or prayer for the people and home/business owners in those areas. They are going to have a lot of rebuilding to try to do before it gets really cold! If you are in that area, heed the evacuation orders or recommendations to stay home. If you aren’t in that area, STAY AWAY! Better to let the professionals reporting about these things show the flooding on TV rather than become a statistic for them to report!


I hate Murphy and his laws!

I entered the layout contest at The Studio for the Birthday Bash this year again. The first week was while I was on vacation and I did get a layout done. The first kit was an all-pale colors kit. Not really my scrapping style and not a kit I would have bought, but a pretty kit and I think the layout turned out pretty nice.

Credits: Early Morning Light by Piggy Scraps

Unfortunately, there was only one other person who agreed that it was a nice layout and I didn’t make it to round two. Here’s where the hating Murphy come in. The kit for round two is fabulous and I’d love to work with it! I have a ton of photos to choose from that it would match!



Well, best of luck to everyone who did make it to round 2 and enjoy that wonderful kit!!

Everyone be safe and happy today!

Photoblog Wednesday - Vacation Shots

Today is a combination of Photoblog Wednesday and a little about the trains from Vacation. As I mentioned yesterday, as is the custom with our summer trips, it was all about the trains and the baseball. Like our last 2-week trip, our honeymoon in 2009, we did a few other things too. On the first Saturday, this was our view at lunch!

Niagara Falls Horseshoe Falls

Our big “spoil us” meal of the trip was late lunch (early bird dinner) at Skylon Tower in Niagara Falls on the Canadian side. Yes, I’m getting more and more pleased with the investment in the passport. The revolving restaurant has wonderful food and great views of the Canadian and American Fall, with a view of Toronto in the distance as it turns. Totally cool way to spend an afternoon that had gotten a bit too cloudy for train photos.

Speaking of trains, I have to show you my trains!

This is the NS Business Special from the first week of the trip.

Norfolk Southern Business Special

The Norfolk Southern F-Units are just gorgeous engines! That train just oozes class as it glides down the track.

It was cool to meet up with some friends while chasing this trip. The business train in New York is rare and it attracted a lot of railfans. So it was kinda like a cross between a steam train chase and a sunny Summerail Sunday, with a gang of people participating in their favorite hobby together – much fun!

We chased the Livonia, Avon and Lakeville around town a couple of times.

Barilla Pasta plant in Avon, NY

This is my favorite shot of the LA &L. It combines the train with another one of my favorite things, commercial advertising and logos. Barilla is my store-pasta of choice anyway. One afternoon they were making pasta at the plant and the air smelled so good it just cried for spaghetti sauce!

While the Barilla Pasta plant appeals to my interests outside of the trains, the Aces train was definitely David’s on more than one level!

The Aces train to Atlantic City

My poker-loving man would SO take the train to go play poker if there was one closer to our home! Can you imagine a train from Toledo to the casinos in Detroit or Windsor? I can’t imagine there will be more than a bus once they get the Toledo casino up.


I was so happy to get this one!

Starrucca Viaduct

In a past Photoblog I showed Starrucca Viaduct in Pennsylvania. On September 2 we caught the fairly rare shot of a train going over it! This was taken from the back of a soccer field.

My favorite shot of the trip from my camera was this early morning shot of a Buffalo and Pittsburgh train. I love the lighting and the fog in the back. This is definitely my best train of the trip!

B&P with morning fog

Update

Photo "Road" by by Petr Kratochvil

Well, Hello! For anyone who was wondering, I was on vacation and it happened to coincide with the start of fall semester, so I vanished for a while. I’m so sorry to anyone that worried! Edna is a dear and caring friend who made a point of looking for me, even as Massachusetts was getting drenched by Irene! But, see Edna? I’m ba-ack!!

I didn’t want to post too much that I was away because I didn’t want to chance that our friend who looks after her “grandcats” could have to let us know there were any shenanigans in our absence or that she’d have to deal with any. I’m probably overprotective, but WAY better to be that than careless, right? There were a few vacation statuses on Twitter, so a few that appeared here, but I won’t take out a cyber-billboard that we’ll be gone for 2 weeks, ya know? So, that was the 2-week vacation we had planned that I spoke of when I introduced why Joe/Jo Morgan wouldn’t be adopted until fall. But I guess we could start talking about our next cat now!

Our vacation was, as it usually is at this time of the year, for trains and baseball. We were hoping to follow the Norfolk Southern Business Train in New York and catch one of the final runs of the New Jersey Transit’s Aces train that runs in and out of Atlantic City. We’d compiled baseball schedules for teams in New York, and the coast from Maine to New Jersey to go with our plans. Well, thanks to the same Irene that knocked out Edna’s power, our travel plans changed too! We never got to Connecticut to visit David’s brother and family who were also in the dark for a while. We did make it to New Jersey for the last weekend of our trip and had a short visit with our friend, Maria, the evening before she left on her vacation. Maria gave us an A-ball baseball suggestion that was not just a great evening, but my first trip to Delaware too!

When David and I travel, we have short little songs or cheers we sing as we cross the state line. I’m going to make word arts for those cheers for scrapbooking. I think I’m going to offer them on this blog as freebies. Some of the cheers may not be so universal. When we cross the border into Indiana, we text the cheer to my brother and Sis-in-law, “P-O-T-A-T-O-E, Indiana, Indiana, he-he-he!” and when we cross into New Jersey, it’s “Welcome to New Jersey,” with me trying to “YAY!” louder than my New York native hubby’s “PBTZZZZZ!” But a lot of them are adapted from songs or tourism slogans; “You’ve got a friend in Pennsylvania,” “Just an old sweet song, keeps Georgia on my mind!” Those ones will probably be more downloaded for other people’s scrapbooks.

The next few blog posts will share some of our trip. Those posts will appear in the midst of some scrapbooking and lots of homework as well as a big pot of vegetable soup which I’m masking this afternoon.

Much as I enjoy traveling, it’s good to be home!