Not So Charming

It’s Tuesday and I occasionally like to participate in Barn Charm at Tricia’s Buff Area Daily. Yesterday was a sad barn discovery!

We were on our way to Dayton to see the Dayton Dragons game last night and leaving early, we took some back roads to photograph a few trains. When driving through Putnam County we saw a lot of the damage that still remains after a nasty storm on June 29 that knocked out power in the whole county for days. There weren’t any tornadoes, but winds up to 80 MPH in that very destructive storm.

On May 20 of this year I took this photo of the Putnam County Bicentennial Barn:

Putnam County Bicentennial Barn

Columbus Grove, OH, May 20, 2012

As we drove past the barn yesterday, David said, “Oh my God, that was the Bicentennial Barn!”

This is what the barn has looked like since June 29:

Putnam County Bicentennial Barn 

after storm on June 29, 2012

taken July 23, 2012

This is the only part of the rubble that I could pick out that looked like there might be a part of the Bicentennial logo:

The house of wood didn’t withstand the Big Bad Wolf; if you see a barn you want in your photo collection, it’s not a guarantee that there will be a day with better light! I’m really glad I take my “safety shots” when I see the Bicentennial Barns, even if the lighting could be better at the time!

Wedded Barn Bliss

July 12, 2009

Wedded Barn Bliss

This was taken the Sunday of our Wedding Reception weekend.  We had a baseball doubleheader picnic on Saturday with fireworks and on Sunday, railfan friends met us at 6:30am where we picked up McBreakfast and went railfanning, in our bride and groom hats, in the area between Fostoria and North Baltimore, Ohio, before meeting the rest of our guests for the luncheon.

What a fabulous weekend it was!

I'm participating with Tricia at Bluff Area Daily in Barn Charm.

Etcetera

Credits: Warm Latte by Rose Made Designs

The big and best news today is the Keurig maker is back where it belongs; anyplace I can make coffee with it! Oh, one more coffee cluster today, but maybe tomorrow I’ll do a chocolate cluster. Then if I get chocolate, I’ll start doing money clusters!


Today I wanted to share a fun scrapbook layout I did with my Iowa water towers from my first visit to Iowa in 2008.

Iowa Waterbed Quilt

Credits: Sleepy Time Collab by Booland Designs, Darlene Designs, 

Deli Scraps by Min, Digilicious Designs, equAveziur, and Moon Designs, 

Quilt pattern is Tick Rack Toe by The Quilter's Cache/Marcia Hohn.

I know The Chronicles of Nani is frequented by a lot of scrapbookers and a lot of quilters too. I love quilt-inspired scrapbook pages. They are so much fun to do and can be done with digital or paper scrapping. I think the stitching is easier to do digitally, I can’t imagine drawing in the stitching by hand, but the pattern can still be done in paper without the stitching. I get my patterns for my quilt blocks at Quilter’s Cache on the web. The quilt templates are free to use for personal use projects and there are just TONS of patterns! Some of Marcia Hohn’s quilt patterns are better than others for scrapbooking, better space for photos or journaling, but they are all fabulous for quilting! Quilter’s Cache was definitely a bookmark on Grandma’s computer. It’s a great place for templates and inspiration!

Easter Barnnies

We shot some trains and even a few barns on our sunny drive Easter afternoon!

There is a larger barn and this little side building on US224, east of the Hancock Bicentennial barn, both with Mail Pouch chewing tobacco ads on them. The larger barn faces east and it was too late to get any lighting for a photo on the same day I shot this one, but I will go back to have the pair. Not a fan of the product, but I love the classic barn advertising!

This one is also on US224. I just like the barn! It’s weathered, but the colors are still rich. I like the stone base and the windows that give it almost a churchy-look.

And now a couple more Ohio Bicentennial Barns

The Hancock County Bicentennial Barn is on US224, just outside of Findlay, Ohio. It was the 15th of the 88 barns pained.

The Wyandot County barn’s Bicentennial logo has definitely seen better days! It’s on US23, south of Carey. I’m kinda sad to see the logo so weathered away. If I had been honored with a bicentennial logo on my barn, I want to touch up the paint every year…of course I’m not paying that bill! It was the 5th barn painted for the Bicentennial project.

See more great barns at Tricia’s Barn Charm at Bluff Area Daily

Links:

Quilter’s Cache

Ohio Barns

Happy Spring 1st

Good morning Cyberpals! Happy Spring!

The high temperature yesterday was 81 degrees here, blowing the old record away by 3 degrees. We’re forecasted for two more days in the low to mid 80s…in MARCH! I’m over the flower sadness now and ready to just enjoy the warmth! Mid 80’s is the temperature in my fantasy paradise.


Global Climate Change. Hmm… I’m still not sold on cars and aerosol cans being to blame for the weather, not yet. Climate goes in cycles and just 2 years of bizarre weather doesn’t mean a permanent change. Even if warmer weather and more violent storms become the norm, I’m not so sure it’s all our fault. True that we haven’t done much to slow it down and we really need to be more ecologically conscious, but we weren’t here with our pollutants during the time of the great glaciers. Where I’m sitting right now used to be a solid piece of ice all year round. The climate does naturally change in big ways, always has. I suppose it would have been an alarming thing to be sitting happily on my glacier and suddenly the cable goes out because there is water in my modem from the glacier melting. I’m just sayin’. It could be the process of major global climate change that’s happened before. Still, like I said, we haven’t helped it slow down the process and conservation is a great idea. Major climate change is slow. The glaciers didn’t melt overnight and I doubt any of us will be fried to a crisp. But we need to do what we can to slow the process so there will be more future generations before they all have to swelter in parkas on an average Ohio 110 degree day in January because the hole in the ozone has made sunscreen ineffective.

Just suggesting to use reusable shopping bags and save the water in a jug while it’s heating up to make spaghetti in the kitchen, water the house plants or make coffee. We love our eco-ghetti! And recycle, recycle, recycle!

I have a really cool barn to share with you and liking to Tricia’s Barn Charm at Bluff Area Daily.

I saw this farm when David and I took a day trip last Sunday, March 11. It’s a beautiful farm, even with the dry remains of the corn field and look at the barn!

It’s on Ohio 423 between Marion and Waldo. I love the unusual color and the fact that the barn and house match!

This week’s prompt from Suzanne at The Coloradolady for Tell Me Tuesday at first glance should be easy for me.

What is the best part of your average day?

As an optimist, “the best” should be easy!

But, as an optimist the first thing I thought when I contemplated the question was, “just one?”

I could say “waking up,” and the best part of waking up is that Folders is NOT in my cup. And then I guess I could say the best part of any day is when I can paraphrase advertising and slam Folders in one sentence!

The thing is that right now I don’t have average days. I mean, I’m not employed. I clean and organize, write a sponsored post when there is one available. That’s my working day. The best parts are when I discover treasures in my boxes form relatives’ estates or when I rediscover something we thought we’d lost. There have been a couple of those.

I could also say the best part is lunchtime when I relax, read a few blogs and usually experiment with something in the kitchen, whether it’s the meal or a new drink concoction.


Then there’s later in the afternoon when Kaline visits me wherever in the house I am just for some attention. It's even better just before David comes home when they both visit me although that’s in part because it's “Fresh Kibble” time.

But I think truly the best time of the average day for me is when David comes home. It’s the “Honey I’m home” kiss I starting missing as soon as the warmth of the “goodbye” kiss fades. I like my alone time during my breaks during the day and Heaven knows that it’s hard to accomplish any cleaning or organizing if there’s anyone else with me, but it’s when my partner in life is home again and I can share what I’ve accomplished during the day with him that I can really say it’s been a good day.

Wow…I’ve been totally consumed by Donna Reedishness, huh? I wonder what Donna Reed would have blogged about?

Putting my apron back on…


Join us for Tell Me Tuesday for a prompt that makes you think a little. You might surprise yourself!

Googrrrrr

Happy Tuesday everyone! To be honest, today is a day I NEEDED to have my morning coffee in my Good Morning mug to remind me!

Okay, it’s not really so bad, I just woke up stuffy and with a tiny bit sore throat. And then Google, Oh Google!

Blogger, BlogSpot, is a Google property. Yes, the people who thought it would be a good idea to put all of my actual files for my photos for everything Google on the brand new addition to their family so that if you cleared things to unclutter the brand new community, you killed all the images in your blog and that’s why I’m still missing a year’s worth of images, is responsible for all the blunders in the world of BlogSpot too.

Let’s start with what it doesn’t do. I am currently migrating away from Google Friend Connect. We all know by now that after tomorrow, GFC will no longer be available to non-Blogger readers, who do follow Blogger blogs. That means those readers have lost the reader they’ve been using and it means that those of us who blog at BlogSpot are potentially losing followers too. I have 74 followers. I have no idea how many will be left on Thursday morning. Thanks, Google!

What makes me nuts is I don’t know for how much longer we’ll have Google Friend Connect as part of our blogging dashboard for the BlogSpot blogs either. And does it really matter? For 2 blogs in particular that I follow, I find out they are posting after I get concerned that they haven’t posted in a while. I just don’t know it because GFC has AGAIN mysteriously deleted them from my blog list. Infuriating.

I’ve done some looking around. I did sign up for Linky followers. You can see that list in the right column. I look at it as a new mug rack for my Information Superhighway coffee shop. The biggest problem I have with Linky as a reader, is it’s so new and not really funded that it doesn’t auto update. If I don’t go to my Linky account and enter in a new post every time I post, followers aren’t alerted. I post once, sometimes twice, a day during the week as well as the White Tornado project and the big scrapbooking project with deadlines looming. Posting that I blogged to Linky every time I post means a blog or two won’t be read or commented on by me. I’m often catching up a day or two as is because of my full days right now. So, if you follow The Chronicles of Nani with the Linky Reader, I will try to update to the most current post when I can, but if it’s been more than 2 days since I posted according to Linky, try me again. There’s probably something new!

As for a blog reader for me, I’m using Bloglines. The biggest pain is that I have to migrate all the blogs I read one at a time, but it’s a quick process to add. If you want to try Bloglines, it’s free to sign up. I use the extension for Firefox which enables me to one click add to my reader. It all takes some figuring out, but once you get the initial set up done, it’s very user friendly, updates automatically and thus far, hasn’t deleted any of the blogs I follow from my reader list. I can read the blog entries from my reader, or click the title to go to the blog itself so I can leave comments. I set this up and use it for free. So far I like it a lot.

Next point of Googrrrr is Capcha. Oh, I hated the type in an incoherent mumbo jumbo of letters to verify your comment before, which is why readers have NEVER had to do that to leave a comment here. I’m not the world’s greatest typist, okay I’m not much of a typist at all, letters that don’t naturally go together in English, or at least French or Italian, mess with my head and that messes with my typing hands. I have to stop and type one letter at a time. Yeesh! Now Google has changed all that. Instead of one group of unrelated gibberish, we get TWO! One may or may not be a word and the other is all warped against a background that makes it unreadable. I know there has been uproar about it. The kicker; if you didn’t have those silly characters turned off in the old dashboard interface, there is no button to opt out of using them that I could find in the new one. Kelly sent me an email asking for help because when she changed layout templates on her blog, Coffee Cup Crafts and Christianity, it automatically gave her the Capcha “protection.” It’s protection from people leaving comments because they get so frustrated with the little game to leave a comment that they don’t.

A few thoughts and tips on the Capcha gibberish. First, the only way I found to get rid of it on the new interface is switch back to the old interface, click the gear in the upper right of the dashboard and select “Old Blogger Interface.” Then click settings and the comments tab. Click “no” for comment verification, then save settings at the bottom. Then return to the dashboard and click “try new Blogger Interface.” If anyone knows how to turn Capcha off in the new Blogger Interface, please leave a comment. You won’t have to type in gibberish to do so.

Google’s filter for spam/bot messages in comments is good. I get very few spam comments because I approve of all my comments before I post them. Originally that was so I could be sure there were no comments on sponsored posts that bash my sponsors or use the post as a free space to advertise a competing product. As I’ve said before, I’ll post anything that respectfully disagrees with ME, but if you’re “dissing” my sponsors, you’re threatening my coffee!  But when I have things in my spam folder, I go in and check them and they're usually right about me not wanting it on my blog.

When choosing between Capcha garbage, approving all comments or taking a chance that the spam filter is working, I will offer this one thing; Capcha doesn’t work. I know I don’t type well. There are plenty of times that I have to retype the password to start my own computer. So I started wondering why I so seldom had to retype the Capcha codes. I’m bent over with my nose in the screen trying to discern what a letter in black on a scratchy black background is and I’m always right! Humph. I tried typing in a few letters that I was sure of wrong, simple “errors” like hitting a g when I knew the letter was h. The comment still posted! I tried it another time using three errors. The comment still posted. I tried making 3 or 4 errors with letter that were nowhere near the correct ones. It still posts. I finally had to retype when I hit all wrong keys, but the right number of characters. That didn’t work. So, I will offer that as irritating as Capcha is, don’t stress; you only have to kinda be right. It does make Capcha look like a bit of a FAIL though, doesn’t it?

I know a lot of people have vowed to not leave a comment when they have to enter a Capcha code. I don’t blame them. It goes back to the limited blog reading and commenting time and the extra time deciphering the code could be spent reading another blog and commenting without the code. I’ll still leave comments with a Capcha code now that I know what a joke it is for blog “security” of any kind. I’m just sure glad my bank’s website is pickier about security.

---PHEW---

Boy I feel a lot better now! Oh, I still have the stuffies and a mildly sore throat, but stabbing Google with a cyber-pitchfork helped.

Barn Charm

If you’re only here to see the barn, thanks for stopping by, but I do hope you’ll consider reading the Capcha rant and suggestions. I know a lot of the barns I visit have the Capcha codes to leave a comment and like I said, I know a lot of people who won’t leave a comment if they have to enter codes to do it.

Isn’t this barn a beauty? It’s in Ottawa County, Ohio, near the Ottawa County Bicentennial barn on State Route 2. I love the rich colors! It looks so dressed up!


See more barns at Tricia’s Barn Charm at Bluff Area Daily.

Links:

Bloglines

Everything

I’m posting later than usual today, so that means all of my Tuesday stuff gets to share a blog entry!

I have started going through boxes and piles in what will be the woman cave today. The woman cave will be in the room that used to be “the office” when David and I were both on the older desktop computers. David’s actual desk is in the basement. It needed brought upstairs, but it was not a job he could do on his own, so his “desk” was the door to the room on top of two stacks of totes he had old clothes in. When I first moved in, my Mac and I were in the corner next to the door-desk on my card table. Later my desk moved in when my furniture was moved from Michigan. It was cozy, but it worked.

What made it cozier was that my banker boxes, all of my office and craft supplies from Michigan, lined the wall opposite the door-knob desk waiting for shelving units to be assembled. I bought 2 shelving units to start. One I assembled and put in the “train room,” which was the guest room, but all of David’s model railroad stuff lived there. That shelf freed all my photo albums and scrapbooks from boxes and gave them someplace to live. Assembling the other shelf for the office had to be done in a particular order. David’s real desk had to come upstairs and be switched out for the door knob desk to make enough room to assemble the shelves and move the banker boxes to place the unit. That unit is the one in the kitchen annex now and I still need more units! LOL

But where claiming the room as my woman cave becomes more of a challenge is that since the laptops moved in and allowed the desktops to catch some dust, Grandma passed and a half year was spent cleaning out her house and settling her estate, that put more boxes added to the old office which became a storage room, my MS symptoms blossomed and took a year of running around from doctor to doctor to figure out what that was and start to treat it and the office/storage room sat untouched. Last year, just before Christmas we heard a loud boom coming from upstairs. Something fell. After locating both cats to make sure they were okay, David went upstairs. He came back and told me “you don’t want to look at it.” After years of supporting the desktop computer and the peripheral supplies and accessories, one of the clothing totes holding it all up gave up. It cracked, collapsed and slid the entire contents of the door top onto the floor blocking passage to my desk! Miraculously, nothing, except the one tote, was broken. Even a glass candy dish survived the fall!

So, as I embark on sorting my way back into the room, because right now I couldn’t access the Mac if I really needed to, I have those original banker boxes of supplies, the rest of the boxes from Grandma’s and everything that fell off the doorknob desk. I did take some before photos. I’ll want to scrap this whole thing after I finish and earn my superwoman cape!

As of this morning I have access to the room’s closet again. I’ve also decided where the shelving unit for the M&Ms collectibles will go. Eye on the prize, I can’t wait until that collection can be displayed again!

Tell Me Tuesday

Once again this week, I’m joining Suzanne at The Coloradolady for Tell Me Tuesday. This one was harder to think about than write about! This week’s prompt:

What is the most unique thing you own?

First off as people are all unique, I think every collection is unique. I could say my mug collection because although it’s not unique to collect mugs, the specific mugs in that collection are unique to anyone else’s collection. I have other things that are probably pretty common, but the story behind them is unique. So I’m going to show you one of my very special and unique because of the story things.

I just unwrapped this from one of my one storage boxes:

Anchor Hocking Apple Jar

These jars were a promotion at Dunkin Donuts. I did some looking to see if I could get help to remember the year, but it seems the apple jar is pretty unique after all! I guess that’s not super surprising. When I started unwrapping it, I remembered what it was and the fun story that goes with it, and I said a little prayer that it wasn’t broken. The glass is thin and it has a valuable and fragile feel when you pick it up. Perhaps they are unique, or at least rare to still exist.

It was a Christmas promotion that Anchor Hocking co-oped with Dunkin Donuts in the 80’s. In going through my memory banks, I think the three years Anchor Hocking and Dunkin Donuts did the glass canisters were 1984, 85 and 86. I own all three canisters and the apple was the first one. I think I remember that it was before I was 18 and that was part of the tease in the story.

As I’ve credited many times before, Dunkin Donuts was and still is the place where I hang out with my friends in Novi, Michigan. Anita worked the counters in the evenings during the week then. Her kids are my age, so she and Mom were peers and Mom was in on the joke too.

When the posters were up all over the store promoting the deal for Christmas that you could purchase an Anchor Hocking Apple Jar filled with Dunkin Munchkins, I was intrigued. I thought the jar was really cool, but a little pricier than my part time job could afford after gas and gifts for others. I asked Anita “What’s Anchor Hocking was and what do you do with the jar to help you anchor hock?”

I did know that Anchor Hocking was the brand. I didn’t know why it was a big deal that it was an Anchor Hocking jar. But, as was natural for me at the time, and still is, I was being silly. Anita joined in.

Addressing my Mom, “you never had 'the talk?'”

I realized they were ganging up on me. Scotty and John were there too and they just loved it when I got zapped. So I asked Anita if she was going to tell me what Anchor Hocking is and how one anchor hocks.

She told me, “You’ll find out on your wedding night.”

Our collective joke that Christmas was anchor hocking the verb! I’ve been married for three years and I still don’t know how to anchor hock!


Now, if you don’t think my apple jar is unique, please leave a comment telling me how to anchor hock!

Join us to tell us about your most unique things at Tell Me Tuesday at The Coloradolady!

Barn Charm

Morenci, Michigan

I got this green-roofed barn on March 26, 2006, while railfanning in the Motherland.

See more fabulous barns at Tricia’s Barn Charm at Bluff Area Daily.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Valentine Smiley from Eat-N-Park

Yesterday was a frustrating yet fun day. Mondays are David’s Sunday and so they are my Sundays too. It had snowed so much in Cleveland over the weekend and it was supposed to be sunny yesterday, so we headed out to Cleveland to get some train pictures in the city in the snow.

We were up and out before the sun was up which means this was our view driving east on the Ohio Turnpike:

No, not easy to drive into, but I love seeing the sun rise on a new day!

And it did start out to be a beautiful sunny day too! The first train I got of the day was my favorite shot, favorite shot so far this year, actually.

Our friend, Terry, met up with us before he went in to work and showed us this phenomenal location with a great shot of the tracks coming around a curve with Jacobs Field (brought to us by Progressive) in the background. One shot with a train and a baseball field. Perfect!!


We got McLunch and David stopped at a store to get a new scanner that he’d wanted for some time and needed to get from the store in Cleveland that carried that particular brand. After that the clouds started to roll in with a vengeance.


We saw that our train day was pretty much done earlier than planned. We wanted to have dinner at Eat-N-Park while we were in the western most area where there is an Eat-N-Park, and on Stuffed Pepper Soup day no less, so we looked for a few other things to do before an early dinner.


David got the directions to the Lake County Bicentennial Barn while he was getting his new scanner.

Now, I boast about Ohio being the Unofficial Barn Capital of the Nation, but there was only one barn yesterday. I’m glad this was it! The Lake County barn is showing the years since painting. The barn itself is a little shabbier and the logo is faded, but it has so much character! There aren’t a lot of barns in the Cleveland metro area, but this one is a gem!


After hunting and shooting the Lake County Bicentennial Barn, it was a little too early for dinner yet, so we stopped at CVS, with its bold reminder that “Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day.” We decided to stop and get cards for each other. There was some chocolate selecting going on too!

After that we went to Eat-N-Park for dinner. Going the day before Valentine’s Day meant that they had not run out of Smiley Valentine cookies like they had when we ate late at an Eat-N-Park in Pennsylvania for dinner on Valentine’s Day a couple years ago. We took a half dozen home!

Before bed, David presented me with my third pre-Valentine’s day present; PEZ!

I love PEZ as a low-cal fat-free snack when I crave something sweet. I also have a Reds and a Tigers PEZ dispenser! This pack includes strawberry vanilla, which I haven’t tried before. He did ask if he could try the new flavor and if I might share the orange and raspberry ones. I teased him about asking me to share my gifts, but how can I say “no” to my favorite PEZ pusher?

That’s it for now, I’ve got a full plate today, but I’m going to try to post again today! In the meantime, definitely check out Tricia’s Barn Charm at Bluff Area Daily for more fabulous barns of character!

A Rant, A Cat and A Smile

The first thing I’d like to address today is a current grumble in Blogland. That grumble is with the mothership. Blogger is making me nuts! I have my list of blogs that I follow and my usual habit is that I check that list and read everyone’s new blog posts with my morning coffee. The problem is that information I get from Blogger’s Friend Connect is usually incomplete. I get randomly selected updates. Who gets listed in the current new blogs? I think it’s occasionally everyone, but how can I be sure? I also get blogs I follow that just vanish from my list! I thought Linda, my Secret Santee at Christmas was deleting me because I was following her anonymously during the swap, but now, two others that I’ve been following have been deleted and I’ve tried twice to add them back, but Blogger doesn’t save them. One blog I read by clicking the newest post post on my “friends I follow” list yesterday at lunch and then by the evening, she was gone from my list entirely, poof! Grrr!

I wonder if any of my readers use a different type of reader to follow their favorite blogs. I was looking at Google Reader, but that’s the same company as Blogger and Blogger is my problem. When I clicked to see the blogs I follow in Google Reader, they were still not all there and the updates were shown randomly. Has anyone used Bloglines?  There isn’t the complete information on the main page I’d hope for before I sign up for an account. I really want something similar to the Blogger friends list or Google Reader, just one that works. I welcome any suggestions by email or in the comments!


Whew! Okay. I’m over the grumblies.


My Dad is going to be here Thursday morning to work on that book shelf. That means I’ll have today and tomorrow to finish up in the bedroom. Shouldn’t be a problem. I have a few bags of things to move into the future woman cave from there too. David asked me if there was enough room to move with all those boxes. There will be. Actually with his desk not there, I still have more room than I had with 2 desks. Add to that, a lot of the stuff is to sort and either shred or put in the good will box. Plus once things are properly organized, they take up so much less space.

When Pop is here, I’ll get to let him try my first batch of minestrone. David brought up one of the larger bowls from the freezer. It’s thawing in the fridge now. I hope Pop can work his artisan miracles and save the shelving unit. They aren’t terribly expensive kits, but expensive enough that I’d much rather not have to add that to my shopping list!


I don’t get a lot of time to blog or read on the weekends, but I do some. I did a post on Sunday that, according to Blogger’s stats has only been read once! I think it’s an important post, way more important than the Super Bowl, mugs, barns or vintage things. If you have an extra click, please read “Lend a Helping Paw.” It’s not trying to sell anything.  It’s about Paws and Whickers Cat Shelter and a sweet little feline girl we are sponsoring.

 

Bissett at Paws and Whiskers

Isn’t she the prettiest thing? We sponsored Bissett when we visited Paws Saturday, which brought her adoption fee way down. Paws is our local cat shelter and we are supporters and fans of the shelter. How could we not be? That’s where our Carla came from and likely where Jo or Joe Morgan will come from as well. I say likely because Kaline was not a shelter cat, she was a feral kitten who was too young to be without her mother, but she was without a mother. We firmly believe in rescues as our pets, usually from a shelter, but if we find one that needs us, we’ll rescue it ourselves.

You can read some more about Bissett and see a couple more photos of this calico beauty through the link, or just go back a few posts. If you are even considering adding a new furbaby to your family, really consider adopting a rescued cat or dog. Shelters are so crowded in a rough economy and rescued animals are the most loving and faithful animals you’ll ever give a piece of your heart to!

Barn Charm –

Yesterday morning, David and I went out to take advantage of the sunny blue skies and photograph some trains. Of course for me, it’s photographing trains, water towers, post offices, barns and anything else that strikes my fancy!

I was totally torn about going because I had laundry to fold or hang and I’m in the middle of the White Tornado Project in the bedroom, so I’m dusting and organizing everything, even dusting the ceiling! I’ve also found half the missing socks under the bed!

I’m glad I went! David had some stuff he needed to go back to the house for at midday, so I stayed home for the afternoon. I got a couple trains, my barn for this week and still got clothes hung up and some dusting done. It was a productive day after all!

This barn can be seen greeting drivers on the I-75 in Wood County.

It’s in Dunbridge, Ohio. My thought is that Joe and Gertie are the owners of the barn, saying his to everyone who passes. We pulled over on the ramp for exit 187 to get this shot.


See more barns at Tricia's Barn Charm at Bluff Area Daily

Links

Bloglines

Paws and Whiskers

Bissett's page

Bluff Area Daily

It's Tuesday, Must be Barn Charm!

 

Since I had photographed and sought so many of the Ohio Bicentennial barns, I just had to get a shot of this one when we were on vacation last summer. Niagara County New York is not quite as old as the State of Ohio, but it’s still a nicely painted barn!

Enjoy more special barns, they’re all special, in Tricia’s Barn Charm at Buff Area Daily!

Something New & A Barn To View

My something new today is that I’m joining Tell Me Tuesday at The Colorado Lady. Suzanne started this the first Tuesday of the year and I think I may do the first two weeks in my personal journal so I have all 52. Let me tell you about Tell Me Tuesday!

It’s actually not you telling me anything. It’s me telling you! Suzanne posts a question on Tuesdays and participants answer it truthfully. Some weeks have easier questions than others and the hope is maybe the writer learns a little something about themselves in the answering of the question too. I know that happens because I write when I’m troubled because it reveals things to me that I was keeping from myself. I can’ tell you how many times I’ve been writing or typing away in my personal journal when I’ve stopped and said, “Oh! That’s the REAL problem!” I’m looking to the weekly introspective opportunity too!

So, here’s this week’s question:

"What is the most important lesson you learned in the past year?

I could make this week’s answer real short and just say the most important thing I’ve learned in the past year is that I have MS. It turned out that MS was the biggest thing in my world last year.

I’ve NEVER liked spending any more time than I absolutely have to in doctor’s offices or hospitals. I was sure they’d only pump me full of drugs and make the pain worse. The biggest thing I learned from a year that had more baseball-free months than doctor-free months, a first from me in many, many years, was to trust doctors. If I had a dollar for every time a medical professional said, “Don’t worry, I won’t drop you, I won’t let you fall, I won’t lie to you,” well, that’d pay all of copays for the year. Looking back, it seems my mistrust was pretty apparent.

My year of doctors started with my primary care doctor once again assuring me he wouldn’t let me fall off the table when I was having a back manipulation done. Then it progressed to a neurosurgeon telling me a few times that he wouldn’t let me fall if I set down the cane and held his hands so he could see my balance. In September, when I’d started on one medication and knew I was soon to be started on another, I called the pharmacist to be sure I could take Benadryl for my allergies without dangerous interactions. I didn’t take a Benadryl until after I’d given the list of prescriptions and vitamins I’m taking to the pharmacist at the specialty pharmacy and two doctors and got the same opinion, that it was safe, from all 4 sources. l still, the first time I took a pill for my allergies, David had to be home and it had to be during the day, so I wouldn’t be alone or asleep, just in case.

I’m still careful about checking qualification and asking lots of questions, but I learning to trust. I don’t have just one doctor anymore; I have a team of doctors. Trough requests to have everything sent to my primary care doctor at home they ALL know what the other is doing. My doctor won’t drop me. My specialists won’t let me fall and my Physical Therapist won’t have me do something that will hurt me worse. I also trust the medications. As prescribed, they have made me feel so much better and the worst side effect so far is dry mouth, I’m always drinking more water. If ya gotta pick a side effect…

Because I’ve learned to trust doctors, I feel like myself again and I hobble a little better too. Turns out it was, indeed, a valuable lesson.

Bram Charm

This is one of the barns I shot last year on Election Day, 11/8:

 Henry Township, Ohio

I love the way the rich red just pops out behind the cornfield. Yes, and the water tower in the shot totally adds to the coolness factor with me!

Here’s a close up shot we got from further up the road:

It’s a little weathered, but kept up well and it’s very productive looking. And that red is so rich!

See more great barns at Tricia’s Barn Charm on Bluff Area Daily

Links
The Colorado Lady
Bluff Area Daily

Tuesday Barn Charm

North of Goshen, Indiana

Taken on our first snow day-trip on November 30, 2011

We had to go to Indiana to find the snow then and we still haven’t had any to speak of in Toledo this winter!

First Barn of 2012

This is the first Barn Charm of the year! So we'll start with yet another from the state that's the Barn Capital of the Nation!

West of Willard, Ohio, on April 21, 2011

I especially wanted to shoot this one for the Ohio State corn crib!

Join Tricia at Bluff Area Daily to see more fun, classic and intriguing barns in Barn Charm!

Christmas For The Record

First sleet, then snow, it’s a little foggy, slushy and there is slippy slush in the driveway and we were out in it. Winter, bleh.

But we’re home now and all is good! I have homemade peppermint mocha in a SpongeBob mug and Rina has a peppermint tea. It’s relax and play on the computer time. We braved the slush to go to our favorite Toledo Middle Eastern restaurant, Ya Halla and to ship a package she was sending to a friend.

Contrary to what this week’s Mug Shot may lead you to believe, this Christmas was not just about coffee! Since I had everything I’d want from the Eastern Market already, except hard candy peanuts, for which Tori and Rina searched but couldn’t find, I opted out of the trip thus year so I could finish some preparations at home. Rina was coming home with us after Christmas Eve dinner at, my cousin, Lisa’s place.

David and I met up with everyone at Dad’s first. We decided that, wince Lisa and her family had moved to closer to us instead of farther out from Dad, that we’d exchange our family gifts there first so we could leave for Toledo right from Lisa’s.

The highlight for me was Tori and Rina getting their ornaments. I grumble at myself because this year I didn’t get pictures. I need to start photographing everything before I wrap it so I can at least journal about it! In that pic above, taken by David, Tori is looking at me saying, “Oh Nana, thank you!” with a glassy eyes and a warm smile. I had ornaments done in their respective favorite colors with their names on them from Bronners, just like my Mom had done for them when they were born. They’d lost those ornaments in moving and really missed them. They came with ornament stands for four ornaments. I figured they can have them for their dorm desks next year with those ornaments from me with a special memory of their Grams with room for the ornaments I gave them last year and a couple of other special ones. Hopefully they’ll be inspiring reminders of how great they are while studying for exams before they come home for Christmas! David and I gave Dave and Laura a neon Tiki Bar sign for their entertainment room. I was happy to receive am electric cake pop maker! Rina and I had talked about trying it out this week, bu9t there are still so many8 sweets in the house! Cake pops together may be on a future visit.

Christmas morning was fun! It’s been just David and me as long as we’ve been together and this is our seventh Christmas. This year Rina was with us and it was so cool! I set up the breakfast tray and the fruit spears I made with chop sticks. Rina got a chuckle out of that. Then we opened stockings. It was fun putting stockings together for Rina and David!

Rina’s very warm fleece scarf

She also got a Wolf pendant that she’s worn every day since she got it. (Proud of herself auntie!) David had a very digital Christmas as he courageously embarks on the journey from film to digital!

Of course he’ll need flash drives to bring his “slides” to railfan gatherings!

This one is the first of his 12 steps. Understanding where his film went! The flash drives made with old film canisters were so cool

The flash drives as well as a cup that looks enough like a Cannon lens to be confusing, were all from Photo Jojo. They have a plethora of useful and whimsical gadgets for photographers. I loved shopping that site for him. (Edna, if you haven’t been. you should check out the site! He also got a card for his digital camera and a card reader so his computer can talk with the cards.

For his big present he got the slide scanner he’d asked for. Now is time to start scanning a couple decades of slides! I see, for my holiday efforts, a number of nights in the near future of frustration helping him learn all the new toys, but I’m confident that it’ll be totally worth it when he produces his first digital train sound and photo show!

I hope you all had as Merry a Christmas as we did!


Barn Charm

I’m not leaving you all on a Tuesday without a barn!

This pic was taken on December 18, just north of Dexter Michigan the way to a Christmas party. I saw it and said, “Ooo, gray barn! Stop!” The sun was hitting it just right and in addition to “gray barn” I like the stone base. It’s just a sweet shot!


Okay, games time with David and Rina starts soon, so I’m off to continue to enjoy my Sweetie’s visit!

Links

Photo Jojo