Home Alone

A little melodrama, re: the title, to get us started. Really, it is not so bad, but I sure do miss Bruce, especially when he decided to remain in DC until Saturday!! Much to his chagrin, there have been far too many unforeseen problems needing his attention. It is not the first time, although with any luck, it will be the last, primarily because his next job is here in Orlando! Just five and a half miles from home, no less.

So, I'm pretty much sick of summer. Same old, same old.

Most everyone feels the same when September rolls around because it is still hot/humid as the dickens and we don't want it to be. Humidity--big time! Why, some days, my glass doors do not lose their condensation until after 10 in the morning. We've not had a drop of rain, however, since Sunday afternoon, although the sky is cloudy now, just when Bill needs nothing of the sort as he is having some concrete poured around 2:00. Not only is he having a sidewalk poured alongside the house, he's having some planters filled that once were inside the pool screen enclosure, and of late, have housed only weeds.

The early week adventures have come to a halt, however, my dear friends have really helped me out by having me over for dinner two nights this week. Thank you, thank you.

Wednesday, David and I met with our accountant to discuss next year's tax burden and it could be worse. I invited Dave because he's our money manager, or at least the invested portion; then too, he can follow along better than I can. Long story short, it's going to be interesting.

Because I was in Winter Park, Trader Joe's was on my agenda. One thing they have for very reasonable prices are fresh flowers, and that day was no exception. I came home with some super fly orange Gerbera daisies. 10 stems for $5.00.

Aren't they super? Speaking of the grocery store, the other day I boiled some eggs for egg salad and once they were all peeled nicely, I lined them up to check the sizing. You know how when a recipe calls for a large egg and that is what you use. But seriously, as demonstrated below, not all large eggs are created equally.

See what I mean? I wonder how much difference it really makes when baking...

Clemons hooked me up with some multi-colored radishes!!

This is a first in my life....I take my excitement any way I can of late. :)

Here is a wonderful story for all my teacher friends. Simply amazing what an impact a teacher can make on a young student's life. I bet everyone reading this has one of those in their life, or so I hope. Susan Thigpen was mine, back when I was in the ninth grade at Howard. I wonder what happened to her.

My friend Sue is having her kitchen redone, and unlike us, she's getting all new cabinets, flooring, and a wall taken down. In other words, the works. Riding over the other morning for a status update, we talked out front and I could not help admire all of her blooming orchids, and there were a bunch.

The day I visited the cabinets still had not arrived, however, that has now been rectified, and things are moving along nicely.

Cheryle sent me a link to an article last week about purslane and how you can eat the stuff. The reason she did so is because last year, when I had it growing like a weed, she took some cuttings and now has plenty of her own. For the life of me, I find it difficult to imagine frying the stuff.

Or eating the flowers for that matter. I think I will content myself with enjoying the cute flowers and foliage in the garden.

Bruce is encouraging me to do a better job taking care of my camera equipment which is probably only fair. Finding this cute little bag from Jon and Alissa in my desk drawer, I'm going to do my best to use it for storing lenses. Time will tell now, won't it?

By the way, it is now pouring. Perhaps it will stop before two? I sure hope so!

Yesterday morning I finally took Baxter for a walk in Cypress Grove Park, the only place he really likes to do so. As I mentioned before, with all of the recent rains, everything is green, green, green.

Surprising me, he was a pretty good walker, at least until he got a little tired. Most of the time I forget he's getting older like we are. Twelve years old already. I ended up carrying him in order for him to catch his breath, however, once we reached the big open field I put him down because, generally he loves to run. And run he would have except the grass was nearly as tall as he is!

He's taking a little breather in the high grass which was also wet from the morning dew. I know my shoes got soaked, as did his little legs. Once home, for some reason I took ahold of a bowl I've kept on my kitchen window sill, rummaging through the contents. Was I ever delighted to discover two items that I thought I'd never find. Duh, I look at the bowl every single day! Anyway, one item was a watch, and the other was a replacement button for a blouse I purchaed in Brighton, England. The blouse is darn cute with bird cages and never fails to garner compliments. Unfortunately, one of the lower covered buttons fell off a few months ago. My plan was to remove the one at the collar to replace it with, however, now I don't have too!! Button sewn on this morning. Woo hoo!

My luck did not hold out with the watch, however. Figuring it was merely a dead battery, I took it, along with a couple other dead watches over to the clock guy I've seen more of than I would like. No problem, three new batteries, and I am off. This morning though, I put the lost/found watch on before going on my ride,  only to look down thirty minutes later, and notice that the time was as he set it the day before. I seriously loved that watch, so much so, that I drove over once again to see what was up. Here's what was up--the circuit board is dead. I asked him to throw it away for me because it was too painful to do so on my end. :(

Finally, and this will interest only a few of you, so you've been warned. Anyway, a few weeks ago while at the nail salon, Tina talked me into letting her paint my nails which is something I ordinarily shy away from. Not because I don't like it, but because what I don't like are nails with chipped polish. Well, lo and behold, that polish stayed looking pretty good for about five days. I discovered I kind of liked being a painted lady. While flipping through a Vogue magazine recently, I saw an ad for Essie top coat which promised to behave like gel nails. So, I went in search of it, finding a little combo pack of both the top coat and a bottle of polish named "Sunday Funday." Perfect! Except, it is not. Or to date it has not proven to be so. First day and I had a serious chip. Second day--more. Hmmm.....let's try this again now that I am confidant enough to polish my nails. Pretty much the same result. In other words, not the miracle cure I was hoping for. Still not ready to give up, I wondered if it were the Essie polish, and would another brand work better? Seriously, a science project going on around here. The other day I decided to try it with some Revlon polish I had in my little nail bag. Let's just say that painting with dark polish is quite the challenge for me. Here I am holding up a little piece of sea glass I keep in shell jar.

By golly, I'm several days in, and my nails, although too dark, are still looking mighty good. Stay tuned.....

Won't be long now,

Gail

Gail's iPhone

Although I have a fancy new camera, I take plenty of photographs with my iPhone. While Jonathan was home for Christmas last year,  he turned me on to Instagram, which is very fun, and those photos can be seen on statigram/gailpeck most of which are silly stuff that I come across from day to day. At one time, as I mentioned in the last few months flickr was where I posted online photos, again, nothing that I intend to sell.

Earlier this morning Nancy sent me a message asking that I send her some phone photos so she could choose something for her wallpaper. Okay, I can do that. After watering the flowers I roamed around the yard looking for anything that might appeal to her. Once inside I started looking at them and discovered I had some photos already on the phone and was pretty surprised that some of them were pretty good. Or, at least they looked so on the phone screen!

Because today is a holiday for Americans, let's just get real simple and look at photos today, shall we? This one is the water feature outside the Seasons 52 entrance. According to Bruce, the ones he will have in California are even cooler.

While looking for flowers at Lowes,  I took this, which as I recall is an aster flower.

You know how crazy I am about those caladiums!

The colors and textures are super great!

Periwinkles, or vincas, are a summer stalwart in Florida, standing up to the incessant heat and rain. Some folks aren't crazy about them because they seed themselves but I say, the more the merrier! These white ones did just that.

I love white flowers because they really pop in the landscape. Then for something silly, there's this:

For those who've never had a swimming pool in their backyard, it is the drain hose rolled super tight. Which reminds me, recently a catalogue came from Grandin Road with lots of garden related products, one of which was simply unbelievable to me. Talk about taking design mania to the next level! I give you a dressed, as it were, garden hose. This one is for folks who have more money than they rightly know what to do with!

Purslane is another one of the summer bloomers, a member of the succulent family, it can take the heat and blooms prolifically.

Pretty, aren't they?

Picasa is my go-to editing and storage sight/program, well, actually I don't really know what to call it. At any rate, sometimes it will recognize my phone, other times no. I wish it worked all of the time. Thinking of Google, the other day I considered the history of the big techies businesses, such as AOL, Yahoo, Microsoft, and thought to myself, Self--what if Google succumbs to the same place in internet history???? Will my blog be gone? What about five years of work? Scary.

The Fourth of July is already special in our nation's history, and too, in our own family history. This morning we did a little Face-Time chat with Matthew as he opened his birthday package. No, he wasn't born on July 4, but pretty darn close. Although we arrived at the hospital around 10PM on the fourth, he did not make his entrance into our world until 1:30 in the morning, missing being a Bicentennial baby by 90 minutes. I was able to share the story with Tom as he had joined us waving a British flag. He stole a bit of my thunder as I'd sent Matthew eight small flags to wave as he cheers on the US team at the Olympics, one for each event he'll be attending. As you may know, Tom has been working for several years on the transportation plans for the Olympics, a pretty big endeavor as they are predicted to be very well attended. Americans may be surprised to learn that there are NO parking facilities at any of the venues; all spectators will have to rely on public transport. Because they have done every bit of pre-planning possible, his team is anxious to get the Games underway. As am I--cannot wait!

Matt and Tom were to be leaving for the airport directly after our chat, they are coming to America, arriving in Philadelphia an hour or so before nightfall with hopeful plans to share in their fireworks display. A wedding in Lancaster, PA is next on their agenda. I'm hoping they don't melt as the temperature in London has been anything but warm.

So, Happy Birthday America, and soon, a great big Happy Birthday to my first born son!