Br-r-r-r!

Time to pull out the socks! My toes are cold!!! It's 8:03 am and according to the TV the temp is 46 degrees in Orlando so I'm sure it's colder here.  You do have to be careful what you wish for. You may not be able to fool Mother Nature but she sure likes to try to fool you.  Yesterday Sarah, our granddaughter, told her mother that it felt like Christmas! However by the middle of next week it is expected to be back in the 70's. Typical Florida weather.

Wake Up Call

Sometimes in life we can get rather abrupt wake up calls. I was on the receiving end of one of those last week. Bob and I have been trying to make some positive life style changes but mine obviously should have been more diligent. When I woke up last Wednesday morning I certainly did not expect to be in the hospital by evening. Two "stents" later I can assure you that I am much more serious about my health issues and the food that goes into my mouth! I am also very grateful to my guardian angel for giving me another chance to get it right. Thank you!!

Construction!

Well, we're back in the construction business again. As soon as fall is in the air Bob gets the urge to build something! A few years ago we remodeled our master bath as it was over 20 years old. We traded our cold tiled walk-in shower for a "cozy" fiberglass corner shower complete with glass enclosure. Would have been great if we could have figured out how to keep it from leaking around the base. Finally gave up, tore it out, and discovered that the base had a crack in it! All the caulking in Lowe's would never have remedied that problem. We're keeping the corner footprint and the shower enclosure but tiling the whole thing. It's a little difficult to visualize at the moment as the concrete rubble and big hole tend to get in the way! I'll keep posting as progress is made.

Better Gardening

Bob and I may not have the best luck growing good things to eat but our squirrels sure have the knack.

They have "planted" peanuts all around the yard.

I recently posted about having a soft heart and feeding the stray cats in the neighborhood. The down side to that is you can't be certain what else you are feeding!

We had to chain up the dish because "Rocky" and his/her family kept stealing them.

New Blog Look

My favorite graphics designer is Irene Alexeeva and I was so tickled when she started designing "blog couture" - ready made backgrounds and headers for blogs. She recently updated her blog with a beautiful fall theme but hasn't offered it for sale yet so I decided to use her graphics and see what I could do. Not too shabby if I do say so! If you would like to see more of her work her blog address is http://irenealexeeva.blogspot.com/.  The Heartistic link on the right will also take you there.

I have been very busy with the start of the new school year. For the first time in quite a while I am the sole ESL teacher and have no one to share the many responsibilities with. The number of teachers may have decreased but the number of students and amount of paper work sure didn't! Next year at this time I should be able to say "This is the last time I have to do this and the last time I have to do that." Retirement will be right around the corner!

Home

I love vacation! Who doesn't? For some people a vacation means simply not having to go to work. For Bob and I a vacation means - ROAD TRIP!! We love exploring new places and revisiting old favorites. But sometimes reality is hard to return to. That's what happened to me last week. We returned home late last Tuesday and I just couldn't seem to settle back into the daily routine. I did get laundry completed but spent most of my time reliving vacation and finishing my library books. I couldn't even dig up enough ambition to post the rest of the vacation pictures. Of course this week I panicked when I realized that school starts in 3 weeks and my summer "to do" list is still a mile long! We had a wonderful trip, enjoyed spending time with family and friends from PA and NY, and took lots of pictures. Pictures are posted and I'm working on adding captions and descriptions. Check out the Flickr Web Album link to see them. We're already thinking about our next road trip.

More Sightseeing

Our last night in Page. Tomorrow it is back to Vegas and then home on Tuesday. Today we took a tour of Antelope Canyon. What an awesome sight! My only complaint is that I think they allow too many tour groups to visit at the same time and a few of the tour guides were a bit pushy towards other groups. You have to book a tour because the canyon is on the Navajo Indian Reservation. You ride to the slot canyon in the back of 4 wheel drive trucks with BIG tires as there are no paved roads into the canyon. Well worth the money though. Later in the afternoon we drove to several points of interest along Lake Powell. The Waheap Marina has a really nice RV park that we would like to come back to. Dinner was at an Italian/Mexican restaurant. Interesting combination but the food wasn't bad.