Merrill July 05 019

Merrill July 05 019
Originally uploaded by zela.

This is Sharon, the MIL and FIL's next door neighbour at the river...she's been married to Joe for 50 years and they were one of the first people to welcome MIL to the river when she had just married FIL...by rustling up a group of friends, grabbing their pots and pans and clanging them together as they walked over the meet the new bride and groom...being a sweet Georgia peach and not used to the wild ways of Wisconsin..I think the MIL freaked out a bit, but became freinds and now counts Sharon as one of her nearest and dearest.
Sharon and Joe didn't want to have a fancy dinner so Dawn (the daughter) and Judi and Jerry (she's the pretty redhead in the pictures) and others cooked up a surprise.
At 3pm on Saturday we all met at the top of the drive, turned on the siren on someones golf cart and walked down the hill banging all the muffin tins and saucepans we could find.
The extended family had managed to make excuses to be there already, we loaded the 3 pontoon boats with booze and food and carefully (with generally comedic results) tied all 3 boats together and sailed on down the river enmasse. Sharon and Joe had a great time (she was pretty shickered by 9pm) and we eventually moored for a bbq to finish things off.
Just the perfect way to celebrate 50 and a fun way to introduce my sister to life on the river.
Try not to look to hard at how much the cake is leaning...she insisted on 4 layer banana cake with whipped cream and choc icing on top.
Click on the photo if you want to see more of the party.

Parking...what parking?

I think Americans might be a bit 'afeared' of parking...maybe it;s the big ass cars, maybe its easier to park in first gear (instead of trying to figure out what the automatic gears might do), maybe it a genetic lack of a parking gene, but I for one, am grateful. When I pull into the underground car part a little late (like this morning), spaces near pillars and beams....oooooooh...scaaary pillars and beams...are usually free...and closer to the building - yay for that.
However, I have learnt that it not a good idea to park in the spaces next to the trolley returns (where there is usually a gap at the supermarket). Maybe it has something to do with winter and a desperate need to get into the car before you turn into an icicle, or possibly the overwhelming influence of Nascar, but I've seen a lot of trolleys shoved in the general direction of the returns section by people looking the other way, and once one go careering past (not downhill...there are no hills in Illinois) with no one watching but me...and yes, i did stop it crashing into a car. Not sure why they don't push them neatly into the lines every time....maybe some people just can't park!

so it's back to work

Can't beleive that I only have one more week of my sister staying with me...it's been fun (I think our relationship has gotten much better since we've gotten older) and she seems to be having a good time. I was really liking this working part-time thing last week...wonder if I can keep doing that and still get the same pay!

Been on blogging holiday....

once you are out of your normal routine, normally routine things become much harder to fit in. I've got photo's to post, but they have to wait a day or two (though I'm about to figure out how to send them to Walmart to print out via the internet), but in the meantime, here's the FRIDAY FEAST (on Saturday or Sunday if you read in NZ!)

Appetizer
Briefly describe your living room.
It's a wonderful large 1.5 height room with an enormous stone fireplace in the middle and one of the main reasons why we bought the house. At the moment it contains a boob height pile of unpacked packing paper, a matching pile of flattened boxes, all our pictures stacked on one wall and all our 'good' china neatly lined up on the floor around the walls like a car boot sale thanks to the unpacking skills of my little sister...maybe we should just open the door and see what we can sell...the papers all there to wrap it up!

Soup
List 3 things you'd like to accomplish before the end of 2005.
Find a home for everything in the house
Start the garden
Go to Patagonia
I figure the last one might be the most feasible!

Salad
When you're online, what do you spend the most time reading/playing/doing? Suggest a site for us to visit.
Writing my blog and reading others...and shopping for blinds or travel deals! If Strayed into this blog the other day...very funny and quite an interesting perspective to

Main Course
What would the title of your autobiography be?
Kiwi's can fly!

Dessert
What time do you usually go to bed?
Going to bed and going to sleep are two different things...heheheheheh...somewhere between 9:30 (bad day!) to 10:30 usually...the sleeping thing can occur 15 to 4 hours later...depending on the book I'm reading (minds out of the gutter children!)

George Carlin said it best about MARTHA STEWART.

"Boy, I feel a lot safer now that she's behind bars. O.J. Simpson and Kobe Bryant are still walking around; Osama Bin Laden too, but they take the one woman in America willing to cook, clean, and work in the yard, and haul her ass off to jail."

Thanks for sending this Lorraine.