Wheeewwwww, am I GLAD Monday is coming! Friday night - out with my aunt...ever feel that you are participating just to appease family politics? Don't get me wrong - she is a wonderful lady but body language speaks volumes...she looked at her friend all night and barely gave me a glance. Last time for me. Called DH today at his folks and told him as much as I enjoyed myself I really felt like she was having a night out with me to check in on things. Okay, call me bad, but I would have been happier at home. It's keeping DH happy and the family. Turned my phone off - 7 phonecalls last week with everyone checking up on me - couldn't even sit down to eat and that darn phone kept ringing. Sat. afternoon, got invited for a light lunch with our new neighbours - very nice folk - enjoyed it and sat out. Today had dinner with friends (b-day for them). Enjoyed it. Somehow managed to get the bathroom painted. Now have the kitchen to do. Threw 7 bags of compost down on the front lawn, raked it in with 2 bags of grass seed and did another planter in the front. Having all out war this summer with SLUGS - they have been unusually bad - so bad I have been out with garden tools and SALT hunting them out. Actually got bio-friendly, less chemicals, slug pellets. I have worked too hard and have invested time and money enough not to have those critters eat my plants. So that has been me and I have been neglecting this post. Tomorrow I will be getting ready to start another week and SEND OUT CINNAMON FLAVOURED TOOTHPICKS!!!!! Send me an email with your details and I will send you a lovely little packet of toothpicks to chew on...they are sheer heaven! Really happy to hear of great doctor appointments, weight loss. I think I have gained with all of this entertaining. This week promises to be quieter and I should be getting back into a better routine! Take care, gotta get this butt in bed! McPeg

Today was a good day, hope it was for everyone. Started off with a good walk, then worked in the yard, and finally, after at least a month without, we had a nice rain shower! Several of us were out in our yards, and were all so happy to have rain, we kept working! It was rather refreshing. (Now if there had been lightning, I would have gone inside!) Then our check arrived from the state's Unclaimed Property Division. They update it once a year (in all states, I assume) and I just happened to check last week after a local school teacher received an unexpected windfall of $20,000+. Ours was much less, but still, a nice surprise. It went back to the 1970's, when we were in our first house as a married couple(an insurance refund.) So, it's not a bad idea to check your state's website and see if you've got something due you. You just fill out a form, send one or two forms of ID, and notarize it, and they do the rest. Then, today we met with an independent insurance agent to see if we could get better rates and coverage for our home and car than what we presently have. As most of you who have experienced disasters such as hurricanes,know, insurance rates are unbelievably high, if you can even get coverage. Ours, before today, because of the windpool factor, even though we are miles away from the beach, totals approximately $9,000 a year. And no, we do not live in a mansion. Today's agent will be able to provide better coverage at a savings of $1500 a year. So, "yea!" Plus, he's on several local committees fighting to get even better discounts for our area, so we feel good in his care. So, with that, I will close and hope everyone has a lovely weekend.

I hope everybody had a happy Thanksgiving day. Well, I guess it's just me and you Ivamae. Not enough activity here to justify a new thread, so I'll just post this week's results here. I stayed at 189 for the third week in a row. I ate an average of 2025 calories per day, and burned an average of 328 per day while exercising, recording an average of 12755 steps per day on the pedometer. I wolfed down 2486 calories worth of Thanksgiving goodies, indulging in some apple pie, fudge and pumpkin roll. Not too bad though, as I managed to break even for the week.

Thomas Dewar Quotes Scottish - Businessman January 6, 1864 - April 11, 1930 Minds are like parachutes - they only function when open. Thomas Dewar No wife can endure a gambling husband; unless he is a steady winner. Thomas Dewar There are two kinds of pedestrians... the quick and the dead. Thomas Dewar The only thing that hurts more than paying an income tax is not having to pay an income tax. Thomas Dewar Judge not a man by his clothes, but by his wife's clothes. Thomas Dewar The road to success is filled with women pushing their husbands along. Thomas Dewar Carl Sandburg Quotes American - Poet January 6, 1878 - July 22, 1967 I doubt if you can have a truly wild party without liquor. Carl Sandburg The moon is a friend for the lonesome to talk to. Carl Sandburg A baby is God's opinion that life should go on. Carl Sandburg Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance. Carl Sandburg To be a good loser is to learn how to win. Carl Sandburg Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you. Carl Sandburg There is an eagle in me that wants to soar, and there is a hippopotamus in me that wants to wallow in the mud. Carl Sandburg Strange things blow in through my window on the wings of the night wind and I don't worry about my destiny. Carl Sandburg Nothing happens unless first we dream. Carl Sandburg Life is like an onion. You peel it off one layer at a time, and sometimes you weep. Carl Sandburg I tell you the past is a bucket of ashes, so live not in your yesterdays, no just for tomorrow, but in the here and now. Keep moving and forget the post mortems; and remember, no one can get the jump on the future. Carl Sandburg I am an idealist. I don't know where I'm going but I'm on my way. Carl Sandburg Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits. Carl Sandburg A politician should have three hats. One for throwing into the ring, one for talking through, and one for pulling rabbits out of if elected. Carl Sandburg In these times you have to be an optimist to open your eyes when you awake in the morning. Carl Sandburg Every blunder behind us is giving a cheer for us, and only for those who were willing to fail are the dangers and splendors of life. Carl Sandburg The secret of happiness is to admire without desiring. Carl Sandburg Where was I going? I puzzled and wondered about it til I actually enjoyed the puzzlement and wondering. Carl Sandburg Let the gentle bush dig its root deep and spread upward to split one boulder. Carl Sandburg Valor is a gift. Those having it never know for sure whether they have it till the test comes. And those having it in one test never know for sure if they will have it when the next test comes. Carl Sandburg Back of every mistaken venture and defeat is the laughter of wisdom, if you listen. Carl Sandburg I had taken a course in Ethics. I read a thick textbook, heard the class discussions and came out of it saying I hadn't learned a thing I didn't know before about morals and what is right or wrong in human conduct. Carl Sandburg All politicians should have 3 hats - one to throw into the ring, one to talk through, and one to pull rabbits out of if elected. Carl Sandburg I learned you can't trust the judgment of good friends. Carl Sandburg Nearly all the best things that came to me in life have been unexpected, unplanned by me. Carl Sandburg The sea speaks a language polite people never repeat. It is a colossal scavenger slang and has no respect. Carl Sandburg Slang is a language that rolls up its sleeves, spits on its hands and goes to work. Carl Sandburg Love your neighbor as yourself; but don't take down the fence. Carl Sandburg I couldn't see myself filling some definite niche in what is called a career. This was all misty. Carl Sandburg Let a joy keep you. Reach out your hands and take it when it runs by. Carl Sandburg The greatest cunning is to have none at all. Carl Sandburg I have always felt that a woman has the right to treat the subject of her age with ambiguity until, perhaps, she passes into the realm of over ninety. Then it is better she be candid with herself and with the world. Carl Sandburg Poetry is the opening and closing of a door, leaving those who look through to guess about what is seen during the moment. Carl Sandburg One of the greatest necessities in America is to discover creative solitude. Carl Sandburg I never made a mistake in grammar but one in my life and as soon as I done it I seen it. Carl Sandburg I've written some poetry I don't understand myself. Carl Sandburg Sometime they'll give a war and nobody will come. Carl Sandburg Arithmetic is where the answer is right and everything is nice and you can look out of the window and see the blue sky - or the answer is wrong and you have to start over and try again and see how it comes out this time. Carl Sandburg A man may be born, but in order to be born he must first die, and in order to die he must first awake. Carl Sandburg Here is the difference between Dante, Milton, and me. They wrote about hell and never saw the place. I wrote about Chicago after looking the town over for years and years. Carl Sandburg Calling it off comes easy enough if you haven't told the girl you are smitten with her. Carl Sandburg Often I look back and see that I had been many kinds of a fool-and that I had been happy in being this or that kind of fool. Carl Sandburg The scholars and poets of an earlier time can be read only with a dictionary to help. Carl Sandburg We read Robert Browning's poetry. Here we needed no guidance from the professor: the poems themselves were enough. Carl Sandburg When I was writing pretty poor poetry, this girl with midnight black hair told me to go on. Carl Sandburg Ordering a man to write a poem is like commanding a pregnant woman to give birth to a red-headed child. Carl Sandburg To work hard, to live hard, to die hard, and then go to hell after all would be too damn hard. Carl Sandburg Anger is the most impotent of passions. It effects nothing it goes about, and hurts the one who is possessed by it more than the one against whom it is directed. Carl Sandburg All human actions are equivalent... and all are on principle doomed to failure. Carl Sandburg A book is never a masterpiece: it becomes one. Genius is the talent of a dead man. Carl Sandburg I won't take my religion from any man who never works except with his mouth. Carl Sandburg I can remember only a few of the strange and curious words now dead but living and spoken by the English people a thousand years ago. Carl Sandburg I decided I would go to Chicago and try my luck as a writer after those eight months as a fireman. Carl Sandburg I fell in love, not deep, but I fell several times and then fell out. Carl Sandburg I had been keeping an off eye on the advertising field, thinking I might become an idea man and a copywriter. Carl Sandburg I have become infected, now that I see how beautifully a book is coming out of all this. Carl Sandburg I have in later years taken to Euclid, Whitehead, Bertrand Russell, in an elemental way. Carl Sandburg I have often wondered what it is an old building can do to you when you happen to know a little about things that went on long ago in that building. Carl Sandburg I knew I would read all kinds of books and try to get at what it is that makes good writers good. But I made no promises that I would write books a lot of people would like to read. Carl Sandburg I make it clear why I write as I do and why other poets write as they do. After hundreds of experiments I decided to go my own way in style and see what would happen. Carl Sandburg I stayed away from mathematics not so much because I knew it would be hard work as because of the amount of time I knew it would take, hours spent in a field where I was not a natural. Carl Sandburg I took to wearing a black tie known as the Ascot, with long drooping ends. I had seen pictures of painters, sculptors, poets, wearing this style of tie. Carl Sandburg I wrote poems in my corner of the Brooks Street station. I sent them to two editors who rejected them right off. I read those letters of rejection years later and I agreed with those editors. Carl Sandburg I'm either going to be a writer or a bum. Carl Sandburg My room for books and study or for sitting and thinking about nothing in particular to see what would happen was at the end of a hall. Carl Sandburg There are 10 men in me and I do not know or understand one of them. Carl Sandburg There have been as many varieties of socialists as there are wild birds that fly in the woods and sometimes go up and on through the clouds. Carl Sandburg There was always the consolation that if I didn't like what I wrote I could throw it away or burn it. Carl Sandburg We don't have to think up a title till we get the doggone book written. Carl Sandburg We had two grand antique professors who had been teaching at Lombard since before I was born. Carl Sandburg You remember some bedrooms you have slept in. There are bedrooms you like to remember and others you would like to forget. Carl Sandburg Poetry is a phantom script telling how rainbows are made and why they go away. Carl Sandburg Shame is the feeling you have when you agree with the woman who loves you that you are the man she thinks you are. Carl Sandburg When a nation goes down, or a society perishes, one condition may always be found; they forgot where they came from. They lost sight of what had brought them along. Carl Sandburg