these were great, i love the topics you all come up with. i was born in march in a snowstorm, my dad said it was a pain in the you no what (yes swear words he always swears lol hes 72 still allowed) and he still says im a pita to the day! lol but i love em to death. i love all the seasons but winter in ny never seems to end and this year we had no spring! more info than ya needed huh but i loved all youre stories.

fun - thannk you!

At this, the second meeting of the ROMEO(1) club at church (which I call "The Old Farts' Club") this morning, we decided that we'd each take turns telling our life story (as we had last year). One man in his late 80s agreed to start off, and without previous consideration told of being an instructor in the Royal Canadian Air Force in World War II, then working for H J Heinz for 30 years (didn't know of the veracity of the "57 varieties") and later for a provincial agency helping farmers not lose their farms when interest rates went over 20% just after 1980. He'd worked for 35 years ... had been retired for 25 years ... and asked us to consider how much his company had paid out to him over those 25 years since he'd retired. As fewer of us have the privilege of private pensions any more it seems to me that funding our retirement should be a high priority item for almost all of us in our hierarchy of important things to do in our lives. And it needs to begin early on. ole joyfuelled 1. It started as the Senior Men's Coffee Hour a few years ago, then someone heard of another group called "ROMEO" (Retired Old Men Eating Out) that he'd heard of ... so that's what we became. They wouldn't touch my suggestion that it should be ROMDO (Retired Old Men Drinking Out) with a twenty-foot pole! o j

What an interesting question! My answer? about 1300 miles. Lars' and Jmms' comments are resonating -- thank goodness in the US we can pretty much live where we wish and do as we wish, because in other times and circumstances, that was not possible. My Mom/Grandma/Family were sent to an internment camp -- that was pretty far from where they had chosen to live and where my Mom was born. I don't have "grandma's china" or anything else -- if she had any in the first place, it was not useful enough to be dragged to a camp. They did choose to return to their home after the government allowed it (which was quite a bit after the war) and their home had been completely looted, so it was a start over from scratch. During the war, my Mom was sent even further away (2500 miles) for an opportunity to get out of the camp and get a high school/trade education...with no idea of if/when she'd be allowed back, or what would really happen to her (she was about 16 then). Sometimes circumstances push people to make tough choices. My Dad left his country of birth for better opportunities, and did the best he could; we moved a fair amount when I was a kid to pursue better opportunities for our family.