Carla~~ Thank you!! I LOVE that picture...it reminds me of sherbert!! Pam~~Thank you...what a lovely rose...almost surreal for a rose! Kate~~I think I picked out enough for the next 5 birthdays! :o) Devon~~ Festive as always...thank you!! :o) Carol~~Ain't this rain grand! I wish I could take credit for it...but I doubt I could warrant such a gift!! Buford~~I am SO glad to hear you are getting this rain too. You need it much worse than we do. Ann~~I hope the rain goes on and on. Not only do we need it...but I wasn't feeling much like Christmas with those 80 degree days!!! Ingrid~~Many Thanks :o) Judith~~You are a temptress with that picture...that is GORGEOUS Thanks to all of you. Next year is the big 4-0. Maybe Ill just hand on to 39 for a while. lol Ronda

Good Sunday morning all, Patti, I am sorry to hear your news. I am glad that things are going well with Dave. (((((HUGS))))) What did you mean "four of us were in Orlando" who, what, when?????? Too bad you didn't connect with ??????????????? Besh,(((((HUGS))))) I am sorry for your family. Death is not easy. I hope your FIL has a very peaceful passing. I have sad news myself. A long time friend of ours called Friday night very late. His 29 year old son is in a coma due to a drug overdose and has very minimal brain function. Mark, (my DH), went down to be with them righ away and of this morning he has not improved although he has been able to breath for 3 minutes on his own. Right now they are in with the doctor discussing taking him off life support. The whole thing is agonizing for them. What a horrible situation. All we can do is pray and think positive and remember that everything is perfect the way it is. Besh, I know what you mean about memories. It's hard to have to revisit such awful memories right now for me. I will be thinking of you.

Good morning from drizzly, cooler SE Texas! I just finished my oatmeal and having the last few sips of coffee before getting ready to go work out. This makes 8 days of doing it, with only Sunday off. I've already lost a few 10ths of my BMI! They have this little gizmo there that measures it, and I tried it yesterday, a week after the first time, and was pleased to see that 7 days of exercise made some difference. Suzanne, I never did try the polenta last weekend because I have 3 rolls of it in the fridge and didn't want to waste it yet. But, I'm definitely going to try it in a few weeks. I'm just not eating that much of it anymore, which is probably good. I'm no good at naming rides today, but I think that my favorite one I read from y'all has to be BJ's: The Kharma Carousel: what comes around, goes around. :) Patti, I've never heard of, much less been to a Rosa's. Are y'all going there while you're in Texas? I miss freely dining at a Mexican restaurant now - I always order fajita salads without sour cream and cheese. No chips. :( I'm not shopping anymore for at least a month because I'm just not losing enough to make a huge difference in what I still have to wear to places other than the fitness center. I am wearing t-shirts I couldn't wear before. When I go to Dallas at the end of May, I will break down and buy a few nicer things, but that's it. It's nice seeing so many posting these days. I was so tired and a little sore yesterday, so I just rested and didn't do anything else. Some days I just don't have anything to say. I'm always glad that y'all do though! LOL

Thanks everyone. This was a low-key birthday, which is how I like it. No cooking. That was the day before, my daughter made us a mahi mahi stir fry that was very good. She learned how to juggle two woks at once. Last night we went out to sushi, as that is daughter's new food passion. Then we browsed our favorite vintage/hipster clothing store. I've almost stopped buying clothes at regular retail stores; this store provides in retail-speak, an edited eclectic selection at remarkably cheap prices. I bought a like-new cotton-cashmere sweater from Club Monaco (a Ralph Lauren sub-brand) for $8 - hard to beat that, even if the horizontal stripes are not exactly slimming. Call it a challenge. We also poked around Powell's bookstore, where I checked out some books on 1980s BMW sedans. I am getting a slight hankering for a "new" car project, and I've always liked the late 1980s BMW 5-series sedans, the last of the boxy no-nonsense Teutonic Beemers. They are quick, solid, and great bargains as future classics. Plus I'm told a fellow who knows how to work on cars (that's me) and who likes to work on cars (that might or might not still be me) can transplant a V8 motor from a later BMW in place of the stock 220 hp six-cylinder M30 motor. We bought a magazine on 3D printing for my son. Home 3D printers are now as cheap as $500, and that would be a pretty interesting thing for us to play with. My favorite present was a cutting board that has gridlines and measurements for various cuts. Now I can judge exactly how thick to slice for medium dice (1/2"), batonnet (1/4"), julienne (1/8") and fine julienne (1/16") sticks and brunoise. Very useful for the OCD cook. My least favorite present for this b-day will be making an appointment for my first colonoscopy. Oh joy! The pleasures of entering my fifties. Actually I should have done this last year on my 50th b-day, but have been putting it off. The pastime currently occupying us is planning for daughter's impending start of college. She is now receiving her college admission and rejection letters, and we are going through the various dormitory choices and studying credit requirements for different degree programs. At this point she is most seriously considering either Fordham University in Manhattan, McGill University in Montreal, UC San Diego, or the Clark Honors College at University of Oregon. I'm quietly rooting for U of O, it seems perfect to me. The Honors College is a small liberal arts program with just 700 students and their own professors, counselors, building and housing, set in the big campus of a 30,000 student research university. 2 hours from home, far enough for her, not too far for me. It is eminently affordable if you pay in-state tuition. If she wants to get a single room with private bath, to spend five years in school doing multiple majors, to study abroad and take trips, we can do all that and she can still graduate with zero student debt. She likes the campus and the town, and already has some friends who started there last year. So, I hope she picks it. Fingers crossed! We went to the beach last weekend. The Oregon coast is gorgeous. I haven't been for a couple of years. My friend led us in making a huge sandsculpture (a dragon consuming a hilltop city) that, I'm told, made the local TV news. It was very relaxing, and made me think that perhaps I work too much. This post was edited by johnliu on Thu, Mar 27, 14 at 10:32