Good Morning Monday, December 8, 2014

Hello World,

So today is Monday after my birthday yesterday.  Got to go to work and clean up the mess left from Friday not being there.  Sometimes I wonder if it is worth taking a day off, but really I know that it is.  It’s nice to have a day off and still get my paycheck.  Oh yeah, one nice thing to look forward to is my “Christmas Gift” that was handed out on Friday.  I guess I’ll end up using a lot of it to pay for my car.  I’m hoping that my extended warranty will pay for it.  I sure hope so.

Yesterday I had a great birthday.  I went to church and it was a wonderful service.  I’m wondering if I can convince Doug and Dick to start coming to church since they are staying all winter this year.  It’s worth a try.  Maybe I could get them to come next week when Bill and Cathy are coming.  It’s a thought.  That would be nice if they came and liked our church family.  Doug and Dick took me to Carrabbas for my birthday.  I had chicken Bryan – as usually – still wonderful.  I also had fried mozzarella, fried calamari and salad, plus they gave me a “birthday” dessert.  I ate SO much!  I want to start cutting back on the “eating” of everything in front of me.  Doug is thinking about going to Weight Watchers again.  Maybe I’ll go with him.  But he also asked about OA.  So I think I’ll find out about the OA meetings from Nancy and then see if he wants to go to one of those meetings.  I’d go to that with him too.  It might be interesting to try that.

Here are my pictures of the front porch lights:

Stockings are hung.

Front Porch Lights

I tried to “center” the pictures and it didn’t work like I wanted it to, so I’m just leaving them to the left.  Anyway, I’ve added the “stockings” this year.  They are stockings that my friend Wynne made for me about 30 years ago and she made one for me, Beirne and the cats.  I tossed the one for Beirne, but kept these two.  They are made from Lily Pulitzer fabric and are really great for Florida.  I took my Pink Flamingo back to the place I bought it to have it reworked.  I think the lady remembered me from last year.  I do this every year.  For some reason the lights just don’t work and I’m too impatient to change them all out.  She said she would work on it and give me a call when it is done.  I’ll probably put it on the bench in-between the stockings.  I have these little tin cans that are “luminaries” and a set of colored lights that flash on and off.  I used to put them on the 3rd floor balcony at my old place down town and now they just sit on the floor of the porch.  I’m not sure anyone really sees them but me and my cats and my neighbors, but I think they are awesome.  This morning, part of the lights that had been not working were suddenly “on”.  That was pretty cool because I thought about buying a replacement for them yesterday when I was at Walmart and forgot.  So now I don’t have to!

I think I’m going to enjoy having Dick and Doug in Naples for the winter.  They are “great” to “hang out with” and I’m excited about their “place”.  Although they couldn’t be farther away from me than if they lived in Bonita Springs!  They will give me a “family” feeling and I’ll enjoy having them around.  Dick has also already offered to “kick butt” at the car dealer if my extended warranty doesn’t cover what is wrong with the car.  I drove around all day yesterday and the car was running fine and no light was on.  Then last night as I drove to dinner, it came back on.  So more shall be revealed and I’m sure it will work out as it should.

This week my friend Amber is having her “grand opening” of her catering kitchen.  I’ve already been contacted by Denny about going to it.  I’m not really sure where it is located.  But it will be nice to see how excited she is to have her own company and business.  She used to be our bookkeeper when we were doing “Cuisine Management”.  She started out as a bartender for us and then worked into the accounting end of things.  She finally broke away from that toxic environment and began to do catering on the side and was a personal chef for a while.  She worked with Fred at  his Matthews and Gardner for a few years.  She is one of the hardest working women I know and is really “passionate” about FOOD etc.  She is a single mom and her daughter’s name is Meadow.  She’s had a hard road but still seems to have the energy to do it all.  She flirted with going to AA for a short time, called me about it, but never reached her “bottom” so she’s still out there.  She’s a “Gator” and they like to PARTEEE!!  Of course being in the “business” makes it easy to gloss over any “issues” you may or may not have.  Anyway, we’ll see how things are and it will be fun to see some of my old “chronies” at her opening.  I should be able to get to her “opening” and still make it to the “Cookie” meeting after it.  I’ll probably need that meeting this week.

Time is up.  I’ll leave you with this final pic of the day:

My helpers this morning.

Have a great day today!