Monday Musings

It's Monday morning here in upstate New York. Finally, I awoke to sunshine this morning. Alas, it wasn't long lived. The weather forecast says, "diminishing clouds". I hope that means sunshine for the afternoon, but these days, who knows? Jim checked the temperature for me and it's a blazing 48 degrees. I think that means dress warm when I go for my walk.

I really don't mean to complain about the weather. After all, it didn't rain at all yesterday. Albeit, the sun didn't show it's face much either, but hey, you can't have it all, can you?

In spite of the weather, I have some fun things to share. Remember the birthday girl, Gretchen? Well, do I have a great birthday story to relate. She called her Dad on Friday morning with this query. "Hey Dad, do you and Uncle Verne still have a contest about who finds the most money in a year? Well, I think I might have won it". It seems that for her birthday, Brian took her to see the Cirque show KA at the MGM Grand.

Brian gets a number of free tickets to Cirque shows each year as an employee benefit. The tickets being free, Gretchen always buys popcorn. She said it was really crowded around the concession stand so she was looking down to be sure she didn't step on anyone's toes, and there to her wonderment and surprise was a chip from the Mandalay Bay Casino. She picked it up and put it in her pocket. After the show, she suggested to Brian that they go down to the Mandalay Bay and see if it really was one of their chips.

To make a long story short, she went up to the cashier, handed her the chip and was promptly given ten,crisp one hundred dollar bills. That's correct, $1,000. Talk about a birthday present.

Poor Gretchen, it was midnight and she couldn't even call anybody to tell them her good news. I asked her what she was going to do with it and she replied that she was going to give it to camp (her pet project). She said, "I don't need it, it's not mine and camp needs it".

While we're talking about our Vegas family and the yukky weather we had last week, I'll tell you that on one of those dark dreary days, I made plane reservations to fly out to spend Thanksgiving with them. It sure brightened up my day. Well, that is until I was ready to push the key that said, "purchase" and a message flashed on the screen saying, "Sorry, the price of this ticket has gone up to $$$". I almost gave up, but decided to look a little further. I found a fare that was okay, but not as good a deal as the first. Nevertheless, we are going to Vegas for Thanksgiving and both Jim and I are happy.

After all, it's only money and given what we are losing daily in the Market we might as well spend while we can.

Okay, so what else is new since the last post. Oh yes, we had about two hours of sunshine on Saturday and I managed to spend some time in the garden. My friend, Sandi, dropped off some purple cone flowers and bee balm on Monday and I needed to plant them. While I was in the garden, I did a lot of weeding, moved some things around and dug out some tiger lilies. They are sooo prolific.



Here she is "Farmer Pam" To my British and Canadian friends, notice the "Wellies".

I guess I should be pleased that these drab days gave me lots of time to catch up on some scrapbooking. I needed to do a lot of journalling to finish up my cross country trip book and "Voila" it is finished. I also spent some time making Halloween cards for the kidlets in my life. I do feel like I accomplished some good stuff. I guess this weather brings out the "craftiness" in me.




In the midst of all these musings, I almost forgot; since October 1, was the day my Christms Club was deposited into my checking account, I am thinking a little about the coming holiday season. Hence, I want to do an early Christmas Giveaway. Just say you are interested in the comment section of my blog and I'll put your names in a hat and draw one out. I've been anxiously awaiting the opportunity to give away this cool Christmas Alphabet Stamp Set.

Jim and I have a New England Boiled Ham and Cabbage dinner in the crockpot for dinner tonight. We haven't made this in a really long time. My mom always made this wonderful meal of comfort food in the fall. I am really looking forward to dinner.

As I sit here, I'm sure there are more things rollicking around in my mind that I could write about, but maybe this is enough craziness for one day. Hope you are all having a great Monday.

~Hippo Hugs~