SYW: Least Favorite Day, Energy, and Other Musings

January 24, 2022 / amoralegria / 1 Comment

Monday, Monday…I can trust that day
Monday, Monday…to find Melanie’s Share Your World today!

This is a good segue into Melanie’s first question, which is…

“What’s the worst day of the week for you?” Why?

It’s not Monday, as it probably is for many in the working world – but I’m retired so Monday is just fine, and so are Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday! I have a different schedule every day. Monday is mostly free of scheduled activities and commitments, but it’s the day I have to do our weekly calendar, fill my pill cases, and usually do laundry and/or run the dishwasher (i.e. clean up the kitchen, thus filling the dishwasher). But it’s pretty laid back. Sunday, I guess I would have to say, is my least favorite, because it’s the only day I have to get up early to go to church! But really, I can’t think of a “worst day” of the week. I have random “bad days” but they don’t fall on the same day of the week.

With the recent energy crisis here in the UK, would you prefer electric, gas, oil or some other means of heating your home?

Downloaded image from Google, courtesy of https://www.insideindianabusiness.com/articles/iea-awarded-illinois-wind-farm-project

I would prefer to have solar panels and a system for storing solar energy at my house, but I cannot do that, because I live in a senior community and our house is rented. We have all electric, except water & heat, which are gas. That said, when we were living in our own home before we moved here, I was some years ago given the opportunity by our energy provider to choose wind energy. I signed up for 100% wind energy – there are extensive wind farms in southern Illinois. I hope my instructions were followed, but I have no way of verifying that all of our household’s our energy was in fact generated by wind turbines. More and more people in this area are signing up for solar power – they have the panels installed on the roof and a system for collecting and storing that energy. It requires an initial large financial commitment, but in the long run, it saves money. You can get energy credits and “sell” your energy back to the company. I wish this community would go solar!

In your household, who takes care of the bills, taxes, and other financial stuff? Is one person responsible or is it a shared chore?

We share financial matters, but I do more of it in terms of the amount of time spent on it. I pay the bills, keep track of medical/drug/charitable expenses by putting them all on spread sheets, and then when we are compiling our tax information, I print out the spread sheets and give them to my husband. I also keep spread sheets of our trip expenses and our children’s debts to us. Dale takes care of getting financial documents together, compiling all the things we have put into our yearly tax folder, and getting them over to our tax preparer. We also have investments, and managing these is a shared responsibility.

If you can have any one job (real or fiction) in the galaxy (yes, the galaxy, I’m widening the search radius, imagining relocation to other planets possible), what is that job?

galactic explorer and journalist/travel writer; also perhaps being an interplanetary travel agent, helping people plan trips to wherever. I would expect perks from this job – free or almost free travel credits on flights aboard space ships!

Who are you grateful for?

My husband, Dale. He does so much to take care of me and does all kinds of tasks that I get frustrated doing or my ADHD interferes with me doing, as well as a lot of household chores. He has been having some more health issues lately, and I feel as though I should learn to do the things he customarily does. I think I take him for granted too often! Living in a senior community, we find out when someone in independent living passes away, often leaving a husband or wife behind. Sometimes it happens suddenly, and sometimes after a long illness. But it’s always hard, and there are a lot of widows and widowers here! This may sound morbid but it’s just part of getting older.

SYW: Our Planetary Emergency and Looking on the Bright Side of Life

January 19, 2022 / amoralegria / 3 Comments

This week Melanie has a Dalek to introduce this week’s Share Your World!

Oversized Bronze Dalek Figure Stands 23cm Tall | Doctor Who Figurines Collection All Doctor Who Collectables and Memorabilia — Exterminate! EXTERMINATE!

Questions

Fill in: ‘If I were really completely honest, I would say that …’ This is a question for ‘radical honesty’. What are the things you wouldn’t normally say? Things you would otherwise actually hide? What’s on your mind? What would you really like to be able to say?
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I would talk about the emergency facing our planet: that is, climate change and the havoc it will wreak, not just in a once-a-month meeting of an environmental committee or a conversation over dinner – I would talk about it ALL THE TIME! I would tell people not to litter their masks on the ground – instead, take them home, cut the loops, and dispose of them. I would insist that people recycle. I would chase after scofflaws who litter. I would tell managers at supermarkets that it should be against the law to use plastic bags for loading groceries and demand that they stop or at least charge a quarter for each bag. I would not bite my tongue when someone I’m having lunch with asks for or uses a plastic straw that the wait staff leaves on the table. I would go immediately to the management of the restaurant to tell them not to use straws because plastic straws represent 7% of plastic waste that ends up in the ocean and in landfills. I would be much more “in-your-face” aggressive about anything I were to see relating to pollution of the water or air and other environmental problems (diminishing animal habitats, etc.) and I would demand that our politicians DO SOMETHING NOW!

But of course, I can’t really do much to influence politicians, because it’s not just American politicians – it’s leaders all over the world who are not doing enough to address this crisis.

I would tell everyone to watch the Netflix movie Don’t Look Up and discuss how the premise of the movie is an allegory for the attitudes of politicians toward the serious, life-threatening problem of climate change.

Have you ever broken anything? What about rules?
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I have broken things, although not many, considering my klutzy-ness. But rules? Sure, I’ve broken many, but not serious ones, nothing that would hurt or impact another person. In high school, my friends and I used to joke about how many rules we broke – we even made a list of all the school rules we’d broken. I think there were at least 25 on the list! As a mature adult, overall, I obey laws and rules if they make sense.

Are you also afraid of spiders? What is your biggest fear, other than spiders? (if you’re not afraid of spiders, use your biggest phobia instead).
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I’m not really afraid of spiders. I see them all the time and usually they aren’t bothering me so I let them be. Sometimes I like to watch them. I had a boss once whose son had tarantulas in a tank behind his father’s desk. It was really cool when they shed their skins – it looked exactly like a tarantula itself! Once, I tried to take one of these shedded skins home to show my son, but it disintegrated almost as soon as I touched it.

I have a phobia of pests that run really fast, such as mice and cockroaches. Oh, and also millipedes! We used to see them often in our old house because the basement was often damp. Fortunately, I haven’t seen a millipede where I live now. I hope never to see cockroaches either; we did have a mouse in the garage once. Management put out traps for them near the garage door, but no mice ever got caught in them, so they were eventually removed.

Do you think time goes faster as you get older?
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Oh, definitely! There is a scientific basis for this perception. Older people literally have so many memories stored in their brains that ordinary happenings barely register, so they lose track of time easily. (This is also the reason why older people forget things that happened yesterday, but can remember seemingly inconsequential things from their childhoods.) For example, I might get on my computer, expecting to be on for about an hour but then when I’m ready to get off, I look at the time and it’s 3 hours later!

GRATITUDE SECTION (as always, optional)

Please share something that really inspired you from this last week or month.

I joined a group which met this week for the first time in my senior community. One of the activity directors thought of it. It’s called “The Bright Side” group. We met on Tuesday and discussed ideas on what this group could be or do in the community. For example, I suggested that we buy birthday cards and give every person who has a birthday that day a card, signed by at least one of us. Even if we don’t know the individual personally. We used to have a birthday party every month for people whose birthday was in that month, but Covid restrictions put an end to that.

The group is going to meet twice a month and share positive stories or brainstorm ideas for making the people in our community look on “the bright side” of life!

SYW: Grammar, Genets, Sibs, & Alter Egos

January 5, 2022 / amoralegria / 6 Comments

Monday Melanie starts 2022 with the following Share Your World questions:

What frivolous, but annoying thing that people do be considered a sin (crime)?
And how should violators be made to repent (be punished) for it?

Confuse possessives with plurals by adding an apostrophe where it does not belong!!This is extremely common these days. Don’t they teach grammar in elementary school anymore or were these people asleep in class? It should be a crime, punishable by having to spend a whole day in a grammar class in which the attendees would write out many examples of both plurals and possessives, using all the rules for making plurals and possessives in the English language.

Cake’s is not a word, although the supermarket would have you think so! What belongs to the cake? Frosting? A message written on the top? No. They mean simply “more than one cake” which is a plural. The rule in this case is to add an “s” to the end of the word, NO APOSTROPHE! I have a dear friend that makes this mistake all the time and it drives me crazy!! But I don’t tell him about it because he would feel I am just lecturing him in my teacher mode! At the very least, he’d be embarrassed and since I only see his writing in emails, I’m letting it slide. There is one common exception to this rule which confuses a lot of people: its and it’s. “Its” is the possessive. (Its paws, its timing, etc.) “It’s” is a contraction of “it is.” If it doesn’t make sense to substitute “it is” where you’ve written “it’s” in a sentence, then correct it by removing the apostrophe.

Imagination IN and impracticality and logic aside, if you could pick one animal to have as an exotic pet based solely on how cute and adorable it is, what would it be?

A genet. I had never heard of this species until I went on a safari trip in Tanzania, and at one of the lodges, the owners had genets (they left food out for them so the genets would hang around) who would crawl out onto the rafters and stare at the people below. They look like cats, which is probably why I like them so much, but they are not cats. However, they are so CUTE!!

*A genet looks down on diners at Ndutu Safari Lodge.*

Do you have any siblings? If so, where do you rank in birth order? And do you think either of these facts contributed to the person you became?

I am the youngest of 5. I have three older sisters and one older brother. I’m sure it contributed to the person I became, because I tended to get away with stuff more often than the others. And I was the rebel, or “black sheep” of the family, so I think I made my mother rethink all of her child-rearing methods that she had developed raising four other children before me. Letting me excuse myself from dinner because “we eat so late” and I wanted to watch a TV show during that time. (Not sitting with the family during dinner was always verboten!) And letting the cat stay with me in bed instead of making him sleep in the garage. Things like that, I was able to get away with. Still, I fought a lot with my mother, but not my dad – he was always calm and hated conflict. Then my siblings, one by one, went away to school, and I ended up with only my brother, or alone, living at home with my parents. I think that had an effect also. I loved one of my sisters the most, and always wanted to stay up until she got home from school so I could see her right away. It was hard when she went away, because she served as a buffer between my brother and me. My brother teased me mercilessly, and I wanted that sister at home to comfort me, to distract me with songs or games.

We all have things that make us happy, but what makes you deliriously, giddily, tail wagging-ly happy?

I wish it were my grandchildren, but I don’t have any. It is my cat that makes me the most happy, although I wouldn’t say “giddy” – I love to watch her antics, to play with her, to hear her purr when I stroke her. Speaking of wagging, did you know that cats wag their tails? People associate wagging with dogs, but my cat does wag her tail by flipping it back and forth when she is content. It’s almost an unconscious gesture, because if I pet her when she is almost asleep, her tail starts flipping.

*Who could resist a face like this? This is my adorable fur baby Hazel.*

If you had an alter ego, who or what would it be? Describe some fun or interesting things about them!

I don’t know if my alter ego would be male or female. I guess I would want her/him to have the skills and personality characteristics that are the opposite of mine. My alter ego would be confident, organized, and a risk-taker. (S)he would do things I would never do, such as ziplining, hang gliding, going on archaeological digs, and white water rafting. (S)he would be athletic and agile (unlike me) and be an excellent photographer. (S)he’d have a blog, far more exciting than mine, about traveling all over the world. At home, (s)he would have an awesome job: graphic designing, travel consultant, linguist or anthropologist, famous novelist or painter, architect designing eco-friendly buildings. (S)he would get involved in environmental projects that would really make a difference in preserving species from extinction or mitigating the effects of climate change.

I guess my “alter ego” would be damn near perfect!! 🙂 😀

What are some hopes or accomplishments you’d like to see happen in 2022?
My number one priority is for the federal government to really get serious about mitigating climate change, and that the population in general become more aware so they can pollute less and love our planet more! I have many other hopes, but I’m afraid they are just pipe dreams: Trump and his cronies get convicted for corruption, lying under oath, and deception of the public. Everyone gets vaccinated against Covid-19 so no new variants have a chance to take hold and wreak havoc. And a personal accomplishment would be for me to waste less time, so that I have time for all the things I “don’t have time” to do! And that the exciting trips I have booked for this year don’t get cancelled!!

Bloganuary, Day 4 (But I Never Got 1-3!): A Childhood Passion

January 4, 2022January 4, 2022 / amoralegria / 1 Comment

Today’s Bloganuary prompt is What was your favorite toy as a child?

I have come to believe that whatever your interest or passion as a child, even if you don’t follow that passion for many years, will come back to you sometime in adulthood, and you will have a chance to pursue it once again and hone your skill.

My favorite toy, although not really a toy, was reams of paper that my dad picked up at the local newspaper’s office. It was left over from what the newspaper used to print each edition of the paper. My dad knew I would be happy to put it to good use. Along with pencils and crayons, this paper was the material I used to create my drawings and writings. I wrote little books, usually about my family or an experience I had, such as a basketball game, and illustrated them.

*This image was downloaded from Google Images.*

A few years ago, going through some of my mother’s stuff, I found several of these little books, which my mom had had stiff covers put on to preserve them. I haven’t been able to throw them out! I guess I will leave that to my kids to sort out after I’m dead. At that point, I will no longer care!

As I got older, my stories were longer and usually fictional. I wrote a “book” of several chapters when I was in junior high – I typed it and illustrated it. It was about a girl who meets a boy when visiting California and they are separated when she has to go back home to Wisconsin. Did he love her as she loved him? That was for her to find out (typical young teenage preoccupation!).

I have always loved drawing and writing. I kept a diary for many years when I was a kid, and I still journal, although not nearly as often as I would like to. I also have started writing projects which I keep meaning to get back to. Some day they will all be stored on flash drives and my kids can either read them or discard them. Maybe they will entertain or enlighten someone. Anyway, I enjoyed doing them! Currently I spend more time drawing and painting than writing. I am not very good at painting yet, but have done several watercolors, such as the one below.

SYW: New Year Revelations

December 30, 2021 / amoralegria / 2 Comments

SHARE YOUR WORLD AS THE YEAR ENDS 12-27-2021 is Melanie’s final SYW for 2021.

SHARE YOUR WORLD QUESTIONS

Melanie writes: 2022 Is bearing down on the world. In my opinion 2021 was 100% better than 2020, but it hasn’t been without its own set of problems and fresh worries. I’m hopeful that 2022 will somehow see a return to ‘life before Covid’ , but I also realize that’s a foolish hope.

At 12 a.m. on December 31st/Jan 1st, what will you be doing? (use your own time zone please)

Toasting the New Year with my husband, sister, and brother-in-law. We will probably be drinking one of the wines I’ve brought to their house to share on that evening.

Is there a tradition you have for New Year’s Eve?

The four of us have gotten together on New Year’s Eve for several years. They provide the venue and games, we provide the food. This year we’re having pizza and have the chance to sample several wines from my “collection.” We play games, always Scrabble, but since we’ve acquired some new games in the last couple of years, including a Trivia game, we will play those as well. We play games until midnight, then turn on the TV to watch Chicago bring in the new year! And we toast! Shortly thereafter, Dale & I take our wines (if anything is left) and go home to bed.

Do you have any hope or reason you find that next year will be better?

Oh yes! Because of vaccines, we are not in the situation we were a year ago. But Covid still rages, preying on primarily the unvaccinate, but frightfully also many vaccinated! Dr. Fauci says that the omicron variant seems to produce milder symptoms, thus fewer hospitalizations in the long run. And travel opportunities are now available! I know several people who have traveled already, mostly to Europe. After a few false starts, we now look forward to a trip in March to Southeast Asia. Travel requirements will make things more complicated, but we are ready to face them, after staying within 50 miles of home for two years!

On the other hand, I think the political situation in the U.S. will get worse. Too many people believe the 2020 election was “stolen” and that Biden is not a legitimate president. In the latest polls, 70% of Republicans now believe the Big Lie!! Due to the vast array of media sources, Americans live in different universes. Bridging that gap, enlightening those who are convinced the virus is a hoax and the election was stolen, will not be easy! So there will be more violence, less civility, and meanwhile, people will continue to die from gun violence every day, while Congress does nothing to stop it.

What’s the biggest personal lesson you learned during 2021?

Not to take life for granted. It is important to live life as fully as possible and to take obstacles in stride. I do not think life will return completely to what it was at the beginning of 2020. Changes have already been made that will affect us for a long time to come. And Covid may be with us for a long time, but it will become manageable, people getting vaccinations every year just like we do for the flu. We will, we must, adapt!

GRATITUDE SECTION

Describe in 1-3 words how you feel going into 2022.

Excited, hopeful, cautious!

Happy New Year 2022 Wallpapers - Top Free Happy New Year 2022 Backgrounds - WallpaperAccess

to all my friends on WordPress!!

SYW: HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

December 21, 2021December 21, 2021 / amoralegria / 4 Comments

Melanie has holiday-related questions this week for Share Your World.

What is your least favorite holiday side dish? (for any holiday)
Anything with raisins. Also, I am not fond of peas and pearl onions. I like onions, but it’s a dish that’s not worth putting on my plate with so many other more delicious choices!
What is the ugliest or most tasteless decoration you’ve ever seen?
Those over-the-top decorations with a million lights that light up the entire neighborhood! Also, it’s kind of incongruous to see Santa Claus flying down to the Holy Family in a manger!

This house in Rolling Meadows, IL won the annual *Daily Herald* (local newspaper) holiday decoration contest in 2020.

What is a cherished or unusual (either or both) family tradition from your childhood?
Watching the black-and-white 1950s version of the operetta Amahl and the Night Visitors. My siblings & I watched it so many times that we practically memorized it! (You can find the 1951 version, the 1963 version and a newer version on You Tube.)
You’re walking down the street, feeling great — what holiday song would be playing in the background? All I Want for Christmas Is You.

GRATITUDE SECTION (Always optional)

Feel Free To Share Anything That You’d Like Today! Wish Someone A Happy Holiday! Our Moorings choir sang this to end our concert this year for the residents of our community. Of course, the video is not of us!! But it’s the same version we did. It’s a nice, upbeat song, so I wish you…and you, and you, and you, happy, happy, happy holidays!!

MERRY CHRISTMAS (or whatever you celebrate this season) AND HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL!!

SYW: Health Care in the U.S. and Other Wishful Thinking

December 14, 2021December 14, 2021 / amoralegria / 5 Comments

A new week, a new set of questions from Melanie’s Share Your World.

SHARE YOUR WORLD QUESTIONS

What is your opinion of the state of health care in your country? Adequate or inadequate? What could be done to improve it?
Hoo boy! This is one that has been highly and hotly debated in the last several years! How to get all Americans good health care while at the same time letting insurance companies run the show? It ain’t gonna happen! We need what Europe has: “free” health care for everyone – I know it isn’t really free, but it is run by the government and taxes pay for it, with the wealthy paying much more than the average worker. There are people who combine travel with medical needs, going to Spain, for example, to have hip replacement surgery which, even for Americans who don’t pay into their system, is many thousands of dollars cheaper than having it done here.

The United States has an excellent medical system; by that, I mean that it has the most advanced technology and research, and perhaps the most highly trained medical personnel, but, as we have seen in this pandemic, the “excellence” is spotty – concentrated in some areas, very inadequate in others. It is not evenly distributed and even with sophisticated equipment, many hospitals lacked basic PPE for all medical personnel when their hospitals were flooded with Covid patients. Many more people died than would have if hospital staff had everything it needed to treat them.

People (especially children, it seems) come to the United States to have some advanced procedures done that aren’t available in their countries, and they get special visas to stay in the U.S. for as long as their treatment lasts. Doctors Without Borders sends well-trained American doctors to poor countries to help people who have little or no health care. We hear about both of these efforts, but until Covid-19 hit us hard, the deficiencies of our health care system were largely unknown by the general public, (except, of course, people who already had had horrific experiences dealing with the cost and availability of health care). We did hear about people dying because they didn’t have insurance and couldn’t pay specialists who could help them. This is a travesty, revealed especially once “Obamacare” (Affordable Care Act, or ACA) was being debated. President Obama clearly wanted to make health care more affordable and more equitable, but because of the influence of big pharma and corporate insurance lobbyists, the middlemen – the insurance companies – were allowed to administer the program. When I retired, I had the option of a COBRA policy from my school district, which I would have to pay for. I compared the cost of that policy with what I could get of equal value from the ACA. Registering for the ACA was initially less expensive, so I dropped the COBRA, meaning I could not later get it back. My medical insurance from my employer ran out in August of the year I retired, so I got a Blue Cross Blue Shield “silver” policy – a deductible that wasn’t prohibitive and a “reasonable” monthly premium of about $550. It was difficult to be responsible for this entire cost, (even though the premiums are calculated on a sliding scale according to your income) since I was no longer working, but I figured that I only had to have it for a year and 9 months and then I could get Medicare. In January of the following year, only four months after my employee insurance benefits ran out, the monthly premium of my BCBS silver policy went up by more than $200 a month. Now it was higher than the COBRA would have been, but I was stuck with it. The following year, it went up again – this time to over $1,000 per month! Fortunately, I turned 65 in the middle of that year and was then eligible for Medicare, but even so, the cost was nearly prohibitive for those first six months. I imagined what it was like for people in low-wage and no-insurance jobs; although they had subsidies from the ACA, their costs must have gone up too. I heard horror stories of dilemmas far worse than what I experienced. So, while the ACA did make medical insurance affordable for millions more people than before, there were millions of people that still couldn’t afford it. The ACA was and is far from perfect.

I believe health care is a right, that should be available to all. That is why I am in favor of a single-payer system. However, with the innate distrust of the government that is embedded in American culture, I don’t know when or if it will ever become a reality. Perhaps another entity could administer it, so it wouldn’t be associated with a government “welfare state.”

What are two words that describe you best?
scatterbrained
intelligent

Do you have a morning routine? If so, what it’s like?
Yes, we get up around 8 am, and go to the kitchen, where Dale gets his coffee and I warm up water for tea. We each get a banana, and sometimes a small piece of cheese. Then we sit in our living room in front of our fireplace (in cold weather seasons) or on our screened porch (in warm weather) and read. Unfortunately, this is so pleasurable that we let it go on too long before we really start getting ready for our day, which, 5 days a week, starts with an exercise class between 10 and 11 am. Then we have a proper breakfast, take our morning meds, get dressed and go.

What’s something that really makes your blood race?
Wishing I lived in a country that values its children more than guns.

Do you enjoy singing festive songs during *insert festive celebration that you observe to replace “Christmas” if it’s not relevant to you * Christmas carols or songs? Yes, of course – because it’s only one season a year. I also like to listen to the radio station that plays all Christmas music during the month of December. By New Year’s Day, I am sick of all these songs and want to go back to “normal!”

Admiring holiday lights in Rosemont while listening to Christmas songs on 93.9 FM

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GRATITUDE SECTION (as always optional)

Feel free to share something that brings peace to you.
Knowing that my son is OK, taking care of himself and no longer using drugs & alcohol. Until 6 months ago, worrying about my son was a constant stressor, but he has managed to finally get out of his rut and do the things he needs to make progress in his life. He calls often, sometimes with problems that frustrate him, but we always talk it out and he realizes his problem isn’t unsolvable. He is surrounded by people who care about and support him. He is a joy to be with now!! I look forward to spending Christmas with both him and our daughter and son-in-law.

Two Colors

December 11, 2021 / amoralegria / Leave a comment

Cee’s fun Foto Challenge this week is Basically Two Colors.

SYW: Colors, Back to the Future, Holiday Parties

November 30, 2021November 30, 2021 / amoralegria / 2 Comments

UNVARNISHED QUESTIONS from Melanie’s weekly Share Your World!

If you had the power to strike one person in your life permanently speechless, who would it be? (Real names aren’t necessary, vague descriptions are fine… and yes, this is being asked in fun and not to be mean). Donald Trump

If you could relive your childhood over again, what’s one thing from this modern world world today you’d want to take back with you? My computer/word processor. Writing would have been so much easier!

Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple are the standard colors of the rainbow.
Name something you love (or greatly admire/appreciate) for all six major colors of the rainbow! (Sorry indigo, you’re just blue-purple. Hot pink? You’re too flashy!)
Red: apples and tomatoes – because they are delicious to eat!
Orange: Zinnias and Dahlias – they are pretty and bright!
Yellow: bananas – I eat one every morning! Also daffodils – because they are the harbingers of spring.
Green: trees & grass – the primary color of nature
Blue: sky – because it means the sun is shining!
Purple: my parka which used to be my sister’s but she passed away and I got many of her clothes – it still reminds me of her!
All 6: M&Ms (except purple, which is brown instead). I love to sort them by color and eat them one by one.

If you were to open the world’s most accurate fortune cookie, what would your fortune inside it read? You will lead a good life and travel a lot, but also bear the consequences of many of your decisions.

Santa’s tired of people leaving him out cookies and milk on Christmas Eve night! If you really wanted to get on Santa’s good side, what would you leave out for him to eat/drink instead? (This question applies whether you celebrate Christmas or not. It’s just for fun, so imagination? Welcome! )
A good, cold glass of beer (Santa seems to be more of a beer person than a wine person), hot tomato vegetable soup, steak dinner, and a cup of hot chocolate!

GRATITUDE SECTION (Still optional)

What plans do you have for the upcoming holiday/celebration/festival season?
Socializing in a party atmosphere with co-residents, even if we still need to wear masks! Also, going to plays and concerts again!

CFFC: Paper and Books Memorabilia

November 16, 2021 / amoralegria / 9 Comments

The theme of Cee;s Fun Foto Challenge this week is books and paper. When I looked up my photos in this category, I found memorabilia (personal and historical), such as the following:

At the Overlord Museum at Omaha Beach in Normandy, France

I don’t think this display is really made of paper, but it’s meant to look like the pages of a book. This display describing the history of the hotel and the findings of Howard Cater was in the lobby of the Sofitel Winter Palace Hotel in Luxor, Egypt.

In our local newspaper, The Daily Herald, there is a column on Sunday that I enjoy reading called “Grammar Moses.” Jim Baumann, Mr. Grammar Moses himself, writes about grammar and spelling gaffes, mistakes, and clarification of usage of particular words or phrases sent in by readers. How often have we all seen a sign like this one?

Cards Against Humanity is a sort of nasty card game that is also hilarious (if you like this sort of thing), which I’d never heard of before until our son-in-law introduced it to us. Do not, I repeat, DO NOT, seek out this game if you are not prepared for truly sick and twisted humor! Every once in a while, I get in the mood for it, and then I ask my son-in-law if we can play it next time we go over to their house…