What?

We went grocery shopping today and as I am want to do, I walk ALL the aisles. This time we took our time looking at the different foods. It was in the International Section that we had the most fun.


What is Irish Moss drink. It seems to really have irish moss as an ingrediant.

You can get Guarana Antartica Soda in a very tall 2 liter bottle.
And how about those soup mixes for Fish Tea Soup and Cock Soup.


You can buy Callaloo. Couldn't figure out what it was. It was near the Old Harbor Style Bammy. I'll bet the old harbor style must be the best kind.


Mauby Conentrate Drink is some kind of fruit?


In a box-type of container was Maracuja concentrate or drink. The picture looked like fish eyes. Yum.


How about Ty-Phoo. Regular or Decaf.

And finally Nestles Klim!


We are such boring eaters.

Cool People

I was in Orlando to attend the FETC (Florida Educational Technology Conference)
this last week and got to hang out with some presenters. That was really fun. Every year when it's over I get depressed because I'm a LOSER. I never WIN anything. I should win something because I want it more than other people. It's no good to tell me about all the cool stuff that companies give me. They give it to everyone.

I REALLY wanted to win a clicker system. I sat next to the people who win whole systems from eInstruction and Quizdom. Loser!

I went to Orlando Premium Outlets (with Lola's help) This is where Cool People shop. Big brand name$. Fendi, Armani, Calvin Klein, Hilfiger, Perry Ellis.
What does it take to be Cool?

• Cool people's clothes look immaculate. Crisp, bright, expensive without looking gaudy.
• Cool people have a foot size that can try on any shoe especially the high heeled ones. In fact, they love to shop and walk everywhere in heels.....heels with long pointy toes that look like weapons. Their feet never hurt.
  
• Cool people can always find a place to sit to eat in the food court. They don't balance a tray their lap because there are no tables available.
• When they are finished with their food, they just sit there forever doing nothing but being cool.
• Their packages never seem to be heavy and a burden to tote around.
• They are usually tall and never seem to have bad hair.
• Really cool folks don't have little children that have to be toted or pushed. Their children are a little older and already have a keen sense of what to buy too.

I'm not cool. I'm totally not impressed with a must-have Fendi purse or the pointy toed shoes. I did find a couple pairs of shoes I can wear. I can't wear the $$$ sandals from Gaylord Palms for every situation that may require something other than my New Balance shoes or my black school shoes. Yes, I think I have a modest dressy shoe.

I do love Kohl's though. I can always find something there that I must have. This last time I even got a 15% discount because it was Wednesday. Works for me! :-) How cool is THAT?

What's Going Up?

Rumors? What rumors?


The Toys-R-Us is gone and building has been empty for awhile, but in "The Magazine for the Premier Community in which to Live, Work and Raise a Family---Coral Springs, Winter 2007 it describes a project that is exciting for the electronic junkies in the family. Best Buy! (not to be confused with Buy Best) is going in the old store.


The open date in the magazine says Jan 19th, but that date has passed. I don't really know if it's open or the opening date is delayed.

In checking the city web site it seems that a Super Target will go in close to the old Target. It also lists a Target/Ross (?) going up at University and Westview. That's across from Magnolia Theaters.

Wow.

Girl Scouts & Cookies

It's that time of year again. Love the girl scout cookies. (Yeah, the Thin Mints). Being a Media Specialist at an elementary schools means I have access to cookies. We have a teacher who has 2 daughters that are scouts. Order you cookies and bing-0, they are delivered ASAP. I've already bought 5 boxes, 4 mints and 1 cafe.

This weekend the scouts were set up in the lobby of Publix. Parents are savvy and put the littlest brownies out front to beg you to buy cookies. There were so many of them that surged towards everyone who was entering or leaving the store that you could hardly get through the lobby. Then, because they are the youngest scouts, they are easily distracted and are just being little girls not sales-persons.

They don't know that I've already supported scouting already with my purchases. There should be some kind of sticker or button you can wear like the 'I voted' stickers you get on exiting the polling booths that could show that you'd already supported the cause and it's going to be fruitless to ask for more again.

Comet McNaught

Who knew? Evidently this comet has been out there awhile, but today is the first I saw something about it. The last comet I've seen is when Coral Springs still had 'the edge of the earth' to go view night items without light pollution. I wasn't able to tell if it's viewable in SoFLa.

Christmas-pas deux

It's not many that get to celebrate 2 Christmases. Our second 'go-round' was this last week-end and it was as awesome as the one on December 25th. Both times we we able to include NY NinJa via skype to be a part of our 'good times'. This includes the Monopoly game as a present.

When I think of the presents, the one that seems to get the most play is Potty Putty. The endless joke of making 'potty' sounds never tires. It's still just as funny the 200th time.

Lip gloss on little girls is charming. They haven't mastered how to apply it and it's all over the lips and adjoing face. And then the invitation to 'smell' the flavor of cherry, grape, or chocolate is adorable.

The GPA that hubby got was quickly named 'Lola' and she bossed us all the way home. Little Lola doesn't ALWAYS know the best way. We got off the turnpike to travel on I95. She did NOT like that. She continued to prompt us to exit and get back on the turnpike. When the exit she chose for us was ignored, she would say (I think with an attitude) "recalculating". Now he takes her to Wal-Mart, Walgreens, and just around the block for a spin. Good grief!

Finally the Gators Mojo and Juju to prepare for. The 'lucky' shirts, croc shoes, car magnets, amd trash talk. It worked! What a great feeling to have backed a winning team all year.

Drama-Drama

This has been a drama-drama 2 weeks.

• I got a new computer for Christmas. The drama-drama is switching all the important stuff from the older computer and then trying to make it work. Tears....HELP!....more tears.....IT DOESN"T WORK.....tears....I ALREADY did that.....OK...OK....I'll just leave......Stupid computers.


• The older computer goes to hubby and he can't get it to work for him. After spending hours/days reformatting etc he finally discovered it required 7-8 discs that Dell sent and you have to search the discs for the drivers you need.


• Repairs.....the new garage door is beautiful. The opener quit working. The guy installed a new opener. Great. Works fine. When we came home from shopping the door went up and I walked over to turn on the outside lights. A shower of sparks and the circuit breaker tripped. We cannot turn on the outside lights without short-circuiting something. Now to get someone to find out why.


• Ancestors. I spent this last summer researching our geneology. There was nothing on the hubby's side. I finally hit a gold mine and found out the names of his Aunts and Uncles. He had no idea. Today, we received an email from an actual live cousin who happened to find my work on a page somewhere. He has a book about his ancestors and has even used DNA testing to positively trace the right branch. Seems the ancestors have been Amish/Mennonites and were traced back to Switzerland. What a gift.

Mailing Lists

I wonder what I must have bought to get on such a variety of mailing listts. I bought NiJA's winter coat last year.....so I get Land's End. I never knew they had specialty catalogs. There must be a catalog for every situation. I ALSO get L.L. Bean. Both of these have terrific looking COLD weather stuff not really practical for most of the family living in Florida.


I bought the Shushing Librarian 'Action' Figure from Archie McPhee. What a blast it is to look through those.

I get catalogs from some company trying to sell me supplies and templates for all my scroll saw work. Why someone thinks I have a scroll saw is beyond me. Wond what list I was on for that to be sent.


I bought Christmas cards last year after Christmas on sale from MOMA. I know they sold my name. I got a really beautiful catalog last week with works of art items make of blown glass and artsy items, none costing less than $75 and that was for some very minor thing.


Our newspaper had a slick papered-high definition 1/4 " magazine in the daily newspaper showcasing jewelry. Jewelry that all cost HUNDREDS of thousands of dollars worn by people in very strange poses. That was very expensive for them to produce, but if one person buys something, it will pay for it.

I ordered a couple of kid's magazines for the grands, and now I get upscale catalogs for all kinds of pricy toys. Educational of course. Because they magazines were animal-based, I get pleas from the National Wildlife Foundation.

They are all beautifully done and I couldn't begin to be able to afford to buy from even half of them. What a waste of paper and trees.

Help the Drunk get home

A friend sent me this and I love games.

It's called...Help the drunk get home.
Try this and see how far you can keep this drunk man up......Good Luck!
You just move your mouse left to right (no clicking) to keep him walking in a straight line.
The object of the game is to keep him walking, without falling over, by using your mouse from left to right or right to left - you can't see your mouse which makes it more difficult.

I got as far as 62 meters, but will probably try to match the german record.

Ms. Dewey

The website, Ms. Dewey, is a hoot. It's a search engine, but while you're waitng for her to locate info, she performs. She is very expressive. I like to let her wait a while and see what kind of tactics she takes.

Also, this is the beta version of blogger.I'm having trouble publishing though.

Pain in the Foot

The FAME (Florida Association of Media Educators) is in Orlando and Penguin and I were going to a free dinner at the Gaylord Palms sponsored by Garrett Books. Gaylord Palms is a swanky place and I convinced Penguin not to 'just' wear his jeans and a shirt, but put on a tie and sports coat. I looked nice and put on 'real' shoes, not the black supportive shoes I wear to school or the New Balance athletic shoes I wear on the week-end.

Well, I have feet that need surgery. My toes don't bend, but the occasion called for dressier shoes. My dressier shoes are not heels or fancy, but modest 1 " plain little things. It was dicey just putting them on, but I thought I could survive.I couldn't. While we were walking to the restaurant at the Palms, I could barely walk. My feet were red and bruising.

Penguin got the wrong time, so we had an hour and a half to waste. He suggested we just get some shoes at the Palms, but their shoes were resortwear. Sandles. Sandles are the new dress shoe...right? We found some sandles. There were plain black numbers and because there were at the Palms....$75. Pain makes you buy stuff you would never otherwise even think about.

Now my feet were comfortable, but they looked naked. I needed polish to make it look finished. So we headed for the spa for polish. Of course it wouldn't be the $3 bottle you can get at Wal-Mart. No, this was an $8 bottle. Superior polish. I sat in the 'Everglades' and polished my toes. Voila. Now the only thing that would have been better would be if the sandles had sparklies on them. My free meal cost me about about $85. It was great food though.

BOO! Scared you didn't I?

Jack, Bones, and the other guy wish you a Happy Halloween.

Bones is showing where the doorbells is and 'glows' on his head from the collection of cams Terrier-mode NBK put there.

I hope we give all the candy away so I won't be tempted to eat it.

Good Grief!

Candidate wants to arm students with thick books.

Oh sure, let's get students really heavy books to tote around 'for protection'. And you certainly shouldn't pull them in the little rolly carts, it would need to be in their backpacks so it could stop that bullet. Make the students be responsible for their safety. Good idea.

Good Times

I have a blog I like to visit. For the Birds lives in Florida and works at the Kennedy Space Center. She posted a picture of what must be the smallest little frog/toad I've ever seen.

Today we ate out on our patio while the weather was great and we spotted the 'small' iguanna that lives by the canal. The huge one is spectacular but I haven't seen it very often since we had the trees level after Hurricane Wilma. It could be its lost too much protective shading or the neighboring kids had discovered it. It's still exciting to see wildlife even after all these years.

Iris Blah Blah

Random blah-blah

• Bookfairs are insane times. Too bad libraries have to find different ways to get money to buy books, equipment, and supplies for the school. Bets and I always try to discourage the kids from blowing all of their money on trinkets. They need at least ONE book, then they can get the bendy pencils, the spikey top pens, and jumbo clicker erasers. They even had a little pack of 'monkey' tissues for an exorbitant price.

• I was offered a sub for the days of the fair by my principal. In five days I've had 4 different people and today they took the only one who would have spent 2 consecutive days for another class. 'Smiley' wanted Bets to take my classes then and just have me man to bookfair. Oh, yeah Bets already has a lunch duty time with a unique child while I have classes. How was she going to be in 2 places at once? Eventually we got 'Smiley' to spit my classes up among the other specials. It would only mean an extra 4 students in their classes per period.

• Shout out to Penguin this AM for remotely solving a black/white issue on the morning news. The cameras were sending color, but the computer powerpoints on D were black and white. Found out to be a connection not all the way pushed in. When it was securely in, COLOR!

• Science Friday with Dr. Moody and Mrs. Willis was rushed because of the technical issues. That an she showed up too late to rehearse.

• Reports came in that the mics are not loud enough and I don't have any time to play with the settings. Guess they'll have to read lips.

• Hubby is OBSESSED with his cams. We had a cheapy security cam we picked up last year at Sam's club and later another one for the patio. This year, not good enough. We now have 4 cams; 2 of them super digital and the 2 older ones.Again.....not good enough. We had to get a digital recorder with a 4 split screen. Now his month long quest is to get it on the web 'when we want to check the house when we're away'. Good grief! We hardly ever go away and why we would want to view it while 300 miles away escapes me. He's in terrier mode. THAT's the real reason he hasn't blogged. Morning-noon-night he's obsessing with this.

• I'm going to have so much leftover Halloween candy and it's the kind I like. I'm going to give a lot this year.(Except to the non-costumed teenagers with mustaches and cell phones)

• TC the 'evil' cat who sits outside our patio screen and drives our cat to try to attack him/her through the screen struck again this AM...In the 5:00 AM dark. I've a glass of water ready on the patio to fling at TC to scare him/her away. TC thinks this is where her/she should hang out. On/under our cars, on the front wall, and lounging on the screen room stoops. He/she would love to be our cat, but Gypsy hates him/her. TC is well-fed by someone, but our house is the place to be.

• Iris Blah-blah is done. You should read Martha blah blah about the dog who can speak because her family feeds her alphabet soup.

This is Fashion?

These 'fashion' pictures have been on the Yahoo page this last week and this is a creation for French fashion house Guy Laroche as part of their Spring/Summer 2007 ready-to-wear fashion collection.

Oh! My!

My real dismay is that this model is so skinny that you can count her ribs. The ASPCA rescues horses and dogs that have their ribs showing like this model does and arrest the owners as being cruel to animals.

Besides that, the 'dress' is not much either.

Where Shopping is............

We went bicycling this evening. The weather cleared up and the heat of the day was gone. It is also good exercise.

After ride around almost the whole developement we headed over to the 7-11 store at the corner of Coral Ridge and Sample where there is construction behind the building. It takes the whole rest of the corner. We were trying to figure out what it could be. Doors, but no windows to speak of. We tried to find the building permit, but signs posted said we were going to be charge with a felony if we tresspassed on the construction site.

Blaine finally went inside 7-11 to ask them if they knew what the building was going to be.

PUBLIX!!

How close is that!? We COULD ride over and not have to cross the streets like you do with McDonald's and Walgreens.

PUBLIX!!......where shopping is a pleasure.

Ernesto

Today was an uneasy one. We had school as usual, but every one knew that Ernesto was coming and didn't know if we would have school tomorrow. Looking outside at the weather doesn't give a clue as to what is headed our way. The day looks picture perfect with blue skies and sunshine. By the end of the day the word was given that school is closed Tuesday and we were to unplug all computers, printers, and TVs and put trash bags over all computers. The Tanburg distant learning unit had to be hurricane readied and the tech person had to do an emergency 2 hour server back up.

When I finally left school every gas station on the way home had lines of cars wrapping around the block waiting to fill up. Last year Wilma did a number on us. We all remember the days after when there was nothing available anywhere. We know the drill now. Fill up the cars and all available gas containers. Stockpile food and water in case the water has to be boiled or there is no power. We are supposed to be able to survive 3 days without help after a hurricane. Medications have to be stockpiled to. Last year when there was no power for days, medications that had to be refridgerated were not available from the few pharmacies open because their power failed to keep it cold.

Again, we all know the drill. Charley, Jeanne, Francsis, Katrina, and Wilma have left us uneasy. It is not an adventure once you've actually been damaged in a hurricane. Unease and a nagging feeling that you haven't done everything you should to protect the house and the family. The constant noise the winds and trees make during the storm is a kind of torture too.

We know the drill, but preparing for disaster when it looks so beautiful is unreal. It's like boarding a plane in Florida in December with shorts on because it so hot and humid and getting off in New York in snow and freezing weather. You just can't believe it could be that cold or bad. Preparing for hurricanes is the same. I can understand why some folks might have put off preparations before, but we know the consequence now and we know the drill by heart.

Polly Pocket and Ronald

I think I may be part of a small group of adults who regularly orders McDonald's Happy Meals. I like the small portions, the option of apple wedges instead of fries, and the TOY. I really enjoy getting the toy. I have a closet of MIB (mint in bag) toys from when I spent 8 years in a row as a band parent and counted on these fast meals before chaperoning the football games.
I have entire sets of toys and I had to part with them.

It started with the toys that came out for Snow White and the Seven Dwarves ( or is it Dwarfs). I had every part but one, Prince Charming. I had my son broker a deal with the little sister of his friend for a trade. How pathetic is that!

Two weeks ago I got a cool Pirates' binocular and today......Polly Pockets Purse. While we ate I put the stickers on the 'purse' and her dress. This dress looks like something that was a disaster on Project Runway. It encases Polly and is a hard shell. She couldn't possible 'walk' in a dress like that but she stands with her arms awkwardly out at her sides, so I guess it doesn't matter.

Blaine is promoting that I give it to Mac-a-Do, but I'm betting she already has some and she has an extensive collection of Barbie dolls, clothes, and houses/castles that put Polly to shame. So........I guess I'll get to keep her myself.

Boo-Hoo Tea

We've been back in school for a week. During the first week parents are allowed past the drop-off gates and they can be seen walking their child to the cafeteria for breakfast or to their classroom. Our campus is rather spread out and it can be confusing for a new student. For those students who have been here in previous years it's not so hard.

Last Friday was our Boo-Hoo Tea.

This is a formal acknowledgement that it's time to let go and let the child come on campus by themselves and make it to the room solo. Boo-Hoo because parents are sad and may shed some tears and Boo-Hoo because it is a rite every kindergarten student has to face. They can do it on their own. Mommy is NOT going to come and take them home. Come Monday.....it's called Independence Day.

The staff who man the gates will not let parents through the gate. IF they need to come on campus they have to go around to the front of the campus and come in through the office. This year they have installed a new security feature where adults have their driver license swiped. This will check the database of people who should not be on campus because of divorce agreements or a noted child molesters. Their picture is taken and the reason they need to be on campus is punched into the machine.

Once school starts all of the gates are locked and no one can get on campus without going through the front office as the front entrance now sports gates and doors that only open outward for fire drills. We are very secure this year. I don't know if there has been a problem, but I'm sure it cost a LOT of money and not every school seems to have it yet.

Independence Day is tomorrow and I'm pretty sure those on gate duty will have to turn away some determined parents. I'm glad that is not my AM duty. I just have to get ready for the closed-circuit morning news program and be available to help teachers in the library. No tears for me!