Peeps and Pops

Hello all!  How is everyone today.  We had a nice day today with sun and 50 degrees!  Weather has been crazy here.  It snowed twice this past week, but c'est la vie!  Life in Ohio!!

Just a couple of things to say this time.  It's been busy these past weeks.  My granddaughter's birthday was the 20th.  She is now 14!  We had a family get-together for her on the 21st at my dad's house. She is just growing up way too fast!  Then my Dad's (Pops) birthday was the 24th.  He turned 80! That's hard to believe too.  We usually celebrate his birthday the say day as my granddaughter's, but this year we all went out to a restaurant to just celebrate him. It turned out real nice and my Dad was so surprised.  He just thought I was taking him out to eat and didn't expect everyone else that came too.  We ordered a really neat cake for him.  He's always working in his workshop so we went with a "tools" theme.  I just have to share a picture!!

Tasted really good too!

In my "college life" I've been staying busy too.  Finished Computer Applications and ended up with an "A" in the class.  Working on Introduction to Management now.  Had several chapters to read and some quizzes to do these last couple of weeks.  Not too bad so far.  Tomorrow the group that I was put into had to present one of the chapters with a Power Point and then have an activity for the class to do centered on Teamwork.  Two of the members worked on the Power Point and one of the other members and I worked on the activity.  It is called "Sneak a Peek" and involves the other teams not presenting to replicate a structure that we built from Legos.  However, only one member can come up and look at the structure.  Then they have to relay back to the team instructions to build it. Every minute or so another member can sneak a peek until someone builds it correctly.  That team is the winner.  We decided to give out some kind of little prize and since Easter is coming we chose to give them peeps.  Then we changed the name to Sneak a Peep!  I had the job of getting the peeps.  I saw a cute idea on Facebook on how to make Peep Bunny Race Cars.  So I made 5 of those for the winning team and then am bringing regular peeps for everyone else.

Hopefully I'll get to write some more this week.  If not, Happy Easter to everyone.

See ya later!

Happy St. Patrick's Day

Happy Saint Patrick's Day to all.  I apparently have a little Irish in my background, but mostly I'm of German descent.  I learned an odd fact about the way German's "celebrate" this holiday.  Apparently there is quite a rift between German's and the Irish.  (Not sure if that is still true today, but at one time that was the case.)  So, because of this dislike of the Irish, the German's took to wearing Orange on March 17th in protest of St. Patty's Day!  I've heard before that you can wear either orange or green today, but didn't know why.  I always just stick with green.

Anyway, I learned that tidbit tonight at school.  We had our final for Computer Applications, which took two hours to do!  Quite the work out.  My poor brain was fried when it was over.  But after that, we were introduced to the next class - Introduction to Management.  The teacher for that class gave us the head's up on St. Patty and the Germans!

She also gave an overview of the class and it doesn't seem like it will be as dull as I thought.  Two reasons:  The teacher is very nice and interesting and she said she has learned the most about teaching this class from the Horrible Bosses movies.  We are going to have discussions on some of the awful bosses we may have had in the past, or maybe even have now.  I do have some stories to tell on that front!  I've been working since I was 16 so that is 40 years in the work force.  At the beginning it was sporadic to say the least, but still that's a lot of time to evaluate the effectiveness and ineffectiveness of the bosses I've had.

One story goes something like this.  I worked at a different bank early on and had this one boss who apparently was very paranoid.  She always assumed if she could see any of us talking to each other, that we had to be talking about her.  In one of my reviews, she marked me way low on being respectful to her, or something like that.  I was shocked, because I couldn't for the life of me know what she was talking about.  I asked her when was I ever disrespectful.  Her comment was that I hadn't done anything directly to her but she could just see my body language and knew I was thinking bad thoughts about her.  Another evaluation, she said that in June (mind you, evaluations were in December) she saw me talking to another teller on a break and knew we were making fun of her because she had a garage sale!  The think is, neither one of us knew anything about this garage sale; and I had now explanation of what we were talking about that day in June because 6 months had passed.  My guess is that we were deciding what to eat for lunch.

I have never seen Horrible Bosses, but am thinking I need to watch the movies.

With that, I think I'd better sign off for now.

Feels Like Spring

Finally we are getting some weather that is above 20 degrees.  Last weekend it got over 40 degrees and we were all wearing spring jackets and running to the ice cream stands!  Felt like a heat wave. LOL.

Today the time and temperature sign at the Bank said it was 51 degrees.  So excited to actually feel like Winter may be over.  I really need to move to a warmer climate!  Guess that's another part of getting older.  When I was in school, I loved the snow.  We couldn't wait to go sledding or ice skating and stayed out in it for very long periods of time.  I used to build snow tunnels in the drifts that would go half-way up the front of our house.

Now, I only really enjoy looking at the snow around Christmas because it makes the decorations look so pretty.  The thing is, we hardly ever have snow at Christmas anymore.  It doesn't show up until January, or we have some in October that soon melts away.   I just want to be on a beach somewhere, reading a book and listening to the sound of the waves.

So now we are warming up a bit, and the snow is mostly all melted away.  Birds are singing and we saw the sun today.  Stepped outside to enjoy the day and stepped into mud puddles!  Mud is everywhere.  That's the downside of the snow melting!  Things don't look very pretty outside right now.  It'll probably a few weeks before we actually see some pretty greenery sprouting. But at least I can feel it coming.

My kitty seems to feel it too.  She cries for us to open the drapes and pull up the blinds so she can look outside.  As soon as the door opens, she runs to peek out the window.  As long as we have had her, she hasn't set a fool out the door. I don't know if she has ever been outside.  It's cute to see her want to see what's going on, but I do worry she'll sneak out the door one day and take off running. Maybe, we'll have to get a kitty harness and take her out sometimes.

On another note, my Computer Applications class is essentially over.  I just finished all my homework and submitted my last project for this class. We take the final exam this coming Tuesday and then start right into the next class - Introduction to Management.  That doesn't really sound very interesting, but maybe it will be better than it sounds!

I'm a little concerned about the final coming up because I just don't remember things as well as I used to. I'm pretty good at figuring out how to do things in the various programs that are part of Office 2013, but I don't always remember the correct terminology for things. Wish me luck!

Have to end with a picture of my youngest grandchild.  He just turned one in February and loves MTC (Marion Technical College) as much as I do!!

That's all I can think of this evening.  Take care and I'll talk to you again soon.

The Revenge of the Couch

Well, here's my story. 

Tonight my husband, Rob,  and I were relaxing and watching some House of Cards episodes. I was reclined on the couch with my feet up, leaning back on a couple of pillows. The pillows slipped a bit so I was trying to scoot myself up and back so I was more upright than laying down. 

Then it happened. 

The couch rebelled and attacked me by stabbing me in the rear. IT HURT!! But that wasn't enough for my unruly couch. It then totally grabbed me and I could not get up. I was attached to that couch somehow, and was in a bit of a panic.

My loving husband didn't seem to notice a thing.  I had to holler to him to please pause the show and come rescue me from the couch. Now mind you, the couch and chair are right beside each other.  I jsut don't know how he didn't know that the couch was trying to swallow me whole! 

When I finally got his attention by telling him the couch had me in it's grasp and I couldn't get up, his reaction was to first laugh and then second grab the camera!  The thing is, there wasn't anyway to get a picture of what was really going on because I was fastened to the couch literally by the seat of my pants.

After some strange maneuvers, he was able to unattach my pajama bottoms from the broken spring in the couch and I was free. We went on to finish the episode we were watching and all was right with the world again. 

However, I now have a hole in my PJ bottoms and my rear end hurts!  

Talk to you again soon!

I'm Loving It!

I just got home from school a little while ago, and I just wanted to say that I absolutely love this class!  It is Computer Applications and we are learning about Office 2013 - Word, PowerPoint, Access and Excel.  I use Word and Excel about every day at work, but really just knew enough to do what I had to do.  Now I'm learning so many shortcuts and other fun stuff that these programs offer.  As I has said before, though, the problem I have is remembering all the neat things I'm being taught!

It does help that our IT department installed Office 2013 on my computer at work.  We did have Office 2007 and there are a lot of differences between the two.  So at least I'm using some of what I'm learning every day.  I only wish I loved my work as much as I'm loving this class!

This was week 4, so next week is our last full week and then we take the exam the week after for the first two weeks of class.  After that we are on to the next class.  I can't remember what that class is at the moment though!

I know this is probably an odd thing to write about tonight, but I'm just feeling so satisfied with this experience that I had to get it out.  Many of you probably think I'm a little crazy!  I think it just goes back to the fact that after all these years, I am finally in college.  Some days it's hard for me to believe that I'm actually doing this.  I really wish I would have taken this step sooner in life, and yet, I wonder if I would have appreciated it as much in my younger years as I do now.  Guess I'll never really know, but again, I am so happy I'm doing it now.

In some of my earlier posts, you'll notice that I was stressing quite a bit at first.  New things don't come easy for me, and probably don't come easy for a lot of people.  It's easy to get comfortable with the status quo of everyday life and get comfortable.  But take it from me, it does a body good to step out of that comfort zone and try something new.  It doesn't hurt a bit!!

And, I always stop at McDonald's on my way home and treat myself to a Caramel Frappe. I'm lovin' it!

Al Capone's Speakeasy

Just finished up some homework, so I decided I'd get on here and tell you a little about the underground Speakeasy in Bucyrus, Ohio.

Back in the day (way back), it seems that Bucyrus was a wild little town!  During the years of prohibition, we had more than once Speakeasy operating and quite a few brothels so the guys could find a little company.

The one that I included in my speech a few weeks back is located beneath the Crazy Fox Saloon/Weaver Hotel just off the town square.  When this was a hopping place, Bucyrus boasted a large tunnel system under the city.  These tunnels were used for many things: getting coal into the businesses to use for heat, shuttling money and ice between businesses and the quick get-a-way if needed!  At that time the above-ground structure was the Highway Grill, and below was where the liquor flowed.  It was quite the popular hangout for many gangsters, most notably Al Capone who would stop by on his trips between Chicago and New York City.  His presence was kept very hush-hush, but for those that knew his secret they would realize Al was in town when they would see his private rail car pulled off near the brothels.

The tunnels would get him in an out of the establishment that boasted very thick, brick booths which are still there today.  Sometime in the 30's, the place closed down and the tables were taken apart and just thrown here and there is the basement.  It fell into great disrepair until is was renovated and re-opened in 2003 as a tourist destination.  Everything is just as it was in the 20's with original tables, woodwork and brick booths.  Also original is the hand-operated elevator that you can take instead of the stairs if you so desire. Most of the cities tunnels have been filled in, but there are still remnants under the Crazy Fox.

The local theater group has put together a show based on the history of the speakeasy.  It is full of song and dance, and of course a special appearance from Al Capone himself! I've been to the show twice and it is a real treat.

You can find information about the Speakeasy and other things to do in town at www,bucyrus.org. For a small town, we do have some interesting things to see!

Well, I'm thinking I'd better head to bed now.  I'll be sure and talk to you again real soon!

My Memory is So Bad . . .

Just got home from college.  I am really enjoying this class – Computer Applications. I can relate so much better to learning to do things on the computer than I could when I had to do speeches!  The only issue I have is that I learn so many neat things in class, but then can't remember them all when I get home!

This whole memory thing seems to be an on-going battle for me.  Senior Moments. Brain Farts. Mental Lapse. Brain Freeze.  Whatever you call it, it can be quite annoying. I’ve come to believe that I have so much knowledge in my brain there just isn't room for any more so that is why I forget stuff!  I doubt that is a scientific fact, but it works for me!  I love the jokes about senior moments that I see on Facebook because I can so relate to them!  Just today, in fact, I was on my way to school and totally missed my turn-off.  I don't know what I was thinking, but I must have wanted to go on to Columbus and by-pass Marion altogether!  Maybe the Cheesecake Factory was calling me.

Then there are those times when I run into someone at the mall and they start talking to me about things we used to do.  “We had so much fun when we drove to the lakes and met those hot guys!”  I’ll reply, “Oh, I remember that.  We had a blast!”  The conversation will go on for a while and we’ll promise to keep in touch.  As soon the she leaves, I’m thinking, “Who in the world was that?  I don’t have the faintest clue what trip to the lakes she is talking about!”  Why do they remember me, and I can’t place them from Adam?  The joys of aging I guess.

There are good things, however, to not having such a great memory.  I can watch movies over and over and they are still good.  Now there does have to be a little bit of time in between viewings, but my husband is always amazed when he catches me watching something that I just watched a few weeks ago.  Doesn't matter to me though, because I'm still enjoying myself. Same goes with reruns on TV.  It’s always new to me!  

PS:  I am laughing so hard right now that I might just pee myself!  I went into my blog today to decide what to write about and I realized that I wrote this post last night and totally forgot to post it! Beyond that, I was supposed to tell you about the Speak Easy yesterday and forgot that too!  Once I compose myself, I'll tell you about that underground Speak Easy.  I promise!!