Now that your unpacked and got to test drive the area for a bit, encountered some locals and yokels, and hopefully some actual people that moved to the area from your home town or state its time to list the likes you have of your new or semi-new, or heck if the area is your native home than by all means and ways list what you like! Y'all got it? Well here goes!
Weather! You like or not!
Year round flowers!
Long springs!
Longer Autumns!
Shorts year round! For the hearty ones that is.
Variety of sub divisions to chose from!
Snow is a neat event versus a ho-hum not again event!
No rust on older cars! Amazing if your from the Northeast!
Can fish year round without cutting holes in the water (ice) for us North Easterners!
Pretty country side is usually only 5 minutes or less from where you live anywhere in the triangle.
People R People. No matter what they say!
Day trip to Mountains!
Day trip to Ocean!
And in a lot cases no trip at all to the many lakes, ponds, river, and streams that spot the area!
Good food can be had by all and more is always welcome irregardless if they are called viddles or pickins!
Out away from the city lights the sky at night explodes with the many stars that fill the emptiness of space with the occasional flying star to catch a dream or two on!
Groceries can be cheaper but we all have to eat!
Sure it takes time to get use to this place, remember the place you came from was called home and that is never a easy place to replace! But give it time, explore the area and get involved and this place too will be your new home not only in name but in feeling!
May the triangle, RDU, RTP, Crossroads, the Quay, Wake Forest, Knightdale, Apex, Raleigh, Durham, Zebulon, Oxford, Mossisville, Franklinton, Youngsville, Chapel Hill, Henderson, ...seems like I am forgetting somewhere.
...????......Oh yea! and Cary, be with you!
Oh Tarheels! I forgot to number the above as I did say I would count thy ways!
Weather! You like or not!
Year round flowers!
Long springs!
Longer Autumns!
Shorts year round! For the hearty ones that is.
Variety of sub divisions to chose from!
Snow is a neat event versus a ho-hum not again event!
No rust on older cars! Amazing if your from the Northeast!
Can fish year round without cutting holes in the water (ice) for us North Easterners!
Pretty country side is usually only 5 minutes or less from where you live anywhere in the triangle.
People R People. No matter what they say!
Day trip to Mountains!
Day trip to Ocean!
And in a lot cases no trip at all to the many lakes, ponds, river, and streams that spot the area!
Good food can be had by all and more is always welcome irregardless if they are called viddles or pickins!
Out away from the city lights the sky at night explodes with the many stars that fill the emptiness of space with the occasional flying star to catch a dream or two on!
Groceries can be cheaper but we all have to eat!
Sure it takes time to get use to this place, remember the place you came from was called home and that is never a easy place to replace! But give it time, explore the area and get involved and this place too will be your new home not only in name but in feeling!
May the triangle, RDU, RTP, Crossroads, the Quay, Wake Forest, Knightdale, Apex, Raleigh, Durham, Zebulon, Oxford, Mossisville, Franklinton, Youngsville, Chapel Hill, Henderson, ...seems like I am forgetting somewhere.
...????......Oh yea! and Cary, be with you! Oh Tarheels! I forgot to number the above as I did say I would count thy ways!
Wake Forest, Gosh its a pretty nive place to live!
Posted 03-09-2009 at 08:59 PM by dansdrive
Wake Forest, NC. located in Wake County NC. Some call it Wake's Forest of the Triangle....Ok maybe that's just me. But if you come from the North East, Wake Forest seems to fit. It has some rolling hills and many farming areas.
It has a small town feel but close to Raleigh, you could be down town Raleigh, depending on time of day in about 15 to 30 minutes. You can be at the Virginia border in less than an hour.
It has old Historical homes and some new subdivisions. It certainly worth a look see if your looking and seeing the area. It has transplants from New Jersey, New York, and many other NE State and Mid West and California and....well you get the idea people from all over this great country now calls Wake Forest home!
C'mon down, over, left, or right and check it out you may just like what you see.
It has a small town feel but close to Raleigh, you could be down town Raleigh, depending on time of day in about 15 to 30 minutes. You can be at the Virginia border in less than an hour.
It has old Historical homes and some new subdivisions. It certainly worth a look see if your looking and seeing the area. It has transplants from New Jersey, New York, and many other NE State and Mid West and California and....well you get the idea people from all over this great country now calls Wake Forest home!
C'mon down, over, left, or right and check it out you may just like what you see.
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Tuesday April 5, 2011 and its 57.3 degrees outside in route to clear the clouds and send the temp up to 63. The rain yesterday and today helped to knock the pine pollen to the ground which was nice. It was getting pretty thick in the air on on the cars and deck and just about all over. One knows its April in the south when the yellow pollen coats everything and anything. Rain is our best defense!
Hard to believe the morning slipped by without my post but it did and now is my post. With all this talk of post and with a few slats and a couple of cross members I would have made a nice fence!
Speaking of fences, how come as kids no fence was to big to hop and sometimes in a single bound! As we use to bounce through yards at night in our old neighborhood we got quite good at climbing, shimmying, and jumping fences. Seemed like every yard has a different one, from two foot to eight foot high, with materials such as wood, metal, and concrete...ops that would constitute a wall! Jumped those too! Sometimes the landing over the fences were soft and sometimes they were hard landings and occasionally they were garbage, we literally in the garbage can! Gee-gads! But it was always a challenge. The track was usually always the same about 1 city block where we would come out in a Church parking lot and than walk back down the city block to trade hopping stories!
Quote of the day from Maya Angelo :
Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences penetrates walls, to reach at its destination full of hope."
Happy Tuesday and what barriers do you have to penetrate today?Posted 04-05-2011 at 01:38 PM by dansdrive
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Wednesday April 6, 2011 and its 37.6 degrees outside going to try its best to double that but may just settle a few degrees shy at 68 sunny degrees. Nice! But that will mean the pine pollen will be filling the skies today. A puff here and a puff there and before you know it everything is coated with yellow dust!
Did not have to deal with that up north, but we did have to deal with maturing dandelions, when they would get there cotton white seeded tops and blow all over the place. Sometime it was like white clouds of cotton. I can remember as a kid going with my Grandfather picking dandelions in the spring for salad and wine. My grandfather always made his own wine and dandelion wine was one of the flavors he made when grapes were not yet ripe. I remember his big jugs in the basement fermenting his wine and while it was fermenting he would be cranking out his Lorado cigarettes. I think he enjoyed making them more than smoking them. He also tended his garden and a many a times I can remember my grandmother frying up some egg plant flowers. He would also trap birds and rabbits for eating. He made his own traps and was a very good carpenter. He had a few missing fingers and stubs to prove it! My grandparents had a very simple life, they came to America twice, once before the great Depression and then returned to Italy and came back after the Depression to start again.
What I remember about them is if they could do it themselves they did. One of their fears was that the great Depression would one day come back and they would be ready for it. Maybe that attitude by them and those that lived through that era did in fact keep another Depression away. Its intriguing to me that the further we get away from the great Depression the less likely we believe it could happen again. I guess we could and in some cases did learn allot from our grandparents and parents, if we took the time to watch and listen.
Quote of the day from Herbert Hoover:
"Blessed are the young for they shall inherit the national debt."
Happy Wednesday and are you one day deeper in debt or one day removed from debt?Posted 04-06-2011 at 05:39 AM by dansdrive
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Thursday April 7, 2011 and its 49.1 degrees outside sun shining its way up to 76 degrees today! Sweet! Hard to believe how fast this week is ticking by, seems to be going by faster than Jim Carey spun by in the Mask! ...and that's pretty darn fast! Can you see me know?
Speaking of seeing me now. Reminds me of the days I did electrical work. One job we had was upgrading an old apartment building, where the owner had a first floor barber shop and his second floor apartment. The third and forth floors were going to be apartments. So we had the job of putting in a new electrical service entrance and rewiring the 3th and 4th floor apartments. The owner hired a friend of his to do the carpentry work. One day we were working on the 4th floor apartment and the carpenter was up in the attic doing something. We were in the kitchen area installing the circuit breaker box when we heard a crash and went out to the hallway area and saw the carpenter laying on the floor. He had fallen through the ceiling....YIKES! Fortunately for him he was OK. So we all went back to what we were doing.
That day we were running the cables up from the basement to the 4th floor through the conduit pipe we had previously installed. Anyone that ever tried to push cables through conduit know its no easy task. In fact they make a bright yellow sliding agent to spray on the wires to make them slip through the conduit. The conduit ran up the back of the building up to the 4th floor. There was rear porches on each level and a staircase between each level to be used as an emergency exit. So this is how we got up and down the apartment building floors. Well my cousin was about to head down with his can of yellow slip-sliding-ooze stuff when it slipped from his hands and fell off the 4th floor porch all the way down to the concrete below. On its decent it managed to hit other things like the porch, the top of the garage below and eventually landing firmly on the sidewalk below...this in itself was not a problem as its final destination was ground level anyway. But what happen next was the 'topper'.....
The force of the can hitting the ground caused it to rupture and basically explode into a ball of bright yellow slim! Yellow slim coated everything for about a 10 foot radius of the smashed can! Dang! I remember looking at each other and instantly busting out laughing.......than we seem to simultaneously stop laughing and heading down the staircases to figure out how to clean this mess up before the boss came back!! We managed to clean it up the best we could and headed back to the electrical supply house for another can of yellow ooze! That job took us several weeks and each weekend we would work on it brought new adventures and experiences that we both would never forget! ...We were both new drivers at this point so I have a few stories about driving to and from the job site and the electrical supply house for some future postings.....
Quote of the day Oliver Hardy:
"Well, here's another fine mess you got us into.."
Happy Thursday and if you do one thing today, just one thing, make it laughter! Laughter warms the Soul!
Posted 04-07-2011 at 05:55 AM by dansdrive
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April 8, 2011 and its 62.6 party sunny degrees heading up to a projected 75 degrees. For a Friday that is Fantastically nice! Which is in stark contrast to the day we heard a loud bang outside the building we were working in.
Prior to our yellow ooze saga we begun this job by replacing the entire service entrance into this building. This required putting in four separate panel boxes for the business and apartments that were going to be housed in this building. This required a new wall to place the panel boxes on. So some 2 x4's and plywood was needed. WE got what we thought we needed that morning. But once we took the old service entrance down and the old panel boxes and wall they were secured to we saw we were one 2 x4 short. In the word our boss used frequently which was 'FUDGE!', a 2 x 4 was needed. So we had only had our drivers license a few weeks at that point. So my cousin talked our boss into letting him go get a 2 x 4 in our bosses car which was once deemed a Chevy Impala and now was a rusted out barely running junker!
Off he want happier than a kid driving someone elses car. So me and the boss continued to install the new wall. We worked and got the new 2 x 4 up and were await the return on my cousin. We were nailing up the 2 x 4's when we heard a big bang outside. We were in the basement working on the street side of the building. We dashed outside to see if there was a car accident or some other incident that could have caused this big-bang...we had theories on our way outside. But our theories were all wrong. What we saw was my bosses car pulled up along side the road and half of a new 2 x 4 laying on the sidewalk.... What had happened was my cousin had the 2 x 4 hanging out the passenger side window a few feet and never see the street sign as he pulled up. The street sign caught the 2 x 4 and broke it in half. We could not believe how loud that was! Fortunately, no one was hurt except my cousin pride! Another quote from our boss after he seen what happened and no one was hurt... He said to my cousin, 'You Tart!'. A favorite saying of his...at some point we were all Tart's!
Quote of the day from Winston Churchill:
" Some see private enterprise as a predatory target to be shot, others as a cow to be milked, but few are those who see it as a sturdy horse pulling the wagon."
Happy Friday and are you pulling that wagon or just on it for the ride? Enjoy your weekend!Posted 04-08-2011 at 09:24 AM by dansdrive
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Monday April 11, 2011 and its 56.9 degrees outside zooming on up to 87 degrees today. Summery like! Toasty in fact! It was a busy weekend and a tale of two weekends, weather wise that is. Saturday was cloudy and cool, low 50's and Sunday was about a half day of sun with temps in the 70s.
Friday made a planter with a pole capped with a bird stop off point. The planter worked perfectly for covering up an old stump near the back deck. Was a large tree so in stead of messing with the stump I messed with making a cover for it. The pole coming up out of it will work nicely for the climbing plant that was planted in the planter along with other plants. Came out quite nice but I am biased I suppose. Only cost $12 to make it as I had a lot of the wood around from other project and a box of screws we $5 of the $12 but now I have more screws for other projects.....sweet!
Saturday brought a changing of the walkway. I had slate pavers that went from the Driveway to backyard gate. I had set them several years ago and they were not uniform in size nor shape. So it was time to bid them farwell and replacement them with cinder pavers. But I had a new home for the slate pavers. I removed the slate pavers and moved them to a little garden area we created near our driveway. These pavers were exactly what we needed for the walkway that will lead to the park bench and eventually arbor over the park bench. The area is the side of a small hill were we planted a variety of new plants and reclaimed 'free' plants off of Criaglist plus some roses and patunia's. New that the walkway is in place I will finish off the entire area with wood chips. Speaking of wood I also drug out an old log I had cut down over the winter that I place in behind this area as the ground slops down, so the log will hold the wood chips plus give some depth to the area. It also will be a nice backdrop to the park bench. It is a weathered Oak log so it goes perfectly with the area!
Checked the garden a few times over the weekend and nothing coming up yet. Have more plants to get, all I have in are the seeds. Put in a bunch of Pumpkin seeds as we would like to have a bunch of Pumpkins come Halloween! Boo! Just practicing!
In between the yard work did get to uncover the boat and cleaned it up and started it up and have it launch ready! Now to pick the date and time to launch the boat....soon, soon I tell you!
So that was the weekend in a couple of snap shots, there were other pictures of the weekend but some of those are still developing and others were underdeveloped and a few over developed! But all in all it was a digitally perfect weekend!
Quote of the day Tim Scott:
" As I have traveled throughout my Congressional district, the one thing I heard loud and clear was simply please stop spending money you do not have, rein in spending, live within a budget."
Happy Monday and when was the last time you spent money without having it?
Posted 04-11-2011 at 05:27 AM by dansdrive
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Tuesday April 12, 2011 and its 66.7 degrees outside heading up to 83 degrees. Spared from the thunderstorms last night and intermittent sunshine this morning so far. The Rascals said it best in their hit, "It's a beautiful morning!" I wrote about this song before, I am guilty as charged of SMILING when in the presents of a beautiful day!
BY: RASCALS
It's a beautiful mornin' ahhh
I think I'll go outside a while
An jus' smile
Just take in some clean fresh air boy
Ain't no sense in stayin' inside
If the weather's fine an' you got the time
It's your chance to wake up and plan another brand new day
Either way
It's a beautiful mornin' ahhh
That song on a beautiful day just don't get better than that my friends. Sum it up in one word, 'ahhhhhh'
Quote of the day from W.C. Fields:
"Start every day with a smile and get it over with. "
Happy Tuesday and just <SMILE> its the best medicine you will ever take!!!!Posted 04-12-2011 at 06:50 AM by dansdrive
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Wednesday April 13, 2011 and its 50.8 degrees heading up to a projected high of 70 degrees! Oh so nice! Especially for a Wednesday......and nearly the middle of April! Sweet day calendar page fellow flippers, can you believe it?
Days are slipping by quicker than Chevy Cruze steering wheels are coming off! Precisely why its never a good idea to buy a first year model vehicle. The first year is for getting things tightened down or up, which ever you prefer. I am old fashion when it comes to steering wheels, I like mine to remain firmly on the vehicle when I am driving. Anything less is simply 'out of control' in my mind!
That is not to say I never drove a vehicle where the steering wheel was firmly in place but the tires were not responding to their wheeled commands if you know what I mean. That too is not a good situation either!
But today is Wednesday and the world turns with or without its proverbial steering wheel into the future!
Quote of the day from Dale Earnhardt:
"When he was young, I told Dale Jr. that hunting and racing are a lot a like. Holding that steering wheel and holding that rifle both mean you better be responsible."
Happy Wednesday and may you have a responsible day today and everyday!Posted 04-13-2011 at 05:18 AM by dansdrive
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Thursday April 14, 2011 and its 44.4 degrees outside and currently dark soon to be lighter turning to much lighter with a projected or protracted high of 75 sunny glorious degrees! Nice! This spring thus far has been great grass growing weather. Some rain, sun, warmth (on and off), some fertilizer and waaalaa, one has grass they can cut twice per week.
Speaking of twice per week, that was about the number of times we use to get to do electrical work after school. One day was always a Friday night and the other was usually a Tuesday night and always a full day Saturday. Our jobs were typically adding new receptacle and lights to someone home and sometimes it would trouble shooting an electrical problem. Spring and summer we typically installed the electrical connection to swimming pool motors. One summer we worked almost exclusively at a home across the street from our bosses house.
This house was a duplex that they were converting to a triplex. The owner lived on one side and they were converting the other side to a duplex from a simplex! So, we did a lot of electrical work on that house. Me being the attic guy loved this house as they had no attic. My cousin the crawl space expert did not like this house as a large portion of the basement was crawl space. So all the wiring on the first floor required....you got it crawling! The owner of this house also loved cats and had many. The one window in the owner side basement was out so the cat's had free run in and out of the home. It was like a true cat house, heading down to the basement you never knew which one or how many cats you would encounter. They did not limit themselves to the basement, they also loved the crawl space where they could chase mice and rats. In fact my cousin got bit by a rat or cat we are not sure which one....His other crawl space dwellers, namely spiders and snakes were always looming in those dark crawl spaces. Fortunately for him the spiders in the north east are not hazardous.
A lot of hours were expended in that old house. I remember drilling a hole in the kitchen when the owner and our boss was standing there. I was using a large auger bit and the owner asking him how long one of those last. He said they last a long time and are virtually indestructible, and he no sooner finished saying that when the auger bit broke in half. That was one of those moments I wish I was in the crawl space or at least on my way down to crawl in that crawl space. What were the chances of that happening? Amazing! I often wonder if they ever did finish that remodeling job. We spent the better part of a summer on that house and never did get to see the finished product but that was the case in a lot of the homes we worked in.
Quote of the day from Maya Angelou:
"Living life is like constructing a building: if you start wrong you'll end wrong!"
Happy Thursday and no matter what you plan to builder to, albeit a better tomorrow or a deeper friendship, do it with conviction and character!Posted 04-14-2011 at 05:30 AM by dansdrive
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Friday April 15, 2011 and its 51.3 degrees outside nicely rising up to a forecast high of 74 party cloudy skies. Just a sweet Friday!
Speaking of sweet I obtained a bunch of treated lumber from someone that was finishing up a large project and had a lot left over for the taking! I wanted to build an arbor over one of my backyard gates and this lumber will 'cover' that project and than some. Ok pun was intended, hey its Friday man! I already have planned out what to do with my left over lumber, build a couple of planter boxes I seen the plans for online. No good wood shall go to waste! ...and the small scrap piece go to the bonfire stack! So I hope to get the poles set for the arbor today before the rains come tomorrow. Once they are set I can move onto the flower boxes.
I also hope to get the boat out into the water this weekend and see if I can catch the big one, if not that is A-OK too! A boat out of water is like a baseball in a protective case. Neither are a really 'big hit'!
Back to work so I can finish in a reasonable hour to get those Arbor poles dig out.
Quote of the day by Ashley Smith:
"Life is full of beauty. Notice it. Notice the bumble bee, the small child, and the smiling faces. Smell the rain, and feel the wind. Live your life to the fullest potential, and fight for your dreams."
Happy Happy Joy Joy Friday and <SMILE> till it hurts my friends! That's all folks!!!Posted 04-15-2011 at 05:33 AM by dansdrive
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Monday April 18. 2011 and its 51.8 degrees outside almost but not quite yet sun shining its way up to a projected high of 79 degrees. Severe weather stuck our area on Saturday. Kudo's to the weather forecasters, this time they were giving warnings since Thursday of last week that the area had a moderate risk of tornado's and they were right on. The closest one to touch down near us was about 7 miles south east. We got some golf ball size hail from that one. It actually was windier before the actual storm hitting than during.
I was working outside with the radio on when I heard the first reports of possible tornado on the ground south west of us. So as it approached I finished what I was doing and headed inside. Actually I was finishing up the four post I installed for the arbor I was building. Just finished when the storm came up. Fortunately for us it missed us but many were not so lucky. Lots of damage and loss of life which was very sad. The power of mother nature at times seems limitless, seeing the destruction these tornado's caused was really unbelievable.
Yesterday was a picture perfect day, sunny with a high of 80. After church I was able to finish my $26 arbor! Because I got most of the wood free I only had to purchase a few pieces and the screws. Now we have a good size arbor over our read gate into our yard. STill have lot of wood left over for other backyard projects. One persons left over wood from their projects is another persons arbor and flower boxes, or anything else one can imagine to build! Thanks Dad for teaching me how to make things and to use my mind and abilities to create things without plans or formal drawings....
Wanted to get the boat out but didn't get to do that. Another time, another time....
Hey, the ride in this AM was cool. The moon was big setting over the horizon with the clouds silhouetting in front of it. Just to the left of the moon at about 11 o'clock was a bright star or planet that was fading in and out behind the clouds. Just a really cool sight this early Monday morning........
Quote of the day from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:
"The best thing one can do when its raining it to let it rain!"
Happy Monday and when bad weather comes a knocking, don't answer!!!Posted 04-18-2011 at 05:05 AM by dansdrive
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Tuesday April 19, 2011 and its 63.7 degrees outside with the sun playing peek-a-boo with us today as it heads high in the sky as its warmth reaches 80 degrees! Fabulous!
Speaking of fabulous, its Easter basket time. As kids growing up it was always the Holy week, the week we went to church more in a given week than any time of the year. Our elementary 'Public' School use to let us out at 2:45PM on Friday's so we could attend our local churches Station of the Cross. I wonder if any Public Schools do that today? The Stations would start at 3:00PM every Friday of lent. So it only took about 10 minutes or less as it was all down hill to the church to get there. Our Italian Priest in our Italian church was a no nonsense old school Priest. He was always all business. He would come out and go from station to station reading each station. We had books to follow along. Than he would go to the alter and save one decade of the Rosary. Than he would leave the alter and we would leave. That officially started the weekend during lent!
We all knew as kids that at the end of the Holy week there would be a basket of candy awaiting us. Chocolate bunnies, coconut filled bunnies and eggs, peanut butter eggs, marshmallow peeps, jelly beans, and the list went on and on if only in our minds! We also had a tradition on Easter Saturday to take our family Easter morning foods up to the church for blessings. There would be literally hundreds of baskets of all shapes and sizes, filled with fresh baked breads, boiled eggs, butter, rolls, salt/pepper, and every other kind of food a family would share at the morning breakfast table. The priest would come out say an opening prayer and proceed to sprinkle the baskets with Holy Water. I'm sure this tradition is carried out today but with far less baskets!
I will be heading up north to be with family and friends on this Easter. So this shall be my last post till next week. Time for some R&R and recharge the batteries as I am no longer the Everyready 'Bunny' as I use to be!
Quote of the day from Jesus of Nazareth:
"For we walk by faith, not by sight."
Happy Tuesday and may the meaning of Easter fill your Spirit to guide your faith into the future! Peace.Posted 04-19-2011 at 07:47 AM by dansdrive
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Tuesday April 26, 2011 and its 73.4 degrees heading on up to 82 today. Some showers and that is A-Ok with me. Back from vacation, back from visiting family and friends, back from the land of the north where we seen snow flurries last Friday.....oh joy!
It was a wonderful trip, seeing family and friends after not seeing some of them for literally years. One observation we made regarding the trip was the light traffic we encountered to and from the north. Sure 95 was busy in its normal spots but in general was lighter than we expected and that was a good thing!
For family and friends it was catch up time, time to relive the past and talk about the present and occasionally speak of the future. Family members that were at odds with each other years ago remained at odds, some who were not are now at odds, so something never ever change! The old neighborhood at first glance appeared as it had always looked with exception to a new mini-park they added across the street from my Mom's house. After 25 plus years of an empty field the city decided to put in a small park with security cameras. In the first few months some people already smashed up the four tables they put in that had checker boards built into them....so much for the security cameras. The neighborhood has really gone down hill. My Mom had a new roof put on her shed last year, this year kids go on the roof and tore it off. Nice. So this is the neighborhood they decided to reward with a new park....
In the same neighborhood my In-laws who live on a fixed income had to have a alarm system put in there house that they lived in for over 40 years so they could feel safe again in their own home at night. So very sad. What someone wants to steel from a couple of old people who just want to live out their remaining years independently and on their own is not clear. But what is clear is people that need money will do anything to anyone to get it. Having grown up in that poor lower income neighborhood in the 1970's we did not have to worry about robberies, occasional gun battles and knifing but not robbery. Today it has all changed, for the worse unfortunately.
But on the positive side it was wonderful to see our family and friends. Easter was a party cloudy day with occasional showers but it was warm. The day spent there went faster than a dollar at the local gas station but it was well worth it.
Quote of the day from Charles M. Schulz:
"All I really need is love, but a little chocolate now and then doesn't hurt!"
Happy Tuesday and its good to be home!Posted 04-26-2011 at 12:02 PM by dansdrive
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Wednesday April 27, 2011 and its 68.0 degrees outside heading up to 86 with slight chance of a passing shower, that is why I elected to bring my umbrella in this morning. Those passing showers tend to drench more than a steady rain forecast!
Speaking of steady, that is what gas prices have done for sometime now. 4 dollar a gallon gas prices sunk the economy in 2008, we must be smarter now because we will blow by 4 dollar a gallon gas and the economy is still expanding. Amazing the difference a few years can make. Must be why I stuck to engineering and not economics.
Economics is more like forecasting weather, you can be wrong more times than right yet everyday people listen to what you have to say......makes the world go around I suppose!
Quote of the day from Aristotle:
"Happiness is the meaning and purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence."
Happy Wednesday and do you know where your happiness is?Posted 04-27-2011 at 05:26 AM by dansdrive
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Thursday April 28, 2011 and its a cloudy occasionally rainy 74.2 degrees and wind-ing its way all the way up to 80 degrees today. Tornado watch until noon today and very breezy to down right windy! Here is hoping their is no tornado's!
Near had to worry about those living in central Pennsylvania, never actually seen one and that is a good thing. Central PA has lots of clouds and rain. As kids we played right through it most of the time in the summer months. I remember one time in particular where my cousin and I were out doing something and a storm was brewing, we headed for home and arrived just before it hit. My Dad and uncle's were under the aluminum roof of our patio whne the storm hit. There was lightning everywhere. How safe was that under an aluminum roof? Well safe enough as none of us got stuck but we had the closest encounter to a lightning strike as I ever want to get. The end of our backyard had a large garden in it and for some reason a bolt of lightning hit in the garden. I remember it vividly as it was so bright and so quick. I remember the sensation as the instant it hit my mouth went dry as the dessert sand! We were fortunate that day no one was struck. The ground in the garden where it hit was smoking. These were the days before warning were given to seek a safe place during a storm as we get today. Just simply amazing as I think back on it today.
Quote of the day from Benjamin Franklin:
"It has pleased God in his Goodness to Mankind, at length to discover to them the Means of securing their Habitations and other Buildings from Mischief by Thunder and Lightning. The Method is this: Provide a small Iron Rod (it may be made of the Rod-iron used by the Nailers) but of such a Length, that one End being three or four Feet in the moist Ground, the other may be six or eight Feet above the highest Part of the Building. To the upper End of the Rod fasten about a Foot of Brass Wire, the Size of a common Knitting- [nbneedle, sharpened to a fine Point; the Rod may be secured to the House by a few small Staples. If the House or Barn be long, there may be a Rod and Point at each End, and a middling Wire along the Ridge from one to the other. A House thus furnished will not be damaged by Lightning, it being attracted by the Points, and passing thro the Metal into the Ground without hurting any Thing. Vessels also, having a sharp pointed Rod fix'd on the Top of their Masts, with a Wire from the Foot of the Rod reaching down, round one of the Shrouds, to the Water, will not be hurt by Lightning."
Happy Thursday and are you protected from the lightning of ones words?Posted 04-28-2011 at 05:49 AM by dansdrive
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Friday April 29, 2011 and its 57.5 crisp degrees outside in route to a projected high of 73 sunny degrees and for any day that is a super nice forecast but for a Friday its a picture perfect forecast! Tomorrow projected high 74 and Sunday's is 77 and nothing but sun in the forecast. One comment about that..... "Ahhhhhh!"
Good garden growing weather and peering out the window I see the garden is looking good. Not growing as fast as my lawn this time of the year but its growing nicely. The only plants that did not come up yet is the asparagus....so the wait is on! My garden is about a tenth of the size of the one we had growing up. About the same vegetables but just fewer and no lettuce. One thing I do have more of is garlic, have a fair share of garlic planted. The other thing that is neat to me is how far along our garden is here in the south on April 29th versus gardens we had in the north. My garden is easily 6 weeks ahead of the ones in the north. I also get a kick out of people growing gardens now that emphasize the organic part....we always had gardens for the food content, never even gave the organic piece a second thought. Where I grew up almost everyone had a garden and grew their own vegetables. Just the way it was in a poor neighborhood. A lot of sharing went on during harvest season too! People that had fruit trees and grape vines shared their fruits to people who had an abundance of tomatoes and lettuce and sweet corn. The farmers market was the neighborhood street....where have those days gone?
Quote of the day Hanna Rion:
"The greatest gift of the garden is the restoration of the five senses."
Happy Friday and plant that garden you may grow more than food for your family!Posted 04-29-2011 at 06:02 AM by dansdrive
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Monday May, 2, 2011 and its 57.9 degrees outside buzzing on up to a nice 81 sunny degrees. If that's in the offering sign me up! Just delightful!
Speaking of delightful, this past weekend my Son and I made up some planter boxes for the rear deck. This was left over wood I picked up for free off of Criaglist. I still have some left so I have to figure out some more project. These planter boxes were really rectangular in shape, that had dimensions of 14 inch x 16 inch by 14 inches tall. They now sit on the deck complete with nicely colored flowers and grasses, they were my wife's added explanation points to the project. Now onto the patio furniture, buy or make is the question. I seen some plans for some nice Adirondack chairs and table. They maybe in the offering and than again maybe not. This fall my youngest Son goes away to college so our handy helping hand will be off to his University studies. On to learn his way into the future, hopefully never forgetting the values of helping everyone right down to someone. Being fugal to save something or allot for future generations. And more importantly always being himself and honest not only with himself but with the people he encounters along the way.
I'll tell you that the wood we picked up for free as left over unwanted, 'I finished my deck' I don't need it anymore brought hours of enjoyment. Many things were made from the wood such as an Arbor, planting boxes, Bird feeder, and bird house holders but they are all pale in comparison to the time spent as a family making, painting, talking, laughing, smiling, and just being together. You can create a lot from a pile of free wood but the intangibles are truly priceless!
Quote of the day from Dr. Seuss:
"Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind."
Happy Monday and that ole Dr. Suess knew more than green eggs and ham, that is for sure!Posted 05-02-2011 at 06:15 AM by dansdrive
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Tuesday May 3, 2011 and its 63.5 degrees outside heading on up a toasty 85 degrees today. The sun is up nice and bright flooding my garden with its growing rays. My asparagus finally has popped out of the ground, I was having my doubts if it was going to make it. Doubts turned to sprouts!
What else is growing, garlic, onions, green peppers, tomatoes, yellow squash, zucchini, Swiss Chard, cucumbers, Basil, and pumpkins. I have to find some room for some sweet corn, no so much for the corm but for the corn stalks to decorate the house in the fall. My raised garden bed is boarders with some dead oak trees I had around the property. I gave them new life of sorts. I use to have my garden way down in the back of the property but it just did not get enough sun so I moved it up closer to the house and so far so good.
One thing I have not planted here in the south is fruit trees. Grew up with pear, peach, and apple trees. Miss the peach trees, nothing like reaching up a pulling off a fresh picked peach! My grandfather had an old peach tree that yielded large sweet peaches. These peaches were the size of grapefruits and oh so good.
Reminds me of a funny story about those peaches. My grandparents lived down the street from us and our family a beagle growing up that had the run of the neighborhood. In our old neighborhood dogs generally were loose like cats. Our dog had a good pal who lived down by my grandparents, he was a bid ole black lab. He towered above our beagle and he was the enforcer. Our beagle was a bit of a bully who was well protected my the black lab, affectionately names Mr. Nick! Anyway, our beagle appropriately named 'Troubles' would go down to my grandparents to get some snacks or soup bones.
Well when my grandmother would run out of things to give the dogs she would place in a paper bag some old peaches and pits. Rolled up the top of the bag and gave it to Troubles. He would trot up the street with that paper bag in his mouth shadowed by Mr. Nick the enforcer. He would come to the backyard or up to the front porch and drop the bad only to find out they had been had! But he would repeat this rituals several times a week. Pretty funny!
Quote of the day from Emily Dickerson:
"Dogs are better than human beings because they know and do not tell."
Happy Tuesday and what a great day to give your dog or cat an extra treat or two for being loyal and enjoying!Posted 05-03-2011 at 06:08 AM by dansdrive
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Wednesday May 4, 2011 and its 53.8 raining degrees outside rain dropping its way up to 66 degrees today. Maybe a chance of some late afternoon sun rays! Based on the rain I stayed far and wide of Rt 540, took the alternate back roads to the park this am. Rain slick roads and people doing 80+ miles per hour is just to slippery for me!
Rainy days remind me of the days in elementary school where we would have to have recess in doors, either in the classroom or down to the Gym. Tag was never quite as good indoors as it was out. We could get in some good dodge ball games indoors! So rainy days during the school year were alright, not great, no cool, but just alright.
Now rainy days during the summer were plain ole bummers! They meant staying in doors, fortunately my parents had some pretty cool things in the basement that we used as space ships and machines. My Mom had a big press machine that had many buttons and knobs. Not sure I ever seen her use it as some sort of iron to press clothes but for us it was cool. Up until she got an automatic washer she had a wringer washer which acted as a pretty cool machine to be used by us budding astronomers. My dads workbench had broken radio's he was fixing and tools of all types. So rainy days we hit up our basement for hours of exploring the universe if only in our imaginations. That press machine took us to the Moon and Jupiter and Mars. It took us to distant stars and galaxies. The old wringer washer would squeeze out the distance galaxy dust from our clothes so we could analyze what it was! We were living the dream of being Will Robinson from Lost In Space. The dryer worked as a great re-entry module. We could one at a time climb in and imagine we were falling back to earth. Thank goodness no one ever turned the dryer on as we would of burned up in re-entry that is for sure!
We didn't have video games or cell phones we had great imaginations. We were active and not passive. We were doers and not watchers. We didn't have much but when I reflect back on that time I realize we had a treasure beyond measure. We had the gift of imagination to create new worlds and new galaxies. We didn't need to see a screen to play a game we created the screens in our minds and lived out the dreams!
Quote of the day from John F. Kennedy:
"You can't depend on your judgment when your imagination is out of focus."
Happy wet Wednesday and may your imagination burn brightly as your beacon to your future!Posted 05-04-2011 at 05:38 AM by dansdrive
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Thursday May 5, 2011 and its 45.6 degrees outside and with full sun the temperature will race up to a projected high of 69. Spectacular!
Speaking of spectacular I did manage to get out Tuesday evening on Falls Lake for some fishing and just boating around. It was a nice evening. Fishing was not good but the scenery and being on the water was well spectacular! Did not see any deer this time as usually floating in and out of the bays you always come across some deer heading down to the water for a drink. Some of the bays had an abundance of schools of Carp swimming across the top of the water. There were people jet skiing and wake boarding it. There were a number of other angulars trying their luck or just just tying some knots on their fishing line!
As the sun began to set it was time to head to the boat ramp and haul the boat out of the water for another day. On this day the fish have clearly won and that is A-OK with me! But I will try to even up that score another day real soon I hope!
Quote of the day from Herbert Hoover:
"Fishing is much more than fish. It is the great occasion when we may return to the fine simplicity of our forefathers."
Happy Thursday, a.k.a. Cinco De Mayo!Posted 05-05-2011 at 05:49 AM by dansdrive
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Monday May 9, 2011 and its 51.8 bright degrees outside heading up to 78 or so as the high. Nice! A special thanks to all the Moms out there for the special sacrifices all you make to keep this world a turning! Without all of you, kids and dads would be...well....NOT!
Speaking of the inverse of NOT, on Friday went with a friend fishing, took the day off and the boat out but as luck would have it the fish took the same day off! Leaping catfish!! But as they say a bad day fishing is better than a good day at work! I also managed to squeeze in some yard work over the weekend, trimming some more tree branches to give the grass and plants more sunlight. We also had an old Amish built swing in our attic for years. The back of the swing is shaped in the form of two hearts. The house we live in now does not have a large majestic porch to hang it on so it sits in the attic....well it sits no more, it hangs in the backyard! I used some natural pillars, aka trees as the supports. Than built a arbor over the swing. Hung the swing and walla, presto change-o we now have a swing in the backyard to watch the sun slip over the horizon....well at least over the roof line of the house!
All in all it was a spectacular long weekend! I hope all those that could did phone or see their Mom's. If not there is still time, call your Mom and tell her THANKS for everything and that you love her!
Quote of the day from Abraham Lincoln:
"All that I am or ever hope to be, I owe to my angel Mother."
Happy Monday, happy day after Sunday, happy to see another day of sun! Remember, today is the first day of the rest of your life, make that call today!Posted 05-09-2011 at 05:09 AM by dansdrive
