Friday, June 20, 2014

Good and Bad

My great nephew Brady with his Mom Adrienne. On Father's Day

My favorite nephew Brian and his son Brady. Brady is wearing a cape! 

Photos by my niece Ashley - this shows his cape! 
1. Good: It's good to be home after our trip. And my friend Bob took very good care of our plants. (I was so worried about my beast of a fern!)
Bad: I don't have another getaway until September, when we go on our flyfishing trip.



2. Bad: I didn't run for the 2+ weeks in Italy because there was no safe way to do so. In fact the whole time i saw only ONE runner.
Good: Nothing hurt, no lower back, no hip or nagging knee pain.



3. Bad: I gained a couple of pounds - i think most all of it in my face.
Good: I am still under my "Magic weight".



4. Good: The swimming pool is open!
Bad: Screaming Meemies. What the hell is the attraction for that stupid Marco Polo game anyway? They were playing it yesterday.



5. Good: I discovered a new author from my friend Beth and also Cat Petcher (why isn't she here blogging?): Loraine Moriarity.
Bad: I'm going to be finished reading everything she has written soon. Right now I'm reading The Husband's Secret.



6.  Good: I may have conquered a few anxieties about travel - maybe especially air travel since i only used 3 of the 9 Xanax pills that i brought with me to Italy.
Bad: I don't think i will ever totally get over having anxiety about being somewhere unfamiliar.



7. Good: I'm starting my YMCA workout again this Saturday.
Bad: I'm getting ready for new parts to start hurting.



8. Good: Going with my goddaughter niece Ashley and her mom and two friends to look for wedding dresses today!
Bad: Maybe too many opinions on the dress?... (I'm not going to be that awful aunt on Say Yes to the Dress who makes the bride cry because she doesn't like the dress that the bride loves.)



9. Good: Facebook. Thank you everyone who helped me with all of my dumb questions about traveling to Italy. What a great resource it has been for me.
Bad: I spend way too much time on Facebook!



10. Good: I took about 1000 photos in Italy. I have some very good ones that i like a lot. I'm not going to bore people anymore with them since i already put up 100 on Facebook, but I am going to go online and make up a photo album to print from Costco.
Bad: Organizing 1000 photos!



11. Good: Babies! I get to babysit Brady (photos above) on July 3rd in place of his nanny. He is one of the happiest babies I've been around in a long time.
Bad: Nothing!



Notes to Self:                                                                          
Word Count: 438 words
Sunrise: 5:14
Sunset: 9:09
High/low temp: 79/49
Longest run: 37 minutes
# of cat photos hidden on Facebook: 3, plus 1 video. (I left the one photo on Jon Stewart's site though.
Minor irritation on Facebook this week: Photos of 5 year olds in full graduation regalia.
Major relief: That i am retired and don't have to do all of the signature gathering on the class size initiative that my former colleagues are doing on evenings and weeknights!



6 comments:

B said...

I fell down on my job before you left on your trip. My aunt and uncle visit Italy very frequently, and when I read how disappointed you were in the food, I could have hooked you up. They have certain hole in the wall restaurants that they visit every time they go to Italy and in the same towns you visited. I should have hooked you up. You could have mentioned their names (they are friends with all of the owners), and you could have gotten primo food and service.

Shoulda woulda coulda.

Signature gathering sucks. It's so not my thing, but I'm trying. Unfortunately, I have to try 3x as long as everyone else to get their number of signatures. I'm leaving the state in a week. Chugga chugga, chugga chugga.

pearl said...

Reluctant to post since I appear to ice every thread I weigh in on...

I get on a plane tomorrow (business) that starts a 9 week stretch of travel. 2 business trips and 2 for pleasure, so it's all good.

Firedrill at work yesterday became my excuse to skip the gym (we're on the 15th floor, and have to exit the building through the basement - 17 floors of stairs is a whole lotta down! Legs feel like I doubled up anyway, so it's all good.

All the walking I'll be doing on our vacation will be so much easier now. Almost 50 pounds down now. It really is like I stopped carrying a fully loaded suitcase everywhere I go. And I'm still approaching goal - a bit slower, as it goes - but it's all good.

Would love to see your photos. I always post our trip stuff on Shutterfly. I have share sites there, organized by trip. It is a chore organizing all the photos (I shoot with 2-3 different cameras and usually take 1200+ shots) but I love 're-living' the experience as I sort through them. It's all good!

jojo cucina cucina said...

Beth, i would have loved to have known about different restaurants. I really wanted to find that non-touristy place but we really didn't.

jojo cucina cucina said...

Dammit, my iPad makes it difficult sometimes to type messages if i go back and try and correct a problem. Not sure what's up with that. So i have to start a new one because it freezes up.

Anyway, Brian and i were talking that we didn't feel like we really experienced that amazing Italian meal. Maybe it's because we love our own Marzano's restaurant here in TAcoma too much. The owner is from Italy. And we found twice that when we ate out the restaurants were owned by a woman from Brazil (the one place that family who was around us ate at 5 times while we were there) and another was owned by a woman from Finland. Anyway, the wine did not disappoint. And of course the ambience and the people and that it's nothing like anywhere else i've ever been.

pearl, on my Facebook profile page i put up 100 photos when i was in Italy. Because i would get up so early there i just started working on the photos there so i wouldn't be as overwhelmed when i got back. Have you not been able to see them? It seems like everyone posts on the OIS photos but not on them so much. YOu have to click into the actual post to be able to scroll to see them all. I noticed that if you click on just one of the photos and scroll through it will stop after about 8 photos. But clicking on the album name will open them all up.

Those are only photos from the first half of the trip. I might put up a few more that i really like but not THAT many. I plan to make a printed photo album from them, using chapters. I was really pleased with my photos. Brian has great ones too.

jojo cucina cucina said...

That is amazing about 50 lbs! It's funny pearl that you mention a suitcase. When i was packing and weighed our checked bag before we left to make sure it wasn't too heavy it was 35 lbs and it felt SO heavy. And i thought about how many people carry this extra weight, because 35 lbs overweight isn't as bad as it could be.

jojo cucina cucina said...

I shot with two cameras. I also used my coolpix camera when i didn't feel like lugging around my large Nikon. One day i was videotaping a street musician with my little coolpix (that camera is so cute and really a pretty nice little thing!) and i forgot to turn the video off so while i thought i was shooting photos with it i was actually shooting video and it's pretty funny because it's got all this movement and sometimes it captured images as i walked. It also ran down the battery. lol.