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| Week One: |
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It's Happy Birthday time
for a whole bunch of us. 
Click on the calendar picture, on the right, to see who's getting
older when. You'll notice that on some of our birthday days there are
multiple celebrants partying as they turn another year older.
I'm going to be adding a new section to my TimeLapse photo section
that shows this kind of calendar for the whole year. I'll continue
adding birthdays to the calendar as we come up on them.  |
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| I wanted to show you a few
more pictures that Tara sent me lately. All of the baby furniture
for Ella has arrived and been set up, along with the new paint and
curtains. It sure looks like little Ella has a nice bedroom to come
home to after she arrives. Tara has had a lot of redecorating
done this past year (the patio/deck, the kitchen, the bathroom, and
Ella's room), and finally added some flair to the plain wall along
the staircase. |
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| The end of last month, I wished Lisa
and Donny a HB*, so I'll start March off by saying HB to Angie and
Ritchie. We didn't have much of a party for Angie; but we did all
get together last Friday and celebrated with her by having a
delicious Dairy Queen cake. MMM |
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Ritchie has gotten this idea that he'd
like to join the Marines someday, so Richard and Angie got him this
cake decorated with the Marines' logo. |
DO, Kayle, and Linda
all sing HB as the candles are lit. |
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the Happy Birthday boy - Ritchie! |
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Week Two: |
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It's time for another trip
to the hospital. No, this time it isn't for any of the usual
suspects (Cliff, Dennis, or myself); this time it's DO in the
hospital. For years now, she's been having problems with her knees.
Her doctors have suggested knee replacements and the removal of a
ping-pong ball sized bone spur. Since she's already been in a
hospital more than she wanted (haven't we all? LOL), she put this
surgery off as long as possible. However, she just couldn't wait any
longer, and if she has the surgery now, she'll be back up and moving
around by the time Summer comes to town, and we all head back to the
pool.
I took DO into the hospital at 5:30 am on Wed. morning and things
went pretty well. They had told me to bring Cliff back up around
10:30 to check on her after recovery and to talk to the doctor. By
the time we got there at 10:15, the surgery was already done, DO had
been in recovery for over half an hour, and the doc was already onto
the next patient. WOW! Linda and I (and her kids, Kerri and Kayle)
did go back to the hospital later that evening and checked on DO
once she was finally settled into a room. She was a little sick but
doing pretty well. Hopefully, we'll have her back home sometime next
week (maybe even on my bday, the 14th!). |
| There's always some sort
of project around that Jim and I seem to be working on, and this
week's job was setting up a webcam at Trent's (Randy's brother)
Dairy Queen over in Canfield (about an hr. away, near Youngstown).
Trent isn't having a problem in his store; but after hearing a
salesman pitch an $8000 surveillance system, Trent knew there had to
be a cheaper solution. Of course, since I've already set up
several webcams now, I was the obvious choice for him to call to get
a more reasonable method. |
Jim poses while I focus the webcam |
That's Carolynn, in the background,
while Trent and I are talking |
Of course, since we were
in the area,
we stopped by to see our favorite Christmas camel,
Herman!  |
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| Herman had several friends
with him in the field. We saw three other camels and a yak! |
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| Jim spent some time visiting with Herman. |
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So that's what a camel
kiss tastes like! |
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Week Three: |
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| Since DO is still in the hospital, we
had to re-arrange celebrating everyone's birthday. Jim and I had
Mike Poland over for a nice dinner to help him celebrate turning 29. |
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But don't think that just because DO is
in the hospital, that she just blew off our birthdays. No siree! She
already ordered and purchased us birthday cakes from the local
grocery store. All we had to do was pick them up and eat them up.
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Although the day before my bday was
unusually warm (nearly 70!), today turned back to real March in
Ohio. It's only 35 as a high today, and snow flakes were blowing in
the air all morning!  These fuzzy slippers that Jim got for
sure were nice to slip on when I got up on such a chilly birthday
morning. |
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Being that it's been four years, it was
time to renew my drivers license too. So after a quick haircut and
hair-coloring, I went and got my new mug shot. 
MouseOver and you'll see that my hair is still listed as BROWN. 
When it's not this wild red, it's more gray that brown anymore. |
For all the crabbing of
mine that you have read here through the years, let me add a section
here about something nice - getting older. I know, most of you out
there really hate the whole "getting older" thing. To be honest, I
can't say that I'm really happy that my hair is grayer every year,
that I've got more wrinkles around my eyes, that my hairline is
still slowing receding (thankfully!), or that every Winter brings on
more aches and pains. But, on the other hand, all those things just
mean that I'm still alive and kicking! WooHoo!  I mean, I NEVER
would have believed that I would turn 44 years old. Every year for
the past decade, at least once, a doctor has told me how very sick I
am and that I probably have only a few months left to live.  And
every year, I've managed to hang in there.  It's actually been
one year, three months, and two weeks since my doctor last told me
that kind of terrible news , and my counts are good enough now
that I'm not expecting to hear anything like that again for quite
some time. For me, getting older every year is a very, very good
thing, so bring on the jokes, I'm GLAD to be old! |
| Everybody has been asking, so I thought
I should update you on DO's condition. As I said before the surgery
went well; but she was pretty sick for the following two days from
the pain meds (morphine drip); but she is doing very much better
now! Within three days from the operation, DO was able to stand and
walk around a little bit. Unfortunately for us, she's still stuck in
the hospital and undergoing therapy for another week, so she won't be back home
until sometime between the 21st and the 24th. |
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Jim and I took Cliff out for some errands the other
day, and we picked up this slightly-used chair for $20 for DO to use
once she gets back home (she needed something with sturdy arms to
help push off from when trying to stand). |
| Hmmm. Tara must like having her kids in
my updates, because she keeps sending more pictures of them to me.
The catch is that her kids ARE cute, so I just have to show off
the pictures that she emails me. Look at this newest batch of
pictures of Austin at five years old now. Gosh! How he has grown up
in just the last year! |
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Ever play one of those slider puzzles, where you
move the pieces around to complete a picture? I dug up some old
coding that I used to use on the Waikem newsletter and decided to
start using it here on my site. Each month now, I'll have a special
picture for you to re-arrange and see. Try this month's puzzle by
clicking on the picture to the left.  |
| If you didn't check out the Happy Birthday Calendar earlier this month, you should look again. I've added more people, and even gotten some of their ages listed. Plus the whole this is very dynamic and every time you check it, the current month will start the calendar and everyone's age will be correctly calculated for that year. Some people even have an email link with their pictures, so that YOU can wish the Birthday Boy or Girl another great year! |
(use the email icon from the left-hand menu and let me know who I've left out. Name, date of birth, and email [optional] would be great to know ) |
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Ok, I've got one more new thing I've added to my website this month. I
recently found a nice little program that will convert my movie
files into Flash files. Because the Flash files are much smaller,
and Flash is probably already installed on your web browser, this
makes a great way for me to starting adding video log (vlog) entries to my site each month. |
| I really hope that you like this last addition, so please make sure
to let me know what you think during the next couple of updates. |
Click on any picture with this "mIkIE" icon
to watch a vlog (video log) entry. |
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Week Four: |
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| It's been a fairly quite week here.
Only a few flurries in the air, as we shiver in a cold snap and we're all anxious for DO to
return from the hospital. So, I'm sitting at the computer for a
while, I stand up to go get something to drink, and what do I see
behind me? Aries up in the clothes basket! He's so sneaky, I
never even heard him. His look of utter innocence caused me to just
burst out laughing. |
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On an unrelated matter, I
thought it would be interesting to show you something about my meds.
When I started taking meds years ago, there was only AZT. Taken
every four hours, it made me so sick I had to quit taking it (I was
beginning to think IT would kill me before Randy passed away!
).
The next regimen had a total of 28 pills; although it didn't make me
sick enough to feel like I was dying, it made me sick enough to
almost wish I was dead. So then the regimen was changed to these 15
pictured below and those were still bad enough to keep me quite sick
(one is a gel-cap with an ethanol-based medicine. Ethanol?!?! That's
gasoline!). For the last couple of years though, things have been a
lot better. Now I'm taking only 8 pills a day, and with hardly any
time or food restrictions!
Three in the morning without food, and five with my dinner each
night. |
Meds from June '01 |
My current daily meds in '06 |
| Take a gander at this pretty emerald
green dress that Linda recently made for a friend. I really should
set up the second bedroom in this house as some sort of photography
studio, with all the pictures I take of people's creations-for-sale.
LOL |
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Thanks to everyone that emailed me about the new
video log entries that I started adding to the site. So far,
everyone says that they like the idea and thought it was really
cool. So make sure to check out the newest video log entry in this
next section.
(Remember to look for the "mIkIE" icon!) |
| Well, the word is that DO will be
released from the hospital sometime towards the end of this week. So
it's time to bake the cookies! (Remember reading about the idea that
Jim and I had back near the first of the month? )
The almond cookie dough is very dry and a real pain in the butt to
knead; but I rolled and cut until I had 52 "playing cards". |
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Boy, did they smell good as I peeked
into the oven to check on whether they were done or not. MMMMM!
Caution:
Hot Cookies! |
I let the cookies cool until Jim got
home after work (he's working at a Nissan dealership [just
up I-77 almost into Akron] and doing very well! ).
No, these cookies didn't change colors in the baking or cooling.
This is what they looked like after we used a brand new product -
spray cake icing! To make the cookies resemble playing
cards, we sprayed the "backs" red and sprinkled a little red sugar. |
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Never interrupt an artist!
MouseOver Special! |
| A light coating of powdered sugar and
some red icing on the front turned these cookies into Hearts and
Diamonds. |
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Black was a very hard color to mix up;
but we did add some Spades and Clubs to our "deck". |
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Video Log Alert!
Jim works on decorating the cookies as we watch results night of
American Idol. |
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Mixed and matched, the cookies are
"glued" together with a little bit of icing. When they get taken up
to DO's house, I'll finish stacking them up into the "house of
cards". |
Jim always like to take "Batman"-shots
(If you ever saw the old Batman series, you'll remember that they
liked to use those crazy off-kilter camera angles.) |
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| The
finished product! |
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WooHoo! Look who I'm getting to
chauffeur home from the hospital on Thurs (3/23). Finally, Joyce was
released from prison (Mercy Medical Hospital) and got to come home.
She'll be using a walker for a while; but she's healing well,
following through with therapy, and already able to get around the
house some. |
Poor Rosita just hasn't been herself
the last two weeks with DO gone.  Poor DO could hardly breathe
with the doggies kissed she got after getting settled into her new
chair.  |
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Linda took some vacation
time, and arrived with these lovely flowers and balloons
to celebrate DO's arrival back home. |
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DO is VERY happy to be home, and was
really excited about our cookie house of cards. |
DO, I hope the rest of your recovery
goes well!
"I love YOUR cookies"
and can't wait to have you back in the kitchen.
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Recently, I was a little ornery; but I've put things back right. Becca has a tendancy to look at my site a lot, and she uses the search function. I've got no complaints about that. The only problem is that she ONLY uses it look for pictures of herself.  So, with a little nudge from Jim, I gathered some new pictures (of hags, ghouls, and monkeys); then I rigged the search function so that a search for "Becca" showed all of these pictures.
After Ritchie's party, at the first of the month, Becca knew I had taken pictures, and went looking to see if I had added any of her. That evening, I got a phone call from Becca. "Uncle mIkIE," she cried. "Something's wrong with our computer. When I searched for my pictures, it keeps showing me all these monkeys and monsters!" While she had me on the phone, she even refreshed the page and got the same results. Of course, Jim and I, and Becca's mom Angie, all got a good laugh out of this. But now, I've fixed the search back. A search for "Becca" will really show her pictures. If you'd like to see the phony set of pictures, type in "Becca2" in the search
box. (Don't forget to click IMAGES )
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