May birthday bash

May is a busy month for us with three birthdays, all within 6 days. Hannah turned 13 on the 17th, Chelsea turned 25 on the 22nd, and Richard the big 5-0 on the 21st. We celebrated with a big birthday bash on Saturday, the 23rd, with live music, good food, and fire juggling. I tried to keep it a surprise for Richard but there was no way that I could pull it off. While Sarah, Jonah, and I were hanging the birthday banner from the garage, he walked out and we yelled 'Surprise!'

So, of course, what else would Richard think to do but write a speech! Writing is becoming his life of late (watch for his book "Surviving Cyber War" due out in August, I believe) so it just seemed an apropos time to pen a few words.

I just love this intelligent, humorous, caring man!

A lot going on....

The race to the finishline is underway; the finishline being the end of the school year. This is such a head-spinning time of year with all the activities going on. I want to share a few videos and pictures of late.

Sarah and her very good friend Alissa Neff performed on stage for their very first 'gig.' They are both taught by Detroit's well-known blues guitarist, Robert Noll. Robert has played with some very big names in blues including Stevie Ray Vaughn. He's been around a long while kicking up some bad-_ss blues, if you don't mind me saying. Richard took lessons from Robert for a while, also.

Robert rented a bar for an afternoon/evening and had some of his students play. Here he is introducing Sarah and Alissa with their first song of four that they played. They did a great job and I'm very proud of them. I'll post the other songs as Richard makes them available.


Along with spring comes softball. Hannah's team is doing pretty well; I believe as of today they are 2 and 2. Here is a clip of Hannah crossing the plate after hitting her first home run of the season. She's a terrific hitter.



I've been able to start working on my gardens now that the Mother Nature is giving us quick shots of dry and warmer weather. I was working in one of the areas in the back today when the two cuties next door asked if they could come over. Of course, I love when they come visit and keep me company. They like to collect worms while I'm digging around in the dirt. Here are a couple pictures of Adorable 1 and Adorable 2.

Père Lachaise Cemetery

Back to that trip my daughter, Courtney, and I took in May of 2007 to Berlin and Paris. Gosh, it's been almost two years! It was so memorable and so much fun.

You can see the previous post here where I posted most of the Berlin pictures. Now I want to tell you about and show you pictures of our jaunt to Paris! It will be in several posts; I will need more time than I have right now to post all the pictures I want to.

One of the places we had to check out, of course, was the famous cemetery where Jim Morrison is buried. The name of it is Père Lachaise Cemetery. Lying along with our man Jimmy are a lot of famous people.

Famous French singer Edith Piaf is buried there. (If you haven't seen the movie about her life called La Vie En Rose I highly recommend you put it in your Netflix queue - right now...go ahead...take a break from reading this blog to do it...)

Also, Sarah Bernhardt, a famous French actress known as the most famous actress ever.


Frederic Chopin's grave was laden with flowers when we were there. I can imagine it always is.



Of course the famous French mime Marcel Marceau is buried there but I don't have a picture of the grave nor do I of Gertrude Stein, famous American author.

I do have pictures of Jim Morrison's grave. His grave deserves special attention:
A GUARD! There were actually two hanging around the site; one walked away to the camera's left when he saw me ready to shoot.
This is the famous destination for many American travelers:
I have to say that I was a little...um...not really disappointed but I guess I envisioned a more 'celebrated' grave site. There were definitely signs of vandalism. Hence the guards, obviously.

Of all the graves I saw I was taken aback when I saw Oscar Wilde's grave. It is COVERED in lips! Kisses for Oscar. There are so many that it's hard to make out his engraved name here:
A close up:
Some leave roses and other trinkets:
Obviously these people have paid no attention to this sign. Here it is up close:
The whole gravestone is quite impressive:
Not all the pictures I took were graves of famous people. I got a kick out of these two family members side-by-side:

I couldn't really figure this one out, whether it was trying to make a statement or not. I feel as though there is a story here...
Here is the sweetest thing we saw in the cemetery, a fuzzy guy keeping everyone warm. The graveyard cat:More to come...visit soon!

Jonah's chain maille coif

Pretty dog-gone freakin' cool, eh? Jonah made this hat with chain maille. Chain maille (or chainmaille, chainmail) consists of small metal rings linked together in a pattern to form a mesh. It's a very old 'art' and was used for armour, reaching its apex in Europe, in terms of coverage, during the 13th century when mail covered the whole body. Sounds incredibly heavy!

Jonah's been into chain maille for a little while now and has some cool ideas for other articles. I'll post them here as he finishes them.

I'll be featuring an Etsy artist this week in the EtsyConnction newsletter that makes all kinds of things from chain maille. She has some very cool stuff. If you would like to sign up to receive the EtsyConnection you can check out my other blog at http://etsyconnection.blogspot.com and click on one of the links there.

EtsyConnection newsletter

No excuses other than way too busy now that I'm working full-time. I miss blogging.

Most of you already know that I'm into something new - a newsletter that centers around Etsy.com called the EtsyConnection. I feature three Etsy artists along with highlighting interesting articles that are relevant to arts and crafts. If you haven't checked out Etsy yet I encourage you to do so. It's a website where people sell their hand-made wares; it's like going to an art fair. There are some really cool people doing some really cool things and I hope to introduce them to you.

You can check out some of the issues here but if you would like to receive the newsletter every week subscribe here. Make sure to choose EtsyConnection when it gives you a choice as to which newsletter you want to subscribe to as I publish another IT security newsletter also.

I would like to get the EtsyConnection readership numbers up and with your help I can accomplish that. Pass it on to friends and family. It's a fun newsletter to produce and I hope a fun one to read. My secret wish is that Heather Armstrong of dooce.com mentions me on her wildly famous blog (she often mentions Etsy artists on her blog). She would get a kick out of knowing that she is someone's secret wish. (I love you, Heather, but it's a purely platonic thing.) If you haven't heard of her, she became famous a while back (at the forefront of blogging) when she expressed her opinions of her co-workers on her blog and then got fired for doing so. So much for freedom of speech. She blogs about all sorts of things normal with an abnormal, hilarious twist. Check her out.

I'm open to feedback on the newsletter. Let me know what you like and don't like. Give suggestions as to what you would like to see me include.

TTFN - coming soon: feather bowling 2009. It was a blast and I thank all who participated and wish that all those who couldn't make it were there to revel in the fun. I'll be posting a video or two here in a few days. Check back often!

Great quote from my bro

My brother stumbled across a sagacious quote by the late Dr. Adrian Rogers. If this is the same Adrian Rogers that I find on Wikipedia I can see that I probably wouldn't agree with much of what Mr. Rogers might have said and preached while he was alive but I do find this quote to make a hell of a lot of sense. Here it is:

"You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is about the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it."

Spring has sprung, Pepe le Pew style!

All those who know me know I prefer warm weather and really look forward to spring. Well, we had a little, itsy-bitsy warm up of about a day and a half and that was enough, apparently, to get ole Pepe le Pew stirring and marking his territory.

Richard and I were sitting on the sofa yesterday doing computer stuff (that's a whole other posting - I was infected with a trojan horse!) when we started smelling Mr. le Pew. We thought it was coming from outside, of course, but the smell was getting stronger and stronger. We have a wooden porch in the front that we've often thought could be housing skunks underneath. (We had a mom and 4 babies hanging around most of last summer.) After stepping outside and trying to find the culprit just to have an answer as to where this was coming from we decided to check out our basement. WOW! We were blown away by the powerful stench. I started getting a headache immediately and the cat (why she would choose to be down there is anyone's guess) threw up. The smell was strongest toward the front of the house so we checked all around and up in the ceiling rafters but couldn't find anything.

After having the Consumers Energy guy out just to make sure it wasn't a gas smell (when we went into the basement the smell was a combination of skunk and rubber leading us to believe that maybe it wasn't a skunk, maybe it was either gas or an electrical burning problem) Richard cut a hole in the wood porch so that we could look under to see if the skunk, possibly dead, was under there. But - nothing. We found nothing.

It's getting better but the smell still lingers. We had to have our bedroom window open last night because the smell made it upstairs and made it hard to fall asleep.

The nice thing about all this was waking up to the sounds of the morning with the window open and the sweet smell of the fresh air. It made me happy to know that spring is only a month away. I love sleeping with the windows open and listening to life outside. Especially when the trains go by...

Has anyone else had any dealings with skunks yet this year? Anyone know of a skunk deterrent that we might think of using this year? I don't want these things hanging around our house again.