pj party

My BBF, Barb, invited me over to her house for a pj party/movie night on Friday. She had invited several ladies but in the end I was the only one able to keep the date. Her hub, Mike, took refuge in their upstairs TV room. Barb provided the movie (Road to Rodanthe), a dry sparkling rose wine and dark chocolate M&Ms. I brought along two of Bonnie's heart-shaped sugar cookies and the ingredients to make a chicken pesto pizza. While the pizza was baking and the champagne bubbles were going to our heads, the phone rang. Barb looked at her caller ID and said in an apologetic-sounding voice "It's my mom". Having just spent an hour on the phone with my mom the night before, I know how important it is to take that phone call from your mom. I told her to go ahead and answer it. Flo had called to inquire about the Continental Flight 3407 crash which had occurred a mere two miles from Barb's house. While she chatted with Flo, I tried to take Elmo's picture.


Elmo is the younger and much more energetic of Barb's two look-alike dogs. Buddy is the other. Elmo was very happy to receive the attention. So happy that he just couldn't sit still for me. After Barb wrapped up her call with Flo - who didn't want to keep us from our movie - Barb held Elmo still so I could snap this pic.


You can see how much fun we were having. We ate our pizza standing at the countertop and blabbered on and on, then settled in for the very definitely chick flick movie. It was a wonderful evening.

treats

Friday... another Jean's Day (donations going to the Alzheimer's Association this week) and the day before Valentine's Day and Jeremy's birthday. Caroline was the last birthday so she was up to bake a cake for Jeremy. Fortunately for Caroline, her mother, Bonnie, was making a trip into Buffalo and offered to bake Jeremy's cake and bring us cookies. Bonnie is a retired school teacher who keeps herself busy with two part-time jobs and doing things she loves to do. One of the things she loves to do is bake. Caroline told me that Bonnie was asked to bake wedding cake cookies that will be given as favors at a wedding. I hear that Bonnie will be decorating these with candies that look like pearls and I will be anxious to see the final result.


Caroline and Bonnie
We were teasing Caroline at lunchtime that we were going to kick her off the birthday list and replace her with Bonnie. But even though Caroline often has peanut butter sandwiches for lunch, her cooking skills are not to be sneezed at. She made Jeremy a lovely and tasty Oreo cake for his birthday last year.


Jeremy cutting his Holy Cow Cake. Paula remembered that this same cake used to go by a different name a few years back. Does anyone remember the Better Than Sex Cake?

more time than money

When I was in college I had very limited funds and had to be creative in coming up with a valentine card for B. Sew... I used to make them. I was remembering a fabric card that I made for B. I dug around in a box of keepsakes and found it, but I also found two other cards that I made for him that I had forgotten about. One is the above pink satin (pin cushion?)with embroidered heart of my design.


front of fabric card


and upon opening....I had to keep it simple for time and space reasons.


But finding this one really delighted me. I even made the envelope. It has two cancelled 10 cent stamps on it. Inside are six pages of babble and pictures cut from magazines proclaiming my love for B. I showed it to B. He said "Boy, that's really something. You should keep that." so after photographing I put it back in the keepsake box.

tax games

Each year when tax season rolls around, we like to do little things at my firm to keep people motivated and give them a fun little little break from all the late nights and Saturdays. We have the fitness challenge that I already blogged about. So far I am on goal. With the added bonus each week there are 15 points max that you can get. The bonus last week was a nutrition quiz. I got all 15 of my possible points and I'm still on track this week. It's amazing how this little challenge can motivate me to go down to the cold basement and run on my treadmill at 9:30 pm when I'd much rather be reading or blogging. Our challenge this week is to see how many sit-ups you can do during a television commercial break. Since I rarely watch TV I guess I'll have to turn it on and wait for a commercial to meet my challenge this week.
Caroline runs a Bingo game each week. We each receive a Bingo board with four games on it and she doles out a few numbers each day. We usually have a winner by Thursday or Friday. The winner gets a gift card to somewhere. I used to run a Boggle game but this year I wanted to mix it up a bit more to appeal to more people. Last week I sent out a word search game and 22 people played. The grand prize was a Target gift card. Two winners each week get to chose a gift from my Box-O-Surprizes which is filled with various items from Target's $1 section. This week I decided to do one of the games that is circulating the Internet. The grand prize will be a gift card from Wegman's. Here is the e-mail I sent out.

Rules: It’s harder than it looks. Copy into a new e-mail, erase my answers, enter yours and e-mail back to me. Use the first letter of your name to answer each of the following questions. They have to be real, nothing made up! You can’t use any word twice and you can’t use your name for the boy/girl name question. I will be posting these on the outside wall of my cube for all to view. So if you don’t want yours posted, please indicate that when you e-mail it back. Grand prize is $10 gift card to Wegman’s. Have Fun!!

1. What is your name: Ramona
2. A four Letter Word: riot
3. A boy's Name: Robert
4. A girl's Name: Rebecca
5. An occupation: realtor
6. A color: Robin’s egg blue
7. Something you wear: ring
8. A food: rutabaga
9. Something found in the bathroom: razor
10. A place: Rwanda
11. A reason for being late: retching
12. Something you shout: Rebound that ball, y’all
13. A movie title: Remember the Titans
14. Something you drink: Roobios tea
15. A musical group: Radiohead
16. An animal: rhinoceros
17. A street name: Randolph
18. A type of car: Regal
19. A song title: Ruby Tuesday
20. A verb: reticulate


My firm also provides us with Saturday lunches from various restaurants interspersed with subs or deli trays from Wegman's. It's always tasty and there is always a lot of it. I didn't work last Saturday so I missed out on the pancake breakfast that was prepared for us by the partners in honor of our being named one of the Best Companies to Work for in NYS. We have received this honor for the past several years for WNY but this is the first year for NYS. We will find out our ranking in April when Caroline attends the celebration dinner. The wall in this picture is the one that we will be crashing through after tax season to reveal the new space that is being built out on the other side. So we removed the pictures and everyone signed it. Now we kind of like it but I can't wait to see our new eating area. Hurry along, Tax Season.

for you

This one goes out to the ones I love. I've been too busy to post this week but remembered this photo I took last fall while I was out for a Halloween walk. This one beautiful rose was blooming next to Marinaccio's restaurant on Main Street. So with Valentine's Day coming up, I offer it to you.

warm up

Dirty Snow Mountain Range

Sunday it warmed up to the high 30’s. While I was shopping at Wegman’s all the chunks of dirty ice and snow that had been clinging to the underbelly of my car fell off. When I pulled out of my parking space I left a perfect rectangle of dirty snow chunks. After I arrived home and put away my groceries, I decided to go out for walk on my five mile path to enjoy the sunshine and warmer temps and because it was the first day of our fitness challenge at work. One point per day for eating 5 fruits and veggies, 1 point for at least 30 minutes of exercise. There will be five winners who will receive a $30 gift card to Dick’s Sporting Goods and everyone else will receive a $20 card to Dick’s. I think I can be one of the big winners. The Dick’s nearest to me is located in a strip mall on Transit Road right next to BJ’s Wholesale Club. I just think that’s wrong. Having BJ’s and Dick’s side by side in a strip mall.
My walk turned out to be a bit of an obstacle course. Snow up to my knees along Garrison Park. Thankfully I was able to take Gas Station Pass through Dirty Snow Mountain Range.


And then a water hazard


and another hazard....this one of canine origin, I believe


At last....open bike path


Back on Main Street, I encountered this obstacle but managed to make it past


But then this snow dude tried to coax me to sit on his lap but I didn’t take him up on it


Along the way I stopped to talk to many famous men but found them to have rather wooden personalities. Frank Lloyd Wright ignored me but his plaque said "For a period of 22 years (1927-1949), a critical mass of Wright's designed structures stood in and around Buffalo." I don't think Frank would have been so snooty had he known that someone had used his crotch as a disposal site for their chewing gum.


A final water hazard and then home again.

immortal

These are the very same mums from my January 14th post. They were several days old then and they are still going strong today.


Carnations on the kitchen table. One week old and still looking good.