Author Archives: Dee

About Dee

I am a working wife, geek, and mother of two with opinions about just about everything which I plan to share here.

Random TV Movie Quote

I’m watching The Librarian : Return to King Solomon’s Mines on TV. I’ve seen it before but there is nothing else on and so I am reading, writing and keeping one eye and ear on the show.

The hero and the girl are traveling, walking through the sand when they stop suddenly because they see this head sticking up out of the sand with some kind of ceremonial makeup on. The head moves and startled the girl asks if he is okay. He responds with a slightly British accent, that he “has been better”.

Chuckle. I guess it’s all a matter of perspective….

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For me, the summer is winding down and while it has been a time of rest and regrouping for my family, I’m getting the itch to get back. There are still things I would have liked to get done here at home this summer but we have been spending our time trying to adjust. Everyone is home and that is a new situation. We also know that our oldest will be a senior this year and the youngest a junior so it won’t be very long before they are out of the nest. I am certain I just blinked and they grew up. And who IS that person in the mirror. She wears bifocals and has lines around her eyes and some grey hair. I’m sure I don’t know her.

Oh well, at least I’m not buried up to my neck in sand.

Are We There Yet Blogging Style!

We had our second blogging class today. I have three more classes to go this month and so far at least 6 brand new bloggers out there. I hope I am teaching them what they need to get started – but here is what they do NOT know:

The new bloggers don’t know that I am sitting on the edge of my seat waiting for them to post, excited about new voices in the blogosphere.

They don’t know that I will come to their school, meet them at the local coffee shop, whatever it takes to help them get comfortable with their blogs.

They don’t know how excited I am to have new friends blogging!
They don’t know how much FUN it can be!

They don’t know that if they give it time they may find themselves traveling some surprising paths because of who they “meet” and what they learn.

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Welcome to the world new bloggers! As soon as you are ready I’ll add links to your blogs to my blogroll here. In the meantime – I’ll try to be patient and not peek.

Harry Potter Disappointment

I am a Harry Potter fan. There. I’ve said it. I pre-ordered the new book from Amazon and we went to see “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” this afternoon. While I enjoyed the continuation of the story of Harry this was my least favorite story and the movie was dark and depressing.

One of the things I like about Harry Potter is the sense of wonder and hope. Here is this kid who has had such a terrible time growing up and has somehow managed to not become bitter. He has a strong sense of right and wrong and knows how to be a friend even though he hasn’t had any experience with friendship. He is loyal, kind, admirable.
In this book and movie it seems like that sense of wonder is gone, the expectations are all bad, Harry spends much of his time pushing his friends away, and in general the quality of the story wasn’t up to the same standards as the others.

Every other Harry Potter book and movie left me wishing they had gone on longer. This was the first one that made me feel like it could have fit into half the time and it didn’t even seem as though the characters liked each other. The only time I saw any of the old Harry was when he was teaching the other students and the part of Ron was almost non-existent.

Sometimes there is enormous pressure on authors who write a very popular series of books to hurry up and crank out the next one. If that’s what happened here it makes me sad. I hope Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is better. If not it may be a good thing if it is the last of the series.

Flickr Goodies

I’ve seen some interesting new things on Flickr this week and decided to consolidate the links in one post. I love Flickr and they just seem to get better and better.
Alan Levine has a post on a new “toy” SlideFlickr which allows you to quickly and easily create a slideshow from a flickr set. Lawrence Lessig has an interesting article on Web 2.0 Ethics and “sharing sites” comparing Flickr which makes it easy to download images and Youtube which does NOT. He discusses some other sharing sites and made me think about the subject of sharing and which sites actually embody the concept and which ones just ride along on the bandwagon. Definite food for thought.

If you haven’t visited Flickr:Creative Commons yet you are missing out. The first page defines the type of creative commons licenses you will run up against and then you can search photos and use them for non-commercial things (like your student’s project!!) without the copyright violation issues.

The last one for today is just gorgeous. I could just sit here and click and feed myself eyecandy. It’s called ColrPickr and it’s by KrazyDad. You choose a color on the beautiful color wheel and it displays a group of Flickr photos that fit the color. Now if this was just mashed up with Flickr Creative commons (hint! hint!)

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You can also visit BigHugeLabs and find all kinds of toys that let you create new things with Flickr photos.

Have fun – I would love to hear from you and see what you are creating with Flickr!

Blogging Basics Today

I taught a class on blogging basics this morning. We had a few technical difficulties that I had not expected. I had planned to get to the room and check it out prior to this class and paid the price for not doing so. The data projector kept giving a message to check air flow and then going off. Because it was hanging from the ceiling it was a little difficult to see where the filter was – one of the class members climbed up and tried but the “tech guys” showed up with a ladder and it turns out that the filter is actually located on the top front of the projector which makes it even more difficult to find.

That problem fixed we moved on though time and momentum were lost. I still tend to throw too much out too quickly and will have to work on that before next week when I teach it again. It will help that I’m to be back in my own room. I’ll be a little more comfortable having the home court advantage so to speak and if I’m less nervous things will go better.

The hard part for me is teaching blogs without teaching tagging and feedreaders. I am going to have to just say NO! to those voices in my head that want to teach it all and show the connections.

I need to work on timing some as well. I hope some of the class will create blogs and that some new voices will join the conversation.

There is a short article on my school blog about it with some links to resources on my wiki.  These are specifically for WordPress and Wikimedia within our system.

An Insurance Tale

We have enjoyed this summer so much compared to last year at this time. Dale was in and out of the hospital for a large part of the summer and the rest of the year he was making the long climb back. We recently went to Dallas to have a procedure done and before we left we were presented with a bill that was from last year.

When we got home I called the insurance company to see what happened. Medicare had paid their part but our private insurance was denying the claim. They initially said that it was because the hospital didn’t precertify. Dale of course didn’t call them because he was half dead from infection and hallucinating due to the pain medication (given to him by a hospital I won’t name since they recently showed a desire to frighten anyone who publishes negative opinions about them by suing them).

Next they claimed that the hospital didn’t provide enough information to convince them that the procedures in the list of charges were necessary. I proceeded to explain exactly what the procedures were and why they were done and you can trust me when I say they were not elective. The customer service person I was speaking to said the only thing I could do would be to request the records from the hospital and send them with a letter asking for an appeal to the insurance appeal department. I had already given permission for the hospital to file an appeal on my behalf about 8 months ago. We have requested records from the hospital for ourselves over a month ago and still haven’t received them so this put us in an interesting situation.

I explained to the person on the phone that this was not going to be a workable option and that I needed to speak to someone in the appeals department. She replied that the appeals department doesn’t speak to the people who file claims. You have to communicate with them in writing. I asked to speak to someone who could help me. She told me (in a rather sarcastic tone) that I could speak to someone else in her department and they would tell me the same thing she was telling me. I asked to speak to a supervisor and was put on hold for fifteen minutes (I timed it and the elevator music wasn’t lousy) before someone answered.

This new person checked back and found that the hospital had sent records – 131 pages to be exact. The reason the claim was being denied was because the doctor’s notes were not legible. We now have three completely different reasons why the claim has been denied and I still haven’t been granted an audience with the great and powerful grand pooba of appeals. I have also patiently explained to each person I have spoken to, what was done and why.
I called the office of the admitting doctor and the person who deals with insurance there got out the notes and found she couldn’t read them either. The ball is in their court now.

I wonder if Michael Moore will be doing a sequel – “Sicko II” – I may have a story for him.

Education Democratically

To me the read/write web displays the best (and worst!) of the true meaning of democracy. People vote with their keyboards on what is the best/worst, hot/not, good/bad.

A couple of good things have happened recently. One, a middle school student from Falls Church entered a video contest on C-Span that not only one him a prize, but improved upon a situation that needed to recieve attention.

The 13-year old Wilson of Luther Jackson Middle School won first prize among middle school entries in “StudentCam,” C-SPAN’s National Video Documentary Contest for his documentary “When the Boys Come Home: The Controversy at Walter Reed.” Wilson took home $1,000 in prize money, and his video will be played at 6:50 a.m. on C-SPAN on June 14.

Wilson’s video, which runs just under 10 minutes long, highlights the controversy surrounding the cleanliness and medical care provided at Walter Reed Hospital, which takes care of wounded American soldiers returning from battle. Wilson relates the issue to his own family, as his brother Sgt. Gordon “Gordy” Hamm is currently serving in Iraq.

“What would happen to my brother should he be injured in Iraq?” Wilson asks during the narration of his documentary.

You can see him on Fox News and others or read the article in the Falls Church newspaper here. You don’t have to be a big Hollywood producer to get your story out there anymore!

Another great thing is a new section that has been added to the iTunes store called iTunes U. You can read more about it on the Apple website but basically what it entails is different universities have some of their classes on podcast and videocast and you can subscribe. Now you can go to M.I.T. and Berkeley and never leave your living room!

Science is Disgusting

Actually “disgusting” is now a science. There has been research on how we associate “cooties” with certain things. For example, if you have a grocery cart full of items and the chocolate chip cookies end up next to the toilet bowl cleaner the cookies end up somehow less appealing to us due to their proximity to the thing we think is gross. It’s kind of like the old saw about laying down with dogs and getting up with fleas. They are using this research to rethink how items are arranged in a grocery store. In the past you would have one aisle for all the baby stuff – from diapers to formula. According to this research the baby food items would be more appealing if the diapers were elsewhere.

As someone who has had to go to the grocery store with babies I have to take issue with this thinking. If I have a toddler in the cart chewing on the package of cheese that I’m planning to purchase and an infant in the carrier screaming because they are wet/hungry/tired I don’t really care what looks appealing – I want everything on the same aisle so I can get what I need and get out. Now that my children are older I don’t really care because I will not be going to either area. I understand the point of the research and the conclusions but I think we take this stuff a bit far.

I don’t like it that someone will end up charging me more for my groceries because they have to pay some researchers who will tell them how to try to fool me into thinking I like something more or less because of what it is sitting next to on their shelf. If they want me to like it more – improve the quality and sell it at a decent price. Take out the trans fat and don’t waste, mistreat, or cheat anyone or thing in the manufacture of it. You can read an article about it here.
The next time I go to the grocery store I will be eyeing the arrangement of the displays with a new perspective. I hope the chocolate chip cookies don’t have “cooties”!

How To Learn

A while back I posted on David Warlick’s article “Of Course I Think It Matters” about teachers needing to be lifelong learners. I found this quote in a later post ” Knowing how to do it — is not literacy! Knowing how to learn to do it — is literacy!”

Then I ran across this presentation by Stephen Downes and it resonated with a discussion we had this morning. You can see the presentation here. Some quotes that seemed to get to the heart of things were:

” 3 principles of effective e-learning
interaction – in a learning community (aka a community of practice)
usability – simplicity and consistancy
relevance (aka salience, that is, learning that is relevant to you , now)”

“place yourself, not the content at the center””Elements of usability :

Consistency…I know what to expect…

Simplicity…I understand how it works…”

“Don’t worry about remembering, worry about repeated exposure to good information”

“Information is a flow, not a collection of objects”

“To gain from self-directed learning you must be self-directed“

If we can make staff-development into self-directed learning and essentially self-development we will not have won a battle, we will have created change.

We need to change the perception through exposure to new ideas, look at it through a different perspective and pass that on, if we want to create a new paradigm and I think that is essentially what we are doing. It just seems slow sometimes.

Day Four

I have completed four days of being smoke free. It feels scary to say it on this blog because it’s very public and I will be held accountable but maybe that’s a good thing. I am wanting one every minute that I’m not up doing something and I am eating everything not nailed down.

My friend B.J. made it to the north rim of the Grand Canyon yesterday and I’m anxious to hear where he went today. I may know before I finish this post. He has taken some great pics. Yesterday he actually got a shot of some Condors! Maybe that’s the advantage of going to the north rim. It’s more crowded at the south rim because the access to the views is easier and there are more places to look so consequently you have a lot more people around.

This is one of my favorite shots from the Grand Canyon

North Rim

This is the shot of the condors.

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Mindboggling Photosynth!

I saw a video yesterday (thanks for the heads up, Tony) that showed a gorgeous application called Photosynth. You can check it out at Microsoft Labs and as the news spreads there will be more videos and articles about it on the internet. If I understand it correctly – image resolution will no longer be a problem.

It creates a three-D image of other images – thousands of images taken by thousands of people. You can zoom in and out without losing quality.

Think back to a time when you have found a picture on the web that you wanted to use in a document. You saved it and then inserted it into your document but it was just a little thumbnail. You stretched it out to the size you wanted and it became ugly, blurry, and pixelated (or blocky) Not so with this – if you watch the demonstration you will see an entire book and the presenter will zoom in and the fonts will stay clear and smooth no matter what size you view.

The three-D part is where is gets confusing and exciting. You have this huge collection of photos (his demonstration used photos of Notre Dame) and all of the view might be slightly different and yet you can use this to get a 3D view of the site. You can also see from different perspectives and it looks like you can see the exact spot the photo was taken from.

Another aspect of this that is very cool is metadata. Metadata is everywhere and it simply means data about data. A non-computer example would be card catalogs in libraries. The card catalog is not the book but it tells you where the book can be found, who wrote it, and other information about the book. Metadata can describe a file or a web page. If you are looking at a web page and view the source code you will see some entries near the top that begin with meta – these usually contain information like keywords that help search engines find the website. Imagine that all these photos have been tagged with keywords and also contain metadata that gives you the time and date the photo was taken, gps coordinates for the exact spot where the photo was taken and much more. Imagine that all these photos coming together as a 3D view of the groups of them and the metadata for one becomes part of all.

I’m still trying to digest it. It gives a whole new meaning to research on the web. I think this will be huge and there will be more and better information as this becomes more known. My only saving grace is that in trying to find out more about it I ran across people much more knowledgeable than I am who were also asking tons of questions.

The implications for ecology, biology, and even astronomy are interesting. Of course we will needs some travelers willing to take their digital cameras to space for that. Imagine using this with microscopic photography, pictures taken from inside hurricanes and tornadoes, legal implications if this type of software is able to create images that can be admitted as evidence in a case.

What about the cultural implications of this and all the metadata that exists out there that leaves our “footprints”. If this application can zoom in on a building detail it can pick out the details of a face or hand in a crowd. We have historically worried about protecting our “privacy” on the internet but I wonder if as we become more aware of how transparent we are and how discoverable, will it cause us to live differently? You know the old saying about people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones? They shouldn’t walk around naked with the lights on either. However – if you know the lights are going to be on – won’t you behave differently? Maybe this transparency isn’t all bad – if it means that we will strive to be perceived as better then we will act better and in the act, maybe become better. As our culture affects how we develop technology we more and more can see how technology affects culture. This is another one of those times when we can’t see ahead to what the long term repercussions will be but this is one that makes me hopeful.

Visually speaking, some thoughts were expressed in this quote “I used to live in Arizona, several years ago, and you’ll notice that the further away you get from a mountain, the more its figure stays the same regardless how far left you go, or how far right. I wonder how the software handles perspective, and distance on this magnitude.
Buildings, which have unnatural forms will look rather different depending on where you are. But mountains tend to retain their figure when you are further away, walking left or right.” http://channel9.msdn.com

Another person on this particular forum brought up the cameras that they use for intricate surgery and how they could use this technology to build 3D surgery so they could study it further.

Blaise Aguera y Arcas is the presenter and worked on the project before Microsoft purchased the companies that developed it. I hope you will watch the video because my explanation and description do not come close to the reality of this application. It truly has to be seen to be believed.

You can see a video here

Summer Is Here

It has rained nearly every day and everything is the yard is green and thriving! I have started on the summer catch-up around the house and have a ton still to do! I made a dent in it today and I will keep at it – like everything else I am behind because last summer was all about taking care of Dale. We got the word today – he has the green light for transplant as far as his health is concerned – now we just need a donor.

My friend B.J. is on a road trip and has promised to blog it. He has already uploaded some photos to Flickr as you can see here.

CadillacRanchBumgarner.jpgHe is in Tucumcari and has already published an entry on http://homer4k.blogspot.com/ I’m looking forward to taking the trip without ever leaving home! He did say that gas ranged from 2.97 up through 3.31 a gallon. Sounds like you need a bank loan to take a vacation anymore!

I shared a link with him for Comic Life which is an application that comes on the MacBook but now is out in beta version for the PC. That means there will be some bugs but when they get them ironed out it will be great. This is a fun application that easily lets you make comic strip like documents using pictures and then adding speech bubbles. It comes with preloaded templates – you just choose one and drag the photos to where you want them. Choose the shape of speech bubble and type in your text and you’re done. Today on Bionic Teaching I read about a class that is using this application to create ads for Greek gods and goddesses selling products. There are also some great creations there on copyright licensed under creative commons.

In 2006 Jeff Han gave a demonstration at TED Talks on an interface-free touch screen -and last night Microsoft announced the Microsoft Surface Computer which you can see here. I would love to play with one of these. Instead of spending hours learning an interface just start moving things around any way you like with your fingers. They also show loading things like pictures and maps onto someones phone from the surface. It won’t be on the market til winter 2007 but it will be making it’s appearance at different conferences and events. You can check back on their site to see where it will be shown next. It will be exciting to see how this evolves and if it makes it into the mainstream market. Imagine being able to do desktop publishing by simply dragging your documents and images around on a template and seeing the text flow to fit. Don’t like it? Just drag it somewhere else. Add voice recognition and we really will be using something that like what we only used to see in science fiction movies. The uses just boggle the mind. I’m sure it won’t be making an appearance in Paris Texas anytime soon but maybe next year at TCEA! You can read more about it here.

Time To Learn

The school year is rapidly winding down and between keeping up with work and my own kids end of year activities I am missing my blog reading and writing. I have ideas and I am trying to catch moments to read everything I can. I can’t help but wonder how anyone is finding the time!

Dale had all the heart tests today and everything looks good for transplant so now we just wait to hear what the next step in the process is. We had a long day but at least it was all in one place.

I want to comment on a post by David Warlick “Of Course I Think It Matters” The part that resonated with me was this

“Sadly, we are a generation who was taught how to be taught — not how to teach ourselves. It’s one of the many reasons why the experiences that our children have in the classroom must become much more self-directed, relevant, and rich. They/we need to learn to teach ourselves. Teachers shouldn’t need professional development. They should be saying, hey, I’m going to teach myself how to do that this weekend. It’s about life long learning. Not about a life of being taught.”

Years ago I was working as a teacher’s aide in a special education 6th grade class. We were self contained for the most part and because of a grant we got a shiny new Apple 2C that sat in the box for a month before I timidly asked if anyone had a problem with me opening the box and seeing if I could do something with it. I then took a couple classes at the local vocational school in Basic and spent weekends typing rows of numbers and letters that would allow the students to answer a simple math program and if they answered correctly a little character would run across the screen holding a sing that said “great job!” The kids loved it and the teacher loved it when I wrote a little program that would let us average grades.

I took a few years off to raise kids but when I went back to work in a school (again as a teacher’s aide) I was the weird one who got excited about staff development. Someone was going to take time to teach me something for free! Yea! I was also excited because it was a time that I had no obligation to do anything but learn – yea again! For those of you who know me you know I have no degree. I’ve had a couple of college classes and some vocational school classes but other than that I am self-taught.

I know that a little part of what motivates me is the constant newness – there is always more to learn and even once you learn something it changes and I like the constant change. I know I can never catch up but that isn’t a bad thing for me. I like the constant surprise and discovery. I like being able to help a student figure out how to accomplish something with technology. I like to help teachers solve problems with technology. The only way I know how to teach is to learn first.
My question is – how can anyone teach and not love to learn?

Is Everything Miscellaneous Or A Soap Opera?

A couple of random things rolling around in my brain this morning. I have been trying to nail down the meaning of Web 2.0 to give a definition to others and it is like nailing jello to the wall. As I research I keep in mind other related pieces and I read an article on tagging and folksonomy on David Weinberger’s site Joho.

I should have known that tagging things would appeal to me. I have always liked playing with and arranging things. When I was little I had one of those metal doll houses with the little furniture and plastic people. This was of course back when we could have swallowed the furniture and died or cut ourselves on the metal corners of the dollhouse. I liked taking furniture and putting it in the “wrong” room. Before people were putting making media rooms complete with little refrigerators and microwaves I knew it would be conventient to have the ability to drink and eat in the same room in which you watch tv.

The first time I saw a chessboard I of course had to spend hours arranging the pretty pieces in what I thought were interesting patterns that had nothing to do with the actual game.

Tagging appeals to me because I can “arrange” information, websites, pictures, media – anything you can save; into patterns that mean something to me. Some of my tags may be at least similar to how you would categorize something and some would have absolutely no meaning to you because they reflect a reference that is personal.

You would not understand why I might scan a photo and upload it to flickr and have it tagged pipeline unless you know that I took that picture when we were traveling along with a pipeline crew. At the same time I would probably add tags that would tell you it was a related to Arizona, 1980, and Grand Canyon. With tagging I have a dollhouse with unlimited furniture so I can have my refrigerator in the kitchen, living room and bedroom if I wish and all at the same time!

Now if I could just tag that pair of sunglasses I lost….

I’d like to hear some opinions about Twitter. I have read come comments about it and even though I have a tendency to sign up for every new thing that appears on the internet I have resisted Twitter so far. I used to watch soap operas (yes I know – confession time) but I don’t anymore.

I do however, get attached to characters in tv shows and like to read books by authors who create multiple novels using the same main characters. I get upset when a favorite character gets killed off a show or has a catastrophe befall them in a book. Is Twitter the new version of the soap opera? I don’t think my life in interesting enough that anyone would care what “I’m doing right now” but I can see how I would get the nosy curious side of me fed by peeking in at what others are doing. If you use Twitter and see some use for it for collaboration or education I would like to hear about it. Have I been missing out?

Big Wheels Keep On turning

Tomorrow is my 27th wedding anniversary. I have two kids in high school – next year and the year after I will be getting ready for first one and then the other to graduate.

I have lived in Michigan, Florida, Colorado, Louisiana, Arizona, California and Texas. I have had multiple jobs including salad girl, waitress, machine operator in a plastics factory, seamstress in a bra factory, art teacher in a residential facility for emotionally and intellectually challenged youth (hope I got that politically correct), “do whatever is needed” person at a small start-up newspaper, housekeeper, teachers aide in a migrant program, night staff in a small private mental institution (yes I’m serious – two of us even set up and dispensed meds), data entry at an office that kept track of licensing for surgical technologists, secretary in a drug abuse recovery facility, lifeguard, and a ten year hiatus in there somewhere to be a stay-at-home mom.

Dale and I bought a piece of land years ago when he did dirt work and he brought the dozer home. I drove it just enough to say I did it, and then we cleared the land, built the pad, put in the forms and poured the slab. We built a 24×24 garage and finished it off so we could live in it til we got ready to build. There’s a picture of me somewhere, nailing down shingles on the roof and another of me putting up styrofoam insulation. The idea was stolen from my parents with the plan to finish paying it off and then build a house. Instead we ended up selling when Dale got a job on the pipeline and we went off and lived in a travel trailer for awhile.

It was during that time that we stayed awhile in Blythe and I took a class in BASIC at the Jr. College there and spent a lot of hours in the RV playing Zork on an old TRS 80. There began my addiction to computers! I got an A in my class and also had access to their library. I read a book back then called Deep Enough by Frank Crampton who had mined in the early 1900s when they did it with hammers. Swinging two hammers to drive the spikes in to create holes for the dynamite was called double-jacking and there were photos of the LaBrea Tar Pits with the city off in the distance behind them. I made Dale drive me to L.A. one weekend just to see them and was totally disappointed to find they had become a postage stamp size park in the middle of huge buildings. I ordered the book tonight from Amazon as an anniversary present for us.
When the job ended we said goodbye to some wonderful friends and traveled a bit and finally settled in Denver til we had our son and decided it was time to head home to Louisiana where the cost of living would allow me stay home with him. Our daughter was born a little over a year later and I spent the next few years up to my neck in diapers, crayons, playdoh, and Happy Meals. When Dale got the job in Texas it was too good to pass up and we moved here and here we have been ever since.

Regardless of what the news may say, it has been a good place to raise kids. If we had stayed in Denver our kids would have grown up in daycare because it would have been impossible to survive on one income. There would have been some advantages but they weren’t the kind of advantages we wanted for our family. Oddly enough the kids probably would have gone to Columbine school if we had stayed – we lived in Littleton.
I remember the day the shooting happened. We were on our way to San Antonio and turned the TV on in the van as we came into Austin thinking maybe it would pick up some cartoons for the kids. Columbine was all over the news. My best friend lived several blocks away from the high school and her daughter had a houseful of kids who were trying to connect with their parents. The nearby park where we took the kids to swing on a visit years before became a memorial site filled with flowers, pictures, and candles. We checked in at the hotel in San Antonio and called my friend to make sure they were all okay. I remember having such a knot in my stomach until I heard their voices.

We all have these days in our lives where we feel that time stops for a moment and we take a little ramble back through the past. This has been one of those rambles. We have now been married for more than half our lives and have been so very lucky. I read today that around 50% of the marriages in this country end in divorce. The big wheel has turned completely around a few times over the years and there were a few times where I didn’t like my husband too much but we waited it out and the wheel turned again and everything came back around.

I think the big problem today is that people don’t want to wait for that wheel to turn. It’s been a great ride so far and If I had it all to do over again – I would. I guess if you can say that after 27 years you have done all right. I’d like another 27 years please. Here’s to you babe – you’re one of the great ones!

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