Good morning all. It is chilly this morning so my hands are cold. I got up with Jack this morning and stayed up so I paid bills today. Guess if I get tired I can take a nap early this afternoon though I want to get a lot of work done today if I can.

I am fixing what Jack calls mutant chicken, (cornish hens) for dinner with my blend of rotisserie spice on them and some kind of rice dish I think. Haven't decided on veggies yet.

Jean: Looks like winter weather is coming your way. I guess it is time since it is almost November. I have a feeling up north is going to be cold and down south is going to be warm this winter. I just wish the leaves would all fall off the tree. Man, I bet bell practice was hard if your hands were cold from the boilers not being on at the church. My nail salon is Asian as well, but they are inside Walmarts so you usually are hot in there. I am sitting here posting with pictures of desserts next to the thread about food lovers diet. Durn, why do they have to put desserts on their advertisements?

Maggie: Fortune uses the same type of flea meds, but with his top being cut short, it is hard for the stuff to get down into the skin without just rolling off his back. It did better doing it little spots around his neck area where his collar lies. He takes Heartguard for heartworm.

Susan: Wowee Kazowee, you have some quilting schedule. I bet it is nice to be busy though. Sounds like you have a great variety of stuff too.

I have been working on the sock, but I get distracted because I have other yarn in my tote that I keep thinking about what kind of socks I want to make with them! lol I haven't ordered my stuff for my birthday certificate yet. I am in a period of indecision. I want to make sure I get stuff that has softness but strength. Thomas said one of his pairs of socks has holes now but I have knit him several so am not sure which type of yarn it was. The ones he outgrew fast weren't fingering weight one level heavier and I think that is why they didn't stretch. These I am doing now have a nice stretch to them and are really soft.

Well, I need to get going and get some work done. I have been having some allergy issues again so have some on and off headaches which slow me down. I noticed Jack has been a bit more congested lately too.

Have a good Thursday everyone! Faye

Good afternoon, ladies! A nice 75 degree, sunny day. I can't wait until I can get the weather forecast for next weekend so I know what to pack.

For the next 7 days all I have is the Y and bible study and a lot of quilting at home. I want to have all my cleaning and laundry done before I go so I can come home and do nothing. Of course, the next morning I have water aerobics and Bella's Belle's and then the rat race is on!

Faye, You can get nylon that you knit into the sole, heel and toe with the regular yarn that makes them last longer. It's labeled for that and usually displayed with the sock yarns around here. I'll be glad for the frost that will kill the fall allergens.

Jean, we change the clocks November 7. That will give me an extra hour at retreat quilting. I think they should just make a 30 minutes change to the time and leave it there permanently. DST from the middle of March to the first week in December and then the little time until I changes again is silly. It sure is dark when I get up now. Our church is in use 7 days a week from early until late so it's always warm. I don't think I could do the bells with cold hands. I usually don't get a manicure because the pins and needles make short work of it but I'm getting one Wednesday so they will be nice to start retreat. We also have a lady who gives chair massages at retreat - $15 for 15 minutes so I'll probably have one on Saturday and one on Sunday. My back gets tired from all the sitting.

Hi, Maggie!

Have a great day!

Good morning girls! Man it is chilly here this morning. I might just have to turn on the heat! It is in the 40's I believe.

Got some distressing news last evening. A girl I went to high school with sent me a message through facebook that another girl I went to school with was dead. I had just talked to this woman on Monday as she had gone to our high school's football reunion in our little town that weekend and posted pictures. I guess her son found her slumped over her computer late yesterday morning. Very nice gal, a labor and delivery nurse and she was only 56.

I am posting my sock yarn pics. I thought seeing the pictures of them knitted up would give you a better idea so here goes. On the first picture it is top left #1278 I bought this yarn for myself, second one is third sock down on right only one with yellow in it and is for my bes friend's birthday, third is fifth down from the top #1161 and the fourth one is #1271 top right hand sock, this is for Thomas.

Jean: You must have been posting on the last thread the same time I was setting up this one. I am sorry I didn't get it done earlier. When I was a kid, we always had a sump pump and the thing scared me to death. lol I know, I am going to miss the warm weather, but can't say I am going to miss the over 100 temps for those two weeks that we had.

Maggie: I really like those little cheeseburgers too.

Susan: Hope you get all your work done and are all ready to go to your retreat. Do they usually have it in a hotel rather than like cabins and such?

Jack forgot to wear his Halloween tshirt this morning. He said he would save it for Wed after the election and wear to work. He is a real ornery guy.

Well gals gotta go. Have a great weekend all. Looks like temps are going to cool down now so it will be time for long pants and sweaters I guess. Faye

Morning gals! Brrrrrr, had to turn the furnace on this morning. Jack went out this morning in a sweatshirt and a jacket so fall is definitely finally here. It does warm up quite a bit in the afternoon still though.

I am so tired. Woke up having to go to the bathroom and midnight and couldn't go back to sleep so sat at the computer for awhile then watched the last half of the Johnny Depp movie about John Dillinger called "Public Enemies." It was pretty good but the man was a killer and like the old Bonnie and Clyde movie of the 60's I think they made him a bit nicer than he probably was. I had a distant uncle that was murdered outside a bank by Dillinger and his gang according to family lore. He certainly robbed banks in my growing up neck of the woods.

I wish they would ship out my yarn. I am anxious to get it, but I have this sock to finish, I had started a pair for Jackson so need to finish those before I start on any others. I want to make my sister a pair for her birthday, which is the day after Christmas, but I am going to use this pretty pink and blue I bought awhile back. I am thinking about making her slipper socks instead of regular socks but who knows? lol I haven't knitted since spring because it got too hot so I am ready to get back at it.

Maggie: Have you read Beck's book, The Christmas Sweater? It is a really good fictional book that has a secret sort of at the end. I saw that book Broke yesterday. In that same veing, Jack's Halloween tshirt is bright blue with black lettering and says "This is my BARACK OBAMA costume, now give me your Candy, your Clunker, your Bank Account, your House, your Health......." He is going to wear it tomorrow. I imagine he will get some opinions on it. I guess we will see Tuesday what is going to happen.

Jean: Wow, I am sorry about your med. I imagine they gauge whether the cost of the one Caduet is cheaper or more expensive than the one amlodipine and one statin drug together. We are so lucky, we don't have to change prescription plans when we go on Medicare and ours is top notch. I am just dreading paying so much more for the medicare payments than the Tricare premiums we pay now. There will be 4 years where we pay single medicare and single Tricare premium. That will still be cheaper than Medicare. I hope what Medicare doesn't pay, Tricare will pick up for the most part. The good thing is we don't pay for Tricare after we go to Medicare. It is premium free then so we will just pay Medicare payments. Jack has a couple drugs not on the allowable list, but had the doctor send a request and Tricare ok'd it. One of his drugs we just pay for and it is outrageous.

Well, Jack is back so I need to go. Have a good Saturday! Faye

Good Afternoon, Flowers! I tried to get in here this morning and never did made it. I hope this site isn't have trouble again. The sun is shining, it's breezy, and 63 degrees -- not bad for the end of October. We had a nice supper and visit with Beth and family last night. Will is enthused about his new job so that made our day.

Maggie -- Bob is a Glenn Beck fan also. He doesn't have the book but watches him on TV when he can. Years ago I made a quiet book for Beth. It was when I worked in the fabric/craft department of a store that is no longer. We could make anything for display and get the materials for free. I substituted fabric and backing for the felt thinking it would hold up better. Unfortunately, when we were on vacation she left it in the back seat of the car and the crayons melted. I did manage to get the crayons out but the colors stained the fabric. I can get free med samples from the clinic but that just means 2 trips picking up meds instead of one. I'm tempted to try the 2 and if they work as well, fine, and if not then appeal the Medicare decision.

"Gma" -- I hope you can sneak a nap in this afternoon. Our church family is waiting for the office volunteer lady to die from pancreatic cancer. She has been in the hospital for a week and is just hanging on. That is so hard on her family who all live away from here. I'd much rather go as your friend did even though that's not easy on the family either. I had to chuckle at Jack's shirt. Bob would wear it, I'm sure! For all of the hospital bills Bob's mom had in the year she was here, Medicare paid for everything except her prescriptions and she had to pay part of those. I was surprised. My dad and "mom" had/have Tricare and can't say enough good about it. She gets her meds in the mail which would make me nervous but she seems to do fine with it.

Susan -- Are you busy quilting?

I'm hoping to get some windows washed this afternoon. They are really grungy from the field dust and rain. Have a nice day!

Jean -- from Iowa!

Good evening, ladies! It's in the 50s. Temperature went down 20 degrees yesterday. My roses have buds. I guess the warn weather confused them but I've had roses on Thanksgiving before.

I emailed you a link to an article on the new ProPoints WW plan. It comes out in England November 7 and the article is from one of their newspapers. Very interesting. It sounds like just what I need.

I maintained this week. Better than gaining.

I've been working on the projects I have to complete before retreat and it's taking a little longer than I thought but I still have plenty of time.

The 2 pills have the same ingredients as the one pill you were taking but that one pill costs more than the two. When you multiple that by thousands on that medication, I can see why Medicare balks at the extra cost. I have the same deal with my asthma meds and its not had to take 2 instead of one. My generic medications are free as long as I use the mail order pharmacy and I pay 2 co-pays for a 3 months supply of others rather than the 3 I'd pay at the drug store. That's $140 a month in my pocket. I have no problems with that, they remind me a month ahead of the time I should reorder and everything arrives in a few days. Nothing to be nervous about.

Maggie, I listen to Glen Beck while driving to work. I like him alot.

Faye, Jack should get a ton of comments on that shirt!

I'm tired so I'm going to watch Antiques Road Show and then go to bed. Have a good night.

Good morning gals! Today is commissary day and hopefully since Navy payday isn't until Monday it won't be too nuts. Jack and Fortune are still snoozing upstairs, but I had my foot go to sleep from laying on it so decided just to get up about an hour ago.

I saw online this morning the sweetest pictures of Marlo Thomas and her family when they were younger up to present day. It was nice to see a showbiz family that actually loved each other. She sure does work hard for St Judes. She is here in town a lot. If you ever see the ad on tv for one of their "informercials" and see their spokeschild, Emma, that is the little girl I made all the hats for a few years ago. Kelly is friends with her mom.

Jack brought me home a lovely surprise yesterday. Whenever he has wanted to upgrade his cell phone in the past, I get passed down his old one. Well, he went and bought me an Iphone yesterday. I didn't think I would use it much since I don't work and such, but Thomas has an Itouch which is basically the same thing without a phone and has shown me his. I have been having a grand time putting some apps on it like games, my bank, facebook, stuff like that. I also spent about half an hour transferring all my address book over. One of the reasons he got me a new phone is that my old one won't "sync" up with our Sync system in the car. It picks up my address book, but I when I call up an address and ask it to dial, it always drops the call. Jack "synced" my Iphone yesterday and called me in the house from the car and it works perfectly so no more struggling to dial if I am driving. We decided to go one step further and get rid of our home phone line in favor of just having the Iphone. We have never had long distance on our home phone because I thought it was ridiculously expensive. I just bought phone cards and used them, which wasn't that big of a deal. Well, our phone carrier has upped its rates and now local service is $66 and I think that is outlandish. The only thing we use on our plan is caller ID but you can't just get that separately so you have to take all that other stupid stuff like call forwarding, etc. I figured between what my cell phone costs were, plus the monthly phone bill at home and the long distance phone card, with the plan we took, we would just about come out even. I am calling them on Monday and having them disconnect it. I talked to someone at ATT online yesterday to make sure I could still have my dsl without a home phone and they said yes so there you go. My brother thinks we should get magic jack, but that sounds way to iffy to me, besides, I think you have to have a home phone number to use it in other parts of the house so what is the idea of that?

Susan: Jack has never taken a combo med but separate stuff for his bp cholesterol. I just take bp meds and I have 3 of them I take. I also take acidophilus, which seems to really help with my intestinal issues, calcium and a multi vitamin plus a low dose aspirin so I take 7 meds all together, but only two of them are big, my calcium and vitamin so I can take them in one gulp. Yes, I imagine he will get smiles or frowns with his shirt depending on how people are inclined to vote! lol He actually bought it to wear to work because he is one of only a few Republicans out at work and let's just say the ethnic group tends to argue with him about stuff.

Jean: Jack and I are on a mail order pharmacy and we love it. Here is the deal. We can get 90 supply for our meds with Tricare/Express Scripts. Our generic is $3 copay and brand is $9. If we go to Walgreens we can get 30 days for $3, if we order them through the mail we get 90 days for $3. We don't pay for shipping, I can order them online and pay for them and they ship them by USPS. If I order refills on Monday, they ship by Wednesday and usually we have them by Saturday as they come from Phoenix. The cool thing is we get to keep this when we go to Medicare too. I hope Will likes driving a truck. Jack had an uncle that drove a semi for years pretty much coast to coast. Jack said when he was in high school he took a summer jaunt with him and he said it was the bumpiest ride he had ever had. Of course that was back when there were no cell phones, no ac in the trucks, no big fancy sleeping stuff, etc. Is Will doing local or long haul trucking and does he have to buy his own rig? Those things can be lots of money.

Still working on that sock. I should have it done the end of the week at the latest. Good thing too because Kelly's birthday is in two weeks. I just realized our anniversary is in 2 weeks too. 38 years of wedded bliss, minus sitting and watching hours of college football on Saturdays.....

I guess I should go and get the dishwasher unloaded and load up the couple things from last night. I think we are going to go out for breakfast before going to the commissary so won't have breakfast dishes this morning. You all have a great day and keep warm!

Faye

Good morning, ladies! It's supposed to be 70 degrees today, then back to 50s tomorrow. What weather!

Jean, you had asked me about the accomodations at retreat. It isn't a hotel, but it has motel-type rooms with 2 queen beds, tv, dvd, etc. No fridge but we don't need it with all the food we are fed. We occupy 3 of the buildings for rooms (69 of us). The main building has the dining room (linen tablecloths and napkins), piano music at dinner, very nice; the conference room where we each have a 8-foot table for our machines and gear, a small room where the girl does the massages, vending machines, offices, etc. These are nice country people and they go out of their way to make sure we have everything we need. They make homemade bread and rolls at every meal and last year we asked if they sold it so we could take some home. They said they never had but if we wanted it, they would make more. The ladies ended up ordering so much they had to come in at midnight to get it all made. That's is my nemisis while there - I can made a meal with homemade bread and a cup of tea. My strategy is to eat half of what is served to me, except fruit and vegetables where I can eat more. I know the Friday lunch is their to-die-for chicken and dumplings (huge chunks of all white meat). I plan on having yogurt and fruit for breakfast that day. Was the 1-2-3 Success Plan the one with exchanges? If so, I might still have it. If I do, I'd be happy to send it to you. I did well with exchanges having lost all my weight on original WW plan. The WW plan now is pretty similar to the Pyramid put out by the government. They are upgrading that this year as well, first big one in 5 years.

Faye, I hope your commissary trip goes quickly. Birthdays and anniversaries at Thanksgiving! Did you get me email about the new WW plan? If not, I'll send it from my other email. It looks real interesting.

Maggie, I never could see any value in Sam's Club for me. Everything is just too big. I can see where it would be beneficial for your church to shop there. Do you have a lot of orders for glass for Christmas?

I put a pot of 0-Point Soup on this am. I'm making a stir-fry for dinner with pork, pineapple and Asian Vegetables (PicSweet brand) to have over rice for dinner.

I need to vacuum again. How can one woman and one cat get the floor so dirty all the time?

Have a great day!

Good morning everybody. I know, it is really early again, but Fortune woke me up wanting to go out so I said to heck with it, let him out, fed him, then sat down at the computer to figure out a conundrum with my Iphone from a problem we were having last night. I wanted to put a purchased ringtone from Itunes on my phone. Well, first I had trouble getting it into the right format, which Jack finally helped me with, then it didn't show up in my ringtones on my phone. We worked for 3 hours getting the thing to show up and it never did. It showed it in the ringtone section of my Iphone tab on Itunes, but not in my ringtones on my phone. I was determined to figure it out this morning, so I googled "ringtone won't show up on my Iphone" and got this technical site that had very good visual "dummies" instructions. I followed them and voila, I now have "Oh What a Night" by Frankie Valli as my ringtone, which is my favorite song.

We went commissary shopping yesterday, came home and unloaded and put everything away then ran to Walmart for a couple things only they have and came back home and crashed for a bit. Boy, they had a bunch of miffed people at the commissary. It wasn't busy at all, but they had a line a mile long to check out. I bet we stood in line 20 minutes and why, they had TWO checkers and they were both express! We then went out to dinner because dummy me put everything I had bought in the freezer and had not taken anything out this morning to thaw! We went to Carrabas which is not too friendly WW wise. I have to say, we had their pomodoro brushcetta and it had goat cheese and it was delicious. It came as plain brushcetta with the pomodoro sauce in a bowl with the slices of goat cheese down the middle. Jack could put sauce on his bread without the cheese and I could put both that way. Jay clued me in on goat cheese when we were in Indiana last time. It is really good. I don't know how fattening it is though. The one thing is basically, I ate my salad and not much else. I got lasagna, but found it to be way over cooked. The noodles were soggy they were so overcooked. I think I ate 2 bites and said ick! I came home and later on made a sandwich.

Susan: I didn't get the WW info email, can you send it again? I don't know where your emails go, because they don't show up as spam either. I am like you, I can make a meal of homemade bread no matter what kind it is. They had great bread at Carrabas last night and I had two small slices and had them take it away before I sat there and ate all of it. I am really not much of a regular store bought bread person, but I do like bakery breads a lot so I have to make sure I don't have them in the house or scarf, scarf, scarf. Your stir fry sounds wonderful.

Jean: I got a big chuckle reading your post about the church member not doing ushering because he has IU season tickets. I wondered why someone who is from Iowa has IU season tickets (for me IU is Indiana University!) DUH!!! We actually had one group of trick or treaters last night, but we have never ever had them in the 9 years we have lived here so I don't buy candy. If my husband had kept the entranceway light off like I told him, they probably wouldn't have knocked. Our entranceway switch lights the front entrance, but also is the light for the upstairs hallway. I had turned it off and told him to leave it off because of just this thing, but he turned it back on to do something upstairs and never turned it back off. I felt bad, but I didn't have anything I could give them! Wow, they build a Veterans' memorial and you have to pay to have your name put on it and then give with the omelet breakfast besides. Guess the $100 is for the engraving and the other money is to have the monument carved and built or whatever. That's some pretty expensive engraving! Since the kids are grown and gone, we don't buy stuff at Sam's anymore either. We have the commissary reduced prices so don't really need to. Jack has always maintained if they would quit paying truckers by the mile and pay them an hourly salary or whatever they would quit speeding so much. Most companies put so many demands on their truckers they have to speed to get stuff delivered. Sounds like this is a good company. We get Blue Bunny ice cream down here but I have never seen it sold in Indiana. We actually get quite a few brands, Angel Food, Blue Bunny, Haagan Daas, Dove, Breyers, Edys, and a few other brands. Jack like Breyers French Vanilla.

Well gals, Jack should be up in about 15 minutes to get ready for work so I am going to go. Have a nice start to your week!!! Faye