JEAN: Sounds like you had quite a treasure hunt! We had quite a nice time at dinner even getting my sil a birthday cake with T eating most of it! He had fudge frosting all over his face and was so cute. Oh, we have a Mercury Grand Marquis, which has a 5 star crash/safety rating so I guess maybe that is why the damage was not really serious. All I know is I don't want to do THAT again! Our tags are $103 and if not for this big tax they hook you for to pay for this stupid Fedex Forum complex here they would be about $35. That's not bad considering Indiana's were based on how big and how old the car and you paid excise tax accordingly. If we had bought the Marquis in Indiana our tax would probably BE that $500 a year. At least the inspections are free. Virginia has a tough inspection and it costs or did about $30 bucks every year plus having to fix this and that. Ours is mostly lights and turn signals, and omissions. Virginia, they checked tires, brakes the works and they had to be top notch and back then we were poor as church mice and always dreaded it every year because we knew we would have a repair of some kind.

Hey, I breezed right through Friday never even realizing it was the 13th! I guess I had my "13th" on Thur, huh?

I bought the prettiest comforter "bed in a bag" deal at Wally's. My bedroom is gray and maroonish red with one wall being stripped gray and red. I found a floral type comforter set all in the exact shades of gray and red and it looks great for less than a $100 bucks with pillow shams, full set of sheets, dust ruffle and comforter. The one I had been looking at was going to cost about $300 just for the comforter and dust ruffle. Glad I found this one.

Have a great Lord's day ladies and Jean keep warm!

Faye

Morning ladies.

I got over in the pool again this am and it was so cold. It is the only time that I dread it. Oh well, it is something that has to be done and I am not going back to walking until I absolutely have to. We are supposed to have a turn around in weather and warm back up into the 90's again, but it will take a week of hot weather to warm up the pool any I am afraid and that means overnight temps have to be up and they have been in the 50's.

I am including a pic of the bedroom so you can see it. Now if we can get flooring replaced it will look pretty good. I am sure it has ever been replaced and is pretty sorry looking.

Maggie: Hope you have figured out why you can't get into the site and will be back with us soon. We have become so tiny now that if all three of us don't post everyday it is kind of ost feeling!


Jean: Sounds like you had a busy weekend again. We didn't do a lot yesterday but I had a lot of errands on Saturday to try and get done. We have yet to have any family or friends venture down here except our son. My sister keeps insisting she is moving here when she retires. We shall see. Her dh has MS and is getting worse and worse so I know the warmer weather might be tough on him. When does school start for you? Our kids went back the 9th.

Well, I need to go and get a shower.

Faye

Jean: We painted that wall. We started doing it the proper way by using a chalk line but found it just wouldn't do right so dh did it by sight and only made one mistake and that is covered by the bed at the bottom. I don't think he will ever volunteer to do it again though!!!! At one time, I wanted to paint the hall upstairs using 3 colors of green and doing this plaid effect but I gave that up when I found out how much work it is. (saw it on the BBC version of trading spaces a couple years ago)

My bil is in a scooter permanently now, has bowel and bladder control issues and falls a lot. He has a real problem with heat as it tires him out so and with our humidity I am sure it would exhaust him. The thing is, just a half mile from here is a retirement community that is gated, all on one floor and most likely handicap accessible. As they have had to call the fire department numerous times to help get him up when he falls ( he is probably 250 or so and pretty tall,) it would be good because we have two fire stations within 3 miles of us each way and the hospital is 5 miles from our condos so it is about 4.5 from the retirement community. She is pretty serious about moving so I may get her some info from their rental office. She turns 65 in 5 years and he in 7 years. The house is pd for so if they would sell it and invest they could probably do ok for their retirement years and they would be closer to me. She has had a pretty rough life with her first husband being 20 years older than she, alcoholic and abusive and committed suicide when the kids were teenagers. She married this man knowing he had MS but he was totally mobile then and I figure she didn't want to be alone anymore, which I can understand. Now she is the total breadwinner, is in a poor paying job that she can't quit because she needs benefits for them medically.

Well, Jack will be home soon so I better git!

Faye

Howdy

Well I got on but it is with my old dinosaur of a laptop that would probably be faster if I could use a crank insted of electricity. It took me 20 minutes to get here and now when I type I type two whole lines before I can even see what I type. The problem lies with my comuter and if I want to get in here I will just have to wait till I have a good block of tiime and use this one since none of the experts hve a clue what happend to give my big one a glitch. Right now I have to go fix dinner so hope later I can come try this again. I am thinking I might take this little jewel down and see if they can speed it up a tad.

Morning ladies.

Whooee, we have a storm brewing in the government here again. I know you have probably seen all the stuff that went on with the Iraqi delegation that the stupid head of the city council refused to allow into the building and then said if they came in he would follow it with the bomb squad. Of course after all the brouhaha he is backtracking and lying his teeth off. Now the jerk of a mayor has again fired another police chief and his second in command and told them to clear their desk immediately. This guy is crooked and as power hungry as you can get. He has been through SIX chiefs since he took office and it is all power related. He pulled up a week ago behind some police officers giving someone a traffic ticket in which they found drugs in the car and the mayor reamed them about being too slow and fooling around. Believe me, in this city cops do not pull some one over and "fool around." Until the dopes here vote him out we are going to continue to have these problems. Sheesh!

Jean: I will be thinking of you today going item by item on your agenda. Don't you just hate when they treat you like kindergarteners?

Maggie: Hope you get your computer up and running right.

I have to take the car to the adjuster this morning so we will see what comes of that. I wish Jack could have done this because women don't seem to get fair treatment when it comes to automobiles. Jack says they know what they are doing and it will be ok.

I better get going and get a few things done before i have to go over there.

Faye

Jean: Donuts, huh? They are a true weakness of mine. Like Lay's potato chips say, I can't eat just one! Sounds like the rest of your week is going to be very busy. Never enough time I guess no matter what.

The adjuster went great yesterday and he was very nice. Answered all my questions and everything. It is sure easier than it used to be with the 3 estimates stuff and all that. He just takes photographs, writes it up and voila issues a check or in my case they mail me a check when I decide who we are going to have do the work since the car has a lien they have to issue to us as well as either the lien holder or the body shop. I also only have to call the day before we take it in and they will have Enterprise have a car for us to use along with Enterprise billing Geico directly, which is cool.

Yes, our government is a total mess here. It is all power politics hidden behind smiling faces. Reminds me of Chicago! There is a lot of dirty stuff here. We have a guy who just 2 days ago went to prison for embezzlement but get this, he was allowed to retire with his pension and knowing he was going to turn 55 and his pension would double, got one of his cronies to put him back on the county payroll the day he turned 55 so he could double his pension! We have city and county mayor here and the county mayor knew nothing about this and blew his stack when he found out. It just goes on and on. They now want to increase our property taxes because of cost overruns on the behemouth Fedex forum they built here to the tune of $250 million. That combined with the fact the last thing they built we still owe $20 million on you can imagine what property taxes etc are here.

Well, I need to get going for the morning.

Later

Faye

Jean: Hope your headache is better and you can adjust to that lousy school schedule. I know dealing with special ed kids has got to be doubly difficult because in this day and age it is more trouble makers and less special needs kids.

I was having trouble with my contacts so I got up and took them off but my one eye is still bothering me so I decided to get up for awhile and see if it would quite being scratchy. I thought maybe it had dried out from the fans in our bedroom. We use fans including the AC on a higher temp to try and keep our utilities within the "not go broke" range.

Maggie: Sure wish you could get whatever messed you up straightened out and back on here.

Bubs and Gloria we miss you guys too!

I will check back in tomorrow morning. Everyone have a good night

Faye

[SIZE=3]GOOD AFTERNOON MAGNOLIAS[/SIZE3]

A hazy, warm Thursday but there is a wonderful breeze blowing that has taken away the humidity.

MAGGIE: I sympathize with your computer problems...hope they are resolved soon and to your satisfaction. I have been having more problems with mine. 1st it would not hold the internet connection and then last night it would not let me shut down. I had to pull the plug. Today my computer "nerd' neighbor...and that is his discription of himself, just got me up and running. Had to down load the 'support 2' pack from HP. Hope that takes care of this puter for a while. It is new, December, and so many problems. Your neck of the woods has been having many fires....I hope they are not too close.

JEAN: School, it doesn't seem possible that you are starting a new year. I hope that the schedules difficulties can be straightened out so you will not be too stressed!

FAYE: Oh DEER! Not a fun thing to have happen but glad you are all right and the car can be fixed. Your bedroom looks beautiful. I only wish my walls were in good enough condition so we could paint. We have to wallpaper and that is so expensive.

Have had a crazy summer and the weather has been crazy too. Lots of rain lately. DH has taken advantage of a rather dry day to mow back and front lawn. I Just heard the mower stop so must get some cold lemonade for him.

Gloria in MA....keeping in touch.