Memorial Day Memory

My father's Army unit in WWII. Not sure whether they had arrived in Europe or were still in the US. My father is top row center, the tallest man in the unit. Ahead of them was the Battle of the Bulge and a freezing cold winter. My father came home but was not the man who went to war at 23.

Which veteran is???

Short Blog Break

With a lot of regrouping on the home front, a few things need to go on the back burner so we can sort ourselves out. Sometimes you just have to slow down and look at what you really want. Let the waves of time wash over you.

See you all in a week or two. 

U Turn

Life Changes happen


I find myself not where I thought I was

Learning new things seem overwhelming

There are tears of frustration and exhaustion

His life feels the same

An unwelcome project that has a major loss as an undertone

OVERWHELMED

Too tired to see anything ahead but another time of stressful choices

He offers me a choice I need, we need

Stay

Rest

Enjoy what is

Stop   and    exhale


Peace

Wordless Wednesday 11 05 25

original

Scrapping Weekend

I love when Designer Digitals have their quarterly sales and chats. The sales are 30% off and the chat day is a long long great one.

The sale is still on through Tuesday but the chat day was Saturday. I love it when I have the house to myself and can sit (or stand) and chat and play all day. This year I decided to try and go down to the kitchen and stand at my Macbook. I did the funny leg exercises my former boss did while standing to talk on the phone. Alternate bringing each foot back to your butt while you stand. The chat started at 8am and the last one started at 11pm. I almost never make the 11pm one and didn't even try this year! Why would you do all these chats? Well, each hour there is a Designer Digital freebie in addition to lots of advice and lots of chatter.

After a good bunch of these chats I have learned not to try and scrap AND chat tho I could do it more easily than my earlier chats. Then I was just trying to get a handle on PSE (really I was pretty clueless) and would get frustrated to tears. I knew I had a learning curve to get over but like so many negative things, I wondered if it would ever end. It did.

Saturday I had loads of fun, got most of the day's free products, and went to be tired and happy. Here's what I made. This first one was for a 30minute challenge. Phew! In 'the old days' I should have known better to try and attempt a 30minute one. But what did I know then!! (I'm talking about 2+ years ago...)

This one only required that you use the black tag.

This one had you use a text freebie and I used that "This much I know is true" wordart, which I also used later on the image you see on top.

So that was my Saturday along with some batches of weeding! Hello Monday.Remember, that 30% sale is still on until Tuesday midnight! [ETA - Actually the sale continues until Wednesday May 25th at 3am EST (Midnight California time on Tuesday)]Over 9,000 products on sale! Designer Digital Products .

Sunday Serenade 11 05 22

Well, I'm still here and I guess you are too. Saved. So far. So good.



I guess this is a different kind of saving, giving us all another chance to think what could be different.

Happy Sunday!

Popcorn Time

Actually, there was no popcorn on the flight back from London, but BA did have some good flicks.  I had neglected to bring my own headsets for my Macbook but got a cheap set with a magazine at Heathrow. However when I saw the lineup of video/audio and the ease of switching channels, I stuck to the entertainment BA provided.

I first watched

This was perfect after the time in London and was funny along with being a good view of the identity struggles of so many Pakistani immigrant families. It's the kind of thing many of our own grandparents dealt with. Such a love-hate relationship with the country they left and the one that gave them shelter.

Later in the flight I decided to watch some eye-candy. Jason Stratham.

Really brutal but no nightmare worries as I was watching this in the late afternoon as I switched through time zones. Ben Foster was really chilling too, the kind of character you'd avoid making eye contact with on a bus or tube.

Since coming home, I've caught up with two Netflix dvds that sat for a while. Doesn't it always seem that as you're going away, you get that 'good' situation where the one you want isn't available so you end up getting your next-on-list AND the first choice when it comes in?  I finished up the British series

which I grew to like a lot for some great lines, tho watching the whole series straight through was a bit too much.We were actually in the bookshop that serves as the series model when in London, but didn't make the connection then. The other movie waiting for me was one by Majid Majidi. Fascinating Iranian film. Baran, the title and the name of the Afghan girl who poses as a boy to help support her family. The word also means rain. 

It was fascinating to me to see the images of southern Tehran, an area I was never able to visit in my short time there. Looking north towards the Alburz mountains was a view I had from my apartment but I left before the winter snows came. btw, the film was made in 2001 so it's hard to imagine life today for those Afghani in Iran. Another case of being torn between two countries.

Today? well no movies for me. Today is an all day chat at Designer Digitals  with many prizes to be given and a lot of fun to be had. If you're a digital scrapper, head on over and join in!

Is tonight a movie night for you?? I'd love to hear about your choices.

Flashback Friday 11 05 20

A winter vacation, our first abroad together where we had to function in three different languages - that we didn't speak, utilize three different currencies, and navigate three different city metro systems and take international flights and trains. All in 9 days! I decided this would be the watershed experience to see if we could manage such a vacation. Fortunately, the major details were handled by Austrian Air, so our flights and inter city trains were booked as well as a hotel in each of our three cities - Prague, Vienna and Budapest. It was a package I noticed in the newspaper one July...all of this for $999. per person. I booked it immediately for that December.

We loved the trip and decided that together we made one whole brain since once of us usually was a bit confused or totally turned around. Fortunately, we never wigged out at the same time! The Warhol image shows the many sides of my dh during the trip including a coffee house stop in Budapest. Sadly our metabolism couldn't handle all the coffee and pastries we COULD have eaten! I think we have to go back and try again.

365 Week 17 and 18

These are the weeks before we went to England, so I decided to stretch the US part into 2 pages. Now England can be on its own. I've decided that I am just going to put the UK layouts right into the same book or album. Simplify, simplify, simplify. That way I don't have that 20 page Shutterfly requirement hanging over my head. All in all my 365 is really becoming more like Project Life which is nice since that's evolution.

Of course, all this week was leading up to the Friday and the Royal Wedding. I know that wasn't the case for many people, including my dh who couldn't care less, but I lived in the UK for seven years and visited many times after that. Fortunately for me, my dh was away that day and for the rest of the weekend.  The 'telly' was on for a lot of that time!

More shots of the television, and not all that bad considering they were done with my iPhone. Then it was pack the clothes and get ready to GO to England on Sunday. btw, we had our trip planned before the wedding was announced and were grateful to be going later rather than during.

Wordless Wednesday 11 05 18 -an Italian memory

Orvieto memory

Digital Life, the Ups and the Downs

Sometimes coming home from a trip means getting caught up with some of the activities that a digital life entail.  Adding new purchased products to their proper categories in various folders, making sure that there are cds burned of such items, checking the ehds to continue the ongoing process of organizing. Etc, etc. It's really no different than regular paper items in a home or office except that once in a while there is the kind of message that strikes terror in one's heart.  Well in my heart... "Back up and reformat asap."

I have one portable ehd that has been troublesome from the git go. It will be properly ejected but somehow it doesn't seem to know that all the time.  It isn't what I need to be doing right now or should I say it's not what I WANT to be doing right now but that's beside the point. What I want to do is dive into my ACDSee class that started two weeks ago. I won a copy of the program on line almost two years ago but waited for the Mac version!! The timing was perfect because this class was starting just after I downloaded the software. I had already installed the program when I downloaded it but didn't give it much attention because I knew I had the class coming up. Now I'm two weeks behind because of our England trip so I so want to catch up before the video chat tonight.

But instead I am copying files to a newer and more stable ehd and waiting - and waiting. In between there is a lot of laundry being done, and I am slowly but surely getting a feel for the ACDSee which is not much different in process from the steps of iPhoto. I'm only doing my digital supplies not my photos which reside in 3 different iPhoto libraries, stored on ehds and backed up.

As my husband and I often remind each other, these are truly upscale, first world problems. This sluggish process on this chilly, rainy day does remind me of how fortunate I am if this is the worst thing in life I have to deal with today. It's all in the perspective, isn't it.

Sunday Serenade 11 05 15

Who can't find their way back home with these wonderful sounds? There's an earlier version on YT but I chose 'the lads' as they are today. This song has always been a heartbreaker for me but then so has Eric!



In any case, it's good to be home. England was brilliant as ever but home is ..well, it's home, isn't it?

Flashback Friday 11 05 21

A winter vacation, our first abroad together where we had to function in  three different languages - that we didn't speak, utilize three different currencies, and navigate three different city metro systems and take international flights and trains. All in 9 days! I decided this would be the watershed experience to see if we could manage such a vacation. Fortunately, the major details were handled by Austrian Air, so our flights and inter city trains were booked as well as a hotel in each of our three cities - Prague, Vienna and Budapest. It was a package I noticed in the newspaper one July...all of this for $999. per person. I booked it immediately for that December.

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We loved the trip and decided that together we made one whole brain since once of us usually was a bit confused or totally turned around. Fortunately, we never wigged out at the same time! The Warhol image shows the many sides of my dh during the trip including a coffee house stop  in Budapest. Sadly our metabolism couldn't handle all the coffee and pastries we COULD have eaten! I think we have to go back and try again.