* September 28, 2012 *

I'M RETIRED! YAY YAY YAY YAY YAY YAY!!! 18 days after having to take on ALL the housework by myself, I finally crashed. I wondered how long that would last. OK, all my readers who are going to be jealous, or won't be able to handle my blogging about my retirement, please stop reading as of today. I don't want those of you who still have to go to work every day to start hating me because your jealous of my retirement. You'll retire too someday. I'm probably older than you anyway, so it's expected that I'd retire before you. I just don't want anyone begrudging me my retirement because they can't yet. OK? When it's your turn to retire, you'll lose friends, too. Half of your friends who still have to go to work every day will end up secretly (or openly) hating you for not being as miserable as they are. Misery loves company. Success & happiness often brings jealousy except from those friends who are as successful & happy as you. I always had a very strict rule for the kids & mostly for MYSELF. Work FIRST ... relaxing is earned ONLY after all the work is done. For the kids that meant chores & homework. For me it meant housework, my eBay business, & everything else that needed to be done during the day. Well, that hasn't been working out for me too well. The night before last, I didn't get to my relaxing point until Pete pulled in the driveway. Last night it never came either. I don't know WHAT happened last night, but I spent the entire evening talking to everyone about everything. Not my choice, theirs. Social interaction is a good thing, but yesterday everyone was like a tag team. The second 1 would finish, another was there. This went on until almost midnight. My down time has been held off since Tuesday night. One thing about my life is ... it's so nuts that I NEED that down time. After the 1st day, I was irritated. After the 2nd day, I'm wound as tight as a garage door spring. By tomorrow I'll be the meanest, cruelest person you ever met ... on my last nerve & snapping at everyone for just crossing my path. I can't do that. I can't live with that much anger, resentment, & high BP. So, I have a new plan. So much for the rule about work 1st. Today, & from now on ... when everyone is at work & school, it's relax time for me. I don't care what time it is, I don't care what hasn't been done yet ... I relax. It's my ONLY chance & I know it. If I work 1st, everyone comes home & relaxing doesn't happen just like last night. So, starting today ... I post this blog, drive Josh to work, come home & RELAX ... FINALLY! Do you know what that means? NOTHING gets done today. Zip, zero, nada, the big bagel. I blog, I taxi, I relax. Pete comes home & I cook dinner, watch TV with Pete, & go to bed. Oh well! If everyone here wanted a clean house & a supplemental income, they should have either helped or left me the hell alone after I was done working so I could unwind. Since they couldn't do that, unwinding just trumped working before I ended up in a rubber room. A/C window units come out TODAY! WOOHOO! Anyway, I did the last of my housework for a while yesterday. I finished up the laundry, de-cobwebbed the bedroom (we have REALLY overactive spiders), fed the cats & dogs, cleaned the kitchen stove, cleared off the living room coffee table, & blew the dust out of my knitting machine. I'm now officially retired 5 days a week & work only on weekends when everyone is here. You see, NO ONE bothers me when I'm working because they know I'll put THEM to work too. Once I'm done, it's open season on Liz's "free" time. Anyway, I'm going from working 7 days a week to working 2 days a week. I'm gonna LOVE retirement! My daughter sure does & she retired right out of high school. I waited this long? I think I did something wrong in life. LOL! Matrix ... here I come!!! I plan to become one of the BEST Sims 3 gamers around & start volunteering on the official Sims 3 Website. I'm gonna LOVE retirement! Happy birthday goes out today to my Mom & my brother-in-law-in-law Mark! I just looked out my office window & saw the most beautiful Cardinal sitting on top of the wishing well fountain. I couldn't get my camera out in time ... would have made a beautiful photo!

__________ is the single reason people don't like you. And your __________. And __________, too.

1st Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis later worked as an editor for what major book publisher?

A. Doubleday

B. Imprint

C. Penguin

D. Random House

Answer: A. Doubleday

Don't hang sweaters - the hanger will stretch them out. Fold sweaters & store on a shelf or in a sweater box for out of season storage.

Estonia sinks (1994):

On this day in 1994, 852 people die in one of the worst maritime disasters of the century when the Estonia, a large car-and-passenger ferry, sinks in the Baltic Sea.

The German-built ship was traveling on an overnight cruise from Tallinn, the capital city of Estonia, to Stockholm, Sweden, when it sank off the coast of Finland. Estonia, a former Soviet republic that gained its independence in 1991 (the last Russian troops left in 1994), was a popular and affordable travel destination for Swedes. The Estonia was a type of ferry known as a "ro-ro," which featured a smorgasbord, live music, dancing and drinking and allowed people to drive vehicles onto one end of the ship and drive off on the other end.

After hitting stormy weather, with waves reaching an estimated 15 to 20 feet, the Estonia went down in the middle of the night. Many passengers were trapped inside the ship, while others, even some who managed to make it into lifeboats, later drowned in the frigid water or died from hypothermia. Helicopters were used to rescue most of the 137 survivors.

In the aftermath of the tragedy, a joint Swedish-Finnish-Estonian government committee ruled it an accident and blamed it on stormy weather that caused water to pour through an open bow door and into the Estonia's car deck, destabilizing the ship and capsizing it in less than an hour. However, there were others, including some family and friends of the Estonia victims, who believed the sinking was the result of a pre-existing hole caused by a collision or explosion.

Two years after the sinking of the Estonia, the Bukoba, a passenger steamship, went down in Lake Victoria near Tanzania in May 1996, leaving an estimated 1,000 people dead. In September 2002, a Senegalese passenger ferry, the Joola, sank off the coast of Gambia, resulting in at least 1,800 casualties. By comparison, when the ocean liner Titanic sank after hitting an iceberg off of Newfoundland on its maiden voyage in April 1912, approximately 1,500 lives were lost.

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Humans typically have 46 chromosomes; how many do potatoes have?

48. A sweet potato has 90.

Legend of 1900:

Raised aboard an ocean liner after being abandoned there as an infant, 1900 (Tim Roth) becomes a virtuoso piano player who learns about the outside world only through interactions with passengers, never setting foot on land, even for the love of his life. Years later, the ship may be destroyed, and a former band member fears that 1900 may still be aboard, willing to go down with the ship in this compelling drama from director Giuseppe Tornatore.

Let them bowl! Fill empty soda cans or bottles partway with dirt or sand. Find a soccer (or similar) ball & set up your "pins."

Manners are made up of trivialities or deportment which can easily be learned if one doesn't happen to know them; manner is personality - the outward manifestation of one's innate character & attitude toward life.

Never give a collections company electronic access to your checking account. They will steal from you. It's legalized theft, & they're thieves.

Scumble:

1: To make (as a painting) less brilliant by covering with a thin coat of color. 2: To soften the lines or colors of (a drawing) by rubbing lightly.

He scumbles his watercolor seascapes until they're suffused with, &  nearly veiled by, a pale golden light.

The history of "scumble" is blurry, but the word is thought to be related to the verb "scum," an obsolete form of "skim" (meaning "to pass lightly over"). Scumbling, as 1st perfected by artists such as Titan, involves passing dry, opaque coats of oil paint over a tinted background to create subtle tones & shadows. Although the painting technique dates to the 16th century, use of the word "scumble" is only known to have begun in the late 18th century. the more generalized "smudge" or "smear" sense appeared even later, in the mid-1800s.

What fibrous mineral is known as salamander’s wool?

Which artist was famous for drawing buildings that defied logic & architecture?

A. Salvadore Dali

B. M.C. Escher

C. Pablo Picasso

D. Andy Warhol

Which colors are the Olympic rings from left to right?

A. Black

B. Blue

C. Red

BAC. The Olympic symbol was originally designed in 1913 by Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Olympic Games, but gained widespread popularity due to its promotion by Nazi Germany.

Which country has the oldest, 2nd oldest, & 3rd oldest population?

A. Japan

B. Germany

C. Monaco