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Sunday in Union, NJ that is

Ewa, my friend. Ewa and I worked at a publishing company in Manhattan exactly eleven years ago, for the last time. We were laid off eleven years ago June. She and I worked together for about five years and became friends immediately. She and her family were from Poland, having lived here only a few years when I met her. I had worked in the company first for a couple of years, left and came back as a temp, and she was there when I came back. I left five months later to give birth to Scott and was asked to come back permanent. So she remembers him when he was just days old. On Sunday she almost had a fit when she saw he had whiskers.




All these years later we don't see each other very often, but I think of her so much. We spent every break together, every lunch hour. During that time she taught me how to knit, the European way. She also gave me a lot of advice about being a mother, what to expect out of adulthood and much more. I love her dearly, and though I never call her enough, she is always in my thoughts. Scott and I visited her and her husband on Sunday for the first time in a long time. Her cat, Lola, hid the entire time because we took Boha with us. Boha had the time of his life smelling around for Lola, being spoiled by them, and thoroughly enjoying their gorgeous backyard with the scent of stray cats and skunks...



I promised to go over more often, and it's a promise I mean to keep.

Scott's 15th

Happy Birthday, Honey!

Days Nine, Ten and Eleven of my FLA vacation

Saturday was my nephew, Kevin's, 13th birthday. We spent the day by the pool at my dad's house. It was nice having all of the family together. That doesn't happen very often.

They all loved the Cholcolate cake from Stone Cold Creamery.

On Sunday Scott and I drove to Spring Hill where my brother lives. We visited a beach called Pine Island, very close to their home. It was a great day for the beach and a beautiful drive. But the van was so hot after the two or so hours of being shut up, even with the windows open, it felt like everything was melted inside...


Then we went to a local pizza place they eat at. I'm not a pizza fan, and allergic to most of the ingredients in most of the food they served there, but I was able to enjoy myself none the less. Felisa loves her pizza!

This shot is of the last day, on the way to the airport. It's always so depressing for me because I never want to go back to NY after visiting FL. We spent the day at home with my dad and his girlfriend, packing, watching daytime TV, having lunch - boring stuff. Scott took one last swim. I went to say goodbye to my grandparents for about a half hour. But I really didn't want to do anything special anyway. Our flight was in the evening so we had a day to lounge around. I like that. I just HATE leaving. I had a wonderfully relaxing vacation, and wish I could go back soon. I plan on taking time off in November, but don't know if we will be returning then.

Days Seven and Eight

Drove to Tampa to visit my Aunt Carmen. She's the quilter. I think the photos will say it all:

She collects sewing machines, and has about 7 or 8 of them. Here are 3. This is one of the projects she is working on now. This is all done by hand. No machine work at all. You can see more pics at my Flickr.

Then we drove to another town to see my other aunt, Emi. She's the golfer, as you can tell by her skin color.

Day Eight: My Lamp. We went to a local thrift store. I was carrying around a bunch of stuff and walked out the store with this lamp and book. A total of $3.00. The lamp was marked for $4.00, but I was charged $2.00 because of a crack it had, and a buck for the book. What a find! The problem was that I couldn't bring the lamp home. I was afraid of bringing it home on the plane. I'll bring it home the next time I drive back to NY. My dad's girlfriend plugged it in for me and made sure both sockets worked. I didn't want to do it at their house in case it blew a fuse... I just don't know what kind of shades I'm going to get for it. Now I wish I would have taken a couple of better photos too.

This is what Scott bought. This is the perfect example of his personality:

After that we went to a Super-Joann's. That is what the lady at the cutting station told me. I love that store and it's only half a mile from my dad's house. I bought so much there it was obscene. No photos allowed. Then we drove to Ybor City in Tampa. It's an old neighborhood in Tampa where most of my family and I grew up. It got real run down and has had a rebirth, so to speak. There are a lot of clubs and bars there. The police have such trouble with the nightlife. But when I visit I go for lunch. There is a restaurant we go to everytime, as long as we catch it still open. It's called La Tropicana. I don't know how many years it's been open, but my maternal grandfather used to take me there when he would go buy his cigar making supplies. The food still tastes the same after 35 years. I think that's the mark of a great restaurant. I think Scott is starting to love it as much as much as I do.

Then it was back to the house for another evening at the pool. I decided to take some shots in the back yard.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (#7)

Yes, I gave in and bought it on Saturday. I was going to wait until this coming weekend and give it to Scott for his birthday. He has the previous six books. That was when I knew my son actally knew how to read and learned to like it. But he is reading something currently, which he likes and has two more books to read for school in September. He won't be able to read #7 for weeks yets. That's not a real birthday gift if you ask me. I knew he wanted the video game for OOTP (#5), which I had planned on giving him for his birthday, but he had his own money and he went and bought it.

So with all of the frenzie of the book on Friday, I knew poeple would be spoiling it for others eventually. I hate when people tell me the end of a movie or book. I have a couple of coworkers that have/are reading it and I knew I wanted to talk to them about it. I was online Saturday night about 7:45 PM, at Amazon checking out the reviews, and decided I was going to get dressed and go to the bookstore and get my copy. I was home reading the thing by 9:00 PM. I couldn't put it down! I read until 1:30 AM because I couldn't keep my eyes open. I had finished reading the entire thing on Sunday night at 3:45 AM. I had a hell of a headache Monday morning at work from either the lack of sleep or the intense reading on my eyes.

SPOILER PART: I am really sad to know that it is the last book, but making seven stories for seven years at school makes sense. The first two books were kids stories, but from book three on, they rose to another level in my mind. I am a person that needs closure and I really wanted every single story line in #7 taken care of. But I am happy with the amount of tied up endings she gave us. Yes, I would have liked to have known what happend in those 19 years, but who is to say that she won't get bored and write about them, or is already doing it and not telling us?

Also, I never expected the details she gave us in Snape's memories. I was one of the people, at the end of #6 that didn't realize Snape might have been good, because I was looking at everything from Harry's perspective. Then when I listened to it for the second time (audiobook), I put a few facts together and realized what might be going on. But I had no idea that JKR was going to give us so much detail and make it so intense. Adding Petunia into it was the icing on the cake. When #7 was moving forward and she wasn't revealing to us that he was good, I was getting worried that I was wrong. When he was dying and Harry was not there for him to confess to I was really worried, but then we I read the rest memories I had to have a tissue in my hand. Yes, I cry at the drop of a hat, but that stuff was powerful. There were other things that made me teary-eyed, but that chapter was the most heartbreaking for me.

The death toll was surprising to me. I kept getting more and more worried. I really didn't expect it. As each person died it felt like I might have been closer to the end, but I knew I wasn't because of the page numbers. I was really relieved that Ron was possesed and suspected it, when he left. Because if not, I would have been so disappointed.

There are so many points I could go on about, but it's so unneccesarry. I loved this book. It was worth the headache. My son has been questioning me on and on and I can't wait until he reads it so we can talk about it as he does!

Days Four, Five & Six

SHORT post because I already wrote a LONG post and Blogger just wiped it out:

Day Four: Daddy and his girlfriend left to go camping, so Scott and I had the house to ourselves for a few days. We went grocery shopping, ran some other errands, went to visit my aunt and uncle that were not in town I soon found out, then to an early dinner. After dinner Scott spent the evening in the pool. I read. That's a vacation.

During dinner on Day Four I felt like offering Scott the option of driving to Orlando to go to a theme park. He wanted to go to Epcot. We hadn't been to Epcot yet because I didn't think it would be exciting enough for him. He liked it once we were there. The temperature was comfortable. It was pretty cloudy, no rain, but we still got some sun. He didn't try to spend the whole day playing video games. I was relieved. His favorite place in the park was "Japan". We had lunch there also.




I expected the UK to be my favorite area, but it was actually France. There was rose bush after rose bush, but they looked neglected - and did not inspire me to take photos of them.




Our independence Day was spent eating BBQ chicken, hotdogs, fries, sandwiches and all the fixins' by the pool in my dad's backyard. I am allergic to fireworks unless it is a bigtime spectacle. But then I don't do crowds either so I usually just skip the whole thing or watch it on TV. As long as I'm not in NY I love the fourth.

We haven't been to Epcot yet because I didn't think he would be interested in the learning aspect of the park. I thought he would be bored. He is going to be 15 this weekend. I guess it was good timing because he really liked it, and he didn't waste hours playing the video games provided either. We spent a good deal of time over in "Japan", his favorite part of the park. We had lunch there. I thought the UK would be mine, but it ended up being France.