Emily Bloss

Bleys posted this great link on his Facebook page. Thanks, Bleys!

100 Ways to Use a Strip of Bacon

Perhaps I’ll get some ideas for our restaurant (and web site) Bacon in, Delicious out™!

Every so often I like to look at the Approver’s Choice WunderPhotos on Weather Underground. Today I happened upon this awesome picture! It’s one of the best photographs I’ve ever seen.

Dew flowers by thebige

What a wonderful way to view the world…

My friend Jane sent this, and I wanted to share… Thanks, Jane!

Written By Regina Brett of The Plain Dealer, Cleveland, Ohio. Here’s a link to the original posting, and one to Regina Brett’s site. You can also get an archival quality reprint. Neat!

“To celebrate growing older, I once wrote the 45 lessons life taught me. It is the most-requested column I’ve ever written. My odometer rolls over to 50 this week, so here’s an update:”

1. Life isn’t fair, but it’s still good.
2. When in doubt, just take the next small step.
3. Life is too short to waste time hating anyone.
4. Your job won’t take care of you when you are sick. Your friends and parents will. Stay in touch.
5. Pay off your credit cards every month.
6. You don’t have to win every argument. Agree to disagree.
7. Cry with someone. It’s more healing than crying alone.
8. It’s OK to get angry with God. He can take it.
9. Save for retirement starting with your first paycheck.
10. When it comes to chocolate, resistance is futile.
11. Make peace with your past so it won’t screw up the present.
12. It’s OK to let your children see you cry.
13. Don’t compare your life to others. You have no idea what their journey is all about.
14. If a relationship has to be a secret, you shouldn’t be in it.
15. Everything can change in the blink of an eye. But don’t worry; God never blinks.
16. Take a deep breath. It calms the mind.
17. Get rid of anything that isn’t useful, beautiful or joyful.
18. Whatever doesn’t kill you really does make you stronger.
19. It’s never too late to have a happy childhood. But the second one is up to you and no one else.
20. When it comes to going after what you love in life, don’t take no for an answer.
21. Burn the candles, use the nice sheets, wear the fancy lingerie. Don’t save it for a special occasion. Today is special.
22. Over prepare, then go with the flow.
23. Be eccentric now. Don’t wait for old age to wear purple.
24. The most important sex organ is the brain.
25. No one is in charge of your happiness but you.
26. Frame every so-called disaster with these words ‘In five years, will this matter?’
27. Always choose life.
28. Forgive everyone everything.
29. What other people think of you is none of your business.
30. Time heals almost everything. Give time time.
31. However good or bad a situation is, it will change.
32. Don’t take yourself so seriously. No one else does.
33. Believe in miracles.
34. God loves you because of who God is, not because of anything you did or didn’t do.
35. Don’t audit life. Show up and make the most of it now.
36. Growing old beats the alternative — dying young.
37. Your children get only one childhood.
38. All that truly matters in the end is that you loved.
39. Get outside every day. Miracles are waiting everywhere.
40. If we all threw our problems in a pile and saw everyone else’s,we’d grab ours back.
41. Envy is a waste of time. You already have all you need.
42. The best is yet to come.
43. No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up.
44. Yield.
45. Life isn’t tied with a bow, but it’s still a gift.”

Jane’s note at the end of the email she sent:
Its estimated 93% won’t forward this. If you are one of the 7% who will, forward this with the title ’7%’. I’m in the 7%. Friends are the family that we choose for ourselves.

Today we went over to Orlando to see Bleys’ new place. “On the way”, we went to Cocoa Beach and spent several fun-filled hours body boarding.

I was pretty excited because Cocoa Beach also happens to be where the Ron Jon Surf Shop is… a place I’ve wanted to go ever since we started seeing ads for it in Florida. It was really neat! Way overpriced, though. I don’t think I will EVER pay $72 for a pair of flip flops, even if they do say Ron Jon on them. Not everything was that terribly overpriced but we were a little shocked by that one. The store was huge, with two stories, and they had a lot of cool stuff there. Apparently it’s the largest surf shop in the world. Here’s a view of the outside, including one of the statues gracing the front yard of the store.

After the beach we went to see Bleys’ place. Of course, the minute we got there, it started raining cats and dogs, so we had to sit around in the lobby and eat Dum-Dums while we waited for the rain to let up. Then they took us to see the model apartment and it was quite nice. I never had such a nice place when I was going to college! He’ll be sharing his apartment with 3 other guys so that ought to be an interesting experience. Hopefully it all goes well.

So that was our exciting day. Next we’ll rest and treat our poor poor sunburned skin! And Trav burned the soles of his feet on the hot wood of the boardwalk, can you believe it! I never saw that happen to anybody before. We’ll probably go back next week, after we move Bleys into his new pad. Can’t get that close and not stop by the beach!

Here’s one of my favorite pictures of two of my very favorite people in the whole world – my parents!

It was so great having our phone on vacation. Trav took a ton of pictures and got many good ones with the phone – he shared some of them on Facebook where people have been enjoying them tremendously! Neat.

The big event of our vacation was the Birthday Bash. Jeannie made a cake for each of the six people celebrating a birthday and they were INCREDIBLE!! My cake was tie dyed, how cool is that? The other cakes were a golf ball for Dad, Jeannie’s “Happy Birthday to Me!” heart cake, Adrianne’s book (24th edition), Becky’s confuzzled cake (from a book series she likes), and Anthony’s southwestern theme. They were delicious, too. Here we are with our cakes:

We had a marvelous time at the bash… it was so good to be able to visit with everyone and the food Greg & Jeannie prepared was awesome. A bacon-wrapped hot dog and baked beans are a great way to celebrate being on this planet!

Another fun thing we did was to stop by the San Xavier Mission, one of the oldest churches in the southwest. I wanted to get a popover (Indian Fry Bread) and of course explore the bulding. Here I am, in front of the mission eating my popover. Mmmm!

If you’re ever in Tucson, the mission is a great place to see. Notice how the bell tower on the right side is naked? Some believe they never finished the church so they wouldn’t have to pay taxes.

Another good thing about the trip is I got a bunch of postcards from the Tampa airport, a few from Desert Museum and a few more from San Xavier Mission. I’ve already sent some out to people on Postcrossing.

I have a few other pictures to share of our jaunt to Nogales, but I’ll post that another time.

We took a trip to Arizona to visit my family. It was wonderful! I’m happy we got to see everybody and spend some quality time together. I’ll post more later… for now I wanted to put up this picture of the mountains. It was early morning and we were on our way to the Desert Museum. I just love the way the mountains are in shadow. The desert was so beautiful!

I’m cleaning out my Opera tabs (again!!) and wanted to post these things so I don’t forget. Of course, we shall start out with the most delectable of foods, bacon!!!

• 10 Craziest Products Inspired by Bacon – A very cool list from Oddee.com.
• Bacon Flavored Vodka – I bet this would be great in a bloody mary! Or even just by itself. MMmmmmm…. bacon. :p~

Also from Oddee.com:

• 15 Pieces of Food Art – A family favorite topic to pass around on the internet.
• 10 Unfortunate Cakes – What were they thinking?? Perfect accompaniment to Geeky and Artistic Cake Designs and the ever-popular Cakewrecks.

After enjoying all that bacon and cake, here are a few articles to help us recover:

• 5 Tips to Optimize Your Nutrition – Part of series on vibrant health.
• 12 Food Additives to Avoid – Some we already avoid… with this list I don’t think we would be eating any processed food at all! And that would include bacon. So I guess we’ll just try to minimize eating these!
• Tips to Speed Up Your Metabolism – From Women’s Health. I’m sure the tips work for guys, too.

Wow, that cleaned up quite a few tabs! Only 16 left open right now, aside from the four I keep open all the time – email, Gmail, Twitter and Facebook.

This is the story of the seventh day of our vacation to North Carolina. You can also read about the background and trip up, the first day, the second day, the third day, the fourth day, the fifth day, or the sixth day.

Gem mining!! For me, this was the highlight of the vacation. We went to Rose Creek Mine on Thursday and then I got to go again on Friday. Jen & Michelle stayed behind to tidy up the cabin (thanks, Jen & Michelle!!) and the guys dropped me off and went exploring for a while. Here I am at the entrance:

The way it works is you dig a bucket of dirt from the dirt shack and take it to the flume, where you use a screen to wash the dirt and clay away from the gems and rocks. You get to keep anything you find! Each bucket of dirt was $4, except the first one, which was free.

The dirt comes from somewhere nearby – this mine is not “enriched” with other stuff, unless you buy the prefilled buckets which are salted with some very pretty gems. Here’s the dirt shack:

Those buckets of dirt get pretty heavy after a while… the first day I did 5 buckets (Trav did 3 and Bleys did 1) and the second day I did 9. On the first day, Mike & Trav very kindly donated everything they found to my collection. Thanks, guys! Here’s the work area:

First you take some scoops of the dirt and throw it into the screen. Then put the screen in the sluice and let the water wash through it. To aid in the removal of the sticky, sticky clay, you can rub the dirt with the blue & yellow scrub brush. Put anything you find into the white container and at the end of the day, the fine folks there will sort, bag and label your treasure.

The ladies sitting next to me on the second day had been there all week. The warning on the mine’s pamphlet sure got it right… mining can be addictive! I also had a lot of fun watching them sort other people’s stuff. There are some very pretty gems to be had.

My next post will be all about the gems we found. Here’s one of my favorites – a beautiful topaz which sparkles with rainbows. The picture doesn’t do it justice but here it is anyway!

< Previous – Day 6 :: Next – The Gems >

This is the story of the sixth day of our vacation to North Carolina. You can also read about the background and trip up, the first day, the second day, the third day, the fourth day, or the fifth day.

Today we went to Rose Creek gem mine!! It was very cool but I’ll post about it next, because I got to go back for a second go-round and I want to do one complete post about it.

The other highlight of this day was dinner at The Dillard House, down in Dillard, Georgia. The restaurant is part of a beautiful resort with horse stables and a little farm animal zoo with goats, pigs, sheep and cows. The food was amazing – they have an all-you-can-eat family-style menu. They brought a big bowl or plate of each item on the menu:

By the end I was really, really full. I took a little sample of each dish, seconds on some of the vegetables and two desserts (I just couldn’t choose between the buttermilk pie and coconut pie). The neat thing about this place is whatever you don’t eat, you get to take home. And they don’t mind if you order extra of stuff, either. You can ask for as much as you want and then you take it so it doesn’t get wasted. How cool is that?! Here we are just before they served the food…

That was the last we saw of the top of the table.

< Previous – Day 5 :: Next – Day 7 >

Perhaps tonight we’ll sit out in the back yard to watch our redneck neighbors shoot fireworks! That would certainly be a nice ending to a very pleasant day off. I got to go on a major grocery shopping trip (bought tons of veggies and fruit!) and we had a very delicious dinner – Mojito Grilled Chicken, black beans and tostones (fried plantains).

It was delicious! Trav grilled the chicken perfectly and did an excellent job seasoning the beans, too! I’m so lucky he’s such a good cook.

To drink, we had Bartles & James mojitos which were pretty tasty… I think I would like a real one better, though. Perhaps my brother will fix me a good one when we see each other next.