Walking and Bell

Well, there is not a whole lot going on over here.....but there are a few things that I've done this week. The walking group I belong to had their banquet on Tuesday which was worth going to. I mean, a whole restaurant room of senior citizens and lottery scratch tickets was entertaining to watch.......boy, they make scratching those tickets an art form by itself and a sport. We had lunch and they pulled some raffles.....right up my alley :) I got my little certificate saying that I walked 39.5 miles this fall.....not too bad and I'm glad someone kept track of it cause I sure didn't. :) The walking group will pick up again in early April and I'm looking forward to it.....

Then this week I decided to teach Jake to ring a bell for his treats. I thought it would be good to get that dog thinking again....LOL! I mean, he gets everything for free, he might as well work for something. So, anyways, it's just a regular typical desk/counter bell and (this was a learning lesson for both of us here) I was trying to think of how to "condition" him to ring the bell for a treat. So at first he didn't associate the treat and the bell at all. He would just skip the bell and paw at my hand for the treat. So I thought and thought (this wasn't suppose to be a brain exercise for me.....ugh!) And then I figured out that if I put the treat under the bell, he would paw at the bell and when the bell "binged" I would lift the bell and he would get the treat........okay, maybe I serious need a job at this rate LOL!! Wayyyy too much time on my hands and I'm just going to end up annoying the whole household with this bell thing. Moving on.....

What else, what else.....tomorrow we are going shopping because my parents want to buy a security camera for this property (three floor apartment building) because someone passing thru our driveway set off the vehicle alarm on the Dodge Ram over the weekend. So now, my parents want to monitor outside activity and these security camera are pretty sophisticated these days......I mean, you can monitor all cameras right from a computer website and if there is any movement activity it will alert you in an email......pretty much all automated.....so, we will go check those out and see what we find.....(yes, I'm very well aware that I will now get two million spam comments on "video surveillance cameras" LOL!)

Okay, I'm outta here. Behave yourself and I'll be back! :) Nite Nite....

Meandering Thru The Week

I don't have too much action packed news tonight. We are having a yard sale on Saturday and I've been going thru alot of stuff that I didn't even know I still had. One of those, "Hey, THAT'S where that is!!" moments. Stuff I packed away years ago and forgot I had or I knew I had but didn't know where I put it. I mean, I found a Polaroid camera!!! Oh boy, they don't even make film for Polaroid camera anymore and this company in Denmark took over making Polaroid film under another name and you can buy the Black and White cartridge for $24 for 8 pictures! So just when I think I have an outdated valuable camera on my hands, you can't even buy film for it without losing your house over it. I mean, that is ridiculous, and my Polaroid is useless, but guess what, I'll but a price tag on it and set it out in the yard sale.

A few other things I've come across: A (useless but interesting) business card from my days as a travel agent in 1996......noooo not 2006.....1996!!! That went in the trash. Oh boy.... BUT, I did find a jacket I've been looking for for the past three of four years that I was praying and hoping I didn't give it to the Goodwill where all my other clothes I don't want goes to. I was so happy to find this jacket I got back in.......oh, we are talking back in 1998 or 1999.....anyways, it's a Hilton Las Vegas jacket and I love it. The inside pocket and lining inside is a tad ripped from wear and tear, but I'm going to get it fixed and wear it. It's got three Flamingos on the back and says "Hilton Las Vegas" in the front. It's from the Flamingo casino. That's an oldie but goodie. No, that's not going in the yard sale, I don't care how much they want it for.

Okay, next I found a box of "Pocket Dragons". Do you remember these little guys, I use to collect these back in 1997, I can't part with them, I just can't.......I must have about 10 of them.....here's pictures of my favorite pocket dragons in case you don't know what they are (yes they are cute little statues)......

Pocket Dragons

Yes I have this one.....my favorite

I have this one too.....

I have this one too.....

I have many more, but I can't part with them, so I'll keep them for eternity :) I have always been a long time fan of "Pocket Dragons" and I even have the two books that tells me when each were released and the date the stopped releasing each of them, you know, like in a series. So what AM I going to sell at this yard sale?? I have a treadmill, I have a mountain bicycle, I have a bicycle rack to put on a vehicle, I have a ski rack to put on the top of an SUV, and some other little stuff I want to unload. I'll take plenty of pictures of the yard sale on Saturday, but tomorrow I'm bring up some stuff from my house to add to the yard sale collection. So, my day today wasn't that exciting, but I found some long lost treasures that takes me back to the year Nineteen Ninety Something........ :) Have a great night, I'll bug you tomorrow! :)

Friday - Arsons - Tricks!

Well, it sure didn't feel like a Friday today to me. Felt more like a lazy Sunday. I know, I know, don't rush your weekend. Well, it wasn't a productive day. I've got some irons in the fire I've been steadily working on this past 3 or 4 weeks so that has been keeping me busy.....typical me, online ventures seeing how far I can run with it LOL! I did see my sister again today as she wanted to show me the gym she had decided to sign up to. It's a simple gym and I even liked it alot, but in my situation, I just can't afford the $34 a month membership fee for it at this time. But, I did buy my lottery tickets for the weekend (total cost $2 dollars) and if I win, the last thing I'll be thinking about is a gym :) So I took Jake out for a little walkie tonight and that was my simple day. I'm thinking I should at least make two paragraphs out of this blog posting just to make it look longer....LOL!

Let's see.....tomorrow there are some car shows around I might hit up with my camera. OH, and I almost forgot, there is a small (I'm going to imagine it would be small) carnival at the Deerfield Park here in Manchester (I saw it advertise somewhere on some corner street), so I'll take Jake there to the park and check that out, yes, with pictures. :) I knooowwww, how exciting....

I just saw in today's local newspaper there has been 42 arsons in my city since Jan 1st. The police is still asking for help from the neighbors to keep their eyes open. Unbelievable.

OH, I forgot to mention that Jake and I has been working some new tricks.......well, wait a minute, he's working on the trick, I'm feeding him the "good boy" treats. Okay, we have been working on "Paw". I say "Paw" and he puts his left paw (don't want to confuse him) in my hand and I give him a little cookie treat. And it's been working out great! I swear when it comes to snacks, that little dog picks up the trick on the spot. So when he's more fluent on "Paw", and before I run out of treats, I'll do a little video on my new camera and post it for you. Too Cool. Have a good night! :)

What I'm Up To And My Professional Rock Climber

Hello! I missed a blog posting yesterday.........I did that just to make sure you were paying attention.....heehee!! Yesterday was a nice day as I spend lunch with my Sister and my Mom and I got my birthday presents from my sister. My sister got me a pocket size Snoopy & Woodstock themed notepad (always writing my thoughts down) and she got me a RV travel related book. I'm currently working my way thru the book. I'll give my complete thoughts on the book when I finish it, but so far I got thru Chapter 1, Chapter 2 will be tonight's reading. And no, at this time, I'm not listing the name of the book......
We have a diner up here called the Red Arrow. Okay, maybe it's not in the best part of town, but with so many people coming in and out and walking around outside, I feel comfortable going there at a decent hour of the day (I might skip it at 1am). The restaurant is always hopping with people coming out from local night clubs and events (concerts, theater plays, baseball games) .....I dug up some pictures I took a while ago of the menu and soup bowl.......I sometimes forget to bring my new camera with me thinking I'll never need it.....I'm always wrong........

I almost forgot the point I was trying to make with the Red Arrow......my point is that I went there for dinner on Saturday night with friends........ :)

So, moving on to today......today, I brought Jake to the park this morning. I didn't have much planned for today at all and Jake and I were pacing the kitchen so we hit the road and went to a local (hmmmm, about 4 miles from my house) park. OF COURSE, dummy me, I forgot my camera again, but I did get two snap shots off the Blackberry......here's my Professional Rock Climber.....

"I'm a professional, don't try this on your own......."

Here's the pool at that same park that we walk around, pool don't till 11am

So, after that we didn't do too much......


I'm a little disturbed by the national news having so many shootings. Just last week I've heard of

• an air conditioner that was in an apartment window leaked on a woman's head and the brother of the woman went up to the apartment that the air conditioner belonged to and shot the resident who lived there 8 times (in Chicago).
• a guy walks into a roller skating rink (in Texas) and shoots his wife and family, injuring 7 people during his kid's birthday party.
• a car show yesterday just south of Seattle leaves 11 people injured with gun shots (one person with multiple gun shot wounds) when one car owner bad mouthed another car owner's paint job.
• AND locally, hitting home where I live, a guy is killed outside a gas station after a verbal confrontation with another guy in a car.

Should I not leave my house anymore? I guess we all take chances when leaving the comfort of our home. I'm not going to say no one should own a gun, but it's some of the people in possession of these guns that really worry me. Someone having a bad day, getting a divorce, lost their job, wants to "one up" the other person, YOU insulted my paint job!!.......sigh, I'm just going to look for an island for sale that has wireless internet access......this is just unbelievable. Okay, I hope everyone had a nice weekend, I'm signing off. Have a good night, bug you all tomorrow......and I promise to bring my camera wherever I go tomorrow :)

New Camera

I have killed two FijiFilm cameras each in a one year span. With each FijiFilm I got, I took over 8,000 pictures in less than a year and at the end of the camera's lifespan, 4 out of 6 pictures were coming out black. Just black, no image, no shadow, just black. So since I love taking pictures (obviously), it was time to, once again, splurge on a new camera. But since my budget has become "inconveniently" limited now, I set a "camera allowance" of no more than $200. So I looked around last night online and decided on one, instead of making this an all year project. So I chose the Cannon PowerShot. Not the $300 or $800 one I really wanted, but this will do fine. I came home and snapped two or three pictures and the battery went dead on the camera....sigh....so I took the wall charger that was in the box and shoved the battery in it and it's plugged into the wall now charging. Here's two pictures that I got so far with my new camera. Trust me, I didn't buy this camera for nothing.....I will be using and abusing it will all the pictures I'm going to take on my time off :)

I'm going to try an x-large size of this picture and see how it comes out on the blog page.

And this is the "large" size picture.....BlogSpot makes it so convenient to re-size pictures on the whim! :)

And this is what my new camera looks like!! It's a Canon PowerShot ELPH 100HS (the link will take you to the Canon page to see details about it).......here are some pictures of it (done with my Blackberry camera of course) :)

OH, I have to tell you what else I did today! I went Blueberry picking this morning.....and since Blueberry picking was done before camera shopping, these following pictures were done with my Blackberry camera! :)

Well it's almost 1pm now and my Saturday isn't even half way done yet......so I'm going to check if my new camera battery is charged up yet and I'm not sure what we are doing the rest of the day yet, but I'll be sure to let ya know! :)