Checking In

Hey everybody! :-) I just wanted to check in and say bye for a few days. As many of you know, I'm going home to Georgia for a visit. I'm all packed and so is Brit Boy. I did my best to travel light ;-)




We're headed for the airport early tomorrow morning. The forecast isn't great for our drive up, but we're gonna leave early and take our time.

Take care everyone and if you celebrate Thanksgiving, have a wonderful holiday next week! And if you don't celebrate it, have a great week anyway :-) I'll post after we get back on the 28th, and tell you all about our trip.

Until next time...

Going Home To Run

I have some interesting news to share. I’ve been working so much on school work that I haven’t been able to blog a lot and bring this up, but….I’m going home!!! :-) Well, not to stay, but Brit Boy and I are going to Georgia for Thanksgiving week. I’m so excited! I haven’t been able to go home in over three years, so I’m really overjoyed…so is Brit Boy :-)




This is a photo that I keep looking at. It’s a photo of one corner of the fields that I used to run around and play in when I was a kid. Hey, I played there when I was a grown up too. LOL. I love that spot…I always have. At certain times of the year it’s dotted with purple and white violets. So in a few short days, I'll be going to that spot and running til my heart's content.

The structure in the distance is the red tin roof of the shed/barn that’s been there for decades…long before I was born. I used to love looking around in there when I was a kid. There were lots of old, cool things in there :-)

It will be really great to touch base back home again. It’s been so long and I’m so ready :-)I’ll get to see my four sisters, one brother, several of the thirteen nieces and nephews, and several cousins. My niece is even coming in from California to hang out, so it’s gonna be fun. A few of my nieces and nephews are rather close to me in age, so we have a shared growing up experience. I always laugh and tell Brit Boy that some of the nieces and nephews seem more like cousins to me. It will be so fun to hang out again :-)

Brit Boy and I are flying out this Friday…in just three days! We’ll be in Georgia for eight days. We want to visit with the family as much as we can since we haven’t seen them in so long. The rest of the time, we’re gonna just take a breather and enjoy :-)

I’ll do a short post on Thursday to check in. I’ll probably be bouncing up and down by then. LOL. I’ll post again when we get back and tell you all about our adventures. Have a great week everybody!

Charter for Compassion

One night last week, Brit Boy and I were channel surfing and stopped to watch Christiane Amanpour’s new show on CNN International called Amanpour. I've loved her reporting from all over the world over the years, and now she has this where she does work from the studio. Anyway, the discussion on this episode was about the Charter for Compassion that was unveiled this past Thursday. The discussion was very intriguing. Here’s a video to explain what the charter is about.



We have a lot of problems in our world today and some days I just shake my head at how things are. We are continually told how dark things are and they are in some ways, but there is also light still in our world. I’ve had to remind myself of this a lot lately :-) So when I heard about this, I took a look at their site and I have to say, it has lifted my spirits.

When you go to the site, you can read about the acts of compassion that others have committed, like this one and many others. Then it gets you to think about what we all can do. Some may ask, why do I need a website or charter to make me do something that I already do or something that we should do anyway? Well the answer is, we don’t need this site or a charter…compassion is free and available to all of us every day :-) But I’ll tell ya, personally, I’ve been a bit down lately and seeing this space where you can go and find people showing their true hearts and then sharing it is powerful for me. We get fed such nonsense and negativity every day, so it’s nice to read something that lets us see the true beauty of human beings. I think sometimes we forget :-)

This is what has me smiling today. I hope you enjoy checking it out. Have a great rest of the weekend!

Happy Birthday Sesame Street

I want to say Happy Birthday to Sesame Street today!!!! :-) Today marks the 40th anniversary of Sesame Street premiering on our television screens.


Photo credit: Richard Termine/Sesame Workshop


I, like many others who grew up in the 70s, have fond memories of Big Bird, Oscar the Grouch, Cookie Monster, Ernie & Bert, Grover, The Count, and all of the other great characters who live on that wonderful street. I used to want to live there so much when I was in elementary school :-) But getting to visit them each day in TV land was great too. That show opened up a great deal of my imagination and taught me so much. I remember songs from that show to this day, and when I hear them and hum along, I get the same happiness that I had as a kid. What would I and so many others have done without Sesame Street? :)

The beauty of this show is that I enjoyed it when I was a kid and then my nieces and nephews enjoyed it and then it just goes on and on over the years. It has stood the test of time for my family and countless other families and I’m so glad that it’s still around. It is a part of the cultural DNA now :-)

So here’s to Sesame Street and what it has brought to all of us kids and kids-at-heart! May it go on and on :-)

Fountain Friends

I’ve written before about my love of pens and fountain pens in particular. Well, I’ve been using my Parker pen exclusively for a while now, since I love how it feels in my hand. However, the other day I was cleaning around the Yellow House and came upon my other favorite fountain pen, my Levenger. I haven’t been using it for a long while. The Levenger is at the top of the photo and the Parker is the one below.

Here’s the story of my reunion with an old friend. When I put my Levenger aside a good while back, it needed cleaning, therefore it got put aside for what I thought would be a day. Well, life intervened and that day got lost in the shuffle as I prepared to change gears and countries at that point. My Levenger got packed away in its case…got carried across the Atlantic Ocean with me…and it’s been living in its case since I moved here to England over three and a half years ago :-) It’s had a long nap. It got lost in the shuffle with my transatlantic move. It’s a strange life sometimes…I feel like I’m still unpacking sometimes :-)

So I let out a squeal when I laid my eyes upon its simple little case. I know this may sound corny, but it was like seeing an old friend after this long time. It’s funny how the little things from home can just make your day when you live a life like mine :-) I love the adventure of living here, but as I’m only human, I get homesick sometimes too. Finding my pen was like a tiny snapshot of who I was before I came here. I’m still me…the same sense of humor, etc., and that'll never change, but a lot has happened to me since I closed that pen case those years ago. And like any other person, my experiences have shaped me and it's revealing to take stock sometimes. So it was cool to have a think backwards. It’s intriguing how certain objects or certain songs can take you back so much. Life's an interesting trip :-)

I had to do a thorough cleaning on my Levenger, and now it’s back in action. Long live both of my fountain pens! Now I’ve got to go and see what else I can find! :-)