It's been THAT long?!

Seriously though.  It HAS been that long since I posted here on ATGAOP.  I guess I have to update what's been going on in the last 3 months since you heard from me last.

First of all let me say that D and I got ENGAGED on December 5th!  He totally took me by surprise by getting Teddy in on the act and proposed as I sat on the couch.....watching TV.....in my PAJAMAS!  It was totally romantic and very sweet.  But that's how he is.  :)

We hosted dinner this year for Yulemas on Christmas Day (we have some Christians among us Pagans....but it's ok!)  We didn't burn or otherwise destroy the food (thanks for the help Ma) and had an entirely delicious dinner.

We went to visit D's family the weekend before and I got a blender from D's mama.  Very cool and awesome to make milkshakes in. :D

January and February came and went without any big stuff going on.  As per usual those two months are usually typically boring and that's fine cause I just want the winter to be OVER so we can start in with all the awesome spring stuff.  Like trips to the beach, hiking, and taking Teddy for walks (which he REFUSES to do when it's cold).

Well now it's March.  Hello March.  March is funny because it's an action as well as a month.  So technically you can march through March.  How many times can I say March in this blog.  Don't test me.  :)

We celebrated my Mom's birthday by taking her out for chinese food and getting her this embarrassingly HUGE cupcake balloon.  And then they gave her ice cream and we sang Happy Birthday as obnoxiously and as loudly as we could.  Super awesome and she was thoroughly mortified!

We attended my niece T's Sweet 16 party held at a night club!  She wore this GIANT red tulle ballgown and I spent part of the night reminding her and her friends to stop stepping on it!  No wardrobe malfunctions happened! Thank goodness!

I was moved to a new jobsite at the beginning of March...in Manhattan.  I don't mind the commute because I don't have to drive.  I nap on the train.  Which is awesome.

We are heading to see D's parents this coming weekend so I will see ya next month with a new post!!




Signing off 12:35 hrs

The Official NORAD Santa Tracker

Did you know on Christmas Eve you can track Santa's progress to see where in the world he is flying and delivering toys?!  Well you can!!  NORAD has a special website just for him!

It's not quite Christmas yet so the site have activities and things you can play around with in the mean time.

Check it out HERE.


Merry Santa Tracking!!!


Signing off 12:38

Totaling the 12 Days Of Christmas gifts....

EVERYONE knows the song the 12 Days of Christmas.

This blog has to do with just that.

The song.

First I will start out with a little history on the song and then I will get to my point.  Y'all know how much I love Wikipedia!  A search on Wikipedia found an article describing the background on the 12 Days of Christmas song here.  If you want to read the whole article there that's all well and good but the first section is pasted below for easy reference:

Origin

The twelve days in the song are the twelve days starting Christmas Day, or in some traditions, the day after Christmas (December 26) (Boxing Day or St. Stephen's Day, as being the feast day of St. Stephen Protomartyr) to the day before Epiphany, or the Feast of the Epiphany (January 6, or the Twelfth Day). Twelfth Night is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as "the evening of the fifth of January, preceding Twelfth Day, the eve of the Epiphany, formerly the last day of the Christmas festivities and observed as a time of merrymaking."
Although the specific origins of the chant are not known, it possibly began as a Twelfth Night "memories-and-forfeits" game, in which a leader recited a verse, each of the players repeated the verse, the leader added another verse, and so on until one of the players made a mistake, with the player who erred having to pay a penalty, such as offering up a kiss or a sweet. This is how the game is offered up in its earliest known printed version, in the children's book Mirth without Mischief (c. 1780) published in England, which 100 years later Lady Gomme, a collector of folktales and rhymes, described playing every Twelfth Day night before eating mince pies and twelfth cake.
The song apparently is older than the printed version, though it is not known how much older. Textual evidence indicates that the song was not English in origin, but French, though it is considered an English carol. Three French versions of the song are known. If the "partridge in a pear tree" of the English version is to be taken literally, then it seems as if the chant comes from France, since the red-legged (or French) partridge, which perches in trees more frequently than the native common (or grey) partridge, was not successfully introduced into England until about 1770.

This leads up to the info that I found online yesterday.  Someone took the time to total up the prices for all the gifts given in that song based on today's prices.  They even gave a comparison figure based on last year's prices.  The prices in the list are only for 1 "set" of gifts as the link here explains.  The whole package with all 364 gifts at today's prices would be around $107,300.24!  Yikes!

As promised here is the list (I added the pictures):



Prices of items in the Christmas song “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” according to PNC Wealth Management:

- Partridge, $15; last year: same

- Pear tree, $189.99; last year: 169.99

- Two turtle doves, $125; last year: same

- Three French hens, $165; last year: $150

- Four calling birds (canaries), $519.96; last year: same

- Five gold rings, $750; last year: $645

- Six geese a-laying, $210; last year: $162

- Seven swans a-swimming, $7,000; last year: $6,300

- Eight maids a-milking, $58; last year: same

- Nine ladies dancing (per performance), $6,294; last year: same

- 10 lords a-leaping (per performance), $4,767; last year: same

- 11 pipers piping (per performance), $2,562; last year: $2,428

- 12 drummers drumming (per performance), $2,776; last year: $2,630


What I want to know is where the hell did she PUT all this stuff?!

I hope you have a happy holiday, no matter what you celebrate!

Signing off 09:45  








 

Piecaken and jello brains

This post is going to be pretty boring.  Mainly because I am talking about the first piecaken I've ever made.  Mostly because I forgot to take pictures as I was making it.  I know...that sucks.  I promise I will take pics of the next one.  I SWEAR.  We are getting prepared to move next weekend and I've been stressed about it and forgot.  Ugh.

Anyway.  I made a piecaken.  What is a piecaken you ask?  It's a pie (of any type) baked into a cake (of any type)....whole.  I made one with a cherry pie inside a chocolate cake and it turned out pretty damn good.  At least everyone who tried it liked it.  It's really easy to make also:

Step 1: Obtain box of cake mix of any variety (and the eggs, water, oil etc you need to make it)

Step 2: Obtain a whole pie (or make a whole pie and bake it)

Step 3:  Heat oven at temperature listed on cake mix box

Step 4: Spray and flour a springform pan of the round variety bigger than the pie

Step 5:  Prepare cake mix and pour 2 cups of it into the bottom of the springform pan

Step 6: Place entire whole pie in the bottom of the springform pan on top of the cake mix

Step 7: Pour the rest of the cake mix over the pie, making sure it's completely covered.

Step 8: Bake until cake is done (will probably take longer than listed due to the pie being in there)

Step 9: Once piecaken has cooled you can frost it if you want to

Step 10: Cut it in half so you can see how cool it looks and display for consumption

Step 11:  Enjoy!

***************************************************************************************

Made jello brains in a mold too....those didn't work out too well as they lost shape upon removal from the mold.  We kept it to eat anyway cause cherry jello is yummy!

Let me know if you attempt a piecaken and how it turned out!

Signing off 22:50

A Few Random Images.....And Teddy

Today I just felt like posting some random images from my vast collection.

Like this

And this

And this

And Teddy

Music I remember loving in the 80's

I heard a song today that I hadn't heard in a long time.  'Mandolin Rain' by Bruce Hornsby.  I got to thinking about the first time I remember hearing that song.  I must have been 9 or 10 years old and I can specifically recall loving the piano part and the words.  I used to tape songs off of the radio just so I could listen to them over and over again.  I liked to memorize songs and be able to sing them word for word.  Heck, I still like to memorize songs.  That's what drove me to memorize 'We Didn't Start The Fire' by Billy Joel when I was in 12th grade.  I used to drive around in the car with the cassette tape in the tape deck and the windows down.  I would rewind it and play it over and over and over again.  I can still sing the whole damn song word for word (and I know about all the historical events and people he talks about too....so there :-P )

When we were kids my Mom sold Avon and had a regular route with customers that she went on delivering catalogs and merchandise orders.  That was one of the things my sister and I helped my Mom with on Saturday mornings.  We'd drive the route in my Mom's car with the radio on and sing along while we made deliveries.  I have to say I learned a lot of songs this way.  I'd hear a song I liked and when it came up on the radio I'd tape it and memorize it.  I still love to sing.  D makes fun of me sometimes because I will sing along to anything whether it's in my range or not!

All of this thinking about my childhood got me to thinking that I wanted to pick 25 songs that I remember being my favorite in the the 80's.  Then I realized that I would have way more that 25.  So I picked the first 26 that I could remember.  In no particular order.  Finding them on YouTube was pretty easy, as was saving them to a playlist.





1. 'The Way It Is'- Bruce Hornsby
2. 'Mandolin Rain'- Bruce Hornsby
3. 'The Living Years'- Mike and the Mechanics
4. 'Billie Jean'- Michael Jackson
5. 'Walk Like An Egyptian'- The Bangles
6. 'Come On Eileen'- Dexys Midnight Runners
7. 'Take On Me'- A-Ha
8. 'Wake Me Up Before You Go Go'- Wham
9. 'Under Pressure'- Queen and David Bowie
10. '867-5309'- Tommy Tutone
11. 'Sister Christian'- Night Ranger
12. 'Born In The USA'- Bruce Springsteen
13. 'You Spin Me Round (Like A Record)- Dead Or Alive
14. 'Mickey'- Toni Basil
15. 'Jack And Diane'- John Mellencamp
16. 'Take My Breath Away'- Berlin
17. 'Whip It'- Devo
18. 'Straight Up'- Paula Abdul
19. 'Faith'- George Michael
20. 'She Blinded Me With Science'- Thomas Dolby
21. 'All Night Long'- Lionel Richie
22. 'Down Under'- Men At Work
23. 'Uptown Girl'- Billy Joel
24. 'Tiny Dancer'- Elton John
25. 'The End Of The Innocence'- Don Henley
26. 'We Didn't Start The Fire' -Billy Joel

 I hope you enjoy the songs and let me know what your favorites were from your childhood. I always love hearing thoughts on and reactions to my posts. Thanks.

 Signing off 04:38

September 11....(eleven years later)

I'm sitting here in Queens, NY in our office with the windows wide open and the breeze blowing in.  I hear the trains and traffic going by and I hear people in the lot next door talking and laughing.  This is the first September 11th that I have worked since I was sent home from work on September 11, 2001 and told by my boss that she was paying me for the rest of the day because they might need me at the fire house.  The events that day and the months that followed were bizarre, surreal, and I'm not sure I ever really got over it.

Today's weather is exactly the same as it was in 2001....it's even a Tuesday.  Every year I take September 11th off from work and spend the day at the fire house.  The place we all gravitated to as the events in 2001 were unfolding.  We prayed, stared at the TV and monitored the scanners.  We talked and stood around in a state of shock.  We didn't truly know what was really going on with our brother and sister firefighters and EMT's until we started getting phone calls about people we knew who were working.  Some people hadn't heard from them since before the planes hit the towers.  Guys were MISSING.  It was a little scary.

We prepped the trucks and the ambulance in case we were needed to assist anyone, anywhere.  We sat around....no one wanted to leave and go home.  Our families didn't really understand what we were feeling.  My ambulance responded to a ferry terminal and assembled with several other ambulances to remove and transport some of the more minor aided to our local hospitals as the city ones were becoming overwhelmed with wounded.  I don't know what time we got back to the firehouse but I then received word that two guys from a neighboring fire department who were both working that day were missing.  So I went with some people over to their firehouse and a few days later was involved in a prayer meeting as we held out hope that they'd still be alive.

But they weren't.
I went to many, many funerals, wakes and vigils that year and the next for brothers who died in the line of duty.
I know many others who survived the response that day but who are now sick with lung issues, cancer, are battling PTSD, or have since passed on.

I think about how we are all tied together because of what we do.  Firefighting and EMS is our calling.  I personally wouldn't have it any other way.  It doesn't matter if you didn't know someone who died that day, we are all brothers and sisters in service.  It's not just today that I think about my friends who perished doing one of the things that they lived for.  It's every time I get on a rig, every time I head off to work and bandage someone up, every time I see a skyscraper or airplane, every time I push that siren button as I sit in the front seat of that ambulance and head off to a call.  I take comfort in the fact that they SAVED people from dying that day.  People are alive today because of my brothers and sisters who put civilians lives before their own and for that I am very proud of them.

It's a daily struggle for me to understand why people want to cause trouble for others, to try to injure and kill each other.  Especially people they don't know.  Every assault victim I see and every news report I hear makes me even more determined to try to make a positive difference.  The gods gave me the power to help people and I try to do the best I can while I make my way in this world.  I get into the back of that ambulance and I hold the hand of the elderly woman who fell and cut her head and needs stitches.  I take a minute to reassure the husband of a patient that his wife of 60 years is going to be alright.  I hold a child who has had a febrile seizure and explain to his sobbing mother that what happened is perfectly normal and he will be fine.  I try to make a little difference wherever I can.

I have been serving for the last 13 years and D for the last 18.  I hope that when we have children they will get the service bug in them too and continue the work that we have started. I serve in the memory of my friends who have died in the line of duty and the friends that I have made since I have been part of this thing that is bigger than I am,  it's bigger than all of us.

Rest in Peace guys.  Just know that we won't ever forget you.

343 on 9/11/01
To TL, GH, PL- R.I.P
To my sick friends:  Keep fighting!