Broken zipper

Posted on 8th May 2012 in Friends/Family, Internet, Life, Opinion, Shopping, Technology/Gadgets

A few weeks ago I saw a zipper repair kit for sale online at one of those “bargain” websites. I had been looking for something to give my wife to use to repair the zipper on the hooded sweatshirt that she had hand painted several years ago. The zipper had broken and she had stopped wearing the sweatshirt, but she did not want to throw it away because she had spent so much time and energy hand painting the thing.

So when the zipper repair kit arrived, we hunted for a while to find the sweat shirt. It had been put away in the back of a closet and was being elusive. Finally we put the zipper repair kit in her sewing basket and had given up looking for the sweat shirt. Well, surprisingly enough, when my wife was looking for a gray skirt to lend to her sister to wear at a funeral, she found that sweat shirt and pulled it out of the closet.

We tried to use the zipper repair kit, but we were unsuccessful with our attempt. We broke two of the replacement zipper heads in the attempt. Very discouraging!

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Frank Lloyd Wright was my father’s favorite architectural designer

Posted on 7th May 2012 in Entertainment/Fun, Environment, Friends/Family, Home and Garden, Home Improvement, Life, Opinion

When I was growing up, my father would take us kids out and drive around to look at open houses in different new neighborhoods. He made his living as an architectural designer and he was always looking for what the “other guys” were doing and what was the newest and trendiest thing in architecture.

He had designed the house we lived in, and although at the time I thought that it was not an attractive building from the outside, I have to admit that the interior layout was really very nicely designed. It wasn’t until I was a young adult that I learned that the inspiration behind the house was from the designs of Frank Lloyd Wright. I had never even heard of the name of Frank Lloyd Wright until the album “Bridge over Troubled Waters” was released by Simon and Garfunkel. I can remember asking my father who Frank Lloyd Wright was, and he told me that he was a famous architect. I always thought it was weird for Simon and Garfunkel to be singing a farewell song to Frank Lloyd Wright…. but it did pique my interest to learn who he was. And to be honest, he really was a very good designer!

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Lawyer up

Posted on 6th May 2012 in Friends/Family, Life

Sharon called me to ask me for some advice on how to handle the problems that she has been having with her husband’s ex-wife. She has been a thorn in her side ever since she found out that Sharon was a part of his life. The most recent thing that upset her was when she was at the grocery store and was in the check-out lane and saw her walking into the store. Sharon tried to leave the store from the opposite door, trying to avoid detection, but within a few minutes of driving her car she looked in her rear view mirror and saw the ex-wife was tail gating her! I advised her to get the best Raleigh lawyers that specialize in family law that she can find. There’s no need of that!

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Brio trains

Posted on 6th May 2012 in Entertainment/Fun, Friends/Family, Life

My grand-niece is visiting with us today, and we have been trying to keep her entertained with the Brio trains that my sons played with when they were younger. These trains bring back a lot of memories – all the way back to when our oldest son (now 30) was only 5 years old and we took him to a model train and dollhouse show down at the armory. My wife was eight months pregnant at the time, and I hoisted our son up onto my shoulders as we walked around the train show. His eyes gleamed with excitement as we walked around looking at all of the model trains. There was one very large display set up that had the electric trains actually running around and we spent at least an hour looking at the display.

When we decided to buy the starter Brio train set, we had hoped that the set would stay in the family for generations to come, and so far it looks like it will, in fact, do just that. And that feels really good.

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Chocolate fountains

Posted on 5th May 2012 in Food, Friends/Family, Life, Opinion

Guest post by Rita Sheldon

Have you seen those commercials on television for the Golden Corral restaurant where they show photographs of chocolate fountains? To be perfectly honest when I saw the commercial I thought to myself that it sounded pretty gross.

So when I found myself going to the Golden Corral myself a few days ago, and I saw the big chocolate fountain in the dessert section, and all of the plates of fresh fruits and pieces of angel food cake, marshmallows, and Rice Krispy marshmallow treat bars, all skewered with bamboo skewers I decided to pass it up. Until I saw that the chocolate fountain was actually really, really popular. I decided that I would go ahead and go up to the fountain and take one of the skewered strawberries and dip it in the chocolate and give it a try. I mean, what do I have to lose, anyway? I’d already paid for my meal, and it was all-you-can-eat buffet. Isn’t one of the biggest reasons that I go to a buffet is to be able to try new things without committing to ordering a huge plate of some unknown food and then hating it? Of course it is!

Well, to my surprise, I really DID like it. I think that the reason I thought that I would not like it was that I was expecting the chocolate to be dark chocolate, which is bitter, and I don’t like bitter. But this chocolate was delicious – I’m not sure if it was milk chocolate, or semi-sweet, or a combination. Regardless, it was delicious and I went ahead and took a lot of the different fruits and dipped them into the chocolate and filled up my plate with a lot of chocolate dipped strawberries and apples and marshmallows and pieces of angel food cake.

I think that I’m going to look into what kind of chocolate they used and see if I can get some of it to melt in the crock pot at home and just dip some fruit in it at home and see if I can get a similar taste. That would be a nice dessert to have at the next family party that I have to hold!

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