Do you judge a book by its cover?

What is your first impression of this guy? You can't see it in this picture but he also has tatoos all over his arms. He has piercings in his lip, both ears and his nose. Some days he wears a belt that is made out of chains and a bracelet that has spikes on it. He has tiny square black glasses. I have never seen him wear anything other than black.

In the past I probably would have been petrified if I saw someone who looked like this. However, for the past year I have worked in a different work location that draws its workers from an entirely different demographic of people. Most of the people that I work with have tatoos and many of them have multiple piercings. We have several people with black and red hair. Although there is a dress code, their style is very casual and is far from the "formal" atmosphere that I am used to.

Actually the young man above is one of the nicest people you could ever meet. He is always at work at least a half hour before his shift begins and is always ready to work when the start time comes. He is extremely conscientious and never misses work. Although he has only been on his present job for about 9 months, he has worked for the company for 8 years and has done an excellent job on all of his previous jobs.

If you call our company, he might be the Customer Service Representative that you speak with. If so, you would be very lucky. He is soft-spoken, very polite and makes each customer feel like he has been waiting all day for their call. Since he's still fairly new on this job he has things to learn but he does his best to make every customer feel special and to resolve their problem. If you were on the other end of the phone, you would probably never picture him to look like this.

He and the other people I work with have taught me to be more open-minded and not to "judge a book by its cover".

Oh, by the way, his hairdo is done with a flat iron, elmers glue and lots of hairspray. He says it takes him about 20 minutes to get it in place.

State Cheerleading Championsip

My beautiful granddaughter Hannah is a cheerleader for

Lakeridge High School. Although this is her 3rd year as a cheerleader, it is her first year being part of their compeition team. There are 15 girls on the team.

She has had quite a year learning the routines and mastering her back hand-spring. Thank heavens she isn't one of the fliers....I'd have a heart attack for sure.

Yesterday was the state championship. Lakeridge was one of 55 teams from all over the state who competed. I must

admit that I am a sucker for this kind of event...I love to see all of the cheerleading uniforms and see their amazing performances. Each teams did a tumbling routine, a cheer and a dance routine. For the most part all of the teams were sesational.

This isn't Hannah's team but it will give you an idea of what the competition looked like. I did take a video of Hannah's team butit is to big a file to load here.

Her team placed 8th in the competition. Even though they were hoping to finish in the top 5 so that they could get a trophy, placing 8th out of 55 teams was outstanding (especially considering that several of the girls are new to the competition team this year. My old high school placed 3rd, so I enjoyed watching them also.

Congratulations to Hannah and her teammates. You did great!

FFF - Favorite Foto Friday

This is a picture of my son-in-law Zac at his wedding reception in Gatlinburg, Tennessee on September 10, 2001. The reception was at a german restaurant and Zac became the entertainment. We all had so much fun....the next day was 9/11 and the world changed.

Box Crushers bring it home!

Last weekend the Box Crushers (the pool team that my son Travis plays on) competed in the Tri-Cup pool tournament.

As you may recall from my earlier post, a few weeks ago the team won 2nd place in their Monday pool league. That win qualified the team to play in the Tri-Cup tournament. This tournament pitted the winners of the local leagues in the Portland and surrounding area (from Salem to Vancouver and Hillsboro to Gresham) against each other. Sixty five teams completed.

After a grueling two days of competition Travis' team came in third and won $1000. This was quite a feat considering they were playing the best teams in Portland. No one had ever heard of the Box Crushers and thought that they were absolutely no threat. Now they are a legend.

The next step in journey is the regional competition to be held in June. This will bring the winning teams from Oregon,Washington, Idaho and Montana together. At this point they don't know where the tournament will be. They are hoping that it will be somewhere out of state. If finish in the top 8 in that tournament they will progress to the national tournament in Las Vegas. Stay tuned for the next installment.

Senior Bingo ....here we come!

Do you have your own private geriatric social worker? I do! .... little did we know when we paid those thousands of dollars for my daughter's college education that we'd get a direct payback once we got to be members of the "golden age generation". Yep, my oldest daughter Jennifer is a social worker for a "Seniors" agency and she knows just what we need.

Last time I visited her she decided that she, my other daughter and her husband, and I should go to BINGO at the senior center. Now, even though I legitimately quality as a senior, I'm really more the American Idol concert type.

Jenny, Suzi and I at the concert this summer

Jenny says that when you get to a certain age all senior women get the gene that makes you buy those horrible sweatshirts with pictures on the front of them and get the tight kinky-curl short permanent. I'm not quite to that stage yet. I've been to bingo before and know that not only do the women match that description but they also have their purse full of lucky trolls, special colored dabbers, bells to ring and whistles to blow.

The first thing that happened when we got there was that we all got in trouble because we sat a table that was usually occupied by REGULARS. We didn't know that people sat in certain places and we just stayed put. Next we got in trouble for talking and laughing. Playing bingo is serious business! You can read all about our experiences on Jenny's blog.

We actually had a great time in spite of not winning. Most of all it convinced us that "Bingo Caller " definitely should be the next occupation of my husband AIRJER. Anyone who knows him, knows that he is one crazy dude. He has way more personality than the present bingo caller. Mr. AirJer would have all those old ladies loving him after 1/2 hour.

The other thing that the bingo caller does is shop for hamburger, buns, chips and pop (they sell hamburgers during the breaks). That is right up AirJer's alley too....he is the only person I know who can make an all day trip out of going to the grocery store to buy a couple of items. (My girls are convince that he has a thing going on with Tami, the meat lady at Albertsons because he always takes her a Starbucks coffee and gets great deals). He loves to grocery shop and loves to find the best bargain. Does this sound like the perfect job for him or what? Right after we were there the present bingo caller announced that he thinks he may retire soon. Watch out bingo...AirJer is coming.

AirJer hasn't had the chance to experience this wonderful adventure, so over President's Day weekend we are flying over there so that he can go to bingo with us. The six of us (my daughters, son-in-laws and AirJer and I) are going to celebrate Valentines day at the Senior Center playing bingo. I've even been shopping for one of those awful sweatshirts to wear just for laughs. You can bet there will be another blog about this experience.

What do you think.... does this sound like a perfect match for AirJer?

The blue leather recliner bites the dust...FINALLY!

The blue leather recliner has become a legend in our house. Many, many years ago we bought a navy blue leather couch, recliner, and chair.

The recliner immediately became dad's chair and he has clocked many hours sleeping in it. The chair should have made it's exit a long time ago, but Jerry wouldn't even listen to suggestions that he should get a new chair. About 5 years ago the ball bearings started falling out. In the past year springs have fallen out, there are rips in the arms and the whole chair tilts to one side. When Jerry falls asleep in it his head bobs to one side since the chair tilts so much. No amount of pleading

would make his give up his beloved chair. In the last few months the chair had gotten so bad that he actually had to put pillows on the seat to keep the springs from polking him.

Even though personally I would have loved to burn the chair, some things just aren't worth the fight. If that chair really made him that happy who was I to get rid of it. Whenever we go to a store that has recliners he "tries" them out and promptly declares that they just don't feel right (of course not - he doesn't remember what it feels like to sit in a real chair).

Over Christmas my daughter Jenny and I were Christmas shopping and came across a recliner that we were both sure he'd like. Finally after a month of begging Jerry to at least go look at it, today he finally agreed to go. It only took one test "recline" to convince him that it was indeed the chair for him.

We said...."We'll take it!" .... and guess what-they only had the display model (which had a few dirt spots on it). After a few phone calls they located the chair at another one of their stores about 5 miles away. So, off we went to the other store. When we got to there not only did they have the chair, but also had a lounge chair that matched it.

Patience pays off because now we each have a new chair.

Does anyone want the old blue recliner?

Sometimes my brain is sawdust.....

Anyone who knows me will tell you that I am addicted to scrapbooking. Even back in the dark ages when I was a teenager (and long before scrapbooking was in vogue) I loved this hobby. And as the years have gone by I have only gotten worse .

My scapbooking buddy is my friend Linda . Between the two of

us we probably own every scrapbooking tool and gadget known to man (or woman) plus a huge assortment of paper, ribbon, chipboard, embellishments, button, etc.. We buy our "treasures" at Scrapbook Fever (our favorite scrapbook store), at CK conventions, on QVC and wherever else we find things all these wonderful things that we can't live without (we only buy things that are new and different - don't we Linda).

Honestly, I have enough scrapbooking supplies to last a lifetime.

Before I retired, I justified my purchases by saying that I had to buy things before I retired and could no longer afford to buy them. I don't know what my excuse is now. Linda and I crop together frequently, take classes, go to scrapbook conventions....you get the idea. We even have brainwashed our daughters. This picture was taken after we had all been scrapbooking for 3 days with no sleep.

Linda and I love trying new techniques and have been known to scrapbook from 10:00 AM until 11:00 PM and only get 2 or 3 layouts done. (Did I mention that we talk a lot?) We love to spend hours creating our masterpieces.

No project is too intricate or overwhelming for us....or is it? Have you ever had those days when your brain is just sawdust? As a rule I find scrapbooking very relaxing, but sometimes I just don't have the energy to be creative. On these days I just want to sit down and magically come up with a beautiful page without having to think about it. I shouldn't admit it, but when this happens I cheat and resort to "page kits".

In September we went to Scrapbook Expo in Salt Lake City. There was this great booth - Out on a Limb Scrapbooking that had wonderful page kits for $2.99 - $4.99. Even with all my scrapbook supplies I can justify spending that amount (because it would cost me at last that much for paper and supplies ---- right?). No! I have no affiliation to this vendor and don't get a kickback by mentioning them. I did meet the owners Lindsey and Kate and really liked them. But, on days when my brain is sawdust these kits are perfect! They are also great for beginning scrapbookers who want some help getting started. Here are some of my pages that I made using these kits:

I'd include a layout that I designed from scratch, but then you might tell me to only use the page kits.