Cold Snap in Florida!

Here in South Florida, the cold snap shattered a decades-old record!

The freezing temperatures are still lingering on in South Florida, and do you believe it...... with snow flurries spotted around Orlando and a record low set for Miami.  The News showed snow on top of cars and children trying to make snowballs.  Warmer weather  is coming our way this weekend.

Some citrus groves in northern Florida, sustained substantial damage, as temperatures were in the teens in some parts of northern Florida. Citrus trees rarely survive when exposed to temperatures in the mid-20s or below longer than four hours.

Florida's citrus industry is worth $9.3 billion and produces 75 percent of the nation's orange crop.  Well, be ready to see the price of oranges to go up.

Floridians might have had enough of Mother Nature, but she hasn't had enough of Florida!

Look at the ice forming on the trees.  Yikes, I've been living in Florida close to 21 years now and I have never seen this before.

The heat has been on daily.  I've had on several pairs of socks as my feet were freezing!

I had to check my car's manual to see how to turn on the heated seats which I've never used before!   LOL  Wow, it gets nice and toasty.........Didn't think I would never use those features.

I just don't understand one thing????????  I've never felt this cold inside the house living up in New England for most of my life.  Heat is heat....right?  Why would I still feel so cold in the house?  I don't understand it.

Well, I got the opportunity to take out my winter wardrobe that I reserve for my trips up north. 

Stay warm folks!

Dr. Oz

If you have not heard of Dr. Oz, you must be living in another planet. I fell in love with this doctor with the many appearances he made on Oprah's show....55 to be exact. I'm in awe of him.

He now has his own TV show and I'm glued to my TV every day at 3:00 PM here in South Florida to watch him. There isn't a medical topic that he can't answer a question to. His education and background is supersized!  His father is also a doctor.

He also has an online site called "realage.com". You can test yourself to see what your "real" age is. I took the test once three years ago and it said I was 78 years old! Since then, I stopped smoking, exercise every day even if it is only for 15-20 minutes and try to eat healthy. The age dropped down to 66. Well, I just turned 65 but I would like my age to drop lower on that test. I need to exercise longer.

Dr. Mehmet Oz is a Turkish/American Cardiothoracic surgeon and an author. He has been on many of Oprah's TV shows and also on Larry King, CNN and other networks.

In the fall of 2009, Oprah's Harpo Productions and Sony Pictures launched a syndicated daily talk show featuring Oz, called The Dr. Oz Show. And I have not missed one show yet. I'm crazy about him and gaining so much knowledge on how to take good care of myself! He talks about things that you would be so embarrassed to ask your doctor and therefore not getting any answers.

He seems to know it all when most doctors just stay in their specialized field and that is it. He is just "Brilliant". Check him out on your TV Listings in your area.  He is on Channel Five here in South Florida.

Happy New Year 2010!

Wow, another new year approaching!  Most of us make a list of new resolutions starting with stop smoking, lose weight and exercise and declutter, declutter, declutter!

Well, I already stopped smoking three years ago so I scratched that off my list, Yippee!  By the way, it was not an easy thing to do. I'm still working on losing the weight that I gained from stop smoking! Now, it's time to declutter my life.  It seems that at least every several months, I buy a bag of large trash bags and try to get rid of things in my walk-in closet because I'm always tripping on something due to lack of space, everything seems to go in the closet.

I now have the shelves looking neat with the clear containers but I still need to color coordinate my outfits hanging by two different sizes...just in case!

Gosh, I miss attics and cellars. No such things here in South Florida.  Maybe, it's best...It is just more places to store more stuff that we don't need.  Well, I'll take that back, you do need storage for Xmas trees, ornaments, wrapping paper, bows,  hurricane equipment, suitcases, etc.

I always find excuses as to why I'm saving certain items that I consider cherished possessions that are tucked away in a box or something. If they were so cherished....I doubt they would be buried in a closet. They would be proudly displayed somewhere in my house I would think....no?

It seems that it was just a few short months ago, I gave away tons of clothes and shoes and made a mild dent in my closet. I should have tried to make some money and bring them to a consignment shop instead.

I recently purchased more clear shoe boxes and transferred all my shoes from its original boxes to the clear ones.........what a difference that made. They have pretty lime/green handles and match the huggable lime green hangers I purchased several years ago. They work great and they do really give you extra space than those fat round bulkie plastic hangers. I do need to order more..........Yes, I have tons of shoes!

I ordered these clear plastic shoe boxes made by "Sterilite" (7 Qt size) online at Walmart and they have a new policy now "ship to store". So, you order your stuff, save on the shipping and handling, as the manufacturer delivers directly to the store. They email you when your merchandise arrives........no need to stand in line at the register........in and out of that store I hate to go into......It is always too crowded and frustrating but they have great prices for certain items like my new purchase.

Now to tackle under the bed!  So, you see, it is never new year's resolutions to declutter, it's something you should be doing periodically anyway. Give away to Good Will things you don't need and help out the needy. We all have tons of clothes that don't fit us anymore....whether too tight and if you are lucky, to big! LOL

The chore took close to three hours including going up and down my stairs taking trash bags to the dumpster. Nearly pulled my back out again. Ah, the condo lifestyle sometimes is not so convenient. I miss having a garage and my own trash container with wheels on it that I used to just wheel to the end of the driveway.........no lifting, tugging, pulling, up and down the stairs.................Ugh. An elevator would be helpful at least!

Well, enjoy your parties for New Years and try to keep your resolutions for the new year and above all stay safe.

Hugs, Rose

Merry Christmas to my Blogger Friends!

Wishing all of you a wonderful Christmas! 

Hugs, Rose

P.S.  Remember to CLICK on the cookie shaped

like a Christmas tree....then watch the Reindeer eat it!

Remember what your mother told you--choose your friends wisely!

Ahhh, to be young and naive again!

Life has a way of throwing us off course. I may not have a "Tiger Woods" for a husband (thank God) who not only cheats with low-life scanks but embarrassed and hurt his wife to no end and I personally see no future for his marriage. But, I have certainly been dealt my fair share of challenges – So if some women look like they tend to be happier than others because they have better husbands, bigger homes, or larger bank accounts? And, if widowed or divorced, are they provided for better than you? The answer is no. So, what looks like the good life is not always so....no happiness there. Money can only bring you a certain amount of happiness.

We all have the power to think positive and the ability to recognize our own blessings! I love quotes and I like this one - Abraham Lincoln said it best in his famous quote, “People are about as happy as they make their minds up to be.” The world is filled with two kinds of people—those who are positively charged and those who allow many unmentionable little dilemmas in between causing a dark cloud over their heads. It's all about choosing wisely.

Do you remember when you were young, your mother telling you to choose your friends wisely? If you hung around with the wrong crowd, you always got into trouble. Ain't that the truth because who you hung out with made you look good - or bad - depending on the crowd. Now it appears the same advice applies to connections you make on networking sites like LinkedIn and Facebook. Facebook isn’t a race to see who can get the most friends. In fact, the more “friends” you have, the less likely it is that you will be able to have meaningful chats with.

Oh my, the World Wide Web we weave with new technology and social networks definitely have a huge effect on our attitudes including how we perceive ourselves. It's hard to feel good about yourself if you are choosing people to hang out with that are not confident about themselves. I was raised, and I spent most of my life believing that somehow I was magically confident enough to live with a positive attitude and try to complain little and that your neighbors should never know your family business.

Old fashioned Italian families believe that your personal problems are to be kept to yourself. Then as you get older, you find sharing your most inner secrets with your best friend with an understanding that she would not tell another sole. Then we were told to let out your feelings and don't keep it bottled up inside causing major stress. Wow, talk about ups and downs.......what is right.......what is wrong......loosen up and give yourself a reality check.

We all can't be perfect but we can plan to be better. You do not have to be everyone’s friend. Choose to be friends with people who build you up, not tear you down. Choose friends, who are honest with you and inspire you. Choose friends that welcome you, not alienate and insult you and this applies to co-workers too. Some co-workers can be back stabbers…….now why is that? People spend a 8 hour day with these co-workers that you automatically consider them friends and for some, an extension of your family until one hurts you. Good friends don’t hurt you.

Most friendships are started because of some common thread – a love of books, an appreciation of fine wine, and an insufferable boss to share stories about. Love girly flicks, shopping for new shoes, enjoy a favorite sport with or check out the local library book sale together next month.

Friends are very important............ just do what your mother told you to do.........choose them wisely!

Sharing----thank you to my friend, Janice!

http://www.nightingalecreations.com/MerryChristmas2009.html

CLICK ON THE ABOVE UNDERLINED AND ENJOY!

Merry Christmas!

I will be making a conscious effort to wish everyone

a Merry Christmas this year ...

My way of saying that I am celebrating

the birth Of Jesus Christ.

So, I am asking my email buddies,

if you agree with me,

to please do the same.

Maybe we can prevent one more

American tradition from being lost in the sea of

"Political Correctness".

How did I allow this to happen?

How did I allow this to happen? My computer dominates my life!

Like everyone else, my life is being dominated by my computer. I wake up and brew my coffee, turn on the puter to check my email then read my local Newspaper online, check the weather, check Facebook, ignore Twitter and then read some blogs or create a new entry for my own blogs, one for my old classmate friends and one for my personal life. Before you know it 4 hours have passed!

While I’m defragging my puter, I’ll go do a load of laundry or make the bed and then back on the computer into my graphic sites. I started out with one site and now I’m a member to several. I’m partial to my first site I started with to learn how to make animations and graphics to enhance my blogs and make them more interesting to the reader and myself.

I was in my closet looking for something and down below was my old Singer Sewing Machine that I had converted into a portable years ago when I scaled down to a condo which has no room and storage space for anything. Well, this old gal of a Singer is made of cast iron and quite heavy to lift. It brought back many memories of when that machine was never on the floor of a closet but in a room and opened everyday and housed in a beautiful piece of mahogany furniture. I've had this machine since I was 16 years old.

Wow, it dawned on me that the pleasure of sewing and creating a beautiful garment reminded me that not everything is made up of click of a mouse and pixels! My life years ago was boxes filled with fabric, zippers and patterns that I used to love to change the sleeves to one pattern and add a different collar to another. I was quite good at it. My clothes did not look homemade. The savings was amazing, then the cost of fabric went up just like everything else and all your hard work and time was not worth the effort. A lot easier to pick a cute outfit off of a rack in an adorable boutique and unique department store like Filene's Basement in Boston!  But being only 5'2", alterations were always necessary whenever I purchased from the stores.

I’m thinking of browsing threw a fabric store for an interesting pattern and perhaps try and create something nice for myself. Wow, do I even remember how to thread the thing? LOL While I was in high school, I made a new outfit every week. Yes, I did get an “A” in Sewing. My Italian mother was proud. When you come from a very large family……..hand me downs are awful……….being a good seamstress made me look like I came from a rich family! LOL  All my girlfriends and I made our own clothes so it was also fun to sew together too and mingle ideas for a new creation.

I have such a bad back that I fear trying to lift this heavy cast iron sewing machine from the closet floor. I don’t want to pull my back out. I wish I had the space I used to have, I would just walk over to the machine whenever any mending needed to be done or alterations to a newly purchased outfit. Then when that Singer was converted to a portable, I became one of those women that paid a tailor to hem a pair of slacks! I don’t like the idea of having the machine sitting on top of my dining room table………..heaven forbid my house should look untidy and things out of place! LOL

Thank you, Veterans!

http://www.ladyszoo.com/GodBless.html

CLICK ON THE ABOVE LINK....IT IS BEAUTIFUL!

Too much communication or not enough!

Do you realize that most of us spend a good portion of our days chatting in either Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Online Dating Sites or Blogging for the most part and on certain sites with people we have never met before? People have to realize that you should not leave too much personal information about yourself on these sites and make sure you go to your "Settings" first and adjust that first. I just experienced a nasty person that left an unpleasant semi nude photo in the "Comment" section. What a sleeze! We have too many sickos in this world. I was embarrassed for my followers that saw it. I deleted it ASAP. I also went back into my settings and selected more protection. There should be ONE State for all the Sickos to live in so they can torment each other and leave the sane people alone!

A friend of mine enjoys LinkedIn for networking and found it very helpful with finding jobs and increasing the growth of their current companies.

It sure can be exhilarating, at least at first to connect with long lost friends on Facebook which is the upside but the downside is the weak ties and realizing the distinction between true long time friends and acquaintances is becoming a connection we never knew before. We care about these people in a different way. And who are these people anyway? All our electronic relationships sometimes are quite refreshing and entertaining yet some or most are still strangers.

I read an article in a magazine recently that with all this new computer socializing, we are all heading for a massive Friender-Bender! Ya think? Will we need insurance for this “Friender-Bender”? LOL Well, in my opinion, it certainly has kept me company on many lonely evenings that I could not sleep. I think all these Scientists just find topics to study and analyze and criticize and what do they know anyway??????? They are human just like we are….the computer world certainly helped them in their field…so why can’t we have our field for a playground providing it is a healthy playground with no ill intent and definitely no cyber-bulling which can be frightening and deadly for the younger kids on computers. Some people just take it a step too far and forget about personal responsibility for their actions.

What happened to the old fashion way of communicating with others over a cup of coffee at your local coffee shop or walking down the street and stopping to chat with a neighbor or the local shopkeeper? I guess we are all in a hurry these days……driving here and there, multi-tasking, rushing doing errands…not taking the time to stop and smell the roses! We have all inflicted way too much stress on ourselves. The simpler life of years ago was better in so many ways. Your family, friends, neighbors and co-workers were truly sincere. Now, just turn on the News to get depressed with the horrifying stories and sometime all you have to do is look around your own office to notice the backstabber............sad..........real sad.

I’d like to find something nice to say everyday about any topic. And, today…I’d like to say I hope people find happiness and do what they love doing best in their work field…heck, you are there 8 hours per day or longer…….it certainly helps if you love your job! So, love the job more than loving the bigger paycheck! And, only believe half of what people tell you. The old days of a handshake to seal a deal is over!

Enjoy your weekend!

Happy Halloween!

So, what is in your mailbox?

Beware of what is in your mailbox!

I’m extremely upset that I had to write not one but two letters to two different magazines that I did not subscribe to. I made a total of five (5) phone calls regarding “Why am I receiving your magazine if I have not requested it”. I checked with my family and friends and they confirmed that they did not send it to me as a gift. It also has been plastered all over the News about people receiving magazines that they did not order.

So, this rollercoaster ride exhausted a great deal of my time which is valuable as I certainly could have been doing something else. I requested on three occasions for this magazine to stop being delivered to my home since I did NOT order it. One lady from the company told me that it is already paid for so why not continue to receive it until February! I replied...NO, I don't want anything I did not order. She also stated that the person who paid for it will get a check in the amount of $2.50 for the balance of this subscription.

Guess who got a check in the mail last Saturday for $2.50. Me! Which leads me to believe that someone has access to some of my information. I don't plan on cashing this check.

I composed a letter and sent it out "Certified" demanding an explanation for all of this. I was quite surprised and would expect a high degree of judgment and integrity from a well known magazine that was filling up my mailbox every month. Then it started again with a different magazine! Yikes! futta, futta....what gives?

I requested that this situation be investigated, an apology be tendered and some guarantee and something in writing showing me who is taking my money for subscriptions to their magazine. I thoroughly went through all my credit card statements and bank statements and see nothing out of the norm.????? Then I thought perhaps researching online has some hidden little things that can be overlooked with a check mark?????

I also kindly asked for them to acknowledge receipt of my letters and a detailed explanation of this entire mess. Or I threatened to have them plastered all over the Channel Five News. I’m very angry. What are people thinking?

I want all monies owed back to me and also for the cost of postage for both these certified letters, the paper, ink and envelope and my valuable time to write the damn letter sent to resolve these issues the imbeciles on the phone was unable to handle the matter over the phone.

If anyone has experienced something similar to the above with magazines, please let me know and how did you resolve your issues. Thanks