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Charlie’s Authentic Sicilian Lasagna
Ingredients:
Directions:
Got the picture???? When I moved in, the ceiling lights in every room were those kind that are enclosed in and flush to the ceiling! uugghh — every time a light bulb blew, I was calling a friend or my son to come change it out for me or catching a visitor while they happen to be here!!! I don’t like depending on anyone else for anything — I wanna be able to do it myself and when I want to have it done – not wait for someone else to have time to help!!! So – I had all but a couple changed to ceiling fans with the tulip type lights, which killed two birds with one stone: 1. gave me the ability to move the air around in the rooms and 2. made the light bulbs easily accessible and low enough to be able to reach them on a small step ladder and a little stretching.
But I still have an issue with the smoke alarms! Even if I make myself climb the bigger ladder I have out in the shed (which I have been known to suck it up and climb when I really need to), it is not tall enough to raise my not-quite-five-foot frame up high enough to reach the smoke alarms that barely extend an inch from the ceiling!!!! I am not one of those people who routinely change out the batteries every time the time changes – I know I should, I just don’t – so there! So, this morning I was very rudely nudged awake by a loud chirp every couple of minutes!!! Oh no, one of the smoke alarms has a dead or dying battery!!!! It is EXTREMELY irritating and just happens to be the one in the hallway, so I can’t even just close the door to muffle it!!! I may just go insane before I can get someone to come change out the battery!!!
On a slightly odd note — it doesn’t seem to be bothering the girls at all. They don’t seem to even notice it! I find that odd because of the fact that dogs have such acute hearing. When Puddles was alive, that was something that drove her bonkers – when we had a smoke alarm chirping, she would pace around and whine and look up at it in total disgust! Not Katie, Megan, or Amy – they are going about business as usual……..wish I could!!!!
I could not believe it!!! I yelled, called them bad girls, let them out to pee, and then put them in their confined space without dinner!!! I left the mess right where it was and went to meet a friend for dinner and cool down! When I got home, I fed them, let them out, and cleaned up the mess. I acted like I was still mad and didn’t want to talk to them — that drove them nuts!!!! I finally let them make their apologies and we “made up”!!!
The cushion can be fixed, I think — the fabric tore at the seams and they reached in to pull the foam out. I’ll take it to Todd’s or somewhere and see if they can put a new foam block in it and stitch it up for me.
I’m wondering when they are going to grow up — both Puddles and Katie settled right down and stopped all the destruction when they turned 2 — I hope Megan and Amy aren’t going to be the exceptions to that rule………..Will I ever be able to have nice things again????
Participants of note are:
Maybe you’ll find someone else you know on the list — check it out and help in any way you can — every $1.00 counts!!!!
The fun at Local Joe’s starts this Saturday (July 12th) at 3:00 with kid head shavings from 3:00 – 6:00 and the adult head shavings from 6:00 – 11:00! Come out and cheer on the wonderful shavees……..they are doing a great thing for a great cause and deserve our support!!!
And I’m sure there are more…. My Dad worked for GM and I was married to a “Chevy Man”, so very few of my cars were NOT made by General Motors. I’ve had Camaros, Vegas, Cavaliers, Grand Ams, an Oldsmobile, and an Astro Van. The only outliers were a Dodge Daytona and a couple American Motors cars (an Ambassador Station Wagon and two Gremlins – all in my very early driving years). I have never owned a FORD and probably would have been ridiculed if I had even mentioned owning one!!!! But – my dream car has always been a Mustang!!! My favorite song has always been Mustang Sally!!! So – my mid-life crisis gift to myself was a red Mustang convertible — not just any red Mustang convertible, but an 8 cylinder GT and one of the new retro models!!! The first year they came out, I had to have one and searched until I found the one I wanted — red, GT, convertible!!!! And I have loved every minute since it entered my life!!! I’ve decided it will be the last car I ever buy — I’m going to drive it till the wheels fall off — my little red pony and I will be together till the day one or the other of us die!!!
Then today happened……..I got in it to go to work and it sounded like it wasn’t quite ready to wake up and then it started and all was fine — sounded normal — no idiot lights flashing at me — I was good to go!!!! I went out for lunch and it started right up — no problem — must have just been a freak thing this morning……. Then…….I left La Dolce Vita to go back to work after lunch and put the key in the ignition and turned it and all I got was “click – click – click – click – click” — RUT RO……….my F-O-R-D was “found on road dead”!!!! What was I going to do??? I had a 1:00 meeting and a 2:00 meeting and it was almost 12:30……..I called my best friend to come see if he could help — he thought maybe it was the connection to the battery, so he checked everything he could get to without getting under the car (not possible without a lift) and nothing! He was on a motorcycle, so a “jump” wasn’t in the cards……. He assured me it was probably something simple like the connections, the battery itself, or the solenoid – not a major problem! So, I started calling around to see if a service station could come help — no one was able to do so — I called the Ford dealer and their service department didn’t answer the phone — so, my friend told me to call Burrus Automotive — BINGO!!! They sent a very nice young man from Paradise Towing – we had a lovely conversation on the way to Burrus! While I waited for the tow truck to arrive, I called and cancelled my two afternoon meetings and let my boss know I needed to take 1/2 vacation day to tend to car troubles…… I got to Burrus and he asked me a couple questions, decided it was the battery, and fixed it in no time flat!!!! I was good as new and on my way home by 3:00!!!
While I waited for the my friend and again while I waited for the tow truck, all kinds of things went through my very over active imagination…….like even though I knew it was probably something simple, I was sure I’d be without a car for days and I was going to need to take out a second mortgage to pay the bill………..like how I refuse to own an “old car” cause I want one I can depend on and if I’m gonna start having problems and pouring money into it, then maybe I’d better start looking into trading cars…………..and how I just got the notice that the warranty has expired and it looks like the “timer” they put on cars to start the problems after the warranty runs out has already kicked in………and on and on………But – after paying a very reasonable bill for a quick simple fix that is probably fairly “normal” for a 3 year old car, I came back to my senses and reminded myself what a fabulous car I have and apologized to it for thinking about trading it in………we’ve made up and all is good!!!!
Thank you Paradise Towing! Thank you Burrus Automotive! And thank you to my best friend who left work to try to help me and pointed me in the best direction for a successful conclusion to my predicament!!!
So, no – I never lived in NYC, but I do have fond memories of the Big Apple. I LOVE NYC!!! Not sure I would want to actually live there, but I do so very much enjoy traveling there. Ironically, though, I only made it there once during the entire almost 29 years I lived in NY State! Most of my trips to NYC were long after I moved to NC! The articles on the front page of Section C in today’s Herald took me back to my first trip to NYC – it was many years ago and the city is very different now, but also in some ways very much the same! I sat for a while with the warm fuzzys taking over my thoughts and decided to do a blog about that first trip – an adventure, really – all those years ago!
My first trip to the city was in 1979 and I was just 22 years old. It was also my first trip on my own without my family. My best friend, at the time, and I decided to take a vacation and check out the city. Neither of us had ever been there before, but since we were fearless, we couldn’t understand why some of our family and friends made it their mission to provide us with cautions and advice – it seems they were concerned about two young country girls traveling by ourselves to NYC! We were warned to not talk to strangers, to not let the “street people” sucker us into giving them money, to walk like we know where we’re going and not look like “tourists”, don’t wander around the streets after dark, and to stay together at all times!!! Man, the doom and gloom was really casting a shadow over our trip — what did they think we were, stupid, naive, vulnerable, gullible??? ha-ha We surely weren’t!!! We had good heads on our shoulders and could tackle any situation and win — we were invincible!!!! Yeah, right – cough, cough…… Looking back, it was a combination of thinking we could do anything and keeping the warnings in the back of our head that helped us have a great vacation – with a couple hiccups along the way!
Keep in mind as I wander down memory lane that this was in 1979 – a long time before Rudy Giuliani became Mayor and “cleaned up” NYC, lowered the crime rate, and made it a safer place to vacation – it is still a big city with all the dangers that implies, but it was so much more dangerous for young girls to be wandering around alone back then. Our vacation lasted four exciting days from June 29th to July 2nd. We had it all planned out and were going to see all the important stuff……..I came across the “Diary of Events” I wrote each evening to capture what we did each day. In reading it, I find that I took a very “glass half full – all is peachy – we did great” approach to my accounting of the events, but that’s OK (and actually very typical of me). Here is what our adventure looked like!
We decided to take the train from Rochester to Grand Central Station in NYC. There were two reasons for our decision – 1) it was cheaper than flying and 2) we wanted to see more of NY but didn’t want to drive or be couped up on a bus. So, the train, it was. That was an experience in itself – we stopped in every little town with a train station all the way down! The scenery was magnificent, but the trip was supposed to take 7 hours and ended up taking 9 hours!!! I actually would do it again in a heart beat, but at the time, it was irritating to us because we wanted to get our adventure started!
When we got outside Grand Central Station, we suddenly knew we were in a different world! We were BEAMING and in total awe of everything we saw – we had arrived!! The hotel was just a few blocks away, so we decided to walk instead of take a cab…….right out of the gate, we started making questionable decisions……..the streets were crowded and we didn’t have wheels on our very large, heavy luggage – you can imagine the time we had! Not to mention the advice we were given to avoid looking like tourists……..hhhmmm! Our hotel was in the midst of the Theater district – Sharon and I were budding actresses and thought it was fitting that we park ourselves in the Theater district!!!! My notes for that first day include how we wandered around Times Square (in those days was commonly referred to as “Slim Square”) and a description of our dinner at “Joe’s Pier 52” – we had a combo meal of crab legs, baby lobster tail, crab cake, baked clams, and a shrimp cocktail and my comment was how surprised we were that our total bill was a whopping $48.00 — can you imagine what that would cost us today??? I also mention how cute the waiters were and that the two guys sitting next to us were fun to talk to (uumm – what happened to “don’t talk to strangers”?)…
I had to sleep in my clothes that first night cause I forgot to pack jammies – so our first order of business on day two was SHOPPING!!! We went to Central Park and my notes mention how funny it was to see people “sleeping on park benches” and how we dropped change in the hats for the street performers (more advice down the drain on the very first day) – ha-ha – and shopped at all the great NYC stores – Macy’s, Gimbles, Bloomingdales, and Alexander’s (I got a nightgown at Alexander’s to get me through the rest of the trip). We had an early “lite” dinner at Sardi’s and saw the musical “Chorus Line” on Broadway! My notes indicate that it was “the most fantastic thing I’ve ever seen!” and gushed on from there. It still is one of my favorite Broadway shows – I even saw it again in Toronto some years later!
Then, after the show, my notes recap “…our first and hopefully last mistake…”. The notes mention how the dinner was great, the atmosphere was fascinating, but that the Las Vegas type floor show “left a lot to be desired – and that’s as far as I go”. The real story is: We had coupons for dinner and a show at the Club Ibis as part of our package. It sounded so intriguing – Turkish style decor and cuisine and a Las Vegas Style floor show! WOW – we had to experience that! The meal was very good, as I recall. Then, the show started and the show girls came out in the scantily clad costumes and huge colorful head dresses – I took out my camera and took a couple shots when the waiter came over and angrily told me “no pictures!” – OK! Then, all of a sudden, some male dancers joined the show girls and they started some very “suggestive” dancing and began to undress each other! Sharon and I froze – our jaws dropped and our eyes widened!!! We starred for a few minutes at the performers becoming more and more naked and simulating doing things to each other that really shouldn’t be done in public – let alone set to music and done around people who were eating! ha-ha-ha We realized at that moment that we were not as worldly as we thought we were!!!! ha-ha We asked for the check, the bill was more than the coupon covered and in our haste we used cash instead of traveler’s checks and headed out to catch a cab! We got in the cab and caught our breathe and it hit us both at the same moment – OMG – did we have enough cash for the cab ride? We scrounged through our purses and put together a very small amount of cash and looked at the meter and saw that we were not going to have enough money to get us all the way back to the hotel!!! So – when the meter read just shy of what we had, we asked the driver to stop and let us out. We walked several blocks to the hotel – AFTER midnight (did I mention the advice to not wander around the streets after dark?) – we were TERRIFIED and made a pact to be more careful for the rest of the trip!!! That lasted until we got up the next morning and started on with a new day with refreshed confidence in ourselves – after all, if we survived the night before, we could surely survive anything!!!!
The next day was Sunday and we went to Central Park and took a horse and buggy tour through the park to “Tavern on the Green” for brunch! It was FABULOUS!!! We ate in the Crystal Room and it was more beautiful than you can imagine – looking out over Central Park! The food was amazing and, as per my notes, the waiters were “incredible looking in their black tuxedos”! We had strawberry dacaris and champagne and fresh fruit and omelets and felt like royalty!!! We then walked all through Central Park taking pictures, singing, dancing around, we bought helium balloons and used them to talk like munchkins, and acted like total idiots — we had such fun!!!! We rode the famous Central Park Carousel for 30 cents and took our pictures sitting on the benches at the ice rink in the exact spot Ryan O’Neill sat when he filmed “Love Story” (at the time both of our favorite book and movie of all time)!!!! It was incredible!
We spent the rest of the day sight seeing — we did the double decker bus tours, spent time in China Town, and taking in everything we could in a day! Due to a mis-communication and missed connection, we missed out on seeing the Statue of Liberty, though! That night, we had dinner at Mama Leone’s – a world famous Italian restaurant that is no longer in business. The food, again, was incredible and there were roaming Italian singers, musicians, clowns, and other performers — it was an amazing experience.
On the morning of our last day, we went to the Empire State Building, but it was foggy and the visibility was only 0-2 miles, so we didn’t get to see much! We wandered around some and got on the train to head home! Yeah – we were a little reckless at times and made some errors in judgement, but no harm was done – we got home safe and sound – and the experience was one we’ll never forget – especially the hiccups that made it so interesting!
Since then, I have been to the city many times – all for business travel, but I always spend my “down time” enjoying the city!!! And I do so very much enjoy the city!!! I’ve seen many Broadway shows – I never make a trip without getting tickets for at least one show – more if I have the time! I try to see something different and do something different each time I go! I was lucky enough to have one of my trips occur during baseball season and the Yankees were “home”, so I got to see the Yankees beat Toronto in Yankee Stadium – the thrill of a lifetime for me – and I took the ferry from the South Street Seaport up the river to the stadium on a warm night – it was incredible!!!! My absolutely favorite part of the city is the Financial district — rich in history and beauty, Battery Park, and the South Street Seaport. I stayed many times at the Marriott World Trade Center and spent a lot of time on the top of the WTC overlooking the city! Sadly, all that is gone and I haven’t been back since! Although the southern tip is my favorite, I also spend a lot of time in the theater district – my second favorite section!!! NYC is an amazing place — I adore it!!!! I’m hoping to go again sometime soon!!!
Don’t get me wrong — I’m all for the alerts and the importance of making sure people are aware of emergency situations. But, come on — what is wrong with a tone and the message running along the bottom or top of the screen???? OR find a way to maintain either sight or sound of the program so you don’t miss what’s going on!!!! It always happens right at critical points in the dialogue, too……
Tonight, I was watching “My Cousin Vinny” (BTW – one of the best comedies of all time!!) and right at every one of the classic punch lines!!! It is a good thing that I can recite the entire movie by heart or I would have REALLY been irritated!!!
I had a nice day — it started out early — I got up about 5:30 and couldn’t go back to sleep. So, I took care of the girls and puttered around here for a while. Around 9:00, I was tired and ready for a nap, so I laid down with the girls for a while. I fell sound asleep and had a wild dream……
I woke up a little over an hour later and got myself ready to go out (for real, this time). I played with the girls for a while and watched some TV — the SciFi channel is running their annual Twilight Zone Marathon — and then headed out for the day. I went by the bank and ran a couple errands. I couldn’t do some of the things I planned cause a lot of places were closed for the Fourth.
I went to Depot Park and stopped in to see Emily and Lindsay and wandered around a little bit. I didn’t stay too long cause it was pretty hot and when I got there, they were “between bands”. I went to get something to eat and came home.
Then, this evening, I went back over to Depot Park to see if it was still going strong and it WAS!!! They still had a small, but nice sized crowd and a lot looking on from the railing along Moore Street. I parked on the other side of the tracks on Chatham Street and sat in the car with my top down — it was a lovely breezy evening and I enjoyed sitting there listening to the Heart of Carolina Jazz Orchestra and the Martin Luther King Community Choir. Iris Jordan sings for the choir and she is on my staff, so I was really happy to get to hear her do a solo on “When The Saints Go Marching In” — she’s really, really good!!! I sat there a little while after they were done — just enjoying the lovely night and watching the crowd disburse. Iris walked up to the car and startled me — I was parked right beside her and didn’t realize it!
Then, I just drove around town a while with the top down — what a great night for a top down drive — the only thing missing was a sky full of stars!!! The impending rain kept the stars from coming out and making it absolutely perfect — but that’s OK!!!
There were fireworks off to the south. I couldn’t tell where they were coming from, but they must have been fairly close. They were pretty – what I could see of them!
I got an ice cream at Sonic and headed home! I got to watch the end of the Macy’s Fireworks presentation on TV — they were in NYC, not sure where, but I’m thinking it was probably down around Battery Park. Very Nice!!!
Great day — hope yours was as nice or better!!!
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