Blogger! Hear my plea!

Spell Checker that checks automatically before posting! I write my posts, publish them, re-read them, get an email from CK telling me of the misspellings, and have to go edit and republish them because I forget to spell check.

Spelling has never been my forte (phortae, fortay, fourtay). Sigh.

The Move

We finally moved into our new house yesterday. I think I am too tired to be excited. Give me a few days. We (CK and I) are big procrastinators so we were up until 2:00 am on Tuesday night/Wednesday morning doing last minute packing - until we ran out of boxes. We got most of the heavy/large/important things packed for the movers to move. We still have to go pack some of the kitchen dishes and small appliances, a couple lamps, and the tortoise's 4 foot abode (he is now residing in a very cramped 5 gallon aquarium), but that will wait until tomorrow.

Tonight, we are going to pick the dog up from the pup resort, order some take-out (we are now in delivery areas!!), find a recliner, and watch TV until we fall asleep in the chairs and the dog wakes us up by throwing his water or food dish at us for a refill.

"Is that Ron Jeremy?"

Continuing on our trip to the dreaded Kenosha, WI. Our main reason for the trip was to visit my grandmother who is in the advanced stages of Alzheimer’s and lives at a nursing home and to also visit my great uncle who is temporarily at a nursing home for rehab from cancer treatments. The pretext for the trip is not a happy one, but our visit did brighten the days of both. That said; let's move on to the rest of the trip.

Our other required stop during this trip is Villa de Carlos. This is a family owned pizza place down by the shores of Lake Michigan. LB and I grew up eating their pizza and have found it difficult to find any that we like as much (LB lives in Chicago - so that is saying a lot).

The dining ambiance and decor is a bit hard to describe. They strive to keep the decorations seasonal, for example, we had a fall theme going during this visit. Additionally, they have the "ol' standby" decorations. The massive amounts of twinkle lights everywhere, the faux birds hanging from the ceiling, the occasional baby deer curled up in a pseudo forest in the corner, and so on.

It is almost always busy. Our wait this evening was estimated to be 45 minutes - and it was already after 8 P.M. After only 25 minutes, we were seated in a horseshoe booth under a canopy of faux forsythia (fauxsythia?) and tree branches. The table is covered in butcher paper and they provide crayons for your dining entertainment. We don't need to look at the menu because LB and I ALWAYS get the same thing. We start with a combo-basket of fried cheese, mushrooms, cheese, zucchini, and did I say cheese? And our pizza is always a hand-tossed pizza with mushrooms, zucchini, and tomato slices. YUM!

As we dined on our fried cheese we observed the crowd in the restaurant. We saw the mullet, the big 80's hair, the blue eye liner, more metal band t-shirts, the lingerie ladies now wear as a shirt (or skirt), the waitress in a tennis skirt, I could continue. It really is like stepping back in time. Anyway, about the time we got our pizza CK looked up and said, "Is that Ron Jeremy?" LB and I turned and gawked. Standing below the array of twinkle lights was a man wearing a tuxedo t-shirt who looked very much like the infamous Ron Jeremy. For those of you wondering, "Who is this man she refers to?” he is a "star" of not-so-nice films. We know him from VH1's show The Surreal Life. Needlesstosay, it was not. Although we were compelled to grab the camera phone and snap a picture so we could blog about it! The pic also shows a little bit of the decor. Enjoy. :)

Returning home.

This weekend we are going to Kenosha, Wisconsin. I always have mixed emotions about returning to the town where I lived from 6th grade until I graduated high school and moved away for college and never moved back.

Anyone who has visited or lived and left Kenosha knows that it sometimes can seem like you have stepped back in time. Located halfway between Milwaukee and Chicago, one would think the city would be progressing with current times; then they try to find a radio station that plays music dating past 1990. Any given day, you can drive around town and see black metal t-shirts, mullets, and long "80's hair band" hair. I find it creepy.

On the other hand, the city has done many things to improve the area and make it quite nice. The downtown area has gone from hobo-lane (as it was when I was young) to a very quaint, nice area. The lake and marina area has been improved and is unrecognizable to what I am used to.

That said, I look forward to Carl's Pizza and The Spot fried mushrooms and cheese (ahh, Wisconsin fried cheese). We are going to the Keno drive-in theater tonight (this could be fun or just too weird - we'll see).

You are probably wondering why we are going in the first place (the pizza is my favorite, but that isn't the main reason). We are going to see my grandma who is in the advanced stages of Alzheimer's. She doesn't really know who we are, but we visit because it makes her happy to have visitors.

So, we (me and my sister) return to the dreaded Kenosha.

Labor Day Grilling

A few years back, my mother moved in with us for 6 months. This is a long story which I won't get into here, but let it just be said that it was not a pleasant situation. My mother is a compulsive hoarder. After she had moved out (and I use this term loosely, since most of her junk still resided in my pole barn) my sister and I spent a weekend sorting (i.e. throwing most everything out) her 2,500 lbs (literally, the movers weighed it) of junk that was still being stored in the barn. Upon our sorting, we came across this bag [shown below].

Now that I am moving and we spent another weekend sorting through the rest of her stuff and weeding out our own, I ran across the bag again and thought it needed to be shared.

Have a hot dog on me for Labor Day.