Friday, February 26, 2010

Quotes from Baltasar Gracian

Today's Thought: “It is better to sleep on things beforehand than lie awake about them afterward.” ―Baltasar Gracian

A friend of mine posted this quote on Facebook today.  I thought it was good advice, and decided to do a little research on the author of the quote, Baltasar Gracian.  

I found this on Wikipedia: "Baltasar Gracián y Morales, SJ (January 8, 1601 – December 6, 1658) was a Spanish jesuit and baroque prose writer. He was born in Belmonte, near Calatayud." I found some more of his sayings, and these were a few that caught my attention: 

  • Never open the door to a lesser evil, for other and greater ones invariably slink in after it.    

  • Work is the price which is paid for reputation.

  • The wise does at once what the fool does at last.

  • A single lie destroys a whole reputation of integrity.

  • Respect yourself if you would have others respect you. 


Just my interesting findings for the day...... 

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Wedding planning begins.....

The first item of business -- where to hold the wedding!  While our home church is large enough for the wedding, it is not really "pretty" -- the main areas have more of a "conference room" feel to them than a sanctuary.  With Morgan being an art history major and with her love of old buildings, churches, etc., the search began for a church with the right "feel" for her.  Here is her first choice -- St. Andrews Episcopal Church in College Park, MD.  We're hoping we can work out all the details in order to be able to use this facility -- it truly is gorgeous!!

Partial view of the front of the church
 

Main door into the church
  

Inside the sanctuary (view from the front of church looking towards the back)
  

View of sanctuary from rear looking forward

A wedding in St. Andrews (not Morgan's!!)
 

The church's reception hall



Monday, February 15, 2010

The last week in a photo review


The snow of 2/6 - 2/7/10 (28+ inches)--
Snow accumulating on the deck rails --
2/7 & 2/8/10 -- After digging out the sidewalk and driveway (again.....)

....the snowplow arrived on Tuesday the 9th -- just THREE HOURS before the next big snowstorm!
2/10/10 -- During the height of the storm (which dumped another 16+" of snow), Nelson worked on clearing the roof of the storage shed, which is also weighed down with bamboo from the neighbor's yard --
The cardinal appreciated the food he found at our bird feeder.
The snow began accumulating again -- how many times do we need to dig out this winter??
 
The smaller birds had now found the feeder --
 
The ever-growing mountain of snow threatened to cover our mailbox --
  
In weather this harsh, none of the birds seemed to mind sharing the feeder with the others --
  
2/11/10 -- Even with the snow starting to settle in the warming sunlight, the accumulation on the deck was impressive!
  
The 3 1/2' high fence was nearly covered, too!
  
The huge pile of snow on a neighbor's roof was both impressive and worrisome --
  
2/12/10 -- Another neighbor could barely be seen over the piles of snow as he cleared his driveway yet again --
  
2/13/10 -- The various workmen from the power company began to arrive at our house early Saturday morning to find and repair the cause of our power outage.
  
This is not so easy to do in the deep snow -- additional help had to be called in!
  
Still moving snow around, trying to locate the problem!
  
Finally, the trouble was located, and now the workmen were using a jackhammer to remove part of our sidewalk!!
  
At this point, they had to finish hand-digging the hole to find the exact place that needs repair --
  
And now the problem was fixed; we have a temporary, ugly repair that will hopefully hold until the spring, when more permanent repairs can be made.
 



And guess what?  IT'S STARTED SNOWING AGAIN.......  

Can I go back to Mexico now?

__

I think he regrets coming home!!

My poor hubby -- he was working at Ft. Benning, GA for two weeks and was looking forward to coming home for 10 days, to take a class over at NSA as well as to have some R&R.  It was rough enough while he was gone -- subfreezing temperatures and a heat pump that unexpectedly decided to die meant we needed to move a LOT of firewood and get a repairman in to fix the unit.  His flight home was originally scheduled to land at 6:30 pm.  As we watched the weather reports, we realized that we needed to get him home sooner than that and thus changed him to an earlier flight.  He was home less than six hours when the first storm began!!

Since arriving home, he has:
  1. endured a 28+" snow storm, complete with shoveling;
  2. endured a 16+" snow storm, shoveling off the roof of the storage shed during the height of the storm, along with shoveling (after the storm) not only the sidewalk and driveway, but this time, the house roof (from the huge accumulation that was piling up) and part of our cul-de-sac, since our county didn't seem to want to dig us out;
  3. spent hours on the phone trying to locate additional firewood, to no avail;
  4. replaced the guts in TWO toilets that decided to leak; 
  5. put StopLeak into the radiator of the van, since it also decided to spring a leak;
  6. braced up the stand for our fish tank, because it decided to start weakening and tilting to the right at a very alarming angle;
  7. gone into the office twice to help out, even when the roads were barely clear;
  8. spent the better part of a day on the phone, trying to find out whether the class he was scheduled for was going to be held, and then found out that it had been cancelled;
  9. and then after it was determined that the class was cancelled, it was decided that he should go back to Ft. Benning earlier!!
  10. and adding insult to injury -- we had a loss of power to our home late Friday night (only our house, not the neighborhood).  BGE had to come out, mark the power lines in our yard (no easy task through multiple feet of snow), bring in a small front end loader to move snow from our sidewalks and edges of driveway to help determine where the problem actually was, and then had to use a jackhammer to remove a portion of our sidewalk, HAND-DIG through that cold soil another FOUR FEET, repair the problem, and then put a temporary patch on the sidewalk until spring time!!
    This AM, I drove him to BWI Airport to hop on a plane back to Georgia.  He may actually be GLAD to get out of here -- and I wouldn't blame him one bit!

    __

    Sunday, February 14, 2010

    It's official.....

    Baltimore-Washington International Airport (in Baltimore) AND National Airport (in DC) have the highest snowfall totals ever recorded for a single winter season. And the winter is not over yet.......

     


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    Tuesday, February 9, 2010

    Snowpocalypse and the weatherman!!

    Somebody shared this with me today -- so funny!!!  It may be a few days old (from our LAST snow storm), but it truly sums up how we're feeling around here!!  Enjoy!



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    Monday, February 8, 2010

    How much snow THIS time?

    From WJLA TV station's website:



    See where the dark blue line crosses the tip of a county right underneath the 16"?  That's where we live -- right on the dividing line between 10" - 15" and 16" - 20".  Should be a long, interesting, and COLD day tomorrow.
    ____

    Say it ain't so!!

    The weather we've been having here is beyond unbelievable.  I've lived in Maryland my entire life, and I do not remember any winter as snowy as this one.  Our snow storm on Friday afternoon into Saturday afternoon dumped over 28" of snow here.  Of course, the county we live in has not seen fit to plow us out yet, so we are stuck in our cul-de-sac.  And snow is predicted for tomorrow -- originally 5-8", which would've been bad enough, but now has been upped to 10-20"!!!  Where will we put it when we shovel out this time??  The piles already look like small mountains!!

    But the upsides -- it truly was a lovely snow; Nelson got home from his business trip in Georgia just a few hours before the storm began; we had plenty of food in the house; and we NEVER lost power (unlike 250,000 other homes in the MD/VA/DC area)!!  So, I guess we have a lot to be thankful for!!

    During the early morning -- we still got MANY inches of snow after this point.


    A tree in our back yard:

    The weight of the snow coming off the garage roof was pulling our gutters off:

    Somewhere under all that snow is my poor little car!!

    The view into the woods behind our neighbor's house:

    The view down the sidewalk after digging ourselves out:

    Snow clumped in the tree branches:

    And one shot of the dogs on the deck.  We dug out a small area to show the depth and then posed the dogs there.  Cody (the one in the back of the photo) is exactly 100 pounds, so he's not a small boy!! 

    More snow tomorrow to report on........ sigh.......

    ____