~~~~ Saturday I went to Irene's daughter's 50th Birthday party. OMG ! I couldn't believe how many people were there ! She had a big tent set up in her backyard. I finally got to meet her daughter Sue from California. Actually I walked past her and was really checking her out cuz' She LOOKED LIKE A RODRIGUEZ. She asked me who I was and I asked her who she was and it didn't dawn on me for a minute then I got all excited and hugged her. She's really kewl , I like her a lot. Ha ! She made a remark about my voice , like, " Wow ! Listen to that voice ! " HA ! hadn't heard that in awhile ! I also got to meet Irene's sister Flo ! She was really nice too and she lives in Texas. I was really like a family reunion with all 5 kids there ! There was Soooooo much FOOD ! I ate for an hour , maybe more ! Plus I found some vino that appealled to me and had myself a lil' nip ! I gave Irene's sister Ruth and Flo a ride back to Ruthie's house then i came back home for a minute. Wait, back up. I stopped by the Jazz Club on the way back to see what was going on but my old boss Susan didn't getthe liquoir license yet ! Two months now ! She's gonna lose the place. ( she just relocated ). Then I came home for a minute and did bad things and then talked to my new prospect for a few ;-) Then back to the party for a while 11:30 ish then I was on my way home and decided to stop by P. J.'s . Well there was a cover charge so I went downstairs to Gracie's then up the back stairs to P.J.'s and no one asked me to pay just asked to see my stamp ! HA ~ HA ! I Bought a drink ut it was way strong , didn't like , didn't see ne one i knew so I left , went to the 8 Ball walked thru ,didn't see ne one I knew so i left and avoided another cover charge to The Blind Pig by going up the stairs again. Hung out there briefly and came home , whoo hooo , pretty exciting shit , eh, Maynard !!!!! . Hey , I tried ! Least I went out " trolling " ! Too many young people. Where do all the old folks hang in A2 ?? WEBER' S ??? I bet !~~~ I'l have more pics from th party soon ! This is Irene's daugter Andrea and her daughter Alexis ( Lexie ) they are here visting from California ! Her and her daughter are las chicas simpaticas ! ( charming ) !

~~~ I HAVE A RAILING ALONG SIDE OF THE STAIRS GOING UP A HILL TO MY FRONT DOOR. MY GOAL WAS TO GET SOME MORNING GLORIES TO COVER THE ENTIRE RAILING. I PLANTED ONE AT THE BOTTOM , TOP AND ONE IN THE MIDDLE. LOOKS LIKE I SUCEEDED , EH? ~~~> CLICK ON THE PIC OF THE SINGLE FLOWER ! , IT'S SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO PRETTY ! ! ! I'VE RECEIVED MANY COMPLIMENTS ON THEM & MY GREEN THUMB ! =o)

I wanna thank you for giving me time to breathe ~ Like a rock you waited so patiently~ While I got it together ~ While I figured it out ~ I only looked but I never touched ~ 'Cause in my heart was a picture of us ~ Holdin' hands, makin' plans and it's lucky for me you understand~~~~~~ What a girl wants ~ What a girl needs ~ Whatever makes me happy sets you free ~ And I'm thanking you for knowing exactly~ What a girl wants ~ What a girl needs ~ Whatever keeps me in your arms ~ And I'm thanking you for being there for me~ A weaker man might have walked away ~ But you had faith ~ Strong enough to move over and give me space~ While I got it together ~ While I figured it out ~ They say if you love something let it go~ If it comes back it's yours ~ That's how you know ~ It's for keeps, yeah, it's for sure~

Today is the first day of Fall , how appropiate since I just FELL .... flat on my face ! ! Hurt like a bitch ! Still hurts and probably will for awhile. Best watch my footing from now on ......Don't wanna be a fool again !

Hottie in town ! ! Russell Crowe was at the Michigan vs. Notre Dame football game on Saturday ! ! Apparently, the actor and Michigan coach Lloyd Carr have become good friends. An Australian at a Michigan football game. How kewl is that? ?

Damnnnnnnnnnnnnn ~ My little space here sure is popular but with whom? I know of few of ya' BUT.... ? Ya'll never leave a comment ! ! But I appreciate the interest ~ hope you enjoy ! :-) Thanks for reading ! ! =o)

~~~~~"A successful marriage begins with the merger of two great forgivers". ~~~~~~ I happened to come across this and liked it & thought I'd share cuz' you know I love/ live to share !

Wow ! has it been CHILLY ! Really , it has been darnright COLD ! Mid ~thirties Sun. morn. IM FREAKING ! ! ! It's SAD ! It can't be happening ! Can't we have at least two more months of summer ! PLEASE ! I so DO NOT want to have to turn on the furnace, mainly cuz' of the $$$ it costs and bcuz' mine is a piece of CRAP ! I did call the building inspectors this last week and told them about the dilemma w/ my furnace as they will be doing a bi-annual house inspection here soon and I wanted to give them a heads up on it. I told them I wanted to inform them on the D. L. ( down low ) cuz' I didn't want Mr. Witherspoon to know I was calling him out on the furnace ! He just put in new sidewalks and patched up the funky blue costing him almost $10,000 and I want to tell him ~~ If you had mantained your property instead of letting everything go and doing half -assed repairs ' and what you did fix you wouldn't be in this spot now !!! So..... go away coldness ! ! Jack says > Back the F off ! ! ;-)

IT' S GUMBY GIRL ! I love gymnastics and this spunky young lady just became WORLD CHAMP. !! Her performance was SPECTACULAR ! She's the best I've seen in a long time. Elle mucho perfecto ! If she doesn't bring back GOLD from Beijing I will eat ....um..... Bart's shorts !!! I think she's 4'8" and 88 lbs ! Cute too !

Oh what a ride this week ! ! Unbelievable !! Is it FRIDAY yet ??? I can breathe a sigh of relief bcuz' I made it thru my 1st Spanish test and two homework assignments that were due today ! I absolutely LOVE my Monuments & Culture class so much ! Compared to my Spanish class it is relaxing , laid back and not so much pressure but I am in a more familiar territory . Spanish is so.... foreign to me ! It's also really KEWL to have a special bond with my teacher. She sent me an email to me after class in regards to the Art Club and at the end she wrote that it was good to have me back in her class. Awwwwwwwww ! She's such a great teacher and makes it so interesting , I hang on her every word (well almost , when I'm not thinking about sex << just kidding ;-) ) We had two presentations on the Eiffel Tower plus researched it on my own and it really is truly amazing. Why the engineering that created it. nearly uncomprehensible. I can't believe how little I knew about a place I HAVE VISITED but I was only 9 yrs. old ! so..... I still don't have an excuse do I? What did I know b4 about the Eiffel ?? Where it was located and how HUGE it is. What do I know now ?? Everything , including the social & political structure of that era ( 19th century ) . Gustave Eiffel to me was a genius and an artist . You should see the bridges and viaducts he built. ALL of them are still standing today bcuz' like the Eiffel Tower they were built to last. He also designed the inside skeleton of the Statue Of Liberty......Nuff bout that...... Next subject please.... lol Next subject is..... CRASHING..... and with that I bid you adieu , I'm CRASHING ! LOL Farewell to you my avid readers, family and friends.... and MAGDA ! ! lol .... wanna ' see those pics from London's museum you promised..... TT4N !

" Slumps are like beds ; easy to get into but hard to get out of " Good ole ' Johnny ! I always liked this quote cuz' I hate gettin' out of bed ! And have been in a " slump b4 ~~> in another lifetime ;-) " !

This is a continuation of Part 1 . My friend has been living overseas in Saigon for approx. 3 years and here's a glimpse into a world that most of us are not familiar with ........ This relates more what you've read about China than about filthy food and I have heard this from more than one person, more than 2, more than 3, many many many ! Now I know many people who are in the business of manufacturing (usually garments & textiles) and have factories in China and Vietnam and other countries around here. Typically, factories in China would not operate around the clock 7 days per week, they would close down at night and have a day off every week, like you would expect most people would want to live but this did not work. The employees would not let it work. What they started doing was going back to the factory after it was closed starting up the plant again, making whatever it is they make and stealing all of it, to sell themselves on the black market. The bosses got wise, obviously, noticing the missing stock, and started to shut off the electricity at night, but the workers would go out and find some cables and wire in electricity from somewhere else every night and get right back to work making crap for themselves to steal and sell. The factories, therefore, had no choice but to run around the clock every day of the week. otherwise their employees would rob them blind. So, (and obviously this doesn't address lead paint or anything like that) the workers have insisted on creating the miserable conditions which exist. and the bosses, being hungry for money like all good capitalists, have obliged. The people are poor and see nothing wrong with ripping off the man to clothe and feed their families One of the same circle of people who told me stories like this spent 10 years managing 2000 employees in a garment factory in Madagascar. The stories from Madagascar were equally insane. Management could not eat or drink anything which they did not make themselves and bring from home and kept under lock and key in their office. because the workers were known to poison management by putting chemicals into their drinks and food one of the lessons from this, and the one that really makes me shake my head when I read about another group calling for a boycott of Chinese goods, is that when you begin to examine manufacturing, globally, you find that it's like this everywhere. if you want to boycott china on moral grounds, then you have to boycott the whole friggin' world because except for western europe, japan and north america, the world is very poor and very willing to do whatever they need to survive perhaps the big companies do things like use dangerous ingredients because they're cheaper, but the general population does it because they have no idea that it might be bad or that there might be a better way for instance, most people in southeast asia, imo, seem to have no idea that there exist things too small to be seen by the naked eye. therefore, if something "looks" clean, it is clean. this is also the way the people who work at your dentist's office think the way the people who clean the hospital think, the way your housekeeper thinks, etc etc etc I am reminded of this every time I see somebody preparing dinner on the kitchen floor, where the dogs sleep and piss and shit every day. This is the way people think in their own homes, and it is the way they think in their businesses, their restaurants, their grocery stores. Changing their behavior requires a massive overhaul of the way they think, and it has a very steep learning curve because you have to start from scratch. These are people who still train their children to piss and shit in the street, rather than use the family bathroom. I do not know why. These are people who will stand at your table at dinner and dig boogers out of their nose while taking your order. None of this is limited to Vietnam, or China, or anywhere. I'm talking about between 2 and 3 billion people, or half of the earth's population maybe more. If you're at dinner with your date, and you taste something bad or find you've just put a hunk of fish spine into your mouth, casually turn your head and hork the mouthful onto the floor. nobody will notice and the date will not care nobody cares every facet of life is like this here. few people, only those educated abroad, I think, have any awareness that people in other parts of the world might think and act differently than that. I can't tell how many times I've seen women piss and shit along the side of the road : (men too, of course, but men pissing is much more common. certain streets always reek of urine) : they have no choice it's not like you can pop into McDonald's or wherever & use their John. anyway it doesn't seem strange to them. it's the only life they know. Yeah, lead paint is bad, and so on and so on, but boycotting the product doesn't change the thinking of the individual who is on the other end of the product. It might force their government to adjust, and thereby force the manufacturers to adjust, but that motivation is merely financial to really change the behavior, you must change the thinking of the individual, and that requires education Vietnam is 50-100 years behind, but in many ways that may as well be a thousand years. I think much of the western world was like this only 200 or 250 years ago the Industrial Revolution during the time of Chas. Dickens the French Revolution the early days of the USA even up to the early 1900's

Strange but true ~ I have crocuses ( six of them ! ) that have come up and are at full height ??? Never had this happen before , weird..... I think they are a little confused..... well, maybe they are cuz' they are growing at the " funky blue " ??? Wonder if they are going to bloom ???

My friend Tim has been in Vietnam for 3 years now ??? Has it been 3 ??? I sure have learned a lot from him about life in a 3rd World country. It's hard to fantom. He's spent a lot of time in Japan, Micronesia, Singapore & Vietnam. I'm publishing this because we Americans or should I say most of us have no clue as to how unbelievably lucky we are living the life of luxury here in America. Damn , are we spoiled. Even if you don't have much it would seem to be a lot if you lived over there for awhile.......I'm hoping these stories will open up your eyes as it did mine . Sad stuff ! I kept his adjectives so sorry if it offends anyone ! Story #1 Every Sunday I take a boat to the coastal city of Vung Tau to work my Sunday brunch gig. When the weather is bad, the boats stop at a defunct Russian petrochemical refinery up the coast, rather than cross the rough sea. Vietnamese people live at that refinery. There's a 6-foot tall sewage pipe (raw sewage) that dumps directly into the sea and their little shacks are exactly next to the pipe at the shore where it dumps shit and piss and puke and everything else into the sea. They are very poor people, and have to find their food themselves. They raise small flocks of ducks. The ducks float around in the turds looking for lunch. The people eat the ducks, of course also, the people fish. This means nets on bamboo poles that they toss into the water where the sewer pipe dumps into the sea. They keep (and eat) every living creature that they catch in that net, which is mostly teeny tiny shrimp and fish about the size of your finger. In front of their shacks, they have slabs of concrete about 15 feet by 15 feet everything they catch in those nets gets dumped onto the concrete so it can all be dried by the sun (no fridge, no other way to keep anything from spoiling immediately in the 95-degree tropical heat). It stinks to high hell cuz of the turds & all the dead seafood. Anyway it takes a couple days to dry it out really good, and they shove the piles of seafood around with squeegees on a stick, brooms, shovels, etc all of it totally filthy. Now, every Vietnamese household has at least one dog. Sometimes many dogs and the dogs are never ever trained, they piss and shit wherever they want In this example, they piss and this on the drying seafood as if this isn't bad enough, the families sell as much of the dried seafood as they can. I see it in little labelled jars here in Saigon when you look at the jar, it looks like more or less official food (although obviously low budget) but by the jar and printed label, with a company address and ingredient list (which does not mention turds and dog piss), it looks like trustworthy reliable food. Are you with me so far? And this is all totally normal over here not just in Vietnam, but in all of Southeast Asia, and all of China. this is the level that life has existed on for thousands of years. When people are very, very poor, they do whatever they have to do. And if you're born into that life, you know nothing else and find it all perfectly normal and acceptible Okay, that was story number 1. And there are hundreds just like it. I asked ~~>> have u gotten sick ? the only time I got sick, and I got really really sick for nearly 2 weeks, was from a beautiful Italian Bistro in the resort town of Da Lat up in the hills. and I mean I was sick sick sick ! I asked ~~> in bed the whole time? I have never gotten sick from eating in the street, and I eat in the street every day, in filthy little garages where they have 1 gallon of funky tap water to last them the whole day, to wash every dish in, if they bother to wash the dishes no, in the bathroom the whole time Me ~~>> 2 weeks ? yup I lost big weight it was awful on to story #2~~~~~~~~ TO BE CONTINUED ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

WOWZER! THIS LOOKS LIKE A DOOZEY ! ~~~~~~~ > > ORANJESTAD, Aruba - Hurricane Felix strengthened into a dangerous Category 5 storm Sunday and churned its way into the open waters of the Caribbean Sea after toppling trees and flooding some homes on a cluster of Dutch islands. The National Hurricane Center in Miami said Felix was packing maximum sustained winds of 165 mph as it plowed westward toward Central America, where it was expected to skirt Honduras' coastline Tuesday before slamming into Belize on Wednesday as a hurricane

That's it ! Summer's over ! Pack up the patio furniture and put away those wading pools ~~> it's BACK TO SCHOOL ! Parents sigh w/ relief, yeah , the kids are gone all day ! Sucks here because that changes everything. Town goes from a sleepy summer to full blown out chaos ! Today was the first Michigan home game and they LOST ! LOL It's hilarious. I had a feeling something funky like that might happen and ..shhhhhh.... I kinda' wished it would have happened. Oh, I bet lloyd feels like SHIT ! ..............! So my plans? for the weekend ? I opted for EXTREME MAKEOVER : FUNKY BLUE HOUSE EDITION ! There's two new rolls of carpeting on the porchto be installed on Monday . The living room carpet is hunter green w/ burgundy flecks ? Guess you'd call them that and the carpet for the foyer area?? is a light burgundy. I'm in the process now of painting the living room w/ Gwen Stephani , just takin' a break ! I did something I never dreamed i'd ever do.... I'm painting my LR a cool PINK ????? WTF !! It's not really pink , it's like a dusty rose pink ?? So far it looks fab. IT'S FUNKY !!!! UGHHHHHHH ! What have I done... No.... I actually had a VISION and I think its going to be quite nice. Pink w/ pick up the burgundy flecks in the carpet. My friend 's> Kewlio & Petula took me to Taylor , Mi. to a trade center.... good prices. Then we went to Lowes , dinner , then home. Was nice to get away .....and to not have to drive ! Oh, I got these Chinese " Sky Lanterns " . Lanterns that up launch using FIRE ! LOL It looks pretty kewl . I got it for Zaynah so we can launch it @ the park one NIGHT ! I also went to the school earlier today...library... Got reference books I needed and copied some of the textbook ! I picked up a movie too....Zodiac...Robert Downy Jr. is in it :D maybe l'll actually get a chance to watch it.... tomorrow is lokking bizzy too....I best check up on MAGDA ! ! ~ I havent heard from you since you went to London ! : P :P Miss Ya ' ! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~L8er >> FBH's LR loks AWESOME ! Nearly anything would next to the puke beige !