Easter

We had Easter dinner at my niece's house in Ohio.  My mom, one sister, my niece and her husband, and their three children were there.  My other sister, with her husband and three girls, were on vacation in Florida.  The kids had fun, and we had fun watching them!

Scenes from "Justified"

Here are some scenes with some of my favorite characters.

The first video features Raylan, set to music.  I would rather show the dialogue, but it wasn't available.  The white haired older man is Raylan's father Arlo.  Arlo is on the wrong side of the law, which causes Raylan some conflict because he has been sent back to Harlan to enforce the law.

This scene is Boyd Crowder, played wonderfully by Walton Goggins.  He is a villain, but Raylan has a bit of a soft spot for him because they dug coal together as younger men.

Finally, this is Boyd and Ava dancing "hillbilly" style.  First Boyd speaks to Mags, who is the matriarch of a rival clan.  Margo Martindate, who plays Mags, won an Emmy for this role. 

Just Announced!

My favorite TV show, "Justified" has been renewed for a fifth season!  

"Justified" has the best writing on TV, the best characters, the best dialogue.  And the best looking actor on television... Timothy Olyphant, playing U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens.  One critic said he was "born to play Raylan Givens".  It also has the most fascinating villains of all time.  Two of the "bad guys" have won Emmy awards. 

A fifth season means:

More Raylan!  

More Boyd!

More Raylan and Boyd!  

More Boyd and Ava! 

More Raylan and Al!

More Raylan and Bob!

And lots of interesting bad guys...

and gals...

I'm happy that it's coming back for another season.

Passover

Harvesting wheat to make matzo.

A Much Needed Break

My husband is from Michigan and has many friends there.  Some of them are now retired, and have become "snow birds" getting away from Michigan winters in Florida.  Last week we went to visit two of them, including his college roommate.  Here are some of the photos I took.

We started out in Sarasota.  Our first day there was cool and cloudy, but we were still able to walk on the beach.  I took this photo from our room:

These are the two college roommates, sitting on the dock and reminiscing about "old times".  We stayed with them in Bonita Springs.

Here we are at the beach, where we went to watch the sunset:

We had drinks at this beach bar:

The next day we drove to Naples.  We stopped to have drinks at the Waldorf Astoria.  Nice place!  Look how pretty the sky was.  It had warmed up into the 80s by then.

We had a drink at the pool bar.

Continuing the theme, we drove to the Ritz Carlton, where we had a drink at the beach bar.  We weren't paying big money to stay at these luxurious places, but we enjoyed the ambiance.

I love beaches and beach bars!

Here we are, in vacation mode:

Yesterday, we flew home.  When we arrived, it was snowing.  Back to reality!

Home!

Just got home from a short vacation to the Florida Gulf Coast.  It's good to be home!  (Even though it is snowing here!)

I Think I Might Go To The Beach

Ahhh!  (Be back soon)

"The Twonky"

A very silly television show I saw when I was seven years old, in 1953:  

The actor was Hans Conreid.  He played a professor whose wife was leaving him alone for a few days to help her sister have a baby.  Before she left, she bought him a television to keep him company.

This little television was very strange.  First, it lit the professor's cigarette for him:

 Then it proceeds to follow him around the house.

Here it is climbing the stairs:

The television was called "The Twonky".  As I said, it was pretty silly.  In case you want to see it, here is a bit from YouTube.  It will give you a taste of what television was like in the 1950s! 

After my sister and I saw this show with my parents, it became a kind of family joke.  Anytime an appliance acted up in our house, we started calling it "the twonky".  

Speaking of the Fifties...

Does anyone remember this?  

I will write more about it later.  I just wondered if anyone else remembered it.

Here is one more clue:

Sh-Boom

This morning I heard this song on a commercial for Macy's.  It took me back to another time.  Please come with me.

First you need to listen to this song:

It's the year 1954, the summer I turn eight years old.  I am with my mom in the kitchen.  The kitchen looks something like this:

Mom has a radio on the shelf in the kitchen.  It looks something like this:

That song you just listened to is playing on this radio.  Hearing that song now takes me right back to that kitchen in 1954.

I am almost eight years old, and it's summer time.  The window above the sink is open and I can feel the warm summer breeze coming in.  It smells like grass and the starch Mom uses on the curtains.  The curtains look a lot like this.  Mom made them herself.

Mom always dressed like this, even while she was doing housework.

She made all of my sister's and my clothes.  We dressed in a lot of pinafores, like these two little girls.

She probably used patterns like this:

We didn't have a television until I was six years old.  We used to go to my grandparents house to listen to all the old time radio shows.

Eventually, we did get a television.  It looked a lot like the one in this photo:

That was my childhood in the 1950s.  When I heard that song this morning, it all came back to me.