Month: October 2005

  • You know how Alice and I like to cook while we're on our sister trips, right?  Well this year we had a Mexican dish and so we needed Queso and chips to accompany the meal and therefore we bought a can of RoTel as part of our groceries. 



    Imagine our surprise when we found this hunk of wood in the can along with the tomatoes and little green chillies.  I know it looks like a rock in the picture, but when it dried out it proved to be wood.  I wrote a letter to ConAgra Foods, who distributes Ro-Tel, and sent it along with the empty can and the piece of wood. Here is a part of that letter.



    To Whom It May Concern:


    Recently, my sister and I were on vacation in the Lake of the Ozarks area in a town called Osage Beach, MO . . . along with two of our friends, and since my sister and I love to cook, we cooked all of our meals rather than eating out.  It's also a lot cheaper that way.  We bought all our grocery items at a place called Paul's Grocery. One of the meals we were going to fix was a Mexican meal so of course we had to make some cheese Queso to go with it. We normally use the "Original" Ro-Tel, but this time we decided to try a can of  "Chunky" instead.


    I quote the can . . . "Ro-Tel Chunky is the same great taste as Original Ro-Tel with larger, chunky diced tomatoes."  Now, I'm all for getting a little extra fiber in my diet, but I'm not sure large chunky pieces of wood are the answer.  They are harder to chew, harder to swallow as well as digest, to say nothing of the fact that they lack a certain amount of . . . what shall we say . . . tastiness.  I'm fairly sure that you'll want to reconsider this new addition to your Ro-Tel Chunky line.  I suggest you go back to the tried and true recipe using just tomatoes and little green chillies and leave out the chunky wood chips.


    I'm sort of anxious to hear back from them. 


  • These were a gift from our next door neighbors.  They said that since I was retiring I simply MUST have a pair of blue bunny slippers.  They are pretty comfy and I'm sure they'll keep my feet warm this winter, although I feel a little silly in them.  They are not the easiest things to walk in either.  I've never seemed to be able to get the hang of keeping on shoes (or slippers) that don't have backs to them.  I've even seen lots of tennis shoes now that don't backs.  How do you do it?  Is there some secret?


  • One of the places we visited while in Quincy, Ill was the Maid Rite.  Our brother used to work there and we remembered the wonderful Maid Rite sandwiches . . . sort of ground beef on a bun and you put what ever sauce you wanted on them.  I kind of wish now that we hadn't gone, because in my memory those were indeed wonderful sandwiches, but I think that our memories were a little faulty or at least embellished a bit, because 45 years later and I didn't think they were very good.  I hate it when you bust a bubble like that.   


  • Quincy Junior High School



    Quincy Junior High School


    This is the building where I went to Junior High in Quincy, Illinois.  Funny, but as a kid I never once noticed the gargoyles.  Heck, I don't even think I knew what a gargoyle was when I was in Junior High.  Alice and I spent our first 2 1/2 days of vacation in Quincy, basically just revisiting all our old haunts.  It was really nice to see it all again. 


    Today is the first full day of my retirement, but it doesn't feel any different.  But then, I bet it will . . . come Monday morning at 6:15 am. 


  • Click on the picture, then F11 key to see a larger image of the picture.


    And what sister trip would be complete without visiting at least one old graveyard?  This one was located a couple miles from our childhood home in Quincy, IL and amazingly enough I'd never been inside it before this trip.  It's a very hilly cemetary which overlooks the Mississippi River.  You can just barely see the river behind that white grave stone in the far right of the picture.  I'll let mom tell you the interesting story about her and her sister and the wrought iron fence that surrounds the cemetary. 


    RETIREMENT COUNTDOWN:   8 hours and 15 minutes


  • A wonderful house in Quincy, IL



    A much smaller house in Quincy, IL


    As you may know, Alice and I like to walk around neighborhoods on our sister trips and take pictures of different houses.  Maybe it's the architecture that attracts us, or maybe it's that a house has a pretty garden or has the look of Italy etc.  We did quite a bit of that walking around on this past sister trip, but this time it was much more nostalgic.  Seeing all those wonderful homes that we'd driven by litterally thousands of times as kids was somehow very theraputic.  The smaller house is one that we picked out as our "dream house" for when we someday might live together . . . given that women tend to live longer than men.  Our husbands have joked for some time about when ever one of them goes, the other one had better watch his back.  Silly boys!!


    RETIREMENT COUNTDOWN: 1 day, 3 hours and 12 minutes till retirement.


  • Alice, Kathy and Chris at South Park in Quincy, Illinois


    We started out our vacation in Quincy, IL, which is Alice and my birth place.  The gal in the middle is Alice's best friend Kathy from high school.  I knew her well too, because unfortunately for Alice, when we were in Jr. High and High School I tagged along with her A LOT.  I was the proverbial little sister she couldn't get rid of.  And now we can't get enough of each other's company.  Go figure! 


    RETIREMENT COUNTDOWN: Just under 3 more work days


  • Well, we had to keep the tradition alive, didn't we?  We found this fence the 3rd day we were in the Ozarks and had our picture taken on yet another split rail fence.  Come to think of it, this might be one of the same ones that our father had taken our picture on years ago.  We used to go to this State Park years ago for our summer vacations and so it very well could be one of the same fences we posed on before . . . 50 years ago.


    COUNTDOWN: Three days and 3 1/2 hours till retirement. 


  • We're Back!!  And we had a WONDERFUL sister trip.  Actually it was a sister + friends trip and it was still WONDERFUL.  I'm going to fight the urge to put multiple pictures in one blog because these will have to last a whole year.  This particular picture was taken in HaHa Tonka State Park.  Erik (Alice's friend, and now MY friend as well) said that stood for Land of Laughing Waters . . . only I think he just made that up.  Too bad you don't get the sense of depth with the pictures.  They just can't convey adequately how far down that is.  This was on top of the hill where a large mansion once stood, but burned down in 1942.  I'll show you pics of that later.


    COUNTDOWN: 4 more days until I retire.