Friday, March 31, 2023

it's almost time!


The A to Z Challenge starts tomorrow!  
I'm pretty confident this one is not going to the same epic fail as the past years have been.  My posts are done - I just have to concentrate on visiting & commenting!

As a reminder - my theme was very easy to do. 
I was thinking of calling it "truck art" but the logos on some trucks (of all sizes - not just semis) are pretty basic.  But I guess art is in the eye of the beholder!  I did take some artistic license with some of them. too.

My difficult letters were (surprisingly) K and (not-surprisingly) Y.

See ya tomorrow with that!

Oooo - and another thing that I'm excited about...
I pre-ordered Def Leppard's new album - the one with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra!  
I've heard Animal on the radio a few times and I watched the official video on FaceBook.  It's totally a remix, since they used footage from the video from 1987, but I don't care - it's super cool and I can't wait to hear Hysteria with the Orchestra!

Monday, March 20, 2023

Titles are hard!

 I think I figured out my problem.  

I write about too many things in one post to pinpoint a title!  Back in the day, when I first started blogging on the now-deceased Yahoo 360, I'd use the date 🤣 Which is probably why I'm not too upset that I lost all that content.  I don't remember what I wrote about, but it probably wasn't quality!

Have you ever seen yellow hyacinths????  LOVE THEM!!

Anyhooo - it's the first day of Spring!  Hooray!  Not that it matters much here in Michigan, but I have 3 different colors of crocuses blooming out in my lawn and tulip / hyacinth / daffodil spouts in my flowerbeds, so that makes me happy!  And the robins may be really puffed up, but they're back for the season! 

They remind me of this cartoon.....

So let's get caught up again.   I left off last post looking forward to 3 days worth of search & rescue training.  We had a class on Wide Area Search, which by definition is 1. has an unknown number of victims 2. covers a widespread area.  3. the local resources are tapped out and 4 requires outside assistance.  

So we did a lot of work with actual maps and scenarios from Hurricane Katrina, the Greensburg Tornado, an earthquake in California (the instructors skipped over that one quickly since we don't have a big earthquake problem in Michigan - although fun fact - there's a huge inactive fault line that runs from basically Traverse City to Detroit!)   So we got the scenario and it was if we were first on the scene - figuring out what we were up against and getting needed people, equipment & supplies.  How to prioritize our resources, etc.  Basically stuff I will never need to use, since my SAR team falls under the jurisdiction of the sheriff's department, so there will always be law enforcement on a scene before we are!   We also got to play with the apps that FEMA uses for large scale disasters - where we roamed around the neighborhood, and marking "waypoints" such as animals, debris, structure issues, fires.  Then we went back into the classroom and the instructors downloaded our tracks and looked at the pictures we took.  

Kinda scary!

And there were people from different sar teams, fire depts, police depts, and government agencies so we were on teams with all sorts of people with different experiences and outlooks.   It was a super cool class.  Really interesting. 

I don't care for professional sports (except hockey - I do like that) but at work, I've been known to doodle on the conference room wall (it is painted in special paint so you can do just that!) I was asked to draw for the Super Bowl.  I impressed myself with that Eagle! 

Sis1 lives in "the country" and asked if we wanted to go in on 1/4 of a cow with her from one of her neighbors.  We couldn't find our cooler, so we stopped and picked one up - this one holds 180 beer cans or approximately 265 pounds of beef!  Can't wait for the Spouse to fire up the grill!

I fit easily in the trunk of a Nissan Versa!

I took a weekend road trip with both sisters to see our brother in Ohio and of course I took Chuck the skeleton with me (quick backstory - he's kind of like a Flat Stanley - I take him everywhere and post pics on his own Instagram page - @chuck.d.bones) Some old geezer came up to me in Cracker Barrel and asked if he was my "service skeleton" - we thought that was funny and then he had the audacity to ask if I knew that was weird?!?!?!?!  I was kind of offended!  And then he asked if he could take a pic since none of his buddies would ever believe it.   

Don't be hatin' on Chuck!

Late February / Early March was the 5th anniversary for my SAR team - and seven of us got pins & certificates of appreciation for being with the team since Day 1.   We've come a long way, baby!  We even had a call out at 5am today.  I'm glad they understand that we're volunteers since most of us do have to work!  Luckily they found the kid before I would have even gotten to the scene anyway.

I was helping the Spawn with her taxes recently and needed a printer, so we packed up and went into my office.  The grandkids went nuts and somehow got dirt from my plants ~ everywhere ~, along with potato chip crumbs. LittleMan tried to sweep up but I still left a note for our cleaning guy, apologizing for the huge mess!  

Watch out for BabyGirl!

Of course that's a toy knife - the Spawn used it in a dance routine one year when they did a production of Clue and she was Miss Peacock.  This baby will carry anything around with her.  Empty pop bottles, pens are a particular favorite, baby wipes, you name it!

We usually have a girls' night out for St. Patrick's Day - but this year we just met up with Mom & Sis 1 for dinner.

They are rotten little monsters, but they're adorable!

I've got a few things coming up to look forward to.  2 different Easter Egg hunts with the SAR team - which sounds weird, but imagine a parking lot filled with all sorts of police / fire / emt / other vehicles with candy, and a helicopter coming in to land.  And looking for eggs!  We also are doing our first pack test - where we'll be in full search gear and hike 1.5 miles just to gauge how long it takes.  The beginning of May is a state wide drill with idk how many other teams.  That'll be fun!  I wish we'd have our mounted team ready to go, but that's not looking likely.  

Anyhoooo, Gonna sign off for now.   

I love this tree.  I've got a million pics of it. 

I should add one to the bottom of each A to Z post!

Wait - why does Elmo look like he's flipping you off??
He's supposed to be thinking!



Saturday, March 11, 2023

A to Z Challenge Theme


Welcome to my little corner of the Blog-iverse! 

...some backstory

The first time I did the A to Z Challenge was back in 2012. Jumped right in with 3 blogs.
 
I had this blog, one dedicated to my weight loss journey and one that's all Halloween, all the time.
I did all 3 in 2013, too. In 2014, I dropped the Halloween blog, because I also do the Countdown to Halloween which is blogging every day in October. It was getting to be a bit much.
2015 was also just the 2 blogs. Then I combined them into what you see now so 2016 - 2019 was just done here.
2020 was a bad year for blogging.  2021 wasn't much better.   
2022 was just a fail.  

So anyway.  I thought I'd go for a super easy theme this year, so I could get my blogging mojo back.  One that I know I'll be able to complete ahead of time and concentrate on visiting & commenting on other blogs.   It also kind of goes along with the A to Z Head Honcho team's theme!

Trucks.

There are some pretty cool logos out there and some plain, but I was easily able to get A to Z!

Thanks to Swift for being my inspiration!

So basically, most of these pics were taken while on road trips.  I went to Houston last spring via Cincinnati to visit my 2 best friends from when I was in the Navy.  I also went on a couple weekend trips with my sisters to visit our brother in Dayton.

There's also a special fun video for "P".

Surprisingly - K was the hardest letter!

Also surprising that I've worked for a trucking company for 22 years, and I've never done a Challenge involving trucks! 


So load em' up and come along for the ride!