Reminiscing

It's been incredibly hot here and most of my activities have been indoors. The Ruth Reichel book was good and there are some cool recipes in it. As soon as I get copies of the chocolate cake and roasted leg of lamb recipes, I will pass this one on to someone else. I just started reading a Jodi Picoult book entitled Plain Truth. It's about an Amish family and so far most of the plot seems to take place around Paradise.

Just reading the beginning two chapters, when she mentions Philly and the Lancaster county area...it makes me smile. I loved going to Blue Ball, Epherta and other places in the Lancaster area when I was a kid. My father always drove. The car would be packed with my mom, my two grandmothers (Pierce and Jackson)and me. Occasionally it would just be me, Mom, Dad and Nana Jackson .......but the trips were always the same theme. We'd go to some outlets and shop; we'd stop at the Akron restaurant and eat the most amazing honey fried chicken and red velvet chocolate cake....I'm salivating just thinking of it! Dad would kindly pull off and stop near a farm so I could look at the pigs. I would run to the fencing and as the smell grew stronger, enveloping me in a funk so sour that I would be gagging, I'd soldier on so I could see the enormous hogs furrowing around the mud. Ok, it doesn't sound like fun but to a 10 year old who loved animals it was quite a treat. There was actually another motive to pull over at this farm. The family sold eggs and vegetables. They were just sitting there on a table with a box for the money. It was the honor system, something I'd bet doesn't still exist in that area today. My father would put a few dollars in the box and take the goods he selected.

But I digress...the Picoult book is just started and it's the third one I've read by this author. They certainly aren't "feel good" or chick lit books but she has a great descriptions of what life is really like.

I sent a package to a Navy guy in Afghanistan and recently learned he's been out of touch for over 60 days so they removed him from the list on AnySailor website. So now I have a female soldier stationed in Iraq that is requesting magazines, lotion, etc. The flat rate boxes at the post office are great for shipping lots of heavy books and magazines. I will get that out this weekend.
Also this weekend I will surprise my lovely cousin Char with a package I'd meant to send out two weeks ago.

Tristan is enjoying his motorcycle very much. He already has over 725 miles on it. He bought me Guild wars expansion pack for my birthday...he's a thoughtful young man :o) So now we all have that game loaded on our computers. And we can play together so that's a lot of fun. I gave Doug my software and loaded the expansion pack Tristan got me. So far I have 4 characters created and you wouldn't believe how much fun it is just trying to get an original name. We all sat around laughing when we tried every Monty Python character name and saw they were taken. I mean, even "huge tracts of land" was taken so that's a real fan..As were names like Zoot of Anthrax, Dingo of Anthrax, Tim the Enchanter....the list goes on. It was as much fun seeing the names as it was playing. To my chagrin "Anthony Bourdain" was taken...

Next up on the Pierce project is Mary E. Pierce Newton's bio. She isn't the next sibling after Annie, but I did it out of order and wrote up George Pierce's bio on the January 28th entry. I need to contact cousin Mark and see if he has any additional info on Mary as he is her direct descendant. After Mary I just have to work on Frank Pierce. That's it for that generation. I sure wish i had some photos of these people.