Happy Birthday Lori!!! Colors of Me blog

HAPPY BIRTHDAY LORI :) :D

I really am sorry I forgot to get you something. :(

Sidewalk Repairs

Last year in my neighborhood the city started putting green x's on cracked parts of sidewalks. For some reason none of ours had them. That meant they had to get fixed and/or replaced. It is up to the homeowners to spend hundreds sometimes thousands of dollars to fix them. This year a good part of sidewalk has the green x's.

My question is if they are public sidewalks why are we responsible for fixing them and why are we the ones who have to pay for them. It is not like we can charge people to walk on them to help pay for it.

Oh, and yes this is the same sidewalk by the pictures of the road construction. With all the vibrations the cracks have even gotten bigger. Wait though the construction has just begun!!!
They have not even started to actually fix the road. So who knows what the trucks and vibrations will do the sidewalks, our house, our yard, et cetera.

The decision making politicians are a joke. A few years ago our telephone company dug up part of our sidewalk to put new lines in the ground, added a manhole cover, shook our tree and house like you could not even believe and made the couple of small hairline cracks that we did have even bigger.

Did I mention that they denied doing that. You would think that in this day of lawsuits companies would think to photograph the sidewalks and area they are immediately working in to prove whether or not they did or did not cause damage. Of course if we had thought about it would have photographed the sidewalk too.

Live and learn. Live and learn.

Remember if anyone is doing any kind of work near your home take pictures before they start so if something goes wrong you have some kind of proof that there was either no damage or if there already is some damage how bad it is.

I ran into one of my neighbors that did have sidewalk repairs done and he only had about I say 3 feet to 5 feet to do and it cost him almost $600.00. One of my other neighbors had to pay almost $1,600.00. Where does the city think people are going to get the money to pay this?

Garden Flowers

In the front garden.
So sunny and bright are these daffodils;
or, like I say daffy dils lol.
This is really two tone,
but I took these late in the day and it kind of shows that. I know these look like ordinary daisies, but these are garden mums.
There has been some debate on the classification of daisies over the last few years.
I have been told by certified horticulturalists (spelling?) that there is a difference and some year it will be settled once and for all.
I say why bother.
Pretty is pretty who cares.

We bought these today and are not planted yet.
This is a six pack of garden mums that we got at Menards.

Petunias and geraniums. I did not even plant these this year.

My brother did these yesterday.

He never wants to help with this kind of stuff (lol) and he did these and other pots without being asked to!!!!

Another type of geranium.

This is another one we bought today in a six pack from Menards.

We also bought a boxwood bush, but I forgot to photograph it. The boxwood bush was on sale for only $14.88. It is normally $24.99. That is a good deal. It is not a huge bush, but big enough for the price.

I bought the bush for my mom's birthday today.

More Pictures From the Road Construction of 2008

Our driveway is just to the right of the stairs there. What a pain in the *&^%. We can not use the driveway or garage for the car I am guessing for most or all of the summer. Hopefully whatever they do with street will make traffic slow down a little and be safer for everyone. There is a middle school just past the building on the left side of the picture. The building on the left is a nursing home.
There is an elementary school a few blocks to the right of these workers. On the corner behind these workers there is an apartment building that has low income housing for people. Some are on disability, social security, or work but do not make much money, etc.

The speed limit on the main road is 30 miles per hour and on the secondary road it is 25 miles per hour. Imagine being elderly, disabled, a small child, or someone who lives on these roads constantly having to deal with people routinely going 40 - 50 miles per hours.

People need to slow their cars down. There is nowhere you have to be that is that important (unless it is an emergency and even then slow down) that you risk a car accident that can forever change your life. Right now through the construction the speed limit is 20 miles per hour.

Remember at least in Wisconsin if you get a speeding ticket in a construction zone your fines DOUBLE as do the points taken off your license.

The workers are cutting into the cement and directing traffic today.

Of course there is always one idiot, moron, completely oblivious person, who should not have a license that honks his/her horn. Really like that is going to speed things up. It was some guy in a little expensive sports car that honked his horn. He even tried going around the idiot. He probably paid too much for the car, gets horrible gas mileage (gas as of my station yesterday was at $3.49 per gallon), and I do not even want to think about what he pays for insurance.

All I can say if he drives like that he deserves to be ripped off!!!!!

Construction 2008, Ohio Street, Racine, Wisconsin

The first 2 are taken from our front step. This one is taken from the side of the house.
This one was taken across the street half-way down the steps of the bridge by our house.
This was also taken from the front step of our house.

This started about 2 - 3 weeks ago up a couple of blocks from my house.

From what I can understand they will be doing the following (unless something changes):

1. They are redoing the water pipes.

2. They are redoing the corners that already have wheelchair access, but I guess it is still too steep according to federal law.

(My question is they did not know this when they did this years ago?)

3. The crossover bridge is supposedly coming down.

(At first I thought why are they tearing down a perfectly useful bridge that a lot of people would still use, but I was up on it today and it is getting a little too rusty.)

4. I have been told that there is a traffic light going up on my corner.

I guess we will have to wait and see.

5. There is a hill in the street and they are going to fix that.

My mom and brother were talking to some of the men yesterday and apparently they are only going to dig up part of the road and push it futher down the road to help level it out some.

That should be interesting to see. Ha Ha.

I hope I am off work when they do that so I can get pictures.

I am the only one that has bothered to figure out how to use the digital camera.

So here now are a few pictures with more to come throughout the summer.

I know the first one is blurry but I was having trouble focusing because he was moving too fast and the light was in my eyes. I did take more pictures, but I hope you get the idea of how close they are to our houses and trees and everything else.

Watch out for sample products

So, it is like this.....

I get a magazine in the mail and there is a coupon for a "new" product by an established and well known company with a well known spokeswoman and attached to the coupon is a sample of the product....cool right???

That is what I thought. It is a revitalize lotion...so, I decide to try it today and let me just say my face and skin did NOT like it one bit!!!!!!

First my face was just itching a little bit---ok, not so bad at first. Then it started to itch a lot!!!!!
Ok, still it did NOT hurt but was beginning to really really really annoy me. Then all of a sudden my face felt like someone was burning it!!!!!

Did I mention I was at work during all this? No I did not mention that.

I told my boss I had to go to the bathroom and by the time I got there and looked in the mirror my nose and cheeks were bright red and my forehead and neck were slightly red. I took off all the makeup I had on in those areas and washed my face and it has now been over 10 hours since I put that "lotion" on and over 6 hours since my face started burning and it still burns and hurts and itches.

I know it was not the make up because that has been the same for a while now and my eyes did not have that itching and burning like the rest of my face.

The moral of the story is

ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS

test a new product on a small area before you apply it all over.

I was not that concerned because I have used this company's shampoo and conditioner several times and like it and have had no problem with it. It is obvious that I had a severe allergic reaction to this particular product. It will heal in a few days (hopefully), but meanwhile I still had to work like this and have people look at me funny.

Highlander

One of my favorite shows of all time is "Highlander: The Series". I also enjoy the movies, but the show is one of my favorites. There are other shows like "Stargate SG-1", "Stargate Atlantis", "24", and others that I enjoy.

It is not one of the greatest shows, but it something about it touches me. The comedy episodes are fun, but there is something sad and sometimes beautiful in the serious episodes. It can be spiritual almost haunting like.

I have been asked by people I know if I would ever want to be immortal, and I never know for sure what I would want. On the one hand you get to live long enough to see changes in the world and whether what some leader long ago was right or wrong in the end, but it would also be very sad and lonely. I can not imagine watching everybody I ever knew die knowing that I would not (except by taking my head as in the show and movies).

In the end I do not think I would want to be immortal.

What brought this blog on??? I was playing around You Tube and was watching some of the videos and realized again how spiritual and sad and at the same time how beautiful some of the

episodes were.