East Coast Happenings

[Diane Amberg]

Grump,whine,whine...such a busy time of year for us, and in spite of my best efforts, I caught a cold.
I skipped the fire company monthly meeting last night.Al gave my report and I'll  skip a bonfire/bbque tonight... don't want to give this to anyone. I'll send Al anyway. It's mostly our fire friends so there is no reason for him to miss it.
The leaves here are really starting to color up and look beautiful now. It's always surprising how fast they do when they make up their minds. We got another 1 1/2" of rain yesterday evening, so that should set things up nicely for cold weather. Have a nice day!

[Diane Amberg]

I'm feeling much better today and so far Al hasn't caught that cold from me.It's another beautiful day, cool and dry with the colorful leaves dropping a few at time.
The flavor of the tomatoes is falling off fast now. I brought a few more in, but they just aren't as good. I will make some more green fries soon though. I need to start bringing in more of my houseplants before a frost sneaks up on us, and there are more bulbs to plant.
I hung my friendly ghost wind sock on the front porch and a "Batty" flag next to the front porch in the little shade garden there.I'll put some more things out closer to Halloween.Since it's on Saturday,should be extra fun. Have a great one.

[Diane Amberg]

All the plants are in and the garden has been almost completely stripped.I'll finish it later today.All the bulbs are in and it was chilly enough to turn on the gas fireplace this morning to take off the chill in the family room.
Here in Newark we are mourning the loss of the UD football team.Apparently they died...or so it seems.This year they have nothing! One win all season.They might as well put the Marching Band on the field.
  Al has been kept busy with the Newark Planning Commission.He was recently elected chair again. There are several sticky proposals coming before them, including the possible development of the Newark Country Club. It's failing and has been for a number of years now. Of course, the people who border it don't want houses built on the golf course, as they have been borrowing the open space and the views for years.The Country Club on the other hand, wants to get all the value for it that they can, which would mean high density, small lots and many houses. The tax revenue for the county and City of Newark would make big bucks for the tax coffers, which we need, but emotionally nobody wants more traffic either.
Al has me proof and edit his reports, so I'm involved too.
''Space" is never a problem for you all, but I guess paying the community bills with so few people must be.
I hope you all can enjoy another beautiful fall day.Time for a pumpkin pie.

[Diane Amberg]

Brr! We finally had to turn on the furnace before bed last night.We held out for as long as we could.We'll still just use the gas fire place as much as possible. It heats the downstairs nicely and especially the family room when we hang out there. Lots of frost on the garage roof this morning.I'll go out soon and see if I missed any peppers.
The Halloween decorations are turning up in the Newark neighborhoods...some really cute ideas showing up. I thought about hanging "someone" in a tree, but I don't wanna scare the kids TOO much. HA! I'll put a KU sweatshirt on it and really upset him. Nah, just kidding.
   My brother in law is in the hospital with a very nasty Congestive Heart Failure episode.He'd been having some unidentified  breathing problems, but he then went down hard on Saturday and had a seizure.They drained 14 pounds of fluid out of him!The docs had already given him every test known to man. They always came back normal, in spite of knowing something had to be wrong somewhere.Now they've got something to treat and hopefully he'll be OK. I'm off to the fire house later to set up for fire prevention contest judging tomorrow....and Bingo tonight. Have a good one.

[Diane Amberg]

Whew! I finally finished reading and judging several hundred fourth, through eighth grade fire prevention essays. There were some very good ones and some that would have been had they not had spelling punctuation and grammar errors. We had already judged the K-third posters.
I guess I'll never know where the teaching is falling down with some of these that are so common. There instead of they're, are instead of our, u instead of you and several others ...and when I'm picking winners, all that does count, not just content.
I'm more lenient with the special ed.kids.They have their own category that we call "independent topics."  Some of those kids are very dyslexic but can get the idea across. The others have assigned topics for each different grade. Now another person has to go back to the schools that have winners and track down the kid's information for the 30 winners, as we judge just by a teacher assigned code number.Then on to call each winner's family to come to our awards night on Nov.19th. It only takes an hour and we'll have about 200 people turn out for it.The winners get their prize gift cards and then they can roam the engine bay for visits with the fire apparatus and take photos. Lots of smiles and fun.
It's nice to do something "normal" that doesn't reek of politics and controversy.

[Diane Amberg]

Not a good morning. My BIL has finally gotten a diagnosis on his problems and it's not good. Cardiac Amyloidosis. No cure, but perhaps can be controlled. It's weird protein produced in the bone marrow that makes plaques that stiffen the organs that are attacked by it. Also called "stiff heart disease." He'll need chemo to try to stop it, but there is no way of knowing for how long.Hopefully he'll have a few years yet.

[proelkco]

Good Morning Diane, sorry about the bad news.

[Diane Amberg]

Thanks.It really is a shame. He's a very nice person. He retired a about a year ago and then started having problems. Some retirement!

[proelkco]

Chance of frost tonight so hoping it well knock down the pollen. Did you read Teresa's announcement?

[Diane Amberg]

Yes, I'm sure there are those that assume it's all my fault.HA!