Sloppy Joes at Bethany Lutheran

Keeping with the "church food" theme, I remember the first time I ever experienced the wonderfulness of Sloppy Joes. I was in first grade at Bethany Lutheran, so I was 6 years old. There was a carnival-type thing going on at the church that evening. I don't remember any rides, but that was a time when we were REALLY tight on money, so that might have been something we just didn't do. Looking back, I know it was a real sacrifice for me to be attending a parochial school at all. Anyway, we were there, and I remember saying "hi" to a boy from my class. There was a clown giving out balloons and my parents let me join the crowd of children around him to get my balloon. I was a little surprised when I got close to the clown and noticed how heavy the makeup was on his face. AND--he did NOT say "You're welcome" when I politely thanked him for my balloon. I was taught that you ALWAYS say "Please", "Thank you", and "You're welcome". What a rude clown!
Somewhere along the line was when we all had Sloppy Joes. What a wonderful thing! We'd never had them at home! I loved it! Time passed and it was getting time to leave soon. Ice cream was mentioned, but I wanted another Sloppy Joe! I was told that I couldn't have both ice cream and a Sloppy Joe. That would give me a tummy ache. What a "Sophie's Choice" type of decision to place on a child! Ice cream--Sloppy Joe: what to choose, what to choose! Well, it really wasn't much of a struggle. We had ice cream all the time at home, so Sloppy Joe it was!
PS-A little story about the balloon. I was disappointed the next day when the balloon no longer floated. I didn't understand about the helium leaking out, leaving an ordinary balloon behind. I still loved my balloon, though, and was devastated when my baby brother (that's YOU Bert!) caused it's demise. I don't recall what he did, just that it was his fault, and I cried. My grandmother used the "sop" of "That's OK, we'll get you another one." So I waited ALL DAY for her to get me another balloon! Every time she left the room where I was and came back in, I expected her to have a balloon with her! Never happened! Ever! So you OWE me a balloon, Albert! Make it a helium one, and all is forgiven...perhaps. Make it a helium one that's BLUE and we're definitely even!

Church Food!!

Today I'm talking about that most wonderful of foods: Church Food! It doesn't matter what it is, it's good! I've always loved church food, and especially pot lucks. I don't know why, but for a predominantly German congregation, we sure get a lot of Italian food! Of course, spaghetti and other pasta dishes are fairly easy to make and to make in large quantities. When we had a pot luck at the church where I grew up, our family would always take a couple of big cans of Ravioli, brown some hamburger, mix it all together and cover the top with Parmesan cheese. There were NEVER any leftovers. I went to a funeral at a Baptist church (*gasp*) a couple weeks ago and they had the most wonderful Southern fried chicken at the lunch. Wow! I went to a funeral service at my church at the beginning of this week and they served lasagna at the luncheon afterward. Another wow! What makes all this especially good is that I can eat just about anything again since I'm not having lactose probs anymore. What a blessing that is, I can tell you! I didn't have to worry that the fried chicken had milk in the batter and of course the lasagna would've been deadly to me as well.Which brings me to tomorrow's fare--Pancake Breakfast!! It's the last fund raiser for a trip to Kenya that our pastor and another man from the congregation are taking in a couple of weeks. And I will be able to partake! I absolutely adore church pancakes! I have tried a whole BUNCH of mixes and scratch recipes over the years, and my pancakes NEVER taste as good as church ones. This past Easter was the first in many years that I was able to eat them again. Growing up, we always went to Sunrise Service on Easter and then went back to the church for breakfast. The Men's Club would do the cooking. You'd get a paper plate full of 2 eggs, 2 pancakes and 2 link sausage and cover it all with syrup. Does not get any better than that!
Thank you, Lord, for Church Food! Amen!

the pain! the pain!

Paul spent the last few days "improving" our computer. One casualtyof it all was my bookmarks! Gone! Without a trace! Oh, the pain! I had an old file of bookmarks saved in a folder, but there were a lot of dead end ones and ones I no longer used/needed. I had a LOT of YouTube songs that are gone, but those are fairly easy to get back, just takes some looking around YouTube again. And I had some great YouTube tutorials for stamping that I'll try to find. Some were just stumbled upon and will not be easy to find. What I'll miss the most are the stamping blogs that I had come across randomly. I spent most of today trolling the Net looking for stamping blogs. Haven't yet found the originals, but did come across some really neat ones. There are a lot of stamp blogs done by Stampin Up demonstrators, a goodly number of them in the UK. I had no idea SU was in the UK. I even found a blog done by a man in the UK who is a demonstrator.

AND--all my games were gone and had to be re-installed. Which means my scores were lost! I'd worked hard on some of those word games and just don't have the heart right now to really get into them in the same spirit as before. For Bookworm, I had gone for DAYS working on that one. And I can't find the disc for Bonnie's Bookstore, so can't even play that one until I find it.

But I'll live. I guess. I'll stop whining about it, anyway. At least now I back up my stuff on a more regular basis. Even though not only is the horse gone, the barn (with the door) burned down....*sigh*

Chillin' at the Starlight Drive-in

This time of year I start remembering the Starlight Drive-in. It's gone now, of course, as are most of the drive-ins in California. I don't know how many are left in the rest of the country, but I'd guess not many. It's too easy to get a movie from Netflix or the Red Box and watch in the comfort of your own home. The Starlight was just down the road from where we lived, and on a clear night, we could hear the movie from our yard. There was a field where some kids would go and see the movie for free. We weren't allowed to do that. We'd load up the station wagon with my parents, me and my bro and a couple of times even my grandparents went along. We had plenty of snacks and sodas, because why pay snack bar prices when you could bring your own? We'd park and put the speaker in the car window and settle down to sweat in the hot summer evening and bat at the mosquitoes. There would usually be some movie first for kids and then a more grow-up movie, during which my brother and I would usually fall asleep in the back end of the station wagon.
After getting married and moving to Oroville, Marv and I went to the local drive-in a couple of times. It wasn't until a friend told us how to really enjoy the drive-in that we learned about bringing lawn chairs and sitting OUTSIDE the car with an ice chest full of frosty drinks. Man, that was a LOT of fun! We were only able to do that a couple more times, though, before that one closed down as well.
I have to admit, though, now that I'm a tad older....(ahem)....I really enjoy sitting in my recliner in an air-conditioned house, the kitchen or bathroom only a remote control button and steps away, my cats on my lap, and watching a movie and then being able to go right to bed afterward. No line of cars to get out of the drive-in, no popcorn to clean out of the car, no soda cans to collect....
But the memories remain.

And so it begins (again)

A little over three years ago I signed up on Myspace because I was afraid of trying to start an actual blog. I found Myspace very easy to navigate and have had a lot of fun there and have met some really neat people. The one thing that I couldn't do was link to past blogs. At least not that I could tell. I've always made hard copies of my blogs so that at the end of the year I could put them in a folder for that year. If I wanted to reference a past blog, I'd have to plow through the folders and hope that I'd recognize the title I'd given that particular blog. I realized the time had come to go back and look at this venue again and get this puppy up there. I still haven't looked into how to link to past blogs, but I'm sure I can figure it out. And now that I'm doing this, I'll probably find out that it's super easy to do on Myspace as well, and I'll REALLY feel like the narcissistic dork that I am!
So there ya go. I'll still post to Myspace because I really love that site, but I'll also post here. And when I'm bored and have nothing better to do, I'll dig up an old blog from Myspace and post it here. Because I know you're all dying to read everything I've written. (WHERE ARE MY SMILEY ICONS?? Here's where I'd put a cute smiley to mock what I'd just written! They have them at Myspace!!)
Oh well. We'll call this a work in progress and leave well enough alone. For now.