Category: Travel


London apartments

Filed Under: Friends and/or family, General Life, Relationships, Travel by Paige — Leave a comment
May 5, 2012

One of my fondest wishes is to travel to London someday and spend several weeks (or months, actually) in some London Apartments while I travel around England to see the places where my grandparents grew up back in the early 1900′s. Recently my sister sent me a copy of a letter she had found that was typed up by my grandfather back in the 1980′s where he wrote a short autobiography of how he had met my grandmother and how they had come to live in America back in the 1920′s.

He wrote about how difficult life was in London back then, and how poor they were before they moved here. Then he wrote about how he and my grandmother lived in an abandoned chicken coop and raised their family, and how they could see the sky through the slats in the roof when they went to bed, and how the rain and snow came into the house. And yet they thought that their lives here in the United States was better than their life had been in London! When I think of the life they led, and the poverty they endured, I feel a deep desire to go back to London and meet my distant relatives and see where they had lived. Staying in some
London Apartments while being there would really be an experience to cherish forever.

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City of Port Saint Lucie

Filed Under: Business and/or Work, Friends and/or family, General Life, Home and Garden, Relationships, Travel by Paige — Leave a comment
February 23, 2012

It is really hard to keep up with Ruth and Ken – ever since they retired and moved to Florida they seem to be living a nomadic life. First they moved to Miami, then about six months later they moved to Fort Lauderdale, and now I hear that they have moved again – this time to the City of Port Saint Lucie. I don’t know exactly why they keep moving, but I think that they move into one neighborhood thinking that it is going to be a quiet retirement village and then end up finding out that the crime rate is a lot higher than they are comfortable with. So after a short while they move. What amazes me is that they don’t seem to be having trouble buying and selling the houses. I thought that the real estate market was depressed even in Florida. But apparently the Port Saint Lucie real estate market is doing just fine.

Maybe they just don’t let the fluctuating market bother them too much and just do what they want to do regardless of the market. I know that when they retired Ken was bragging non-stop about how wealthy they were, and they went out and bought a couple of brand new Mercedes Benz cars. Maybe after they move into a place and decide that they don’t like it there they just rent it out, I don’t know. I do know that Ruth is a woman who needs to keep busy; when we were neighbors she was always in the middle of some labor intensive project while Ken just watched and barked orders at her.

I haven’t talked to either one of them in quite a while now, but I do like to send them Christmas cards and try to stay in touch at least that way. And that is usually when I find out that they have moved – the card is returned in the mail with a “forwarding address expired” notice glued to the envelope. What’s so funny about that is the new address is usually on the sticker, so I really do have to wonder exactly why the post office is returning the mail to me – they obviously still have the new address on file. (Come to think of it, that is job security for the post office, isn’t it!) Well, whatever they end up doing, where ever they end up living, I hope that they enjoy their retirement years. I do miss them.

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Get well

Filed Under: Beauty and/or Health, General Life, Relationships, Travel by Paige — Leave a comment
January 31, 2012

Rehab treatment centers in california seem to advertising themselves as if they were luxury vacation spots where people can address their problems in posh accommodations and comfort. When I think of a person going to a spot like that I think of them going to a spa to get facials, manicures and pedicures. I often wonder if allowing people to be in such comfort while they are trying to fix their problems is really going to be as effective as it would be if the accommodations were a little bit more spartan.

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Progress marches on

Filed Under: Friends and/or family, General Life, Home and Garden, Travel by Paige — Leave a comment
January 18, 2012

Today I had the opportunity to go to a meeting in a town that I have not been to since 1971. The last time I was there I was going to visit a cousin that lived there. At the time, it was all farm land – just trees and wide open fields. Well, I found it very interesting that everywhere I looked was highly developed city landscape; high rise buildings, shopping malls, town house condominiums.

I wonder if that is what is going to happen to the town I live in now; in forty years will it be a city, too? There are more cows than people here, and not a single retail store or gas station or traffic light. How quickly will progress march into this farm town?

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Can’t get there from here

Filed Under: General Life, Technology, Travel by Paige — Leave a comment
January 16, 2012

This evening I had an appointment up in the Broadlands. I used my GPS to get there, and it took me along a short stretch of a toll road that cost me four dollars that I was not expecting to have to pay. I was quite annoyed because my GPS usually advises me at the begining of a trip that there will be toll charges and offering to take me a different route.  Well, I wanted to save money as much as possible so on the way home when I directed the GPS to take me home I directed it to avoide the toll road (this time it advised me that a toll road was part of the route.) Anyway I was taken down a lot of winding country roads that were very narrow, and I started to wonder if maybe a hacker had gotten onto the satellites and having a good time getting me lost! Eventually I ended up on a main road that I recognized and I made my way home, none the worse for wear.

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