Happy Birthday Wyatt!

Wyatt in red. Rider in yellow.

Wyatt is my nephew, and today is his birthday. Wyatt was the first grandchild born to our family. I remember the day he was born. We were all so happy! When I got to the hospital, my mom and dad were standing outside and my dad had tears in his eyes. Mom and Dad had driven to Canton from Mansfield. I had driven from Cleveland, and Jason had driven from Toledo. It was a GREAT day for the Solingers.

And Wyatt has continued to amaze us ever since! He is a very smart young man, and his teachers cannot say enough nice things about him. He has many "female admirers" but he doesn't usually refer to them as girlfriends. He loves sports and can hold his own in adult conversations regarding the Indians, Browns, or Cavs.

Happy Birthday Wyatt!! We love you!!

Picture Perfect

I'm sort of in a funk and just don't have any good ideas for posts. Here is a picture you might like. It is my mom's family when she was about four years old (I think). My grandma and grandpa are in the back row. The two older girls are my Aunt Jeanne and Aunt Evelyn. The handsome little boy is my Uncle Jack. Next to him is my mom and next to her is my Aunt Carolyn.

My mom is looking down because she was wearing new shoes and she was admiring how pretty they looked. In another snapshot from this same photo shoot, my uncle is looking up at an airplane. And in both, Aunt Carolyn is struggling horribly with the family cat.

Happy New Year (of the Rat)

Happy Chinese New Year!

I'm a rat. And so are you if you were born in the year 2008, 1996, 1984, 1972, 1960, 1948, 1936, 1924, or 1912. This is our year!

Rats are perfectionists. They communicate extremely well, are quick-witted, level headed and always alert. They choose their friends carefully and dote on children. Rats are great strategists and make good politicians, but most importantly, their intuition enables them to suss out the enemy quite early in the game. Rats are shrewd and know how to amass wealth. They’ll gladly spend on their loved ones while outsiders will find them miserly. Their adaptability and clever manoeuvring will see them thumbing their nose at even the tightest spot. But they can be quick-tempered and overly critical, making them edgy, nervous and a downright nag with things don’t go their way. They have an opportunistic trait that will see them wheeling and dealing in exploiting situations for self-benefit.

Famous people born in the Year Of The Rat:
Antonio Banderas, Antonio Moreno, Ben Affleck, Bobby Avila, Burt Reynolds, Cameron Diaz, Carlos Delgado, Churchill, Colin Firth,Doris Day, Englebert Humperdinck, Fernando Valenzuela, Hector Elizondo, Hugh Grant, Juanes, Jude Law, Julianne Moore, Justina Machado, Kathy Bates, Kenny Loggins, Marlon Brando, Mozart, Pedro Armendáriz, President George Washington, Ron Moody, Samuel J Jackson, Sean Penn, Shakespeare, Timothy Hutton, Truman Capote, Ursula Andress, and Xavier Cugat

The Chinese zodiac signs are determined by the lunar year in which you were born. The Chinese believe the animal ruling one's birth year has a profound influence on personality, and destiny. The saying is: "This animal hides in your heart."

123, 5, 3 Meme

I don't know exactly what a meme is. I think Alison explained it to me at one time, but I didn't really get it. I see this word all the time in the blog world. To be honest, it annoys me. It's shop talk. It has something to do with tagging other bloggers and revealing things about yourself. I'm ok with the concept -- it's just the word that bugs me. Maybe because it's so close to mime, and don't like mime's either. Or mines. Or fines. Now I sound like Dr. Seuss.

Anyway, Alison tagged me and now I have to go to the nearest book, open it to page 123, skip the first five sentences and tell you the next three. I looked up from my laptop with a knot in my stomach because I happen to be surrounded by cookbooks at the moment.

Which reminds me, I am still taking recipes. I've only received a handful from you guys so far, and I know you have GREAT recipes. Kristy, send me your corn dip recipe. Jen, send me your margarita recipe. Alison, send me a good drink recipe from your bartending days. Jeromy, don't you make fudge? Rick, I know you're a cook! Hailey, how about some spaghetti with pepperoni? Ok, enough harrassment. (My email is msolinger@hotmail.com.)

Sooo, the book closest to me was Betty Crocker's Cookbook. Page 123 is a recipe for Apple Wrapper Pie. Sentences 6-8 say this:

Cover with plastic wrap to keep it moist while making filling. Mix brown sugar and flour in a large bowl. Mound apple mixture on center of pastry to within three inches of edge.

Sexy, isn't it? If I had cheated and gone to the second closest NON-COOKBOOK book, you would have gotten this quote from Tom Robbins' Skinny Legs and All:

In this room, the salamander was squashed between the pages of the rhyming dictionary, thereby changing poetry forever. Here, Salome walked around with a big red fish held high up over her head. Old father spanked her with a ballet slipper, sending her to bed without milk or honey.

Now, Stan picked up book number three and we have discovered why this meme has the instructions it has. Whoever made this up had to be reading book number three which Stan now holds in his grubby hands. You will have to go to my other blog to see the quote. If you haven't been there yet, email me at msolinger@hotmail.com and I'll give you an invite.

I tag myself. And I tag you too. What are you reading? What are sentences 6-8 on page 123?

On The Bus: Next Stop Obama For President

You may have noticed that I'm on the bus. That means I'm a deadhead (a loyal fan of the Grateful Dead) and that I "expanded my consciousness" in my younger years. Someday, I will tell you all about my adventures on the bus.

But today, I just wanted to share this with you. I received an email this morning saying that the Dead will play a show together in support of Barack Obama. The concert will take place this Monday at the Warfield Theatre is San Francisco. This is the first time that the surviving members of the band have played together since 2004.

The event will be called "DeadHeads for Obama." I'm so excited I could pee myself. You have to understand that the boys have historically made it a point to avoid mainstream politics. They must REALLY dig Obama to do this.