PHILLIES PHILLIES PHILLIES!

We clinched the Division! NL East Champions 2009!

Outstanding! WTG, guys! :-)

I have discovered that the cats are afraid of the Orange Horn. They both hid, and wouldn't come out until I brought out Cat Treats as a peace offering.

Preparing for the Phantoms Home Opener

I picked up a little something to take to the Phantoms Home Opener on Saturday. :-)

Shell Art

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Shell Art

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OK, I understand that anybody who's eating frozen snack foods is not expecting to have a five-star-chef-level culinary experience. But even so, there are some things that just plain defy logic.

Take, for example, the box of frozen chimichangas we have. On the box, it gives instructions for heating one serving via microwave or via oven. One serving is comprised of five (5) chimichangas.

So why does the box come with 8 chicken and 8 beef chimichangas in it? They couldn't spring for two more of each kind, and give us an even 10 of both flavors, since one serving consists of 5 chimichangas?

Or is this a multi-ethnic version of the eternal question, "Why do hot dogs come 10 to a pack, while hot dog buns are sold in packs of 8?"

Things that make you go, "HMMM."

Happy 62nd Wedding Anniversary to my parents-in-law! :)

Finally, I'm starting to feel better after a day's worth of digestive rebellion yesterday. Still not sure where that bout with Unwanted Symptoms came from.

Good news

Good news: Mr. "Draped All Over His Girlfriend" is nowhere to be seen for tonight's Flyers game. I have a clear line of sight to the ice, without having to court back spasms by craning over and around his big noggin.

OW OW OW OW OW

Even though my knees didn't sound like Rice Krispies when I navigated on stairs today, it's now clear to me that I'm not a citizen of the Land of the Symptom-Free yet.

On my way back upstairs, I just had such a painful crick in the knee, I had to crawl up the remaining steps. Living in a rowhouse has its downside... I hope the neighbors on either side of us didn't wake when I exclaimed in pain. Farging symptoms that show up at this wretched hour of the night morning...!

LMHO!!! This video literally made me LOL. Enjoy!

Fan Follies

The guy sitting in front of me is so focused on keeping his arm around his girlfriend, he keeps blocking my line of sight with his head.

It is only with difficulty that I have refrained from telling them to "Leave some room for the Holy Spirit".

I hope he's not a season ticket holder. I don't feel like sitting behind this all season long.

UPDATE: Seems he was a Red Wings fan, as the only time he cheered was for a Red Wings goal. I hope that means he's not a STH. He and the g/f he was hanging all over left the seats in front of us during the second intermission. I don't know whether they left the building entirely or whether they just found a pair of seats closer to the ice. Either way, I watched the third period without having to crane my neck over and around obstacles. Hooray.

Flyers Preseason

Welcome to the Flyers' first preseason home game! The teams have just come out for the pregame skate. :)

Oh. My. Gosh.

I've been taking the glucosamine-chondroitin OTC product that my mom recommended to me for the past 3-4 weeks.

I just walked down the stairs from our second floor to the first floor.

Remarkably, I did so without having any of the pain or funky noises (aka crepitus) emanating from the knee.

I'm gong to say that one more time: for the first time since well before the second injury 14 months ago, I walked down a flight of steps without one unwanted symptom.

I can honestly say that I'd forgotten what it felt like to walk down a flight of stairs without having at least one pang of discomfort and/or hearing damaged-joint noises.

I know it's not the result of NSAIDs. We ran out of those a couple weeks ago, and since then I've steeled myself to do without them so I could pay better attention to what the glucosamine-chondroitin was doing. Therefore, I know that this symptom-free moment was not the result of naproxen.

I know better than to think I'll be symptom-free forevermore, considering I saw what the knee looks like inside thanks to the pics the doc took during the surgery. But a walk down an entire flight of steps without one problem -- I wouldn't have banked on ever having that again. So that's some real progress.

So you can count me as the latest passenger on the "try glucosamine chondroitin" bandwagon. The particular brand my Mom recommended is Osteo Bi-Flex, but I've had one or two other suggestions from online friends as well, of similar products that have worked well for them.

My original motto, "Don't fall, and if you MUST fall, don't LAND", still holds true. But if you already fell and landed, or have some other reason why the osteoarthritis fairy has visited you, by all means hit up the local pharmacy for the OTC glucosamine-chondroitin products.

We had a nice weekend seeing The Other Donna and meeting her beau. Plus, I now have a new restaurant to be in love with. Chiarella's on 11th Street is out of this freaking world.

I hope the weather stays as nice as it's been for the past two days. I want to use the bike this week.

Today's installment of Stupid Criminal Tricks: a burglar pauses to update his Facebook status while in the act of robbing someone's home. He left himself logged in on the victim's computer, which allowed the police to track him down and arrest him.

CLICK HERE to read "Facebook break leads to burglary suspect"

BWAHAHA! Knucklehead!

Oh, no! :(

Oh, no!

RIP Mary Travers, and thanks for some of my favorite childhood musical memories.

On second thought, let's just call it "some of my favorite musical memories", period.

Mary Travers of Peter, Paul, and Mary dies


:-(

Training Camp

Flyers Training Camp has started a last!

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I wrote out my memories of "Where was I, and what was I doing" on 9/11/01 not long after they happened. Eventually, I used that text as the basis of a blog post. Here's the link to that post.

RIP to the victims. Never forget!

I've started a new Phantoms blog: welcome to the Flyers Farm Team Chronicles. Unlike The Final Countdown, which was intended to follow the Phantoms' final year in the Spectrum, this new blog will be one long-distance Phantoms Phan's diary of the team's progress from here on out.

If you're so inclined, feel free to come along for the ride. Let the season begin!

Easy come, easy go. I saw an ad on an animal rescue site that I frequent: "Become a Dog Trainer".

Hmmm. I've always been a bit of a pet whisperer, so I thought I'd click the link and see what I found. Long story short: I got to the training program's home page, then did a search on Google for reviews on the training program.

I found a bunch of complaints about said training program's quality of material and their externships. Apparently, the home-study part of the course is remedial at best, with "practice tests" that are identical to the real tests. The complaints about the externships appear to have come from students whose "mentors" were independent dog trainers accepting students from the training program for a fee, but who didn't actually want to TRAIN the students to do anything, lest they become competitors.

OK, so forget that particular correspondence course as an option. But I wonder what else is out there. Maybe there's something that's locally based, rather than being a correspondence course that will mysteriously not return phone calls when the student has complaints.

We had a really nice weekend, with a trip to Marsh Creek on Sunday and a visit to John R's on Monday. Both times, we got Betty to go with us. It's good that we were able to get her out of the house for a while. It has been a few years since we have been able to convince her to leave the house for more than a few hours at a time. All-day outings were hard for her to commit to, as it was hard for her to find someone to fill in taking care of her dad.

The only bummer, to me, was that on Sunday it was too chilly to swim. But just sitting at Marsh Creek was nice. It's so pretty there; I wish it was a bit closer to home. But I'm glad we found it at all, as it's the only wheelchair-accessible pool I've ever seen.

Next up on the major events list: Donna H and Dave should be coming in for a weekend later this month. That will be nice.

It's been a tough couple of days. we were at Betty and Billy's father's funeral yesterday. Betty worked so hard to take care of her dad over the past few years. For that matter, there was a time when she took care not only of her dad, but her mom and aunt as well.

We have a few things going on over this weekend which we hope to have Betty do with us. The two siblings who live far outside the area are going home over the weekend, and I think it will be good if Betty gets out of the empty house to relax with friends.

At least now she can actually come out and spend a whole day, instead of being out for an hour or two, max, then going home because there was no one to cover for her taking care of her dad while she was out. It's been years since she has been able to do that.