The wedding is over and I’m taking a few days off… but I have some questions to ask you today… you can answer any or all of them if you like…it’s just something to bring a smile to your day!
1. What’s the most ridiculous fact you know?
2. What is something that everyone looks stupid doing?
3. In one sentence, how would you sum up the internet?
4. What is the most embarrassing thing you have ever worn?
5. If someone asked to be your apprentice and learn all that you know, what would you teach them?
6. What three words best describe you?
7. What’s your favorite way to waste time?
Well, that should keep you occupied…
See you tomorrow,
Blessings, Jeanne
Well, looks like I’m first tonight (although sometimes it Looks like I’m first but there’s another answer before mine when I check back later).
Jeanne, I trust the wedding went well, and I’m sure everything turned out beautifully!! Hopefully Rebecca will be willing to let you share at least a few pictures. (Be sure to remind her we are your sofa SISTERS, and that makes us her aunties!! LOL) I hope you and George have a chance to do some things together, once all the company is gone!
Some fun questions. Let’s see….
1–Most ridiculous fact: gonna have to think about that one.
2–Everyone looks stupid smoking! (Never have, never will…)
3–The internet can be both a blessing and a curse; sometimes more one than the other. It can vary!
4–Embarrassing thing I’ve worn: probably corrective shoes, which I wore until I was 9 or 10–I SO wanted “pretty” shoes like other girls had! That, and having to wear slacks or snowpants under my dresses when it was really cold outside–I think I had to do that until maybe 3rd grade or so. But a lot of other girls did, too, and we all looked just as dorky!! LOL (We weren’t allowed to wear slacks to school like girls do now….)
5–I would teach that person sewing, of course! I’ve been sewing since 1956 on a pretty regular basis, so I think I could teach that person quite a bit.
6–ooh, it’s hard to describe oneself! Physically? or otherwise? I’m short, blond, and fair-complected [physical]. I’m creative, a bookworm and musical [otherwise]. Also loyal, friendly, and compassionate. I guess I’m way over 3 now….
7–Favorite time-waster–video games! Either on my computer (I really enjoy candy crush soda saga) or my little Nintendo DS, which is about 12 years old and the sound is going–I guess I need a new one!
I’ll check back later to see what everyone else wrote!
I’m going to go a little bit out of the box today, but I’ve done that before. I had never written down the tale of where I was on 9/11, so I did so to send to two friends the other day. I thought I might share it with the group and Jeanne could monitor it and remove it if it isn’t appropriate.
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My son had invited me to do a bit of touring after he attended an annual neuroscience conference in Freiberg, Germany, where he was giving a speech. We went through Switzerland, stopping at the small village just north of Lausanne where my great-great-great-grandmother was born and after whom I am named. We went on to Florence, Italy, and were on our way back to Frankfurt from where we were scheduled to leave.
We were sitting in the train station in Frankfurt on 9/11, having just gotten off the train from Rottenburg which is on what’s called The Romantic Road for tourists including Neuschwanstein Castle after which Disney patterned Cinderella’s castle. We were sitting at a table having a snack before David would board a train to Amsterdam where he had landed on his way to Freiburg,
I noticed people looking at a big TV in the middle of the station. I went over to see what was going on because I didn’t think that many people would be interested in the world soccer finals. All that was on was a talking head and I don’t speak a word of German. So I sat back down and David asked the waiter what was going on. He said, “I think there’s been a bombing at the World Trade Center in New York City.” I then asked David, “Do you think this is one of those days on which you always remember where you were?” He said, “No, been there, done that.” as it had happened once before. He got on the train to Amsterdam
I had made a reservation at a hotel that was just half a block from the station to stay overnight as I was scheduled to fly out on 9/12. It was recommended by Rick Steves. I went out the front exit instead of the side and wandered around, dragging my suitcase, until I finally gave up and signaled a taxi. I had never been that alone in my life! The hotel was indeed half a block out but from another exit. As I went in, I could see the Middle Eastern man had the TV on with cartoon playing. I went up to my room and turned on the TV, and by that time there were pictures of the Trade Center burning!
I called my mother immediately and she was very calm. Her friends had been calling her as they knew I was traveling and she told them I wasn’t due out until the next day. I figured we were on the train platform in Rottenburg when it happened. As I was walking out the door when leaving home I came back in and got the telephone number of my friends, Mary Nell and Bob, whom I had first met when we were in Japan. He was assigned to Landstuhl AFB and she was finishing up her career with Department of Defense Schools. I gave them a call and they told me which train to take to the small village where they lived. It was about two hours from Frankfurt.
I stayed with them for about six days before I could get a flight home. Planes had been going out 1/3 full as business travelers had been booking with two and three airlines and canceling the other two flights when one became available as their companies were picking up the bill for the cancellations! That’s why it took six days. David had stayed in the terminal in Amsterdam, sleeping on the floor, and got a flight out in a day or two because he was right there.
At the airport an interesting incident occurred. There was the highest escalator I’ve ever seen to go up to the lobby from check in, probably three stories. As I started to get on, an elderly man with a cane was following his wife and fell back right in front of me. I shrugged my shoulders and dropped my purse and the suitcase I’d been dragging.. A young man was behind me and we were the only ones present as check in was very slow. The young man wanted to stand him up but I told him we should support his head but wait until the escalator reached the top before standing him up. I asked the young man to hold the cane and throw it as far as he could when we reached the top so it wasn’t in the way. We got him standing up when we got to the top and sent him on his way. By that time, his wife was far ahead and turned around and scolded him for lagging behind.
My luggage and purse were at the bottom, so the young man ran all the way down the moving escalator and retrieved them. Whew! That was exciting! Imagine someone running down an escalator today. Security would be on them like a duck on a June bug.
We’ll see if it’s okay to post this. I’d be interested to hear where you were 20 years ago on 9/11.
Dear Susette, what an incredible story! I am glad the elderly man was alright.
Hi Susette,
I’m going to reply to you first and then see if I have time for any of the questions. Wow, what a story. Fortunately, I was at home on 9/11 We had gone by train to Nova Scotia at the beginning of August, driving form Ohio to Michigan to board. We were taking a wonderful vacation to Prince Edward Island to see Anne of Green Gables and all of the Lucy Maud Montgomery sites.The sleeper car was so much fun, who would have known how the world would change a month later.
We ate meals in the dining car with a lovely French lady and her daughter from Quebec.
I homeschooled and allowed my daughter to watch/ record “Road to Avonlea” each morning before starting school. It came on at 9:00. The news broke in immediately as we turned the tv on and we left the show recording and ran upstairs to turn on the other tv.. I called my mom and she came and we spent the day glued to the tv. while we called friends/ relatives and the phone rang off the hook in turn. Obviously no schoolwork was accomplished
Dear Susette, You described my stomping grounds in the 1980’s when I was in the USAF stationed in Western Germany for 5 years. I had been before you to all those places that you mentioned on vacations or weekends while on tour of duty over there. Best time in my life. Thank you for the memories. I consider myself a Deutsch-a-phile. I loved collecting German toys over there. Mainly Steiff Teddy bears and Zapf Creation dolls (Puppen). I have even collected loads of German miniature doll house items to make my own Oberamegau Dollhouse handpainted with the furniture inside painted as well. I still have all my toys and I was even blessed to have purchased baby items for my son which I still have from there. I have two brand new Identical twin grandson’s who used my son’s kinderwagon (which is Pram) and not yet, but soon, his German stroller). I actually took a wood making class on my base and created a Pennsylvania Dutch Covered top baby cradle and I had my Tole painting teacher Frau Ursula Born paint it in gorgeous colors of sage green and gold and pink, mauve, and white and cream. I still have that as well. I got married over in Frankfulrt in Dec 9, 1982, but sadly it ended in 2004. I am now married to a wonderful man who does handiwork with wood, and fixes things and loves to work with his hands as well. It is so nice to have a man like that around, right Jeanne?
Dear Elaine, How wonderful to hear about your collection of toys and the baby things. Aren’t the prams and baby clothes wonderful? How fortunate you are to be Nana to twins! We stopped by Oberammergau on that trip too. I have a picture of a very happy cat on one of the balconies of the amazing wooden houses. There’s great sightseeing when living in foreign countries. I collected Japanese toys and souvenirs from the various temples and shrines and dishes. The bases do have wonderful classes, one of which I took on ceramics and made pumpkins 🎃, very labor intensive! I’ll send a picture sometime in October with a scarecrow I knitted for decorations if Jeanne still accepts contributions from us then. Wish I could have found one of those guys who do woodworking many years ago! So nice to meet you.
Dear Jeanne, we are so excited for you here on the sofa. We can’t wait to see the photographs and hear your narrative!
To answer Question 7 – I spend way too much time watching TV. HGTV, Hallmark Channel, and ID are three of my “go-to” escapes.
Sigh…. TV for me too. I watch METV and H&I a lot because they have all the old shows I loved so much like “Perry Mason”, “Matlock”, etc. I usually watch “Carol Burnett and Friends” before bed. It mellows me and get me ready for sleep. I never watch the late news. That would give me nightmares.
Questions
2. I agree with Charlotte on the smoking one. Never have/ will either.
5. I would teach someone to bake or perhaps embroider (crewel, counted cross stitch, ribbon embroidery, that kind of thing). I also think it would be fun to work in adult literacy and teach someone to read..
6. animal-lover, compassionate, creative
7. Watching period dramas and playing with my kitties, but of course time spent with pets is NEVER wasted. =^*-^=
Anyone else notice that their “normal’ quilt square color changes when you reply to another sofa sister?
Dear Laura, I don’t think that my quilt square color changes. Let’s see if it does when I respond to you. I hope you are having a nice Labor Day.
No, I hadn’t. Will see if that happens now! (Looks like it stayed the same, at least when I first put in my name and email.)
Congratulations Jeanne on the Wedding. Hope everything went smoothly. Looking forward to seeing all the photos of the happy couple and the wedding and mother of the bride. I am sure you have mixed emotions. Let us and your dolls and your husband keep you occupied. 1. Did you know that Mozarella cheese is made from Buffalos? 2. Everyone looks stupid coming out of a public bathroom without realising they have toilet paper coming out of their pants. 3.The Internet is informative, crazy, links people together worldwide, and a good reminder of events from the past. 4. Coming out of a public bathroom in Walmart and having toilet paper hanging out of my pants. 5. I would love to mentor children whether it is girls or boys on how to cook, sew, and get Closer to our Lord spiritually. 6. Three things about myself: Sweet, Intuitive, and thoughtful of others. 7. Looking at Q posts online, Pinterest for American Girl Doll creations for inspiration. On 9/11/2001 I was living in Manitou Springs, CO at the foot of Pikes Peak Mountain and I remember a baby bear was looking at me because I was wearing my dark brown parka with black fur and he was so scared of me he ran so fast and was breaking branches, poor thing. I didn’t mean to scare him. He sure was adorable.
I can’t think of anything to answer the questions except Susette’s, 9-11. So, I was teaching 3rd grade and had watched tv before heading to school and saw the 2nd tower going down right before I left. We teachers were all in shock I think, but the kids were arriving, so the show had to go on. You could see it in the faces of the parents as they walked their kids into school. Only one parent decided to take their child home for the day. The rest of my students and I just forged ahead and did our work after a discussion that we were all safe. We couldn’t even watch what was going on because a truck had knocked out our cable connection between the classrooms a few weeks before. Believe me, the teachers, five of us, were all watching over our shoulders during recess yard duty. (We hadn’t yet received Air Horns to frighten off mountain lions, but that’s another story.) (Our school K-3, was on the HP/Agilent campus.) We always had spotty cell service because we were down behind a hill, so updates weren’t possible, but one teacher could get a signal only by standing on top of her desk and did give us updates. Such a sad day.
I will always remember 9/11….My friend Daria (who was even worse of a night owl than I am!!) called me about 8 in the morning and woke me up. She asked if I had the TV on and said I needed to put it on. It was so awful, like a disaster movie, only it was Real! So I went out to the living room; Ron had the TV on, and knew about it (I think it was on most of the channels), and we just sat and watched it all day. We were stunned.
Later we found out his brother’s older boy was supposed to be in the twin towers for a job interview that day and for some reason it didn’t happen. (Later we found out there were Many people who Should have been inside the building that morning but weren’t, for various reasons. God’s protection, is my explanation for that.)
I can’t resist the 9/11 question. Believe it or not I was still in bed. I had retired a couple years earlier and was enjoying not having to get up at 5:30 a.m. every day. David has always been an early riser and was on his way to his shop when he saw the plane hit the first tower as he was on his way to turn off the TV. He knew it was real but was dumbfounded that it was occurring. Then the second plane hit. He came in and woke me up and told me what was going on. That was before the Pentagon and PA. My daughter called me and said something like “Mom your feeling came true”. Just a few days before 9/11 we were out shopping and I told her I had a bad feeling. Something big was about to happen but I had no clue what just something. I’ve had those feelings before and they always come true. It’s eerie. Unfortunately I don’t usually have the “what”. I spent the rest of the day, and the next several days in fact, glued to the TV. But the weirdest thing was that later in the day I went to Wal-Mart and nothing seemed out of the ordinary. I was sure everyone would be talking about it and I was looking for someone to discuss it with but everyone seemed oblivious. That was back in the early days of social networking, internet and before iphones. It was like no one knew about it. That was weirder than my premonition.
I also remember where I was when President Kennedy was assassinated. I was a junior in high school at the time. I was in French class. I never thought a president would be assassinated during my lifetime. That was something that happened in the old days. And then there was the attempt on President Reagan’s life. I was pregnant with my daughter when that happened. With all that has happened in my lifetime it still doesn’t come close to what occurred during that of my grandparents. Compared to that most of mine has been pretty calm.
2 – I agree about the smoking thing. I did start smoking after high school because my family did. My mother smoked for years but surprisingly her lungs were clear. Being a nurse she had to have a chest x-ray every year. But the Surgeon General’s report came out shortly after I started and I quit cold turkey and haven’t missed it. That is one thing about the old shows I don’t like. They still have a lot of smoking. I watch “Perry Mason” and it seems they can’t walk into a room without lighting up or lighting someone else’s cigarette. My children grew up in a smoke-free home. When my mother came she had to smoke outside. Problem is it got on her clothes and while she was here the children and myself all had problems with it. I asked her once why she did not stop. She said it was her only vice and she wasn’t giving it up. I couldn’t use her health as the reason because she countered it but my mother once had a lovely contralto voice and she sadly lost that to smoking. She passed away from a stroke and while her smoking did not affect her health per se, I do believe she would have responded better to the medication for strokes if she had not smoked and might have had a few more years with us.
3 – Sum up the internet. Invaluable and destructive at the same time. I can sum it up but you know I’ll have to elaborate on that. I find it invaluable for gaining information and going places I’ll probably never go in real life. And it gives me a chance via Google to visit my old hometown of Bethlehem, PA, and see what’s going on there. I’ve been able to see where I used to live and improvements that have been made to the property, etc. And sadly discovered that my favorite elementary school is no longer. I found out later it burned down. And many of the other elementary schools of my youth are now empty lots. No room to expand them since they were usually only on a city block. They were several stories high and don’t pass today’s fire codes so they were torn down. That’s fun. The internet is destructive in that it has allowed people to attack others with impunity since it doesn’t allow for a face-to-face discussion. I’ve had people attribute all sorts of things to me when they don’t even know me they just don’t like my opinion on something.
4 – I’d really rather not revisit the most embarrassing thing I’ve ever worn but I’ll do it for the sofa sisters. It was so long ago and I was so young, but obviously it was an ultimate embarrassing situation or it would not have been the first thing to come to my mind. I was in 5th grade. I wore a skirt and sweater to school that day. My sweater was a cardigan but I buttoned it down the front that day like a pullover. Problem is when I did that the weave became more open and you could see through the sweater. Unfortunately that day I had on a half slip when I should have been wearing a whole slip. My mother usually got home from working nights as a nurse in time to see us out the door. She was probably half asleep and didn’t notice it either. It was a long, long day I’d rather forget. Probably everyone else has.
5 – I wouldn’t know where to start if I were to teach someone all I know because I guess you could call me a jack of all trades and master of none. I have sewn since I was around 12 but I would never say I was in the “professional” class, I have been involved in music since I joined the church junior choir at 9 and have sung continuously since then but, even with lessons from a professional, I’m still not in the class where I would ask remuneration for my efforts. That goes for piano too. I can play well if I can memorize the music. Singing first soprano all my life I’ve only read the top line of music and have never developed the ability to read all the lines at once. Hence when learning a new song on the piano I read the music like a first grader would read a book. I’ve tried every technique out there but I think in this case trying to teach an old dog a new trick may be less than useless. I just play for fun. I love history but I’m not a good teacher. And I’ve done a lot of needlework over the years but prefer to let my machine do it for me these days, especially since many of the needlework techniques have not been incorporated into embroidery designs. I don’t guess I’ll be having a lot of people ask to be my apprentice after this.
6 – Three things to describe me: loyal like a puppy, great sense of humor (I see this in both of Sean’s children too), good organizer.
7 – Favorite way to waste time – watching old shows on TV. I usually watch a couple first thing in the morning and then put these on in my study so I at least have the opportunity to get things done if I’m motivated in that direction.
Enjoy your time off Jeanne. I hope Rebecca doesn’t mind your sharing at least a few pictures. I really want to see her dress.
Oops! The line about embroidery designs is supposed to say “many of the needlework techniques have “now” been incorporated into embroidery designs.