A Line of Duty Death hit very close to home today with the shooting death of Officer Matthew Morelli of the Norwalk, Connecticut Police Department. Officer Morelli, age 38, became the third officer to die in the line of duty for the month of March and the first fatality in the line of duty at the Norwalk Police Department in 26 years, the 5th in the Department's history.
At 12:26 a.m. today, Officer Morelli contacted dispatch to advise them that he was exiting his car in South Norwalk to investigate suspicious activity in a rear parking lot. He contacted dispatch a second time and then nothing more was heard so back-up was immediately sent to the area. When officers arrived on-scene they found Officer Morelli next to his cruiser where he had been shot once in the head with an AK-47 which was found at the scene. Police believe that Officer Morelli may also have fired one shot from his service gun but there is no evidence that he hit anyone. Witnesses reported hearing a car leave the area at high speed, shortly before more Norwalk police officers arrived on the scene.
"He was patrolling the area, and in fact noticed suspicious activity, and stepped out to investigate what was happening," said Norwalk Police Lt. Paul Resnick. He was working alone and died at the scene. No arrests have been made.
In a statement released this afternoon, Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman said he was "saddened" by Morelli's death. "I hope the perpetrator of this horrible act is quickly apprehended and punished."
Officer Morelli, a decorated veteran of the United States Marine Corps where he served as an intelligence analyst, was a member of the Norwalk Police Department for 11 years. He is survived by a young daughter.
I echo Senator Liberman's sentiments and hope and pray that whoever committed this cowardly act of violence against a man who was simply doing his job is found, arrested, and convicted to the furthest extent of the law. My heart goes out to Officer Morelli's family and all of the members of the Norwalk Police Department.
Before posting some more wishes that I found today, I wanted to update you on my recent trip to the eye doctor's that I posted about the other day wherein I was quite irritated about the whole co-pay situation. I popped into the Human Resources Department at work yesterday afternoon before I took over in dispatch and ran the scenario past them. Both Janet and Stacy didn't think it sounded right either and said that they should have told me up front what my cost was going to be to begin with just in case it was going to be different from what I thought it should be.
Stacy called and spoke directly to a representative of my crappy health insurance provider and was told that my co-pay for the exam was, in fact, supposed to be $30 and not the other way around where the insurance only covered $30 so it turns out that I was right and the people at the Vision Center were wrong. Woohoo! Janet told me to bring in my receipt on Monday and they would fax it off and make sure that I was refunded the $24 that I was overcharged.
So, all's well that ends well (hopefully) with that little adventure. Thank you, Rob, for your help in this and HR was once again impressed with your knowledge of our benefits! Maybe you should be working there instead of out schlepping patients around in an ambulance?!
Meanwhile, more wishes have appeared from two kitties and two ducks!
Maggie and Zoey @ Zoolatry Three wishes from two kitties who look right at home on the porch!
... or perhaps I should title this post "The Agony of Defeat"? Either way it's about loss and how that loss sticks with you even a day or two later. No, I'm not talking about love lost this time around, I'm talking about how $2,000 was snatched away from me last night at Bingo just as I was about to claim victory and at long last break my losing streak. My luck sucks ...
Normally when I go to Bingo with my mom and my aunt at the high stakes parlor at Foxwoods Resort & Casino, I don't ever come close to being able to yell out Bingo! Of course now that I think about it I wonder why they call it a resort as there's not a whole lot else to do there other than gamble unless you can sell your youngest child to afford the green fees at their Lake of Isles golf course but I digress ... back to last night ... Generally when I go to Bingo my cards aren't even in the game and the ink blots I make on them look more like scatter-shot rather than making up whatever pattern the game happens to be looking for. If it's a double postage stamp we're playing for I'll end up having postage due on every single card in front of me; if it's a picnic table pattern then my table is sorely lacking legs or a top; my wild pyramids look more like the garden mazes from the Court of Louis XIV; and I'd be better off drinking a six-pack rather than trying to form one on my card! When it comes to Bingo, I am a talentless - and luckless - hack but hope springs eternal and I always figure that my luck has got to change at some point, doesn't it??
Last night, though, my cards were actually playing quite well and I was in the game for once. I came close on just about every single cover-card "Quickie" (a misnomer if ever those was one as the caller is still about as slow as molasses on a winter day despite the fact they tout it as a "game for the advanced Bingo player") and I was "waiting" on several other games. In the world of Bingo "waiting" means that you only need a number or two to be able to yell out that one word that is valued above all others in a Bingo Hall. "Waiting" means you stand a chance, "not waiting" means you might as well file your nails while your cards sit there and mock you.
As I said, my cards were playing quite well last night and I was actually feeling pretty optimistic that I was finally going to be able to yell Bingo! after the long dry-spell that I've had since 1981 when I last yelled it out in the NCO Club at McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey and came home with $40 (which was a lot of money back then!). Things were most definitely looking good especially when it came to one of the big payout full-card cover-all games towards the end of the night. It was a progressive game where players first started out looking for a letter "X" and a letter "L" and then continued on for the full-card cover-all. If you can cover your card in 48 numbers or less the prize is $10,000 (my father actually won this game years ago and came home with the $10,000 - the biggest prize he ever won) but if no one covers the card in 48 numbers or less we then play on for a full-card cover-all consolation prize of $2,000. Not bad ... I could use $2,000 ...
On my sheet of nine cards I had several cards that were playing quite well but the letter "X" and then the letter "L" portions of the game were closed without my having completed either letter. That's okay because those portions of the game were only paying out $300 and I was going for the whole enchilada. No sense "wasting my win" on a smaller amount. The caller continued on and the card in the very middle of my sheet was playing very, very well. I only needed the numbers 1, 11, and 21 to cinch the thing and walk out of there with some of Foxwoods' money in my pocket.
"B-1". Yes! Only two numbers away -things were looking really good. "B-11" popped up on the TV monitors around the room and my pulse started to race a bit. In my mind I was thinking, "Come on I-21, you can do it!" However, my hopes were dashed as B-11 was called out (you can't just have the number displayed on the screen in order to win, it actually has to be called) and I heard someone else yell out Bingo!. What made it even worse was that the very number I needed - I-21 - was displayed on the TV monitors and would have been the very next number called if no one had called out Bingo! I couldn't even hope that whoever had called out was in error because he or she was playing on a video terminal and it's kind of hard to mess up when the %&*#'ing machine is doing all the work for you.
AUGH!!! I wanted to pound my head on the table or burst into tears as someone else made off with the $2,000 that was supposed to be mine. Why, oh why, do the Bingo Gods continue to mock me?? I managed to maintain my composure but it truly was the agony of defeat.
Even though it has absolutely nothing to do with losing at Bingo, the song "This Nearly Was Mine" from the Rodgers & Hammerstein musical South Pacific began playing in my head as I was driving home last night. Knowing that Jamie from Duward Discussion loves a good musical number, I decided to post it here along with this sad tale of loss! This particular version features the great, late Robert Goulet who I had the pleasure of seeing live in several plays, including this one, and who will always remain one of the greatest singers ever for me.
I might have lost at Bingo - yet again - but at least I got a good song out of the deal! Though I really could've used that $2,000 ...
I want to thank everyone for continuing to play along with the Make a Wish Meme and for all of the great wishes I've been finding out and about in the Blogosphere. May all your wishes come true for all of you!
Rachel @ Heart of Rachel Rachel has two wishes and I hope she gets both of them!
... what Amanda looks like - this is her current new look complete with blue hair, pink sunglasses, and a rainbow-colored hoodie.
... and to think that she'd only wear black not all that long ago! Now she tells me she needs more bright-colored clothes. Sigh ... teenagers!
I need a night out so I'm off to Foxwoods Casino to play Bingo with my mom and my aunt. Who knows? Maybe my losing streak will finally come to an end! However, I'm not going to hold my breath just in case!
I generally don't like to make jokes about the head guy in the White House here in America but I got this one in my email and actually found myself laughing so I figured why not share? I shudder to think what kind of jokes people are going to be making after the next election! Of course, depending on how things turn out in November, I may be living in Canada by then anyway!
A Japanese doctor said, 'Medicine in my country is so advanced that we can take a kidney out of one man, put it in another, and have him looking for work in six weeks.
A German doctor said, 'That's nothing, we can take a lung out of one person, put it in another, and have him looking for work in four weeks.
A British doctor said, 'In my country, medicine is so advanced that we can take half of a heart out of one person, put it in another, and have them both looking for work in two weeks.
A Texas doctor, not to be outdone said, 'You guys are way behind. We took a man with no brains out of Texas, put him in the White House and now half the country is looking for work.
Today I am feeling disgruntled for lack of a better word.
So why am I disgruntled you may ask ... good question! I've been having some problems reading small print lately more so than usual to the point where I have to ask Amanda to read the backs of medication bottles for me and that sort of thing. I've got a pair of what they call "cheater" glasses that are basically framed magnifying glasses but even those aren't helping at times. This isn't really all that surprising as I'm nearing the ripe old age of 50 but even so, I figured it was time to get my eyes checked just to make sure there wasn't something more going on. With a major family history of diabetes I figure it's probably a good idea to keep on top of these things.
I called this morning and got an appointment this afternoon to go see the eye doc at the local Wal-Mart Vision Center, which is one of the providers covered under my crappy health insurance plan that I have. Based on my crappy health insurance information I figured I was going to have to fork out a $30 co-pay to have the doctor tell me that my eyes were just maturing a bit and I needed a stronger pair of "cheaters". Well, turns out that with the crappy health insurance I have, $30 was the amount that the crappy health insurance would cover and the rest of the cost of the exam was my responsibility. So, instead of paying $30 I had to pay $54 - almost double what I thought it was going to cost me. But of course I didn't find this out until after the exam instead of before when I would have politely said, "Oh, no thank you then, I can't quite afford that."
Needless to say, I was none too happy when they told me that $54 was my co-pay. I pulled out my crappy health insurance card and showed it to them where it specifically states "Specialist: $30" so why did I have to pay more than that? Their answer? Oh, well, an optometrist is not really a specialist. Excuse me? An optometrist specializes in eyes, does he not? Is there something else an optometrist specializes in? Lungs? No. Hearts? No. Bone issues? No. Eyes? Yes. Anything else? No, just eyes. So why in the blue hell does an optometrist not fall under the category of "specialist"? After all, the guy who examined my eyes introduced himself as Dr. So-and-so and not "Yo, I'll be the guy checking out your eyes."
Even though it's not that particular place's problem that I have crappy health insurance, I think that perhaps it would have been really nice if they had told me what my part of the cost was going to be up front so I could have decided to bow out before I had the eye exam. I felt somewhat duped and cheated and, well, downright angry about the whole thing. When they asked me how I wanted to pay, with cash or credit card, I looked at him and said, "I don't want to pay with either. I want to pay my $30 like I assumed this was going to cost me and not $54 like you're telling me it's going to cost me." The poor guy just looked at me like I had snakes coming out of the top of my head - which might not be that far off! I wonder if he could see the smoke curling from my ears?
I ended up forking over the whole $54 as there didn't seem to be much choice in the matter but I wonder what would have happened if I had refused to? It's not like they could take back the eye exam or anything, Would they have locked me away in a back room until I either came up with the money or my family brought it in? Would I have had to work off my debt by polishing all of the eyeglasses displayed along the walls? Or perhaps they could have announced over the Wal-Mart loud speaker that there was a dead-beat customer in the Vision Center trying to get out of paying for a service thereby embarrassing me into action? Hmmm ... maybe I caved too soon?
Regardless I was seeing red when I left there this afternoon and it has left a bad taste in my mouth all afternoon. Today disgruntled, thy name is Linda!
In between the occasional paid post (sorry, bills need to be paid!), I've been scouring the Blogosphere for wishes and I've found more that I wanted to share with you here. There are some truly wonderful wishes being made by some truly wonderful people and my wish is that their wishes come true!
Bud @ WTIT Tape Radio: The Blog Jiminy Cricket would more than approve of this one - what a fantastic wish!
Laura @ That Girl Laura, I think you made this wish for a lot of people!
Bundle-o-Contradictions @ Random Autumness A true wish from a mother's heart ...
After working my standard 16-hour day yesterday at work and coming home quite exhausted by the whole thing (it's been pretty busy in the Land of the Ambulances lately), it was really nice to see the links to more wishing stars waiting for me in my e-mailbox. What a total thrill to see so many people not just participating in, but really enjoying, this meme.
The Teach @ Work of the Poet Wishes for sunny beaches in Florida, something I can really appreciate around this time of the year when winter just won't go away!
Amanda is getting to be that age where letters and brochures and catalogs and all those sorts of things from colleges start arriving in the mailbox. If I remember correctly from when I was back in high school, you didn't see those sorts of things until the end of your Junior Year or the beginning of your Senior Year but now the pressure is a lot higher to make your college plans early. It's kind of a scary thing, especially if you can hardly make ends meet with regular day-to-day necessities, never mind thinking about the cost of a college education. Shudder!
There are a couple of schools for cartooning that Amanda has mentioned wanting to go to but we haven't really talked about it that much (said I while hiding my head in the sand). It's too bad she wasn't interested in pursuing a future in industrial engineering as Kettering University offers engineering co-op programs that would give her not only the education but the experience when entering the highly competitive job market. It isn't enough to just have a degree these days, you've got to have some real life work experience to go along with it.
Recently, US News and World Report ranked Kettering University as "the #1 University in the nation for Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering" in its annual "America's Best Colleges Guide for 2008". With their unique co-op programs, Kettering places students in companies in their freshman year and then rotates them between school and their co-op job every 3 months in order to gain practical experience. Not only do students gain an education and job experience with the co-op program but they also earn a professional salary.
With eleven science, business, and engineering programs and seven majors to choose from Kettering offers some of the best co-op education in the nation. Like I said, it's too bad Amanda wasn't looking for a career in any of the fields they offer because I would be definitely encouraging her to look into Kettering and the opportunities they offer outside of a boring academics only education. Maybe it's something your soon-to-be bound for college student might want to check out?
In keeping with this week's Manic Monday falling on that most favorite of drinking occasions - St. Patrick's Day - Morgen decided to make our word of the day "drink". Once again I had to put my thinking cap on as nothing readily came to mind but then the light dawned and an idea came creeping in.
The favorite band of my youngest daughter Jamie is the Australian band AC/DC, one of the pioneers of hard rock and heavy metal though they've always considered themselves to be pure rock and roll. Most of you are probably familiar with the band through their songs "Back in Black", "Highway to Hell", and "You Shook Me All Night Long" but as luck would have it, the band also released a song called "Have a Drink on Me" which was said to be a tribute song to their late lead singer and co-songwriter, Bon Scott, who died on February 19th, 1980 from what was listed as "acute alcohol poisoning". No irony there, is there? In consulting with the self-proclaimed band's #1 fangirl, Jamie told me that the song was an excellent choice for this post and she gave me her blessing to proceed. Perhaps you'd like to listen to it while you continue reading?
AC/DC was formed in Sydney, Australia in 1973 by transplanted Scottish brothers Angus and Malcolm Young. They released their first album, High Voltage, in 1975 after going through several line-up changes then shortly after that, in 1977, Cliff Williams joined the band replacing bassist Mark Evans. In 1979 the band consisted of the Young brothers, bassist Williams, drummer Phil Rudd, and front man Ronald Belford "Bon" Scott, another Scotsman who had emigrated to Austriala, when they released their highly successful album Highway to Hell. Upon Scott's sudden and tragic death less than a year later, the other members of the band briefly considered disbanding before deciding that Scott would have wanted them to continue on and hiring British singer Brian Johnson as Scott's replacement.
Brian helped finish writing the songs for the band's third album Back in Black, a tribute album to the late Scott, that was released in 1980 just six months after Scott's death and which became the band's biggest selling album when it went platinum a year after its release. The album reached #1 in the UK and #4 in the US, where it spent 131 weeks in the top ten, making it the 5th highest-selling album ever in the USA.
For Those About to Rock We Salute Youwas the band's follow-up album to Back in Black and was released in 1981; it became the band's first album to reach #1 in the US. Shortly after that, drummer Phil Rudd left the group amid rumors of disputes with Brian Johnson and album sales declined until 1990 when the group releasedThe Razor's Edge. In 1994, Rudd returned to the group and shortly after thatBallbreakerwas released in 1995. The last album the band released was in 2000 titledStiff Upper Lip, an endeavor that was well received by critics and fans alike. A new album was announced in 2004 and should be out sometime this year if all goes well, much to Jamie's delight.
All told, AC/DC has sold an estimated 150 million albums worldwide with an estimated 68 million of them being sold here in the US. The band is ranked #4 on VH1's list of the100 Greatest Artists of All Timeas well being ranked #7 by MTV's list ofGreatest Heavy Metal Bands of All Time. With a grand total of 25 albums, both studio and live, under their belts AC/DC was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on March 10th, 2003 where Brian Johnson accepted the award by quoting lyrics written by Bon Scott for the song "Let There Be Rock",
"In the beginning, back in 1955, man didn't know about the rock 'n roll show and all that jive. The white man had the schmaltz, the black man had the blues, but no one knew what they was gonna do but Tchaikovsky had the news, he said: 'let there be rock."
Now that you've had the chance to drink up all this knowledge on my youngest daughter's favorite band and you'd like to see what other people are drinking this St. Patrick's Day, click on the link to go check out Mo's Manic Monday post and quench your desire to find out!
If I had harbored any doubts that I was starting to lose my memory at all, I was able to put all doubt aside this morning when I did, or actually didn't do something, that I haven't done in - well, since I can't remember when! Apparently, I had agreed to swap shifts with one of the other dispatchers today back in mid-February and agreed to work Wayne's day shift while he was to cover my evening shift but I completely and totally forgot all about it.
Amanda was spending the weekend over at Jason & Amy's with Cate so I had the whole house to myself last night so I was rather enjoying it. After doing a little bit of cleaning, I had stayed up late first playing a little bit of Rock Band on the Xbox 360 and then working on my Manic Monday post for tomorrow. I have to write it on the weekend as I'm normally at work on Sunday evenings and then from 7:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. on Mondays so if I don't do it early, it doesn't get done. I'd missed last week's and wanted to make sure I got a post done for this week.
I had the post almost complete around 2:00 a.m. and figured I would add pictures and tweak it before going into work this morning so I finally went up to bed a lot later than I normally would. Even though I was tired I couldn't fall asleep right away so it was pretty darned late/early before I finally got to sleep. At 7:21 a.m. when the phone rang I was most definitely a bit disoriented and wasn't even sure who I was talking to ...
"Hi Linda, it's Dave from work calling. Did you forget you switched shifts with Wayne today and were supposed to be at work?"
"Mmmpphhh ... I did? I don't remember doing that, are you sure?"
"Yeah, Wayne's at the EMS Conference and when we called his house and woke his wife up she said that he had switched shifts with you."
"Oh bother ... okay, give me 20 minutes and I'll be in but I really don't remember switching shifts at all."
A few minutes later, while I was brushing my teeth, it dawned on me that I was talking to Dane and not Dave which would explain why I couldn't figure out why on earth Dave, who doesn't work dispatch and never works Sundays, would be calling me! I gotta tell ya, I was completely and totally out of it this morning!
I got to work almost exactly 20 minutes later, still totally unable to remember doing the shift swap, but when I logged onto the computer and opened my Outlook a reminder popped up telling me that I was covering for Wayne with a shift swap. Duh! Yeah, thanks for nothing! That needed to pop up yesterday so I would have remembered and gone to bed at a reasonable hour!
Sigh ... growing old truly sucks sometimes! I wonder what else I forgot??
I was quite happy and excited to see that three wishes have already appeared in the heavens of the Blogosphere as a result of the new Make a Wish Meme that I posted about yesterday. And good wishes they are, too! ...
Travis @ Trav's Thoughts A lover of fine classic automobiles, I bet Travis would look great in this beauty!
Ralph @ Airhead55 A proud father of two fantastic children, Ralph's wish speaks volumes of his love for them.
Morgen at It's a Blog Eat Blog World A man who wants to get the past behind him and head unencumbered into the future, this is a great wish for Morgen!
For Manic Monday on March 3rd, Morgen @ It's a Blog Eat Blog World had us use the word "want" for the word of the day. I thought it was an excellent choice and managed to come up with what I thought was a pretty good post that you can read by clicking here (just in case you missed it or thought it was so good you want to read it again!). When Morgen announced the word for the week on the previous Friday, a comment was left by Janna in which she said, "Interesting. Awhile back we had "wish" as a theme. Now I'm philosophically debating with myself about the difference between "wish" and "want"."
I wondered the same thing myself wishing I knew what I wanted and wanting what I wished for and then an idea popped into my head that it would be interesting to know what other people were wishing for, or perhaps even wanting for, themselves. To that end, I thought it would be nice to create a new meme similar to the one that our beloved Mimi, Queen of Memes used with her very successful and popular Message in a Bottle Meme. Of course, I didn't wish to step on any royal toes so first asked permission of Her Royal Highness to use the same sort of format that she had used. Gracious, as always, Mimi said that it was certainly fine by her and she that would absolutely participate in such an endeavor once I got around to undertaking it.
After a little cajoling, I was able to get my resident artist and Photoshop® expert to come up with a graphic for me to use that I liked. I explained to Amanda that what I had in mind was a wishing star as that is what comes readily to mind whenever I think of making a wish. Granted you could throw a penny in a wishing well, make a wish while blowing out birthday candles, or even just randomly wish for something without any sort of ritual involved but how many of us have looked up into the night sky, seen a star shoot across the heavens, and not made a wish? Uh-huh, that's what I'm talking about!
So, now that you have the background information and understand why I'm embarking on this adventure, let's get on with the rules of the new Make A Wish Meme - as I like to call it! If it catches on even a quarter of the way as well as Queen Mimi's Message in a Bottle Meme did, I will be thrilled to pieces. Honest!
The Rules
1. Think about what it is that you want more than anything, what your heart's desire and fondest wish is, and what it is that you would wish for if you were to see the above wishing star flame across the night sky. 2. Right click and SAVE the blank graphic below. 3. Use a graphics program of your choice and place your wish on this picture:
4. Post the Make A Wish Meme and your wishing star on your blog along with these rules. 5. Tag as many people as you like so that there can be wishing stars all across the Blogosphere and ask them to please link back to me so that I can see what wishes others have made and share those wishes with others.
If you don't currently have a graphics program and aren't sure how to put your message on the picture you can either download one for free (I use IrfanView which is an image viewer but also allows you to customize and optimize your pictures) or email me at mouseski58@yahoo.com, tell me what you're wishing for, and I'll customize the picture for you and email it back to you so that you can then post it.
To kick this meme off, I am going to tag the following people to participate and get the ball rolling. I don't have a dungeon to threaten you with should you choose not to participate in this meme, like certain other Queens have been known to do, so let's just suffice it to say that I wish you would! There - how's that for guilt?? But of course, as always, participation is optional.
One of the nice gifts I got for Christmas this past year was an iPod Shuffle MP3 player from my son Michael. It took me the better part of forever to finally get around to downloading any music on it and I didn't really get inspired until Amanda decided that she was going to use it if I wasn't. Ut-oh! If you have a teenager in the house, never let your cool gifts sit unused for too long as they'll lay claim to them faster than you can say "Hey! That's mine!"
Turns out that this tiny little piece of technology packs quite the big sound and I have had it with me almost constantly. The weather was actually even nice enough here in Connecticut today that I could go out and sit on the porch on my outdoor furniture and enjoy some music. Very nice indeed! Warm weather and good music - I love it!
Because I have a rather extensive collection of CDs it was hard to decide which songs I wanted to put on iMom, as it's been named, but one of the easiest choices was one of my very favorite songs by Sting.
If anyone reads this post and finds the double message in it, you get bonus points!
I was looking at automotive accessories on the internet earlier today for something in particular and I came across tail light guards, which at first I wasn't exactly sure what the purpose of was. It wasn't that I was being dense or anything but I was wondering why on earth people would need such a thing on their cars. Was there that much of a problem with people backing up their vehicles and smashing their tail lights out? Why would anyone invent such a thing?
I took a closer look at the product description out of curiosity and think I may have found the answer "...Tail light Guards feature European styling and high quality one-piece construction." Obviously if they have European styling it must mean that the people in Europe were the ones to initially have the problems with backing up and breaking out their tail lights and they came up with the idea! It naturally migrated across to America and, because we love all things European, people now put them on their vehicles in order to look cool like our counterparts across the ocean!
Even though I only live about an hour away from the beaches in Rhode Island (the next state over to the right if you're facing Maine!), I've only actually been to one of them once. If you've got some time to kill and want to read the post, I blogged about it way back on July 26th, 2006. The girls and I had a great time with our friend Paula even though I ended up getting a nasty sunburn on my feet which turned into a nasty case of cellulitis (a common, potentially serious bacterial skin infection) that put me out of work and on crutches for a few days. Despite the end results we had a wonderful time and I've often wondered why it is I don't get to the beaches in Rhode Island more often.
After some initial planning and then more planning and much discussion via emails and IMs, it now appears that I'm going to get the chance to not only visit another beach in Rhode Island this year but also spend a week at a house right on the beach in Matunuck. That's the place in the picture above - doesn't it look nice? It has four bedrooms, two bathrooms, a beautiful deck overlooking the ocean, and all the comforts of home minus sheets and pillowcases and a few other things that are easily brought along. It has room for eight people and comes complete with eight lawn chairs for sitting out on that lovely deck and sipping a cocktail or two while someone else grills up some steaks on the barbecue grill that's provided.
Sounds just perfect, doesn't it? Yes! Yes it does and what makes it even more perfect is that I'm going to be spending the week after my 50th birthday right there on the beach with some of the best friends a gal can make via the Internet - Morgen @ It's a Blog Eat Blog World, Callie Ann @ Scrappin' With Life, Kai @ The Buzz Queen, Mags @ Ms. Maggie Moo Talks 2 U, and my very favorite cheeky blogger from across the pond - Claire @ A Little Piece of Me. I have to tell you that I am totally psyched for this vacation and can't wait until September even though that seems like I'm rushing headlong even faster to hitting that half century mark that so many of us dread.
Okay, so I bet you're wondering right now how on earth it is that someone from Connecticut has managed to hook up with a Canadian, a Brit, an Oregonian, and a Michiganite along with a former fellow Nutmegger to plan a week on the beach in Rhode Island of all places, aren't you? Well, we've decided to blame this one squarely on Mo and The Mo Show as that's how we all seemed to hook up. During after-show IM sessions, we were all bemoaning the fact that we needed a vacation, that we'd all like to meet, and that it would be cool to do something BIG for my 50th birthday and somehow we ended up planning a week at one of the most relaxing places we could think of. You've got to admit, that deck does look relaxing, doesn't it?
As most of you know, Mags and Mo and I all got together last September when Mo took the train down from Michigan to spend a weekend exploring bits of Connecticut and Rhode Island and we had a GREAT time! The three of us know what to expect from each other but as for the other three - Callie Ann, Claire, and Kai - we only know each other via the pages of our blogs and IMs and emails but getting to know each other is going to be half the fun of this trip. Mags has promised to create some fantastic meals for us, Claire wants to go exploring the countryside, Callie Ann has a marvelous sense of humor, Kai can bring some moose steaks and tales of the Canadian wilds, Morgen is just one of the nicest guys ever, and me - well, I'm not sure what I offer to the mix but I'll try to think of something by September!
With sunsets like this one, how can this not be a fantastic trip and week well spent away from the stress and pressure of 911 calls and medical emergencies? What better way to spend the week after my 50th birthday? I can't think of one and I'm sure that we'll all have tales to tell - though now that I think about it, I don't believe the house has an internet connection. Oops!
So, how many of you are jealous and wish you were going, too??
A Line of Duty Death hit very close to home today with the shooting death of Officer Matthew Morelli of the Norwalk, Connecticut Police Department. Officer Morelli, age 38, became the third officer to die in the line of duty for the month of March and the first fatality in the line of duty at the Norwalk Police Department in 26 years, the 5th in the Department's history.
