it's Paul's special day!

Happy 40th birthday today to my brother-in-law, Paul! He lives in Philadelphia, PA.

Enjoy your milestone birthday, Paul! :-)

Love,

Susan, Sal, Buddy & Aruba

a new week.....

Hey there & happy Monday!

Sal and I had a relaxing weekend, including a trip to Sonic together with Buddy & Aruba:

Buddy & Aruba love it! ... going for a ride (lookin' cool in Mommy's sporty Eclipse!), eating treats (the doggie kind, not the "human junk food" from Sonic, LOL), and people-watching.

I'm busy today getting miscellaneous stuff done before my Census training begins (later this week). Should be interesting!

Have a great week,

congratulations to my parents!

Today my parents are celebrating their 43rd wedding anniversary! Yay! Congratulations, Mom & Dad!

Wishing you a fun & romantic day! :-)

Love,
Susan, Sal, Buddy & Aruba

p.s. ~ happy Earth Day everyone!

way to go, Sal !!!

We spent the weekend celebrating because Sal was recently awarded $700,000 in federal research funding!!! This is one of the largest grants ever awarded to a professor in the Chemistry Dept at his university! The grant will further his lab's research of chemicals that are used during positron emission tomography (PET/medical imaging) of the brain. I know, pretty high-tech stuff, right?

It took a lot of HARD WORK and SACRIFICE to write that research proposal, and I am SO PROUD of him!

Congratulations, sweetheart ... savor your BIG achievement !!!

Love,

yay for Buddy!

Today is a day of CELEBRATION for us!

One year ago today Buddy was having extensive (and scary!) surgery ... a large cancer tumor was removed from his lung, along with 3 lobes of that lung! We are so THANKFUL that Buddy came through the surgery well, and was strong enough to begin the necessary chemotherapy treatments shortly afterwards.

This was Buddy one year ago:

We were not allowed to visit him the night of the surgery, he was too weak and the surgeon said it would be best to wait a day. That was so difficult for us, we wanted to see him! But the next day when we arrived to visit, I nearly fainted when they rolled him out in that oxygen box! I wasn't expecting that. Our poor Buddy!

We've appreciated all the well-wishes that you've sent our way over the past year, they have meant so much!

Enjoy the weekend,

another busy & fun weekend

Hey there and happy Monday! Hope that you enjoyed the weekend, and that the new week is off to a good start for you.

My weekend began with a fun scrapbooking class on Friday night, and then 2 more on Saturday. Cheryl Mezzetti, the design team coordinator for Creative Imaginations, was in town to teach for the weekend at Everything Scrapbook & Stamps.

We all had a great time ... she has amazing ideas & techniques! ... and her cute Boston accent was a novelty for us here in SoFla! We made 3 fab mini-albums. All of them have a beach and/or travel theme, so they were exactly what I love! I didn't quite finish them ... still putting the finishing touches on (I'm a slow scrapper, LOL!), so instead I'll show you pics of Cheryl's class samples:

"Tiki Hut" mini-album

"Perfect Escape" mini-album

"Inspired Traveler" mini-album

Aren't they incredible ?!?!?

On Sunday, Sal and I attended the annual Delray Affair. It's a huge outdoor arts & crafts festival that spans along 10 blocks of palm-tree-lined, picturesque downtown Delray Beach. It's a really big deal here, drawing a crowd of 300,000 people! And this year, for the first time, it included a travel expo too. It was great to spend some time chatting with others who are as obsessed about travel as I am!

be still my heart

Last week, I went to the doctor for a fairly routine appt for my high blood pressure. I mentioned that I sometimes have heart palpitations, so she scheduled me for some tests today. Lots of you have probably had these, too.

First, I had an echocardiogram (an ultrasound of the heart), which was painless and only took about 20 minutes.

Next, they outfitted me with a halter monitor that I have to wear for 24 hours. It's a gadget that records all my heart's rhythms via electrodes, which are stuck all over me right now. It looks like this, except mine has a lot more electrodes:

Plus, I have to keep a written journal of my activities, so the doctor can correlate them with what my heart's doing at those times (should I write down "blogging" right now? LOL).

And then I have to wait several days for the cardiologist's report. I'm hoping that these tests don't reveal any problems. I'm a little nervous ... and that's probably showing up on the heart monitor right now too, LOL.

let yourself go ... to the movies

"I want to go someplace where I can marvel at something."
--- from Eat Pray Love



The summer movie season is fast approaching, and is typically filled with lots of duds (just my $0.02). But 2010 looks like an exception, with 2 movies already on my summer calendar!

So what's even better than chick lit? A chick flick based on chick lit! LOL

Right now I'm reading (and loving!) Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. Can't put it down! (and I really should since I told Sal that I'd clean my latest pile of scrapbooking stuff off the kitchen counter ... 3 days ago) I've read some reviews that say the author is self-absorbed, but I disagree. And even if she is ... HELLO? it's a memoir, so no duh!

So this being a best seller, Hollywood took notice. I'll let the movie trailer (that I've watched 5 times already!) divulge the storyline ...



That's some pretty scrumptious cinematography! So would you agree that if you love introspection and/or travel (to me, these go hand-in-hand), then EPL should be on your must-read/must-see list? Anyway, EPL hits theaters here in the U.S. on August 13. For worldwide release dates, click here.

Plus ... Letters to Juliet is coming out soon, May 14. Although it's probably somewhat predictable, it looks like a sweet story and OH!!!! get a load of that scenery of Verona! Sal and I haven't been to that part of northern Italy yet, but have always promised that it'll definitely be on our itinerary "next time". Here's the LTJ trailer:

a great weekend, Florida style

Hi there ~

Hope you enjoyed the holiday weekend ... had some fun ... relaxed a bit.

Sal and I did all of the above.

He patiently waited on Saturday while I went to Cherry Blossom Studio (a local scrapbook store) for a "garage sale". They invited scrapbookers to buy table space and sell their unwanted, gently-used scrapbooking goodies. I didn't see much of interest to me actually, but I did score a cute acrylic stamp set with a beachy theme ... starfish, sand dollars, and such ... you know how I love that kind of thing! And the set was only a dollar! :-)

Afterwards, we went to the Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge, which is the northern-most portion of The Everglades. We've been meaning to check it out for months. Spent some time strolling the boardwalk through the stands of cypress trees draped in Spanish moss, enjoying the company of birds & alligators (yep, this is Florida folks!). The peace & quiet were so refreshing. And we learned that the Spanish moss is neither Spanish nor a moss. It's actually a member of the bromeliad plant family!

(The sun is already summertime-strong here in SoFla, so we have to wear hats and slather on the sunscreen for these nature walks!)

Today was also about simple pleasures ... we spent Easter Sunday here:

Have a great week,

Easter weekend

Today is Good Friday ... it's almost Easter ... as we remember Christ's suffering and celebrate his compassion and mercy, shouldn't we (Christian or not) resolve to extend that same compassion and mercy to God's most innocent and defenseless creatures --- animals?

Please consider serving an alternative menu this holiday ... one without ham, lamb, duck, or other animals for whom this is certainly no holiday. For cruelty-free (and delicious!) Easter dinner ideas, please go HERE.

And although the Seder has already been served, for compassionate Passover menus, click HERE.

Enjoy the holiday and as always, on behalf of suffering animals, thank you!

inspiration, squared

Hey there & happy April !! It's a new month ... and spring is in the air.

You may have heard on the news earlier this week that Jaime Escalante passed away. You may have never heard of him, but if you saw the movie Stand and Deliver, you know his incredible story well.

The film told how, as a math teacher, he INSPIRED a group of inner-city high-schoolers who had been written-off as failures by the school system and, even worse, by society. He saw their potential and molded them into confident math students with hope for their future. They went from struggling with fractions to mastering Advanced Placement Calculus! But not without confronting trials, struggles, and a hefty dose of discrimination along the way.

Sal and I were enrolled in our second semester of Calculus when this movie came out (1988). I remember our professor saying that we all MUST see it! Plus, that was right around the time Sal and I started dating. So, it's a special movie for us. We own very few movies, but a copy of Stand and Deliver is in our library. We plan to watch it again this weekend. The powerful story never gets old.

I highly recommend it!