Carousel

If you want to see more of the pictures I took of the carousel . . . have fun!

Great Long Weekend!

I drove up to Youngstown (Boardman, really) on Wednesday, to my parents' house. Early Thursday morning, Mom and I got on a bus, were joined by my second Cousin, whom I call Aunt Nancy and her daughter, Kim, and went to NYC.
(picture shows Nancy, Mom and Kim)


It was a long trip, and there seemed to be several delays, the most dramatic of which was when the other bus blew a head gasket (whatever that is) and started billowing nasty smoke, just before we reached the Lincoln Tunnel. We were late to dinner at Pellegrino's in Little Italy.


The folks on the other bus missed dinner (they packed it up and loaded it onto our bus for them for later), and we were late to the show (Chicago, which was great, but missing my favorite song sucked). But, I haven't laughed so much in a long time. Aunt Nancy and Kim and Mom are EXCELLENT travel companions!





The main reason we went to NYC was for Friday morning . . . to see and ride the restored carousel that was the carousel of our youth. Idora Park was a smallish amusement park, originally constructed to entice people of 1899 to the end of the streetcar line in Youngstown. When I was a kid, we used to hold backyard fund-raising fairs to raise money for Muscular Dystrophy and get free tickets to get in to the park.


The carousel has now been restored (took her 22 years), and is in a warehouse in the DUMBO district of NYC. It is now being called Jane's Carousel, for Jane Walentas, who is the artist who did the restoration.
(This is Mom with Jane)




We got to see it, ride it numerous times, and I took over 100 pictures.

Each horse has a medallion like this one that tells what row it is in and what model it is. Very cool!

Jane's resoration work is nothing short of miraculous. The precious-metal leaf used, the beautiful color, it is all amazing. It was cool, too, to see these people (mostly elderly) so thrilled to see this bit of their childhood.

I loaded more pictures to my Facebook Account, if you want to see them. Let me know if that works, or if not, I'll load them into Flickr.

Ravelympics, NYC, returning to work, Learn and Play

We had our kick-off for Learn and Play and CML on Tuesday. I went in, and I'm really glad I did! Gerald and the rest of the team did a great job with their presentation!

And Michael was fabulous! He's so inspiring. If you aren't a library-blog-reader, you probably don't realize that he's a blog ROCKSTAR!!! See what his blog is like here.

I'm really looking forward to doing the 23 things given as our goals to learn more about Web 2.0. Obviously, blogging isn't new to me, but I'll find things to learn and blog about, don't you worry! I'm saving my big excitement until I'm officially on work time, though . . .

I've sorta kinda been on vacation this week. We didn't go anywhere as a family, but we DID put in some hours for the Boy Scout Garage Sale that is our only fundraiser of the year. Took all summer to gather all the goods, took all week to set up, took 6 hours yesterday to sell as much as possible, will take a few more days for our old bodies to recover. I was a cashier all day, while Mike helped me and helped in the Furniture tent some. Simon was a delivery kid, doing whatever the adults asked of him all day. TIRED! I've got no pics because I didn't want to run the risk of my camera being sold. :-)

Last weekend I helped my dear friend Carol move her son to NYC. He's living and working there as part of Teach For America. We took him clothes and stuff and got him into his new apt., although he's been there all summer already. We drove out Friday, played in the city Saturday, moved him Sunday and then . . . .

drove to Elizabethtown, PA, to stay with Ann the night, then drove home on Monday. Don't ask us about the driving home on Monday part - let's just say we made a slight navigational error and it took a bit longer than necessary.

I've been working on a sweater for Si. I cast on during the first day of the Olympics and I hope to finish by the closing ceremonies. It's part of the
Ravelympics game on the Ravelry site. I have the body done up to the armpits, and I am almost done with the sleeve cuffs. I'm going to do both sleeves simultaneously so I don't have to take notes along the way for increases. LOL