I immediately thought of the Lone Gunman aka Salabencher when I saw this alligator. No, I didn't imply that LG shed crocodile tears! Let me explain, please. It was because I usually associate alligators with Florida and LG lives in Florida. Also, I am sure LG could tell more about the reptile from all the years reading National Geographic than my useless knowledge about hockey and football!
LG - this croc is for you!
(Wooden sculpture in front of the community farmers' market in the Loop.)
Wednesday (Jan. 26th) was a long day and I did not get home until almost 10:00 p.m. due to a Board of Directors meeting. The person who set up the NHL (the Red Wings schedule to be exact) must have a sick sense of humor because there would be good/great games in the same evening of the Board meetings. This time it was the Wings v. the New Jersey Devils. I was so glad that we had to wait for a few Board members who were running late. I watched the game as long as I could until the chairman yelled out, “TOTA, get in here for the meeting or you won’t have a job tomorrow!” During the meeting I had to excuse myself (for bathroom breaks) a few times to check on the scores. (Have you ever tried to watch a hockey game without making any sound for fear being caught for playing “hooky” from work?) I did not find out until I got home that the Wings won 3-1. Next time I plan to be sick from something I ate at lunch thus unable to be at the Board meeting!
OK, here it goes – I got kicked out of Bible Study on Tuesday night. I took the comment (words of wisdom) from the Lone Gunman aka Salabencher and got a Red Wings tattoo. When I showed off the tattoo at Bible Study, another woman who happened to be a St. Louis Blues fan, said the tattoo should read Dead Wings or Broken Wings would be more appropriate. Well, the Lord's command, "Love one another as I have loved you (John 13:34)" went out the door! I gave the woman a left hook and then an upper cut. She fell flat on her butt with a bloody nose. As I got up after being ordered to leave and never come back, my Bible “accidentally” knocked another woman off her chair. I checked the church website this morning and my face was on the front page above the word “unwanted” and also on the bulletin board. Thanks a lot for your comment, Salabencher. It was really a bad idea!
The above ice sculpture was created for a tuxedo rental business - how appropriate!
Above were the chocolate gold coins in the ice cubes we got from the shops.
Saturday, January 22nd – The last few weeks I started looking for another vehicle to replace my 8+ years old (100,000+ miles) Mazda 626. Previously, when I turned 30, I purchased a light blue 2-door Escort, then another Escort – Green color this time when I was 35 and owned the 626 in 2002. Since I will be turning 50 next month, it is time for me to get another new car. I selected three different models, did extensive comparisons and am very close to make my decision. One of the important factors is that the vehicle must have a high percentage of being produced (also parts) from assembly plants in the U.S. I am not in a hurry to get a new car during these winter months (don't care for snow, salt and mud) and the 626 is still running good. My husband keeps a good schedule of maintenance on our cars. The dealerships need to sell more than I need to buy.
It started to snow around 8:00 p.m. on Saturday evening into Sunday afternoon. I thought it was nice that we already attended 5:30 p.m. Mass yesterday and we could stay inside all day. Though I am not against going to Mass on Saturday evening, I prefer attending the traditional Sunday Mass.
Sunday was another exciting day filled with NFL playoffs games. The Packers sent the Bears “packing” with a 21-14 victory in NFC Championship Game. I was torn between wanting the NY Jets to win because deep-down I am a NYer (well, I have always thought the Jets were more New Jersey than New York team!) but I resented that the Jets kicked my Patriots’ butts. I also thought the Steelers already won the Super Bowl in 2006 (we were there) and again in 2009, so perhaps I should cheer for the Jets. The Steelers won 24-19 over the Jets in the AFC Championship Game.
I read in a book about the Navajo that “The number four is very significant and is found throughout Navajo culture and religion. There are four directions, four seasons, four original clans, and four colors associated with the four sacred mountains. Most ceremonies consist of four songs or multiple of four songs.” (From our recent road trip to New Mexico and Arizona, I became interested and have been reading about the Yavapai, the Navajo, the Apache, the Hopi, and the Pueblo.)
I like to post TOTA's First Entry on Friday, August 4, 2006, just like parents looking at baby photos and see how their child has grown.
However, the Chinese, in both Mandarin and Cantonese dialects, do not care for number four because they believe the word for the number four sounds like the word for death. They avoid number 4 like some people avoid number 13.
Roadside attractions were created by towns along Route 66 to intrigue travelers, drawn by these one-of-a-kind oddities, willing to get off the road and spend their dollars at places such as this sort-of pink elephant (above photo) and the Giant Surfer Dude, aka the Beach Guy (photo below) standing in front of an antique mall. The Dude is one of the five Giants along the Route in Illinois. (Lone Gunman, did you find the photo of the Giant you saw on your trip many years ago?)
According to EZ 66 Guide by Jerry McClanahan, this antique mall was formerly the Coliseum Ballroom, a historic structure dating to 1924 and the Giant Surfer Dude was a prop from the movie "Flatliners".
Benjamin in front of a giant ice cream cone in Staunton, Illinois. At first look, I thought the building looked more like a Cup Cake (below). Benjamin thought it was really cool that the Ice Cream stand was built in the shape of a cone and vanilla twist as rooftop.
My adoring fans and faithful followers, rejoicing with me as my little silly blog, TOTA, has reached an important milestone. According to the "accurate and reliable" Brave.net Counter, the current count is over 5,000 (half of that would be from my daily visits to make sure the blog did not suddendly disappear overnight). Also, I have set a new record of 113 posts for the year of 2009 (and it is only July), compared to 107 in 2008, 89 in 2007 and a pitiful 47 posts in 2006. The next milestone I am trying to reach would be the 400th post. I only need 44 more posts to get there! (Hey Qaptain Qwerty, you only need 22 to reach your 500th post - so get busy and keep posting. And tell your friend, the Lone Gunman to start blogging as his faithful followers have been waiting!) 
I am such a goal-oriented person that in order to motivate myself to continue blogging, not so much writing but posting often, I have to set and try to reach certain levels. At the beginning back in August 2006, I wrote lengthy posts about what was happening in my life, in the community, typical rants and raves and comments on current events. One day I became brave and learned how to post photos. Since then my blog has became more of a scrapbook (or photo albums) with lot of photos and not much writing. I no longer tried to impress the readers with intelligent comments or lengthly essays without much content. My little silly blog will continue to include photos from my visits to NYC, photos of "Babe" Benjamin around St. Louis, my new passion for discovery and history of Route 66 and anything that might be worthy to share (such as Humor of the Week) with my adoring fans and faithful followers. Sorry I did not buy a cake or a bottle of champaign, I hope you enjoy looking at these pretty flowers. 
"The Store" is what we call non-perishable food and household items we keep on our storage shelves in the basement. One time my sister in law AN visited us and I asked my husband to get a container of coffee from The Store. "It is already 10:30 p.m., could you wait until tomorrow to go to the store?", AN said. We had to explain to AN that The Store was actually just our food supply in the basement. I used to laugh at my mother for her constant shopping to make sure we had enough toilet papers and other essential cooking ingredients. Now I am turning into my mother! I shopped once a week for bread, lunch meat, fruit and vegetable for salad. I keep an eye for items that are on sale such as crackers, canned soups and cereal. A local supermarket also has special discount of $10 for every $50 purchase on the last Thursday of the month.
Up to this point, I donated almost 60 books to the local library and all of the music cassette tapes. The library even accepted old records, but not used text books! The photos above showed the stack of text books from my graduate school at Saint Louis University. You could tell one of my study habits was marking the pages with colorful mini post-it notes (photo below). From these titles, Power of the Press, The Four Theories of the Press, Ethics in Communication etc., you could also tell that I majored in communication (journalism & public relations). The price tags were somewhere between $60-100 for each of these textbooks and of course they didn't hold value after each semester because the professors assigned different books or required the latest edition. The school bookstores would pay less than $15 for these books. I was too lazy to participate in the exchange with other students.
The past few weeks I was inspired after reading about the Lone Gunman from Qaptain Qwerty and decided to give simple living another try and at the same time trying (again) to clean up the clutter in my house, especially in my home office. This is not the first time I attempted to be clutter-free. It did not last more than 3 months before newspaper articles, purchases from book fairs, folders for community projects, personal correspondence began to pile up on my desk, on the floor and then move into banker boxes that would easily be forgotten for years. I found about a dozen copies of Metro News (photo above) from 1985, back when I was a volunteer with the organization. Why a dozen copies, because I was in the photo ( and it was on the front page) and that was the first year I participated in the New York City Marathon as a volunteer. I kept one copy and the rest went into recycled bin. I also donated six shopping bags of books that I never read. This week nine brown paper bags of "correspondence" I kept since 1985 went into our church's recycled bins! 
Among almost 20 boxes of sentimental, maybe meaningful but useless correspondence, I found a certificate of appreciation from the Statue of Liberty Foundation for my contribution of $20. That was in 1986 and it was a centennial celebration. For now I am putting the certificate in a box with other heart-warming items. Once I am gone, no one would care about this certificate or all the anniversary and birthday cards my husband and I gave to each other the last 19 years. A few years ago when I was having martial problems and ready to either move to an apartment or purchase a condo, I found the situation was helpful in cleaning up the clutter as I no longer had any sentimental feelings towards stuff that I had accumulated thru the marriage. I also found feeling depressed would help getting rid of stuff as I no longer care about what I would do next. 
Last week I picked up the book "How to Live in Small Spaces" by Terence Conran from the library. I thought a tree tent (photo above) would be a good birthday present for my brother - just kidding Qaptain! According to Conran, these tree tents were designed by Dutch artist Dre Wapenaar for a group of activists called Road Alert Group in England. The activists set up the tents on the trees to prevent construction companies from cutting down the trees to make way for development. Two adults and two children (they got to be small people) could fit in this 9 feet in diameter tree tent. Conran mentioned that a campsite rent these tents but did not mention the location of the campsite.
This bedroom (photo above) is part of small living space of 65 square feet with a rotate kitchen and bathroom using a remote controlled cylinder. Conran wrote about people who enjoyed small space, living to its fullest and found positive aspects to living in tight quarters. I thought of how my family, all six of us, cramped into the tiny hut with one bed while living in the refugee camp (that was in 1979). We had to stuff the only few pieces of clothes into small canvas bags because there were no pillows. From my tiny room in Queens, New York in 1987, after I got married in 1989, moving to the small 100-year home (3-room, small basement) in Grand Haven, Michigan, somehow my husband and I, just two of us, managed to fill every inch of stuff in the current 6-rooms, full basement, 2 car garage home. My brother owns a 3-level home, my sister has a condo and we all filled the space with stuff.
My husband gave me this large stuffed puppy (photo above) as Valentine's present a few years ago. I named him Valentino. This week along with other earthly possessions, Valentino was given to charity, a Goodwill store nearby. I tried not to let all the stuff overwhelmed me as I decided what to let go and what is worthy to keep. I am not suggestion it would work for anyone else but I found the following questions helpful as I decide to trash, recycle, donate or keep. Would these items matter a year from now, five years, ten years or after I am gone?
I also imagine moving into the tree tent and allow myself only one container of stuff - what would be the most meaningful items I want to keep? So check back later as I will provide update of my quest, slow but steady, I promise, on my progress to a clutter-free living space and clutter-free mind.
