Oh, even after my novel I forgot to mention my Bug. A 1961 VW Bug that is painted like Herbie the Love Bug. He sometimes fills in for the real Herbie at public events. He is always a hit with the kids - big ones too. One evening when I was driving my HERR B home from work, I was stopped at a red light. I was in the center lane and a white panel van was next to me. The panel van turn right on the red light and when it cleared the corner leaving me a clear view of the lanes to my right, I noticed four gentlemen all dressed in black leather riding their hogs. When my light turned green and I accelerated across the intersection in front of them, I received four thumbs up and a resounding "Hey Herbie"! Amazing how the little bug appeals to all age groups.

I read a great story about how the VW was selected to be the star of the original Disney movie. Walt Disney did not leave anything to chance. He insisted that even the cars had to audition for the movie. His staff thought he was nuts and asked him just how could a car audition. He instructed them to bring the three cars that the studio was considering for the title role and park them on the studio lot near the stage doors. If memory serves me right, they had narrowed the role down to a fiat, something else and the bug. He told his staff to set up a camera and watch how studio employees reacted to each of the cars. The fiat was admired, the second car was sat in and looked at intently, but the bug was gently touched, talked to and everyone smiled when they walked away. Walt had his star! The man was a genius.

Check out my garage. I love my MINI but there is still room in my heart for my HERR B.

 

kiki,,, those gingerbread cookies decorations are awesome!! and I totally agree with the Mrs Field's comment. In Ohio (I know. here I go again) a young lady got started locally out of her home and now is the CEO of her own company -cheryl's cookies and I think hands down some of the best cut out cookies ever....if I were to go into that sort of business I think I would shoot for homemade pies, people hate to make them from scratch and will pay good money for a really good pie.... yuuuuum!

So, you are in a financial/political pressure cooker?? In truth, though I know there is a lot of pressure at times it also sounds very stimulating. very cool. Thanks for the explanation.

Did I say GOOD MORNING!!!!!!??? Well, GOOOOOD MORNING to everyone!! Hopefully miniola will wake up refreshed and ready to add her 3rd excerpt of the thriller novel....*L*

And for those in the same boat and to you all who love to gloat, we are covered with about 3 inches of snow topped with a nice shiny layer of ice this morning.
funny story- I took the pups out for a walk late last night and it was snowing away,, quite beautiful actually- there are a lot of large tudor and stone homes in my developement and they all looked magical in the snow and with their spotlights glowing. Of course the sidewalks were another story!! and because of the covering of snow I didn't see that one sidewalk had a lip to it caught my toe and did one of those 4 stomp/run kind of recoveries. All I remember is seeing poor little Lacey ( the little female cocker) spinning around and looking up at me horrifed that I may fall right on her...I tell you it was hysterical like something out of the comics,,, like when the animal looks scared and their ears droop flat down and their eyes look big and sorrowful.....of course this IS the dog that knocked my feet out from under me last month,,, maybe I should have landed on her!!!
I tell you I laughed all the way home,,,,McWill and all of you warm weather people, you just can't have that sort of expreience in the sun....hahah

And I will wrap this up stating woo hoo!! kiki you got your MINI back!!!! WOOOOOO HOOOOOoo!!! Did I miss her name?? Surely you named this little vixon who sneaks out and off roads while you work??

 

I missed your last post, kiki!!! Your Her B is awesome and the story about his life that pops up in your garage is priceless.....I recommend you all read it while we wait for 'Ola.

I think I am again flagged for the morning and won't be working,, the roads are really icey here....don't you just hate it when you wake up early to find out it was for naught?????

 

good Morning all, settled down to catch up with my morning coffee, and Random - great work, yeah i hope someone does press charges on apple. hahaha
Ola-that is horribly 1/2 way done typing and hitting the wrong button, but yeah we have all done that before!

I'm just catching up one page at a time

KIKI glad you have your baby back

 

KIKI- thank you for the ideas, those cookies look fantastic!!!
I love the idea of the tree ornament and adding cinnamen oil in the following years! thanks so much!!!
I think i will be ordering the cookie cutter.

also understand your feeling "one" with your MINI, I feel the same way, it just fits! that is all that needs to be said!

 

cab, you are funny, with your stumbing last night...glad you didn't fall again!!!!
yeah it is beautiful out as long as i don't have to go anywhere!! we have about the same 3-4 inches up here with the ice on top.
Hubby got called into work at 5:00am this morning, I told him to call me when he gets to work (usually about 1/2 hour drive). He didn't call so i was awake for the entire time worring about if i should call him, but not wanting to if he was trying to concentrate on the road/ice, at 7:00 he called and said "oppps sorry forgot to call you". bugger... at least he got there safe!

 

Holy cow folks, I just spent about an hour reading through this thread. What a story!! Skillet, I commend you and I think your sense of hope and positive thinking is a boon.

Bananas.

 

Kiki - i really enjoy reading your posts, and I'm glad you have your vixen back, even if she's a naughty kid... And I'd heard the Herbie one before, but always love it!

This is where the beauty of text messaging comes in handy - not enough time or effort to talk, but a few little taps of the phone and it's all good!

 

Y'all have been busy this fine morning!

 

Here's a funny/odd story while we wait for miniola to finish hers.

Last night my wife and I were watching TV and someone pulls up in the driveway and rings the door bell. Wondering who it was, I opened the door and asked the lady standing there if I could help her. She said "I hope you don't think I'm too weird, but my friend and I were driving down the road and saw your peace sign on the roof. I had her turn around to find your house to give you these." Then she handed me two peace sign bracelets. My wife got very excited and gave the lady some hippy pens and peace sign lolipops. I thought to myself, "Oh man there's another one out there!" Turns out shes a music teacher and that she hands out peace sign bracelets to her students. She loved my wifes car with all the tie dye peace signs on it. So my wife was happy that she found out she has a kindred spirit out there doing the same things she does.

So, you might be asking why we have a 12 foot peace sign on our roof. Well about 5 years ago my wife asked me at Christmas time if I could make her a peace sign on the roof. Being a technical kind a guy I took it as a challenge. The first version was multi-color C7 Christmas light strings nailed to the roof and put them on a timer to turn on for 2 hours a night. My wife later wanted them blue, so I bought 200 blue C7 bulbs and changed them all out. After a couple of years of replacing burned out bulbs I decided to change them to LED strings. When we had the shingles replaced on the roof I decided I wasn't going to nail the lights back to the new roof. The wife wasn't going to let me get away with not putting the peace sign back up, so I had to build a 12' frame out of re-bar and attached the lights to that. With the LEDs we are able to run the lights from dusk to dawn for less power than the incandescent bulbs used in 2 hours.

So if you're ever in Arizona and you see a house with a big blue peace sign on the roof, that's my house. You can see it from the air in Google Earth.

 

Now THAT is love.

 

nice story! next time I'm in Arizonia, i'm stopping by!!!
good to know we are close to the same age!!!

 

Hi car47!! Welcome to the insanity!!

 

Chubby checker,, what a great story.. what a great peace sign...and what a nice swimming pool by your nice warm home....... sigh...

 

Hi guys!

Just a warning... I see that we are having cable issues again... which could translate into internet issues. If I lose the internet here, I will go to a Mc D's or something and post.

I'm using my laptop (because it's snowing outside and the ice on the pool is beautiful). It only has a demo word program... haven't installed the real one yet since we need to send it back because of a dead pixel in the middle of the screen. I think I will try to use it though.

Wish me luck!

BTW- The "story" I tell is 100% real. I happen to be a very detail oriented person... ... I think Kikimowse and I have lots in common when it comes to that.

 

you took the words right out of my mouth!!! that swimming pool looks warm and inviting!!!

 

Nope, too cold for that (63°)!
But just right for this.

 

And have the names been changed to protect the innocent?

 

DHHIY? or Has He Heard Anything Yet?

 

Nope. She's ignoring me now...

 

yup, no matter how cold or hot, this is always nice... we have a 6 seater, and it is great when it's snowing !!

 

well, yeah because we are on to her game now!!

 

CRIME FIGHTING COOPER… the MINI SERIES (3)

GAME ON!

LOOK FOR A LANDMARK!

The fun little twisty has NO streetlights and like I said, there’s only ONE entrance point and ONE exit. There are several small ponds along the way which would make it hard to distinguish exactly where the car just came from. OK… so there’s a small center median (where we had just completed our single swoop turn) and a green power box on the right… hopefully we can remember it when we bring the cops back. Certainly I am NOT going out into the woods to see what’s going on.

It’s dark… barely any moonlight… but I’ve got the XENONS! Yeah! Up ahead I can see the taillights on the car… but for some reason they seem to be going slower than expected. I wonder… did they actually even see us before? Maybe we were hiding just enough behind that median so they didn’t know? Nah, I think they saw us once they were almost out of the woods and figured they had no choice but to leave. Cops were coming one way or the other so they really only had the choice to take the chance to escape. I would have loved to have heard the conversation in their car! Oh the adrenaline!

We’re trying to keep a bit of distance until 911 is connected… then we figure we’ll move in to get the plate number. The husband is on the phone and I’m focused on driving… not lots of room for a mistake. The car starts to pull away a little more and the husband says, “You’ve got the skills! Do it! Do it! This is easy for you!”. We’re hyped up and I stomp on it… I LOVE TWISTIES! The criminals can’t shake me. I don’t know where the pizzas went but I imagine it must have looked like a crazy episode of pizza delivery gone wild! We finally connect to dispatch and tell them that we need someone sent out ASAP… telling them what we just witnessed and that we are following the car… what road they’re on and which way they’re heading. We’re trying to get a plate number for them but it’s a weird plate. Florida probably has about 100 different types but this one looks like it’s “California”??? So is that a “0” or the letter “O”? Is that a “1” or the letter “I”? OMG! Just hurry up and get someone out here already!

We get to the main road and there are now streetlights. They stop. Is anyone going to jump out and attack us? Start shooting? Who knows. I don’t have any idea what they did out there in the woods that they might need to cover up. We start describing the car… "it’s a 4 door metallic blue… kinda beat up… a bit rough around the edges and a good sized dent in the left rear panel. The windows are tinted… we have no idea who’s driving". Dispatch still on the phone… the car makes a left onto the main road and they try to lose us! Ha! Good luck with that! In the meantime, the husband continues naming off streets.

The car makes a left into the entrance of the next neighborhood up. Then another left and another immediate left. Isn’t that what one does when one thinks he or she is being followed??? HAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Um… yeah we’re following you IDIOTS!! It’s NOT your imagination!

So remember that I have this concern that my MINI is very identifiable here. As the car makes the final left turn to get back out of that neighborhood I wait… trying to keep my headlights pointed at them. I’m thinking that if I can keep my car at a certain angle in relation to theirs then there might be less of a chance for them to figure out exactly what I am driving and they can’t get my license plate number… also less chance of them seeing who WE are. We’re almost facing directly at each other and we’re both stopped waiting to see who’s going to make the next move. I’m ready to go but just sitting tight. They start moving and try to come around and do a U-turn around a median to get behind us. Uh NO… not gonna happen… and the worst part is that they had to do a 3 point turn so as not to bash into the curb! HA! OH I love my MINI!!!!

Where’s the freakin’ cops already?!?!?!

 

Skillet, the names have not been changed... however... rest assured that no Minivans or Mullet wigs were harmed!

 

lol, CRAZY!!!!!