Happy 101 Award

I've been sent the Happy 101 award by two of my favorite bloggers, Lucie Consentino at http://lucieslegacy.blogspot.com/ and  Linda Hiser http://lindasflipside.blogspot.com/. In order to accept I must list 10 things that make me happy and pass the award along to 10 blogs.
 Things that make me happy are the simple blessings of life.
 1.My Bride of 42 years
 2. My two daughters
3. Both of my son in laws
4. The 5 grandchidren of course and the amount of involvement we have in their lives
5. Enjoying our time up at the lake with friends and family
6. Catching a fish or not.
7. My new iTouch
8 Helping a friend with a home repair
9. a good cup of coffee while I run through my Google Reader List
10 Good health to enjoy my retirement.

As far as as the 10 bloggers go, my favorites have all received the 101 at least once and I'm not going forward this. I did go over my list so if I missed you pick up the award and tell us what makes your happy list.

2010, ANOTHER DECADE makes EIGHT !!

 As I sat with 2 of my grandsons (ages 10&8), sipping sparkling white grape juice, the announcers said 2010 was the start of a new decade. I thought to myself,"if I just make the next 10 minutes I''ll have lived during 8 of them". I wondered how much change they would see as they enter their 2nd decade. I know as I think back how much change I've experienced since the early 1940's. I don't mean just in technology, but in the stages of our lives.
 So I'm  thinking, one reason for my starting this blog was to relate some of my life, whether the grandkids want to hear it or not. I know some do or will, for example my 8 yr old grand-daughter I'm told spent an hour or so reading my blog a few weeks ago. And just today, my 8 yr old grandson broke in, as I was relating a family joke on our origins, and told with great glee how he told a friend the story.
And so all will not be lost and my my efforts not in vain.
 Speaking of vain, when I blog about these different decades, its about our families history really and not of myself.  I'll have to be careful as to protect the living so perhaps much will be just brief high lites.
 Just think, I started out in the 40's with just a radio and now I'm starting out 2010 with an iPod Touch.

Mike has arrived in the Gulf

My son in law has arrived at the Al Basra Oil Terminal in the Persian Gulf.
He will be responsible  for  the upkeep of the facilities. It's about 15 miles offshore and I don't think it will be that pleasant (it's a 1/2 mi long hunk of steel). His deployment is until Aug 2010.
Tomorrow we will be going to spent Christmas  with our daughter and the grandkids. My other daughter will join us on Christmas day. Hopefully we will be able to connect with Mike via Skype.
Merry Christmas to All

An Issue With Picasa

JLOG has posted information on a problem with losing face tagging info on backups.
Its explained  here at  http://www.jgen.ws/jlog/backup/picasa-backup. The face recognition feature is a lot of fun but can be time consuming (program  Id'd 11,000 faces {mostly my grandkids}) and I would have not been a happy camper if I'd lost all that info. Another thing I noticed is that captions don't appear any where except on Picasa.  It seems no "free" photo image program can do every thing. I still prefer Faststone for general viewing and quick resizing.

Wordless Wednesday

"God Bless and God Speed"

We just returned tonight from a visit with our son-in-law Mike before he leaves for the Persian Gulf next week. He's a Lt.Commander in the Naval Reserve and has been called up for an 8 month tour.We'll be helping my daughter 3 or 4 days a week with our grandkids, but it's going to be hard for all of them. Mike is very "hands on" with the kids, sometimes coaching  3 teams for baseball or basketball. We all will miss "Coach Mike".  We pray for his safe and speedy return.

Wordless Wednesday- Thank You