Lake Forest Country Club it ain't...

Logan with his winter hat on...going to get him a golf cap...

Thatcher winding it up for a long one...

Thatcher 'addressing the ball'...

Sunday morning Logan, Thatcher and I hita bunch o' balls at the El Toro golf range…
Like most young men all they were interested in was out-driving Tiger…we hit a 150 ball bucket and soon ran out of them…we bought another 150 that lasted a little longer until the boys were pooped…I was wasted after 100 balls… towards the end they were both killing the ball and I saw some definite future golfers...Logan hit most of his drives further than mine, but all but a few weren't up the middle...We may have to get Thatcher some longer clubs,a hat and maybe a hair cut too...he wore Logan's hat for a while and discovered he could see the range...

Afterwards we had some tasty chicken sandwiches at Carl’s, I went home for nap before my birthday dinner and the boys stayed there until friends would join them at the next door game- shop to play killer video games until dark…

They both said they’d like to go to the range every Sunday with me and we made a date for next Sunday…when I got home my non-golfing-better-half reminded me we were driving up north next weekend to visit Debby and Leesa and a few old friends…I called the boys and told them the news and they were Okay with it…

Sometimes I think they go with me so they won’t hurt my feelings or to be there in case I drop dead…I always told them when I die I want to be in bed or playing golf…

Fluffy who?

I spend a lot of time on City and County web sites researching information needed for possible projects...I stumbled on this one last week... and I quote:

"CATS IN TREES…CAN CLIMBERS HELP?"

Fire departments now refuse to make ‘cat-stuck-up-a-tree calls’…
They recommend special groups of cat rescuers…for a fee of course…

But really, HAVE YOU EVER SEEN A CAT SKELETON IN A TREE?

They will come down when hungry... or slip and fall and die…

"Blowin' in the wind"

"Walkers in the storm"...

What started off as a long-awaited golf weekend to Las Vegas ended up in a surprising snow storm on our way back...

On Friday with temperatures in the 60's we played the Desert Course in a mild wind storm... like Santa Ana winds but freezing; but dinner that evening was fabulous...I should have brought a camera to take a few shots of guys eating snails, shrimp, crab cakes and other semi-exotic appetizers to full porterhouse stakes, lobster and prime ribs weighing two pounds at least...the wine was flowing...

The next day, on the Lakes Course, with temps in the low 50's and gale winds in the 50's too, sixteen golfers, some of them with low handicaps, shot no better than 92...I shot 99 for two days in a row and was thrilled...

Later that Saturday afternoon we met up with Donas' nieces and their children and had a good time eating (at Tony Roma's), drinking, looking at family photos...earlier the younger kids rode rides and played arcade games at Buffalo Bills Casino...

As we left Sunday morning it was 33 degrees at Stateline and it snowed for forty five minutes straight as we drove South on I-15...the Mojave never looked so beautiful...

It's always fun driving home and in time to see Tiger win another tournament...

I can't wait for next year..this was our 8th annual tournament at Primm Valley Golf resort...

Vatican lists ‘new sins’, including pollution!

I was reading on Yahoo the other day that polluting the Earth is now a sin… Holy Cow...
Is the Vatican become progressively ‘green’ telling the faithful to be aware of new sins such as environmental blight... Is this now a modern sin?

It also mentioned that 60% of Catholics in Italy have stopped going to confession…you wonder why…

If that makes driving a non-hybrid car a sin, or burning wood in our fireplaces a sin,

Call me a sinner!

NO YANKEE DOODLE DANDIES...

A few months ago when our work started to slow down I found time to begin putting together a history of our family…it’s something I’ve always to do but had little time to do…my father was born in Italy but his father and/or mother may have come from Albania because as a child some of my relatives and my father ‘talked’ a different language I was told was Albanian…I had no clue if it was true or not, although when they couldn’t seem to find the right words in Albanian they intermingled French and Italian words that I understood…it wasn’t difficult to imagine someone in the past may not have been born in Italy …none of them new who it was…I had a hunch some may have come from Sicily but I hope not!
So I went for it…

I began jotting down my parent’s parents, brothers and sisters, wives and children’s’ names as far as I could remember and e-mailed my lists to some of my cousins in Montreal…I received a little help but not much…all but one of my parents’ brothers and sisters were long gone…and my mother’s living sister is 104 years old and can hardly remember what she had for lunch, poor thing…
So, I enlisted Google for information on how to proceed …
Google helped me to be aware what to look for such as names, places, occupations and life happenings…and things to be careful in believing or accepting…
Occupational data could be important in that it may indicate migrational patterns…old records may include references to towns and villages that no longer exist, censuses are usually helpful but people often lie or a child may have been born out of wedlock or a woman may be a widow who didn’t want to report it…
First names can be confusing, such as a first name like Giovanni could be noted as John or Jonathon or Jack, Edward for Edwin, Peggy for Margarite, Antonia for Tony, and so forth…
I read that people sometimes reduced their ages on marriage certificates while others may have increased their ages either to marry or to join the armed forces…Baptismal certificates could be helpful but it was not unusual for parents to baptize their kids when they were four or five years old…
This week we have cousins visiting us from Montreal and they’ve been able to give me names that I didn’t remember…my father was the second youngest of seven children and my mother was seventh of eight sisters…I found out I had cousins who were born and died before I was born…I hardly knew they existed or their names…a few of the living ones are twenty years older than me…
It goes without saying I’ll be looking into Donas’ history too…she’s from Arkansas with relatives coming from Great Britain…
I’m about to purchase a genealogy program and see how far back I can go with both sides of my family and Donas'…I ultimately would like to know if any of my relatives served in the armed forces…I don’t expect to fine any Italian war heroes because there are none in history…I do know that Donas had relatives who were in the Civil and Spanish American Wars...