A post called HodgePodge

I'm late to the party this week!    Thanks again to Joyce at From This Side of the Pond - it's amazing how you come up with all these unique questions each week!!

1. Do you like your name? Are you named after someone (grandparent, etc)? If you have children, how did you choose their names?

I'm pretty neutral about my name.  It's interesting that even given how short my name is - there are several guys at work who call me "Leese".  

There's a lot of family connection in all of my siblings (and younger) names.  I don't usually use their actual names in posts, but it applies for this one.  

Us girls are Laura Lee, Linda Bea and Lisa Marie.  The L-a's are supposedly a coincidence as well as the middle names rhyming.  Laura & Linda's middle names are the same as Dad's parents' and mine is a variation of Mary, which is Mom's name.  

Dad was James Curtis.  I had a half brother named Curtis James.  My brothers are John James and Terry Curtis.  Then there are nephews named James Richard & Alexander Curtis.  Even my grandson is Adam James.  Oh, and the niece named Lisa Beth (after me & her mom)

For the Spawn... as soon as I found out I was pregnant, I had picked out Brandon James.  Then the doc said there was a 70% chance I was having a girl, but she had her legs crossed so they couldn't tell for sure.  So since the Ex was a wanna-be bullrider from Texas (he wasn't very good) I suggested Angela then he could have his Copenhagen Angel (is a song by Chris LeDoux).  So there's that. 

2. A piece of red velvet cake, a scoop of vanilla ice cream or a slice of blueberry pie? You can only have one...which will you choose? If you could pick any red, white, or blue dessert other than those listed here, what would you choose?

The red velvet cake!   But I also make a simple, fairly healthy but tasty red, white & blue trifle made with layers of angel food cake, whipped topping, strawberries & blueberries.  

3. What's a job you'd like to try for just one day?

The first thing that popped into my head was a fighter pilot - GO FAST!!!! And shoot guns / missiles!   I'm trying to hold down my practical side, since I don't think my chubby, out of shape body could handle the amount of Gs I'd want to do and my lousy vision is against me.  But one can daydream!   

4. Any patriotic decor in your home currently or coming up this summer?

Ugh - I didn't get any pictures yet, but I have 2 of these blowmolds out on each side of my front door.  And that's pretty much it!    I'll probably put them away for a while, then bring them back out of the 4th of July.    I didn't decorate my office at work for Memorial Day, but will for the 4th. 

5. It's the end of May, so let's exercise our brains. Sum up your month with an acrostic using the word MAY. We can do it!!

I had to look this up!  I never knew the name for this activity. 

M - making plans with the Spouse for our upcoming 20th anniversary!

A - all the plants at the greenhouse - I want them! 

Y  - yay for the random neighbor who stopped by last Friday morning and offered to mow the lawn before the long weekend at a very reasonable price!  And also, for the Spouse having that exact amount of $ in his pocket to pay him!  

6. Insert your own random thought here.

Last night we swore in (or "installed") the all the new 2026-2027 officers at the VFW - and since I'm the social media / website / newsletter peep - of course I took pictures.  

Honestly - I 'm ashamed that it took me so long to embrace ChatGPT - you'd never know that I used it to remove several people out of this picture!  

Remember & Honor

Remember what your three day weekend is actually for. 

from Great Lakes National Cemetery

Today, at my VFW.

#AtoZChallenge Reflections & Catching Up

I totally missed the sign up for the A to Z Challenge reflections but oh well!  I'll just kind of gloss over it.  

Woohoo!  I made it through!

As usual, I dropped the ball with visiting other blogs. 

I already joined the Road Trip, at least I can remedy that somewhat. 

Some thoughts from the Reflections post linked above....

I like the Theme Reveal posts.  It's neat to see ahead of time what people are writing about and to poke around their blogs to see what they're about. 

Yes, at least one of the hosts did visit.  That's got to be a tough job - kudos to them for visiting everyone!   Some of the blogs have topics that I'm not interested in so I think it would be hard to make any meaningful comments on it!

I'm pretty sure my blog's comments are open to everyone - I do have a time frame set where any comments after a certain time need to be moderated, but that's to weed out the weirdos.  

I don't like the blogs that are hard to navigate, and I've even seen some where there wasn't a way to comment - at least that I could find.  I always wonder if they actually look at their blog?  

oooo and I really like they already listed the sign up dates for 2027!  That theme is really pretty, too. 

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Catching up.....

Who needs Mother's Day flowers when you can stop the ice cream truck!

So my search & rescue team is now an "associate" member of the SE Michigan Dive Group, along with a whole lotta law enforcement / fire agencies.  We had our first training with the county dive team last week.  Since we're all "professionally trained volunteers" we will never actually dive, but we can assist & support the actual divers. 

We met at the sheriff's department & got our made up scenario, then made a convoy to the lake. 

There were 4 of us from my team, plus one K9 who is certified in water searching. 

We were told 2 guys collided out on the lake, their boats sank (there really are 2 boats at the bottom of the lake we went to), they swam to shore and fought, shots were fired, etc.  So, we had to go into the woods and look for the firearm. 

I may have said "gimme gimme" when the guy in charge of the training offered up one of the police dept's 800 MHz radios for us to use.

I was warned several times NOT to touch the orange button (is the emergency button) but when it came time to actually USE the radio?  I hesitated since I was listening to real police traffic the whole time we were in the woods!  

Found this pretty little guy out there, too

Fun fact - there is only one poisonous snake in Michigan, the Mississauga Rattlesnake, but it tends to be much further north than I am and is very timid, so bites are rare.  This is a harmless garter snake. 

Afterward, we got to go out in the boats and see how they use sonar.  I've watched videos on YouTube with guys looking for cars in lakes, but it's different in real life! 

It was a super cool training.  Luckily, it's only once a month since it was during the day on a Tuesday, so I could easily just adjust my work hours.  

Everyone in my house is finally getting over the plague.  Over the course of 2 weeks, 4/5 of us were sick.  First, it was the Spouse.  He was down for the count for 2 days, shortness of breath, coughing, etc.  His cough is still hanging on!  Pretty sure he had bronchitis but he, being such a guy, didn't go get checked out.  Then I started getting a sore throat, congestion & coughing.  Then the next week, the granddaughter came down with hand, foot & mouth.  Then the grandson got it.   The kids finally went back to school yesterday.  The togetherness was getting to be too much.  They were constantly fighting & tormenting each other.     

I went out to breakfast with my sisters Sunday and when I came home, the Spawn was by herself in the back yard.  The neighbor behind us invited the kids over to help him pull weeds in his garden - she said he was probably tired of hearing them screaming and her yelling at them!    

The tulips & hyacinths are done blooming, but the irises are out! 

These used to be purple years ago, not sure why they turned white.

We also just had the VFW's Day of Service - somehow we got involved with the caretakers of a local cemetery, so a whole bunch of us gathered there and cleaned up the cemetery and put out flags for Memorial Day.  Since I'm the VFW's post historian and website admin, I'd like to find out more about HOW we got involved with them and write a little piece for the website.  Everyone I asked pointed fingers at Mike, but Mike doesn't remember how he met them!  I'm hoping the caretaker's wife knows something since her family took care of the cemetery before they did. 

Signing off for now!