Dressing up and going to the Opera had been one of the things Deb and I had fantasized about most as we looked forward to this trip. When we made it back from our trial run for Penn station, I was still raring to go. Deb was done in. She laid on the bed and said she was going to wear what she had on.
Now if you recall, her feet were in serious pain and had been ever since Tuesday night, yet we’d been walking all day, every day. The only shoes she could wear at this point was a pair of kitten printed canvas slippers. She was a little rung out from the train station episode and I’m not sure how much fun it would be to get all dressed up and finish the look with kitten shoes.
Here’s what’s so great about our friendship, I still wanted to get dressed up, so I did and she thought that was great. I pulled out all my finery and as I did, I also started prepping for the next morning, when we’d be going to the christening. That’s when I figured out I had no hosiery for the next day. In Dallas in May, that would be OK. In New York, I figured I would freeze to death.
So, I finished up getting cute and had time to spare to go to our drug store. I have no idea what we would have done without it. We’d gotten foot remedies, new skin for my finger, super glue for my sunglasses, late night snacks, numerous Diet Dr Peppers and now I was going for nude colored hose and something to treat a fever blister. Yep, it’s always something.
We were such pros on the subway now, that we probably could have made it just fine to Lincoln Center, but just to be sure we used Lyft. I could get used to this. Our driver dropped us off right in front and we didn’t even have to think about parking.
I do not have enough superlatives in my vocabulary to describe how wonderful it was to see the Franco Zeffirelli production and sets for Turandot at the Metropolitan Opera House. It is one of my favorite operas of all time and I have seen it a number of times at my beloved Dallas Opera, but there’s a reason The Met is The Met.
Turandot was the Ukranian, Luidmyla Ariltato and she did a remarkable job, but her Calaf was a South Korean, Yonghoon Lee. It was so fitting to see an Asian in this role and he knocked it out of the park, vocally. It really was special in my mind. Deb kept talking about how amazing the entire chorus was. “They were actually moving and acting,” she said, “not just standing around singing.”
Then there were the costumes. They were the perfect compliment to the outrageously wonderful sets created for each scene. If there is perfection in this world, short of heaven, then this production of Turandot is it. I can die happy.
Remember the grand nephew we visited across from St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Well, we made plans to join him for a bite after the show. We had a little difficulty finding his favorite sushi restaurant, even though it was close by. Lyft let us off at Columbus Circle and it was supposed to be right there, only we couldn’t find it. They were just about to quit serving when we finally got there, but we weren’t all that hungry after our feast at the Tavern on the Green earlier in the day.
Then he escorted us to the right subway station and sent us on our way. We made it back to the hotel just fine and felt very New Yorkish to be trotting around so late at night. I know horrible things happen to people on the streets of New York, but we never had a moment’s trouble.
The fun is almost over, but we have one more big event. Come back next week and we’ll take a little train ride.
I started my morning by checking my email and since Memory Keeping is my business, I’m always on the look out for content, something I can post to my social media channels. I’d been writing blog posts the day before, so I really wasn’t looking for another one, but this one found me anyway.
Creative Memories is a Heaven for Crafters
Creative Memories has a blog and that’s where my email took me. If you’re a crafter, you’ll love it. You’ll need all kinds of tools and materials complete the beautiful things the blog features. These particular borders require 11 various items. Each border has 3-4 easy steps (ha), or at least it seems that way, until you figure out that each “easy” step also includes 4-5 steps. You could craft away a morning with these borders.
I have nothing against crafters. I’m happy they have both the skill and the time to do the amazing things they do. Crafters, please let me be your Creative Memories Advisor. I can point you in the direction of a lifetime of craft ideas and sell you everything you’ll need to complete them – including all the totes you need for packing up to go away on that crafting weekend.
Creative Memories is Also a Resource for Memory Keepers
However, crafters have given Memory Keeping a bad name and to be honest, I get a little mad at Creative Memories for obscuring the line between memory keeping and crafting. I get it, crafters who scrapbook are probably going to buy more product than your average person who just wants to save their memories in a traditional album. However, I’m one of those people who embraced the old CM taglines – “Everyone Has a Story to Tell” and “Simple Pages, Completed Albums.” “We Make Scrapbooking Fun,” the phrase on the back of a recent catalog, just doesn’t resonate with me.
So, as I was saying, I looked at the Creative Memories blog and my hair stood on end. Sure, the bear borders are really cute, but I’m not sharing the post on my Facebook feed without a disclaimer. Most of my clients are incredibly busy people who hire me to scrapbook for them. They want an economical answer to their Memory Mess, whether they’re attempting to tackle some of it themselves or they’re turning the whole project over to me. I offer them an affordable album package, which includes all labor and materials, and my clients love the results, but I assure you, none of these borders will be in one of my standard albums. My standard albums are simply beautiful and I can complete them in a couple of weeks, but they’re all Memory Keeping, with only a touch of crafting.
I’m a Devoted Memory Keeper Who Can Also Craft
That being said, if you’re a crafter, go visit the CM blog I mentioned, go to CMTV, soak up their YouTube Channel. There’s a lifetime of crafting there. Get after it. I love it, too.
I want you to know that if you hire me to do your albums for you, I can craft, but I also need you to understand, specialty albums have to cost more. I have stacks and stacks of papers, drawers of punches, boxes of stickers and a variety of other tools on shelves and in baskets. Heck, I even have a Cricut! No matter how simple the album, I find ways to use my toys in quick bites. I am a Closet Crafter, whose day job is Memory Keeping.
However, there’s no package price for a specialty album. I work on a time and materials basis, keeping track of every minute and every sticker. Elaborate titles and borders will fill every page, with thick layers of beautifully crafted paper enhancements. It’s the perfect gift for a bride or a new mother. It’s a vacation album you’ll cherish. However, the timeline for it could be anywhere from a month to six weeks. The materials used will add up, but it will be the time which takes the biggest bite of your budget.
Back to Basics
Here’s the bottom line. Memory Keeping does not require crafting skills. If you want to do this yourself. I promise you can do it. If you’re looking for an affordable way to get someone else to do it for you, I’m your girl. At the same time, if you are a crafter, there just aren’t any projects out there as meaningful as Memory Keeping.
In other words, Memory Keeping is job one, whether you do it or I do. Crafting is optional! So give me a call and lets get busy saving your memories!!
I hope Memory Keepers, Crafters and Travelers will keep coming back. Tomorrow I’ll have The Weekend Report, next Wednesday we’ll be traveling and then a week from now I’ll be keeping more memories.
So, sometime during the winter, Bill built a bunch of shelves in my attic. Yes, we have separate attics. What that means is that I get most of the larger attic. Now he built those shelves so he could navigate more easily to his stuff, but I’m not going to complain, because shelves are shelves and I love them.
However, winter is not an optimum time to reorganize your attic, so I used the shelves to make Bill a path to his stuff and went on with my life, waiting for better attic weather. While winter is not optimal for attic cleaning, summer in Texas is impossible, so when spring hit, I started on the project. I began with a corner of the attic with books and games, but lo and behold my shelves were broken. So, I unloaded everything on Monday, but Bill didn’t get around to fixing them until the last thing Sunday evening.
That left my guest bedroom looking like a storage room, but to tell the truth, it had already been leaning that way, which was the second impetus for reorganizing the attic. Frustrated in my efforts to complete that job, I started working on summer-izing my closet. A lot of my clothes can be worn year round, especially since this is Texas, but I do have seasonal stuff and I keep the off-season on a third row of hanging bar in my closet.
Switching out the season in my closet is a big job and I made it bigger this year by forcing myself to actually try on everything that was going to stay in the to-wear area. Last year I lost down to my goal weight, but before I had any time to enjoy it, I got a monster case of hives, which threw all my discipline out the window. I couldn’t exercise and the meds turned me into an eating machine. That made me angry, which caused me to eat more and for months I just hid beneath those finger tip sweaters and coats I love to wear, trying to ignore those extra pounds.
In March, I worked on a serious attitude improvement program and at the end of it, I bit the bullet and started back on Noom. I’d say I know at least ten health and fitness coaches, but I’m just not into smoothies and supplements, so I go it alone with a little app to make me accountable. I’m having a rough start with a lots of up and down, but that’s the nature of weight loss at my age, so as long as I stay on the plan and the overall direction is down, I’m trying to suffer the spikes with grace.
A lot of people go on diets so they can buy new clothes in a different size. I go on diets so I can get back into the clothes I already have. After my time in the closet last week, I have four feet of summer clothes I can’t wear and at least four feet of clothes that I wish were too big. Segregating the too small stuff saves me time when I’m getting ready, but also provides a great motivation to stay on track with my diet, because those clothes I can’t wear are my favorites.
But wait, just going through my clothes did not satisfy that urge to purge. Next, I attacked the drawers and cabinets in my bathroom. On Good Friday I woke up with the same organizing bug, decided to skip the new networking meeting I had intended to attend and headed back into my closet. The hanging clothes were all organized, but the rest of it also needed a purge. All of this resulted in more stuff for the attic. So, Saturday night I moved all that next to the stairwell and carried it upstairs on Sunday. No, you do not want to see my upstairs right now, but Bill finally fixed the shelves, so guess what I did with all my “spare time” this week!
Good Friday
When I was a little kid, my parents did the whole Easter thing, but somewhere along the way, my dad quit going to Christmas and Easter services. He said he went the rest of the year, so he was going to make room for all the visitors. For years, we stayed away from church on these big attendance days. Once I was on my own, I did not follow his lead, but this year I was going to.
If you’ve been keeping up, Bill and I are church shopping, again, a job we don’t particularly enjoy, but becomes necessary from time to time. We’ve visited several churches with varying degrees of success, but haven’t found the one. Last week, Bill just wasn’t up to it and this week I wasn’t. So, when my bestie called and invited us to join her for Good Friday services, that was a good way to work in some worship without visiting a strange church – her church is my old church. It was a great service and I enjoyed seeing my friends.
Afterwards, we went to Casa Mama, again. It’s her favorite. I’m on a diet, so I didn’t care.
Good Saturday
My plans for Saturday underwent many changes. Initially, I was going to meet my Dot friends, of the local Polka Dot Powerhouse chapter, for a walk. However, the organizer got sick and I was the only “for sure” attendee, so I redirected my exercise endeavors to my gym. Then I came home and organized my earrings for a while, which was the last job in organizing my closet.
I had been going to go meet my bestie on the other side of town after my walk, which would have been at the end of her dance lesson, but without the walk, it made more sense for us to meet on our own side of town. So she came and picked me up. For lunch, we went to one of my favorites, Fable & Fire. Yes, I know the service is slow and they’re a tad bit expensive, but I love the vibe. It was my first Saturday visit, so I was pleased to discover they have live music on Saturday afternoon. It made for a pleasant lunch. I had the salad with the fruit and nuts – yummy!!
After lunch I got back to my earrings and finished up the closet job. Hubby was taking a nap on the sofa, so I sat down to read a little, which turned into a lot.
Good Sunday
Since I always wake up early, so matter whether I need to or not, I used the time to get ahead on my weekday tasks by doing some social media stuff. Bill and I shared a quiet coffee time together, then we went out in the yard for some of that unpleasant, but necessary stuff that needed to be done.
Afterwards, I got cleaned up, because we were supposed to be going out to run some errands, but when I walked out cute and ready to roll, someone was relaxing on the couch. So, I started reading again. He changed couches and I moved to the couch he vacated to continue reading. I was getting chilly and thought about changing clothes, but it seemed as if we were going to have an at home day, so I decided to just change into lounging clothes. The minute I sat back down on the couch, he was ready to roll, so I changed again, but this time into something a little warmer.
We needed to buy a birthday gift for a nephew and the last time I’d been to the Dallas Museum of Art, the gift shop had a good assortment of cute kid stuff. So, we went there, only to discover all the cute kid stuff had sold out. Nada! So, we just enjoyed the museum for awhile. We spent most of our time in the European Art, something we hadn’t done in a while and I must say I liked what was on display. Some old favorites were in different spots and there were other items I either hadn’t seen in a while or didn’t remember ever seeing.
From the museum we went to Fadi’s. He likes the schwerma and I love the veggies. It was delicious as always. Next stop the grocery store, then home again, home again jiggedy jig.
For a girl on a diet I sure did eat well this weekend, but it was a lot of salad and veggies, so nothing to feel guilty about. Come back next week for some more of New York and the usual Memory Keeping 101. Then we’ll see how I did on my diet this week and if I got my attic back together!
Most people in the world wouldn’t recognize this car, yet it’s one of the best there is. It also is not a Ford, Chevy or Chrysler. Companies and politicians hustle for name recognition, because when most of us are in a pinch, we go for what we know. But I ask you – is that the best way to make a decision? Not if you want a luxury sports car. And certainly not if you’re about to digitize your memories.
If someone would deliver this car to your home, would you quibble over what the label said? Chances are you wouldn’t. You’d just want to grab the keys and roll. If you can get the best digitization service for the same price as a mediocre one, wouldn’t you want the best? When it comes to Memory Keeping, there are a lot of names which might immediately come to mind, but does that mean they are the best or does it just mean they have the biggest advertising budget?
The digital memory keeping company I work with, Forever, is not a household name. When it comes to digitization, there is another company which is on the radio and TV all the time with their boxes. Most people would recognize their name, but I’m not going to say it. There’s also another company which promotes their boxes as being in the same league, but are they? (And what about that company you saw in a strip center or some guy in your networking group that turns your photos into video? Talk about not in the same league!)
So, when these other digitization box companies are more familiar to most households, why should you go with Forever? I’m glad you asked!
Level of Care
While we’re on the subject of cars, think about the Mercedes Benz AMG line. You may not even know it stands for Aufrecht, Melcher and Großaspach, but chances are you have a clue those letters mean you’re looking at a Mercedes Benz superior to those which don’t have that designation. Among the reasons it’s better is the tag which shows who built your car over a matter of days, as opposed to other cars which are built on an assembly line by multiple people.
When it comes to digitization, those other guys are one-and-done. They slap a video or film in the machine, run it through and move on to the next one. That’s not the case at Forever. Eric Napier, Forever’s Director of Digitization explains the difference, “FOREVER will run each tape or film 2-3 times to get the best capture possible, edit the dead spots, clean up the tracking, video and audio as much as possible. We also provide editing, batch color correction and photo repair services that other companies don’t offer.”
Sounds kind of like the difference in a MB AMG and a Ford Pickup doesn’t it. A Ford Pickup is a great vehicle. It’s just not made with the level of care of a MB AMG. And here’s where my analogy falls apart. Regardless of which vehicle you might want, most of us can’t afford an MB AMG, but we might squeeze together enough for the Ford Pickup. But if you could pay the same for both, which would you choose? (Yes, if you own a ranch or a farm, you’ll go for the pickup truck, but you know what I mean.)
In the world of digitization, the sticker price of our small digitization box is virtually the same as the one-and-doners – in fact, there was a two cent difference on the day I checked. Now which digitization box would you prefer? Prices are subject to change and there are different specials going on at any given time, but generally, you are going to find that FOREVER and those guys are going to be in the same ballpark price wise, but FOREVER will always be a world apart in the level of care they offer.
Where’s My Stuff?
On the front end of the service, all the box services look a lot alike. They ship you a box. You fill it and send it back to them. Then your stuff is digitized. Each service does things a little different. Some include bags, some don’t. Some use a list, while others use barcodes. PaTAYto, PaTAHto. It doesn’t really matter.
As I’ve already mentioned, the prices are pretty much the same, including the shipping, but here’s the difference. FOREVER’s shipping price includes sending your stuff back to you – theirs doesn’t. That means if you want any or all of your hard copy items back, you’re going to have to pay extra, if you can get them back at all.
So, shipping differences aside, where does your digitized content end up. Well, all the companies are happy to provide you with a DVD or thumb drive, but is that what you want? I can tell that’s what the other guys want you to have. That’s because they are building a book of business for the future. Just as DOSS, Fortran, VHS, floppy discs and Betamax have all gone obsolete, the day will come when those DVD’s and thumb drives are a thing of the past. They’re banking on being around to “digitize” you all over again. Not FOREVER.
We’re hoping you’ll buy your own little piece of the Cloud, so when obsolescence sets in, you can enjoy the promise FOREVER makes to you. They will reformat your images to whatever format comes along when jpg, png, mp4 and their friends are a thing of the past. Never heard of anything like that? That’s because nobody else offers it!
Now, those other guys offer a piece of the cloud, too, but all they are going to do is rent it to you. We’ve all gotten so used to paying for online services by the month or by the year that many people assume that’s what FOREVER is offering and wow, do our prices look ridiculous. Take a second look, those guys are offering to lend you a little space with all the compressing, deleting, sharing, mining and selling that’s comes with that. In this case, it’s FOREVER that’s one-and-done. You pay us once for storage and you’re done forever!!
Look What I Found!!
There’s yet another reason you’ll prefer FOREVER over everyone else. If you have a shoebox of snapshots and a few VHS tapes, anybody can do those. Maybe not as well as FOREVER, but they can do them. Now, what if what you want digitized is larger than 8.5X11 or it’s 16mm or audio or it’s a scrapbook or you’d like to get your DVD’s uploaded. Fuhgeddaboutit! If it’s not plain and simple (see “Level of Care”) they aren’t interested. See the more kinds of things you want to digitize the more kinds of equipment you need and your staff will have to be trained on them.
One of the members of my team told a story one evening. FOREVER called her to apologize, because they were going to be behind schedule delivering an order. The reason for the delay was the fact that the object was so obscure they didn’t have the right machine. Who else but FOREVER would find out what they needed, find the right thing and buy it – at no additional cost to the customer? Everybody else would just say, “Gee, I’m sorry,” but that’s because they are in the digitization business and FOREVER is in the memory keeping business. It’s just what we do!!
Get the Best for Your Memories
So, FOREVER is like an exotic sports car, but it costs about the same amount as that family sedan in your neighbor’s drive way. I’d be driving the MB AMG, wouldn’t you? The color of your digitization box does matter.
So, perhaps you’re still wondering about what I’ve said. Maybe you don’t think you can believe me. Well, how about Trust Pilot? Do you think you can trust them?
Here’s what they have to say about FOREVER and the competition. I’ve blanked out their names, so as to avoid finger pointing, but no one comes near to us.
Since the color of your box does matter, let me help you get the Blue FOREVER box for your digitization needs.
Thanks for coming by. Drop in next week for more NYC, more Memory Keeping 101 and another Weekend Report.
While it would have been very easy to spend every waking hour of my New York week at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, I didn’t, because I want to feel as if I know any city I visit, not just hit the top site. That’s why we stomped all over Mid-Town and Lower Manhattan, as well as taking advantage of the subway. Hopefully, some day, I will get back to The Met, but I needed more than one museum to know New York.
You could museum into perpetuity in New York. They have a little of everything. Museums like MOMA and Guggenheim are better known, but once I’d read about the Frick Mansion overlooking Central Park, I knew it was the choice for me. My choice was tested when I discovered they were renovating the mansion and a selection of the best items had been moved to a temporary home called Frick Madison, but reading through a list of items in the collection, I kept the Frick on my list.
While the Frick was no further away than our stroll to the Met, at this point of the vacation, less steps are better. As we ate meal bars in our hotel room (we were dead tired of their breakfasts and I could not face another egg) Deb pulled out her handy dandy Metro app and discovered we’d need bus service to get close to the Frick. So with the help of the app, we took the bus. It dropped us into a completely different world a few blocks from our destination.
This was residential New York, the Upper East Side and plenty swanky I will let you know. This was a quiet Saturday morning. We saw a few joggers. There were mommies and daddies out with the latest style of preambulars. We were on hallowed ground.
Coming to Madison Avenue, we made a left and continued to enjoy our surroundings. We arrived on the doorstep of the Frick with time to kill, so I backtracked to a small convenience store I’d seen along the way. You know those movies where someone steps into a small crowded bodega and is suddenly swept up in a robbery or a mugging? Yeah, well this wasn’t that place. The proprietors were oriental. Everything was neat, nothing was crowded and yet the space seemed to have a little of anything you might need.
I was in dire need of caffeine and I was ready to take it in whatever form I could get it, but to my absolute delight, they had my beloved Diet Dr Pepper in a screw top bottle. I could drink what I needed and save the rest for later. I was jubilant. I don’t think anyone had ever been jubilant in their store. They smiled and nodded, but I could tell they wanted the crazy person to leave and return them to their previously quiet and neat atmosphere.
Then it was Frick time. The first floor is a functional floor with offices, ticket sales and a store. We walked into the first gallery on the second floor. Holbiens, Hals and other fabulous painters from Holland and the Netherlands. Then BAM, the Rembrandt self portrait we all know. We may not even know it is a Rembrandt self portrait, but we’ve all seen the guy with a mustache in a funny hat, washed in golden light. A roomful of Van Dykes and three of the only 34 Vermeers which exist in the world today. We’re only in the first set of galleries and we’ve already seem more Old Master paintings than most bigger museums have in their entire collection!
The third floor has many of the decorative arts, which many of you will recall is my absolute favorite thing in a museum. Carpets, porcelain (so much Meissan) and of all things, clocks. There was a lot of Italian art of all varieties and in the Spanish section, several El Greco’s, which I love.
The decorative arts also filled the fourth floor and these were French – oooh la la! Not in necessarily in manufacture, but taste – think Sèvres and Meissan. Continuing on the fourth floor was a gallery filled with Frangonard’s Progress of Love. Like the Rembrandt self-portrait, these are paintings you’ve seen reproductions of all your life. To see them in person and all together was stunning.
Then, as if you are not already gob-smocked from all you’ve seen, there is a room of Impressionist paintings, finishes out the floor. Not a comprehensive collection, but stunning nonetheless. At that point, I just wanted to go back to the second floor and do it all over, but other entertainments beckoned and we were hungry!
If I went back to New York tomorrow, I would first go to The Met and then back to the Frick – and hopefully, the renovation of the mansion would be over and I could see these masterworks in their usual venue, placed in his gorgeous home, just as Mr. Frick thought they should be. Then I would go to the Guggenheim and MOMA. The Frick is just that good.
But it’s lunch time! Come back next week and we’ll cross Central Park to the Tavern on the Green.
Traveling is my thing and every year, when the Travel & Adventure Show comes to town, I feed that passion. I remember the first year I happened into it with my hubby at the Dallas Convention Center. He was more excited about the Belly Dancers on the Global Beats Stage and I didn’t worry him by picking up every brochure in sight, like I do these days, but I knew I’d found something.
The next year, bestie went with me and a tradition was born. We schedule our day around various speakers, grab every brochure that even slightly interests us and get our picture made at the photo booth. It’s a good time.
This year she had a dance lesson and we met afterwards. Confession, the last few times we’d been, it want’s the marvelous hit it had been in those first few years and we couldn’t even blame it on Covid. Somewhere along the way they’d moved to Dallas Market Hall and it just wasn’t what it had been. So, bestie and I decided we didn’t need to rush over there. We could have lunch first. I mean we’re not about to miss it, it had just fallen short in helpfulness since it first came along.
So, we grabbed lunch at Torchy’s Tacos, near one of her dance studios. We have one in Rockwall, but I rarely get there. In truth, I think it’s a little pricey for street tacos, but that’s me. This time it was well over $20, basically for fast food, but I did splurge and get a specialty margarita. It was bigger than the standard margarita and while Deb complained her regular margarita was a tad tart, mine was awesome.
Then it was on to Dallas Market Center. This year did not feature some of the big name travel types we’d seen in the past, but I thought it was an improvement over the last few years. The first time it was at DMC it was pathetic and the Covid years were tough, but we’ve hung in there and this year it really was worth the effort. It’s easy to be worth the price, because it was only $10. What else can you do for $10.
We started off with “How to Travel Solo, from the Experts” in the Savvy Traveler Theater, for Deb, who is contemplating a test drive in the world of Solo Travel. There had been a similar seminar last year, but it had been a total waste of time. This year was better – marginally so, but better. Deb was encouraged to discover more and more companies are doing away with an upcharge for solo travelers, but disappointed the cruise industry is slowest on the uptake.
The next seminar was right back in the same place, but it was Gabe Saglie of Travel Zoo talking about “How to Prioritize Travel in Uncertain Economic Times. He talked a lot about trends and offered up travel tips, but his goal in life was to get us to sign up for Travel Zoo. He made it sound good enough, that I actually just did so.
We immediately went to “”The Insider’s Guide to Visiting Arizona Parks,” but the seminar was misnamed. It should have been, “Look What I Did.” Some lady who worked for the Arizona Office of Tourism spent the time showing videos which are on the National Parks’ websites. Apparently, she had been tasked with making the National Parks websites more accessible and she was very proud of her videos. Thank you, I know how to use the internet. You have wasted my time. She got away with showing one. We left when she started showing the second one. She may have made the websites more accessible to the general public, but she made her presentation a real snorefest.
Next up was “Cruise Tips, Trends and Personal Stories from Our Adventures at Sea,” in the big Travel Theater. This seminar was also misnamed. It was an advertisement for Princess cruises to Alaska. The MC for this talk was Alanna Zingano, a social media travel influencer (No, thank you!) and Jeff Corwin. I confess, he looked a lot like Steve Irwin, the Australian Nature Dude who got killed by a stingray, so I thought he was that guy’s son. Not so. Somehow Jeff Corwin has gotten a job as the Nature & Adventure Ambassador, probably because I’m not the only one who thinks he’s Steve Irwin’s son. Anyway, Alaska is not at the top of my travel list and Deb has been four times, so that was a loser.
The final seminar of the day was probably the best. Someone named David McGuffin did a talk titled, “Exploring Europe: Top Destinations, Attractions and Experiences.” Of course, he was advertising his European travel company.
David and our friend from Travel Zoo were the most informative guys at the travel show, but I wish that wasn’t giving them more credit than they deserve. In the past, we’ve seen Samantha Brown, Rick Steves and other travel luminaires behind the podium. So, it was not a star-studded event. However, they have ramped up the quality of their vendors and I felt as if it was more worth the trip than it had been in recent years.
David Solomon at the Biblical Arts Museum
The other big event for the weekend was an opening reception for a new exhibition at the Biblical Arts Museum. I’m not sure how I get on these lists, but the museum invited me to opening of the “Flowers of the Holy Land” Exhibit. A little honesty here. I’m not really fond of this museum. It’s mostly a warehouse for copies of various religious art – including Thomas Kinkade prints. They also cram entirely to much stuff into the space they have, so actually enjoying one of their oversized look-alikes is difficult to do.
I can’t say I walked away from this exhibit with much more respect for what they are doing. Bill and I both thought an exhibit of my own photographs from the Dallas ARboretum would offer better photography and certainly FOREVER would have done a better job printing the large format photos. The refreshments offered were bad wine and bagels – a little odd, but the jazz band which played was actually pretty good.
Glad I went, so I know what’s up. I wonder if the exhibit will be there later this month when the Crowley Chamber Concert will be. While I’m not crazy about the museum, I do love the Crowley Chamber Concert Series.
For now, I must run! See you next week for travel, memory keeping and another weekend report.
Memory Keeping 101: Sharing and Gifting for Your Grads
Senior Photos, Graduation Announcements, Thank You Cards and Party Invitations
Ok, those who know me know I passed on the whole parenting thing. There’s a facet of our culture I have completely missed out on, except what I see on the social media feeds of my friends. When I was a senior, I took the same senior pictures everyone else did at the local Olan Mills studio and ordered my embossed announcements through Balfour.
My how the world has changed. Booking the right photographer for your senior photo session is a daunting task and you’ve somehow got to come up with a place for the shoot that no one else in the world has ever been. Well, once you’ve booked that photographer (And if you need a referral, just call!) then you have to think about ordering your announcements. Don’t make that purchase until you’ve checked out this page.
FOREVER has just introduced some of the most beautiful Graduation cards you’re going to find on the internet and they’ve upgraded their Design & Print pages to make personalizing your choice beyond easy. Choose the number of photos to include on front and on back, choose landscape or portrait orientation, choose your cardstock, choose your colors, choose your text and automatically address your cards when you’re ordering them. Also use QR codes to provide more photos, access to a video or slideshow, even audio files with a personal invitation from your senior. There are so many options available to you.
But don’t stop there! Choose an entire suite of coordinating stationary for party invitations, thank you cards and more. And whatever you choose, don’t check-out before you go to the Deals page! Over the next months, there are going to be such deals, not just for seniors, but for brides, Mother’s Day and Father’s Day.
Decision Day
FOREVER graduation stationary is great for any graduate, from Kindergarten to Grade School, but high school seniors may have yet another important event to commemorate – Decision Day. Just as new parents throw big parties to announce the sex of their expected child, high school senior now make a big deal of their college or career choice. Use FOREVER to make it an even more special day.
From creating themed items for your reveal to creating the layout for your Decision Day social media post, FOREVER is there. Want a blanket for their bed, create in FOREVER. Want a dry erase board, use the FOREVER Table Top Panels. How about some coasters for Grandma and Grandpa? How about a thermal cup for your senior to sport with her university’s symbol? Want to create cards for a formal announcement. You’ve got all the FOREVER tools you have for graduation stationary. Wherever your imagination can take you, FOREVER can make it happen.
Gifts for Remembrance and Encouragement
So, maybe you don’t have a senior, but you know you’re going to be getting those announcements about graduations, parties and decision days. Yes, money and gift cards are always greatly appreciated, but in a week or so, they will be gone, gone, gone. Whether they spent it, saved it or invested it, in time names and amounts are going to get foggy. Make your graduation gift memorable with FOREVER’s AutoPrint or Design & Print gifts, slipping those dollars into a very affordable, easy, quick personalized gift your senior will treasure for years to come.
AutoPrint is a quick way to make all kinds of gifts your graduating senior will love. Personalized water bottles, coffee mugs, journals, dry erase boards and more. It’s so easy, you’ll have your gift ready to ship in moments.
With Design & Print, you can expand your choices to include blankets, frosted glasses, wall décor, puzzles and even calendars. It may take just a bit longer to complete these choices, it’s still easy peasy!
Go to FOREVER right now to choose your project and if you need any help, just let me know. You really don’t have to talk to some anonymous bot or listen to hold music. Just call or text me and I’ll walk you through it all.
If you’re looking for something really unique, why don’t you give your senior the gift of FOREVER storage. Set them on the road to memory keeping with their very own permanent storage account they’ll never have to make payments on, never have to upgrade to a different format, that will never be compressed or deleted or mined for advertising. What’s more, they can use the free app to automatically save all the photos they take with their phone or post to Facebook to their permanent storage, so even if they drop their phone into the punch bowl, lose it at a concert or whatever, those precious photos of their college days will be there. As they live their lives, they can add more GB’s and services, but they’ll never forget who set them on the Memory Keeping Road.
Be Generous and Thrifty!
Never ever buy anything from FOREVER without checking the Deals Page. If you don’t see any deals you like, then call me. I always have the inside track on what bargains will be coming out during a month. There’s always a deal at FOREVER and I don’t want you to miss the one you want.
If giving personalized gifts is something you like to do for all kinds of occasions, then you’ll be interested in The Club. No, The Club is not some sneaky way to turn you into a FOREVER Ambassador. The Club is a way to budget your expenditures and save an extra 5% on pretty much everything you buy from FOREVER. You choose what you want to put away for gift giving on a monthly basis from $25 to whatever you want. FOREVER will charge you that amount each month and save it until you are ready to make a purchase. Your dollars never expire. Then when you do buy something, you’re using the dollars you have already put away and you’ll get that 5% discount on top of whatever deals you find on the deals page (with a very, very few exceptions). If you’re a grandma or grandpa with lots of grandkids to gift, then you’ll also want to check out Premiere Shipping – pay one time for a year of shipping, no matter how much you send.
And that’s some of the ways FOREVER can make you a hero with SRS 2023. I’d love to help you with all your Memory Keeping and Memory Sharing ideas. Let’s meet over coffee and talk about it!
Keep coming back for travel stories, a run down on local attractions and my favorite – Memory Keeping.
MEMORY KEEPING 101 – ORGANIZING YOUR STASH WITH HISTORIAN
Why Historian?
When it comes to permanent online storage you own, there just isn’t anything better than Forever. However, you might have wondered how to get your digital files ready for it. You don’t have to tell me Forever storage is a big investment. For most of us, our digital horde far outweighs the legacy we’d like to pass on to the future.
Historian is the answer. When you’re dealing with hard copy photos and memorabilia, your tools are tabletops, Ziplocks and boxes. You can buy a variety of fancy tools for this project, from boxes and files, to labels and dividers but I just use what I have at home with time.
Curating photos, traditionally and digitally, takes time. Facing a phone, laptop or app full of photos can seem quite overwhelming and if you think of it in view of purchasing permanent storage to hold it all, then it is not only overwhelming, it is daunting.
Historian is the halfway house for your digital stash. I’ve always struggled with organizing photos with my computer. For one thing it will let me save the same pictures in 47 places. It may notify me when I try to put it in the same file, but Historian goes further than that and will let me know when I am saving the same picture anywhere in my stash. With tagging I can find it in several different ways, without taking up valuable space saving it multiple times.
Historian also reads the time stamp from metadata and puts the photos in historical order. How wonderful is that?
Another amazing feature is face recognition. Yes, face recognition. Once you take some time to teach it the faces in your life, it will go ahead and tag them automatically for you.
And stars! You can use stars to rate each photo, which will help you when it comes time to decide what to put on Forever, what to delete and what you’ll just keep on Historian for right now.
I could go on with all the wonderful tools you have for sorting and organizing photos on Historian, but I think you get the picture (wink, wink).
It Both Saves Time and Takes Time
All these automatic time-saving tricks are great, but I’m not going to kid you. To do it right will take time. For instance, I just wanted to take my whole photo folder and dump it there. You can’t do that. You can transfer every photo from a folder, no matter how many there are, but it won’t take folders. So, getting it all in there will take time. (At least you can’t do folders right now. Valet is coming this spring and that will change everything.)
However, it’s good to take time. I decided to dump about 300 photos in there as my first bite. I individually name tagged one photo and then hit Auto Face Recognition. It took me awhile to train the program the difference between the 50 or so people I had dumped on it. If I’d taken things a little slower, it would have been easier, but I don’t do things by half measures. From now on, all I’ll have to do is confirm the faces it recognizes and straighten it out when it gets something wrong.
To be honest, I’m still just learning the program. I had been under the impression I didn’t need it, until I started doing digital sorting jobs for my clients. I didn’t want to be stuck with the limited tools in Microsoft and I didn’t want to buy enough Forever storage to hold everything a client passed on to me. Now I don’t know how I’d live without it.
The very best part is this. When it comes time to transfer your images from Historian and Forever, they are fully integrated, so everything you did to organize your photos in Historian will show up on Forever. That does not happen when I upload directly from my Microsoft files. Oh happy days!!
If you have digital mess, then you’re going to want Historian! Let’s talk about it. Give me a call at 972-971-5263!
Travel There – Libraries, a Cathedral, an Architectural Tour and The Top of the Rock
There was only one thing wrong with our plan for the day and that was Deborah’s feet. Her shoes tore them up on that first afternoon, when we strolled Broadway and since then, all we’d done was walk – all over Liberty Island, Ellis Island, Lower Manhattan, Central Park and The Met, as well as a trip back up and down Broadway. Still, she is a trooper. She medicated her blisters, put on bandages, wore thick socks, pulled on shoes and kept on walking. I don’t know if I would have been so tough. I’ve had days ruined by a paper cut.
The Morgan Library
We had breakfast at the hotel since it was included, took a quick subway ride to save Deb’s feet a few steps and made our way to the Morgan Library. Our admission time was 10:30 and that’s all you get, admission. I sort of assumed someone would take us around and point out the highlights. I was wrong. They pinned a tag on each of us and set us free.
There is an audio tour available on their website and we did listen to some of that, but I like people. Yes, I know I am a dinosaur, but it is what it is. In the absence of a tour guide, it is still an amazing place. They were very serious about masks and overtly politically correct, but I can ignore almost anything.
There is the historical building from JP Morgan’s time, standing as a testimony to his taste and erudition, with a very, very modern building added as a sign they are keeping up with the times. By far, my favorite things were those in the historical part of the museum complex. Several interesting exhibitions were on view in the newer part when we visited – Hans Holbein, Gwendolyn Brooks and Woody Guthie. Of the three, I found Woody Guthrie’s the most compelling. I had known of him, but little about him until I saw this exhibit.
Then we went inside got our tickets for the Rose Main Reading Room, which is the main attraction for tourists. We had an hour to kill, oooohing and aaaaaahing at all there was to see, while we waited to get into their very special space. It was totally worth it. Gorgeous. My photos are awful, so browse the websites I’ve linked to.
From there we checked out Grand Central Station. First, because it is a landmark everyone should see, but also we thought that’s where we’d catch the train to New Jersey for the christening, but it wasn’t.
I’d seen several hints that I should go to The Lott New York Palace which was once the Villard Mansion. It’s located right behind St. Patrick’s Cathedral, so I didn’t see any reason not to check it out. Totally worth the side trip, even if you wouldn’t have guessed it from the outside. Serious construction was going on, but inside, yes, it was worth the side trip. Several really amazing things to see, including the Gold Room, which all by itself was worth the visit. You’ve seen it in so many movies!
St. Patrick’s Cathedral
Next up, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, where the travel gods once again smiled on me. A wedding was going on which included an ethereal voice singing Ave Maria. It meant I could not walk up close to the famous altar and such, but it was a great trade off!
We surprised Deb’s great nephew who was working at a store across the street, which I will not mention, because he no longer works there. That’s when we decided to be spontaneous and have a little break, because resting our dogs while sipping a little wine sounded like just the thing. NYC did not cooperate.
I thought standing right next to Rockefeller’s famous rink, darling little wine bars would be all over the place, but in spite of further irritating Deb’s feet by walking all over the place, the only thing we could find was fast food. Saks had a coffee bar, but it was not an inviting place to rest, there was no alcohol and I don’t do coffee. We killed all the time we had stomping around to find a place to relax, instead of relaxing.
Architectural Tour and Top of the Rock
Having used up all our break time trying to find a place to take a break, it was time to go on the Architectural WALKING Tour of Rockefeller Center. I heartily recommend this to anyone. On the tour, we were introduced to many beautiful works of art we’d passed in oblivion in our search for a glass of wine. We learned a lot about Rockefeller himself and were pleased to learn he was a little rebel, purchasing and displaying works of art thought scandalous at the time, in part because the artists weren’t nice white people, but also because they displayed hitherto covered parts of the body.
After the walking tour we finally found an outdoor wine bar, which was exactly what we’d wanted before the tour. The area was shaded by the surrounding buildings, so it was a little chilly and the wine was downright bad, but we didn’t sweat it. We chatted with some eccentric old woman who would have us believe she was the antique maven of the entire city, and she might have been, but mostly what we liked was not walking for a while and taking an edge off the stress of walking around NYC via maps and our wits.
While it would be nice to say we could have spent more time there, the wine really was bad and it was entirely too chilly to be comfortable, so when it came time for our Top of the Rock tour, we were ready to go. We walked a couple of blocks back to the elevator, took a couple of escalators and there we were at the Top of the Rock.
Deborah told me the Top of the Rock tour had been her sons’ favorite thing about their visit to New York. I am glad I went, but I did not have that kind of enthusiasm for it. It was one of the most expensive things we did (except for the shows we went to) and I thought all of them were more my cup of tea.
I did the Hancock Building in Chicago and I have to say I thought that was a better experience. They have decals on the window to let you know what you’re looking at. There are more exhibits explaining the city and the building to you. I also felt less like a member of a cattle herd. To boot, Chicago is one beautiful city, while New York is overwhelmingly big.
But wait! The day is not over!! Come back next week and we’ll have dinner at Carmine’s a famous and much recommended Italian restaurant in Times Square.
Well, my bestie’s big weekend arrived, The Texas Lone Star Ball. Some time in the Fall she had gotten a new dance partner and I’ve been sharing her with him on weekends as they took lessons and practiced.
Around the first of the year, Deborah asked if I’d be available to go with her to their first competition in mid-March. I love any excuse to hang with my bestie and I try to see her dance any time I can, but I’d never seen behind the curtain at a competition, so sure, I was ready to check it out.
Friday, she picked me up around two and we headed off to the Galleria Westin. We checked in, took our luggage to the room and unpacked for the weekend. Then we hit the mall. Now, we are big shoppers, that’s for sure, but we weren’t casually checking the sales. We were on a mission. Deb needed pantyhose – not the big box store variety with reinforced panty, but sheer toe-to-waist pair.
See, while Dancing with the Stars competitors just come out with as little in the way of clothes as possible, in real competitions, each style of dance has a mode of dress. Deb would be dancing both Smooth and Latin numbers. Her smooth ensemble was complete, but she needed the panty hose for Latin. The ladies are supposed to wear fish net hose for Latin and apparently that’s a very uncomfortable prospect if you don’t have a regular pair on hose on underneath and in Latin, you also have open toed shoes and a very, very short skirt.
So, we hit Macy’s first and they recommended WalMart. Knowing WalMart didn’t have what Deb needed, we tried Nordstrom’s instead. Back in the day, the hosiery department was part of accessories and held pride of place on the first floor of any department store. A wide variety of brands in rows of self serve counters vied for your attention with promises of sleekness, durability and style.
Heck, I can remember when there was no self-serve. You walked up to a counter and discussed your hosiery needs with salesclerk which would then pull out selections for you to choose from. The your selection would be put in a thin box with tissue and sometimes a ribbon. I miss those days.
At Nordstrom’s we discovered hosiery had been demoted to the second floor and resided in one lonely fixture with very limited choices, but that put them lightyears ahead of Macy’s, who thought you could only get pantyhose at the big box stores.
That done we had one more small task. Though I’d been talking to Bill for days about the dance competition, he waited until thirty minutes before my departure to freak out about my absence, which resulted in me forgetting to put in a dress-up outfit for the Gala Dinner. Deb wasn’t even sure how dressed up they would get, but if everyone else was decked out, I didn’t want to be sitting there in the jeans and sweater set I’d be wearing the rest of the day.
I hit a store called Image, which had throw away fashion on the cheap, where a found a black swing jacket with silver glitter woven into it. At Lovisa I found a cheap rhinestone necklace to dress up the turtle neck sweater I’d wear under it. I was gala ready!
While Deb’s been dancing in competitions for a number of years, she’s always done it on the cheap, skipping the money eaters like Gala Dinners and expensive restaurants, but her new partner goes first class. So, she decided to go all in this time and I had the privilege of going with her. That meant dinner at Oceanaire with her partner and his teacher.
The prices on the menu were not the denominations Deb and I usually see. Sure, we’ll splurge on something like a birthday dinner, but Oceanaire was expensive, no two ways about it. There’s two ways to go about a meal like that. You can go in budget first, eat a Caesar salad and be practical. Or you can dive in with both feet and break the bank. Deb and I went for the latter.
We started with escargot, had the Seafood Mixed Grill for our entrée and finished off with cheesecake. Each and every bite was out of this world, but we ate so many bites that when we finished we felt like balloons in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade. After dinner, Deborah and Aimee (the dance instructor) went up to the room to try out hairstyles. I read for awhile, giving them a thumbs-up now and then, but eventually fell asleep. I woke up at mid-night, had to get ready for bed and then go back to sleep.
Why I Will Never Dance in Competition!
The alarm went off at 4 AM. Deb needed to be on the floor rehearsing at seven and she had a lot to do before then. Stage make-up is the first hurdle. A little lipstick and mascara will not do on the dance floor. Then there are all the things that go on before you put on your gown – this kind of hosiery, that kind of undergarment, etc. and so on. Then getting on the gown is like suiting up for a joust.
At that point, Aimee came in to go after the hair, which had been in hot rollers while the rest of the activity was going on. This is a big deal. Hair can’t just be fluffed up, it also has to be anchored into place so that it won’t fall as Deb makes her way around the floor. Apparently, there are hair pros who start styling even earlier than Deb and I woke up, but Deb doesn’t feel as if she’s in that league yet and she also doesn’t want to spend the money. They ended up with something which looked very 40’s starlet and I doubt a pro could have done any better.
After the hair was glued into place with copious amounts of hairspray, it was time to add the jewelry. The jewelry we’d selected for her smooth performances, a shimmering full length gown in in gunmetal gray decked out with pearls and crystals, was long dangling clear rhinestones earrings and a clear rhinestone necklace. The piece d’resistance was her bright red elbow length gloves which matched her bright red lipstick.
Meanwhile, I fell into a pair of jeans, a pair of sweaters and a pair of boots I’d brought to battle the extreme cold of the ballroom. I put on some makeup, but my hair was a total loss. That was OK, with peacocks like Deborah running around, no one was going to pay any attention to me anyway!
A Day of Dancing
At 7AM Deb and Richard, her partner, were on the floor to warm up. I was in charge of keeping up with the dance heats and videoing their performances. It’s more difficult than you might think. From 7:30 AM on into the evening, every 90 seconds there’s a new group marching out on the floor for their heat. Deb and Richard had 24 performances and then Richard has his pro had at least that many more.
Though Deb has explained how the heats work and how they score it doesn’t quite click with me. Some points are awarded for just showing up to dance and for the number of heats that you dance. When you are out on the floor, multiple judges are looking at multiple levels of competition. So, even though everyone may be dancing a Paso Dobles or a Viennese Waltz, there will be various age groups and categories of the dance competing at the same time. You and your partner may be the only Intermediate Silver in the Senior Amateur competition and you may end up with first place, but it was actually the only place.
You can usually tell some of this, like who’s dancing with a pro and whose dancing with an amateur, by the number the man wears on his back, but then there are amateurs like Richard, who dance with both and who dances in everything from Intermediate Silver to Full Gold levels. Yes, it’s confusing.
The morning was given over to smooth dances waltz, foxtrot, tango and Viennese waltz. Then while the country dancers took over the floor, Deb ran upstairs and put on her Latin outfit, changing everything from the top of her head to the bottom of her feet. I have to confess, I thought the second half of the day was more fun – salsa, samba, paso dobles, bolero, even the hustle! Though I would have loved to get on the floor and rock out a bit, one look at the precise costumed dancers on the floor kept me permanently bolted to my chair, but I might have chair-danced a little.
By the end of the day, all the sambas and rumbas ran together and I did good to keep from falling asleep. The judges changed out every hour. I was glued to the table announcing heats and taking photos. I love DEb, but I was done.
Wrapping It Up
The Gala Buffet didn’t have much pizazz to it. I could have saved myself a few dollars, but we didn’t know that. After the buffet, the dancers went in to participate in the awards ceremony and see more dancing. I went to bed. I didn’t go to sleep until later, but I read while I reveled in the quiet of our hotel room, hoping the ringing in my ears would go away some day.
The next morning we got packed up and met for breakfast there in the hotel. After that we loaded up the car and headed home. I was glad to get there. I had a quiet day at the scrapbooking table and finished up my 2022 everyday album. I am now officially caught up.
Come back next week, Deb and I will be attending the Bubbles and Bunco Brunch to benefit Lone Star CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates) – a fun party with bottomless mimosas and a great cause. All the other usual things will be happening, too. So, stay in touch.
jane sadek 