Do you remember Steve Martin in "Father of the Bride?" Certainly you remember Martin Short who played Franck Eggelhoffer, the wedding planner. But wait a minute; this movie is now 19 years old, so maybe you don't remember it or the characters. Yes, it is Saturday morning and I thought I would share some personal news and show you how if your planning a wedding your wedding planner no longer needs to hire an executive assistant, as we are discovering that the "Father of the Bride" role of Howard Weinstein can be replaced with Google, Franck's New Virtual Executive Assistant.
But first things first...Dennis' and my oldest son, Aaron, became engaged to Allison (Alli) Gubanich on October 15, 2009. Dan and I were in Las Vegas when all the excitement happened. As I understand it, Aaron set up the Scrabble board (both of his Grandmas would be proud) to welcome Alli home from class/work and the words spelled out "Will you marry me?" (Of course, I questioned how those words could ever really come together on a Scrabble board- to which Aaron rolled his eyes and shook his head - he is really a romantic!)
Aaron and Alli, the A Team, have known each other for quite a few years, but started dating in the Summer of 2007, at the time they both worked at Bluepoint. Alli is from the Philadelphia area. Her parents are Kathy and Chris Gubanich. She has two sisters, Nikki and Jessica. Dennis and I had fun meeting the Gubanich family when Alli graduated from the University of Arizona in May 2008. And of course since we moved to Tucson in March 2008 we have really enjoyed spending more time with Aaron and Alli.
Ok, so now you know the engagement happened October 15, 2009, and by the morning of October 17, 2009, Nikki Gubanich was sharing a Google document with members of both sides of the family! Nikki is Alli's older sister and she just finished her MBA this past Summer (congratulations by the way) so she volunteered to be the Project Manager. What is funny is that Alli said to me "I had never heard of Google documents and how you can share them!" So now we can all participate real time and keep each other informed.
This morning it occurred to me that this past week has been so crazy with returning from Las Vegas, catching up on work, that we (Dennis and I) really have not taken time to call and congratulate Kathy and Chris! I haven't even sent them a Gmail or written on their Facebook walls! I promise to do that today; however, I also decided to create a Picasa Album (Google Product) and share it with the family members. This album will allow us to enjoy old memories and chronicle the new memories over the next year. Google (AKA Howard Weinstein) will assist with Blogger, Gmail, Google Documents, and Picasa Web Albums. And that is just for starters.
So here's to the A Team (Aaron and Alli), Chris, Kathy, Nikki, Jessica, Dennis and Dan...congratulations one and all!
P.S. The picture on the Photo Album cover was taken Halloween 2008!
Today is July 4th, our federal holiday celebrating 233 years of Independence. While I wish all of you a Happy Fourth of July, I would like to highlight Lady Liberty. Happy 4th of July Lady Liberty!
This July 4th is special for Lady Liberty. For the first time since shortly after September 11, 2001, a limited number of visitors will be allowed to climb the spiral staircase to the crown. Have you ever been to the Statue of Liberty? I will tell you that of all of the majestic places I have visited in our United States, Liberty Island is by far the most awe inspiring, more so than Mt. Rushmore, Yellowstone National Park, Yosemite, the Golden Gate Bridge, Bryce Canyon, Zion National Park, St. Louis Arch, Hoover Dam, Denali, Everglades, Washington, D.C., Arlington National Cemetery. But enough about my travel guide.
I invite any of you who have the opportunity to visit New York City, even those of you who live in New York City, to make time to visit Liberty Island and Ellis Island. If you are unfamiliar with Ellis Island, it served as a federal immigration station for steamship passengers from 1892 until 1954. But I digress...as you approach Lady Liberty on the ferry you might recall great movie scenes from Titanic, Funny Girl, to name a few...it is amazing.
Beginning this July 4th, 30 people per hour will be allowed to climb up and down the 346-354 (but whose counting) steps to the crown, that is about 250 guests per day. I have never been to the Crown, but my sons have. I believe it was the spring of 1990...here is my Picasa web album of one of my trips to see the Lady with Aaron and Dan.
Take a minute to watch this NBC Nightly News video of a trip to Liberty Island and the Crown.
Today I cannot begin to impart all that you can see and learn when you visit both Liberty and Ellis Islands. But you can stay in touch with The Lady, as she does Twitter...and Flickr. She is a social lady!
P.S. If you really want to have some fun, then visit the Ellis Island Foundation and search for your relatives who may have immigrated to the United States through this station.
Downloading the original pictures uploaded to Picasa all at once is easy if you're using Firefox. DownloadThemAll is a plug-in for Firefox which can be used for many things but I have found it most useful for me when needing access to original pictures from Picasa.
1) Download the plug-in DownloadThemAll and install it to your Firefox browser.
2) Go to the Picasa album where you want to download the pictures from
3) Picasa provides the RSS feed for the pictures so all you have to do is click on RSS on the right hand side of that page to bring up the feed.
4) Still with me? Now just right click on the screen and click on DownloadThemAll.
4-a) Save the files in a directory you specify and select Images under the filters.
5) PRESS START
One thing I am still trying to figure out with Picasa is how to display a random image from the album using the RSS feed... Any suggestions?
Today is the 65th Anniversary of D-Day and this past Monday Americans waited to hear the news of General Motors' bankruptcy. Yes, the same GM whose industrial power helped our country be on the winning side in WWII. The news of this bankruptcy was startling, even though we have had so many shocking economical events in the past nine months, I feel this news hits a part of us that is not just about the economy, but our life's memories. If you read my Saturday post regularly, you know I am not an economist, and I do not have an MBA. I have, although, worked for major US corporations, mainly banks, and in my day was quite proficient in the automobile financing world. But today's post is not about economics, albeit I am heartsick for all those workers impacted by this latest chapter in the American automobile industry. No, today's blog is about my memories of GM. And so I say: Good Night GM...Que sera, sera.
For the record, my life's memories as they relate to automobiles are not just about General Motors' products. For example, I do remember fondly my mother learning to drive in late 1953. We had what I believe was a very used Plymouth. Then one evening in 1954 I remember my father coming home from work. When he came through the door I ran to him and grilled him, as little ones do, what had he brought us? I expected ice cream, but to my surprise, he smiled and said: "I brought you a new car!" Outside sat a brand new 1954 Plymouth sedan. It was two toned, dark brown and beige. And it was in that car in 1956 that we (our the family of six) traveled from San Diego to Great Falls, Montana, to show off our new baby brother. It was during this trip(I was 6.5 years old) that the magical car radio repeatedly played "Que Sera, Sera", (the 1957 Academy Award winning song from the Alfred Hitchcock thriller, The Man Who Knew Too Much.)
By the time we reached Montana I had memorized this wonderful song and my father happily had me sing it for his brothers and sisters! Memories.
My days and nights with General Motors began in 1959. My father traded in the 1954 Plymouth and purchased a 1959 Chevrolet Impala. It was two toned (green and white), no accounting for taste. I never cared for the color, but it seemed so fancy. In 1964 my father traded up for the latest Chevrolet Impala, four door, a really big engine, and a pale blue. He was beside himself. See a typical window_sticker.pdf here. Following the General Motors' Mantra...my father loved to see the USA in his Chevrolet. In the summer of 1964 our family made another jaunt to Montana and the song of the summer was the "The Girl from Ipanema", which won the Grammy for Record of the Year in 1965. I believe everyone had a love affair with this car...even Hertz featured this model in their Rent a Car ads in 1964. (I am sure the only reason I saved this ad, which you will see in my Picasa Web Slide show, from my 1965 Hilton Hotel room was because of the Impala.)
The summer of 1967 my parents drove me to college in this '64 Impala. I wore some flowers in my hair and they dutifully dropped me at the University of San Fransisco and tried to avoid getting lost in Haight/Ashbury on their way out of town!
Here are some car facts about me: 1. Since 1968 through today I have owned 13 vehicles. 41 years...13 vehicles. Two(2) were General Motors products, three (3) were Chrysler products and eight(8) were foreign models. 2. What I love best about my General Motors vehicles is this: In 1980 we brought our new born Aaron home from the hospital in the 1979 Buick Regal and in 1984 we brought Daniel home from the hospital in our 1984 Chevrolet S10 Blazer. 3. In 1997, Dennis and I drove across country with Aaron and Daniel in our 1994 Dodge Caravan...more memories.
My friends know this about me. I am not a car person. I do not care about cars, I hate worrying about vehicle upkeep, I would love to have all of the money I have spent over the past 41 years buying, renting, leasing, insuring, and repairing vehicles. I would happily live in Manhattan, Chicago, or San Francisco and take mass transit. But I will never trade the memories of being brave enough to ride with my mother when she was learning to drive and I was only four, or my father settling in the driver's seat for a Sunday drive in the country, or road trips to Montana, Las Vegas, Denali, Howe's Cavern, the Bronx, Washington, D. C...and let's not forget front bench seats, no seat belts, no A/C, crossing the desert with a canvas radiator bag.
So today, que sera, sera, whatever will be, will be. But for some reason I cannot bear to say good-bye to GM. I will remember the great ads, Dinah Shore, and my favorite from 2002.
I will say good-night to GM, savor my memories and wait and hope the reinvention is successful.
P.S. Let me hear about your GM memories and enjoy my YouTube video selections and Picasa Web Album.
P. P. S. A good friend just read this blog and he reminded me that in 1960 my father purchased a used 1940 Cadillac mourning car. It had jump seats and held about 10-12 people. It was the real fore-runner in our family for a mini-van. Go to this blog post to read about my dad and see a photo of this crazy car.
About a week ago I sat in a wonderful Greek restaurant with my friend and client Will Bruzzo. Don't worry...Dennis was there, as well. I have known Will for at least five years. He is a successful criminal defense attorney in Orange County, California. While having lunch we talked about Will's parents, Aldo and Sarah. They own a villa and winery in Vicenza, Italy. Since 1985 Aldo and Sarah, with their son Alan, have been living the dream of owning an Italian vineyard.
As Will talked about their adventure he reminded me that Aldo and Sarah, whom I met a few years ago when they were visiting from Italy, have decided to retire and sell the villa and winery, Ca' Bruzzo. The beautiful Ca' Bruzzo Winery and Villa is for sale! Of course, my mind wandered back to 2003 when I first saw the movie, Under the Tuscan Sun, and I recalled how Dennis and I were both so taken by the story that we rushed home to see how easy would it be to purchase an Italian villa. Such dreams...now instead of living under the Tuscan sun, I find myself living under the Tucson sun!
But I digress...seriously, did you ever dream of changing your lifestyle, learning a new trade? I think we all do this from time to time. But every once in a while people actually take the plunge and just do it! So, if you find yourself at a crossroads in your life and want to think about starting a new chapter, then I invite you to check out Ca' Bruzzo. For all descriptive details and photos, you can visit Piedmont Properties. Here is a teaser...my own Picasa Web Album of Ca' Bruzzo.
Here is a YouTube video of Vicenza...enjoy.
Remember it is Saturday morning, the day for dreams. And when tonight comes, you might wish upon a star like a famous woodworker Geppetto and your dreams could come true.
Let me know if you decide to live your dream of owning an Italian vineyard.
On the right side of the page above the photo location map, in your own albums you will see "Link to this album" Click it, and you should then see a link to "Embed Slideshow" Click it too,
Now the fun begins, you should get a pop up to "Create a portable slideshow for your website, blog, Myspace, etc."
Use the pull down to select the size of your Picasa Slideshow, for this blog post I used, "Large 400px"
I left the default setting to "Autoplay"
Copy all of the embed text, and paste into your blogger blog thru the "Edit HTML" tab.
If a picture tells a thousand words, a slideshow tells 1000x the number of shots used!
I hope you have enjoyed this walk thru, if there are any other tips you would like to learn,
I am sitting at my desk right now. It is Saturday 6:51AM and the view from my Tucson home office is pretty spectacular. The doves are nesting in the porch eves, the hummingbirds are fluttering around the blooming ocotillo and the prickly pear are preparing to bloom. As a write, a little bunny just walked up on to the porch enjoying the early morning weather. This week the Tucson desert around our home has been particularly beautiful and I thought I would tell you about three ways to enjoy the living desert.
I don't want any of you to worry that my hints are going to cause you to do anything too strenuous. In fact you don't even have to physically be in the desert to enjoy the living desert. And remember, this is Judy writing today. I gave up hiking, backpacking, camping, and bicycling a long time ago. So here we go...
1. Rent or buy a copy of Walt Disney's The Living Desert. This film was released in November 1953! Yes, I know that is over 55 years ago, but it won the academy award in 1954 for best documentary and if you have never seen it, then you are in for a surprise. Below you will see a You Tube video clip from the movie that deals with the cute ground squirrels. My parents took my sisters and me to see this movie in 1954 and I have never forgotten the beauty of the blooming cactus.
2. If you live in a desert environment, particularly around Tucson, AZ, then just take a walk in your neighborhood. It is spring time in the desert and for the next few months the cactus will take turns producing beautiful flowers and fruit. Just yesterday I was retrieving my neighbor's mail and I had to stand back and wonder at the simple beauty of the living desert. And if you really think that a desert tortoise is just to be seen in the movies, here is a photo that Dan Helfand took last summer in Gates Pass a few miles from our home in Tucson..
3. For those of you who can not rent or buy the Living Desert and do not live in the desert, I invite you to watch my slide show of a RED TORCH CACTUS. This cactus is located outside my bedroom and Daniel decided to chronicle the blooming process. These photos were taken over the course of 24 hours. And you should know the flowers really are only in full bloom for one day! (I created this slide show using Googles' Picasa Web Albums.)
So I will sign off for the day, more living desert for me to see, sans snakes!
P.S. If for some reason my slide show is really not of a Red Torch Cactus, I hope one of my readers will correct me.
Follow us on
