Happy Fourth of July from Boom This!

Have a wonderful, safe holiday. Enjoy your friends and family and all the great food.

Best, always!

Baby Boomers Love Change (not!)

We are in the midst of updating our boys' bedrooms. It is long overdue, no doubt, but still hard to do.

Gone are the primary-colored checks, stripes, stars, jets and soccer players. In their places will be a mint green (grown up!)bedroom and a new craft room for me, which isn't all bad. I know that.

But I will miss walking into their rooms and seeing the old paper which always generated a slew of good memories of when they were little guys.

They haven't been little guys for a long time, and I came to grips with that, of course, since I am not a total loon (at least not most of the time). But jogging some of those memories was often a nice thing.

Eating Healthy

Eating Healthy is not an easy thing to do. On the surface, it would seem that it is, but we all know better.

And even if you are strong enough to do it most of the time, there will still be times when you can't resist a little goodie or more than one. What can be done? Hmmmm. Wish I knew! I am trying to figure it out, like so many of you.

I did take a positive step today and bought a new book entitled Women, Food and God by Geneen Roth. That ought to about cover it!

I have read some of her other books and liked them a lot. She also writes a column in Prevention magazine.

So I will look to Geneen to help me figure out why we can't just eat healthy all the time and be done with all of this worrying and fussing about.

Stay tuned for an update to see how I am doing!

Junk no more

Have the junkmen coming this week to take an old TV out of the bedroom. It's a big one and would be nearly impossible to have amateurs move it.

We have to get it out before the new carpet comes. We had water damage from snow and ice build up on our roof this winter. The insurance company came through with funds to fix things up again. So it will take baby steps to get it all done.

Like so many projects, it will be good when it's done. Now I am in the middle of a mess that I won't see the end of for awhile as we have other damage to repair and some other projects to get done.

Love 'em when they are done. Hate 'em while they are going on. Isn't that always the way?

Good-bye, Robert B. Parker

With all of the information zooming around us at any given moment, it's hard to beleive that I missed an event which brought me such sadness. Robert B. Parker, the author of so many mysteries starring the quirky Spenser private eye, died in January of this year at his desk while writing.

I had no idea that he had died. I only found out last night after watching a Jesse Stone movie on TV, which was based on another character Parker had created. When I saw the dedication to him on the screen, I rushed to the compuer hoping that it was a relative of his who had died.

The Spenser books are some of my all-time favorites. I love the great dialogue, the friendship between Spenser and Hawk, and the interplay between the Boston PI and his girlfriend of many years, Susan.

I read that there are a couple of Spenser novels yet unpublished. Here's hoping that they come onto the market soon to give all Parker groupies one last outing with the characters they love.

It's hard to believe there will be no more novels written by this terrific writer. I hope he realized how much pleasure he gave to so many through his books. What a legacy to leave behind.

Good-bye, Robert B. Parker. We will miss you.

Yoo-Hoo, Birds!

Today we are awaiting the arrival of some of our bird friends to the new feeders we have hung from our upper deck.

They were all ga-ga over the seed we have been putting out, but today things are quiet. Guess they are taking it easy, getting used to the new feeders before they commit to a visit. That's the smart thing to do, and since I have begun dealing with birds, squirrels and the like, I have decided that they are much smarter than we would like to believe.

For one thing, the nasty blue jays have designed a way to get seed to their mates and friends. One of them perches on the feeder and knocks seed to the ground with his beak. It's much easier to eat it that way, although he may have to shoo a squirerel away from his bounty once in a while. For a blue jay, this goes with the job description.

Back from the Beach

We took a few days off to visit Ocean City, MD. It was warm and sunny and pretty much perfect. Since we were there during the "off season" -- typical for us -- there were not too many folks around. The Springfest celebration on the Boardwalk promised to bring bigger crowds and kick off the summer fun.

Beach vacations are some of the best kind. A lot of walking, shelling, reading, eating, ice cream and then repeat. I got a little reading done including starting Anna Karenina, which is proving to be a very LONG book. But I will keep at it and shoudld finish sometime this year!