vicgoodwin's posterous

Recap on the weekends activities.  This weekend was spent both on Hubpages and on Facebook. I have found a great way to spend a little time when on Facebook.  The game I have recently picked up is called Backyard Monsters.  The game is so fun that I have created several pages on how to play and what to expect from the game. These two pages will get you started with hints and tips that will speed you on your way.

The game is a Civilization, Age of Empires type of game and has a very involved tutorial which will really get you off to a great start. The stories that I have written about the game should teach you everything you need to know about getting started and what creatures you should create in order to protect your village . If you are more aggressive, there is a thorough description of each monster so that you will choose the best monsters to build before you take off to attack other villages. 
The game has both defense and offense available so that you can play in the most aggressive style or be able to concentrate on building up your monster army to protect your lovely village.  Much like Starcraft, you will have to face monsters that come over trying to zerg your village. Towers will assist you in keeping your buildings and creatures safe.

If you just enjoy the match three type of games more than the war games,  I have created a few pages to help you enjoy Jungle Jewels and Bejeweled Blitz. 

I am on vacation in Winchester and having a wonderful time with Angie, Tony, Jacob, Nathan and Sarah.  The temperatures here are chilly to me but  I am acclimating.
We have been playing with the gorgeous baby and the awesome boys.  They have a lot of questions about their cousins and life in the desert. They are talking about coming to Arizona this time next year.
I was given this trip and it was the best mothers day present. I have missed Angie and family so much. They have such a great life here, I wouldn't even ask them to relocate to Arizona even though I would love to have them close.
 
I have tasted yogurt.  Never have I ever had any but Angie coaxed me into a bite of hers and I have to admit I did not hear the little cultures screaming as I ate the bite.  I admit the flavor of the yogurt was tasty and I may eat some another time.

Tony fixed my laptop power supply so I am now able to access the internet with my laptop.  Exciting times for me. I have missed this laptop. The dogs chewed through the cord and Tony soldered it back together. Hip Hip Hooray I am mobile again.
Sarah has the most adorable face. I love it. She has hige blue eyes and dark lashes. She is really such a beauty. She is a sweetheart.  She loves to be held of course and loves to play with her feet.

The first night I was here the temperature dropped to 37 degrees and I was totally freezing.  I do not think we dropped below forty this whole winter in Arizona, and I was not dressed for freezing or near freezing weather. Lucky for me it is warming up. It is in the 60's right now and moving up.

I am staying here until the 23rd and loving every second of it.

This year the Great Smoky Mountain National Park is 75 years old.  That is one thing I remember about being a small child, the trips to the Smokies.  Going to the Deep Creek Campground and the smell of the campfire.  My Grandmother cooking an amazing breakfast over that fire and the thick Black coffee that we were (as a treat) allowed to have a little taste. The fishing in Deep Creek river, I remember the fishing because we all cried about having to eat the fish we had caught.

The story line of Glee is so perfect and it makes it one very entertaining show.  Never let it be said that I did not admit that the characters are quirky and fun too.  I started watching on the first episode and I have really enjoyed it. They have brought musicals back to television in a great and fun manner. Have you seen this show? It is on the Fox network and the songs that they pick each week are such great choices. 
It is funny how they do the open casting call for people to try out for the show.  Lea Michele is adorable her voice is amazing and her expressions make the show even more fun. 

Ok!  This is where I come clean about how I believe in my twisted mind that life is a musical, and to know that there is at least one other person that believes the same just makes my day!  That was what first attracted me to the show and since then I have just fallen in love with the characters and the story of the program. Even the bad bad Sue makes me laugh.  She is so twisted  that she makes me laugh. 
But then they do one of the production numbers and I forget how evil Sue is and get caught up in the life is Broadway "lets put on a show" thinking and I am once again singing along with the Glee crew.

It has taken a long time for a fun musical based show to come back to television and I am personally so glad to see it this year.  I hope that I will not be rudely waken up to find that it has been canceled and I will have to go back to making my own musicals to reflect on my own day to day life, without being able to see a group as talented as the Glee cast do it for me.

My poor children can remember me singing to my cat and calling it the "Tonto Broadway Show" (A one-cat show).  Its memories like these that make them stronger in the end.  Either they get strong or they create musicals of their own when they become adults. Now there is a third option, they find shows like Glee to keep them entertained.

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How funny is it that someone my age is following Lady Gaga, but I can't help it. I find that she is so talented and so very smart.  Yes, she dresses in the most bizarre manner, but her fashion sense is some of her appeal.  Each one of her videos are so fascinating to me. She has a dramatic flair that just pulls me in.  She is very intelligent. She is fluid in French, adds that to her lyrics, and makes the song perfect.

I am not some fall down Gaga fanatic, although I do look for her songs and sing them when they are on.  Even when I am not in the shower, I am belting out some Alejandro or Telephone.    Pairing up with Beyonce was one of the smartest things Gaga could have done in my opinion. They have gotten quite a nice sound going together. They have had two songs out now and each one is better than the one before.

The other day I was watching a live version of Gaga on stage and she fell off of her 6 inch heels while she was dancing. That had to be the most upsetting thing for her to have happen. but with grace she stood up and carried on.  I would have crawled under the stage. That is one of the main differences in she and I .  She has nerves of steel and is willing to be out there performing in front of thousands of people, while I get nervous just talking to several people at a time.

So when someone tells you they love Lady Gaga think of her as more than just a sexy singer and realize that she is going to have the entire music industry wrapped around her little finger soon, if she hasn't already. Her House of Gaga is on the brink of a take over.  Watch for the line of clothing that will no doubt be coming from the house of Gaga soon.  She is inspired after all by Fashion Week while she writes her music.  That is why she can do the model stomp and it works with the beat of all her songs.  

Yes I have a thing for Lady Gaga...  A respect for her that is hard to explain. And at my age, shocking I know.

Thankfully I do not have a grandchild old enough for prom. I was listening to some teens talking about their prom and I was so thankful that none of my grandchildren are old enough to be caught up in that side show.
These kids had to rent a limo and they stayed in a hotel afterward for an after party.  They treated the entire things like it was Oscar night.  The dresses shoes and purses are extravagant and ever so beautiful and cost their parents a small fortune. When I was in high school my prom was nice, but my dress cost less than $100.00 since my grandmother was paying for it.  I got to shop at one of the places that she had a charge card so selection wasn't all that great.  There was not a whole lot of young lady fashions in that store.  My dress was pretty but it wasn't like these designer gowns these girls are wearing.   We didn't have a limo my date borrowed his dad's car and we were really thinking we had done something.
I started thinking about how these boys got enough courage to ask these little teenage diva's out for the evening and were they worried about the cost or did that fall directly on the parents.
I started thinking that by the time my grandchildren started doing the proms they might have to rent a little plane and how much would tuxes rent for and how would my poor son pay for 5 children to go to prom one after the other and year after year.  We are only 8 years away form the oldest starting to get prom ideas. She is probably thinking about the designer she wants to use even now.  It is never to early to plan your dream prom it would seem.
 Sure we thinking passing, oh dear in a few years they will want to start dating.  However, that will be probably somewhat overshadowed by the application process  for the loan that they will need to take out to pay for all these children to go to prom.
Will my daughter have to take her sons to one side and have them read how to pages to learn how to cope with asking out a girl to prom and know that they are reading pages like this how to get laid at the prom
So I send this out with the warning to my son and daughters, start saving now. You only have 8 years until the limo needs to be rented and the Gowns purchased.

This weekend I did some research and found how to make a ham and I had rave reviews on it, so I wanted to share what I had found. First of all the calories of a ham are much less than I would have thought so it is a great alternative for me with this new way of cooking.  Since I am trying to be healthy and more aware of the calories of everything I eat, this was great news. 
Cooking a ham after reading on the web turned out to be more simple than I had expected.  I have really only cooked a turkey and left the ham to other people, now I am willing and able to have both meats for the holidays.

Turkey is always a good Holiday food, but I am not that fond of it. So this will make everyone happy. The best directions I found were telling me to slow cook the ham and that was how I did it.

So the secret is the honey based glaze that I placed over the top of the ham. I mixed honey and brown sugar and drizzled it over the ham once it was finished baking.   The taste was awesome.

Knowing that the honey taste only adds to finished product, makes it nice to be able to complete the taste without having to pay the money that honey baked hams charges.  I am still looking for directions to spiral cut it so that it looks like a store bought ham. this ham was falling off the bone so maybe I cooked it too long and to get the spiral look I would need to cook it less time.  That is something I am still looking for an answer about.
 I would love to have more recipes for things to do with this ham that is left over. I have never seen so much ham leftovers in my life. 
I am going to use the bone to cook some navy beans, but I still need more ideas for the ham its self. 
What kinds of meals can I make with the extra ham that is in my freezer now?   I think that it will last a while in the freezer, so there is plenty of time for ideas.

Send me ideas please. I do not want this ham to go to waste and I am afraid that with my limited knowledge on ham recipes it will just sit there.

My computer has been dragging. I have seen the difference when writing emails as well as when I am playing my games  At first I thought it was that I keep so many windows open, then I realized it was just really running slowly.  So I started looking for information on how to make it run faster.  I ran across a few places that seemed to have some insight to what was going on, so I am going to give them a shot.  There was one Mahalo page on the topic I was looking for and I found some very interesting options.

So if course I wanted to share them with you. how-to-make-your-computer-run-faster  This is where I found some very helpful tips. I never really thought that much about malware. I knew about spy wear but not that it could slow down my computer as well as cause it to not be secure. So that one piece of advice caused me to look further and then I realized I could compress my files and clean off my desktop.  Again ways I had not thought of on my own.  
Now I might have said this before, but the dust is the worst part of living in Arizona, and so I have to clean and maintain my computer all the time.  And since I have Beau and Arrow the two  Australian shepherds and they shed so much keeping cans of compressed air is a must.  When I looked into the back of my computer I could see there was some dust in there and I am sure it is mixed with the pups hair. It seems I need to clean the interior as well as the exterior of my tower even more often if I want the computer to run as fast as possible. Seems you should be cleaning it with alcohol and q-tips and I have not been doing that except on the keyboard. So I guess this slowness is really something that I should have been addressing for a while now.
 

So I am off to clean the computer and see if I can speed it up some. I can't very well play World of Warcraft if I am lagging. If you are looking for information on this subject too then I know a great place to get information.

There is a whole section on how to remove unwanted and unused programs and since I have been known to download games thinking that I will play them at a later date, this is probably where some of the slowness is coming from.  I will let you know how it goes when I get it all clean and all the old programs removed.  I hope that if you have the same problems that this helps you some.

I am trying out Postrous. Nothing like a grandma with a new blogging tool!!!