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Hug That Tree!

Awww, g’wan...hug the tree.  It deserves a little attention. After the bushwhacker weather situations we’ve had around here the last couple of weeks, maybe we’d ought to pay a bit more attention to  the greenery instead of taking it for granted all of the time.  Many real estate agents will tell you that one of the things that will sell...

News Flash!

Here’s a news flash : Tbilisi, Georgia (the former Soviet Union region, not the Peachtree State): “Sausage-wielding extremists” (There’s a phrase to ponder, right?) invade a vegan café –Café Kiwi--during a film festival in the neighborhood and proceeded to fling  meat and fish at the café patrons.  The ten to fifteen men, wearing sausages around their necks and waving skewers...

ZZZZzzzzzzz-zzz–zzzzz

Bob snores. I can hear him across a room or in my lap.  He has a sort of combination wheeze and whistle. I’m not bringing this up to clue anybody in on my—virtually non-existent--love-life, I’m calling it to the attention of the members of Bob’s Fan Club.  He has fans.  One of these days he’s going to stop just sitting on...

Two Steps Forward, One Step Back: A multipart saga of dealing with the Medicare Part D Rx insurance industry

Previously I explained how the Ohio Public Employees Retirement System (OPERS) made the decision to stop offering supplemental medical insurance to us retirees and, to assuage that decision, hired a firm we’ll call Firm XXX to help us all get our own supplemental Medicare insurance.  Mind you, I am not blaming OPERS for getting out of the insurance management...

Amen for Jacks!

Can I get an “AMEN!” out there? Keep your fingers crossed; Spring may actually be here this time.  For the occasion, all of the Jack-in-the-Pulpits at my place have climbed up to their little green lecterns and are  giving us palefaces H-E-double toothpicks for all they’re worth.  They are in the front where the ferns are finally unfurling, they are...

Meet Bob, he is a cool cat!

Bobcats, though seldom seen, are the most common wildcat in North America. The Bobcat, Lynx rufus, is named for its short, bobbed tail. They are medium-sized cats and are slightly smaller, but similar in appearance to their cousin, the lynx.  Rumors of Bobcats being seen on Headwaters Trail, in Pondbrook Conservation area west of Aurora, and several other areas...

“You’re your own worst enemy.”

As a professor and student advisor,  my father spent a lot of time listening to people’s goals and their struggles on their way to meet them. Most often, these people would be highly critical, either of others or of themselves. My father would analyze their motives, character flaws and excuses as they made their case. More often than not —...

Parks and Trees…

Well...isn’t April –now that we’ve finally got some weather that resemble Spring—just the greenest month! We’ve got Earth Day.  We’ve got Arbor Day.   We’ve got Happy Birthday for the National Park System (which will actually be running all year to mark the centennial of the founding of the NPS in 1916...by President Woodrow Wilson, no less—at the direction of...

Cicadas Back by Popular Demand… Not!

As we make the transition from spring into summer, the wildflowers are fading, flowering trees and shrubs are ablaze in color, and the mosquitoes, deer flies, and other insects are making their presence known in one way or the other. We are all too familiar with the biting and blood sucking insects that cause us so much irritation, but...

Boaty McBoatface

Always be careful of what you wish for; you may get it.  A warning nicely illustrated by a recent item on various news media. It seems that some British outfit called the National Environmental Research Council, preparing to launch a brand-new $287 million—aw, let’s call it $300 even, like all of those government project go—polar(south) research vessel, thought it would...

Bean counters try to control us

This is the ongoing story of how the greedy medical prescription drug insurance companies prey on us older retired people, who they presume won’t fight back but will just lay down and get steam rolled by them.  No one seems to have our back! This is my story so I am here to tell you that it is true...

Six Reasons A Real Estate Deal Can Fall Apart

You fell deeply in love with an updated Victorian, knocked a few grand off the asking price, and maybe even bought a spiffy camelback sofa for your new living room. Sweet! Still, until you close and the keys are in hand, there’s a sliver of dread in your mind: What if your dream of homeownership falls apart at the...

Bean Counters: A multipart saga of dealing with the Medicare Part D Rx insurance industry

This is the ongoing story of how the greedy medical/ prescription insurance companies prey on us older retired people, who, they presume, won’t fight back but will just lie down and get steam rolled by them.  This is my story, my experience, so I am here to tell you that it is true and I tell it to...

Fiscal Fashions

So...I’m listening to a radio program called “Marketplace” and discovered an interesting idea from some economic guru—Michael Bloomburg or Warren Buffett or some such multimillionaire.  Whoever this dude was, he said that he frequently followed the MUI—the Men’s Underwear Index(not to be confused with the Modern University of Information and Technology or the Multilingual User Interface)—when deciding the type...

Prodigality

O.K., I can definitely understand the viewpoint of the older brother in the Prodigal Son scenario and I have to wonder if there might be a story to be told about how family life went on after the younger brother returned, all contrite and  grateful for a crust of bread, let alone the Fatted Calf.  The older brother, upon...

It’s All About The Home

Today I had a customer in the store looking at bar stools.  Before we could get to the fun stuff like style and color, we had a few “technical” issues to iron out.  Issues like what size and how many were going to fit at her kitchen island.  It was at this point that I realized I could turn...

Return of the Prodigal Cat

I started with a dog, you know. Her name was Samantha, which rapidly became “Sammie”; her mother was a purebred apricot poodle   and her father was a traveling salesman of some sort...whatever he was selling, she bought it.  Anyway, Sammie was a nice dog, a good dog...and not much more discreet than her mama—had three puppies under the couch...

Minks and Otters

As promised, we will continue up the family tree of the toughest family on the block, the Mustelids. This week we will be discussing the “middle “children of the family. But make no mistake, they are just as tough, fearless, and bloodthirsty as their siblings. Next time we will discuss the big boys, the Martens, Fishers, and Wolverines. Now...

“Respect is earned; not given.”

While Marlon Brando in The Godfather usually gets the credit for this quote, he was actually borrowing a bit of wisdom from  the Pakistani Beggar King Hussein Nishah (1538–1599), who wrote, “Treat people the way you want to be treated. Talk to people the way you want to be talked to. Respect is earned, not given.” My father often drove...

The Name Game

Speaking of winter storms....  This whole naming thing apparently started with the Weather Channel and a Latin class somewhere.  This was apparently so that the on-screen prognosticators could get us all to focus on a particular weather event at a particular time and to nudge us toward acknowledging the fact that all of this weather stuff is related rather...

It’s All About The Home

Welcome to “It’s all about the Home”.  Please allow me to introduce myself.  My name is Jane Ulmer and I am the co-owner of The Wayside Workshop in Aurora.  The Wayside Workshop is our family business that my dad started in 1976 in Willoughby, Ohio.  We spent about 6 years in Chardon before moving to Aurora Farms where we...

The Old Farmer’s Almanac revisited.

What Dave Barry always calls “an alert reader” stopped me the other day in the PCDL and asked if I wasn’t going to write  some more stuff drawing on the abovementioned publication and it seemed like a good idea, so here we are.  The Old Farmer speaks : (Freely translated by yours truly) What is it that everyone quotes the...

Welcome to 2016 — Need a Calendar??

Well, here we go again.  ”Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme.” As you, no doubt recognized, the above aphorism attributed to Jean-Baptist Alphonse Karr, means “the more things change, the more they remain the same.”  (You might also be aware that albums by the groups Cinderella, Machine Head and Bon Jovi used the phrase, either as album or song...

Not my fault!

Working at Garrettsville’s Precinct A  for thirteen hours on Election Day—with a fairly steady stream of citizens exercising their rights, good for them—was enough to occupy my time; I had no occasion to commit mayhem on the Portage County Board of Elections computer system, though I’m sure there are those who probably think that I could do it by...

“Don’t stir up the hornet’s nest!”

“Why go looking for trouble?” Dad would ask. “Some trouble is sure to find you at some point in life, but only a fool makes himself a target by intentionally causing a commotion.” Don’t stir up the hornet’s nest is a familiar idiom, likening hornets to angry humans, dating back to the first half of the 1700s. In case you...

Turnpike Proud!

Well, that was interesting...and informative...and fun too. The Ohio Turnpike had an Open House on Saturday, October 24, celebrating its 60th Anniversary; it officially opened on October 1, 1955, all 241 miles of it.  The construction took 38 months, in sections, employed some 10,000 workers—and 2300 bulldozers—at a cost of some $326 million, give or take.  It connected to the...

Memorial Trash

Another Trick-or-Treat for adults? I am referring, of course, to the semi-annual trash pick-up in the village—not to be confused with the weekly services provided (paid for on an individual residence basis) to dispose of our pitch-worthy household detritus and garbage.  Garbage Eve is observed every Wednesday night; no carol-singing or candles in the windows that I know of. The Trash...

Stuck in Ohio…And Proud Of It!!

During my lifetime I have been blessed with many opportunities to experience nature and our natural world. I have been to National Parks from Maine to California, talked to God in a grove of Redwoods, touched sequoias, climbed to 14,000 feet in the Rockies to sooth my feet in a cold alpine lake, hiked part of the Appalachian Trail...

Forget the Memoir

Everybody is writing memoirs lately.   It’s the literary style du jour in all of the magazines and reviews.  So I’m thinking, hey, my memories are as good as anybody’s, why not hop to it and make the big bucks? One reason may be that my memories are certainly just fine, but getting them to show up on cue is...

Whadda Prize

It’s awards season just about all of the time now.  There are awards in television, for the theatre, for movies, for sports of every stripe and description, for just about every genre of music that one can think of( and some that I don’t really classify as music, but, rather as “entertainment”)—country, pop, rap, classical, you name it.  But...

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