Margaret from Upstate NY

and Welcome, Margaret!
Glad to have you join...you probably know your way around after being on site. Hope you enjoy your membership! Blessings to you!

the weather is turning cold here near Chicago but the sun was out and we enjoyed a day downtown - going to the Zoo to shoot some pictures and enjoyed the lake view. Enjoy your time on the site, Mary

Welcome to sudokuland where the people are friendly and conversation good but most of all enjoy and drop in some time if you feel like having a chat, cheers.

Thank you all for your welcome.
Vibrant Vici from California: what part? I have family south of LA.
And Mymare from Naperville. Where in Illinois is Naperville? I do not have family there, so I have never been there.
But Sophia from "Country Vic," I do have family in Victoria. Where do you live? My daughter lives in Melbourne, so I have travelled a bit around "Country Vic." Such beautiful country! (As is California, and I'm sure Illinois).

Some day I will set up my place here with cozy furniture and pleasant refreshments for sharing with pleasant company. But right now I am in the middle of a move and have to set up my actual home, so my virtual one will have to wait a bit

back Margaret. Glad you have decided to become an official Member! with your real move in & your virtual one.

Margaret, it is wonderful to see you back. I used to love seeing your 'from', both NY and Melbourne! I read you have just moved house...my worst nightmare!
Hope to see you around the pages, and if you ever come back to Melbourne to visit, please let us know and we can arrange a lunch or something, in your honour.

Hi Margaret - once again welcome back.
In answer to your question on Easy about where Redlands is. It is a city adjoining Brisbane to the south-east. It borders on Moreton Bay and is a very nice area. I have lived here for nearly 30 years now. If you ever stop here on your way to and from Melbourne, there's quite a few Sudokuists around - we could always organise a gathering. Nice to talk to you anyway, hope you keep posting. I have a sister named Margaret. Cheers, CynB

I must say that Garth has greatly improved the site since the Good Old Days--and the many ways we can connect are just part of the improvements.

Hi Kathy, Gail and Cyn B. Great to hear from you, and thank you for your greetings. Now I need to get back to work on my presentation on global warming; I really was glad I checked in on the right day for Rayray's poem on the subject. I'll check back and chat some more next time I need to procrastinate.

Gail from Cockatoo: when I joined, it wouldn't let me say from NY & Melbourne (too many letters). But it has now been over a year since I was there, so I feel more like a visitor and less like a part-time resident of Oz. But the family is coming herre this year for a sort holiday visit.

Welcome Margaret. I feel flattered, daunted, honoured - and all sorts of nice emotion from you saying my verse is a reason for you joining. I now feel responsible for your well-being here, and have brought a hamper of goodies (chocs and diverse fruit juices) a presents for you, along with some colourful throws and bean-bags to scatter across your domain. May all your roses have coloured petals.

Margaret!
to the wide wonderful world of Sudokuland!
But it looks like you already know most of us!
So, I guess that "Glad to have you back!" is more correct!

Thanks Shiela. Actually I have not been a chatter, so these are all new friends, you included. I have been a lurker who would occasionally make a few serial posts--and then not hang around to see replies. But now the new improved Sudokuland emails me when there is a comment!

Rayray, there's more . . while I don't have time to set up my new place in Sudokuland until at least next week, I am setting up my printer in a temporary office while I wait for my desks to get moved in so that I can print your poem. I am giving a version of Al Gore's slide show on global warming tomorrow, and I want to bring a copy of your poem with me! In the meantime, all your lovely snacks and cushy seating will allow visitors to feel comfortable until I can work on my place. And the chocolate will get me through a long night: this will be my very first slide show; I was just trained by Gore and his team last month.

Margaret!
I am so glad you are using Rayray's poem in your presentation! Please stop by 'easy' and let us know how it went. Good Luck!
When you get settled in, stop by my place for a visit by clicking on the blue 'check out my page' next to my avatar. The door's always open

Well Margaret, welcome back! And your own page as well, so that's nice. Enjoy my traditional page warming gift, a double chocolate fudge beavertail pastry from Ottawa. Glad to see you posting and playing the games once more!

back! What a wonderful job you have! Wishing you the best for your presentation tomorrow...

Dear Margret.
You are to your own page.
You are to my own page.
You are to visit my Egyptian Guest House any and every time you wish.

Thank you for the warm welcomes Wagdy and Greg. Tomorrow I have to clean my real house so I can have a real estate agent show it. The next two days I finish moving out of a house I was renting. Yes, I'm moving back into the house I am selling (don't ask). Sunday evening I will work on my little place in Sudokuland, and then I can put my feet up and enjoy a few treats in pleasant company.

Thanks for the well-wishes for the presentation. I needed them! We were not able to show Al Gore's slides because I didn't have the right connector for the slide projector (and wasn't told I needed one until right before the presentation). But it went well anyway: I had lots of props and quotes to keep the discussion going. If anyone wants to host a discussion on how to turn global warming around ( with slides from Al Gore), let me know. "Have slides, will travel."

Hi Margaret:
It must be nice to have the ear of people in high places (like Al Gore). I have had reason to criticise him in a letter to a blog newspaper in the past. I wonder if he heeded me? He made an error of interpretation of Scientific data in his lecture on UK TV that was very critical to his argument. That is a problem with politicians who venture into Science.
Rayray
[= Raymond Wray Groves = Mr Global Village] [LOL]

Dear Margaret,

Thank you so much for the kind words. I will miss my brother terribly, but I have some wonderful memories from our childhood and beyond to sustain me. I hope you are enjoying yourself on this wonderful site. There are a lot of amazing people here!

♥ Jane

Just saw your note, Margaret, and here are some of the ways I dealt with our major downsizing:

The two most important were:

1) I took inventory of everything we owned and mentally discarded anything that didn't look "beachy" (since we were moving from a city to a coastal community).

2) I kept reminding myself that all the things we'd collected over the years were just "stuff", albeit some expensive and rare but, nonetheless, they were just "stuff". People are important. "Stuff" isn't.

Regarding family heirlooms, I should mention first of all, that we do not have children, so we did not have to ask "permission" to unload these things (LOL)!! What I did with the family things that I did not want to keep was to list them in an e-mail that I sent to all my nieces with instructions to let me know what they wanted. I also told them that they would have to pick up the item(s) or pay for shipping.

I sold some of my antiques to dealers and had a "walk-through" art sale for scores of paintings that my husband and I had acquired over the years.

I had "wine and cheese" preview yard sales for friends and family where people could tag items they were interested in. Then when I started to have yard sales (and I had several), I called those people to let them know that the item they were interested in was available. It's amazing how many things got sold before the sales.

Whatever didn't sell was donated to charity. There was one charitable organization in my city that would pick up anything (and I mean ANYthing), so there was nothing left over to throw away.

When we got moved in to our new house, there were of course some items that didn't fit in, so we had a yard sale at our new home a month after moving in!

Life simultaneously as a "landlord" and "house seller" and "downsizer" has been crazy--what a roller coaster the real estate market has been this last year. I actually thought the house was sold last summer, signed a lease and moved out, only to have to break the lease and move back in (what I was doing last November, when I last posted. Bank of America had"changed their mind" about issuing a mortgage. Now I am really moving out for good. The apartment house has new owners--people smart enough to get their mortgage from a locally-owned bank!

As soon as my actual place is livable, I'll start working on my "virtual" home! In the meantime, enjoy some local produce, Ithaca Fine Chocolates, and Finger Lakes wine!