It must be Christmas! The Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony is tonight.



The Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree is perhaps the biggest and brightest magnet for praise in a city filled with wonders. The annual crowd-stopper has drawn oohs and ahhs every year since its first formal appearance in 1933, when it brightened Depression-darkened days.

Tonight at 7 pm - that's 8 pm Bonaire Time - the five MILES of lights are lit for the season in the Big Apple. You can learn all there is to know about the tree - it came from Manchester CT this year - at the WNBC site. They even have a cam and videos for those poor folks who live where the palm trees sway.



http://www.wnbc.com/christmastree/

Maybe Cynde Lee will pos pix of her tree lighting for us?

You beat me, Rusty. I was just going to start the thread

I went off in search of the Xmas lights switch-on in Manchester {UK} and got absorbed in it all. And look how much time has passed!!!!

Let's switch on them there lights

Jenni:

You are QUITE the magician! Look at those lights!

Ooo! Ahhh!

It's a beautiful time of year. I think that even if I were Hindu or Puritan I would still enjoy the lights and the holiday cheer. Seems like people are friendlier this time of year. Maybe it's a residual effect of being told that they'd get coal in their stockings if they misbehaved when they were little?!

Hmm - being Hump Day and all I wonder if Ben Dover will post another message?!

Today is also Dadz Day. We are off to freeze our butts off (I wish! LOL) at the Union Street cemetery. I've taken pix of every headstone there but the light wasn't very good on half of the yard - so I'm going to try again in the clean morning light. Sunny and nice here except for the ^$&@*%)&#%^* temperature.

It's the nicest and smallest cemetery in town - but it's located now between some noisy auto-painting place and a doctor's building. Bet the town fathers and mothers never would have imagined how the town would grow up around it.



The stones are all sandstone and many of the graves have footstones also. Very posh (Jenni and Annie's word!) at the time, I bet.

Wish you could go with us! If you want to just show up - remember your scarf and mittens!

DID SOMEONE MENTION MY NAME?

It's...

Let's Hug Day

You Deserve A Hug, so...

HERE IT IS!

HUG!

We still have to find our lights and that can't start till the painter finishes. He promised today, but you know you can't trust contracters.

Funny story without an ending yet. We in New Hampshire are going to get a new minor league baseball team and a few months back they picked a name for the team. They were going to call it the New Hampshire Primaries (after our first in the nation primary election). The new name was pretty much despised and laughed at immediatly, so after a few days they backed off the name and opened up for suggestions for a name. I thought about the name and came up with The Fisher Cats. I told them it's native animal, tenacious and tough, a perfect fit for a baseball team. I also send them this picture.



Well . . the new name will be announced today at 3:00 and the winner is probably going to be . . drum roll . . The New Hampshire Fisher Cats or the totally bogus New Hampshire Mountain Men. We'll see at 3:00.

Rusty - have a great day freezing in the graveyard!!!

Jenni - love the lighted tree gif - way cool!!!

Annie B - hugs back to you!!!

Cecil - cool story - that would be great if your name will be picked!!! Keep us posted!!!

Here's today's redux pictures.

Squirrel Fish


Under the Tipsey Seagull Dock

Have a nice day, Rusty. Wish I were with you.

Hugs for you all

Great pics, Seesull

Just realised my computer crashed and I never posted the pic of Manchester switch-on

Cecil, I'm rooting for ya! My dad was born and raised in Portsmouth on Middle Road (just saw the house again a couple of years ago and it's in stellar shape) so I think I should get a tiny vote! LOL
Rusty, now I really am going to get out the family tree cause I'm sure you're going to find an ancestors grave and post it!
Thanks for the hug Annie! One back!
Hi, Jenni & Sally!
How about a
And some music
to brighten up the day!

That's the Town Hall in the centre of Manchester. We always have a giant Father Christmas, and then to herald the switching on of the lights all over the city there is a fantastic firework display

Here's another



Lots and lots of people go and watch the displays and the show, and then the lights swtich-on and then the fireworks

Hi Barbara

Oh, my look at all those concurrent posts! Love the redux Cecil!

Hi Jenni!!! Here's a GIF to go with your great snaps!

Very cool hello person there Jenni! I'm gonna steal it! Gotta run now and get some more work done!

Here's a pic. of me that Dr. Doolittle just sent. He took it on one of our dives.

oops, let me try that again.

and one more...

Here is a picture that Mike has captioned "Redneck Taxi" which I think is hilarious.

This is a most unusual sight. Mike with his mouth closed. I'm serious, the man never shuts up. I told him at Thanksgiving dinner that if he didn't shut his mouth he was going to swallow his head! LOL!

It's Jake our little Cam God.

Jenni - Manchester switch-on pics are great!!!!

Kelly - Love the pics of your time in Bon!!!

Wow, all the cool Christmas pictures! Sure get's you in the holiday spirit! Gee, Rusty, my tree lighting? did I miss something?

Cecil, It's now 3:06PM in New Hampshire...so what's the scoop????? I can't understand why you didn't send them this picture though, it is much more artistic...

Well we have a winner, The New Hampshire Fisher Cats it is. Click here Free registration. Good taste those New Hampshirites, now if I could only convince them to rebuild the Old Man.

Get out of here - I was sure they'd pick mine - the Granite State Quarriers. Phht.



FELINE name? Hello. Did you tell them it's a weasel? Criminy - guess they wouldn't like that so much. HAHAHA!

So how come you didn't win the trip to Spring Training, Cecil?

How can you tell it's you underwater? LOL You're more colorful than the fishes.

Cecil: A+ for the Bon fish pix today!

No gratitude, they steal my idea, now they send some other Joe to camp, piiffffllll. Here's a better site for the info, Click Here. I should sue, speaking of which she laughed a lot when I told her originally. Who's laughing now.

Congratulations Cecil!! Now you have a match for the Sacramento River cats! (which really are feline) We love to go to the games...lots of summer fun!
Very cool dive pics, Kelly...are you sure you didn't superglue Mike's lips together...looks like he's trying to talk ! LOL
Rusty..I like the Quarriers too...reminds me of the original Beatles name, the quarrymen (or was that another band???)

I should have submitted it. LOL

So you think your ancestors came thru Western MA? A lot of folks did settle here on the *frontier* when Boston area became too restrictive. The Puritans enjoyed religious freedom as long as it was THEIR rules everyone played by. Many farmers and soldiers settled on the west side of the Connecticut River, across from the *big city* of Springfield. (I keep reading about Indian attacks/killings and kidnappings right in Springfield in the late 1600s and early 1700s!)



It's amazing how much info you can find for free at rootsweb.com and ancestry.com. If you have a long family history in America there's probably someone already doing your research for you. After learning my way around there last week looking up names from the cemetery - I'll be interested in tracing back my mother's family. I believe that my grandfather was a Yankee from way back.

My Dadz side showed up late - about 1904 or so from the Old Country.

Dontcha just love his big old fuzzy ears?

heehaw Donkey01.wav (23.5 k)

Rusty, rotflmao...poor Dr. Doo, he just can't get away from it! LOL! I think Kelly would look "cute" with donkey ears while she's diving...don't you? [wink]

Cecil, I think we need to find out who this "Keith Lacasse of Weare" is and rough him up a little for taking credit! Do you honestly think he came up with the name? NOT! It's NOT FAIR....CECIL SHOULD WIN!!!!

Rusty...ancestors came over on the Mayflower...have the records but they are incomplete re: dates of some marriages, deaths, etc....I'm figuring that some of them must have ended up in Massachussets though my maternal grandfather ended up in Maine!

I, being a Fisher, (and a cat of sorts, and a weasel at times), vote for Cecil. I think I will call up some of my friends in low places in NH and have this "Keith Lacasse of Weare" kidnapped and put Cecil in his place. (JUST kidding in case anyone gets this message in a web search!)
Good to be back. We had huge storms last weekend on the harbor in Charleston and so I wasn't able to get sea lion pictures or any other pics. But the storms were really cool! Rained over 3" in 4 hours and 65 mph winds - whoooooeeeee!

Here's a pic of one of my favorite places - the swells get up to 20-30 feet in winter and creates spray a hundred feet or more. They also have a fantastic Christmas light display at the botanical gardens there. We are also into the grey whale migration now so hope to spy some soon. Pic's of everything later.
My laptop 'puter messed up it's display and have spent 3 days trying to find an external monitor that would work with it - kind of hard in a small town, but I finally found some folks with laptop brains. ARGHHHH! So now am back again and catching up. See you all tomorrow.............Kris

All I can say about the two posts with my picture on them is:

Text description Fogattack2.wav (48.5 k)

Who the heck is this Mike Endrizzi guy and why is he posting in our chat? LOL

Ms. FisherKat! OMG - what a photo! I don't know what's more cool - the waves, the pockmarked rock or the vertical uplift in the far rocks.



According to my college geology course those sedimentary layers had to be laid down horizontally. Look at them now - pointing toward Heaven! Looks like both ends of the country got squeezed like an accordian. We see rock layers like that everywhere around here - most of our highways cut right thru rock jutting up at 45 degree angles.

That is one super duper picture, Kris. I really like it. I love sitting and watching the sea, and the sea spray. Sounds like a fantastic place your got yourself there.

I'm wondering if Kris carried that lava rock all the way from Crater Lake or Area 51 just for that photo? (Shades of Lucy in The Long Long Trailer!)

Jenni - you're right - it's a stunner!

Hey thanks guys! The whole coast south of us looks like that, and the whole coast north of us for 60 miles is great (and I mean HUGE) sloping sand dunes.

Rusty, Don't even get me started on rock hauling. At our home in Idaho, Terry and I used to go out into the desert for 3-4 days at a time and haul loads and loads of rocks - agates and petrified wood - home to use in our landscaping. We estimated that we hauled over 12 tons in about 4 years time. And that was in packs on our own little backs. People thought we were crazy, but our landscaping is something to behold. I once found a piece of plume agate which was the heavyweight champion at 245 pounds (also very valuable in that size)- of course I didn't haul that piece on my back - had to get a couple of friends to come out and help us haul it 3/4 mile to load it up.
But alas, if Terry even catches me looking at rocks, he gives me the old that says "Don't even think about it - no room for rocks in the motor home!"

I really like that picture Kris. A winner for sure.

I agree with Terri no rocks in the motor home, unless you get some of those fiberglass ones.

Great pic Kris! I love the coast up there! I can hear the waves crashing!

Now I'm going to have to watch The Long Long Trailer and imagine Terry as Ricky and Kris as Lucy! I LMAO every time I see that scene where they are trying to climb a mountain with the trailer on the back of the car and the rocks Lucy had hidden start sliding out from under everything.



That's right, I forgot they have volcanoes out thataway!

OMG Rusty - that comparison is too close for comfort! You really got me going now!

WHOA! Have Volcanoes? NONONONONO - Its HAD volcanoes!!!!!!!!! Scares me silly. My brother in Washington state can see Mt. St. Helens and Mt. Rainier from his back yard. Say's he's waiting for the BIG ONE, so he can immortalized in stone!