Simply Belle

From my family to yours, Happy Holidays!

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picture lifted here

My daughter came home yesterday from Flagstaff by way of Lake Mary but had to turn around because the road was closed due to snow. I had told her several times before her trip to check first the road closures in the area before proceeding home. Of course, she didn’t listen and assumed that the road was passable because the weather has been nice since the snow storm.

After driving half an hour into the road, she called us that she had to take an alternate route because like what I was afraid of, the road was closed. Hmmm, if she only listened, she would have saved a 40 minute-drive, and gas. It was 3:30 PM when she called.

I expected her to arrive around 6 PM via the long and winding route which she hasn’t driven alone before, so I was a little worried. I told her to call us if she needed help with  direction. I also prayed that she would have a safe journey home. At 5 PM, my eldest daughter and I drove to the mall in town to do some last minute shopping, and also to get my mind off L

From a distance on my way home,  I didn’t see her car parked along the driveway which worried me a bit. It was about 7 PM, and so the visibility was poor. As I turned on the street where I lived, I saw a red car stranded along the road in front of our house.   I suspected something was wrong as she normally doesn’t do this.

Me: L, why is your car parked like that outside? Why didn’t you park where you were supposed to?

L: The car quit working. I just barely made it to the gas station in town, and then it ran again until just right in the front of our house.

What a perfect timing because my husband just signed up for a road side assistance four days ago due to my prodding. He called the 1-800 to ask for help first thing in the morning. He couldn’t get through. He tried again, and he was put on hold for half an hour. I told him to dial again and maybe he would have better luck the second time around. Wrong! The line was busy.  Busy! Busy!  We dialed again, and again, and again, and no luck. This went on for an hour or so. We were getting agitated.

My husband called the insurance, where he signed up with, to complain about the service. She told him that he just had to wait for his turn because there might be tons of people calling. Huh? She wanted us to go through that same routine again by waiting for an hour or so by the phone, wasting our whole morning.

This time, I got up and used my cell phone to call the agent in town, upset. We exchanged words and I got hot under the collar. She insisted that I also wait for my turn as there could be a lot of people calling. I said, “look, if I am in the middle of nowhere and I do as you told, my cell phone is going to run out of battery. What good is it if I couldn’t get a hold of anybody?”  She said she was able to get through earlier. I told her that I would come over to her office that minute for her to show me how to get a hold of the sales representative because we couldn’t. And I also told her to try calling them, wait by the phone, and asked her to call me back, should she get through.

Evidently, she was unsuccessful, as well. Told her  so.

She called back, and said that it was alright to call a towing service in town as long as the fee was under $150, and that she would reimburse us for it.

It took two unpleasant calls before the agent caved in to option B.

Problem solved.

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took these pictures late this afternoon

Have you had your fair share of blustery snow storm yet? In my neck of the wood, we are expecting our first dose of it anytime soon which is supposed to last a week. Yesterday, while I was visiting my daughter, Lexi, in a 7,000-foot altitude city, I heard people talking about it, which made me worry a bit. I don’t care for snow at all. Yes, snow is a beautiful sight to behold, but for a working woman like me, there aren’t words to describe how much I abhor snow especially my kind of work requires me to be on the road most of the time. I do uphold the slogan, “neither rain nor rain nor sleet nor hail shall keep Belle from doing her rounds.”

So, count your blessings if you have the choice to stay by the cozy fireplace, sipping a cup of hot tea or cocoa on a cold winter day.

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Yet another of my shameless plug:

My daughter, Stephanie, has recently pre-recorded a new song titled, When You Sing, via computer, and I would like to share it with you. You can listen to it by going to her myspace site. This is the kind of music that she wants to specialize in because it basically fits her personality, and it is the kind of music that she can easily do live without needing a band to back her up.

K was asking if she recorded an album for the holidays. The answer is No because she is currently finishing a degree in Biomechanical Engineering that is quite a demanding course by itself.
She will graduate in June of 2009. It is a good thing that engineering here only takes 4 years of rigorous and grueling study as opposed to 5 years in the Philippines. And another good thing is she doesn’t have to take an engineering board exam to be a licensed engineer, which I find hard to believe. Why is that?

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Wow, it has been a while I haven’t updated my blog, and I haven’t paid a visit to any of my friends’ blogs either. Nothing is wrong from my end, except that I have been overly busy with job and other important stuff. Hope all is well with you all.

Anyway, the other day, on my way home from work, I thought of having a hearty neck bone soup for dinner. We have been having a cooler weather here so a soup dish would be a good idea and would definitely stick to our ribs.

The moment I got home, I shouted to my husband. He seemed to be nowhere in the house. So, I looked for him outside, and sure enough, he was out there wheel borrowing a load of soil up to the garden area.

Me: Could you get me a white cabbage please?

S: How many?

Me: Just one plant.

He brought me a single plant but turned to be an arm load…hehe

typical salad on a daily basis

Lately, we have been eating tons of vegetables and plenty of fresh crisp salad. Sometimes, it is too much of a good thing that we have to give a lot of them away. Sometimes, we give our tummy a rest and skip a day of eating veggies. And after a day’s rest, we crave for it.

The cold weather doesn’t seem to hinder the growth of the plants. Some, like the lettuces, spinach, kale, asian cabbage, and even the mache are exploding. The brocolli raab which is one of the better tasting vegetables, is doing extremely well. We never expected that the plants would survive in the cooler weather, down in the 20′s.

So far, we haven’t bought that much vegetables since summer. The ones I buy from Oriental store in Phoenix now and then, stay in the other refrigerator until they spoil. And my husband throws them eventually in the compost pit. I think our garden would last through winter and continues until May. By then most of the plants will bolt. And then comes the beginning of the summer garden which includes the melon, tomatoes, beans, eggplant, peppers, etc.

Now, we just prove that there is no reason for people to go hungry. And it doesn’t even require a huge garden space to produce an ample supply of vegetables.

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