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Yes, Dewi and Mona are on another road trip! We've added one more notch to our Waldo Map creds, which we'll post about shortly. Suffice it to say, our first da7y was an adventure. Stay tuned!
Mona and Dewi
Dewi and I left Madison yesterday morning and spent the night outside Toledo, Ohio--it was a long day of driving with only a couple of stops. It was sunny and quiter warm--even had the car windows down when I was in town.
Today we drove from Toledo to Akron (usually 3 hours) in about the same 9 hours--we took the scenic route along Lake Erie to begin with, driving under (hand to God, these place names are true) Fangboner Rd., on the way to Put-in-Bay, which is near Port Clinton. You connect the dots and creat your own punchline.
We also went to Lakeside--a quaint littletown that hosts a Chattaqua in the summer, but is like aghost town this time of year--not even a place to get breakfast! Then we went to Marblehead to see the lighthouse, whichwas pretty, but would have been more interesting if it had been open.
Also, it was noticeably colder, greyer and windier today. By time I stopped for lunch at 1 pm, there were even a few stray snowflakes coming doiwn! I wanted to go to a paper warehouse (don't ask) so that took a couplw hours after lunch. By time I finished there, we were having a real blizzard--it snowed 3-4 inches in about 4-5 hours and driving the last hour took me 2 hours and it was near-white-out conditions! This is the part of thge trip where we cross River Styxx Road--now who would name a road that? And put houses there? Did not see the Boatman. He probably thgought Hell was freezing ovder. 
The snow finally let up, but everything is covered-it looks like a Christmas card and the roads are all slushy.
If SJ is reading, we may have photos of Dewi in another Welsh-naamed town--if we can get credit for "Valley City, OH"--it is no more a city (less of one, even) than Valley, Wales. We made a U-turn just for the photo op outside the old train depot. Let me know--photos will probably have to wait til the end of April. We also came across a Muffler-Man-like thing up by the lakeand took a photo--don't think it was an actual Muffler Man, but similar.
Visited a couple of cousins tonight, then founda cozy hotel. More cousins tomorrow and maybe Friday morning, then on to Cleveland for the NAFOW planning meetings.
Stay tuned for any other interesting sightings. And, photos later.
Mona and Dewi
Like Canaries in a Mine
I return an hour later and as I approach the front door, I smell something a little off, but do not register that it is emanating from our house untilI open the door to find a houseful of thick, black, acrid smoke 
and a dog with his tail between his legs. I quickly run through the smoke and briefly assess the situation--no flames, but floor is charred--and open the back door to let the dog out and catch a breath of fresh air.
At that moment, my front door bursts open and it is our neighbor who had been raking leaves in his back yard. He is yelling for me. I tell him I am fine, briefly explain what I know so far and go out the front to breathe again. A former volunteer fireman, 
he immediately noticed the smoke billowing out the back door when I opened it and with the fumes blanketing the neighborhood, thought I might have been down for the count inside.
Back inside, I quickly check the floor, see the paint stripper melted to the tiles and conclude that this was an Act of Dog. Dog, in this case, having accidentally stepped on the paint strippers switch, engaging the heat, igniting the cardboard box 
and scorching the floor. I open more windows and doors and then check to see if the floor is still hot. It is warm, but I feel confident the fire is out. I note the cord to the paint stripper has burned in half and think that that is a very good thing, as it probably is why we still have a house and dog and bird. Omigod, the bird! 
It has probably been an hour since I returned home before I think of our cockatiel, Larry Bird, and I am afraid of what I will find in his cage in the living room. Visions of canaries in mines dance in my head as I run to check. Larry actually appears fine and I think I should move him out of the main smoke-filled areas. I decide on the basement, having been taught that heat (and therefore smoke) rises, I assume the basement would have the best air. It is too cold that night to put him outside. I open the basement door and more smoke billows out. Guess Larry wont go down there. But I do, thinking that I could have been wrong about the fire being out. Now I am thinking it burned through the floor to the basement ceiling or worse, to the area between ceiling and upper floor. I do a quick inspection in the laundry room and see no evidence of fire, just smoke.
I decide it is time to get Leonard on the phone and get him home from work.
I am spending my time going between the backyard for air (stinky though it is) and continuing to monitor the house. Before Leonard arrives, I notice that the can of paint thinner is all of one inch from the edge of the scorched flooring and the bottle of rubbing alcohol only a few inches away from that. Once again I am grateful to have a house.
We do not call the fire department. The fire is out and we are airing the house. My asthma has hit the big time by now and I have a headache. I keep telling Leonard, "You should have smelled it an hour and a half ago, if you think this is bad!" By this time, I located two fans and have them blowing smoke out the back door and the bedroom window. The temperature in the house is dropping and by bedtime it will be about 40 degrees inside. I sleep with the blankets over my head, not just for warmth, but to act as filters. In our heart of hearts, we know we should never have stayed in the house and I shudder to think what our lungs look like. Never having been smokers or coal miners, I still figure someone will be writing "lung cancer" or "black lung disease" on our death certificates some day. 
Leonard takes the rest of the week off from teaching drivers education and we work at cleaning up. It eventually becomes obvious that we are making no headway. The more we clean, the more soot we find. As we dust one item off, soot is settling behind us. The fumes are still toxic and Leonard goes to buy masks. He wears one for a couple of days, I dont, feeling the damage has been done already. Obviously, the fumes affected my rational thought processes. We finally realize the situation is bigger than both of us and call the insurance company. Unbeknownst to us, that is when our troubles will start in earnest.
To be continued
Not exactly misspent youthbut what happens when you dont misspend your youth enough and by default grow old enough for things like this to happen. True storyhappened in 2001.
Mona
4F: A Cautionary Tale
I am writing this all down, not so much as to tell a story or simply get this all off my chest (Lord knows, I need to keep what I have), or even earn Top Blogger points, but, rather, as a kind of public service announcement--a warning, if you will, to any other hapless individuals (and as you read, you will know who you are) who may find themselves in a similar situation.
First, I must introduce the characters. Besides myself,
the Innocent Bystander :
there is my husband, whom we will charitably call Leonard , since that is his name and this is a family show:
NOW
(can you pick him out of the line-up?)
and our dog Huckleberry , a lively coonhound/pointer mix of uncertain parentage, quite similar to Leonard, now that I think about it:
Leonard is what some might call a handyman or do-it-yourselfer, but certainly not anyone who has lived with him for 20+ years. When I am being kind, I prefer "procrastinator" and "an accident waiting to happen," if you get my drift. He is a former industrial arts teacher, grandson of a former industrial arts teacher; and is convinced he, and he alone, through the miracle of DNA, can handle any home repair project from plumbing to electricity, sometimes undertaking both tasks at the same time with shocking results. So, it follows that our house is always in some state between torn apart and nearly-but-not-quite finished, and I have 911 on my speed dial.
His current undertaking is kitchen remodeling. By "current,"you need to think in terms of geologic time. I mean this project was started 13 years ago and is now in its third incarnation. He has torn out a wall to open the space between the kitchen and living room, removed the original wallpaper and replaced it with paneling, installed some new cupboards (but never got around to finishing them off or installing the final countertop), removed said cabinets, which are now conveniently and attractively, I might add, stored sideways in the family room, replaced the original linoleum, and as recently as last May began replacing the tiles that had replaced the original linoleum in the early years of this project.
The first time he redid the floor, it went very quickly, a matter of no more than a week at most. Of course, he was 15 years younger and had the help of our teenage son. I was pleasantly surprised. This time around, things are not going so well, an understatement if I ever made one. It seems the years have added pounds and stiffness to my former football player/wrestler:
THEN
His knees are bad. His shoulders are bad. He is limited in what he can accomplish in one squatting. For instance, Labor Day weekend, he managed to lay four squares of new tile. As you can imagine, he was very worn out by this extreme burst of exertion and required heavy doses of football to recover his strength. (Labor Day is in September, mind you. See above for May reference.) I told him by time he finishes with the last tile, it will be time to start over again with the first. He did not find this as pithy as I did. Either that, or he didn't realize I was casting asparagus on his efforts.
Moving right along to October 30, his tools are on the kitchen floor just waiting to have something to do. Here's the process, finessed during weeks of sofa-sitting, picturing it all play out on the insides of his eyelids: In order to loosen the old tiles, he has been using a paint stripper to blow hot air on the tiles to soften the adhesive backing, which makes them easier to lift off the floor. For efficiencys sake, he devised a system whereby he places the paint stripper through a hole he has cut in a cardboard box, which is then placed over the next tile to come off. When the paint stripper is turned on, the hot air is contained inside the box, focusing it on the tile beneath. Once the tile is off, he expeditiously cleans any adhesive residue off the plywood underlayment with paint thinner and/or rubbing alcohol. On paper this seems like a plan:
So the scene is set for our little drama: Box over tile, paint stripper through hole in box and (this is important!) plugged into socket, paint thinner and alcohol nearby on the floor; dog is alone in the house, as husband has exited stage left and is at work and I went out to run an errand.
To be continued.
And I get bummed if I leave my shampoo or toothbrush!
Gold worth 6,500 are among the oddest items left behind by guests at a hotel chain.
Travelodge said the false teeth, found at its Bridgend hotel, rank alongside a life-size Dalek and an antique rocking horse also found in rooms in the UK.
Other items included a 50,000 diamond-encrusted Rolex watch and 10,000 in cash left in a dustbin.
"Our lost and found departments provide plenty of revelations," a spokesperson for the hotel said.
Also on the hotel chain's list of the most mysterious objects left behind during 2010 were keys to a car in Chester, Cheshire, a Hermes handbag worth 8,000 in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, and a 4ft (1.2m) tall yam (vegetable) in Cambridge.
AS Wales First Minister hes never far from the headlines.
But Carwyn Jones has opened up on his normally private family life to reveal the story of his great uncle.
Leading Aircraftman Edgar Hopkin, from Gwaun Cae Gurwen in Carmarthenshire, was killed while in Alabama in 1942 during World War II. He was Mr Jones great uncle on his fathers side.
Now Mr Jones is uploading photographs of the RAF pilot to historical website Peoples Collection Wales, an archive of reminiscences, photographs, video and audio in the hope that others can learn his history.
Mr Jones told the Echo: When my great aunt died in 1993 all the family heirlooms came to me photographs, Edgars service card from the RAF.
We knew a lot of his story already, he was one of five siblings, which included my grandmother, and he was the first in the family to be accepted to university.
He was a colliers son going to read medicine at Edinburgh University but he never went.
The First Minister and his family discovered that Edgar, who was just 19 when he died, had been sent to the US for warm weather training and didnt when his aircraft got into difficulty.
We knew he was buried in Newcastle, Pennsylvania, near other family members, and we even had a cine film of the funeral, said Mr Jones.
I decided to put his name into Google and it found pictures on a website. I decided to contact the site administrator who told me Edgars instructor was still alive.
FORMER First Minister and Cardiff West AM Rhodri Morgan, right, has joined our campaign to save our great locals.
Mr Morgans favourites are The Windsor in Penarth and The Grange in Grangetown.
The Windsor is like a mini Splott market on a Friday with a table of all sorts in the corner, said Mr Morgan.
And Ive enjoyed many a party or function in its back room.
The Grange is a pub where theres a genuine mixture of people. You dont know who you are going to chat to when youre there.
Despite the decline in pubs across South Wales Mr Morgan is calling on people to support their locals.
Pubs are important because they are controlled licensed premises, he said.
Buying alcohol in supermarkets and drinking at home, there is no control over how much people are drinking.
Theres still a lot of damn good pubs around and people should support them and visit them.
