I was the team captain this year and it was a lot of responsibility but I enjoy this event. I am glad TTWC has decided to join RFL. This year theme was “Toon out cancer” so each team had a cartoon theme! Ours was Casper the Friendly Ghost. Our tent was wonderfully ghostly and we even played the casper song… We had a survivor in our team who walked the survivor lap.

The ceremony was great and the most exciting part was the Luminaria. As you may know (or not know), Luminaria is lighting the candles.  As the sun sets over campsites and darkness falls, the night is brightened by the glow of illuminated bags called luminaria, each bearing the name of someone who has battled cancer. Some celebrate cancer survivors, while others help us honor and remember those gone too soon. All represent someone special who has been profoundly affected by cancer and the family and friends who continue to fight back in their honor. I am partial to this ceremony because I was in it this year. I was among the 5 people chosen from the teams to recite a poem. My poem was called: “I Light A Candle”. I was pretty nervous to read this but then I realized the lights are off and it is pretty dark and I could only see if I used flashlight to read, so I read! I did enjoyed it a lot….

I wanted to thank eveyone who stopped by our tent to visit and buy raffle tickets and give us word of encouragements. Please join us again next year….

On Woman’s Club front,  it has been a busy new year. I am the new chair for our Int’l Affairs department and I am glad that the previous chair is in my committee and agreed to be the co-chair. I was panicking there for a while. It should be a new challenge for me as I have not been a chair before.  I also agreed to be Relay for Life team captain this year.  I was the co-captain last year so this is more responsibilities for me now.  I have to say I really enjoy doing Relay for Life and it is one of the projects of Home Life that I am glad we participate at. If they asked me again next year to be the captain, I will say yes… Well, our RFL event is March 26-27  at Greco Middle School again in Temple Terrace, FLorida. As I said before, it is a wonderful event and I just found out last night at one of the captain’s meetins, that I will be one of 5 people who would read a poem during the Luminaria ceremony. I am actually looking forward to that although I have always been shy in public speaking but I thought why not, it is for a great cause. My team has made 75% of our goal as of today which is great and I am proud of them. I personally made cupcakes again this year and sold quite a bit of them. So we are doing just fine.  Relay for Life theme this year is: Toon Out Cancer so each team had to pick a cartoon theme and we decided to go with “Casper the friendly ghost”. ALthough my first choice was olive oil and popeye since eveyone thinks I look a little like olive oil!!!!!!

Well, I think I’ll sign off now. I promise I will write soon….

An artist named Dorothy Hope Smith drew Ann in 1928. That drawing became the famous baby picture on all of Gerber baby products. Ann has made a lot of appearances for Gerber during 1990’s and calls it a pleasant experience.

She was invited to join Temple Terrace Woman’s Club in 2003. She said that she was in her 70’s by then and in middle of writing her last 2 books so she wasn’t a productive member. However, she enjoys speaking to women groups around Tampa Bay area.

I asked Ann about her background. She has master’s degree in English Education and was an English teacher for 26 years. She was also head of English department for Hillsborough High School. She always wanted to be a writer and a newspaper person. So, she started her career as a writer after retirement. She took creative writing classes for 12 years and attended any and all writes conferences around. She is a member of Tampa Writers Alliance.

I wanted to know how she finds her story lines and what the process of writing a novel is. She told me she gets her inspirations and ideas for her plots from a lot of different sources. On a trip to Charleston, SC she came across a haunted-looking mansion and that made her think about what if murder happened there a long time ago. She does her researches through archives, making trips to small historic town and talking with natives. She told me she actually had a reading with a medium as part of her research for her 4^th book: Micanopy In Shadow. She said it was an interesting experiment. The lady was a certified medium in a town called Cassadaga. She also had her husband’s help in researching police procedures as he was a Major with Hillsborough County Sheriff department.

She told me writing is a hard process. It takes her a little over a year to finish a book. You have to write lists and summaries, write developments you imagine happen. You have to know the ending of the book from the beginning and work toward that goal. Also, there is a structure in literature to follow in writing a book. She is currently not thinking about writing the 5^th Brandy O’Bannon book. She said appearances and marketing is a hard work in her age now. That saddened me a little because I found her books very interesting. I bought her 4^th book and loved it and went back and read the other 3. Brandy is smart, hard-headed and risk taker. I like that about her!

Ann also told me that she is a member of Mystery Writers of America which I think is a big honor. She sold a short story long time ago and submitted it to them and has been a member since 1995. Her favorite mystery writers are: PD James and Tony Hillerman.

As she told me, she is still grieving over losing her second partner in life only lost to her this past May. Her mission right now is to talk to groups of mostly women approaching retirement: Do what you always wanted to do like becoming a mystery writer…..

It has been a while since I wrote on this blog. I just have been busy working and oh yah I bought a new car!

Okay. I had my Toyota Camry for almost 10 years and my air went out last year and the oil pan started leaking oh about 2 years ago which meant I couldn’t change my oil. I had to keep adding oil everytime the oil went down. To make the story short, I needed a new car.  I was debating what kind of car to get but I really wanted to stay with Toyota. They are good car and have good gas milage. David found this car for me on our local Toyota dealership’s website and we test drove it and liked it. It is a 2009 Toyota Corolla XLE. It is red and shiny….

2009 Temple Terrace Relay For Life event was a success.  One thousand people participated at the Relay this past weekend. We raised $130,000.  Great Job Temple Terrace!

I was part of the committee that put together this event. I was the on-line chair and accounting co-chair. If you never been to a Relay before, try to participate next year. It is a lot of fun. I can say it is a lot like a Fair. There is music, entertainment, food, games, raffles and more.

The opening ceremony was at 6pm Friday night and closing ceremony at 11am Saturday morning.  Each team who participated in the event had a tent and did on-site fundraising. This year’s themes were holidays. Temple Terrace Woman’s Club theme was Halloween. Our tent looked great. They dressed me as a witch with hat and broom for a Captian’s walk (I was also my team’s co-captain).

One of the best part of the Relay was the Luminaria ceremony. Luminaria is bag full of sand and candle that you purchase in honor/memory of someone and you lit the candle. The ceremony started at 9pm with bagpipes playing Amazing Grace and went around the track and when they passed our tent, we lit our candles. I had a candle in memory of my dad. It was very moving. I felt like crying. The whole track was lit up and people were walking around and reading the descriptions on each luminaria.

The whole event was wonderful. It was a great experience for me. I made some friends and raised money for cancer research at the same time. Please check out Relay for Life website to learn how you can help: http://www.relayforlife.org

A special cover is spread onto carpet or on a table. This cermonial setting is called sofreh-ye-haft-sinn (seven dishes setting), each one beginning with the Persian letter sinn (S). The number seven has been sacred in Iran and the seven dishes stand for the seven angelic heralds of life-rebirth, health, happiness, prosperity, joy, patience, and beauty. The symbolic dishes constist of Sabzeh or sprouts, usually wheat or lentil, representing rebirth. Samanu is a wheat pudding which represents the ultimate sophistication of Persian cooking. Sib means apple and represents health and beauty. Senjed, the sweet, dry fruit of wild olive represents love. Sir which is garlic represents medicine. Somaq, sumac berries, represent the color of sunrise. Serkeh or vinegar represents age and patience.  Other elements and symbols are also placed on the sofreh. Books of tradition, usually Koran and poems of Hafez (the famaous poet), a few coins representing wealth, a basket of painted eggs representing fertility. An orange floating in a bowl of water represents the earth floating in space and the fish in a bowl of water represents Anahita, one of the angels of water and fertility. Also added to the table are a pot of flowering hyacinth along with a mirror and two candelabras . The candles represent enlightenment and happiness and the mirror represents the images and reflections of creation as we celebrate anew the ancient Persian traditions and beliefs that creation took place on the first day of spring or Nowruz.

Below is the photo of my Nowruz table. I had everything except Samanu (the pudding) and hyacinth was not in season so I had tulip. I also had a dish of persian sweets pastry (no, I didn’t make them!)

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

I had worked retail years ago when in college and I thought “GREAT, this might be fun”. The new job started pretty fun at first except for those first few days when my back was killing me and my feet were on fire….Then everything went down the hill. They started LAY OFFS! We started with 25 people in my department and now we are down to 11.

It is not good to have a job that puts so much pressure on you. I go in everyday and I think well, this might be my last day and I wouldn’t be surprised if it was…. I have to prepare myself for it mentally.

Anyways, I should be greatful as I HAVE A JOB….

Temple Terrace Woman’s Club is involved with American Cancer Society’s Relay For Life. We are preparing for our March Relay which is on March 27-28 at Greco Middle School starting at 6:00pm. 

We had our garage sale this Saturday 2-21. The weather was cold, down in 40’s (okay, okay, I know…. for those of you that live in nothern state 40’s is a nice day-I live in Florida!!) but our team made it to the site and set up our tables and brought all of the goodies that members and their friends and family have donated. All in all it was a success. I just heard that all of Temple Terrace’s teams made over $6600. GREAT JOB!

I am also in middle of baking my famous cupcakes for our general meeting tomorrow. I am selling them to raise money for Relay, of course…. Well, I have to go now, since I still have to decorate the cupcakes and go to work at 1:00pm.

See you…..

Judy, Mindy, Glenda, Linda, Elaine, Morgan

A few people had influenced my life but if I have to pick one person who I consider a mentor, I’ll pick my dad. I don’t know where to begin to explain about his character. He was the best man I have ever met. He passed away about 17 years ago but I still miss him and wish for his wisdom everyday.

My dad lost his parents in a young age and had to take care of his brothers and sister. They all turned out very successful people and all because of my dad’s thoughtfulness and generosity. He was indeed very generous person. I don’t think I know anyone like him. I remember when I was a little girl and he was in charge of accounting for a huge factory. When he found out that one of the poor workers has a daughter who is getting married and the father had no money for the dowry, my dad provided the family everything they needed for the wedding out of his own pocket.

My dad always taught me to be generous and thoughtful and take care of people. He used to say life is full of opportunities and you should take advantage of them but with hard work. He always provided us with everything we needed but expected us to work hard to keep the things we wanted. He also taught me to never give up. I think because he never gave up on anything. Even if there was a hard time in our life, he would never let us see it.  He loved “LIFE” and I think that is the most important lesson I have learned.

Thank you dad for being my father and my friend.