Home Sweet Home

After looking at house after house I began to think I would never find that special place to call home. I never even came close until I found my house of Pfaffle Street 10 years ago next month.  I knew before I even saw it that this could be the one. Passing Warner Street (my maiden name) was my first clue. Concidently I signed my loan docs on March 15th- my parents wedding anniversary.
I walked into the house through the mudroom and into the kitchen where I immediately burst out laughing at the green...green...GREEN kitchen. The cupboards inside and out were newly painted pea soup green. Under the sink, above the refrigerator, every wall, the backsplash and molding was all the same overpowering color.  I gazed around wondering who could have thought this was a good color to sell a home. Hearing me laugh the realtor and a young couple (house hunters like me) stopped mid-sentence to see what I found so funny. The real estate agent was an eager young man who quickly asked "Oh, do you like the color?" I could tell immediately he was part of the design team. I laughed again as he admitted it was he who had picked it out. Undaunted by the color scheme I walked through the rest of the house where I was enchanted with the huge picture windows and coved ceilings in the front room. I could already see sunny mornings on the patio off the master bedroom and a fire in the living room. I wasn't surprised when the realtor told me it was being sold by the original owners and was in fact the family Homestead. The energy in the house was full of love and the deal was sealed when I discovered the little Pfaffle handprints pressed into the garage floor concrete.

                                                          

It took me less time to move in than my parents took on their honeymoon.

The first week I moved in two of the now grown-up  Pfaffle kids stopped by to say hi and share with me how to correctly say "P-faa-fff- le" and some  memories of their lives there. I learned the tree by the driveway was planted upon the birth of the first Pfaffle child and the 82nd street side of the lot is sprinkled with random Christmas Trees as a result of an abandoned attempt at a Christmas Tree Lot. They also shared that their mom had lived here until she passed on.  I promised to take care of her home now entrusted to me.
I have never regretted my choice to make this my home. Over the course of the last 9 years I have done my best to take care of this old house and the quarter acre surrounding it. I like to think that Mrs. Pfaffle would be pleased with my decision to add a good neighbor fence and double-pane windows. Maybe she is even a little envious of the hot tub I finally added on the patio. I know she would approve of our hard work in the yards and upgrades to the kitchen. 
Not all of the memories from the last decade have been happy one but this house has remained my sanctuary.  A place to snuggle up by warm fires in the winter and celebrate with backyard bonfires in the summertime. She provided a shady spot under a tree for Baby Kitty and Roxie to be laid to rest and surrounded me with her walls like a fortress protecting me from life's ups and downs.  
My family and friends have added our own layer of love and laughter to that already infused into these four walls and I cannot imagine ever calling some place else home.

Browser Add-Ons Designed To Reduce Online Stress

The web is rife with annoyances. Pop-over ads when you visit a page that you have to dismiss, sites that auto-play audio even in background tabs, pages that reload and take all the text you entered with it, they all suck. Here are some browser add-ons that make the web a better place for everyone.

👀Behind the Overlay (Chrome/Firefox) We covered it a while ago, and it still works like a charm, whether that pop-over display is one of those annoying “yes, that’s great/no, I hate nice things” ads, or any other pop-over, like the kind begging you to sign up or in.

🎥Magic Actions (Chrome/Firefox/Opera) YouTube is full of entertaining videos, but it’s certainly one of the most annoying web sites. From abysmal commenters to annoying (but easily disabled) overlays and random resolutions, it can be a pain to get everything the way you want it—and then one change may undo your preferences on another system. Magic Actions fixes all of that. In addition to making sure any videos that can play in HD (or better yet, 4K) do so, Magic Actions also suppresses ads which you may or may not want to do. kills YouTube comment sections, lets you control the volume with your mousewheel, and adds a cinema mode that cuts the cruft and lets you focus on the video you’re watching. All in all, it gives you a YouTube experience that’s more like a media player than a video portal. Plus, it’s one of our favorite Chrome extensions in general, even though it’s also available for Firefox and Opera.

🔎Imagus (Chrome/Firefox)
Tiny thumbnails that don’t open to large images—or worse, only open to large images in the same page or open links instead of larger views—are annoying, and previously mentioned Imagus (available for Chrome and Firefox) fixes them. Instead, just hover your mouse over an image you want to see in a larger view, and it’ll pop up, nice and big so you can inspect it.We used to recommend Hover Zoom for things like this, but ever since a ton of useful Chrome extensions went to the dark side, we can’t anymore, and Imagus is a suitable replacement.

⛔Social Fixer (Chrome/Firefox/Opera/Safari)
If you install one browser extension that’ll make your Facebook experience leaps and bounds better, it should be Social Fixer. We’ve highlighted it several times, shown you how to use it to clean political posts from Facebook, re-order your news feed with it, always see recent posts and easily find posts you’ve interacted with, hide sponsored posts and pages, filter your news feed so you don’t miss important news, and more. If there’s something about Facebook that annoys you, odds are Social Fixer can handle it. Of course, if you’re not a fan, or need an alternative, you can also check out F.B. Purity, available for all the same browsers, and another tool we’ve highlighted before.

🔕uBlock Origin (Chrome/Firefox)
The fact that this site keeps the engine running thanks to ads doesn’t mean that we don’t know that ads are some of the most annoying parts of the web. Maybe they take over entire pages, or they bump your browser around when you’re trying to read or click. Maybe they auto-play or block the page you’re reading until you can dismiss them. Maybe they just slow down your browser. We feel that pain, and uBlock Origin is our favorite ad blocker for Chrome and Firefox and Opera—not just because it gets the job done easily enough, but because it’s incredibly powerful and customizable.
uBlock Origin lets you control what elements load, which don’t, what ads you see, and what you suppress. You can customize it to your heart’s content, and it’s faster and more lightweight than Adblock Plus or Ghostery, each of which have their own problems with selling ads or partnering with ad companies. If you’d like an alternative, consider Disconnect, a browser extension that doesn’t block ads, but does preserve your privacy by blocking tracking—and the only ads it actively blocks are malvertising, which you want to block anyway.

Here is the whole article with 10 lifesavers to help make your internet time less stressful.
Lifehacker top 10

A letter to Joey

Dear Joey,

I don't think you ever met a stranger, just future friends.You had a big smile, a big heart and big shoulders. You shared your love of life and dreams for the future with us all through your daily affermations on Facebook and your devotion to your friends, family and faith. I doubt you knew so many people fed off of your unwavering "TRUTH" that anything was possible. I will forever think of these positive messages as "Joeyisms".

It was a honor to know you and I thank you for making the world a brighter place. This poem by Arthur O'Shaughnessy's speaks of those who believe. 

We are the music makers,

  And we are the dreamers of dreams,

Wandering by lone sea-breakers,

  And sitting by desolate streams;—

World-losers and world-forsakers,     

  On whom the pale moon gleams:

Yet we are the movers and shakers

  Of the world for ever, it seems.

With wonderful deathless ditties

We build up the world's great cities,     

And out of a fabulous story

We fashion an empire's glory:

One man with a dream, at pleasure,

  Shall go forth and conquer a crown;

And three with a new song's measure     

  Can trample a kingdom down.

We, in the ages lying

  In the buried past of the earth,

Built Nineveh with our sighing,

  And Babel itself in our mirth;     

And o'erthrew them with prophesying

  To the old of the new world's worth;

For each age is a dream that is dying,

  Or one that is coming to birth.

A breath of our inspiration     

Is the life of each generation;

A wondrous thing of our dreaming

Unearthly, impossible seeming—

The soldier, the king, and the peasant

  Are working together in one,     

Till our dream shall become their present,

  And their work in the world be done.

They had no vision amazing

Of the goodly house they are raising;

They had no divine foreshowing     

Of the land to which they are going:

But on one man's soul it hath broken,

  A light that doth not depart;

And his look, or a word he hath spoken,

  Wrought flame in another man's heart.     

And therefore to-day is thrilling

With a past day's late fulfilling;

And the multitudes are enlisted

In the faith that their fathers resisted,

And, scorning the dream of to-morrow,     

  Are bringing to pass, as they may,

In the world, for its joy or its sorrow,

  The dream that was scorned yesterday.

But we, with our dreaming and singing,

  Ceaseless and sorrowless we!     

The glory about us clinging

  Of the glorious futures we see,

Our souls with high music ringing:

  O men! it must ever be

That we dwell, in our dreaming and singing,    

  A little apart from ye.

For we are afar with the dawning

  And the suns that are not yet high,

And out of the infinite morning

  Intrepid you hear us cry—     

How, spite of your human scorning,

  Once more God's future draws nigh,

And already goes forth the warning

  That ye of the past must die.

Great hail! we cry to the comers

  From the dazzling unknown shore;

Bring us hither your sun and your summers;

  And renew our world as of yore;

You shall teach us your song's new numbers,

  And things that we dreamed not before:    

Yea, in spite of a dreamer who slumbers,

  And a singer who sings no more.