This Week on the Dining Table

The "The Sun Finally Came Out, It Warmed Up & We Went Out" Edition.....

It hit 64F degrees here yesterday so we went out for a bit.
We had lunch at Bob Evans(cuz I had a coupon!lol).  They have a mailbox as part of their exterior décor at the restaurant....I guess to give it a "home" feeling, right?

 

 

Well just to prove that there are idiots walking around among us, they needed to post this sign on the mailbox........

 

 

It says, "Not For U.S. Mail Decoration Only".

I guess some moron tried to put outgoing mail in the thing. 8-P

 

Anyway, onward to the meal planning!

 

Here's what was planned last week.......

1.  Easter ham, deviled eggs, mac & cheese, mixed Italian veggies, sweet potatoes

2.  grilled fish, leftover Easter side dishes

3.  chicken marsala, mashed potatoes, asparagus
4.  Assorted leftovers

5.  Boston baked beans, assorted leftovers

6.  leftover Popeye's meal stuff
7.  quiche leftovers

And this is what actually happened--

1.  Easter ham, deviled eggs, mac & cheese, mixed Italian veggies, sweet potatoes
2.  leftover Popeye's meal

3.  chicken marsala, mashed potatoes, asparagus
4.  leftover mac & cheese w/ham pieces, tomato and cuke salad

5.  leftover quiche, sugar snap peas

6.  Subway sandwiches
7.  leftover chicken marsala, mashed potatoes, corn

Everything went as planned except I didn't make the beans or the grilled fish meal.

Last week I made 1 trip to the Dollar Store and spent $9.00 OOP on $18.50 worth of reg. retail groceries.  Not quite NO grocery shopping but quite low.

I had 2 transactions at Rite-Aid last week and spend $1.55 OOP on $67.68 worth of toiletries.

For the week, $10.55 total spending on $86.18 worth of food/toiletries/HBA.


$172.32 spent of my $300 April food budget, leaving us $127.68 for the next 17 days of the month. 

Leftovers going into this week are--1 slice of quiche, corn, mac and cheese and a bit of ham and the bone. 
I will confess to a bit of food waste last week.  The leftover sloppy joe meat went moldy before I got a chance to use it up.  bleh.  Not a bit portion but wasting meat really chaps my hide because it is so expensive!
Why don't the junk foods ever go to waste? lolz

Here is the plan for this week.........

1.  Spaghetti and meatballs, salad
2.  Ham and bean soup

3.  Fish, potato salad, whatever veggies I can dig out of the freezer
4.  Kielbasa on rolls, grilled onions, Brussels sprouts

5.  Chicken and Confetti pepper fajitas

6.  Leftovers
7.  Maybe get Take-out or BLTs(if I can find some nice tomatoes this week)

1 night of leftovers and 5 nights of new dishes.  There will be leftovers of the spaghetti, potato salad, the soup and the fajitas and the take-out(if we get some) plus the quiche, corn and mac & cheese from last week.

 

What I need to buy for this menu......rolls, peppers, maybe tomatoes and we will need milk.  I plan on spending less than $20 this week.

 

What is getting fixed and served at your house this week?    

Was last week's plan successful, did you go off plan or did you not even plan what was going to be eaten that week?

Any great deals on food at your stores this week?

Sluggy

Where Is It Worth Visiting?

I saw this article on Yahoo this morning.......HERE.

It's a Yahoo Travel survey where they asked people what they thought were the most "Overrated Cities". 

I am sorry to tell you Sonya Ann, but these folks named your favorite, Las Vegas, as the most overrated city in the world.

Rounding out the Top 3 Most Overrated in the survey were New York City and Miami, respectively.

I have never been to Vegas or Miami but I have been to NYC on many occasions.
Heck, I almost went to graduate school there!
Plus I worked in Brooklyn for a couple of years.
I must say as far as Manhattan goes I am NOT a fan.

Of the places I have visited I'd put on this list.......most are not major cities since I tend to NOT go to those(my preference)......

*New York City (Noisy, dirty, expensive, crowded)
*Niagara Falls, NY (The American side is pitiful.)
*Myrtle Beach, SC (Hated, HATED it!)
*Ocean City, MD (Nothing but schlock for miles but we go back every Fall....what does that say about me?)
*Any place in NJ (LOLZ...hey! I lived in NJ for 3 years.)
*Gatlinburg, TN(miles of tourtisy schlock for miles...man has ruined this place)
*Columbus, OH(breaking down there may have something to do with my POV on this one)
*San Diego, CA(crowded, hot, and rude people)
*Dallas, TX(very hot in Summer, polluted, crowded)
*Wilkes-Barre, PA(a big depressing grey slag pile of a place overrun with NYC criminal elements)
*Scranton, PA(a big depressing grey slag pile of a place like W-B, but with nice highways)
*Toronto, Canada(traffic and a tall tower and they don't sell biscuits in McDonald's for breakfast because a biscuit up there is a cookie....meh)

If you live in one of these places I am sorry if I offend.....and you have my pity. ;-)


So what places have you been that didn't live up to the hype and why?

Sluggy
 

My Super Exciting Weekend....Not So Much

Here's the plan at Chez Sluggy for the weekend.
Hold onto your hats because we are getting WILD here!  8-)))

We are going to clean out my daughter's old room.
She has been gone now just about 2 years since moving to Louisiana.
Needless to say whatever she couldn't fit into her subcompact car when she left didn't go with her.

We are in "get the house ready to sell" mode now so it's time to clear her stuff out.
I'll be taking photos of everything we remove from the room that belongs to her and will send the pictures to her and she can decide if it goes too charity, to the trash or we bring it with us on this next trip to see her.

I got enough of my own crap here, I don't need her "left-behinds" too.

Next it's on to the oldest son's stuff.  He has very little here but there is some and I'll do the same(take photos and he can decide)and the next time we go there or he comes here it can be carted off.....unless it is something he doesn't want then it goes soon to SA or the dump.

Also on the "clean out and clear out" list this weekend are--

A.  MY closet   Need I say more? lolz
B.  My flash drives  I have 2 flash drives I need to clean out/up the old files on them.  Every time my computer is about to die I backup files on these FDs.  I need to go through and delete stuff I don't need/want any longer and then reorganize what is left.

I have already started on 1 of the FDs.

And I found some photos I thought I had lost a long time ago.
Back in March of 2012 right before I had my heart episode I did a swap.....I think Carla organized it?

Anyway, my swappee was Judy.  I put a lot of time/thought into gathering her goodies according to her likes and dislikes and I took photos of everything even though how swaps work is that the recipient usually posts photos of what they get in the swap on their blog(if they have one).

Well around that time was also when Judy lost her husband so needless to say she never posted about what she got......nor would I have expected her to post about it given the circumstances.

So I can now(2 YEARS later!lolz)show what she got.  ;-)

 

Everything packed in a cute puppy gift bag

An over view of the goodies

A running joke about "Calgon, take me away!" and some hand sanitizer because she works in a hospital.

My prized homemade Pepper Relish

Some Easter candy(because it was almost Easter) and it's Irish Crème filled because of her Irish ancestry.

A PlanAhead journal for 2013 in her favorite color, red.

A cool pouch holding.......

Red Cloisonné Rosary Beads direct from Italy at great personal expense.....ok, not so expensive but a really nice set. 8-)

She wanted a new rosary and I found this neat set in her favorite color from a seller on eBay so it had to go into the swap bag.

So now I can mark this undone thing off my list.

And I can remark again that I miss Judy......as do many others.

If you are out there Judy reading this, please know that we miss you and worry about you and I'd love it if you'd email me sometime.

Ok, I am off to start the cleaning out upstairs now.  I doubt I'll get all this stuff done today but we'll get as much as we can and finish up during next week.

Maybe by next weekend the weather will be warm enough to start some yard clean-up.
I can only hope....

What exciting things have you got going on this weekend?

Sluggy

 

Would You Give Her Your Money?

I saw this article over on Yahoo the other day and it got my hackles up.........

Article HERE.

While I am glad that there are generous people in this world, who will give money to a complete stranger this article bothered me on many levels.

Your life, my life, everyone's life is made up of little decisions.  String together these decisions and it forms the basis of what becomes your life.

Where you choose to go to school....if you chose to go to school.
Which career path you choose.
What job you take which leads you to live in a particular area.
If you choose to marry or remain single.
If you chose to have kids.
And on and on.

Likewise all your financial decisions also lead, one by one, to where you are with your money today.

This woman made decisions in her life that led her to where she was, up to when this accident befell her.

She chose to get a degree that led to her working in a hospital and earning a pretty good salary from the sound of it(average wage for a child psychiatrist in NY is $160K yr.).
She chose to remain in her parent's rent controlled Manhattan apartment after they died.
She chose to either adopt or have IVF/etc.(both are costly) and have 3 children at an advanced maternal age as a single parent.
She chose to spend her money on nannies for these kids(and I assume they go to private school).
She chose to not get any sort of renter's insurance.(One wonders too if she has life insurance for these kids sake.)

And then her apartment and it's contents was destroyed in this terrible accident.
And she wants others to cough up $200K so she can resume the life she was leading.

I am sorry. 
But my wallet won't be opened for this lady.
Who I DO feel sorry for are those kids.
They are the victims in this scenario.

She made lots of bad or at the least questionable money decisions up to this point.
With her large salary she made a conscious decision NOT to get renter's insurance when she KNEW full well if something ever happened to her apartment that she'd have to pay a HUGE amount to replace it with a market rate priced apartment.
Let her move to Jersey or Brooklyn and commute into Manhattan for her job.
These kids are young and it won't do them any harm to change schools and move out of the city.

Or maybe I am just being an old scrooge.....
We need to help our fellow man on one hand.
But on the other hand, our fellow man needs to live with the consequences of the choices they have made.

What do you think?
Would you give someone like this money?

Sluggy
 

More on My Family Geneaology-The Paternal Side

Let's continue on with this family line of Bowmans.

To recap--
Maurice O'Brien's daughter, Catherine "Katie" O'Brien married to Frank Bowman, Sr.

 In the 1920 census the O'Brien/Bowman family is still living in Bridgeport, CT and contained Frank Senior, Katie, their children Frank Junior, Mary, John and Margery(Margaret), and Katie's father, Maurice.

In 1925 the O'Brien/Bowman family has removed to NY state-New Windsor, in Orange County on Drury Lane.
The family has grown to include 1 more child, Eleanor.  Frank Sr. is 39 and working for the NY Highway Dept. 
So why did the O'Brien/Bowman family move to upstate NY sometime between 1920 and 1925?

If we look at this 1925 census on the next page we see that Frank's parents, James Garrett and Mary Elizabeth Bowman live nearby on Station Rd. in New Windsor, NY. That's about 3 miles away.  James Garrett is 59 and a farmer and his wife Mary E. is 58.

Going ahead to the 1930 Federal Census and the O'Brien/Bowman family is now living on Station Road as well, still in New Windsor, NY.  Another child has been born, William in 1928, but only the 3 youngest children are still in the family home.  Frank, Jr., Mary and John are living elsewhere.
Frank Senior's occupation is a farmer on a dairy farm.

Further down on Station Road we find Frank Sr.'s brother, James Garrett and family living nearby.  James is an engineer in the steam roller industry.  Still working on highways I suppose.

So in 1920 the Bowman family is living near/with his wife, Katie O'Brien's family in Connecticut, then moves in 1925 to reside near Frank Sr.'s Bowman family in New York.

Moving on--

By 1930 the oldest son, Frank, Jr., has moved out from his parent's home in NY and is married and living in Manhattan with his wife, Catherine(nee McCarthy).  Frank is working as a salesman in a department store and they report being married in 1928 and are both 21 now, so they married at 19.  There are no children living in their home.

They are renting their apartment for $36 a month.  I imagine that Manhattan location goes for much MUCH more these days!

Here's a shot of this location today.......

Gourmet deli(Hampton Deli) and flower shop on the corner.....

 

And a massage parlor in the store front on the right of the door to the upstairs parts of the building.....

My brother had heard a story about my grandmother, Catherine McCarthy and how she had grown up in Hell's Kitchen in Manhattan and how she had been a flapper girl.
This story is partly truth once you dig into the records.
Yes she had lived in Hell's Kitchen but not until after her marriage in 1928 as the census records confirm.  And as for being a flapper.....she was 19 in 1928 and in Manhattan, one of the epicenters of youth culture of the 1920's so I am sure she had her wild side though I've never seen any photographs of her at this age. 8-)

But I digress.....

This West 51st St. location is in what is known as the "Hell's Kitchen" area of NYC.
After the War of Northern Aggression ended in 1865, the area which had housed shantytowns along the Hudson River saw a boom in population growth.  Tenements were erected and the poverty stricken among New York's residents crammed these overcrowded buildings.  Gang activity grew and at one time this area was called the "most dangerous area on the American Continent".  Violent gangs such as the Gopher Gang and the Hell's Kitchen Gang ran the area and after Prohibition was implemented the area became known for illicit brewing and the many warehouses in the area were used by rumrunners.  During the 1920's the gangs transformed into organized crime entities and the leader of the Gophers, Owney Madden, became one of the notorious crime bosses in the city(he owned the famous Cotton Club speakeasy in Harlem).  After Prohibition was repealed in 1929 these crime organizations moved into other illegal activities and by the time my grandparents lived there it was still a neighborhood for poor and working class Irish Americans but was not the den of crime and iniquity it had been.

Now who is this Catherine McCarthy who Frank Bowman, Jr. married and how did they meet?

Catherine McCarthy first shows up in the 1910 Federal Census living with her parents at 1043 Cambridge St. in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Here is what that location looks like today......

The part of the building sitting at 1043 is owned/rented by the Massachusetts Alliance of Portuguese Speakers Organization now.  In 1910 this was an apartment building.

And here is what is located a mere 1 mile from that building......

Yes, Harvard University....though my family never had any connection to that institution.

My grandmother Catherine McCarthy was 1 year old when living in Cambridge, MA in 1910 with her parents, Dennis and Mary McCarthy. 
Dennis was a worker in a rubber factory.

Ten years later in the 1920 Census the Dennis McCarthy Family is living at 242 Webster Ave. still in Cambridge, MA.
That location no longer exists and there is only a tiny stretch of Webster Ave. at this end of that road.

242 Webster Ave. was near here.....

The Immaculate Conception Catholic Church, which is now a Condominium. Off to the right of the photo is a diagonally laid out bit a street that stretched beyond that called Webster Ave.
This location is a mere .02 miles from the McCarthy family home in 1910.

Not only did they move physically .02 miles but Dennis and Mary added 4 more children to their family by 1920.....Mary in 1911, Ella in 1913, John in 1915 and Margaret in 1918.  Dennis worked for the "Terminal Company" as a painter.

I found that this company was actually the Boston Terminal Company.  The Boston Terminal Company, established in 1897, was charged with the task of combining the four railroad terminals that served the Boston area into one consolidated terminal.
The Boston Terminal Co. built the South Union Station in 1898 which at that time was the largest rail station ever built.

You can read more about them HERE. 

In 1928 Catherine McCarthy married Frank Bowman, Jr. and by 1930 she was no longer living in her parent's home and relocated to Manhattan and they had set up housekeeping in Hell's Kitchen after the end of Prohibition.

Still don't know how they met.  Catherine McCarthy lived with her parents in Cambridge, MA in the 1920's and Frank Bowman was living with his parents in New Windsor, NY in 1925.  3 years after that they were married in 1928.
I do know that Frank Bowman Jr. attempted or actually joined the military in 1926 or so when he was 17 years old.   A cousin of my father told me this a few years ago.  It may have been that he went to Canada and lied about his age and who he was.  He may have been thrown out too. I am still trying to sort all this out. 
We can say for sure that in the late 1920's Frank Bowman was roving about and this is when he met my soon-to-be grandmother, Catherine McCarthy.

In November of 1931 Catherine gave birth to a son, Francis Dennis Bowman III.  I don't know where this III came from since Frank's father's full name was Francis Foster Bowman, not Francis Dennis Bowman.  Another family mystery......
By the time of his birth the Bowman family was no longer living in Manhattan but in Brooklyn according to the birth records.
In 1934 Catherine gave birth again to a daughter, Marilyn.

And in the 1940 census the Frank Bowman family had moved to 5920 5th Ave. in Brooklyn.
Here it is today.......

Here's a close up.....

The green door under the pale blue awning is 5920.  This is located in the Sunset Park neighborhood of Brooklyn.
Here is what is located on the opposite corner from this road on 5th Ave. and 60th St.

Our Lady of Perpetual Help Catholic Church Basilica.
Here's a video from YouTube about the Church but they also talk about the history of the area a bit in the beginning of it.
Stick around for the latter part of the video if you are into architecture and grand churches.



You can catch a glimpse of the street outside my grandparents home at 3:27 in that video.

The Upper church was completed in 1928 so my father, aunt and grandparents went to this church when it was practically brand new.

In 1940 my grandfather is 31 years old, a foreman electrician for a construction company and my father is 8 years old and attending school.  The family indicates that in 1935 they were living at the same address so they've been in Brooklyn at least 5 years in 1940.

Then in 1941, all hell broke loose in the family after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and the US entered World War II.

And we'll leave it here until another time.

Sluggy