S is going to be a busy month so we are Sampling as many S activities as we can before we take a vacation. After this month, we’re going to definitely need a Siesta.

2 Points

SAMPLING SPIRITS AND SAVORY BITES

We’ve found that our city’s newsletter, “Plano Profile”, is a great source for activities that fit right into the ABC Life. (We’re sure you have something similar in your city.) This week we discovered that the Shops of Willow Bend was promoting a new area named The District as part of their effort to reinvent the mall.

To introduce new restaurants and entertainment, they hosted the Plano Wine and Food Festival. After paying a small fee, we received our wine glass, 10 tickets for wine Sampling and 4 tickets for food Sampling. Pooling our resources, that gave us a taste of 20 wines and 8 foods! Of course we started with the S wines and couldn’t resist ending with some Sugar in the form of Fried Oreos.

Soon we’ll be Sampling some larger sized clothing!

2 points

SAMPLING AFTERLIFE SCENARIOS

Ever wonder about the afterlife: does it exist and if so, what is it like? SUM: Forty Tales From the Afterlife by neuroscientist David Eagleman is a fun, thought-provoking book that presents 40 short (few pages each) stories that offer a glimpse into what comes next. These tales are not serious but they do challenge us to ponder and appreciate the many possibilities that could exist. The point is that none of these stories are probable, but then again, what is?  It’s a good book for a discussion with a few friends – and that’s just what we did after reading it. Barbara was particularly intrigued by a tale where you do the same things you always did but suddenly realize the world is only made up of the people you’ve previously met. Although this is comforting it becomes a bit alarming when you realize that there will be nothing new ahead since there are neither any new people nor experiences for you. Laura was haunted by the tale that your new world is populated by all the different versions of yourself that could have been. There are some more successful versions and some less successful. Good ones, bad ones. And realizing what you could have done had you made different choices only leads to misery in the afterlife. This book is best read in spurts to allow for some time to reflect.

2 points

SAMPLING SCRAPS OF LIFE

Capturing moments of your life is an appealing pursuit and scrapbooking is a great way to do it. While Barbara has created many online photo books of her travels, we’ve often wondered about the art of print scrapbooking. The end products always seem nice but we had heard that it was time-consuming and rather costly. Was this something we would ever do? One way to find out was to visit our friend Belindy, who is an avid scrapbooker. Our visit was an eye opener and appealed both to Laura’s creativity and reinforced Barbara’s belief that people who were into scrapbooking were really into it. Belindy had all the tools of the trade – special papers, books of stickers, shelves of albums and boxes of photos. Her finished scrapbooks were beautiful and reflective of her thoroughness and attention to detail. Scrapbooking can be overwhelming but Belindy gave us advice on how to get started. Laura is already planning a Thanksgiving project with her granddaughters and Barbara may attempt a book or two with old printed photos of her kids when they were young. We dashed off to Hobby Lobby to take a look at some scrapbooking materials but our local branch had closed! A momentary setback but a scrapbooking attempt is definitely in our future.

Let us know if you’ve scrapbooked and what type of books you’ve made!