Good morning, on this lovely somewhat cool Friday morning of course being Friday means it is Five things Friday, been thinking about what this weeks five things would be so after some thought I have decided, ok no thought really just listening to the tv and that is how I decided on this weeks five things.

Citizenship tests

Duel citizenship

Immigrants

Integrate

Try to learn the language of your new country

Everyone has an opinion on who should be allowed to immigrate to their country some and all for letting all the refuges in others not so much, most people don’t have a problem with those who apply and go through all the right steps to move to a foreign country but most people also have a big problem with those who turn up in boats and who try to sneak into a country illegally. Also many have a problem with those who do not seem to at least try to learn to speak the language in my case that language is english, I know it’s hard but at least try.

Let us talk a little about the American civil war, we all know that during the war the North wore blue uniforms and the South wore grey but did you know at the start of the war that wasn’t necessary the case.

In fact many soldiers on both sides wore both blue or grey as they wore the uniform of the militia they were part of, as the men of the 5^th Virginia Militia who wore a blue uniform and they had to wear a white strip of cloth around their hats and were told if challenged to place their hand over their left breast and say “our homes”. Like that was going to happen in the middle of a battle or pretty much at any time.

 

Regular U S Army troops wore their traditional dark blue trousers, jackets and kepi caps, to distinguish the volunteers who comprised the vast bulk of the federal armies from the professionals of the regular army.

However, many Union soldiers also wore grey uniforms again because that was the uniform of the militia they were part of. Then there were the men who turned up to fight decked out in baggy trouser usually bright red or striped because their uniform was influenced by French Zouaves of North Africa. I will talk about the Zouaves in another post.

Confederate uniform volunteers were grey kepi jacket and trousers but as the war went on they would fad and took on a light brownish appearance, which gave rise to the nickname “Butternuts” for Southern soldiers.

On both sides artillerymen had red kepis, shell jackets with red trim and depending on rank a red stripe on their pants legs. Cavalry riders had a yellow stripe on their pants and yellow trim on jackets. Other special units had different uniforms the Hiram Berdan’s Union sharpshooters wore green uniforms.

Of course many in command and in Washington thought the whole thing would be over after the first battle, never thinking it would last as long as it did or that so many would die during the war.

The first major battle of the war took place at Bull Run River, now try and picture it a battle fought my mostly untrained soldiers with both sides wearing both blue and grey uniforms and some wearing no uniform at all, it must have been crazy chaos and it was fought only 25-30 miles from Washington. The battle lasted around 12 hours, with between 3,600-4,600 dead or wounded and around 1,200 missing in action.

Ok all have a question for everyone comes from some questions I saw on Lauren’s blog,which can be found here for all those who have not discovered her already: http://www.lotfortyeightblog.com

The question is: How often do you doodle?

My answer, pretty often,usually when I am on the phone, if I have a a magazine or note near me I like to colour in the circles in letters like O or the O in a P that type of thing, I also like to draw around the edges on envelopes and such, that is my type of doodling.

I think pretty much everyone likes to doodle when they are on the phone especially if you are on hold, so tell me your style of doodling.

Here we are on Easter Monday and since it’s Monday that means it is do you know Monday. So did you know this.

All old wooden-hulled ships had to be kept watertight at the seams, since dry docks were not around a long time ago this had to be done while the boat was afloat. The lowest seam on the hull was called the “devil” and was particularly difficult to reach and was dangerous to work on,hence the expression “between the devil and the deep blue sea” was born.

As said it is Easter Monday here so another public holiday but that is ok I have no plans to go out and sometime today Leo will be here we have him tonight because he wants to have a sleep over not as far as I know not because his mum has any plans.

I am not in much pain which is good although I do feel pretty tired and have a slight headache and yes I did 80 minutes of exercise first thing this morning.

Good morning and Happy Easter Sunday to all my friends in blog land, I as usual have been up since 4.30am and have just finished this mornings exercises very little pain this morning. However,since I am doing homemade chicken nuggets for lunch was suppose to be chicken tenders but some silly woman picked up the wrong item got diced chicken instead of chicken tenderloins so it will be nuggets instead of tenders. I have no idea what I am going to have with them but I will think of something.

Yesterday was spent shopping as I couldn’t go on Friday and for the most part my back was fine the pain I had was in the back of my right ankle/calf aka the Achilles tendon that was painful and walking was painful but of course I coped what else can one do.

After Tim gets up I will go and find the Easter gifts and chocolates for my grandchildren, Jessica asked me when did it become the thing to give gifts at Easter time instead of just chocolates. I told her I have no idea, I started to give gifts to the grandchildren when their mothers asked me not to give a lot of chocolate.

I can remember a time when you would find the stores having a lot of Easter Eggs left over and reduced on Easter Monday, not so much any more when I was shopping yesterday I notice a lot of stores had just about sold out of Easter Eggs.

We haven’t had Leo sleep over since the school holidays started and I said to him yesterday something about him sleeping over on Monday night he tilted his head and said “we will see”. I think because we have him so much during the school term both him and his mum think it is right to give us a break over the holidays and I get that, I also think he likes spending so much time with his mum.

Ok that is it for today, I will be back tomorrow.

Good morning all here we are at Friday again and it has started out being a really good Friday and of course it is Good Friday, so here is this weeks five things.

No Meat

Crucified

Pontius Pilate

Public Holiday

Jesus

Ok so it is Good Friday and for me that means no meat today, why we don’t eat meat on Good Friday I have no idea, but it is one day a year so not a problem. It is how I was raised as was my mother and her mother and so forth.

I get annoyed with my own daughters because they do have meat because they are not religious which is ok I get that but as I said it is one day a year how hard is it to not eat meat on this one day.

Here in Australia Good Friday is a public holiday, and a true public holiday as in 90 odd percent of things are in fact closed, all supermarkets are closed are is pretty much all other stores, service stations are opened, buses and trains run and taxis operate, most take away shops are opened fish and chip shops do a roaring trade on this day. All shopping centres aka malls in some countries are closed.

The same goes for Easter Sunday.

Hello all, guess who is in pain, yeah me, guess who was only able to do 70 minutes of exercise this morning due to the pain, yeah me again. Yesterday morning at 6.30am my Wii remote started working again so after a couple of days of no exercising I am back doing it again.

Last night I was woken up a couple of times with spasms of pain in my back and this morning has been much the same.

I want to go to the supermarket today I need a few things but Tim took the car to work because it is pretty wet here, so I have sent Jessica a text to see if she will go for me, I know she will drive me there but with how I am pain wise I don’t know how I would manage to get into her car as she has a 4b.

Tomorrow is Good Friday, so to me that means no eating meat, my daughters, however, do eat meat if they feel like it which slightly annoys me how hard is it to have no meat on one day of the year.

In 21 days Tim and I along with my parents leave on another cruise, it is a 15 day cruise around the South Pacific Islands and Papua New Guinea, 21 days damn it is getting close and I am so excited about the holiday, I really need a holiday.

I am somewhat annoyed with Tim because he bought an all inclusive drinks package but even though I asked him to buy it in my name so mum and I can share cocktails he bought it in his name, he got me a soft drink package. He knows I am annoyed but he doesn’t get why he keeps going on about dad buying a drinks package and yeah I agree dad should but he hasn’t and I doubt he will.

Last night Tim asked me how I really feel about weight loss surgery and do I really think it will work, I said yes I think it will work to some degree but I am not sure how much it will work, I am somewhat picky when it comes to food.

Well that is all for this post.

Hi all on Lauren’s blog I came across this post:

http://www.lotfortyeightblog.com/2017/04/50-questions.html

I liked the questions and copied some of them which I will use as blog post, starting with this post on nicknames, if you don’t already follow Lauren you should she is amazing but that is just my humble opinion. Go visit and decide for yourself.

So today’s question is about nicknames, do you have one or had one in the past but no more, please tell me. I don’t have a nickname and have never had a nickname.

According to freedictionary.com a nickname is:

1: A descriptive name added to or replacing the actual name of a person or place or thing.

2: A familiar or shortened form of a proper name

So using those definitions I guess you could say being called Jo instead of Jo-Anne is a nickname, I however, have always thought of a nickname as described in number 1 like when I was a child the man acrossed the road was called “Vic” because he was from Victoria. My daughter Natasha has the nickname “Tinkerbell” I don’t know why she just does.

I can’t think of any nickname had by Tim, although I just asked him and he said when he drove trucks he had the nickname “knuckles” because when he was driving down some roads doing 110klmp’s he would grip the steering wheel so tight his knuckles would turn white, I never knew that.

My dad when he was working was called “the little general” because he was bossy and short tempered, my sister had the nickname “Franky” I don’t know why but I do know it was our brother in-law Mick who gave her the nickname.

Good morning all and welcome to the first “did you know” post this will be a new Monday feature here at Jo-Anne’s Ramblings, why well I will tell you Leo has this book called “1000 Facts” and I thought why not use it for blog posts so each Monday I will share something from the book with you all.

This week we have this little fact:

As you all properly know The Seven Dwarfs are Happy, Dopey, Grumpy,Sleepy, Sneezy, Bashful and Doc, but Walt Disney had a list of over 50 names and characters to choose from for the movie. Among the dwarfs that didn’t make the cut and end up in the movie were Hotsy, Nifty, Shifty, Blabby, Gaspy, Dirty and Awful.

Ok world guess who spent most of yesterday in so much bloody pain she felt like an old frail woman and she is only 54, if you guessed me you guessed right, Tim said it is because I am big he didn’t use the word “fat” but that is what he meant. I said it was because I spent a lot of the day on my feet, have to say I was thankful for my walking stick. Tim said I didn’t do much during the day yeah really Tim wake up and notice how much I do.

I did spend a lot of time standing and cooking and I pegged two loads of washing on the line and got it off again and of course I started the day doing 1hr 45 mins of exercises all of which is not good when one has a bad back.

Speaking of lunch I did honey soy chicken with fried rice and pasta, Tim complained that I put seeds and nuts in the rice and said the chicken was a little dry, Jessica complained she didn’t like the pasta that much and Kathy said the chicken was a little dry but she really liked the fried rice but they all ate it which I guess is something.

Blain had two cheese pies as he said he didn’t like honey soy chicken, Natasha wasn’t here so she ate nothing which is about how much she would have eaten if she had been here.

Today I have been moving better managed to get dressed and put my own socks on my feet which is more then I did yesterday, I had to have Tim’s help getting dressed yesterday morning I was in that much pain. Although I am expecting things to go down hill as Natasha dropped of washing for me to do another three loads of washing, so more time spent on my feet again today.

At the moment I have Blain while Natasha goes to get Jessica from Wallsend, she had to take the work van she used yesterday back and needed someone to pick her up, Blain is unwell so he is here in the lounge room watching cartoons while I am in Tim’s office using the computer. I still do not have my laptop, although Tim has ordered a new hard drive for it.

Natasha is going to loan her car to Steve, so will need Jessica to drive her home and she wants her dad to take her washing over when it is done I bet he ends up wanting me to do it though.

Tim has taken Leo for a ride on the motorbike they are meeting Jessica out at Wallsend and Leo will come back with his mum and Natasha, Leo loves to go for a ride on the motorbike.

Well that is all from me for this post.