Ticket to the Beatles Part 2

This was my second time stalking/seeing Ticket to the Beatles in concert. It was located at The Meadows at Lake St. Louis. You know where all of the Cardinals/Blues/Rams live... It was in the middle of an outdoor shopping center.

Me and Sara packed a cooler and 2 lawn chairs...along with some strawberry pretzel salad. We found a spot to sit in some shade next to the beer tent. Here's me trying to chop off my head as usual.
The stage was under an arbor/pergola with draped British flags. There was a raised grassy area with cattails that all of the kids ran around during the concert.

Here's a shot of George playing While My Guitar Gently Weeps.

And again...

Here's what the stage looked like when the sun finally set.

And here's the video of While My Guitar Gently Weeps....

Calling all alcoholics!!!

Calling all alcoholics/wine afficionados....bring me your bottles!! I don't drink, but for those of you who do...if you want to be green like me, please re-purpose your wine and liquor bottles by giving them to me. I'm planning on trying to start a little side business by creating beautiful works of art from glass bottles. I only have about 4 wine bottles now...so it's not much to start on. So, I could really use some help if you have any empty bottles that are not sentimental please send them my way...along with corks or caps if possible!! I would greatly appreciate some help along so that I don't have to go begging on the corner for money to pay rent. Please pass this on to anyone you know may have some bottles on hand...restaurants maybe too!! I'll take wine, alcohol, ...basically any glass bottles should work.

P.S. I have 2 bottles of wine in my fridge (yuck) which I obviously won't drink, so if anyone wants to drink them sometime and give me the bottles back...that works too.

Strawberry Pretzel Salad and Turkey Lasagna

Some pictures of my world-famous Strawberry Pretzel Salad. They freak out at work when I bring it in. I did a group from 10-11:30 and when I got back in the office it was gone.

Here's the gelatin and strawberry mixture cooling...
Whipped cream/cream cheese layer...I must have missed a pic of the pretzel layer.

Final product hardening...it didn't stick around much longer after this...

Next up, turkey lasagna. Picture of mozzarella, ricotta, and parmesan cheeses...

Cooking the turkey...

Turkey and cheese all mixed up yum....

Before the oven...

After the oven....

Another puzzle

Here's my 2nd?? puzzle. Starting with the edges...

Got all the easy parts done...

Now on to all of the multi-colored blendy parts...

Blasted trees!!

All done!

My Ancestry

In case you haven't heard, I have been researching my ancestry for the last few months. I can't even really remember why I started getting into this in the first place, except for the fact that I love all things Italian and wanted to know exactly where in Italy we came from. My mom's dad's side of the family is the only side with an obvious ancestry with a name like Alesandrini. I looked around on the usual ancestry websites, but they didn't tell me much since I didn't know much to begin with. All I knew of the family line was from: Me (Casey)--Mom (Stacey)--Grandpa (Ronald)--Great Grandpa (Louis). My mom had told me years ago that my grandpa's brother had all of the ancestry information. I don't see him very often, but when I saw him back in May at my cousin's graduation party I had to ask him what he knew. He told me that years ago he went to Ellis Island to find out everything. Since he used to be in the Navy he had travelled all over including Italy. He told me that now they have a website www.ellisisland.org to find out everthing you need to know. I told him that I was making a family tree on facebook and he registered on there that night and sent me all of his information. Here's the list of family members that he found on Ellis Island filesThe website actually shows you a picture of the original ship manifest that they signed in on. Which of course they wouldn't let me save to post on here grrrr... You can see how old they were when they got on the boat, their height, hair color, and eye color. Both of my great-great-grandparents were about 5' 1" which is strange because the Alesandrini side of the family has always been very tall. This document also shows that they used to spell it Alessandrini and must have dropped one 's' somewhere in America. The document lists all of the family together so you can see how many younger siblings my great-great-grandma had. It also lists where they were moving to, and the Drudi's were going straight to Peoria, Illinois where a lot of my family still lives. The manifest also asks many strange questions like "are you a polygamist or a communist?"

The passenger record states the place of birth, which when transcribed from it's original chicken scratch cursive, was listed as Eallamello. Well, I googled Eallamello and google replied "do you mean Talamello?" So it turns out that their transcription was misspelled. Here is a map of where Talamello is located, near Bologna and Rimini.

Here are some pictures of Talamello!! Also if you get on google Earth, they have a 360 camera there and you can see the vineyard hills.

Next up is the record for my great-great grandpa Terssilio Alessandrini. The manifest says that he immigrated to Spring Valley, Illinois which is also near Peoria where Rosa Drudi immigrated to. Spring Valley used to be a big mining town in the early 1900's when he came here. I was a little confused when I saw that the record states that he is from Southern Italy but lived in Greece. But, when I looked closer a few days ago the original manifest actually says born in Laurenin, Greece!! So this means that I'm Greek also!!! This is when it starts to get crazy. I have always said that the only two places I would want to visit in Europe are Italy obviously and Greece. I have always loved watching movies with the white buildings with blue roofs and cerulean blue waters. I always wanted to be an architect, and hello...Greek architecture!! I ended up majoring in Theater and the theatre comes from Greece!! I also majored in psychology and the whole idea of the psyche came from Greek myth!! I'm in the middle of re-reading my Greek mythology textbook from school right now coincidentally!! It was one of my favorite classes and I always felt a connection to these crazy stories in the myths. I always thought that all of my interests were so all over the place, they never made sense. But now it's like I finally had an Oprah AHA moment or something. So here is the passenger record for Terssilio Alessandrini. It says that he was from Laurenin, but of course another typo...it was actually Laurion or known as Lavrion today.

Here is a map of where Lavrion is located on the Aegean sea right down the coast from Athens!!! Where all of the Greek gods are worshipped and all of the temples are!!!

Here are some pictures of it today. It's right on the sea and it's a huge harbor town!! Hello, I love all things water too people!!

Ruins of what appears to be a temple in Lavrion.

Looking out at the sea...

These are ruins of an amphitheatre!!!

A map showing all of the tourist spots today in Lavrion.

Picture of one of the many mines in Lavrion where Terssilio may have worked.

P.S. I am taking donations from anyone who wishes to send me back to the mother-land where I belong...

Quotes Vol. 22

"No one ever listens to me. When the package is this pretty, no one cares what's inside." ~ Friends

"I thought this was going to be the most difficult thing I ever had to do. But when I saw you walking down that aisle I realized how simple it was. I love you. Any surprises that come our way, it's okay, because I will always love you. You are the person I was meant to spend the rest of my life with." ~ Friends

"I found everything that I'd ever been looking for my whole life. And now...here we are...with our future before us...and I only want to spend it with you, my prince, my soul mate, my friend." ~ Friends

"It can't be any harder than this...I mean, if I had known the last time I saw you would be the last time, I...I would have stopped to memorize your face, the way you move, everything about you. If I had known the last time I kissed you would have been the last time...I never would have stopped." ~ Friends

"He could be anywhere in the world but he chooses to be with her because life is better with her by his side." ~ The Perfect Man

"It's like all the bad stuff that you went through that you hated along the way: the people who disappointed you, the things that didn't go the way you wanted, suddenly, you feel grateful for them, because those are the things that got you to here, to this." ~ The Perfect Man

"Friends are those rare people who ask how we are and then wait to hear the answer." ~ Ed Cunningham

"I believe that sometimes you have to look reality in the eye and deny it."

"The less said the better." ~ Jane Austen

"There are no little events in life. Those we think of no consequence might be full of fate." ~ Amelia Barr

"Man alone is born crying, lives complaining, and dies disappointed." ~ Samuel Johnson

"The most important thing in life is your family. There are days you love them, and others you don't, but in the end they're the people you always come home to. Sometimes it's the family you're born into and sometimes it's the one you make for yourself." ~ Sex and the City

"Let's be honest. Sometimes there is nothing harder in life than being happy for somebody else. Like lottery winners. Or extremely successful people who are 27. And then there's that hell on earth that only your closest friends can inflict on you--the baby shower." ~ Sex and the City

"Puberty is a phase. Fifteen years of rejection is a lifestyle." ~ Sex and the City

"I'm nice. I'm pretty, and smart! I'm a catch! I've been dating since I was fifteen! I'm exhausted! Where is he?" ~ Sex and the City

"I have a date with a dildo." ~ Sex and the City

"My vagina's depressed." ~ Sex and the City

"You pull me off my unicorn, you tear away my gossamer petticoat, and you put your schooner deep inside my Rebecca." ~ Sex and the City

"You men have no idea what we're dealing with down there. Teeth placement, and jaw stress, and suction, and gag reflex, and all the while bobbing up and down, moaning and trying to breathe through our noses. Easy? Honey, they don't call it a job for nothin'" ~ Sex and the City

"I will never be the woman with the perfect hair, who can wear white and not spill on it." ~ Sex and the City

"Why do we clutch at this baggage, even when we're desperate to move on? Because we all know there's a chance we might let go too soon." ~ Desperate Housewives

"Look in your heart, because I'm in there, just like you're inside mine." ~ Desperate Housewives

"Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies." ~ Gore Vidal

"After a while, you just want to be with the one who makes you laugh." ~ Sex and the City

"Wise men never say what they think of women." ~ Samuel Butler

"Life can only be understood backwards, but it has to be lived forwards." ~ Soren Kierkegaard

"I'm impossible to forget, but I'm hard to remember." ~ Elizabethtown

"Have the courage to fail big and stick around. Make them wonder why you're still smiling." ~ Elizabethtown

"We were complete opposites and it worked. And something happened between us that was not part of the plan...we were in love." ~ Elizabethtown

"I was still waiting for everything to start, and now it's over." ~ Elizabethtown

The Beatles, the zoo, and three cheese stuffed meatballs.

The zoo has a summer concert series called Jungle Boogie Friday nights. When I was preparing to take my clients to the zoo last month, I saw that a band called Ticket to the Beatles would be there. I figured it would be a Beatles cover band, so I decided to check it out. I went to the zoo by myself, figuring if it sucked I could just leave at any time. I parked on the street and the zoo is free so I didn't have to spend a dime. I arrived about 20 minutes before the concert and found one of the last bench seats before the swarms of people came in. The stage was set up right in front of the lake and by the cafe and Build-a-Bear workshop. I wasn't expecting a lot of people, but everyone came prepared with lawn chairs and coolers with wine and beer.
The band was awesome. They actually knew how to play their instruments. They played only Beatles songs which made it so much better. At first nobody was dancing except for this crazy guy....

I wish I had gotten video of him, but I'm attempting to upload a video from the concert now. He danced very Eileen from Seinfeld-esque. During the break in the middle of the concert he had to change his shirt because he sweated through the first one.

I took a walk around the area towards the end of the concert and we were right by the sea lions, who seemed to have all gone into a coma from the music. Here's a side view of the stage with more people dancing. All of the kids were basically running around in circles in front of the stage.

Here's an up-close shot of the group. They play all over the St. Louis area and I just went to another one of their concerts last night. Their website is http://www.tickettothebeatles.com/ . I would recommend going and taking the kids.

And best part of all....they have George Harrison!!!! (AKA George Smith) He is my favorite Beatle and looks just like George from the Let It Be album cover. He plays the same guitar as George, and holds it up high like he did. I'll have more video soon of him playing While My Guitar Gently Weeps from last night soon. I had to resist the urge to ask him to take a picture with me.

Last shot before leaving the zoo after hours, the lake behind the stage.

Next up, three cheese stuffed meatballs.

Lots of meat, seasoning, and ricotta, mozzarella, and parmesan cheese!!!

They looked so good...

Add some spaghetti and this is one of my favorite new recipes so far. Not sure if I'll make the meatballs so big next time.

Video from the concert!!! All the middle-aged women dancing LOL.