New backpacks - Coffee may help your memory - Rob Lokoff has departed from this world

 For a dozen or more years I wore the backpack of the Grand Canyon of PA. I loved wearing it but it was not stylish. So a week ago I replaced it with a smaller one that Scott bought me from Macy's for a clearance price of $20.

Mom said on Sunday it was too expensive. She was born in 1922.

 For Valentine's Day Scott bought me the above plant at Kremp's. It was losing leaves so I moved it to this table where it is doing well.

In the background on the wiudow sill is Howling Wolf a gift from Margie Lawlor.

This morning before I left for my volunteer job at Second Home for the elderly, I called them and asked if I could bring blue hydrangeas  from my garden - and a backpack - yes to both.

They'll roll the dice for the backpack and I told em I'd bring anudder beauty next week.

Why not give them away to people you know?

Hold on, I've gotta drink a sip of horrible coffee while I write about Roberto, as I used to call him when we were friends.

My friend died in a car accident.

Rob! How could you. I loved you so.

Monday, June 10, 2013

Rob Lokoff comes for lunch! - Scott's train set - Hello Phil Martino, miss you!

Rob is very easy to cook for. "I eat everything," he told me over the phone. We began with a salad that had spinach, kale, mushrooms, scallions, cukes, read more

 punkin seeds, sunflower seeds, and a dressing made with fresh lemon, fresh mint leaves from my garden, olive oil, and a tiny amount of balsamic vinegar so it wouldn't make me coff.

Rob is one of my favorite people in the world. His daughter Amy just graduated from American University in DC with a degree in art. She's looking for a job. This is a very talented family so I'm sure she'll find something she likes.

Main course was a delicious egg omelette with assorted veggies, left over from last nite's homemade pizza, and herbs from the well-watered garden.

It's raining right now at the US Open in Merion, PA. Today is "Practice Day."

Remember, this is 2013.

Ground crews are clearing off water from the grass... heavy rains. Rob said Merion last hosted the Open in 1981.

Rob's son Jacob is working in one of the refreshment booths.

Everyone is hoping to see Tiger Woods. Even if you know nothing about golf, everyone knows Tiger.

He has an amazing ability to camouflage himself from public view.

We took Rob on a tour of our garden. He remembered the Rain Barrel from my blog. Here's the peach tree we bot at Home Depot. The peaches are two inches high and should be ready in August, we think.

Rob's best friend, Phil Martino, who lives in Cinnaminson, NJ, loves three things the most: drumming, trains, and old cars.

We waltzed over to Scott's to show Rob Scott's great train set in the basement.

Rob is helping Phil install a train set in one of the bedrooms, where Phil takes c/o of his 87-yo mom Terri.

You should have heard Rob speak with such knowledge about trains. Click to enlarge. He and Scott had a great conversation. Both of them learned from doing.

Rob and Phil will visit a great train store at Street Road and Bustleton. The best store used to be downtown but they moved out to Lancaster.

Scott said visiting a train store is like a kid in a candy shop.

Scott uses these as 'screen savers.' Very colorful and real looking.

At one point Scott turned off the lights and the gas lamps were lit up, as were some of the buildings, and the two trains were whooshing around the tracks and the whistle was blowing.

Rob took fotos from his Fiji camera to show Phil.

What a nice magnet you have on your car, Rob! He's worried someone will steal it, as they did Scott's. The thrill of stealing.

Rob commented that Scott had a lot of energy. That's b/c he's been on vacation for a week. Tonite the SEPTA train will take him back to work. The kid who loved trains got a job with SEPTA.

THE END

Saturday, June 2, 2012

D-Day: Comcast Newsmakers - Rob Lokoff to the rescue - Poem: Ah. Mania!

I always need to be chauffeured to my Comcast Newsmakers Interviews. Usually Ada and Rich take me but since this taping was on a Friday, Rich couldn't take off.

I call Rob my morale-booster. He's better than any therapist. I never gave him a house-warming gift for his new condo in Conshohocken, so hopefully the jar of Polaner's All Fruit Blueberry Jelly will make the grade.

It's not the gifts we give, it's the kind of friend we are.

I'd gotten an email from PA State Rep. Stewart Greenleaf (R) showing a taping he did on Comcast Newsmakers - he's such a dull speaker I couldn't pay attention to his message - but I thot to myself Good idea to have another taping - and this time I've gotta mention the life-threatening effects of Lithium.

Two of the technicians at the Comcast studio on South Columbus Blvd. Say hello to Dan and Justin.

These two women made me feel very comfortable.

Danielle Jeter, a graduate of the historically black Spelman College in  Atlanta, interned at Comcast and got a FT job there. I called Danielle to ask her about the temperature in the studio. From previous years I remembered it was freezing cold.

She told me the studio was cold so I wore a fancy sweater.

I like to prepare well in advance for these tapings, so I bot my outfit that morning at the Sweater Mill in friendly Hatboro. Ivy helped me.

At 9 that morning, I had my hair and nails done at Polished, also in The Hat.

To the right of Danielle, is Michelle, a recent engineering grad of North Carolina A & T. She's doing her internship at Comcast now.

I didn't mention I was born in the "Tar Heel State" at Camp Lejeune, NC. I still have the menu they fed mom at the hospital. No wonder we both love key lime pie.

Here I am with interviewer Jill Horner. Rob was sitting offstage and watching me live and on a monitor. I was watching myself from:

inside myself
and on three monitors, very briefly

I carefully checked the info that would be printed on the screen while I was speaking: Ruth Z Deming, MGPGP plus our website which they printed in all CAPS.

Afterward Rob and I celebrated. Instead of eating at the Beverly Hills Hotel, we went to the Hatboro equivalent: McDonald's.

Rob was skittish at first but I assured him they'd have something delicious. Here he is with his mango-pineapple smoothie.

 I thoroughly enjoyed my iced decaf. Unbeknownst to me, the attendant added a forbidden vanilla creme concoction which this person w diabetes, greedily slurped up.

See, if it's in my own power and I do these dastardly deeds, that's bad. But when it's accidentally done for me, that's okay.

Oh? My body can't tell the difference? Shucks.

I got diabetes from my kidney antirejection meds. I've gotta shlep my drug paraphernalia everywhere I go including to a wedding I'm going to later today.

Loads of family members are in town. Am hoping they'll come over to see the additions I put on the house.

My sister Amy from Oregon said to me, "Ruth, where'd you get the money?"

I think she was expecting me to say, "I borrowed it from Mommy."

I sold some of my Berkshire Hathaway stock.

AH, MANIA!

You are faithful, I’ll give you that, coming ‘round just in time for

Valentine’s Day.

You snuggle close and ask me to be yours. I smile knowingly and say,

Show me your virtues....if you have any.

You, in the guise of a gypsy with pots and pans strung across your back,

take down a few tarnished wares and hold them out to me.

I snort. Haven’t we been through all this before?

Then, as I touch your rouged cheek, I ask, Why won’t you give me up?

What am I to you?

Your gypsy eyes, ringed with soot, brush my face.

Okay, I say, it was good. I admit it.

I saw the stars with you.

We ran with the moon at our backs and

leaped across the sleeping earth.

You showed me the future in a

dead dog’s eye, then led me away

lest I drown in my own dream.

You spun sweet songs from the morning breeze

and trickled them through my hair.

You peeled back the world so I could dip inside.

Took the fire from the sun and winked it in my heart.

Okay, I say. You’re a friggin’ marvel, a regular storehouse of miracles.

But can’t we say goodbye?

It’s February and you’ve come back.

You always do.

I hear you breathing at my front door, soft as a kitten.

I’d know that sound anywhere.

Let me in, let me in, you whimper.

Can’t you be more original?

Once

I followed you

blissfully    blindly

never dreaming of deceit,

dazed by your taste for light and color

awed by your contempt of boundaries

so like my own

which you swept away

with a lion’s paw

while I cheered you on from the sidelines,

until I found myself

tethered insensate to a hospital bed.

And forgot I had a name.

Amid the tumult

amid the sea of screams,

the broken minds a-bob the

slicing waves like so many

wind-up clocks jangling out of time,

who should come ‘round but you.

Fancy!

There, amid the black,

the granite slab of eternity sawing through my chest,

you kissed my eyes and bid me see.

Ah, Mania,

My debt to you is incalculable,

simply beyond measure.

But no pots and pans today, dear Gypsy,

Put them away.

Today I travel alone

Fishing for words, as I do,

Fishing, sans you.

LATER ON I WILL WRITE A REQUIEM of some sort for Rob.

His father owned Bryn Mawr Stereo.