| leatherman's log |
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June 2007 |
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| Week One: |
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Now that we're really into
the Spring/Summer season, everything is growing by leaps and bounds
every day. The weather has been quite hot (nearly 90 most of this
past week), and with the few showers that rolled through in the
middle of the week, all the plants are very happy.
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The irises are
really
beginning to bloom now! |
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| Every day adds a few
inches to our ring of sunflowers. I'm not surprised though. We
planted seeds from the tall version which should grow 9-12 feet
tall. By the time these plants begin to flower, they should easily
be seen by anyone in the pool. |
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| Thurs. morning |
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Sat. morning |
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We haven't had a project in a few, and
in all this heat, we tackled a doozie of a project. Over the years,
one of the neighbor's trees has grown tall enough that it throws
quite a bit of shade onto the pool in the late afternoon. With the
permission of the neighbor, we climbed up into his tree and spent 2
hours trimming out branches. We still have a little more to do
before we get the tree top shortened; but we made great progress.
The neighbor also told us that he has a chainsaw, so we may soon
take down a tree at the back of our brush pile that blocks the sun
from hitting the solar heater panel.
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Remember how Jim and I
were stripping down the big brush pile for the mulch at the start of
Spring? Back in March, we nearly had the pile leveled down to the
hillside. After chopping down some bamboo, hacking down the old
pampas grass, and now adding half of a tree, the pile has grown back
up bigger than ever. But it's a GOOD thing. That pile of brush keeps
the neighbor kids and their 3 Jack Russells in their yard, and it
keeps my spaniels down in my yard, without having to fence in the
big backyard.
(In the picture on the right, that tree that's on the left side,
just past Joxer, is the one we would like to remove.) |
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| The brush pile back in March |
MouseOver to highlight
the top of the brush pile |
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This hot weather also
means that we've really been getting to use the pool. As a good ol'
Southern boy, I can't say that I mind a bit having an early, hot
Summer up here in Ohio. Nearly every other day, Jim or DO is
bringing a new float or ball to add to our huge collection of pool
accoutrements.
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You might remember a few
years ago when we got our first "Yertle the Turtle" float.
Unfortunately we found that if someone jumps on them too hard, their
legs blow off, deflating them permanently. (You know who I mean,
Ritchie.
) While looking for more large beach balls, DO
found and purchased me another Yertle. WooHoo! I really like him
because not only is he cute and big; but, flipped over on his shell,
Yertle makes a great float to lounge on (his front legs become
armrests and his head is a nice pillow
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| Although he doesn't get to
spend much time in the pool because of his job, Jim has gotten in
some pool time on his days off during this lovely spell of weather. |
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MouseOver GBS picture
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On such a hot day, we
would have been BAD parents if we hadn't let our kidz take a dip in
the pool too.
When Jim asked Joxer if he wanted to "go swimming?", Joxer got as
excited as Gabby does when Jim asks her if she wants to "go for a
ride?"
Even partially blind, Joxer is still the "pool dog".
Joxer is having a hard time finding his toys in the water until his
muzzle bumps into them. Once in a while though, he still sees them!
I was trying to get to his red/white pull rope as he swam by it and it
began to sink. Joxer saw it though, and with no help from me, dove down to
retrieve his toy!
Very determined not to lose the pull
rope, Joxer struggled swimming back to the surface; but was wiggling
his tail before he even climbed back out of the pool, proud and
triumphant!
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I often compliment my dogz
by telling how they make me laugh every day. Since laughter is the
best medicine, they are part of what has helped keep me alive and
kicking all these years.
When Joxer wanted to take a break from swimming and fetching, he
jumped up into the chair right beside DO to drip dry.
DO and I were both laughing. Well, DO was laughing until Joxer took
a big shake right there beside her.
DO's facial expressions went from
to
to
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Aries had the next turn in
the pool.
(of course, Joxer's stayed through everyone's turn in the
pool. ) |
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Shaking off and spraying water on
everybody on the deck. Thank goodness we were in swimsuits. |
| Aries wasn't too fond of
his dip in the pool. After a quick shake, he ran up too me, and you
can just see his eyes pleading that I NOT put him back in the
water. When I asked if he wanted to swim some more, he immediately
dashed off the pool deck and made a bee-line for the patio door.
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When he got inside, his brother Zeus
seemed upset that Aries was wet and the two of them got into a bit
of sibling rivalry.
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| Poor little Zeus. He
doesn't know how to swim very well at all. First off, he seems
to still think he has big hairy paws. He just reached out and
slapped the water with his front paws. To make it more difficult, he
didn't seem to understand that he needed to kick his hind legs. When
he first started off, not only did he not get very far; but his rear
end sank lower and lower into the water. After Jim taught him to
kick with his back legs, he did better and made it to the ladder to
climb out. I'm going to work with Zeus during the week and will get
him swimming a little bit better before Summer gets here.
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| Gabby handles the pool
like she does everything in life - with gusto, tail and butt
wiggling!
Gabs only problem with swimming is that having only one front leg
does tend to make her drift off to the right as she paddles. The
good thing is that in a circular pool, she always, eventually, ends
up where she originally wanted to go.
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| Of course, all that good
weather was just too much for Ohio, and as this week progressed the
temps took a dip (down to just barely 60!) and some rain moved in
the area. I'm not going to complain too much though (as long as this
cooler period doesn't last too long. LOL). It was getting a bit too
warm and dry, and the plants were starting to have a bad time. You
know something isn't right when you're skimming leaves out of the
pool in June. |
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Between several thunder showers,
I was still able to get out in the cooler weather and get some more
yard work done. One of our friends, Rhonda, has promised me some "hostas"
plants, so I prepared a bed for them out in the front yard, on the
back side of the dogwood tree. |
| I did some work in the backyard too.
Since I needed the rocks to place around the dogwood tree, I robbed
them from around the sunflower bed, and replaced them with some
bricks that were laying about around the brush pile. Gosh! I can't
believe how big these sunflowers are getting. |
This pix is from this past Sat.
The new pix is from the following Tues. |
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| I also planted a few more
things; but since they are at this point just some seeds in some
pots, I won't bore you with pictures of them . . . yet.
I
set a planter stand from my old house into a corner of the doggie's
yard, right next to the patio. Two of the pots will be a surprise
went they grow and bloom. I had some of those papers filled with a
mixture of flower seeds that I planted into the pots. It'll be
interesting to see what comes up. In the other pot, I planted what
we call the "blue pod plants." I haven't been able to determine just
what this plant is from DO's house; but it has really pretty
blossoms, so I really hope that they grow for me. |
Back out front, the cosmos
are really growing up beside the driveway.
Within only a month, they gone from little seedlings to about 8
inches high,
and have totaled covered up the lights lining the driveway. |
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| Just emerging back in May |
After growing for a month |
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| These are the first two
buds to appear. It won't be long until flowers are lining the
driveway now.
I can't wait to see how they look with the
driveway lights hidden underneath the plants. |
| A quick health note: |
| I probably should have mentioned back
with the last update from the doctor that not only were my
HIV-related numbers good; but so were my other numbers. My
cholesterol levels (good and bad) were excellent; liver functions
were excellent; blood pressure was great, no anemia; and since my
weight hasn't much changed since I was a senior in high school
(130-135 lbs. w/o the 15 lbs. leather jacket
), even that
was good since I've actually got a little extra meat on me at 137
lbs. However, even with all that good news about my body
chemistry, sometimes I still have problems. This week I've been
having one those problems - some real bad gastro-intestinal problem.
It started by having one of my now infrequent barf-y days.
 Two
days later I was feeling tons better and did all that yard work.
However, on the following day, I was back to feeling very sick
again. I was having so much pain and cramps, that at one point,
while I laid curled up on the bathroom floor, if my cell phone had
been close enough to reach I would have dialed 911.
Although
I am still feeling bad from all the contortions my insides had been
through, I've been getting better and that's real good since the
weather is getting better too. I'm just going to continue eating
bland foods for a while. If things are much improved within a few
more days, I'll be getting in touch with a doctor about this
problem. |
| A Reading list update: |
| During the times I was lying in the sun
by the pool, or lying on the couch while it rained, I've been
plowing through a bunch of books again. After quickly knocking off 6
books in a Star Trek series (Star Trek: New Frontier,
a series of new characters on a new ship), it only took a day to
read James Patterson's recent third addition to his Maximum Ride
series ("Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports"). This
series is pretty good and I'm hoping for some more books about this
group of mutant winged kids. (If you visit Patterson's website,
you'll see that he's trying to drum up interest in turning these
stories into a movie.) The next book ("The Good Guy" by
Dean Koontz) took me three days to read; but I have some good
excuses - I was sick and not interested one day, and Jim had
actually started this book first, so I was "sharing" this book part
of the time. Both the Patterson book and the Koontz book were real
"page turners." Not only were they both interesting stories; but
both authors have taken to writing short chapters (2-4 pages). This
style of writing lets you easily stop in the story when work or the
pool calls. It also has a subliminal effect of making an exciting
story by how quickly you can turn the pages and move through the
chapters. I find myself saying, "just one more chapter and I'll stop
for a while", and then quickly realizing that I've reached the end
of the story.
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As the weather has
improved, so has my tummy problem. I not quite feeling well yet; but
I'm not really sick either.
However, we have had one little glitch
in the weather. At first, I wasn't certain how Friday was going to
go. They were predicting all sorts of storms coming up in the
afternoon; but after a few quick clouds, things didn't look too bad.
Since DO's car is not running right now, Angie and Becca picked her
up and they all came over to spend some time in the sun and in the
pool.
After a couple of hours though, things
began to change. Checking the radar, I saw storms all over the state
and we were sandwiched between two lines of thunderstorms with
lightning, hail, high winds and even a funnel cloud!
Not
long after the ladies left the pool and headed home, the edges of
both storms clipped our area. |
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As the winds moved through the area,
branches and leaves were ripped from trees all over the neighborhood
and sent blowing down the street (and into our freshly cleaned pool!
). I took this picture as the wind blew
one beach ball all
the way around the decking of the pool a few times. It was way cool
watching this. |
| Inside again after a very close blast
of lightning, I checked the radar, as Weatherbug was chipping out
warning. Glancing out the bathroom window, I saw something VERY
surprising, and ran to the patio with my camera again. Six times the
wind gusts struck so hard that it blew ALL the pool floats around
the pool before crashing them against the far side. |
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| As you can see from this
picture, the winds were strong enough to nearly blow even Gilligan's
Island out of the pool. I wish I had been able to get the
picture as EVERY float was blown up higher than the deck railing!! I
was sure our floats were going to be blown out into the neighborhood
like all those leaves had been! |
| Upcoming events for my next update: |
We have one project and one trip
planned for next week. This weekend, while Cliff is away camping,
several of us are going to be at DO's house, where we're planning on
painting their bedroom, after moving all the furniture out to remove
the ancient carpet. Last month, Jim won a $100 gift card to a local
Italian grocery story for being "Employee of the Month". Everything
we've gotten from there has been excellent; so after the painting
project, Jim and I will be treating everyone to a lasagna dinner
with garlic bread, and a cherry strudel for dessert.
Later in the week, Jim and I along with our friends Richard and Mike
P. are planning on going down to Cincinnati to spend the day at
Kings Island Amusement Park. WooHoo!
Usually
we don't go the any of the parks until next month; but we were able
to get discount tickets and everyone was able to get a day off, so
we're going early this year. Since I've taken plenty (and shown you
plenty) of pictures from the parks over the years, I'll really try
to only take interesting pictures for you on this trip. Wonder how
many pictures I'll be able to take while ON the rides?!?
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Week Two: |
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| Things went well for us this past
weekend as we painted DO and Cliff's bedroom this weekend. It didn't
take Jim and I very long to move out the furniture, and strip the
carpet from the floor. With some help from our mutual friend Rhonda,
the room went from a dingy, faded yellowish-beige to a lovely shade
of robin's egg blue with a blazing white ceiling. By the time we
were getting all the furniture back into the room, the smell of
lasagna was driving us crazy. Within short order, we not only had
their house put back together but we had also polished off the
entire pan of delicious, yummy, great tasting lasagna and garlic
bread.
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| The moon was out the other afternoon,
and so I tried to get a picture of it to see how my camera would do.
Find the moon in this picture and MouseOver it for a closer view. |
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Growing inches a day, the sunflower
stalks are above the fencing now. |
| WooHoo! The cosmos lining
the sides of the driveway are starting to bloom. Right now there are
only a couple of flowers; but within another few weeks, I'm sure
we'll have a ton of flowers showing themselves. I hope they attract
those golden finches and butterflies like they did at my old house.
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We decided to take our
vacation a little bit early this year. There are two big amusement
parks in Ohio, and since moving up here, I've always tried to
alternate years visiting the two parks. Since last year, we met up
with Linda and her kids to go north to Cedar Point, this year's trip
was in the other direction to Kings Island. Because of Jim's job, we
weren't able to take two days like we usually do, since Kings Island
is twice as far away as the other park. But we didn't go alone this
time. Our friends Richard and Mike P went along with us, so it was a
fun time with the guys this year.
As you read about our trip and look at the pictures, make sure to
MouseOver all the pictures marked with a "mouse icon" for some
special CloseUps.
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| If you look real close (or MouseOver
the picture), you can see that Darth (Jim's Hyundai) seems to have
ears like Shrek.
If you really look carefully, you can see our shadows of Jim behind
the wheel and me in the passenger seat. Although it's almost a 4
hour trip, we had a good drive to the park. Driving through Ohio is
actually quite interesting. On our side of the state, we have
rolling hills, similar to the terrain around my old hometown of
Charlotte, NC. The middle of the state is much hill-ier and a little
bit like driving through the lower mountains of West Virginia. The
way side of the state (Kings Island is outside of Cincinnati) looks
more like Georgia - flat, hot and dry. |
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| Things were looking good
as we arrived at the park. The sky was totally clear, the
temperature was warm, and the parking lot was nearly deserted, so we
were able to park closer to the entrance than we ever have.
Of course, we had learned our lesson years ago when we searched for
the car for nearly 45 minutes trying to leave Cedar Point, so we
took pictures once again of where we parked.
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| We usually go to one of
the amusement parks on July 4th, since most people here in the
States are usually at home having cookouts and watching fireworks.
We might just have to rethink our strategy though after seeing how
small the crowd was at the park two weeks earlier. We were part of
the smallest crowd that I've ever seen in any of the parks! We were
able to walk through the park without bumping into a million people.
The best part was that we were able to get onto almost every ride
immediately!
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Our longest wait was only 15 minutes
for the newest ride in the park - the FireHawk. Actually, this
wasn't the first time that I had ridden this ride. Last year
Cedarfaire (the company that owns the other big amusement park,
Cedar Point) purchased a smaller park (near Cleveland) Geauga Lake
(along with Kings Island). They dismantled the ride "X-Flight" from Geauga
Lake and moved it down to Kings Island. MouseOver this picture to
see Jim ready to ride this one for his first time. |
| By noon, we had ridden all
the major coasters in the park, and for a break we went up into the
1/3 replica of the Eiffel Tower. The observation deck is 275 ft. up
and gives not only a great view of the park; but I swear that we
must have been able to see Kentucky and Indiana from that height.
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| Looking down at the fountains |
Looking up to the top of the Tower |
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From that high up, we were able to see where we parked! Yeppers,
Darth was still there!
MouseOver to see a CloseUp of where our car was. |
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Jim, Mike P, and Richard
looking out from the Tower
(Richard called home to tell them that we could see them from that
high up.
) |
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MouseOver the ride in this picture to
see CloseUps of "The Racer" and "The Vortex" (a stand-up coater) on the left;
"The Beast", the world's longest and BEST wooden coaster on the right; and "The
Italian Job", a linear induction ride filled with water and fire
special effects at the bottom of the picture. |
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| MouseOver to see the Koi swimming in
the pond |
MouseOver to see the TIME |
| After some lunch, instead
of going on a few more rides, we were getting very hot, so we headed
over to the water park section of Kings Island. |
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Although this picture is from a few
years ago, I wanted to tell you about the BEST ride in the water
park. After climbing the stairs, up to four people load up in a
raft, zoom through a twisting, turning dark tunnel, and drop out
into this huge funnel. Every time I ride this one, I get off
laughing because it's so much fun. With Richard and Mike along this
time, it was even more fun! With their extra weight, we slid up the
sides of the funnel further than I've ever seen before. If you look
closely, you can see gray pipes inside. These pipes spray water into
the funnel "flushing" you out the far end. With all four of up in
the raft, we slid up the sides so far that we were only about two
inches away from the pipe on either side!
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| After several hours,
riding the flumes, the lazy river, and splashing through the wave
pool, we headed back to the other side of the park to ride the last
few attractions before heading home. You can see from this picture
just how small the crowd was, as we were able to still walk right up
to the rides and immediately get on. That's me and Mike P. heading
for "The Drop Zone". |
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| Riders sit facing out on
"The Drop Zone" and are lifted 315 ft. over the park (that's equal
to 26 stories!). As you ascend the ride slowly rotates, giving
riders another amazing view of the surrounding countryside. Can you
find me and Mike P on this ride? If not MouseOver to see where we
were sitting. |
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| After hanging at the top
for over 20 seconds (which seems like FOREVER as you're waiting for
the drop to happen
)
on the tallest Gyro Drop in the world, the ride suddenly plunges you
at speeds of over 61 mph. Jim took these pictures as we ascended and
descended. You can tell that we have started to drop, in the third
picture below by the way everyone's legs fling out as gravity takes
hold and we plummet to the ground.
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| Going Up! |
At the Top |
Taking the Plunge! |
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All in all, we had an
EXCELLENT time!
After
two weeks, I was finally feeling well from my intestinal problems.
We had two great friends with us. The weather was perfectly clear
most of the day, with only a few clouds showing up after we have
gotten plenty sunburned over in the water park. (Thankfully those
clouds kept us a tiny bit cooler as we finished up the last rides of
the day.) The park crowd was incredibly small and we were able to
immediately get onto all the rides.
The park and the sun finally got to Jim a bit, and I drove most of
the way back home. The only complaint I have about the trip was
having to drive through Columbus during rush hour traffic on the way
home.
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Pool Party!
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| During this Father's Day
weekend, the temperatures were soaring in northern Ohio. By the
first of the week, we're expecting to be into the low 90's! Of
course, we know exactly how to beat the heat at our house - Jump
into the Pool!
Since Cliff and DO hadn't gotten their gas grill fixed yet (a few
weeks ago we loaned them our grill for a cookout), they moved their
party down to our house, and the cookout turned into our first Pool
Party of the year!
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| Although several of us
were sunburned from our trips to the amusement parks (my nose was
peeling from the burn I got at King's Island; and Linda was
suffering from a bad burn she got when she fell asleep at the water
park of Cedar Point
),
everyone had a great time. |
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Becca and Kayle
jumping into the cool water |
DO and Jim try to squirt
Kerry outside the pool |
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| My honey, Jim
,
enjoys his day off and the fun with all of our friends! |
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Week Three: |
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| I'm officially "well"
again. I don't know why my insides were so screwed up for a couple
of weeks; but things have been fine since just before the amusement
park trip. Now I did have a small flare up of the infection in my
hand; but the meds and some Band-Aids took care of that problem in
just a few days.
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| After several years, Jim and I just
upgraded to the these new Nokia 6102i models. So far I really
like the new phones too. Although none of my phone numbers or
ringtones were transferred over, I've been setting up new tones and
pictures with each call that I receive. Along with the better sound
quality and the camera, these phones are very nice. |
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| Of course, as Spring is
turning into Summer, the weather has turned rather stormy. The other
day we were hit by several storms in a row. The last wave of clouds
that moved through produced a very strong storm with so much rain
that our pool not only filled up; but was overflowing! A bolt of
lightning struck nearby (a power transformer four houses away) and
knocked out the power in our neighborhood for over 6 hours! |
Every day the sunflowers are
growing another couple of inches. |
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| All the flowers in the
front yard (cosmos, pansies, and hostas) are all doing really well!
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| Now that I'm living in the
'burbs, I see a lot more wildlife than I did at my old house, which
was not too far from downtown Canton. Recently, I've seen hawks,
squirrels, and even a few humming birds. In the last week, we also
had some other visitors, usually out in the early morning and late
evening. These fuzzy little critters might just be living in our big
brush pile. MouseOver the right spot in this picture to find the
critter and see a CloseUp of it. |
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Week Four: |
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| This has been one of those
"half and half" types of week. During the first half of the week,
Summer weather still reigned; but without the bad thunderstorms.
DO came over to the pool a few times and we started working on
getting things ready for Pooltag2. (Did you notice the popup window
with the countdown to Pooltag2?) We can't start building any of our
floats until we strip the labels off the bottles and make sure all
the bottles are sealed. Most of the bottles we've been collecting
and storing in the garage have no caps because Jim has been entering
the codes into the MyCokeRewards website, so we can collect some
prizes later!
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The latter half of the
week wasn't as good. We had some rain and a whole lot of clouds,
while the temperature dropped down to the mid-70's. I spent this
part of the week catching up on some reading. I finally finished up
the last three Piers Anthony "Incarnations of Immortality" books,
along with a truly icky book called "Fangland". Although this book
was a sort of vampire book, it was awkwardly written and hard to
follow - not a book that I'd recommend.
Another book that I read, but wouldn't necessarily recommend, was
the "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich". I know that's an odd book
for me to pick up; but after reading some political blogs lately, I
thought it was worth checking into some past history. Several of
these blogs made connections between recent events (perhaps 9/11 and
a presidential directive that would give the president unlimited
powers in the event of a "catastrophic event") and Hitler's rise to
power - truly a scary similarity!
Back to some normal books, I also read a couple books by Jeffery
Deavers. His new book of short stories, "More Twisted", was very
good and much better than his first one ("Twisted"). Now, I'm
reading the other Deavers' book called "The Devil's Teardrop".
I have one more library book to read after that, called "Bangs
and Whimpers", a collection of short stories about the end of
the universe - just something light to read by the pool.
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| Bye, Bye Baba |
Our little family is a little smaller
now.
A few days ago, Jim saw that Baba had a few fleas, so he picked up a
flea collar for her. She's still hasn't gotten any friendlier, so we
thought a collar would be easier than trying to bathe or flea dip
the cat. However, Baba had other thoughts on the matter. She turned
on Jim as he tried to put on the collar and not only did she claw up
one of his hands rather badly; but she also bite right through the
thumbnail of Jim's other hand!
Needless to say, Jim was very upset with her, and put her outside on
the patio since he didn't want her in the house anymore. Within a
few hours, Baba escaped through a hole in the screen and hasn't been
seen since.
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