Just a Reminder

SNOW

is a four letter word.

And yes in the last two days,

it has been used in the context of a cuss word.

Our driveway and sidewalks are finally clear.

Mom's driveway is clear.

(Thanks dad for letting me borrow the truck to transport the snowblower!)

The highway patrol actually closed stretches of I-41.

The city had parking restrictions in place most of the day yesterday.

There are still some places in town where the right turn lane arrows end in snowbanks, because the plows need to make another pass to find the edge of the streets.

After an unseasonably warm fall and early winter free of snow,

it finally did snow.

We went from no snow, "I'm dreaming of a white Christmas." to

"Where are we going to put all this stuff?"

in 24 hours.

Maybe I will get around to taking pictures,

after I finish shoveling out the front walk and the drainage ditch around the garage.  The stuff drifted into solid mounds that is immune to plastic shovels, so the old metal shovel is getting used quite a lot.  After several repetitions, it gets a bit heavy.  The way it cuts into a snowbank makes me wonder if shovel throwing could be a new track and field sport, a very dangerous one at that.

I'm pretty sure you know what snow looks like by now.

If you have any doubts, look at posts from previous years.

Right now, it just isn't pretty to me at all.

I Spied

a colon.

and not this kind:

Mom had her colonoscopy today, they even gave her a picture.  Not sure if it was the before or after shot.  Yay, next time she will be over the age limit, so this was her very last one!

I need a nap.  Yesterday was quite long with getting her prepped for the procedure.  And today started very early.  There wasn't much time for sleep in between.

Oh, and Chloe made sleeping the previous night rather difficult, because we had a thunderstorm - yes, a thunderstorm in December. Silly chicken dog.  It has been raining quite heavily for at least a day.  I have sort of lost track, but am very thankful that it isn't snow.  Nap time now.

Does Anybody Need a

Curling Iron?

As a follow up to the "Drat" post, I did find a new hairdryer that only pulls 1600W at Sally Beauty Supply.  The only hitch was they threw in a curling iron for free.  The thing is, I don't generally use a curling iron.  I'm lucky and happy enough when my hair is clean and dry.  Curling it usually just makes things worse rather than better, because it makes the split ends appear faster.  Then I have to pay for another haircut that much sooner.

So, does anybody out there want a curling iron?

Come to the Couch Side

"Mom,

Really, it's your day off."

"Chloe,

Is the couch side anything like the dark side?"

"Mom, yes it is a little bit like the dark side, only warmer, fuzzier, and with better company. Look into my eyes; you are getting less and less interested in putting insulation in the attic."

A Day of Freedom

Yay-sort of!  Stepbrother is taking care of stepfather duties today.  Mom is still at the rehab place.  We hope her insurance will continue to cover her stay there until after the colonoscopy scheduled for early next week.  Yippee, for today, I don't have to go anywhere unless I actually want to.  Although I would like to plop down on the living room couch and do a DVD marathon, there are many chores that have been neglected.  So after a bit of a late lunch, it will be necessary to don the almost dead jeans, one or two long sleeved shirts and sweatshirt, old boots, gloves, hat, and dust mask, tromp up the attic stairs and re-insulate a few spots.  See, fixing that one electrical circuit this spring required a bit of digging below the attic floor, and I have been a bit lax about putting it back together.  It has been an unseasonably warm fall, thanks to El Nino, but winter will rear its ugly head soon, and frost on the kitchen ceiling is rather undesirable.  Fun, fun, fun, but with no T-birds in sight.

Drat

The hair dryer died this morning.  It managed to shrink the window insulator kits alright, but gave up the ghost when I actually used it for the intended purpose.  Looking up possible replacements, it appears that the new trend in hairdryers is to make them consume more electricity.  The newer models at peak output pull 1875 watts.  Let's see.  1875W/120V=15.625Amps.  Gee, that is 0.625Amps > than the 15 Amp rating on the breaker currently servicing the bathroom in this old house.  (Not even taking into account anything else that might also be running on that circuit.)  Hair dryer manufacturer's must assume that everyone has brand new houses with a 20Amp dedicated circuit for the bathroom.  Guess what, not everyone has a new house.  It appears that the 1600W models have fallen out of fashion.  They can still be found, but aren't nice and cheap anymore.  Also, I wonder what effect the new "ionic" models will have on window insulator kits?  Will the ions degrade the plastic, or just give it one nasty case of static cling?

Simple Thanks

I am truly thankful that all the rain we had yesterday was not snow.

I am thankful that my stepbrother has been helping remove 50 years of accumulated "stuff" from mom & stepfather's place.

I am thankful that restaurants actually do serve meals on Thanksgiving day.  Bringing mom over to my house and up the stairs was not a viable option, because if she managed to get up all the stairs, she would have refused to go back to the rehab place.  And if she couldn't have gotten up the stairs, she would have been very hungry and cranky.  Oops, I just remembered I forgot to sign her back in yesterday.  Somehow I doubt anyone has even bothered to check the book.  Pretty sure they know she's back.  She's pretty hard to miss.

That's all for now folks.  Chores to do, people to shuttle places, etc. There will be no shopping whatsoever.  I hate Black Friday and don't relish the thought of even driving past the mall today, but one of the errands involves dropping a couple people off at the airport. And you guessed it; the mall is in the way.

Meandering Thoughts

Sorry for the lack of posts; I have been a tad busy.

Firstly, here's an update on mom.  Mom was checked out of the hospital and checked into a rehab facility because she was too weak and wobbly to return home according to the physical therapists (and very likely their malpractice insurance agents.)  Since the oral antibiotics she was switched to gave her a bit of diarrhea, I really didn't object to having a 24 hour nursing and nursing assistant staff lending a hand with the cleanup.  She's done with the antibiotics and is on the mend.  The facility is having "fun" getting her diabetes meds adjusted as one medication has been removed due to the risk of liver damage.  Stepfather and I visit daily as the facility is old and doesn't have the best rating, but it has the advantage of being close to home.  So we are taking the approach much like hubby did when his Element collided with a deer.  He would take Chloe for a walk to visit the collision repair place and check on the progress.  If they know you will be visiting, they will be more likely to make sure they are doing their jobs.  But today I have been given a day off from mom and stepfather maintenance, because one of my stepbrothers has kindly taken the stepfather maintenance responsibilities for last night and today and mom is hopefully behaving herself at the rehab facility.  I think it is the first full day off I have had since we traveled to NC for father-in-law's funeral.  Unless we go out for dinner, I will get to stay home all day!

Thinking back to last Saturday, I had set the alarm clock for morning just to make sure that I didn't sleep so late that hubby didn't get a hot lunch.  The alarm sounded, I crawled out of bed, silenced it, and crawled back into bed.  I was just drifting back to sleep when I heard the unmistakeable sound of a couple V12 engines.  The first one accelerated away from the corner by the restoration shop before I had the chance to jump out of bed and see it.  Thankfully, the other one had to wait for traffic, so I was able to catch a glimpse of it as it pulled away from the corner.  I must admit that if Ferrari made an alarm clock with true to life engine sounds, that would be the best snooze alarm ever!

Today Chloe received lots of attention.  She was brushed, shaved, and trimmed.  Her ears were cleaned, and she has had a bath to wash away the prickly bits of hair.  Now she is trying to decide where to eat the rawhide she was given for being a good girl all through those chores.  The haircut revealed something unwanted; it looks like we might be making another trip to the vet soon for another surgery.  Another one of her teats is looking abnormal.

Hubby is on vacation this week.  It comes in handy for him to get some rest and then hit the woods on opening day of deer hunting.  As a result he was home to help with the other major chore today, moving a desk downstairs to the north room, where I plan to set up a dedicated sewing area.  It will make doing the mending, alterations, and sewing projects a bit easier to accomplish and reduce the clutter in the upstairs living room considerably.

While the "adventures" with mom were happening, the green tomatoes that were ripening in buckets and totes ripened.  Then most of them went bad.  They are now on the compost pile.  A similar sorting of the apples will need to be done.  I fear they may be too mealy to produce good cider now.  Maybe a few can still be used in pie.  Unfortunately, there are only twenty-four hours in a day, and people are much more important than fruit.

While reading the news of what has happened in France with the Islamic attacks, I am reminded a little of history.  French fur trappers were among the people who "refined" the art of scalping.  With the secularization of France, and the stepping away from strongly held Judaeo-Christian ethics, the Islamic extremists may strongly regret awakening the darker wild side of the French people.

Hubby told me politely that we have done enough chores for today, so it is time for a good dinner and an evening in watching DVD's.  Have a good night all.

One Funny Looking Chicken

So yesterday afternoon stepfather and I had to take mom to the hospital, because she was too sick to stand and walk properly.  The folks at the hospital ran lots of tests; the last one finishing up around 3:00 this morning.  After taking stepfather back home, giving him his meds and a snack, then coming home myself, rehydrating, eating some supper and winding down, I did not get to sleep until about 6:00 this morning.  Needless to say, I was not exactly interested in cooking brunch today, so hubby went to the store and bought himself a pasty (big cheat on his diet I know), and he bought me some fried chicken.  The bag has instructions that purchasers should select the parts equivalent to one whole chicken.  The chicken hubby brought home was truly special.  It had eight pieces, but five of them were thighs, two were drumsticks, and the last one was a wing.  He's a dear, but that would have made a really funny looking chicken.

Oh, and tonight at the hospital as I was walking to the ladies room, one of the nurses said "Oops, I made a mistake and sent a urine sample to the pharmacy."  I laughed and said, "I bet they won't like that present very much."

On the way home stepfather made the comment to the effect of "I wonder if the nurse called the pharmacy and said "Oh s&*t, I accidentally sent you a urine sample".  To which the pharmacy may have said, "Well at least you didn't send us a stool sample."  Happy Halloween!  I need a nap.

Nurses, First Make Sure You Have

The Correct Patient.

So, yesterday I had to take stepfather to his neuro-doc appointment,  because two weeks ago we went to the office and found that the appointment had been the previous day according to their records.  They have this new computer system, and apparently it lost a whole bunch of records, like medical histories, appointments, and billing stuff, which annoyed the medical staff greatly since they like getting paid for the work they do.

So we get to the office and there was actually a person at the specialties check in desk this time, very good sign.  We get him checked in and tromped upstairs to the specialties waiting room.  We wait a couple minutes, and a nurse came out and asked for J......  Another gentleman stood up and walked away with her.  She didn't hear me when I said, "Excuse me, it appears we have two J.....'s out here.  A few moments later another nurse called for J.....  Stepfather and I stood up and followed her to the exam room.  She weighed him, then sat him down and strapped a blood pressure cuff on him, took a few vitals, and flopped a questionnaire down and left the room.  He was part way through a general symptoms list, when the nurse came back in the room and finally asked him his full name and birth date.  Then she said something to the effect of, "Oops, I have the wrong J......  You need to go back to the waiting room where another nurse will come and get you."  Then we asked her quite bluntly why she couldn't have called him by his full name, and she told us that would invade patient privacy.  I am not sure which would invade a patient's privacy more, calling him by his full name or taking someone else into the exam room and reading off the full list of medications he was taking to a complete stranger. So nurses, when you set your patients down in the exam room, make sure you have the correct patient first thing.

Although it would be a dead giveaway if the patient was named Jesse or Renee and you set him down and say, "So you're here for your regular pap smear?"

Be It Ever So Humble

My car is back from the shop!

Yeah!

It was time to get the timing belt replaced on the 2005 Honda Civic.

Hubby and I were driving somewhere the other day and I asked, "Oh, by the way when should the timing belt be replaced?"

Hubby dug out the owner's manual and read

"100,000 miles or 7 years, whichever comes first.  It has 85,000 miles and is 10 years old; it is probably time to get it done."

So off it went to the shop.  We dropped it off last night, and it was ready by the end of this afternoon.  Ransom was paid to the happy mechanic with a rather large check.

You ask, why no pictures of the car, it is because my car is so ordinary looking that the only picture that I have of it is with Chloe sticking her nose and head out of the window like this.

It wasn't until this afternoon that I fully appreciated the little workhorse that is my car.  While the car was in the shop, I borrowed dad's 1996 Dodge pickup truck.  First of all, the electric window switches are not dog safe.  Yes indeed, a dog in her zeal to sniff the fresh air outside the vehicle will invariably stand on the arm rest and you guessed it, close the window on her neck.  She seems fine, thanks to master control switches on the driver's side she was released quickly.  That made me appreciate the window locks on the civic all the more!  The truck has seen better days; it is almost 20 years old now.  Dad used it recently to tow something, and its issues have been exacerbated by that exertion.  It has been hemorrhaging brake fluid all afternoon.  It still managed to stop, but the brake indicator light never went out, even with topping up the fluid at almost every stop.  Called dad this afternoon, and apparently the power steering fluid also has a leak.  Sometimes ignorance really is bliss.  Oh, and this summer I noticed that gas was getting into the oil, which means there is a bad seal somewhere as well.  Dad has an appointment tomorrow morning, but I anticipate spending some time with him in the afternoon tracking down all the seeps and squirts.  My job will probably involve stomping on the brake pedal to make it squirt.  Maybe I can talk him into doing this at my house so that we have the comfort of a blacktop driveway instead of gravel.

Lunch

Simple but tasty.

It Could Only Get Better

So the day started with getting out of the house earlier than usual to take stepfather to his neuro-doc appointment.  We arrived in plenty of time and tried to check in, only to find that his appointment had been yesterday. (According to their records, even though it was also not appearing in their records as a missed appointment.  Welcome to Obamacare electronic record keeping for yet another through the looking glass experience.  Or maybe they bought their scheduling software second hand from the VA.)  I am quite certain I recorded the date and time of the appointment on my calendar correctly when I scheduled it back in July.  A couple options include either the confirmation call that hubby answered last week was actually a "Your appointment has been changed" call, or the scheduler gave me the wrong information way back in July.  Anyway I drove stepfather back home and rescheduled his appointment for two weeks from now when I get the fun of calling him in the morning and reminding him to get ready then arriving an hour ahead of the appointment just in case he hangs up the phone from the reminder call and doesn't remember to get ready.  Alzheimers is so much fun.

After the fun on the phone with the scheduler we went to the bank to get transaction histories on the checking accounts and pocket cash for stepfather since he gave up his debit card a few months ago.  Back at home, I stashed the transaction histories in a safe place so that I can balance their checkbooks tomorrow.  Then it was time to pay the phone bill that I had brought into the house from the mailbox yesterday, Oct 13th.  I opened the bill and found that it was supposed to be paid by the 11th.  Seeing that it was impossible to pay the bill before we had even received it, I called AT&T and explained the problem.  Once an actual person answered the phone, he was quite helpful and kindly waived the late fee.  Then I explained that stepfather still had not received the refund check from when AT&T forgot to disconnect their old phone number after they switched to U-verse phone and tv.  Stepfather had been receiving two bills and paying both of them.  (The switch to U-verse was done to get the call screening feature, which very effectively blocks all incoming calls from everybody except the 20 number we choose.  The peace of mind this has given me is amazing.  No more calls from bogus charities and political groups can get through.  I don't have to worry about stepfather giving his credit card number to people that call him anymore.)  So back to AT&T, it would seem that the corporation in general is quite dysfunctional.  It seems like only the things that are automated and run by computers work properly.  After the check for the phone bill was written and mailed, the day improved.

More of mom's fabric stash was taken off the clotheslines and replaced with a fresh batch.  More stuff from mom's place was sorted and cleaned.  A chair that was found in mom's garage in a sad state had the cushion removed, was given a good scrub, had a few pieces of veneer re-glued, and had a few splotches of paint sanded away.  It will have to sit for a day or so until the glue dries before I will know if the wax paper and vet wrap worked to hold the veneer in place tightly enough for a good bond.  Hopefully the chair will fix up well enough to work as a chair for mom to use in the kitchen.  She has trouble standing up without using the counter top and kitchen table to pull herself upright.  The chair that is being fixed has arms that are low enough to slide under the edge of the table and will provide good support to help her stand.  There are so many things we take for granted in our daily lives, simple things like remembering what was for breakfast and standing up without assistance.  Enjoy the life God gave you, and pray that you will also be able to remember all the fun you had when you get old.

"Summer" Classics

Don't know about you, but I was getting a little tired of looking at apples.  Here are a few reminders that there used to be more choices than Ford, GM, and Dodge from the car show earlier this summer.

Buick is still around, but it is a bit of a joke.

Can you guess what this one is?

It's a Studebaker.

My grandfather really liked this manufacturer.

Sadly, both he and Studebaker are gone now.

Not sure what this one is;

that doesn't stop it from being pretty though.

A Packard with ordinary license plates.

It is not heavily restored and a bit rough around the edges.

There is a regulation her in WI that if you intend to use the car for hauling things, you can't put collectors plates on it.

Maybe that is why the owner has opted for paying the $75/year every year to renew the regular plates.  The collectors plates have a one time fee with no renewal charges, which is more economical in the long run.

Last but not least, a Bentley rather far from where it started.

There are more pictures from the show to share,

but the sun is shining and there are lots of things to do today.

Have a beautiful Saturday.

Still Waiting

Will the BBC ever get around to burning the entire season 22 of Top Gear onto DVD?  I am pretty sure the MacLaren beat the Porsche on the test track, because Jeremy hasn't changed his name to Jennifer.  It would be nice to see season 22 before the new show debuts on Amazon.  It has been rumored that the show will be called Gear Knobs.  Seriously, if they are going to put a double entendre in the name, they might as well be really thorough and call the show Shifty Knobs.  Somehow it seems fitting.

Just wondering what you thing the show should be called?

The Best Reason to Carpool to School

Don't take the Bus!

Walk, ride your bike, beg your parents to drive you,

or better yet - homeschool.

It will be safer.

Apples, Apples, Apples, Cider, Cider,

When life gives you lots of apples,

and you still have applesauce in the pantry from last year,

make cider,

which can be a bit tricky, when the store selling cider presses cannot manage to keep the model that you want in stock.

That just shows a serious lack of planning on their part.

I wonder how much business they are loosing because they have nothing to sell?  And no, I am not desperate enough to buy the one that costs twice as much, because that defeats the cost effectiveness of making my own cider.

Anyway, back to cider.

For cold pressed homemade cider (when you don't have your own cider press), wash, core, and cut out any inhabitants.

(When looking up nutritional information on apple cider, it was a bit disconcerting to find that some of the brands list a trace amount of protein.  EEW, apples don't have protein folks, but the bugs that came along for the ride do.  Thankfully those brands have been pasteurized.)

So if you want cold pressed cider without bugs,

take the washed, cored, and debugged apples and run them through your food processor until they become a swirly mash.  For dry apple varieties like winesap and wolf river, you may need to add a splash of water to get a mashed consistency.  If you can't get a cider press then perhaps a jury-rigged contraption like this might work for you.  Take the colander section of a stainless steel stock pot (Never use aluminum!), put a muslin bag in it.  Set the whole works on top of an overturned double boiler inside a big plastic bucket (in this case a 7 1/2 gallon feed bucket bought at Fleet Farm).  Dump the apple mash in the bag.  For a 2 gallon stock pot colander, three or four 5 quart pails of apple chunks will be enough to fill it.  I usually core one bucket full with fruit fresh solution, then mash and repeat.  Twist the bag shut.  Set a round piece of clean wood on top.  Then set some weights in plastic bags on top.  You know the ones from the weight set that gets used for everything but actually being bench pressed.  (Note said weights also come in handy when retying springs on upholstery projects, but I digress.)
The whole setup will look a bit like this.

The mash in the bag.

35 pounds of weight doesn't apply as much pressure as a cider press, but I do not want to crack the colander.  Much more and it might not handle it very well.
Cover the whole contraption with a large towel to keep off fruit flies.  Let it set for an hour, then take off a bit of weight before setting the colander in the stock pot and putting the weights and towel back on.  Leaving it to set overnight will yield a couple more cups of cider.  Pour the cider from the big bucket into a pitcher immediately and refrigerate it.  In the morning drink or refrigerate the last little bit of cider, but do not dump it into the cider pressed the previous day as it will shorten the shelf life and start turning to hard cider sooner.

MMM, fresh cold cider.
Or if you prefer hot, put it in a mug and pop it in the microwave for 1 1/2 minutes.

The Slow and the Fast

This one falls under the category of yet another thing seen when I didn't have a camera.

So yesterday I was driving back home from the pharmacy after collecting mom & stepfather's prescriptions for them.  While waiting at a particularly annoying intersection for traffic on a very busy street to clear, it became painfully apparent that the traffic approaching from the left was going very slowly.  Peering around the corner of a building, the reason slowly appeared.  Some old fart was driving his mobility scooter on the road.  Now mind you, there was a 7' wide sidewalk right next to him, and every intersection has really nice ramps up and down.  Either his brain is completely addled, or he takes great pleasure in playing in traffic.  To add insult to injury, one of the cars that was creeping behind him was an F-type Jaguar convertible.  So idiot scooter man turns the corner, but unfortunately the jag was going in the same direction.  So they turned the corner too.  Once the jag had passed my car, the driver was able to get around the scooter.  Oh, that was a lovely exhaust note as he zipped away!

Small Problem

The paring knife won't reach the middle!

Such a terrible problem to have.

(How about them apples?  Sorry, couldn't resist.)

Does anyone know of a knife manufacturer,

that makes paring knives with slender, long blades? 

Four inches long should be about right.

However, the blade dimension from back to front should be

no > 1/2" or apple cores tend to become projectiles as they pop uncontrollably out of the quartered apples in random directions.

That is where most knife manufacturers go so terribly wrong when they make paring knives.

Oh, and a chunkier handle might be nice too.

Balancing Act

Ok, I'm ready for the garden to be done.

 First the tomatoes went crazy.

 So very crazy,

SO MANY TOMATOES!

It is good that church had a food drive.

One bushel went to other homes.

With the somewhat cooler weather, they have finally slowed down.

But I was in a very giving mood for a while there;

pretty much every friend, neighbor, and relative has been gifted tomatoes this year.  I drew the line at giving them to complete strangers walking their dogs past my house.

 A fair amount of marinara sauce was made.

Meanwhile, because I had not managed to spray the apple trees (wind, rain, concerns of overspray on the garden, busyness, & laziness are my excuses), apples started falling off prematurely because they had "inhabitants".  I hate coddling moths and should really purchase some of those sticky red ball traps to catch the things.  Of course, some of the apples were still ripe enough to use, with some creative paring knife action to remove the bad parts.  There is still a fair bit of applesauce left over from last year, because mom switched from applesauce to mandarin oranges as her favorite snack last winter.  (By April, I actually had her doctor check her over, because she was turning yellow.  She wasn't jaundiced, she had just eaten too much orange food and was color shifting to match.  Maybe she's really a chameleon.)

Back to the subject of lots of apples - 

since we still have plenty of applesauce, it was time to make some cider.  I wanted to buy a cider press, but the slightly less expensive table-top model I want is out of stock.  In the meantime, I have rigged a contraption that yields about a gallon of cold pressed cider for every 15 quarts of apple chunks that are chopped to pulp in the food processor and allowed to squeeze through a muslin bag in the colander portion of my stainless steel stock pot.  At least the weight set is getting some use.  I have put the individual weights in 2 gal. freezer bags and have stacked 35 lbs of them on top of a wooden block on top of the bag of mash.  It still doesn't squeeze the mash dry, but does a good enough job for now.  So to sum it up, sometimes a "windfall" can be a mixed blessing.

The Cortland apples have all been picked, almost two weeks early.

Now we're just waiting for the Winesap apples to finish ripening.

Really there is no hurry!  Stay on the tree a bit longer please!  I still have two plastic totes of windfalls to process and a full tote of Cortlands that were picked from the tree; those are fairly bug free.  And then there is the grocery bag of apples picked from my aunt's Paula Red tree; they are the perfect snack size for mom and stepfather.  1 3/4 bags of use A.S.A.P. windfalls from the Paula Red tree have been turned into cider.  Three paper grocery bags of ok-ish Paula Red windfalls and two bags of hand picked apples were given to a friend with a big family.  That should keep her busy making applesauce for a while.  Believe it or not the tree still wasn't empty.  Some of Aunt Ginny's extended progeny picked the rest of the apples on the Paula Red tree and mom's brother and his wife will also be kept busy making applesauce and pies out of those. 

Oh, and another unexpected blessing from having some of the winesap apples ripen prematurely is that cider made with Paula Red apples, Cortland apples, and Winesap apples mixed together is really tasty!

Oh, P.S., the beans are still going...and going...and going,

and so are the cucumbers, and kohlrabis and beets, and carrots, and potatoes, and peppers, and eggplants.

Happy gardening, but I am still glad it is almost done for the year!

Oh yeah, I forgot about the swiss chard.

Photographing Chloe

For every photo of Chloe you see on this blog,

there are usually three or four other shots that just aren't really blog worthy.  So the other day I wanted to get a shot of her next to some of the morning glories.  It went a bit like this.

"Chloe look at mom; I promise the flash is turned off."

Click

 Let's try this again....Click.

 Ok, here we go again....Click.

 Let's try this one more time.

Look at the camera and smile!

And this is what we get -

cross-eyed and bucktoothed.

"Summer" Vettes

  Here is some automotive overload

from the car show the other day. 

 For some reason,

I almost expected to see someone dressed up as Danger Mouse

in the driver's seat.

 Looks like someone maybe did a custom body.

This one gets my vote for the prettiest Vette there.

Hubby enjoyed talking with the car owners,

and Chloe enjoyed sniffing their trousers while getting her ears rubbed.  Meanwhile, I was busy taking pictures and draining the camera battery.

"Summer" Convertible Style

Pretty!

Here's a view of more than just the front end

with the hood up.

Not mine, but looking is free.

Which is good, because the cost of this thing would pay off the mortgages of my entire block perhaps with quite a bit to spare.
I am sure its owner will enjoy getting it back with a few more summer days left to enjoy driving it.

Hubby and I went to a car show the other day.

There will be more "summer" pictures to come,

with a lot more variety

(just in case you are sick of looking at Ferraris.)

Beauty

Life is crazy, busy.

Stop and enjoy beauty

as chances present themselves.

Smell the flowers.

Take a picture and save it for later.

Hunting Dog Meets Baby Sparrow

So hubby took Chloe out in the yard yesterday to do her business.  She sniffed around under the apple trees and scooped something up into her mouth.  Hubby seeing a few tail feathers sticking out the side of her mouth instructed her to leave it.  She reluctantly dropped it on the ground.  Then the young sparrow realizing it was free from the big scary dog mouth staggered and ran as fast as it could across the street to the neighbor's place.  I can only imagine it thinking, ack, yuck, dog drool!  Whew, that was a close call!  Meanwhile, Chloe looked at hubby with the expression that said "but how can I be a hunting dog, if you don't let me play with it?"  It is probably good we don't take her hunting very often, because it is seriously illegal for the dog to fetch the bird before you shoot it!

"Summertime"

Do you prefer the Porsche,

or the Ferrari?

Of course, as usual, I will be driving a rather boring Honda, because it doesn't need to spend its spare time in the shop.

Oh, and I want to pay off my mortgage first.

Otherwise this one would be tempting.

Except for the fact that I am not that fond of convertibles, because they don't come with a lifetime supply of SPF 85 sunscreen.

Oh and the image running through my mind right now is the clip from Top Gear where Jeremy Clarkson and a fashion model demonstrate that high performance, convertible sports cars are silly.  In case you had forgotten, it is the one where her hair ends up looking like a rat's nest and he gets a bee in his eye.

As Dad's Garden Grows

I figured if I waited until all the weed were pulled, I would never get around to taking pictures of Dad's garden.

Broccoli doesn't like hot, dry weather.

Sure the plants look impressive, but the yields not so much.

Once I get over this cold, these will probably get ripped out.

The Burpee hybrid corn, between the small number of seeds in the packet and rabbits gnawing on the seedlings, it is quite pitiful this year.

Cucumbers and dill

Warning, Warning!

The cucumbers are about to reach critical mass!

Afternoon shade.

Glad dad's beans are doing well, because the tripods at my house had a run-in with a wind storm.

Dad loves his big mama tomatoes.

I must admit that even though the big mama's are hybrids with maybe a bit of genetic engineering thrown into the mix, they are growing on me.  It takes four or five normal roma tomatoes to equal the mass of one big mama.  It really saves time when coring and peeling the suckers.

The pimento peppers - dad loves them.

He can have them all.

The zucchini are growing with a little bit of powdery mildew on the leaves which is entirely my fault for watering them after dark - busy days.

Dad hates them;

I can have them all.

We are finally getting some rain today!

It sure beats dragging the hose around.