120 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 9-3-18”

  2. The new green heron shot is one I couldn’t have shot a month or two ago . . . simply because I probably wouldn’t have even seen the bird. Green herons aren’t particularly large (“crow-sized” is the way a couple of bird books put it) and they are well camouflaged when they hunt among the grasses by a pond.

    These little stinkers are also very noisy birds, which I didn’t know two months ago. They fly around a lot within their hunting grounds (completely contrary to the more complacent great blue heron), and frequently they set up a really loud chatter just before they fly or as they fly. Or at least the birds on this pond do. They are beautiful in flight, so I love having the “heads up” that tells me where to look to see it in flight and just possibly get a photo!

    Anyway, I was walking back by the pond to go home and caught just a hint of green heron coloring . . . this pond has at least four green herons that frequent it, probably a pair and their young, and so now I am used to seeing them and have gotten pretty good at spotting them, but two months ago I probably wouldn’t have seen it. But I knew there was a bird hidden in the reeds and zoomed in with my camera. It turns out I was standing in exactly the right spot to get a head-on shot of this bird that also shows its front foot gripping its perch, the water below it, and the reeds all around it. This one is an adult, but young herons are also hanging out at the pond, and I even saw a fluffy-headed fledgling just a few days ago, so the parents have a new nest or a new family of herons is now coming to the pond too. (AJ has gotten better shots of green heron fledglings than anything I got in distant shots of the fledgling, so I didn’t bother to send those.)

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  4. It is impossible to get any earlier in September than Cheryl did.
    Do you realize that fall is going to fall in just three weeks?
    Where has this Summer gone?
    Goon night Jo.
    Good morning everyone else.

    Liked by 1 person

  6. Roscuro here. I am currently experiencing a rapid end to summer and catapulting towards the cold seaaon by the simple expident of traveling due north for a few thousand miles.

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  7. Thanks, Jo, Actually I hadn’t been to bed yet, though I did stay awake for a while when I did. My husband ended up holding me and praying for me before I managed to get any sleep.

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  8. Bon voyage, Roscuro! ✈️

    We’re going on the road later today. A family reunion at my nephew’s, then down to Sedalia, MO to visit friends.

    Yesterday, I dropped Mrs L off at Walmart to do the shopping (sorry, Kim, in this small town Wally World is all there is). I then went to do a couple of errands. I got a text from her that there was a fire in the deli and all the customers had to evacuate the building. We hope it is opened again since we want to go back this morning for the weekly shopping.

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  9. So, the other Idiot Vet has been treating Amos for reflux since April. That means he has been taking Prilosec twice a day for $25 dollars a month, taking Prednisone (a steroid that made him gain weight. Two or three pounds on a little dog is a lot), and we had to buy wet, nasty food to hide the medicine in which spoiled Lulabelle; because, as you no, if one gets a treat the other one has to as well. Amos also had some little bumps on his head that could have either been cysts or cancer. As all people will do I took to the internet for research when all of this STILL wasn’t helping. As always, everything you read medically on-line covers itself by saying “It could be cancer”. I was scared. You all know what that little ball of fur means to me! He healed my broken heart when I lost my dad to cancer. To lose him to cancer was just more than I could handle, None of the descriptions of his dry, hacking, choking sounding cough sounded like reflux–it should have sounded wet.
    His new vet tech got down on the floor, gave him treats, and got to know him. His new vet did the same thing. He loved them immediately because of 1. They gave him treats, and 2. They were both women (He is scared of men for some odd reason). He has tracheal collapse which the vet said is very common in Shi Tzus. It is congenital and is treated with cough medicine!!!!
    He has little Robitussin tablets that we hide in pill pocket treats. Last night he and I slept well because he didn’t cough. This morning he coughed once and I gave him his medicine.
    He was also born with a “ballerina foot”. Several times lately he has favored it and hobbled around. The X-Ray showed he has some mild arthritis and his Prednisone induced weight gain has probably made it bother him more, so he has a mild anti-inflammatory. He weighed 13.4 pounds yesterday so he is going to have to lose a couple. His liver was somewhat enlarged, but the vet wasn’t worried about that. She said it will likely go back to normal size once the steroid clears his system and he loses a little weight.
    Again, thank you all for being with me through this. You know he is my Boy.

    https://pets.webmd.com/dogs/tracheal-collapse-dogs#1

    Liked by 9 people

  10. Peter, I am not too uppity to go to Wal-Mart. It is within walking distance of my house. It is convenient for some things. I just don’t like to buy meat there. Diapers and formula are less expensive there and since Mr. P and I are making those purchases again #MimiworkssoGrandpacankeepMaddie I go there

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  13. Morning! The crisp air of Autumn is invigorating…and it is present in this forest this morning! But the pollens will sting your eyes and stuff up your nose… achoo!!! 🤧

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  14. A beautiful blue sky crisp late summer morning here.

    Cheryl was correct, DJ, the dog’s near miss had to do with riling mumsee. One of the family rules is Do Not Disturb the Family Peace, and killing turkeys for fun would do that.

    Liked by 1 person

  16. Yes, she will. However, you must realize that my children do tend to see things differently, Coming from the perspective of never hitting a dog for an infraction, but using other techniques, encountering people who do smack a dog looks like beating. There are people who beat their dogs, I don’t know where this situation lies. Do they come home from school, hours after the hole is dug, and beat the dog for ten minutes? Do they see the dog taking a pillow to teat it up and give a sharp “No!” and give her a single smack? Or somewhere else. Any of those could be seen as beating.

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  18. Great shot today, someone’s spotted breakfast.

    Kim, I’m so glad to hear about Amos, I didn’t realize how little he was! I thought he was more like a 20-pound doggie, small/medium size.

    I love my vet whom I’ve had for years, he’s always getting down on the floor with the animals. And yes, teeth cleaning costs a bunch. 😦

    I went to bed kind of early last night but had to wait until the fireworks ended before actually sleeping (they were at the Iowa, marking the end of the “Jack Ryan” preview night and party). They really did go on and on and on. Tonight is the Beach Boy concert but they’re doing a laser show after that which at least won’t be noisy. 🙂

    I’m having some coffee, I head up to Hollywood to take Carol shopping today so I need to get a spring in my step soon! I think I could have slept for another hour (I was up at 8). Oh well.

    I don’t go to Walmart a lot but I do like their prices.

    It looks overcast out there today and I think the temperatures are holding in the 70s, which feels so good after what has been a long, hot, humid (ugh) summer for us.

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  20. Throughout the years, I have seen several episodes of The Twilight Zone, especially years ago when “independent” or local stations used to have marathons of the show on certain holidays, like New Years Day. The episodes were usually very good, and often thought-provoking. I’ve always wanted to eventually see the whole series.

    Netflix has the show on DVDs (not streaming), but looking into it, I discovered that their DVDs don’t include all the episodes. So, I did something uncharacteristic of me – I splurged. I spent $42.45 on buying a set of DVDs that includes the complete series (five seasons, with 36 episodes per season). (But really, $42 for all those DVDs is a good bargain.)

    (As I watch them, I often think that Hubby would have very much enjoyed watching the whole series with me.)

    What kind of surprised me is that at least part of the first season (haven’t finished it yet) does not have the iconic Twilight Zone theme. This video starts out with the theme we’re familiar with, and then plays the first theme. . .

    Liked by 2 people

  21. Ah, the Twilight Zone, excellent and very cleverly done show — and I remember both those openings. My mom watched it every week (Friday nights at 10 p.m.?) when I was growing up and I have long loved the reruns of that show. Very clever, lots of sharp social commentary, told often with humor and a wink — while sending a shiver of recognition up your spine.

    When I was a teen a friend and I went to watch the Johnny Carson show tapings two or three times — one time while we were standing in line to get in at the NBC Burbank studios, Rod Serling drove by heading for the back gates, driving his convertible. 🙂

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  22. I have displayed amazing restraint this morning. Lulabelle is ill-behaved and hard headed. She wants in the baby’s face all the time. In trying this morning she turned over a table with a glass top. The glass shattered, the baby’s bottle and my coffee went flying.

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  23. The new header is a juvenile green heron. Its colors are more muted and it has speckles on its wings and more stripes on its neck.

    But what is noteworthy about this photo is the neck. Usually when you see a green heron, you might wonder how it’s a heron at all. It’s much smaller than a great blue heron, and it’s a squat little bird with a short neck. But then, once in a great while, it stretches out its neck and you see it doesn’t have a short neck at all! (Though even one of my bird books identifies it as a short-necked bird. Tell me, is that a short-necked bird, or is that a heron?) It is useful for a small heron to have a long neck; it can reach into water for prey as it clings to vegetation above the water. The great blue heron has long legs and can wade quite deep, but the green is a much smaller bird and it tends to cling to logs and low branches and vegetation. But like the great blue, it can “strike” by reaching out its neck and greatly extend its reach while its legs don’t move. That can increase the element of surprise, and if the bird is in water it also keeps it from splashing or moving the water in which its prey is located.

    My experience with green herons is quite limited, mostly just a few minutes here and there the last few weeks with one small group of birds. But among these birds, I have noticed that the juveniles (like this one) are far more likely to stretch out their necks. Plus, because the neck striping is more obvious on them, when their necks are retracted, you are more likely to see that it is a long neck folded up. When the adult has its neck retracted, it just looks like a neckless bird. Now, I also sent AJ this same bird in the same pose, with its neck retracted. If he posts that photo, you will see how different it looks and how surprising it is to see that this bird actually has a long heron neck–it doesn’t look possible in the other shot that the bird has a long neck.

    Look at the bottom of the picture and you will also see the reflection of the heron’s head and neck. It isn’t all that obvious among the water plants, but it is there.

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  25. Kim, I’m glad no one got hurt. Yikes! It sounds like she needs to be in time-out while the baby is there until she can handle it.

    I had to do that with Misten. She got so excited at having company that I learned to make her lie down for a few minutes. If she couldn’t do that (and she couldn’t), then she would go outside–but she was smart enough to understand she was being banished for lack of self-control, which gave her motivation to keep “trying” when I had her lie down until she could calm down. And eventually (I’m talking a period of years, and she was a collie), she got to where she could lie down for five minutes and get her eagerness out of her system, and then I’d let her come and politely (but enthusiastically) greet the guest, and then she would lie down close on her own and be OK. But she was far more stranger-friendly than collies are supposed to be, so it was a struggle for her, and if it was a favorite person of hers it was really hard. If my visitor wasn’t a dog person, then she simply stayed in the backyard for the entire visit. But my doggie friends, who were willing to show her a measure of patience, loved her and understood she loved them back, too much to easily lie still until the proper time for a visit. However, had the visitor been a baby or an old person, she would have used good manners–she instinctively knew to do so, and did, even as a puppy. She always slowed herself down and gentled herself with someone helpless.

    Anyway, can you put her in another room or outside, or in a crate, and then maybe let her out for just two minutes when both of the adults are there, or something like that?

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  26. Good afternoon. This morning I went to my Word Weavers meeting. It is a pleasant group I am thankful to be a part of. I had revised what I took last month sothe piece flows better. We have enough people to split into a fiction and a nonfiction group. If anyone here is interested in Word Weavers and does not have a nearby chapter, you can also become a part of an online group. Its cost is only $45.00 per year so it is well worth it for all the helpful advice and networking.

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  27. Stuck partway due to high winds. We don’t really want our plane to be blown into the sea or the mountains when trying to land at our destination. In the north now, and when disembarking onto the tarmac, I could see my breath, and there was sleet mixed with the rain.

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  28. Does anyone have any new fall recipes? I found one for a chocolate pumpkin bread with chocolate chips in it that I hope to try when the weather cools a little bit more.

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  29. Cheryl Her main problem is her other human. He keeps talking to her about loving the baby. He thinks every thing she does is fine. He doesn’t realize why most people find reasons not to come to our house and why I stopped inviting them.
    I am going to have a trainer come
    To the house to work with them. He may receive the message from an ouysider

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  31. The visiting dog. Blossom was trained by daughter now in the Navy, to jump on people. She loved to have her jump up to her shoulders and lick her face as a sign of affection. After all, she is just a puppy. Then daughter joined the Navy and son got her. Son did not particularly like having a dog flying into his face but did not really have an idea of what to do. Or dig up the yard, or take pillows….. Then he brought her here. I don’t particularly want a dog jumping on me or taking my hand in her mouth, or even jumping on my back so she could grab my hair. After she had been here a week, son noticed a difference. She was just as happy but much less over happy. After five or six weeks, he took her back to southern Idaho. On the way, they stopped at eldest daughter’s house in Boise. She said the dog was totally changed, well behaved, well mannered, showing happiness with self control, no longer mouthing everybody’s hands. Son said it was mom that did it. I thought that was very nice of him. But really, it was that she was able to get the much needed exercise of farm living, walking with twelve year old when he took the other dogs walking, and a little bit of training. She was not allowed to grab my hands or jump on me, and I taught her to fetch which son and daughter had not been able to achieve.

    A dog with duties is much more manageable. She knew she had an important job, running to get the stick and to bring it back safely. Having a duty to perform and being counted on to do it goes a long ways. With children as well.

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  32. Kim, I figured that was the issue. But if he had to choose between the dog and the baby, he would choose the baby. A dog that cannot safely be calm and respectful with a child in the room cannot be in the same room with the dog. I have a brother who put down his dog–a beloved dog about the age and size of your Amos–when he got possessive about something the toddler grandchild had been playing with earlier, but that he considered his (it was just a rock), and the child reached for it and he snarled.

    I knew that I was going to have foster kids, and from puppyhood I did everything I could to train Misten to be child-safe. Now, she was a collie and ultimately that was the biggest thing that made her child-safe. But I did such things from puppyhood as playing with her paws (dogs don’t usually like that), pulling gently on her tail, and hugging her (she definitely did not like that, but got used to it as I did it regularly), and playing with her ears, all to get her used to things a child might do. And I trained her not to lick and not to bite. I worked less scrupulously on not jumping up–to my regret–partly because she instinctively knew not to jump on a child, and I figured I could work on that later. She never got 100% trustworthy on not jumping up, though her last several years when she jumped on someone and they apologized, they usually told me, “Oh that’s OK, I have seven dogs and she is smelling them.” So she knew somehow that this person was OK to jump on, but from my standpoint she shouldn’t have been jumping on anyone. (That jumping was usually at the dog park, where she wasn’t on a leash, and thus I couldn’t actually stop her before she did it.) But I knew that if I did not train her in a way that allowed her to be child-safe, a child could get hurt OR a child could get scared, and either way I could lose my dog. That affected my training–it was a serious concern that I not have a dog who playfully bites a child, or gets possessive of something and snarls at a child.

    When I was younger, I loved having dogs play bite me, and I’d encourage them to do it. It was actually a bit of a temptation with Misten to let her do it when she was a puppy. But it might mean her life later, or it might mean someone else’s discomfort meeting a dog with bad manners, and so I was very firm on that one. If I had it to do over with, I would have also been firm that she could not be petted until she was sitting, and that would have cured the jumping up–but I was very consistent with play biting, because I could not risk that one.

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  34. In being involved with the haiku and other poetry sites, I get to converse with people in other countries who are poets. One lady had posted a lovely photo of blackberries with related poetry. I commented they (the blackberries) needed to be made into a cobbler. Her comment was something like that they did not need shoes because they had already been eaten. Somehow in her translation dictionary she saw cobbler as a shoemaker. I explained about cobbler being a pie. It was a cute misunderstanding. People have good reason to work hard in understanding people who have a different native language.

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  35. Long day for me and the painters advised me they’re (again) running “behind schedule.”

    Christmas 2020 …

    Carol found and bought new shoes at the athletic store, she needed a men’s size 14 — she has enormous feet and there is just so much swelling in her ankles that buying shoes is a challenge. But she found some New Balance (which also are good because they run wide) that fit. Of course, I wound up playing shoe sales person as the real one was busy with other customers so there I was getting the little stretchy socks and shoes onto her feet.

    She’s really slowing down and becoming more stiff, also — she’s having a lot of trouble just getting in and out of my car to where I’m having to help push and pull and dug her feet until they pop in through the door. And each stop also requires the unloading and loading of the walker (her new one is smaller, thankfully, but still every bit as heavy); strategizing on how to pick her up on a nearby available curbside as she can’t step into the car from a flat parking lot surface (the curb barely now gives her enough of a step up, though).

    So today’s stops involved 9 loadings and unloadings, a lot, and I’m afraid I got snippy toward the end, told her we’d just have to cut down on the number of stops next time which I think hurt her feelings. 😦 kicked myself later and I’ll have to apologize to her tonight by text or phone call.

    But it is “at lot,” to be honest.

    Liked by 1 person

  36. 10 stops actually.

    Sigh. Oh well. She got her shoes and all the stuff she needed at Rite Aid and her check cashed and her phone bill paid and we also stopped for lunch. Day is done.

    And you’ve gotta love Hollywood, saw 1 man in drag wearing a rather stunning shear blouse, a woman loudly complaining about a man being in the women’s bathroom at McDonald’s on Sunset Blvd. where we ate, another guy there who was talking to himself and eventually became louder and louder and really quite abusive with language and then actually approaching people at their tables (dude; security eventually arrived to usher him out but he’d managed to clear the dining area by then on his own, no one could stand being around that for too long), a couple of Muslim women in full garb charging through the aisles at Rite Aid, patriotic bunting all around the Scientology celebrity center which was having yet another one of their frequent open houses …

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  37. And off and on one of my editors kept texting me with Fleet Week questions, he’s somehow obsessed with this event and is covering it down to the minutia.

    Beach Boy concert tonight, starting in about 30 minutes.

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  42. Donna, my parents just had a small rubbermaid stool that they left in the back of the car for my aunt. She used that to step up a bit to get into the car. Not sure if that would work in Carol’s situation.

    Liked by 1 person

  43. DJ – I was going to suggest what Kare said. 🙂

    Hubby had arthritis in his knees, which made hoisting himself up into his work truck painful, so he rigged up a step-stool with a rope attached. He held onto the rope as he used the step-stool to get in the truck, then pulled it up after him with the rope.

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  44. The step stool is very useful. Used one for mom in law and later for husband. He can do fine without it now though he takes one when trucking as that is a much bigger step.

    The other thing, DJ, husband gave up on shoes and now wears crocs everywhere. His feet are so swollen most of the time that it takes both of us to get the socks on as well as the shoes, He can just slip into the crocs without socks. As long as he washes them frequently.

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  45. Kim – When The Boy was a baby, Heidi was attracted to the smell of milk in his mouth, and wanted to lick his mouth. We managed to keep her away, but I don’t remember off hand what we did. Probably depended on the given situation.

    We have a cute photo of the two of them napping on our bed. Looked like Heidi was guarding him.

    *******
    Janie is a very exuberant doggie, as well as being long and tall, meaning that her paws can reach pretty high. Nightingale has been training her not to jump up, and she is better at that at some times than at others. It is cute seeing her body wiggle with excitement as she tries so hard not to give in to jumping. Then she kind of jumps around on her own, without jumping on anyone. So funny.

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  46. I tried step stools with her a year or two ago but they seemed to make her feel unsteady. Her legs bend at the knee (permanently) but other than that have really no flexibility anymore, they’re very stiff. So stepping “up” is extremely hard and I do have kind of a high car.

    You know we passed a rack of Crocks on the way out of the sporting goods store after she’d bought the New Balance and I pointed them out to her, said maybe she should look into something like that for around the ‘house,’ easy to slip in and out of.

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  47. Carol also is about 6 feet tall (though now is stooped) and her legs are extremely long, so it’s hard for her just to fit into a car passenger seat space.

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  50. so nice to have internet after everything was down here for the last day. Helps me not to take it for granted. And appreciate our guys here who worked over the weekend to rebuild some parts.

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  53. Yes, 10 stops when you need someone else to help you in and out of the car is a lot. It does show her own perseverance that she herself is willing to make that many stops, but that really is too many.

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  55. Whenever I see a photo of the surrender, all I can think about is my father describing polishing the plaque that is now embedded in the Missouri’s top deck, noting the fact.

    He was a NROTC midshipman and used brass polish and a toothbrush, circa 1950.

    Now that I think about it, I wonder if he was in trouble at the time . . .

    Liked by 2 people

  56. Cheryl, our stops yesterday were half that, but I’m counting unloading, loading/unloading, loading, the complications of drop off and pickup that need to be figured out sometimes on the fly — all of that is needed twice every time we stop somewhere (so double loading/unloading duties for each place we go). The muscles in my upper back ache this morning. I’m fine for the first few times, but toward the end of the day when I’m doing it for the 6th or 7th time, I’m about done.

    So instead of going 4-5 places, next time I will hold her to 1-2 places and probably no more Saturdays where there are multiple check cashing/eating/shopping excursions combined). Having to push and pull her wedged legs and feet in and out of the car (not always easy and requires some real pushing and tugging) is adding to some of that complication.

    I need to ask her, too, why she doesn’t have all her money go into direct deposit. She gets 2 checks a month, the government check + a small pension from a former job she had in her youth in NY. But she has a debit card and for some reason, she has to “cash” one of the monthly checks at a check cashing place on Hollywood Boulevard where we have only a 15-minute free parking period (then it goes up to a $20 flat fee); the phone place is next door to that and walkable, of course, but I’m also not sure why she’s paying her phone bill in person with cash and not online or via phone w/her debit card.

    A lot of her monthly shopping for incidentals can really be done online as well. She does shop online for books, etc., so she has the technical capabilities on her phone.

    Of course, she loves to “get out” and I really do understand that. She used to be able to take the bus around town on short hops by herself, but with the recent long stints in hospitals and rehabs over the past year, I have a feeling those days for her are over.

    And her legs will be so sore today from all the physical exertion she had to put forth yesterday that she’ll probably be in bed for most of the day today.

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  57. Did I get 57?
    That’s the year we were married.
    I think someone here was born that year.

    She had a good lunch at Boston Market. she usually doesn’t eat that much. It was good to see her eating well.

    Liked by 4 people

  58. Made it safely to my destination. We (the other student & I) had to get a hotel room last night, as the airport closes overnight but we were back early this morning and got the first flight of the day. As we approched the landing strip, I understood more clearly just how high winds could prevent a safe landing. The plane (a truboprop) has to fly along the fjord and then make a 360 degree turn to land at the base of a mountain. The landscape is breathtaking here.

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  59. A friend from church shared on Facebook a video from a guy named Lance Wellnau, who seems to be some kind of minister. He is very pro-Trump, and claimed that Trump had “prophesied” that if Republicans do not win the next election, we Christians will be at risk of “losing everything”. Wellnau referred to Christians who do not support Trump as idiots.

    Here is a brief piece from Christianity Today that has a different perspective. . .

    “What Are Evangelicals Afraid of Losing?
    President Trump’s appeal to fear ignores that Christians seek first the Kingdom, not political favors.”

    https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2018/august-web-only/evangelicals-trump-elections-losing-everything.html

    “In a Monday meeting with evangelical leaders at the White House, President Trump reportedly warned of violence against conservative Christians if the GOP loses in November. Evangelicals, he said, were “one election away from losing everything.”
    .
    As evangelicals, we would do well to correct the president on this point. If an election can cause us to lose everything, what is it exactly that we have in the first place? . . .
    .
    Anyone who believes, much less preaches, that evangelical Christians are “one election away from losing everything” in November has forgotten how to sing the psalmist’s warning, “Do not put your trust in princes, in human beings, who cannot save” (Ps. 146:3).”

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  60. I am for Trump, but not relying on Trump.
    There is a difference.

    Anon’s adventure reminds me of flying a C-54 up the fjord to BW-8 ( BW=Bluie West. it was a designation. I don’t know where it came from. I think it was sandistrom Fjord, but not certain.)

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  64. The newest photo is a green heron in flight. I hadn’t seen any green herons down by the pond–first “miss” in seeing the species–but lo and behold this guy showed up in a creek just behind the pond. Well, it was lit out where the heron was, but dark under the trees, so when it flew, the bird was lit up with a dark background. When it flies, you do see its long neck again. But I especially love those yellow toes! Also notice that his “crest” is raised, and it usually isn’t. This bird is also a juvenile.

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  65. Very cool (most-recent) banner photo. Cute feet. 🙂

    I’m wandering from room to room in the house, trying to avoid workers. One has been sanding outside of living room windows (electric sander); the other sanding the front porch overhang right outside my bedroom window. No post-church nap today.

    They’re getting down to the main event, at long last, so when they asked if it would be ok to ‘break’ the no-Sunday rule just this week (“we won’t be there long”) I said OK. Sigh.

    Tomorrow is power washing and Tuesday they can finally start priming everything.

    Photos coming to a post near you soon!: … Christmas 2020 …

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  66. Happy Labor Day!

    Any special plans?

    We are having coffee with a man from church, at a coffee shop owned by a couple from church. He may have a book for me to edit.

    The photo up there now, the bird in the back is obviously a green heron–this one an adult, in its typical pose in which one wonders if the bird has a neck at all, and certainly there is no hint it has a LONG neck.

    I took this shot almost as soon as it was bright enough to take photos, or at least I started photographing as soon as it was; I don’t remember how many I had taken by the time I got this shot. The other bird in the photo is a wood duck–yes, the super gaudy bird AJ often photographs. But in summer, from sometime in June or July until about October, male wood ducks wear what is known as “eclipse plumage” and they lose all their colorful body feathers and replace them with drab ones for a few months. The female never is all that gaudy, and their young aren’t gaudy yet. Before their new bright feathers grow in, like other ducks and geese they lose all their flight feathers at the same time (most birds molt a few at a time) and cannot fly, so it would not be good for them to be brightly colored when they are very vulnerable to predators. For a few weeks wood ducks (and mallards, and probably other ducks too) go into hiding because they can’t fly. Right now I’m not seeing ducks, either mallards or wood ducks, so I’m assuming they are in that period now. Canada geese also lose all their flight feathers for a few weeks, but they do so while they are raising young and before their teenage goslings can fly, so they are all “grounded” together, but being large and fairly aggressive birds they aren’t in as much danger as medium-sized ducks would be.

    This green heron was hunting for frogs, and I saw it catch a couple of them. I like it that both birds have their beaks open, and that you can see the reflection of both of them (the duck’s reflection much closer to the duck because it is closer to the water). I also like how colorful the water is in the morning light, because it is reflecting the trees.

    BTW, do you think “Indiana” when you see this photo? There is a lot more to my state than non-residents know about. We have a fair amount of beauty here.

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  67. If it’s 5:59 and you haven’t been to sleep yet, is it time to get up? 😦 Have I mentioned that I’m not a big fan of insomnia, even though I’m rather an expert at it?

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  69. My special plans are to complete an online course: Risk Management for Brokers. It makes my head swim with terms such as trust account, ledgers, transaction reports, commingling, auditing procedures and checklists. Criminal penalties, E&O Insurance. Ugh.
    On a brighter note, I am about halfway through this version of Poppy. So far I have encountered a Mr. Black and a Mr. Bellamy. The author confirmed my suspicions about the two names.

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  71. Kim, Poppy is so good. I couldn’t put it down!! But, I did not notice those shout outs. I’m glad you did.

    Unbroken is on tonight, so that is my plan for the evening. Not sure what we’ll do during the day. May paint some trim and install it to actually finish that small ceiling portion. Or replace an ugly ceiling fan with another pretty fixture.

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  72. 🙂

    Two for two occasions down for keeping my mouth shut. Wedding tonight will be the last family event for five days. (I’ll need to be silent at another party Saturday night in Lake Tahoe).

    Meanwhile, I’m cramming on OC and WWI–Eric Metaxas is interviewing me on the subject tomorrow!

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  73. I slept on my neck funny or something, got up at 6 a.m. with some serious shoulder pain — took some aspirin and put on a neck collar and it cleared up after a while so I could go back to sleep.

    So good to have Monday OFF. 🙂

    But it’s power washing today so it may be noiser later — and I desperately need to do some laundry.

    And … I’d forgotten to complete my digital time card on Friday so I woke up to a stern warning in my email that if I did not do it PRONTO, it would affect my pay … So that got done first!

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  74. And today’s Poppy day for me!! I have a good chunk of time to finally dig in (already have, it’s making me nostalgic for the journalism of yesteryear).

    Paint crew is renting the power wash machine as we speak and they should be here shortly.

    This will be loud and interesting. Pray for no disasters! No leaks and no broken windows … My window glass is so thin being as old as it is that it definitely would not withstand an accidental shot of that water stream.

    Meanwhile, garage door automatic opener is now disconnected and on manual until painter can figure out what’s wrong with it. He installed the automated unit a year ago and is convinced something is wrong with it; the other theory is the door needs re-balancing. Sigh.

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  77. Good morning. I am coming up for air from a busy 2 weeks. I have worked overtime both of the last 2 weeks and have started my school, with 5 classes, 3 of which have labs. The art appreciation class is the most taxing. I thought we would learn about art, not create art…GRRR. This is my last day of a long work stretch. We should be packed again, as it is the All American Futurity today. I am caught up on all my homework. In the midst of my busyness, my phone decided to die. When I come in for class tomorrow, I will deal with it.

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  78. DJ, men came by to power-wash our condo, as scheduled, the day we were heading out to meet our new grandchild.

    And wouldn’t you know it, after gloating on here about not needing to wash our windows this summer since they were brand-spanking new, we came back to streaky windows and streaky glass doors. 😦

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  79. Morning! It is a cloudy day around here and a tad bit cool…yay for September!
    Dj our opener has acted up on occasion and we found each time one of the dogs ran by the sensor and knocked it off kilter…..we lined it up again with the opposing sensor then…poof…it was operational once again!
    I get to have some Poppy reading time today….this week and weekend has been filled with all things interruptive !!!! 📖
    Cheryl I love that you have this wildlife refuge in your area….I love Indiana and Ohio…oh so many beautiful spots in the Midwest….

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  80. I guess I’m cooking cabbage for freezing today. 10 large heads in the fridge is too much even with our large refrigerator. I just chopped up 4 heads and have 2 large pots boiling on the stove. Well, I didn’t finish one of the heads – I’m going to make some coleslaw for lunch 🙂 It’s a shame to cook it as they are so tender, but…too much to eat by myself.

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  82. rKessler, good to see you pop in, hope you’ll be able to get some downtime today. Art (or any other of those easy-sounding ‘appreciation’ classes) can be killers.

    I’m thinking my shoulder/neck arm hurting was maybe from the walker hoisting I did on Saturday. I may have pulled or just over-worked something. It’s all fine now, but I really had some muscle aches when I first got up this morning, very uncomfortable.

    Carol called last night to say she loves the new shoes, they’re New Balance so a good brand. The first pair of generic men’s slip-ons she tried were awful — not only ugly because they were so mannish looking, but they were a size 13 and her foot was just squished inside them.

    I said, no, those look way too tight. “They’re not tight (her ankles were practically folding down around the tops!), I like them, I think I’ll get these,” she said.

    No, I replied, we can do better I think. Thankfully the clerk found a size 14 in the better New Balance name brand shoe — not only much better and more unisex looking (black with some orange trim) but a much, much better fit.

    It’s going to be loud here today both with the power washing (pets will be stressed) & with the fighter jets overhead (for the final day of Fleet Week). Pairs have roared by a couple times already this morning, cool to watch, the guys get especially excited.

    Painter is setting up for the power wash right now (still waiting for his sidekick to show up) — fortunately we have an amazingly cool and overcast day today, it’s only 72 at 11:30 a.m., going up to a high of 76. Still humid, though, but as long as the temps stay this low it’s much more tolerable. We hate humidity out here.

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  83. Nancy jill, interesting about the garage sensor. I never realized how sensitive they are (since I’ve never had one before).

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  84. I’m not sure I know what a “garage sensor” is. If it opens automatically when someone passes a place, I’m not sure I would want one.
    In H’ville, I had a walk-in garage that operated by a button on the door or car.. Or I entered a code number on the outside.
    Chuck has one of those.
    I don’t. My car is parked in the weather.

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  85. DJ – Even though we get a lot of humidity in the summer, that doesn’t mean we like it any more than you do. 🙂 Although I guess we are more used to expecting it. June was unusually comfortable with temps in the lower 70s and low humidity. Since then, though, we made up for it with more humidity than is even normal for us. And more coming up this week.

    Hubby liked New Balance shoes.

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  86. no holiday here, another day in kinder. This tutoring is taking so much time, but I am learning. I am watching a portion of the training video before every session. Too much to keep in my head.

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  87. 🙂 I see where a hurricane is headed directly to Kim’s house.
    I think she said she had lots of elevation from the gulf.

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  91. A sweet little girl. 🙂 A few ounces over seven pounds, lots of hair, and feeding well. And that’s pretty much all the “personal” information I gave.

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  92. Hello all!

    Not a whole lot going on here today. Our older son has been up for the holiday weekend, leaving soon to get home and get a good night’s sleep before school tomorrow (he’s the K-5 music teacher). We had hoped to use the fire pit (which older son hasn’t been here for when we’ve used it), but as usual the weather did not cooperate. Either it’s too hot (most weekends this summer) or it’s raining. We had planned on using it Friday but a good thing we didn’t, because about the time we would have been getting started, the thunderstorm started, about two hours earlier than forecast (and we had a very wet dog and younger son, who was walking her).

    I did at least finally get the house numbers up today. We had a siding replaced earlier this year, and one day it occurred to me that I no longer had house numbers. I went out and bought some, but it took a while to first figure out how to mount them (I had not realized just how tough it would be to make even a tiny hole in the siding) and then to get around to going out in the heat and doing it. I managed to drop one of the screws into the ground next to the stoop twice, but managed to find it again. I had not expected it to be such a project. (My husband agreed that he should not even consider trying to help – one nice thing about getting the new siding was that it got rid of the extra holes from his attempt to put up the tether for the dog by the back door.)

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  93. We whine something awful when it’s humid. It seems unfair.

    Garage opens with an electronic opener but I guess everything needs to be aligned, the door balanced, nothing in the way of the sensors, etc.

    If I’d known how touchy they were, I might not have put that part in. But the new garage door is metal and really heavy, a lot heavier than my aging wooden garage door that it replaced. Not a huge deal, but a little cumbersome especially when closing it as it really picks up momentum and can wind up slamming down when I open and close it manually.

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  94. I have gotten much reading done today….ya’ll this is such a good book!! Now I must prepare dinner then take my daily walk with my neighbor. A rain storm just came through and it is stinkin’ cold outside! I will need to pull out the sweatshirt for my walk….did I mention “yay September”!!?!
    Dj those sensors are tricky…they need to line up pretty accurately and they are only anchored by a rather lightweight metal. It is easy to knock it off kilter if the dogs are excited and hopping and spinning around! If they are out of alignment the light on the opener starts blinking and the door will not close nor go up…sometimes it happens if a spider 🕷 builds a web over it or if a moth (yes a moth) decides to rest on the sensor….it has happened!!

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  95. Hey Pauline, good to see you. I need to get new house numbers too — I like the colorful tiled squares with the numbers on them to put into a wrought iron frame next to the front door. Waiting until the house is painted to decide what color(s) to use.

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  96. I have to admit I was wondering, as I put the numbers up (squinting in the bright sun and the sweat running down into my eyes), how important it is in this age of GPS. Back when I was in my 20’s, there was a big push in the area where I lived for everyone to get big visible numbers so emergency vehicles could find the house. And as a delivery person for Domino’s, I really appreciated people who made numbers not only big enough but of a contrasting color and in a spot where the light would shine on them. (I sometimes had to stop the car and just walk from one house to another before I found one to give me an idea if I was even on the right block.) And it’s nice for visitors trying to find your house (though as we live on a corner now, all they really need is the street signs and knowing which side we’re on).

    But these days we tend to rely mostly on the Garmin when going anywhere unfamiliar, and it seems like more and more people do. I have read that emergency vehicles rely primarily on GPS also, and the house numbers would only be a backup method in case of computer or GPS failure.

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  98. Pauline, GPS is imperfect. At our old home, the GPS directed people the wrong direction when they got to the last half block. And not everyone has GPS, or uses it “around town.” My husband has it, but doesn’t always use it around town, and I don’t use it at all. Addresses along the way also help tell you “we’re getting close” or “we turned the wrong way on this street; the numbers are going up and they should be going down.”

    Our current address situation confuses everyone. (The street name on the sign doesn’t totally match our actual address, and three very similar street names are in this development.) I once had a pizza guy knock at 10:00 at night (hubby was in bed) looking for a different address. Can’t say I was all that happy about that one! Our address is right above the door where he knocked, with a street light shining on it, so even though he didn’t know how to get where he was going, he knew he wasn’t there!

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  101. Chas the latest coordinates put it going west of me. The news people blow these things out of proportion. My phone let out a god awful noise and informed me that I was under a hurricane warning. No not until tomorrow and they are saying only 70 mph winds.
    Not one to let moss grow under his feet Mr P has been to Wal Mart. We have baby formula and another gallon of distilled water. He has convinced the Mama and the Daddy that the Baby is safer here. I had to let them know they were invited to stay with their baby. I do agree with him. Baby is safer in my stick built brick house than she is in a second floor apartment.

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  102. Guys blew/burned out the water pressure machine (electric) so tomorrow they’ll have to return with the bigger, noisier gas model rented from Home Depot. I’ll be off to work but my poor neighbors and dogs will have to bear through it. Tess gets so stressed through all of this house stuff. 😦 It’s been a long 2+ years for her.

    Seriously, if I’d had any idea back then how long and costly this all would end up being …

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  104. Chas, yes, DJ used to push folk into the water just for a number. Kind of pathetic, really.

    GPS, it usually guides people to our neighbor’s house rather than to ours. But somebody, probably the highway dept, put up blue stakes by each driveway with the number of the house in reflective numbers. People still go to the neighboring house.

    Husband says it is constantly sending him to the wrong place while trucking. I don’t have it. Before I leave home, I print a google map to take along.

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  105. It isn’t GPS. Global Positioning System knows where it is. People rename places and re-arrange street names and numbers.
    I didn’t have anything to do with it, but the Geodesy Department I was in did the satellite tracking to determine the orbit of the (I forgot how many, I think 24) satellite system. Every place on Earth has at least three GPS satellites in view all the time.

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  108. Kim will have to advise on my house numbers. Samples to come, but maybe only after they paint.

    And that will be around Christmas 2020.

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  113. One day many years ago, my mom was driving the girls and me to a new place (new to us) for breakfast, in a town she wasn’t too familiar with, using her GPS. The GPS voice insisted on her turning into the restaurant in a place where there was only grass, no driveway or pavement. We had quite a laugh about that. 🙂

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  119. I refuse to trust GPS. Where we used to live it sent people to a cemetery on the South side of town instead of our house on the North side. And those silly millenials didn’t listen to me when I gave them directions to our house and followed the GPS instead.

    At any rate, someone didn’t need GPS to win the Pigskin Picks. This person needed Mrs L to choose from two winners. (The tie breaker was moot this week.)

    Find out who by clicking here.

    Liked by 2 people

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