So this is why he doesn't wear a flag pin...

The flag pins only have 50 stars and this is clearly not fair and discriminatory to the other 7-10 states that don't get a star.

Getting ideas at the wrong time...

I have all these great ideas for blog posts, but I can't post them. They occur to me right when I wake up in the morning or just before bed. In the morning, I just don't have the time and at night I am too tired.

When I do have time to write, like after work, my mind has been distracted by work-stuff all day and I can't remember the cool stuff I was going to write about. Until just before bed time,-then I am too tired.

Rinse and repeat.

PS. This is not one of the cool subjects I refer to above.

Meenah

What's that sound?

Aha, who cares? The ground is always interesting to sniff at.

Tulips

Red fuzzy ones...

Delicate peach ones...

Dandelions

Just a field of wild dandelions--are there any other kind than wild?

Drink your fill Miss bee. These are about to get mowed.

Home Repairs: Part n of ∞

Yesterday, nicely timed 'till after my wife was done with the truck, the garage door broke.

I didn't get off from work until 8:00 last night so there was little consideration of fixing it then. Today I am off, so today's script writes itself.

The way garage doors work, there are two cables which connect between the bottom corners of the door and springs. The idea is for the spring to counter some of the door's weight. What happened to our door was that one of the cables broke right at the spot where it connects to the bottom of the door. What I needed to do was make a new loop at the end and secure it somehow.

What I did was take a couple of square inches of sheet metal (flashing) and wrap it around the new loop. Then I squished and crimped the metal with pliers. So far it works--time will tell if it is a durable repair.

Dinner Table conversation

Somehow our dinner table conversation got to the idea of which letters are the most used. The participants: Parents and three girls aged 11, 8 and 6.

Okay, we all know that the most commonly used letter is "E", what do you think is the second most common letter?

The girls shot out guesses;

"A", nope!

"S", no...etc.

Finally, Dahlia shot out, "T"? Yes!

Surenna:

"That's Not True"!

Tag mystery solved

So Meenah has had this grayish black stain on her chest for some time. Try as we might, we could not figure out what she was getting into to cause this discoloration of her white chest fur.,

All at once it came to me! Her tags, two of the three at least, are made of aluminum. This metal gives off a blackish oxide, so that is probably the culprit.

Her three tags are: One we got with her name and our phone #. Two, her rabies vaccination tag and three is the dog license. Interestingly, only the town license is made of high quality brass.

My Sunday Run...

Congratulations!

Nithin and Kerry's new baby boy, Rowan.

Cooking through a rainy weekend

Yesterday was rainy, so our productive time was spent food shopping and cooking. My wife baked a cake and made turkey burgers (to be frozen and used over time). I ground up two chuck roasts to make hamburgers (to freeze) and meatballs (to cook, then freeze).

The problem is that today is also rainy, probably even more so than yesterday and I am sick of cooking but don't want to do anything outside.

Just watch. Monday--when I am stuck inside of an office building, it will be sunny and perfect...

Update: Here it is Sunday evening and the sun, absent the whole weekend, is putting in an appearance.