Bogieblog

Invisible

Three times I almost got in an accident last week. It was cloudy and drizzly on Tuesday – nothing major though. I turned on my headlights as I left work since having a silver/gray vehicle makes it difficult for other drivers to see in such conditions. About 10 miles from work, I about hit someone. They were coming off a side street to my right and taking a left onto the road I was driving on. There was a vehicle a short ways in front of me and the driver of the car pulling onto the road waited for him to go by.

Referring Back

Going thru my referrers, I noticed that this blog has been placed on a list of links for Personal Experiences involving Keratoconus, at Dave Dwyer's Place. I haven't gone thru all the links on the site, but the operator has both general links and personal links for KC, so it should be informative.

Rolling Memorial

The Secular Franciscan sent me on a little trip to the Rolling Memorial. All I can say is, AMAZING!

Last Minute BD Presents

We went to a birthday party last night for a friend of ours. We found out about it on Friday night and I was racking my brain for something to give her. I came up with the perfect gift as I was looking thru a drawer that holds stuff for our pets; flea and tick collars for her dogs and cats.

Now that may sound strange to a lot of you, but I knew they were perfect when I saw them in the drawer (I buy a bunch of them in one shot since I replace them every 2 months).

See, we had been talking several weeks ago about how bad ticks were this season. Our animals haven't had any trouble with them, but we have brought them in after working out in the woods. Our friend has been pulling them off her 2 dogs and 2 cats left and right, and she was asking what was the best thing to use. When I told her that I use just regular flea and tick collars, she was flabbergasted that I didn't have a whole regime - nope, the collars seem to work just fine for us. I did suggest a couple of brands (Adams or Zema work best for us), but was not sure she could find them without being on the Internet.

I knew that she hadn't gotten any of the collars yet and that she was unsure as to exactly where to buy them, so I saved her the trouble. She was delighted with the present and I was delighted that I could come up with something that she could definitely use with such a short notice.

Short Takes

On my way home from pet-sitting last night, I followed a truck with the license plate "BOMTEK" - not a job that I would want to have!

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For the last 10 days, the lilies planted in front of the fence have been in full bloom. The bloom spikes are taller than the fence, which is 5' high, so they completely hide the fence. they look awesome and several people have commented on how nice it looks (yes I took pictures, now I have to finish off the roll of film so I can get it developed). I wish I could take the credit, but I can't; Bonnie and Terri brought them over and planted most of them - so this is a hat tip to them!

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Speaking of garden-type things, I found out something interesting the other day. Actually, the Wonderfull Spouse heard of this from a co-worker and passed it on. WS and the co-worker were talking about hot peppers and the co-worker has visited one of the premier pepper growers in this state. It seems that the grower passed on a helpfull hint: when planting hot pepper, group them together in bunches of 3-4. For some reason this increases the foliage, height of the plant and pepper production.

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Speaking of peppers, I picked a sweet pepper and several jalapeno peppers yesterday. These peppers are grouped together in bunches of 4 because thats the way I bought the plant and I didn't want to bother detangling the roots. It seems early in the year for getting peppers, and the jalapeno plants have plenty of peppers going, and more blooms, so maybe there is something to what the grower says.

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After a week of cool (60's), rainy weather, the astilbe is just now in full bloom and looking good. The two delphiniums have been blooming for the last two weeks and look gorgeous. Other plants are not happy with the weather, and have put off blooming, but I'm sure they will get there.

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With the rainy, cool and cloudy (read, very dark and dreary) weather, I put some all of my indoor plants out on the deck for a couple of days to let mother nature water them and rinse off the foliage. I would never do this if it was supposed to be hot or sunny, because most of the plants are shade loving, and all of them would get sunburned since the deck is in full sun until about 5 PM. I worried about grasshoppers getting to them (its a bad year for those leaf-munchers), but apparently they decided they had enough greens to destroy at ground level.

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The 3 (WS swears it is 4, but I've only seen 3) hummingbirds are going through 2 1/1 cups of nectar a week - they sure are hungry little things!

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I'm already booking pet-sitting clients for next Christmas. They never book that far in advance, so it looks like I will have a busy holiday season!

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I think that is pretty much what I have to write about today - I'll write more tomorrow.

Driven

I looked at my odometer yesterday morning and realized I am already 1/2 way to needing an oil change; I was at 1,409 miles (more now since I put on over 120 miles yesterday and another 22 miles on this morning for pet-sitting duties). I have only had the vehicle for 16 days (okay, 17 if you count today). That would explain why I was laughing hysterically the other day when Nissan sent me a letter saying that they had scheduled my first 3,000 mile oil change for the end of September!

It also explains why I wrote this post last fall, commenting on this other bloggers post.

Yep . . .

I'm just going to post links today - all to good news. Lacy has become "the top winning Borzoi bitch in history". Congrats to Greg and his Lovely Bride (and, Lacy of course)!

More Blogosphere News

For those that have missed Dax Montana lo these many weeks, he is back!

Thanks to Jim, at Parkway Rest Stop for the update!

Expansions Happen

I was just going to cruise some sites this morning, and not post anything until tomorrow. My plan was to catch up for the week on at least some of the blogs that I have not had time to read lately. However, when I read the news, I just had to post a link to this!

Nettled

Did you know that Stinging Nettle got its name for a very good reason? Last night I was pulling a few weeds in a flower bed, I managed to grab onto a small speciman of this plant. Now I have three fingers on my left hand that are full of the stinging little hairs. Now the stinging has dulled down to an agressive tingle in those finger, unless I grab a hold of something with that hand.

The good new is that I am technically right handed, so if it involves pens/pencils or silverware, I am in good shape. The bad news that 75% of everything else I do, my left hand is the lead (which is why the nettle got my left hand), so this could be a real annoyance for a couple of days!

Now if I could just figure out how the stinging nettle got there in the first place, I would be all set!