Bogieblog

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I met someone this morning who had a death wish was in a big hurry to die get going to his destination. Correction, I almost met this guy - up close and personal. We probably would not have been in the mood to exchange polite greetings if we had met though.

More Musings

There’s 9 seconds left in the fourth quarter and one of the announcers says, “The Seahawks pretty much have to score here to have a chance to win.” This would make sense if they were only 3 points behind, or 6 points behind, or even 7 points behind – but they were 10 points behind. Yep, plenty of time to make two touchdowns (assuming the Pats left for the locker room at that point in the game). With 9 seconds left, it would be a minor miracle if they could tie the game much less win it. And I didn’t see JC, any of the Apostles, Saints no – not the New Orleans Saints or even a highly respected priest standing upon that field. Sounds like one of the announcers got carried away with his admiration of that particular team.

* * * *

I thought this coming weekend would actually give me a break from pet-sitting (my long-term customer should be back sometime on Saturday). Sunday would have been the first day in 6 weeks that I got to sleep past 5 AM (that was sleeping in on the weekends). But, I got calls Sunday night from two different customers blowing that hope out of the water. Thursday or Friday evening, I will start taking care of a dog and her sheep (until Sunday evening). Also on Friday, I start taking care of another cat until Sunday. At least both those customers are within ¼ mile of our house so the drive time won’t be bad.

* * * *

WS started sucking up the fallen leaves on Sunday (with the leaf vac you sickos). He got a good start but the trees aren’t nearly done dropping leaves yet, so he’ll be out there plenty more times in the next couple of weeks. Monday we had 4 yards of sand delivered to fill in around the block foundation. He will be shoveling that into place after work during the week. Then he has to build a lean-to over the foundation so it doesn’t fill up with snow during the winter and then flood the basement come spring thaw. He will definitely be a busy guy!

* * * *

I still need to get out and get the gardens ready for winter. I am hoping to get that done this weekend. However, it is supposed to rain all week (and into the weekend) so that plan may not have much hope of being realized. We also need to get underneath the deck cleaned out so we have somewhere to store the deck furniture, the grill, the patio furniture and some other summer odds and ends. All that stuff used to reside in the greenhouse during the winter – but since the greenhouse has been torn down, that won’t work this year.

Gotta get ready for work - have a good day!

More Linkage

Val gives the neccessary steps for setting your goatee on fire.

Light and Dark is threatening to actually start posting again.

Lawren missed her own birthday party.

SugarMama has problems finding a tastefull lamp.

The Monkey is just too funny on all his posts, so will just link to his site. Caution: May disturb some peoples' sensibilities.

Billy is away for the day - maybe we should go play at his website.

Wichi Dude and Dudette had some fun at the local St@rshmucks.

That's enough linkage for the day. Hope some of it brightens your day!

How About That?

The Weekend Pundit and Deb (The Girlfriend) have shaken up their lives. Go congratulate them on their engagement.

Niagara Falls Revisited

I have finally gotten some of the pictures from our trip to Niagara Falls up in the Photo Album. Damn, one more thing I meant to do while Cop Car and her Hunky Husband were here was to go thru all the pictures!

Since the photo album seems to place the pictures in some random order which I am too stupid to figure out and doesn't stick to a logicall means of sorting them like time of download, time that the picture was taken, or alphabetically by picture name, I will attempt to give them some sort of order on this post.

Let's see, one of the first pictures I took was of the Wonderful Spouse looking at the falls (actually, at that moment he was looking at me and the camera). Behind him is our friend Jim. I have no clue who the gentleman in the background is - just another tourist like us.

Linkage

Broad at Bat has finally had her jaw surgery - I'm guessing that she is pretty sore. However, if she wasn't going thru shock therapy afterwards, she wouldn't have had such a facinating conversation.

Essay Canajun had a long day (and night). I can relate!

There was an attempted eviction at Rita's place. Coons are everywhere!

I know I've linked Buffy already today, but i'm just dying for her to come over and make my front walkway look like this!

I haven't linked to Fred in too long. He always has wonderful photos up and it was hard to chose which to link to. Once I saw this one though, the choice was easy!

The Weekend Pundit has Flatlander News - and a proposed alert system for the weather. And Chan also discusses laser sparkplugs in a different post. He's got all the neat stuff!

Alright, that's all the time I have for perusing the old blogroll - hope some of the links help brighten your day!

Various Musings

The verdict is in – it has been a raccoon eating the cat food. Thursday night I got home and the Wonderful Spouse told me there were definite coon foot prints on the deck. The coon had to walk thru fresh dirt at the bottom of the stairs of the deck. This dirt had actually turned to mud because of the rain, so it left unmistakable foot prints by the cat house. Unfortunately this means that I can’t set out cat food as I normally do – I hope Fuzzy has an alternate food source! And, I hope that I have an easier time getting rid of it (or them) than Buffy did.

* * * *

Earlier this week, while driving home, I saw a strange road chase. A couple of police cars were headed my way with their lights on but no sirens. They had a good amount of space between them, but they weren’t going any faster than 30 MPH. As I was slowing down and pulling over to let the emergency vehicles by, I realized that there was a horse running down my lane. The lead patrol car passed me, then the horse got into his own lane and passed me, then the second patrol car passed by. Further down the road I saw two teenage girls standing holding on to another horse. I don’t know what happened, but I hope the horse was alright at the end of the chase. The only thing I could think at the time though was that this was probably a higher speed chase than OJ’s.

* * * *

For Buffy who shares recipes and tells us of all the great meals she has; a recipe for Apple Spice Cake. Even if your trying to eat healthy, this seems to be a fairly healthy recipe to me because of it’s unique ingredient:

Wood stacked - Check (after 3 1/2 hours). It seems I underestimated how much wood was left. Apparently I had previously stacked only 2/5 of it. Then I also forgot about the pile of small stuff to be used for kindling that had to be moved. Add to that, stripping the bark off the birch logs (to use instead of newspaper for the initial lighting of the fire) and it was a long day. WS is threatening to bring in some wood that he never moved in from the woods - damn!

* * * * *

The Wonderfull Spouse has been busy too. He dug up an area to pour a concrete pad for the new oil tank and dug up the area under the steps to the deck to pour a pad there too (the steps had previously rested on cinder blocks). Of course that's harder than it sounds because, you guessed it, he dug as much rocks as actual dirt. He made the forms for the concrete and lined the bottom with sand then backfilled around the forms (so they wouldn't blow out from the weight of the concrete). Next he called a Redi-mix place and had them deliver concrete. They were able to pour the pad for the oil tank directly, but he had to use a wheelbarrow to get the concrete to the pad for the stairs. He got it all smoothed out and rounded the edges like a professional. Yesterday he removed the forms and threw dirt back in around the concrete. Oh, and while he had the concrete truck here, he filled in the rest of the cores to the foundation for the future house addition (all this performed by shovel). So I'm not the only busy one around here.

* * * * *

I went to Sam's the other day and happened to go thru the book section. They had the 7th book of the Dark Tower series. I didn't even know it was out. The 6th book came out in May or June, so I was really surprised! Anyway, I picked it up. However, I have been working on abook for 1 1/2 months. Not that it is that big a book, I just haven't had time to read much (I just realized the other day that I am two months behind on reading Discover Magazine). I don't have too much left to read of my current book-in-progress and am hoping to find the time to finish it today.

* * * * *

Maybe I'll have time to finish the book while I wait for the salsa to cook and the water for canning to boil. I managed to cut up the tomatoes last night, so actually putting together the rest of the ingredients won't take long (I can use a food processer to take care of the onions and peppers).

* * * * *

The neighbor's across the street had one of their cats go missing about 10 days ago. It was a lovely, all black cat, named Dinah. They have given up hope on seeing it again and picked up a black kitten this weekend.

* * * * *

Something has been eating all the cat food that I leave on the deck for our cats . I filled the bowel one day last week (I fill it every morning) and it was licked clean when I got home - despite the fact that all our cats were in that day. I know that Sammy, the other cat from across the street, also comes by for a snack every once in a while as does Fuzzy (who still hangs around). However, they never lick it clean, nor do two cats eat that much in such a short time. The same thing has happened a couple more times, but not every day. It can't be a dog because we had the stairs to the deck blocked off for a couple of days while the concrete pad was setting up, so there wasn't room for a dog to hit the bowel. Maybe some coons have moved into the neighborhood. I'll have to figure out how to discourage such behavior!

Frosty Nights

We had a couple of frosty night last week - both nights the temp got down to the high 20's. One of those nights, Berlin, NH was featured as the cold spot of the day with a temp somewhere in the teens (I've forgotten the exact temp).

I have to get into the garden and see if any tomatoes or peppers survived the cold. The Wonderful Spouse was kind enough to pick all the tomatoes that showed even a blush of color the evening before the first frost so it's not catastrophic if nothing survived. I put the tomatoes on a counter to ripen up and have enough to can a bit more salsa, or perhaps some regular old tomato sauce. I'm off work tomorrow for the holiday, so I'm hoping to do some canning then.

Despite the frost, my petunias seem to very happy; they are just blooming away! Yesterday I picked some seed pods from them and other plants to dry and save for next year. Something else to store in the fridge until the next growing season. I have bags, envelopes, jars and film containers of seeds in the fridge. One of these days I'm going to have to get a small "6-pack" fridge so that I can put them in there and save the upstairs fridge space for actual food and condiments.

The onions and potatos will soon be ready to be pulled (thanks Cop Car for identifying that mistery plant for me!). Then it will be time to remove all the straw and landscape fabric that I have been using as weed control - sure am looking forward to that NOT. It seems silly that I will be removing straw from the garden and composting it, but I will be buying straw to put in the doghouse! I will use some of the straw from the garden as a mulch for overwintering a few plants though.

I also have to clean up the flower gardens - pull the dead leaves and flower stalks off irises, lilies and such. Fortunately, the new flower bed at the end of the driveway is still looking nice and green, so I won't have to do anything there for a while. Meanwhile, some of the late-blooming bulbs in the upper bed have been putting on a show so while I'm out doing yard work, I have plenty of things to appreciate.

The leaves are really changing around here; too bad they didn't look this nice while the folks were here. The highbush cranberries, that I planted earlier this year, are a nice crimson red to compliment the maples' deeper red, the birches' yellow and the oaks' orange. And of course the changing of the leaves means that raking said leaves is not far behind. But for now, we are enjoying the vibrant colors.

Today is "stack the rest of the wood" day. I got about half of it stack a month ago but haven't gotten back to it since. It should be a nice day to do this type of work, a bit cool but dry.

I'm off to peruse other blogs before delving in to the outside work. Hope everyone is having a great weekend!

Cool Sunset

Take a look at this picture featured as a picture of the day on NASA's website - just awesome!

Thanks to the Secular Fransciscan for the link.