Good Time Charlie

Click on photo for a better look

Back in January, we visited some friends in their new home. My camera took this picture while their first-born enjoyed some spoonfuls of supper. If this photo doesn't get some sort of Blue Ribbon, it certainly gets an Honorable Mention award.

Study In Contrasts

Halloweekend

Happy Halloween Weekend everybody! This is how I looked tonight when Trick-or-Treaters door-belled for candy. Bonus: we get an extra hour of sleep tonight. G0od Evening.

Polar Eyes

We don't see things as they are,
we see things as we are.
--Anais Nin (1903-1977) American/French writer

Fake Lake

We have a lake in our neighborhood. It's very popular for joggers and dog walkers. It's not a real lake. It's our Fake Lake.

For being man-made, it certainly fools a lot of waterfoul. As I drove by today, a great blue heron flew right over my car. Gaggles of geese love to land into the wind. The fountain is intermittently active. It's lit at night by colored light.

Fake Lake is starting to seem more like a real lake. Reeds are growing along the west side. I'm starting to think a canoe or kayak or sunfish sailboat might not look too bad out on Fake Lake, with me inside.

Generations of Laze

An Add-On Poem by Kit & Johnnny.
Title: Generations of Laze
Date Written: September 26, 2009.
Copyright © 2009. All rights reserved.
{Line 1: Johnnny, Line 2: Kit, and so on and so forth.}

Title: Generations of Laze

Do some cooking for friends, unless
You need to go to church and confess
Bad vibes in your life bringing you down
Weighing so heavily like a beaded bridal gown
Get back to the basics and set up your camp
The stars twinkle lightly, the ground cool & damp
Our tent feels like home except for one thing
This emu we found with a wounded wing
Flight's not an option after generations of laze
A species grounded in its evolutional phase
Emu is king of the jungle except for one chap
But Simba is usually taking a nap
Have fun while you can write an add-on poem
Use your young legs and let them go roam
Keep climbing & rhyming exercising your legs & your brain
"I'm lucky to be" should be your refrain
We'll rehearse every verse dealing with something bad
And google diseases that we've never had
Focus on each day as if it's the end of your life
Because it might be, so embrace the strife.

An Add-On Poem by Kit & Johnnny.
Title: Generations of Laze
Date Written: September 26, 2009.
Copyright © 2009. All rights reserved.
{Line 1: Johnnny, Line 2: Kit, and so on and so forth.}

Roundabout

Do you ever feel like you're going in circles, and that you repeatedly continue going over the same ground, without making much headway? (If you drive NASCAR, that's definitely the case.) This sign in our neighborhood warns of a "roundabout" intersection, where nobody really knows who has the right-of-way. It's lucky we have this sign (from all four directions) so drivers don't go straight through and take out the flowers that have been planted in the middle.

Trick or Treat

We don't have a dog but a lot of people (in our neighborhood) do. So, the other day I purchased one box of Our Family Dog Biscuits (Multi-Flavor) to have on-hand for our passers-by. As Kit perused the box, she mentioned that the INGREDIENTS section included some interesting sounding items:

Wheat Flour (good start)
Wheat Middlings (never heard of these)
Meat and Bone Meal
Animal Fat (what animals?)
Dried Cheese Product (who doesn't love it?)
Liver Meal (but, of course)
Poultry By-Product Meal (which means what!?)
Dried Beet Pulp (my personal favorite)
Dried Milk
Bacon Fat
Wheat Germ Meal (sounds healthy)
Dried Molasses

These treats look like a veritable cornucopia of nutrition, all packed into handy little biscuit snacks. Now when our neighbor dogs stop by, I know exactly why they are so interested in what's in my pockets.

Porky

Hello. Miss Piggy here. Just a quick reminder that people cannot catch the "swine flu" from eating cooked pork. According to the folks at the CDC, swine influenza viruses are not transmitted by food. Therefore, you can't get swine influenza from eating pork or pork products. Eating properly handled and cooked pork and pork products is safe. Cooking pork to an internal temperature of 160°F kills the swine flu virus as it does other bacteria and viruses.

Oh, by the way, I'm doing fine and feeling better than ever. Thanks. Love, Miss Piggy

Cariflower

When you're walking around, with a Canon A540, looking for an interesting picture waiting to be taken, it's hard to pass up reflections.

If you were thinking

that these front yard flowers

are reflecting

in the passenger-side rear window

of a 1989 Honda Civic Hatchback

you would have been correct.

I could have just said

that the back of my car

was full of fresh flowers

but that would have been

misleading.

Caption Contest

Our next in a series of Caption Contest photos comes to us from taking a picture off the television set in the garage.

Please post a comment with your caption ideas for this photo!

Legal Aliens

I recently had the pleasure of coming upon some aliens who had just landed.
Curiously, I did not feel any fear of abduction, just a calm sense of perhaps trying to have a dialogue with them, to gain some mutual understanding. They did agree to pose for a photo-op before we got started...

We agreed to take turns asking each other questions!

They first asked if they could speak to Our Leader, to which I said "Do you mean Hillary Clinton?", to which they retorted: "No, Tom Cruise!"

It was now my turn to ax, so I decided to throw them a two-part question: 1. "Why are you here?" and 2. "How long are you staying?"

Their answer was: "We are here to help Warm Your Planet", and "We are leaving because your Dear Leader has imposed a new UFO Tax, which is Driving us Out of Orbit!"

The Legal Aliens then surprised me with their next question: "Why didn't Adam Lambert win Season 8 of American Idol?" (Maybe you can help me out with a response here!)

My next two-parter: 1."What have you found to be the healthiest substance in the universe?" and, 2. "What do you use as your currency?"

Their answer to both parts: "Heineken."

Legumes

July 2009 Photo Caption Contest!

Post a comment with your caption ideas for this photo!

Fireworks

When it comes to Fourth of July fireworks, some of the best fireworks are growing in our backyards. Flowers are the original summer fireworks. Even tho this particular bloom isn't growing in our particular backyard, we will probably end up sitting on our elevated deck this Fourth of July evening and watching all the fireworks going off around us, just like we did last year. Happy 4th of July Independence Day!

Catchy

June 2009 Photo Caption Contest

Post a comment with your caption ideas for this photo.

Milky Way

Do you ever feel like your problems that you're dealing with are becoming rather large? It always helps to zoom out for a second to put everything in perspective.

If your life has what seems like some big problems, let's compare them to the size of our Galaxy. Our Solar System is located in our Galaxy which we call The Milky Way. This spiral galaxy is in the shape of a big disk which is around 100,000 light years in diameter and about 1,000 light years in thickness. One light year is approximately 5.8 trillion miles. Our Solar System is about 26,000 light years from the galactic center of the Milky Way, which is estimated to have about 200-400 billion stars, and thought to be about 13 billion years old. Size-wise, if the Milky Way was reduced to 100 meters across, our own Solar System would only be about 1 millimeter in width. The Milky Way is just one of billions of galaxies in the Universe. Now, maybe your current issues that you're dealing with, don't seem quite so big. The next time you think you have a big problem, keep it in perspective, relative to the big picture.

Finalistic

Three Dog Night

American Idol Show Notes
Week of May 12-13, 2009
The Final Three!

Well, there are only three dogs left in the race - all guys. That would not have been the case if Alexis Grace wouldn't have been cut way back when there were eleven finalists remaining. Feel free to weigh in with any thoughts, feelings, and predictions on this matter.

Room Snacks

While travelling, we often find ourselves in a hotel room with only a TV remote control and a coffee pot. Today's Travel Tip is to bring your own Room Snacks to make your home away from home more homey.

Here we see a nice variety representing most of the four major snack groups. Notice the clever use of the Aerobies as serving plates. I like to snack, but expecially if I'm at all nervous. Obviously, in this picture taken in Detroit Lakes, I was quite nervous.

Big Deal

An Add-On Poem by Kit & Johnnny.
Subject: Fargo Flood 2009.
Title: Big Deal.
Date Written: March 30, 2009.
Copyright © 2009. All rights reserved.
{Line 1: Kit, Line 2: Johnnny, and so on and so forth.}
{Rhyme scheme: ABAB, CDCD, and so on and so forth.}

Title: BIG DEAL.
When the rain falls hard on the grassy plains
Too much of a good thing can become a big deal
Like gray-haired rock singers' old refrains
If you don't plan your future, stand in line for a meal.
The message I sent in a bottle, now is lost in a sea
There's a river thru my kitchen and sandbags round my bed
How lost can I get before you find me
In a refugee camp with a bandana round my head.
Behind the walls that protect all we love
Mother Nature wreaks havoc to display her power
She teaches us things we have never thought of
Like mixing hot with cold, or sweet with sour.
Fighting like cougars, mostly we are kittens
Biting down trees, dam it up, says the beaver
Our grandmothers made us most of these mittens
While Granpa made moonshine to help with spring fever.
I've entered the tunnel, but see there's a light
Dark times behind us, ahead it's all bright.

An Add-On Poem by Kit & Johnnny.
Subject: Fargo Flood 2009.
Title: Big Deal.
Date Written: March 30, 2009.
Copyright © 2009. All rights reserved.
{Line 1: Kit, Line 2: Johnnny, and so on and so forth.}
{Rhyme scheme: ABAB, CDCD, and so on and so forth.}