Yesterday was a long, long day and I was exhausted. I fell asleep at my desk and woke up with less than five minutes before midnight. So last night’s post was what, in baseball terms, would be called “an emergency hack.”
Today was better, I finally got up off the ground and got a few goals accomplished. But I’m still not hitting on all cylinders.
So, enjoy some fireworks!
Filed under Fireworks, Photography
Last spring we were pleasantly surprised, while looking for local activities, to find the Monday Municipal Mile, held at the Civic Center Park next to City Hall, the police station, and the library.
A quarter mile around the park, four laps.
After about eight or ten weeks they stopped for the summer (it can be freakin’ hot out here in July and August!) but now that Fall’s here, we back doing laps!
We love our local community and the fun things that are offered to participate in and meet our neighbors and make new friends!
Filed under Forever Home, Health, Photography
Spectacular sky this afternoon with tons of puffy white clouds on a deep blue background.
The object hidden in the gaps was immediately obvious to my eye.
Maybe it’s human nature, maybe it’s just me.
See it?
Just rising, white, airless, cratered face peeking through the white puffy clouds.
Amazingly, there are folks who think that seeing the moon in the sunlit mid-day sky is some sort of weird occurrance or magic spell or conspiracy or SIGN.
It’s not anything weird at all, perfectly normal. People just don’t bother to pay attention to the world around them.
Now that we’re living the good life up in the High Desert and not in the mega metropolis of Los Angeles, we have some different entertainment options. Like, rodeo.
Tonight was the first night of the High Desert Rodeo at the San Bernardino County Fair Grounds in Victorville. An easy 20 minute drive up the freeway, and we were anxious to check it out.
The weather was great! Not to hot, a little breeze but not howling.
It was a sellout, and it looks like tomorrow will be as well. (We won’t be there tomorrow since there’s a time conflict with a very important Chiefs game.) This bodes well (we hope!) for the financial future of the new event.
Bareback riding, saddle bronco, mutton busting, chute dogging, team roping, tie down roping, barrel racing, breakaway roping, and bull riding. Plus all of that small hometown charm, like having the local “wrangler” group riding to introduce each event, and a couple of high school ladies singing the National Anthem. Plus lots of booths, vendors (clothing, jewelry, housewares, baked goods, and so on), and food trucks (above average BBQ).
And off behind us (we were facing north, this was to our west) SpaceX launched just after sunset and left a long exhaust trail swirling across the sky.
Is that a great Saturday night date night in small-town America, or what?!
Filed under Forever Home, Photography, Space
When I got into the shower this morning, outside of the bathroom windows were a ton of birds. There were dozens of finches and wrens, 20+ pigeons, some mourning doves, the usual assortment hanging onto the birdseed feeders or strutting around on the ground underneath.
When I came out a few minutes later, they were ALL gone. Just one large bird perched on top of the pergola.
I recognize that regal, killer outline! The shadows were a little harsh, but that’s one of our missing hawk friends!
Spotted chest with brown & white diamonds, a short beak, relatively long tail with some horizontal banding…
That’s a Cooper’s Hawk. And yes, they are known to feed on smaller birds at backyard bird feeders. Which is why I’ve been surprised to not see them before now. But here he is today!
Filed under Birds, Critters, Photography
Just a pretty picture from a week ago, no relevance to today’s tale…
Today, every time I turned around, there was some little thing that I could do to “take back” our house from the state it had been converted to in order to have Casper with us. So many little things that were minor and necessary in and of themselves at the moment, but in sum had turned our world a bit topsy turvy.
For example, all of the trash cans in the house, ESPECIALLY the one in the kitchen where the food scraps go, were all up on counters or in cabinets or someplace where they were hard to get to. They’re now all back down on the floor where they’re useful.
All of the closet doors are back open so we can come and go as we please, with no fear of “someone” going in to steal (and chew and eat and destroy) shoes, or one of Ronnie’s stuffed animals, or a box of my baseball cards.
Clothes to be sorted and put away as they come out of the laundry are simply…clothes. They can be on the dresser or the bed, no requirement for them to be up hidden next to a trash can.
There are no longer tennis balls or chew toys or squeaky toys everywhere on the floor to trip over.
Backing up to close the refrigerator doors no longer involves tripping over The Beast, who had snuck in behind you to stare at the refrigerator’s contents along with you.
Possibly most importantly, last night we slept normally in our bed. There was no knock-down, drag-out fight at lights out to secure (temporarily) a small portion of mattress and covers free of kicking dog legs.
The transformation is complete. There’s no one here but us boring, quiet, dull, tedious, bland humans.
Just the way we like it. Chaos is a young man’s game.
Filed under Casper, Dogs, Forever Home, Photography, Ronnie
Dirty Harry once said, “A man’s got to know his limitations!” We found ours.
After trying to make it work for a week, today we had the rescue group we got Casper from take him back. He was a massive snuggle bug and a beautiful dog.
Unfortunately, he also had about 300% more “puppy energy” than we could handle. In the end, he was faster, wilder, and probably smarter than I was. He was a jumper, and kept going over the back wall and out into all of the empty construction lots behind us. When we worked to make it harder to get over the wall, he went out the front door to roam the neighborhood.
He was smart enough to eventually come back home on his own, more or less, but he was also foolish enough to head out into traffic on the main road trying to extend his “adventure.” It was a debate whether he was going to get hit by a car first, or whether I was going to have a heart attack trying to chase him down first.
There were other growing incompatibilities. He chewed and destroyed things. He wanted to sleep all night on our bed and kick us out of it. The louder he got told “NO!” or “STOP!” the more he misbehaved.
We’re too old for that shit.
They’ve got a new home for Casper on a farm where he’ll have plenty of room to run. And we’ve got our quiet home back.
Filed under Casper, Dogs, Forever Home, Photography
Some days the best thing that happens is that you nail the NYT “Connections” game in less than two minutes. Things just click and the answers just seem to be written in light like I’m some sort of idiot savant.
The rest of the day I just feel like some sort of idiot and the world is kicking my ass.
Tomorrow’s another day. (Unfortunately.)
Filed under Paul
Casper discovers football season in the Willett household. Casper is not impressed.
Casper is not a fan of clothing or shirts, and he’s especially not hapy about having to wear this Chiefs shirt.
Then, with the Monday night game of the Chiefs & Broncos starting about 17:15, right after he’s eaten and wants to take a proper after-dinner nap, every time the Chiefs score a touchdown (and we scored a LOT of touchdowns while opening a 50-gallon drum of whoopass on the Broncos) I scream and wake him and and scare the crap out of him, and THEN I blow the Vuvuzela of Victory. While I may revel in its sweet, sweet music, Casper just hears a really loud and annoying and scary noise. Po-TAY-toe, po-TAH-toe…
Casper hates football.
Filed under Casper, Dogs, KC Chiefs, Photography
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