Don't Blame Bush!

Scott McClellan's book has been in the headlines a lot lately. It certainly has resulted in fingers being pointed at our president. Personally, if the main topics in Mr. McClellan's book are news to you, I think that you have not been paying attention.

I'm not saying that we shouldn't blame him because enough people voted for him to get him elected (at least the second time). No, I look at it another way. If you blame Bush for the mess that our country is in, then you would also blame Bernie for all the things that happened in the movie, "Weekend at Bernie's". Dubya was never in charge. The decisions were made by those around him. Dead from the neck up is still dead when it comes to making decisions. We could have had an inflatable giraffe sitting in the oval office and the results would have been the same (minus the vocabulary and grammar blunders).

Change Is Good, I Think

Since I have been blogging now for almost six months, I decided to make a change in the appearance of Time To Play. Let me know what you think of the new look.

Potomac Avenue, Minus Some Trees

We went to Erie yesterday to see Sue's dad (Grandpa Moomy to some of you). He is doing well and we had a good visit. We spent part of the afternoon sharing pictures that had been taken at Andrew and Kim's wedding and also pictures that we had taken in Florida, Georgia and South Carolina.


The Moomy homestead has a different appearance since we last visited. The electric company decided that the trees that had been in the front yard for more than 60 years had to come down. How sad. Many other trees, up and down the street, were taken down also. It really makes the area look different. On the positive side, it will mean very few leaves to deal with in the fall and no twigs to pick up either. The down side is the lack of shade provided by these big old trees.

We went out to dinner at Syd's, the local restaurant where Sue worked one summer during her college years. The place has changed a little since then. For example, they don't have brontosaurus on the menu anymore. (Luckily. she seldom reads my blog) She was too young to serve drinks to customers back in those days.

It was after 11:00 when we got home last night. The trip takes about two hours, but it's almost all interstates. We chose a good day to travel because the weather was great. Coming and going, we got a view of Mangiamo, the restaurant in Twin Lakes that burned on Monday. It is a total loss. We used to go there when it was called The Black Squirrel Pub, but we hadn't been there since the name was changed. I don't know what the owners plan to do, but it will pretty much need a whole new building.

This morning, I went to the dentist for a checkup and cleaning. He found one cavity and a filling that has to be repaired a bit so I will be going back again next Tuesday. Bummer. Sue got a clean bill of dental health last week. She doesn't have to go back until November. Lucky her.

Wow!!

When I showed this video to my guitars, they all asked to be put up for adoption.

Plantin' Stuff

Saturday was planting day at our house. We had gone to a local nursery and to Lowe's on Friday and picked out this year's plants and veggies. As usual, once you buy them, you have to plant them.















The garden has the normal arrangement of 8 tomato plants. Something new this year is a hanging basket with a cherry tomato plant. Right now it is hanging from a corner of the shed roof. I will probably move it soon, to let it get more sun. We still have some frozen tomato slices from last year. When the new ones start to produce, we will be able to make an early batch of tomato soup. MMMM!

This season's flower hanging baskets are petunias( 2 in the back and 1 in the front). We are going to try a pair of vining, yellow roses on each side of the deck stairway.

Along the rear of the back yard, with the string of hostas, we have planted a viburnum. It is the "snowball" variety and you can see in the picture that the name is well chosen.


















In the front yard, we added an azalea and a rhododendron. They are both bright pink. We don't want any color clashes.

Now we just have to water and fertilize them. Wickett will help with that, I'm sure.

Clear Choice Sings Again

Thought For The Day

Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day.

Teach a person to use the internet and you won't see them for weeks.

After a whole winter of being over 1000 miles away from the rest of the quartet, we had our first gig of the summer last night at Our Lady of the Elms High School in Akron. It was their "end of the year" chorus concert. Various choirs from the middle school and the high school performed. They were very good. The theater was decorated in red, white and blue since the theme was "Made In America". We were the special guests. After all, what's more American than a barbershop quartet? The picture above is from last fall. For this show we wore the red vest/white shirt/red bow tie combo. It matched the show theme very well.

We did three songs at about the midpoint of the show and talked a little bit about barbershop music and the Akron chorus. Then later we did the Lida Rose number from The Music Man with a soprano from the high school choir singing the Marian, the librarian, part. She did very well. Then we finished our part of the show by doing a combined number with their choir. It was a lot of fun and we got lots of compliments from the audience members during the ice cream "social" that followed the concert. We spent about 30 minutes singing requests and doing numbers with small groups from the choirs. We don't need too much encouragement to sing, as many of you well know.

We have a couple of performances scheduled in June already and I suppose that more will come. We have been getting a lot of outdoor "stroll and sing" jobs lately and they are the best kind (as long as it doesn't rain).

Peluqueria Musica Siempre

Alien Geek Squad

Apparently, extraterrestrials prefer the Firefox browser.