skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Last night, I had 400 plots of land on my "farm" and they were all planted with pumpkins. This morning, there were 19 plots on my farm and nothing was planted in any of them. All of my trees, buildings, animals, decorations, etc are there and all the harvesting, plowing, sowing functions work. Still my farm is almost all green grass.
I blame The Smoke Monster.
Well, at least it's a nice day and I will find something to do in the real outdoors.
Update: The "Farm" is back, sometime between 3:00 and 4:00 this afternoon. Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.
There are two news stories that have been occupying our TV coverage lately. The oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico and the debate over what LeBron James will do when he becomes a free agent.
The oil spill is, of course of national importance. The LeBron story seems to headed that way.
Here are my "brief" rants
(1) The oil spill should have never happened. Corners were cut and safeguards ignored that led to this mess. The government, that means both Republicans and Democrats, need to improve oversight that would not allow profit to push safety and concerns for the environment aside. Remember, people died on that oil rig. If you want to dig a little, do some searching about the closed-door meetings between Dick Cheney and guys from Halliburton during the previous administration in Washington. I heard Sarah Palin on TV yesterday suggesting that this situation would have been handled better if Republicans had been in charge. Is she aware of the Katrina fiasco? Well, of course not. She only reads what is written on her hand.
(2) LeBron won't be a free agent for over a month from now. The TV news will beat this to death until then and it will be like trying to endure political ads and praying that election day comes soon. For a 25 year-old whose every move is under scrutiny, he seems to be handling it all well. No indication of drugs, concealed weapons, bar fights, etc. I hadn't paid much attention to NBA basketball since the Cavs moved to downtown Cleveland. I began to follow the team a little when they won the right to draft LeBron and then became more of a fan when Dan Gilbert started bringing in some better players. But, LeBron James will play next year with the team of his choice. If that's not in Cleveland, then the sun will still rise and life will go on. Wouldn't it be nice if the general population of NE Ohio was as passionate about The Cleveland Clinic as they are about a basketball player. Believe it or not, The Clinic has an even better world-wide reputation than does Mr. James.
End of rant. I feel better. I think that I'll watch PBS tonight from 6:00-7:00.
I will always be a fan of the Cleveland Indians. They can be up, down, whatever and I will support them. This year, expectations were not too high. The pitching was suspect and the offense was supposed to be the strong point. So far, the pitchers, especially the starters, have overachieved and the hitters have struggled. Their record is 15-24, after losing two straight to Kansas City. There are a lot of new faces, but I enjoy watching this combination of veterans and kids. As long as I can tune in to a game and see Sandy Alomar standing in the first base coach's box, I will be content.
Of course, a record above .500 would be nice too.
As you may have noticed, my last post here was in March while we were still in Florida. Blame FarmVille and Restaurant City mostly, plus RV trips and general slothfulness. I am going to try to get back in the habit of posting on a regular basis.
Last Saturday, The Akron Derbytown Chorus of barbershop singers sang the National Anthem before the Indians-Tigers baseball game at Progressive Field in Cleveland. This is the third year in a row that we have done this. Mike and I are both members of this chorus.
It was cold, windy and sometimes rainy. We got the singing in ok and stayed through the fourth inning. Then Kim, Mike, Sue and myself went to Quaker Steak and Lube in Valley View for some lunch and watched the game on TV. It was much warmer there.
Here is a video that Sue took despite the wind and other nasty conditions. She's a trooper.
With all due modesty, I think that we sound dang good.How about another video. This is the chorus warming up (both our voices and the rest of our bodies) before we went onto the field.
Here is a small sample of the music from our gig at the ice cream social on 3/5. We did about 15 songs and the folks seemed to like the rock and roll.
Note: Mustang Sally is the only song on this clip (about 4 min. 30 sec.). There is a lot of space at the end that is from a longer movie that I made. I thought that I had trimmed it down, but that space is still there.
Last weekend we spent Saturday afternoon taking a 2.5 mile walk through the Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary. This area is under the supervision of The Audubon Society. There is a very nice boardwalk system that allows you to get up close and personal to flora and fauna. Sometimes too close (see water moccasin picture later). We saw a couple of alligators, a deer, a hawk, an owl and a great variety of other birds. This area is a gathering place for those who actually know about birds. We saw many people with giant lenses on their cameras taking pictures and identifying the birds.
On Sunday, we attended the Bonita Springs Art Festival. This is the second festival. They held another one in January, but we missed that one. We were surprised by both the number of artists and the number of visitors. Many of the artists were from Florida, but some came from the New England area, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, etc. It was a beautiful day to be outdoors. We finished the afternoon by having dinner at The Silver Spoon, a nearby bistro.
You can pause this slideshow and use the arrows to go at your own speed.
It will be a busy musical week for me. Tomorrow, rehearsal for Friday's IBE show. I'm sing with the choir for four songs, doing two with the barbershop quartet and two more with the guitar trio that came from our jam sessions. Wednesday is the regular jam session. On Thursday, Sue and I travel to Upriver RV Resort, where we stayed during the 2008 and 2009 winters. My friend Gator asked me to play and sing again with their musicians for the afternoon "Upheaval" picnic. On Friday is the "Choir and Friends show here at IBE. It will feature the choir and eight others acts. Finally, the choir is singing two songs at the Sunday evening church service. It's no problem to keep my singing voice in shape for when we get home.
Speaking of home, we plan to start back to Ohio on Monday, April 5th. We will stop in Cincinnati on 4/9 to spend the weekend with Kris and Mark, and then go back to Kent on Monday, 4/12. My quartet has a gig on 4/15. We are singing The National Anthem at the home opener of the Akron Aeros baseball team (Indian's AA affiliate).
the addition of flowers and vegetables for this year. There might be a few more flowers coming in the front yard and we want to start a couple of different varieties of sunflowers in the back yard but that's about it.
t I take out. You can see that starter area in the rear right in the picture below. Anybody want some daylilies from Grandpa's house? We might be able to provide lilacs that came from Grandma Halter's house too.
