utenzi

 We received 5 chicken eggs on Easter so in a way they're Easter eggs. True the hues are limited but you can see there is some variation: two white, two light brown, and one brown.  And we also received one turkey egg but that didn't seem very Easter-y. As you can see, it's a lot bigger than a chicken egg. Around 50% or 60% bigger. They taste a little different than chicken eggs but not bad by any means. After laying their eggs, I let the chickens into the garden next door, so to speak, and they had a grand ole time eating weeds, scratching out bugs, and munching on blades of grass.   Even the rooster got interested for a while. But then he stalked away. Apparently gardening is work for the hens.

Incy Wincy spider went up the water spout. Down came the rain and washed the spider out. Out came the sun, and dried up all the rain, and Incy Wincy spider climbed up the spout again.   I don't think I'd call this one "incy" or "wincy."  It's a big sucker. But it's web is in a bad state of repair. The beastie has made itself quite at home on my back deck and doesn't seem to find my taking pictures bothersome so we've found our balance.

I've watched a few of the new shows for the Fall Season and I'm not very impressed. I guess for quality I'll have to wait until the end of the month when Dexter and Homeland get their respective starts. So far I've seen the first 3 episodes of The New Normal, as well as first episodes of Go On, The Mob Doctor, Guys with Kids, and Revolution. The New Normal: I though the first episode was uneven, some jokes worked and some didn't. The grandmother (Barkin) was too harsh for me, but of course she was supposed to be, and the two prospective dads were a bit too cutesey. The second episode clicked. The jokes worked and the preachy aspects were worked in quite well. I decided that maybe this show was going to live up to the hype. Unfortunately in the third episode they only had the preachy part on board. What jokes were there fell flat, very flat. I'll try a few more episodes and see if the quality evens out. Guys with Kids : Run away from this show. It sucks....

Actually the phrase should be Rough Wooing but the word "woo" sounds too much like the background chorus in a Motown song for me. In any case, Rough Wooing is a somewhat caustic reference to the Battle of Pinkie Cleugh . I know, I know. Pinkie Cleugh sounds a little cutesy too, doesn't it? How about this one: Firth of Forth? That's a location in Scotland that the battle was near. The Gaelic version of the name, Linne Foirthe, sounds somewhat more serious. And a serious battle it was. In Scotland the battle is also known as Black Saturday, and for good reason. While estimates vary, something like 30,000 Scots went up against around 17,000 Brits and at the end of the day a third of the Scots were dead but only 600 British died that day. That's the kind of lopsided result that can really make a nation mourn for centuries. It happened in September of 1547. The King that started it was already dead, the future king it purportedly was started for was only 9 yea...

Sometimes when you read a book description you wonder just what demographic the book is aimed at. That's what happened when I saw the blurb about a book by Linda Laird titled The American Grain Elevator: Function and Form . Here's the blurb: NEW BOOK! Explains the who, what, where and why of these sometimes massive structures that puzzle the traveler and are mostly taken for granted by the locals. The 111 pp. paperback, with over 150 regional illustrations, tells the story of how grain storage began, elevators were invented, who owns them and how they work. Includes sections on a variety materials used in the Midwest from the 1800s to today; with many historic photos and 86 full color examples of an important building form that is integral to our American heritage and agricultural economy. I just have to wonder how large an audience there is for this book. For all I know, it could be huge and untapped---I've not seen many grain elevator books around---but it's not...

Every once in a while when I read the description of a book the idea pops into my head that the writer was following a definite strategy for marketing the book. Case in point, today I read the description of a recent release, Joshua's Revenge, by Richard Wren. The blurb goes: Yosemite Park bears are being killed and eviscerated for their body parts to be used in Chinese medicines. Joshua, a Yosemite Ranger, is assigned the task of finding the gangs behind the killings after his best friend, another Ranger, is murdered by one of the bear killing gangs. The trail leads from the backwoods of Yosemite to the streets of San Francisco’s Chinatown, where he’s faced with beatings, murders, kidnappings, and gang warfare. Fortunately, Joshua was born with superior athletic attributes and his well kept secret of being a world champion Oriental Martial Arts expert is put to the test. When his wife is captured and tortured, he must use trickery, misdirection and imagination, as...

 This is what happens when a guy tries to repair some pants with a sewing machine. Havoc! In my defense I wasn't trying to be neat, nor tidy, not even pretty. I just wanted to keep my bits from dropping through the bottom of my pants. You see, the entire crotch was torn out of these poor cargo pants. It started off with one small tear, as these things usually do. But then it got bigger.  And then a tear started on the other side of the seam and that tear kept getting bigger. Soon they started looking like chaps---they covered my legs but little else. So this was my solution. I cut some cloth out of an old t-shirt and sewed it over the torn material of the pants. The pants' material was so thin it couldn't handle the repair on its own. Admittedly it'd have been a lot better had I used brown thread for the repair but I don't use my sewing machine very often and it's a miracle I did this without sewing my fingers to the pants.  Here's a smal...