As always, the folks at the post office always see me coming. There were Star Trek stamps this week and when I got a little too excited about it, the clerk said “oh wait, we just got a new stamp today that you’ll like.” Eclipse stamps! How could I resist?
What would YOU like on a postage stamp?
I don’t like shrimp. They are bottom feeders. Harvesting them in the wild is destructive for the ocean floor. I don’t like their taste or texture.
Now I find that 150,000,000 shrimp will be raised annually in my home town in southwest Minnesota, in an ecofriendly “shrimp harbor”. They will fatten on local corn and soybeans in a covered, 9 acre factory that will use less water than the old meat packing plant did in its heyday. The harbor won’t smell. It won’t pollute. The shrimp will be free of disease and antibiotics. I hope all the promises made by the company are true. I wonder if we can call such shrimp “sea food” or if we will need to find a different descriptive phrase for it.
I am amazed at the technology behind this, and glad for the positive economic impact it will bring to the town. I still won’t eat shrimp, though. I can’t get past the texture.
How do you like your sea food?
Today’s post is from Barbara in Rivertown
I found out early this morning that I have Lyme’s Disease. It is a relief that there is a reason for the red blotches, headaches, fevers, and lethargy I have been experiencing for the past few weeks. I will start a series of antibiotics this evening with dinner.
You’ve probably heard plenty about Lyme borreliosis and the ticks that carry it, often the tiny deer ticks. But just in case you don’t know much detail of what to look for, here are 11 of the common symptoms, according to a site called Daily Health Lifestyles:
Wikipedia has this to add:
“Lyme disease is transmitted to humans by the bite of infected ticks of the Ixodes genus.[6] Usually, the tick must be attached for 36 to 48 hours before the bacteria can spread.[7] … The disease does not appear to be transmissible between people, by other animals, or through food.[7] Diagnosis is based upon a combination of symptoms, history of tick exposure, and possibly testing for specific antibodies in the blood.[3][9] Blood tests are often negative in the early stages of the disease.[2] Testing of individual ticks is not typically useful.[10] ”
I am glad there is an antibiotic to help me deal with this disease.
Do you have a tick/insect story to tell?
Today’s post comes from tim
my daughter had a graduation party this weekend when she described what she wanted it sounded strange as it turns out it was very nice she wanted to have a waffle bar and a barista serving espresso oh what about scones and muffins no she said maybe donut holes and how about some French roast coffee and the amaretto hazelnut flavoring maybe if you said but I think chai tea is a better choice the barista asked me to show him how the espresso machine worked and that was that…he was busy non stop and chai tea was a hit along with espresso cappuccino and latte grandpa from Chicago handled the waffle bar and took great pride in knowing exactly how much of the batter should go into each waffle maker strawberries raspberries blueberries chocolate chip jams marmalades and whipped cream rounded out the entire offering there was a little table with a wooden decorated imitation steamer trunk to put cards to the graduate in and a memory book to jot down heartfelt messages to last through the ages there was an area to take pictures in front of a back ground sheet holding up a Mardi Gras mask or a 2017 identifier on a stick The rain held off until 245 for a party that was supposed to end at three and everyone who was remaining scurried to their cars and left in short order in by 305 we were picking up the yard The table folded down nicely the table cloths got washed or throwing out depending on the weather they were cloth or paper the table got moved to locations that made sense when there weren’t clusters of people spaced sporadically about the yard and everything was wonderful except…
by the guest login book and the waffle buffet my wife had purchased gala table centerpieces with stars and iridescent streamers and must have also received Little pieces of confetti in the shape of a graduate hat these little pieces of confetti were the size of the stars they used to get on your homework paper back in the old days they were very similar if not identical to the stars used to get on your homework paper back in the old days it occurred to me that those confetti stars are made in such a way that they will sit in the landfill without degradation for a lifetime they are put on the table as kind of a cutesy afterthought and thrown away without a concern or a thought about how they came to be placed in the landfill and how long they would remain I walked by the garbage can in front of my garage door and saw one of those little graduation hats sitting on the concrete and knew that if I left it there it would be there two years from now when I am celebrating my last daughters graduation party I feel bad when I take a perfect moment and find a little detail to bitch about but it seems to me that that’s what’s wrong with the world is that nobody thinks about the little details of making a meaningless piece of confetti out of everlasting material instead of biodegradable material
The oil companies Third World countries and developing nations all find a reason to worry about it later I hope my daughter and the people who are graduating today learn from the mindless guidelines that have been left by our generation for them to tweak
how do you keep from letting a little disturbances screw up your day
Jacque, VS, LJB, submitted garden photos. I added some, as well. All I can say is that I have garden envy. There is a lot to be said for warmth and rain.
From Jacque, we have:
Here are VS’s bales:
While LJB sends these beauties:
Black Currents
Clematis
Borage
Hydrangea
The herb garden
Twin Two’s Marigolds
It has been cold and dry here In ND, and the garden is behind. Some things are coming along, though. The roses in the feature photo at the top are some Morden roses in our front yard. It has been a good year for roses.
The peas
Red Currents
Tomatoes
Iris (Beverly Sills)
The beans and their extraterrestrial poles
How is your summer shaping up?
This post is from littlejailbird.
As many of you know, I have twin grandsons (I also have two other grandchildren but they live several hours away so I don’t see them as often). I will refer to these 3-year-old boys as Twin One and Twin Two in order to protect their privacy.
These glasses you see in the photo are powerful glasses. While they may not have lenses, they can still enhance a certain little boy’s vision.
Twin One uses these glasses when he watches TV (things like Daniel Tiger) because, as he says, “They help me see better.” And the other day, he said, as he headed upstairs after dark,“These glasses help me see in the dark!”
Twin Two sometimes wears these glasses but he does not seem to gain the same benefits from them as Twin One.
Do you have any funny or interesting stories about people using their imagination?
My father brought all his remaining tools with him when he moved in with us the last five months of his life. He gave lots away before he left Luverne, and took pride in how he arranged and organized his tools in his new home in North Dakota.
Since his death, we haven’t kept the tool bench as neat as Dad would want it. To be honest, it has been a disgrace for a couple of years, and Husband decided that today was the day to straighten it up. The feature photo is a before picture. Dad didn’t care that he had duplicates of many of his tools, and we just keep them the way he displayed them.
As you can see from the photo, we will never need to purchase a socket set for the rest of our lives.
The coffee containers are full of drill bits, screws, nails, wall anchors, sand paper, garden staples, utility knives, nuts, bolts, washers, holders to use on the peg board, and just about anything anyone could need at a tool bench.
I am glad Husband took the initiative to get this done. I hope we can keep it this way for a while.
It is the weekend. What would your parents want you to accomplish before Monday?
I’ve yakked about strawberry picking before, so I’ll save the word and just show this year’s pictures.
What’s a perfect Saturday morning for you?
I took the photo for this post from my office window earlier this week. Our building looks out on the college football practice field where a high school football camp was in session. It is always rather entertaining to see them run around, skip, hop, and tackle while the instructors scoot around on golf carts. I can hear the grunts and sounds of tackle impacts all the way up to my fourth floor window. There must have been a hundred players. Their buses fill the college parking lot. Many come from little towns from Montana or the eastern part of North Dakota, and get to stay in the college dorms for the duration of the camp. We can hear them clatter past our building in their cleats on their way to the practice field.
You can always tell who the local campers are, since they drive their own vehicles, park along the drive up to my building, and then strip down to their skivvies while they change into their football uniforms. We drive past them on our way to our parking lot. Some have the decency to go behind the large spruce trees that line the drive, but most just stand there in their shorts while they change.
I never went to a sports camp in high school, but trips for speech and music were both fun and stressful at the same time. I hope the boys at the camp had the same sort of experiences. I have worked at my agency for 18 years, and I have seen the local campers in their underwear every year. They sort of signify the arrival of summer, just like the return of the swallows to Capistrano. I think, though, that I would find the birds more interesting.
What are some of your high school camp and activity memories?
We’ve been completely on our own for almost six months now – our followers are up and we’re managing to keep daily posts going. Dale had a few unwritten rules for the trail and I thought it wouldn’t hurt if we spelled them out.
It is a baboon congress, so it’s not a very long list.
#1. Be kind.
#2. Don’t worry if you reply in the wrong place
#3. Avoid publishing any email addresses, phone numbers or addresses. (We do have more than 5,000 followers, so this is a just in case)
#4. Pass on the right
#5. Don’t worry if you are Off Topic!
#6. Try to find photos that are licensed for re-use.
#7. Be kind.
Do we need any other tips for the trail?
Trail Baboon 