Today is the day everyone is supposed to turn off all their lights for an hour . Some kind of feel-good symbolic act to counteract Global Warming - made me wish I still had my Christmas lights up.
I finally succumbed to the hype and got a head start! I left all my lights off for over an hour, from 2:00 a.m. to 5:30 this morning.
A supposedly true story:
A Kansas farm wife called the local phone company to report her telephone
failed to ring when her friends called. And that on the few occasions when
it did ring, her dog always moaned right before the phone rang.
The telephone repairman proceeded to the scene, curious to see this psychic
dog or senile lady. He climbed a telephone pole, hooked in his test set,
and dialed the subscriber's house.
The phone didn't ring right away, but then the dog moaned and the telephone
began to ring.
Climbing down from the pole, the telephone repairman found:
1 . The dog was tied to the telephone system's ground wire with a steel
chain and collar.
2. The wire connection to the ground rod was loose.
3. The dog was receiving 90 volts of signaling current when the number was
called.
4. After a couple of jolts, the dog would start moaning and then urinate.
5. The wet ground would complete the circuit, thus causing the phone to
ring.
The moral of this story is that some problems CAN be fixed by pissing and moaning.
Two significant space-related events occurred yesterday. First, Virgin Galactic’s VSS Enterprise made its first “captive carry” flight. It was considered a huge success.
Not quite so impressive – Buzz Aldrin danced
(poorly) on the premiere of this season’s Dancing With the Stars.
Joined Facebook a couple months ago, mostly to have a handy way to keep up with some family events. Over all, it has been a positive experience – but there are some things I find disturbing:
The grandsons are in town on spring break. We picked them up yesterday and headed for the San Jacinto Battleground State Historical Site where we toured the Monument and the Battleship Texas.
The Battleship Texas from the top of the San Jacinto Monument.
Headed for the Battleship.
Manning the gun.
Stopped on the way home at the Monument Inn for some great seafood.
It occurred to me that I’ve taken a lot of photographs of birds over the past two years, and I thought I would share some of them with you today.
The first is one of a pair of owls that nest on our property. It was early morning when I shot this and he was in a white-oak tree outside our kitchen window.
Not all the birds I photographed were real. This is a chainsaw sculpture from Highway 90 in Biloxi.
I did photograph some live pelicans in Key West.
And some seagulls near St. Petersburg.
There were peacocks at the Fountain of Youth Park
in St Augustine.
And speaking of white birds, there was the albino buzzard at a State Park in Alabama.
Other “park birds” included the Ospreys in Yellowstone
and the Raven at Bryce Canyon
I also photographed hummingbirds in a campground in Chama, New Mexico
And a mother hawk on her nest in my own back yard
My next-door neighbor kid, Wilson Graff, caught himself a calf at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo last night.
Cheryl bought Honey this orchid for Mother’s Day about fifteen years ago, and it has become the gift that keeps on giving. There are actually two plants in the pot, and one or the other has bloomed every year since she got it. There are a total of six blooms on the stem, and the ones that weren’t open in this photo are open this morning.
