Really???

I just read this morning that the most shop-lifted book in America is the King James Bible

Folding the Box

Remember taking IQ tests with questions where you had a picture of an unfolded box and had to predict what it would look like when put together?

As brilliant as my darling wife is, she absolutely can not visualize what a two dimensional figure will look like in three dimensions.  Considering that, she is remarkably adept at jig-saw puzzles.  I mention that because without her help and guidance, I would never have been able to complete the walkway we put in last week.

The stones are designed to interlock, and it would seem to be pretty simple.  Trust me, it isn't.  The first couple are easy, but it gets more difficult as you go.  You would think that once you got a pattern established it would get easier, but for me, it did not.  Honey could see where to place the next stone, while I was forced to a trial and error approach.

(By the way, the correct answer on the puzzle is A.)

Once in a While

It is amazing how easily once daily becomes once in a while.  
I haven't posted anything since Friday, and almost skipped today.
It wasn't because I didn't have anything to say - I can always find something to post, even if it isn't original.
For example, here's a post with something extra - 

Does A Bear -----

Tinker's Bonnet

First of all, that isn't Tinker, and the spider in the picture is fake.  But - it looks a lot like our intrepid hunter when she came in the house last night!
I told you a week ago about her stealing spiders from wasps.  Well, she also  hunts them herself, and yesterday evening she caught one - sorta - dug it out from the crease between two slabs of our new grass.
I thought she had eaten it already, but she did not want to come in the house when I called her, and she kept searching the spot where she had caught it.  You could tell that she didn't want to, but she finally came in after I called her about a dozen times.
When she came in the door, I looked down to see the elusive spider perched on the top of her head like a kind of arachnid beret!  
The legs stretched from ear to ear, and it wasn't going anywhere.
I reached down and brushed it off, and the race was on.  Tinker chased it all around the utility room, but she finally caught it again and this time she ate it before it could get away.

Tony Jackson

For my money, Tony Jackson may be the best black country singer since Charley Pride.  Never mind Darius Rucker, I'm talking pure old-fashioned country.
His first album featured a lot of covers of classic country hits, but also a couple of songs that he wrote himself, like this one - 

Boycott

Lots of threats on social media about National Anthem protests and boycotting the NFL.  
Not sure how well that would work here - this weekend's Texans pre-season game featured ads to get on the waiting list for 2019 season tickets.

When and How Did Monsanto Become a Dirty Word

When I was finishing high school, Monsanto built a new chemical plant just downstream from our home on Chocolate Bayou.  I briefly considered going to work there, and have former classmates who have now retired from there.  It was considered a good place to work.

Over the last decade or so, there has been a concerted effort to destroy Monsanto.  

It probably began with Viet Nam vets who suffered the effects of Agent Orange, a defoliant developed by Monsanto, but it has ranged far and wide from there.

There is a highly organized, well funded campaign against Genetically Modified Organisms even though there is no evidence that GMOs have ever hurt anybody, and lots of evidence to the contrary.  The main culprit, and main target of the no GMO crowd is - you guessed it - Monsanto.  They are guilty of developing seeds that - among other things - allow crops to grow where they never could before, so they obviously deserve to burn in Hell.

The German chemical/pharmaceutical giant Bayer recently bought Monsanto (and plans to phase out the Monsanto name) and they got hit by the latest attack.  Bayer stock dropped 10% after a jury in (where else?) California awarded a former groundskeeper $289 million after he claimed to have developed cancer from repeated exposure to Round-Up. This in spite of the fact that the EPA has consistently found no link between the product and cancer.  

Now Quaker  is being sued for $5 million because traces of Round-Up were found in their oat meal.

Stain

Here is an "after" pic of the porch, walkways and pergola with the stain applied, compared to what it looked like before.

They missed one spot - about a foot and a half long - on a porch rafter.  It's the first thing you see when you walk out the door.

Stain

The contractors are due back this afternoon to stain the pine portions of our porch, walkways and pergola.  Anxious to see how it will come out.

Grass

If you follow my posts, you know that we recently laid three pallets of St. Augustine in the back yard.  I just cut the new grass for the first time the other day, and now we're thinking about fertilizing. 
Looking for advice, I went to the website of Randy Lemmon who does the gardening show on the weekends on KTRH.  I didn't find exactly what I was looking for - but I did find this:
http://www.randylemmon.com/misc/gardenline-god.html.

Stumped Toe

For as long as I can remember, I've heard the term "I stumped my toe."  I'm not sure if it's a regional dialect sort of thing, or just something someone in my family said and it stuck.  Either way, it obviously meant "I stubbed my toe." and it feels just as bad.

Simply as an experiment, try slamming your toe against something solid in the middle of the night.  I'll bet any amount of money that what you call it at the time won't sound like either one.

Math

Birthday Wishes

Received a huge variety of birthday wishes yesterday:

• Several via email
• A text on my phone
• One very important phone call from an actual person
• Sixty-plus wishes on my Facebook timeline
• A couple of cards from companies I've done business with in the past
• And one Honest to God Birthday Card in an Envelope with a Stamp and mailed to me from our next-door neighbors, the Winklers.

They tell me they found the card at Tractor Supply - - -

 

When you open the card, the answer is....

Depends!

Seventy-Six

Another birthday has rolled around.  
It's hard to believe that I'm 76 years old - I never expected to live this long.  If you'd asked me at 20, or even at 35, I would have said that it would never happen, but here I am still going strong.
Logically, I must be nearing the end of my life expectancy - even if I live to be 100, I'm now over 3/4 the way there - but I don't feel any older than I did at 65, and I'm not planning on checking out any time soon.

Who Needs Prime?

I mentioned yesterday that I was having a Devil of a time finding the sort of lawn sprinkler Honey wanted.  
Yesterday evening, I ordered one, and one other item, on Amazon, and was given the option of free 2-day shipping with Amazon Prime.  The other options were 5-day shipping for $9.95, or 5 to 9 day shipping at no charge.  I don't order from Amazon often enough to justify the Prime subscription, and 10 dollars in shipping charges on less than $40 worth of stuff didn't make sense, so I specified the 5 to 9 day option.
Today, I got emails from Amazon confirming that both items shipped and should arrive Tomorrow!

The Great Sprinkler Shortage

We have a couple of lawn sprinklers like this one - 

For my money, they do a perfectly adequate job, but Honey prefers the oscillating type like - 

She says they provide more even distribution of water over the coverage area, and she might be right.  We've had several in the past, and they do a fine job while they work.  They just don't seem to last much more than one year.

Since we just got some new sod, and keeping it moist is mandatory, I decided to pick up an oscillating sprinkler at my next trip to Wal-Mart.  

I was amazed to learn that the new Super Wal-Mart in New Caney was out - I mean totally out - of lawn sprinklers of any type or description.  They had a whole aisle of water hoses and hand-held nozzles, but no sprinklers at all.  The department manager said he had more on order, but didn't know when they would come in.

Well, that was confusing, but they ain't the only store in town.  They might as well have been, though.  I soon learned that the Wal-Mart in Porter, the Home Depot and Tractor Supply were all sold out too.

I'm beginning to suspect some sort of evil water sprinkler conspiracy.  Maybe the Chinese are withholding sprinklers as a trade war tactic.  

Spider vs Wasp vs Tinker

Here at the Boggy Thicket, we have a species of wasp whose sole purpose in life is to attack large spiders.  They don't kill them - in a fate worse than death, they paralyze the spider and seal it into their nest to provide food for their eggs when they hatch.

Okay, I may be easily amused, but I have watched these wasps for as long as 20 minutes as they dragged a much larger spider across the yard and up the side of the house to its doom.  It is truly amazing.

About the only one who isn't impressed is Tinker, our miniature dachshund.  

If she sees a wasp dragging a spider, she will pounce on it.  The wasp always flies up a foot or two, and before it can return, Tinker will eat the spider! 

Next comes a funny/sad time when the confused wasp searches for the spider it had dragged halfway across the yard.  It almost seems to be saying "I know it is here somewhere."

An Armed Society

In chapter 15 of Beyond this Horizon, Robert A. Heinlein wrote -
"An armed society is a polite society." 
He may have been quoting someone else - I thought so, but it's the earliest attribution I can find.
A slightly expanded quote reads -
"Well, in the first place an armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life. For me, politeness is a sine qua non of civilization."
This leads me to a sign a friend saw and photographed at the entrance to a Central Texas barbeque restaurant - 

Grass

The grass got installed just as the rain hit yesterday, so it got well watered.  Honey has decided that we need one more pallet, but it will have to wait until next week.