LUCKILY, IT DOESN'T HAPPEN EVERY NIGHT

 MOST OF TODAY'S PICS ARE FROM AN AFTERNOON WALK

My turn to drive this morning so I picked up my good buddy Richard and we headed straightaway to Clinton's Tim Hortons for two coffees and two carrot muffins to go.  Our country road travels on this fine sunny summer's morn took us southeast of Clinton nearly as far south as Exeter before heading west nearly as far as the shores of Lake Huron.  From there it was north up through Bayfield and home.  A fine way to spend a couple of enjoyable hours.

With the oppressive humidity in the air, I didn't venture out into the yard but Pheebs and I did later take a leisurely stroll into the pine forest beyond the pond.  Had the sun been out we would have not taken that walk. 

AN OLD BROKEN DOWN METAL GATE SEEN ALONG THE WAY THIS MORNING

I wonder how many people fall asleep at night with their computers sitting on top of them??  Not many I should think, but I am one of those who does.  Not every night of course but once or twice a week is not uncommon.  Not a heavy desktop computer mind you, but a lighter laptop.  As readers know, I have been sleeping in my recliner now for nearly a decade.  Because of some kind of medical condition I've never really understood, I can't sleep on my side in a bed.  Nor can I lay flat on my back on a bed.  My living room recliner is the only place I can comfortably sleep.  Kelly and I generally watch Canadian news from 10 to 10:30 p.m. whereupon Kelly heads for bed and I switch the channel to 'ambient music' and fire up my laptop computer.....on my lap.  It is at this time I generally start putting my blog together for the next day.  It is at this time I choose a song for 'Al's Music Box' and gather together the Wikipedia info for that particular song.  I then work on 'Groaner's Corner' deciding what cartoons I will put in the blog.  This all takes time and some of the Wikipedia stuff I have to sift through and retype.  Sometimes closer to midnight, I simply fall asleep 'at the switch' so to speak, only to be woken up later with my fingers still on the keyboard or a piece of music playing over and over.  Or maybe I will wake up to a half-finished sentence in a paragraph with no idea what I was writing about. etc.  In this sleepy haze, I simply close the laptop's cover and sleepily slide it off my lap onto a side table and try to figure out in the morning what it was I was writing about.  Seconds later I am totally asleep again.  Luckily, this doesn't happen every night......

 ONE OF OUR PARK POND'S MANY FROGS

 IT WAS A 'ONE TURTLE' WALK THIS AFTERNOON

 ONE OF OUR VERY OWN FRONT YARD FROGS

Al's Music Box:)) Runaway is a number-one Billboard Hot 100 song made famous by Del Shannon in 1961. It was written by Shannon and keyboardist Max Crook, and became a major international hit.  It was No. 472 on the 2010 version of Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Songs of all Time.  Singer-guitarist Charles Westover and keyboard player Max Crook performed together as members of "Charlie Johnson and the Big Little Show Band" in Battle Creek, Michigan, before their group won a recording contract in 1960. Westover took the new stage name "Del Shannon", and Crook, who had invented his own clavioline-based electric keyboard called a Musitron, became "Maximilian".  After their first recording session for Big Top Records in New York City had ended in failure, their manager Ollie McLaughlin persuaded them to rewrite and re-record an earlier song they had written, "Little Runaway", to highlight Crook's unusual instrumental sound. On January 21, 1961, they recorded "Runaway" with Harry Balk as producer, Fred Weinberg as audio engineer, and also session musicians on several sections: session musician Al Caiola on guitar, Moe Wechsler on piano, and Crook playing the central Musitron break. Other musicians on the record included Al Casamenti and Bucky Pizzarelli on guitar, Milt Hinton on bass, and Joe arshall on drums. Bill Ramall, who was the arranger for the session, also played baritone sax.  "Runaway" was released in February 1961 and was immediately successful. On April 10 of that year, Shannon appeared on Dick Clark's American Bandstand, helping to catapult it to the number one spot on the Billboard Hot 100, where it remained for four weeks. 

GROANER'S CORNER:(( A man answers the phone and has the following conversation: "Yes, mother, I've had a hard day. Gladys has been most difficult...I know I ought to be more firm, but it is hard. Well, you know how she is..." "Yes, I remember you warned me. I remember you told me that she was a vile creature who would make my life miserable and you begged me not to marry her. You were perfectly right..."  "You want to speak with her? All right."  He looks up from the telephone and calls to his wife in the next room: "Gladys, your mother wants to talk to you!"

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- My superpower is holding onto junk for years and throwing it away a week before I need it.

- Not to brag or anything, but I can forget what I'm doing while I'm doing it.

- Artificial Intelligence can't replace you if your not intelligent.

- As long as everything is exactly the way I want it, I'm totally flexible.

- Nine out of ten times when I lose something it is because I had put it in a safe place.

- I found a book called 'How To Solve 50% of your problems so I bought two of them.

- Sixty may be the new forty but the one hundred dollar bill is now the new twenty. 

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I was on vacation in Texas, and was appalled by Dallas' chaotic traffic.  I asked the bellhop at the hotel why it was so disorderly.  "In some countries, they drive on the right, in others on the left. Here, we drive in the shade."

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