AND 'BANG-ZOOM' PHEEBS AND I WERE OUT THE DOOR

 GOLDFINCHES ARE TRANSITIONING FROM THEIR BROWN WINTER COLORS TO THEIR GOLDEN SUMMER COLORS

With a heavy overcast, it was a very dull-looking day and I knew I would have difficulty finding any photos.  But, Pheebs and I in the Jeep headed off to the south end of our Park anyway.  At least we could get a quiet walk in and the exercise was important for both our legs.  Four for Pheebs and two for me.

 THE FIBER OPTICS GUYS ARE AT IT EVERY DAY NOW

 HERE'S A COUPLE PARK  RESIDENTS OUT EARLY AWAITING APRIL'S SHOWERS

My motivational meter seems to have gotten stuck on a lowly two for the earlier part of the day and I couldn't seem to bump or drag it up any higher.  Cold cloudy days have a habit of doing that to me and today was a good example of that.  Well, until skies brightened about mid-afternoon that is and 'bang-zoom' Pheebs and I were out the door.  With my cane and point-and-shoot Sony camera in hand, we headed over to the Park's pond.  We didn't go around the pond, just to the east end of it and back home again.  Maybe tomorrow or Friday I'll see if I can at least make it half the way around.

PHEEBS WALKED A LITTLE FARTHER THAN I DID TODAY

ALTHOUGH HARD OF HEARING NOW SHE ALWAYS COMES WHEN I WAVE MY ARM

I noticed late this afternoon when the Sun finally broke through that our front yard was alive with birds.  I counted 6 Grackles, probably a dozen Goldfinches, Woodpeckers, Juncos, Mourning Doves, a few Nuthatches and Chickadees.  And how nice to hear the excited tweetering and twittering in the overhead pine trees of Cardinals, Blue Jays, and Crows.  Well, I guess Crows don't actually tweet or twitter, but they do make big Crows sounds.  'Cawww-Cawww'

ONE OF A HALF DOZEN GRACKLES IN OUR YARD THIS AFTERNOON

It is with difficulty that Kelly is still holding her own against the advancing liver disease which continues to impede her daily life.  It's not easy for her with each day being a challenge trying to decide which maze and combination of pills to take in an effort to slow down the relentless itching.  A good night's sleep is rare and 'feeling good' days are few and far between.  Her next medical appointment at London's University Hospital will be on March 20th.

 NO,  I DON'T HAVE THE UTILITY TRAILER HOOKED UP TO THE JEEP BUT MAYBE IN A FEW WEEKS

Al's Music Box:)) The Boys Of Summer is a song by the American musician Don Henley. The lyrics were written by Henley and the music was composed by Mike Campbell of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.  It was released on October 26, 1984, as the lead single from Henley's album Building the Perfect Beast.  In an interview with New Musical Express in 1985, Henley explained the "Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac" lyric as an example of his generation selling out,  I was driving down the San Diego Freeway and got passed by a $21,000 Cadillac Seville, the status symbol of the right-wing upper-middle-class American bourgeoisie – all the guys with the blue blazers with the crests and the grey pants – and there was this Grateful Dead "Deadhead" bumper sticker on it!  In 1986, Henley won the Grammy Award for Best Male Vocal Performance for the song.  

GROANER'S CORNER:(( A retired sailor purchased a computer and began to learn all about computing. Being a sailor, he was used to addressing his ships as "She" or "Her". But was unsure what was proper for computers.  To solve his dilemma, he set up two groups of computer experts: one group was male, and the other group was female.

The group of women reported that computers should be referred to as "HE" because:
1. In order to get their attention you have to turn them on. 2. They have a lot of data but are still clueless. 3. They are supposed to help you solve problems but half the time they are the problem. 4. As soon as you commit to one, you realise that if you had waited a little longer, you could have had a newer and better model.

The group of men reported that computers should be referred to as "SHE" because:
1. No one but the creator understands their logic. 2. The native language they use to talk to other computers is incomprehensible to anyone else. 3. Even your smallest mistakes are stored in long term memory for later retrieval. 4. As soon as you make a commitment to one, you find yourself spending half your paycheck on accessories for it.

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- What's worse than biting an apple and then discovering a worm?  Biting the apple, then discovering half a worm.

- Welcome back to Plastic Surgery Anonymous.  It's nice to see new faces here today!

- I was shocked when I found out my toaster was not waterproof.

- If you think I am joking about Alzheimer's,
forget it.

- You're not useless.  You can always be used as a bad example.

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LOST IN THE CONFUSION SHE WOULD HAVE TO REPORT ME MISSING

 MY PRETTY CHEUFFER TAKES ME TO PHYSIO THERAPY THIS AFTERNOON

A few posts ago I mentioned something about moving our clocks ahead in less than two weeks.  While technically correct, I hadn't realized I should have said, in less than a week.  Yes, it's this coming Saturday night that we do that already.  I sure have a knack for getting myself behind the times at times.  Anywho, time sure flies, and what another great harbinger of Spring eh:))   Our sunrise didn't last long but hey, at least we had one, and how nice to wake up to 55F temps:))  The glass was indeed half full. (a reference to positive and negative)  With a chance of rain overnight, I left the Jeep out.  It didn't rain.  No surprise.

 TUCKERSMITH COMMUNICATION ON THE JOB THIS MORNING

Pheebs and I piled into the Jeep again around 9 a.m. and headed down to the south end of our Park whereupon we parked and got ourselves out for a morning walkabout.  We are very fortunate here in our Park to have this uninhabited area with both pine and hardwood forests complete with several streams meandering through both of them.  The 100-acre property is bordered by the Bayfield River running along its southern edge.

PARKED AT OUR PARK'S RECYCLE AREA

 PAWS AND BOOTS ON THE GROUND 

HEADING TOWARDS THE HARDWOOD FOREST

 YEARS AGO WHILE WALKING OUR 3 DOGS PAST THIS CREEK, 'CHECKERS' OUR BORDER COLLIE WOULD ALWAYS WHOOSH DOWN THIS SHORT BANK AND PLOP HERSELF RIGHT INTO THE SHALLOW CREEK THERE....SHE WAS OUR WATER DOG

 ALTHOUGH PHEEBS WAS READY TO HEAD UP THE TRAIL I DECIDED TO TURN AROUND HERE...DIDN'T WANT TO OVERDO MY LEG

 I THINK THIS POOR OLD PINE TREE MUST HAVE TANGLED WITH A BIG BAD GRIZZLY BEAR AND CAME OUT SECOND BEST....(NO, WE DO NOT HAVE GRIZZLY BEARS HERE)

 WITH OUR PARK LOCATED SO CLOSE TO THE SHORES OF LAKE HURON WE DO HAVE AN ABUNDAMCE OF SANDY SOIL

My second Physio Therapy appointment in Exeter at Russett Rehabilitation was at 2 p.m. today.  Kelly of course drove me there and things again went really well.  I have 3 more appointments left which will take me into early April.  For that last appointment, I sure hope they don't make me go out and run around the parking lot 5 times.  By the way, I am totally off the Percocet pain pills now and have switched to Tylenol 3 if and when needed.  We were home again by 3:30 this afternoon with only a few sprinkles of rain.  It looks like we might have a few patches of Sun on Wednesday and more Sun the following day:))

 A RATHER DRAB LOOKING DAY ON OUR WAY TO EXETER

 I WAS IN NEED OF SOME COLOR

A reader's comment in Monday's post asked, 'wondering about the change in street names. What effect does it have on your mail, banking, etc. Did you have to change everything?'  The short answer to this question is, 'Yes we have to change Everything'.  Of course, all this is an absolute PITA.  Drivers License, Health Cards, Insurance, Banking, our house number, etc. etc. and more, etc's.  Add to that the confusion over our mailing address too.  Old mail boxes out, new ones in, new keys-wrong keys, new mail boxes out and back in again, more key confusion and I don't even know where we are now.  Kelly knows enough not to send me to pick up the mail anymore because she knows it would be easy for me to get lost in the confusion and she would have to report me missing.  Although this is all for the better in the long run, we do have a lot of confused Seniors in the Park right now including us!!  Not knowing what's up from down in the ensuing confusment I've even seen some folks out at the end of their driveways standing on their heads. Well okay, maybe not quite that, but almost and it wouldn't surprise me if I did see a few folks on their heads.  I'll try and get a picture of that if I do:))  

 RETURNING TO OUR PARK THIS AFTERNOON THE FIBER OPTIC GUYS WERE STILL HARD AT IT

Al's Music Box:)) Green Onions is an instrumental composition recorded in 1962 by Booker T. & the M.G,s. Described as "one of the most popular instrumental rock and soul songs ever" and as one of "the most popular R&B instrumentals of its era", the tune is a twelve-bar blues with a rippling Hammond M3 organ line by Booker T. Jones that he wrote when he was 17, although the actual recording was largely improvised in the studio.  Booker T. Jones  was the keyboard player for the house band of Stax Records with Al Jackson on drums, Lewie Steinberg on bass, and Steve Cropper on guitar. They started jamming in the studio one Sunday when a recording session with another singer, Billy Lee Riley, failed to take place. They played around with a piano groove that Jones had performed in clubs before, although Jones decided to use a Hammond organ because he thought it sounded better on the tune. The owner of Stax, Jim Stewart, became interested in recording the resulting tune, "Behave Yourself". However, the band needed a B-side for this song. Using a riff with a 12-bar blues bassline that Jones had, the band came up with a song that became "Green Onions". The guitarist Steve Cropper used a Fender Telecaster on "Green Onions", as he did on all of the M.G.'s instrumentals.  After recording, Cropper contacted Scotty Moore at Sun Records to cut a record. He then took the record to a DJ on the Memphis station WLOK, who played "Green Onions" on air. Due to the positive reaction of the public to the song, it was quickly re-released as an A-side.  According to Booker T. Jones, the composition was originally to be called "Funky Onions", but the sister of Jim Stewart thought it "sounded like a cuss word"; it was therefore renamed "Green Onions".   According to Cropper, the title is not a marijuana reference; rather, the track is named after the Green Badger's cat, Green Onions, whose way of walking inspired the riff.  On a broadcast of the radio program Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me! on June 24, 2013, Jones was asked about the title and said, "The bass player thought it was so funky, he wanted to call it 'Funky Onions', but they thought that was too low-class, so we used 'Green Onions' instead."

 I LIKE WALKING SPOTS LIKE THIS....NO PEOPLE, NO BUILDINGS, AND NO TRAFFIC NOISE....JUST US GUYS AND THE BIRDS

GROANER'S CORNER:((  Cal was out driving in the country, seeing how his new car handled the curvy roads at high speeds. As he rounded a corner, one of his tires blew.  When he pulled over and got out of the car to change the tire, he noticed that he had stopped in front of the state mental asylum. There was also a man sitting on the brick wall in front of the facility.  The driver went about his business, not paying any attention to the guy on the fence. He first took his tire iron and jack out of the car, and got the car jacked up. Then, he removed the hubcap. Next, he removed the six lug nuts and placed them in the hubcap for safekeeping.  About this time, the guy on the fence decided to start a conversation. This startled the driver, and he reeled around quickly, knocking over the hubcap, and the lug nuts fell into the sewer drain.  The driver gets angry with the guy on the fence, shouting, "Now look what you made me do. Now I'm going to have to walk to town to buy some new lug nuts. Just go back inside and leave me be."  The guy on the fence says, "Why don't you just take one lug nut from each of your other three wheels, and use them on this one. That should hold it steady enough for you to drive the car to the auto parts store."  The driver asks, "That's a brilliant idea...why are you here in this asylum?"  The guy on the fence replies, "I'm just crazy, not stupid."

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The Vatican has unveiled an email address for the new Pope.  In related news, the Pope has received a confidential financial offer from the President of Nigeria.

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A 2006 study found that the average American walks about 900 miles a year.
Another recent study found that Americans drink an average of 22 gallons of beer a year.  That means, on average, Americans get about 41 miles per gallon.  Not Bad.

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ONE OF US IS GOING TO HAVE TO GO OUT THERE IN OUR JAMMIES

 SAW THIS LITTLE SONGBIRD IN OUR PARK THIS MORNING

Although off to a cloudy start, our day quickly turned itself around and turned out to be the best Spring-like day of the year so far with temps hitting 65F and our thermometer in the shade outside our sunroom hit 70F.  'Wowzers' and double 'Wowzers' I say.  And yes, temperature records for today were shattered.

 ALWAYS SO GREAT TO SEE BLUE SKIES

Although my right leg was bothering me this morning I didn't let that get in the way of a Jeep ride around our Park's roads for Pheebs and I.  A local company called 'Tuckersmith Communications began installing fiber optic cables into our Park this morning so for sure we had to get around and check on all that.  This fibre optic installation will give residents a choice of whether to switch to the new fiber optic company for TV and Internet or stay with the current cable company called Eastlink.  Anyway, with machines and personnel now moving around on the Park's roads, it will be a welcome form of entertainment for some of we older folks after winter's dullness.  Hearing the machines early this morning we didn't know what was happening so I said to Kelly, "well you know that one of us is going to have to go out there in our jammies to see what's going on eh".  Kelly didn't exactly volunteer to go.  Hey, we're Seniors and that is what we Seniors do.  

 TUCKERSMITH COMMUNICATIONS ON THE JOB IN OUR PARK TODAY

 A HURON COUNTRY ROAD CREW CLEANING UP WINTER'S DEBRIS ALONGSIDE THE ROAD OUTSIDE OUR PARK

 OUT FOR A DRIVE AROUND OUR PARK'S ROADS

 SPRINGLIKE GREENERY AROUND OUR PARK'S POND

 FRONT YARD CRITTERS ARE BEGINNING TO APPEAR

 IT LOOKS LIKE SOME LITTLE CRITTER'S COZY WINTER HOME

 I LIKE IT WHEN YUCCA PLANTS SURVIVE THE COLD WEATHER

With a few errands and things to pick up in Goderich this morning, Kelly headed off about ten o'clock.  Even if I had wanted to stay inside the house today I could not have made myself do it.  I sat out on our front deck with coffee in hand soaking up the morning's warm rays for a bit.  But, only for a bit because there were things to do so with my cane in my left hand and the leaf blower in my right hand I blew off our front porch and deck,  Not stopping there, I next blew all the birdseed husks away from the bottom of the birdfeeders.  Also blew more accumulated yard waste off our driveway.  Relocated a couple of outside birdseed garbage cans as well.  Got a load of laundry done along the way as well.  It just felt so great to be outside feeling the warmth in the air and having my hair tousled by an early Spring breeze.  I whispered many quiet thank-yous as I puttered about.  And of course, Pheebs was right by my side all along keeping a close eye on what the heck Dad was doing and why he was walking around looking all funny and stuff.  I took my little Sony RX90 point-and-shoot for a walk around the yard to find a few pics.

 A BIRDSEYE VIEW OF IT'S FINAL APPROACH BEFORE LANDING ON THE BIRD STATION

 OUR FRONT YARD ALWAYS LOOKS ITS WORST AT THIS TIME OF YEAR

 I'LL SOON HAVE A BIG FRONT YARD FROG POND CLEAN UP TO DO

 HAPPY TO SEE OUR FRONT YARD AZALEA BUSH LOOKING SO HEALTHY

As readers know, I call my Aunt Jean in Florida every Friday night.  A reader noted that I hadn't mentioned Aunt Jean for a while.  Well, I can tell you she is doing just fine and taking full advantage of Sarasota Florida's early Spring weather.  With her walker, she has been doing a lot of outside walking around the Sunnyside Village where she now lives.  On her walk, she likes to stop occasionally by a pond/lake within the complex to watch a number of older fellas sailing their remote-controlled boats on the pond.  She is also enjoying sitting outside in the sun surrounded by her new home's beautiful landscaping.  She had been promised a brand new room last Fall and that room along with other facility renovations are now underway and she is looking forward to maybe being in her new room in another month or so.  Her health continues to be good.  Oh, and I almost forgot....last week some of her old golfing buddies convinced her to come along and ride around the course with them while they played.  I don't remember which hole it was but all four of her buddies missed their T-shot.  One of them came over to the golf cart and handed Jean her putter with the words, "okay Jean, you do it".  And, she did.  She sank the putt with one stroke.  Yup, that's my 96-year-old Aunt Jean alright already:))))

 I WENT LOOKING FOR CROCUS FLOWERS IN OUR FLOWERBED AND SURE ENOUGH THERE THEY WERE JUST SPROUTING UP THROUGH THE GROUND COVER

Kelly returned from Goderich around 1:30.  She washed the Subaru while there and said people were walking around in short-sleeve shirts and T-shirts.  I'll bet a number of motorcycles were out as well.           

 IT'S QUITE A COLLECTIN OF ROCKS WE HAVE

Ellen's 'Groove:)) A short practice session for Ellen.... 'Doodles'

 DRANK MY MORNING COFFEE HERE

Al's Music Box:)) Sunny Afternoon is a song by the Kinks, written by frontman Ray Davies.  The track later featured on the Face to Face album as well as being the title track for their 1967 compilation album.  "Sunny Afternoon" was written in Ray Davies' house when he was ill. He recalled:  I'd bought a white upright piano.  I hadn't written for a time, I'd been ill. I was living in a very 1960s-decorated house. It had orange walls and green furniture. My one-year-old daughter was crawling on the floor and I wrote the opening riff. I remember it vividly. I was wearing a polo-neck sweater.  "Sunny Afternoon" was made very quickly, in the morning, it was one of our most atmospheric sessions. I still like to keep tapes of the few minutes before the final take, things that happen before the session. Maybe it's superstitious, but I believe if I had done things differently—if I had walked around the studio or gone out—it wouldn't have turned out that way. The bass player went off and started playing funny little classical things on the bass, more like a lead guitar: and Nicky Hopkins, who was playing piano on that session, was playing "Liza"—we always used to play that song—little things like that helped us get into the feeling of the song. At the time I wrote "Sunny Afternoon" I couldn't listen to anything.  I was only playing the greatest hits of Frank Sinatra and Dylan's "Maggie's Farm"—I just liked its whole presence, I was playing the Bringing It All Back Home LP along with my Frank Sinatra and Glenn Miller band and Bach—it was a strange time.  In a 1995 interview, Ray Davies recalled being surprised at the song's broad appeal, stating, "'Sunny Afternoon', I remember the record coming out and I walked into a British Legion or a pub. I thought I was in a British Legion. All these people and old soldiers singing it. I was 23 years old. I said, 'Wow, all these old people really like it.' And this old guy came up and said, 'You young guys... this is the sort of music we can relate to!' I thought, Wow, this is it, it's the end (laughs)."

 NEW STREET NAMES ON TOP AND OLD NAMES ON BOTTOM

GROANER'S CORNER:((  Unable to attend the funeral after his Uncle Charlie died, a man who lived far away called his not too bright brother and told him, 'Do something nice for Uncle Charlie and send me the bill.'  Later, he got a bill for $200.00, which he paid. The next month, he got another bill for $200.00, which he also paid, figuring it was some incidental expense.  But when the $200.00 bills kept arriving every month, he finally called his brother again to find out what was going on.  'Well,' said the brother, 'you said to do something nice for Uncle Charlie.  So I rented him a tuxedo.'

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I can't believe I forgot to go to the gym yesterday.  That's 8 years in a row now.

I hate it when my wife gets mad at me for being lazy.  It’s not like I did anything!

I have a contact lens problem.
I have no contact lens solution.

My wife rang me at the pub and said, “If you’re not home in 10 minutes, I’m giving the dinner I cooked you to the dog.”  I was home in 5 minutes.  I’d hate for anything to happen to the dog.

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