'GADZOOKS' I HOPE NOT!!

Low on cream for my coffee, Pheebs and I headed into Bayfield for a stop at Foodland and a small container of 18% cream.  That's what Tim Hortons uses.  Rather than turn right around after Foodland and go home making for another long day simply sitting inside, we headed south out of Bayfield down the Bronson Line to see if we could find a few photos on yet another dull grey uninspiring day.  It was nice to slowly amble our way along through the snowy countryside listening to soft ambient music on Subie's XM Sirius Satellite radio.

 BAYFIELDERS OUT WALKING THIS MORNING

 NICE TO STILL SEE SOME OPEN WATER WAY OUT THERE ON THE HORIZON

Home again about an hour later I busied myself with going through kitchen cupboards looking for unopened food items I'd never use.  I'm thinking maybe I could donate those things to a local food bank.  Being born back in the mid-40's I was strongly instilled with the ethics of never wasting or throwing out perfectly good food.

 ANOTHER GREY DAY IN THE COUNTRYSIDE

 FINALLY, A SPLASH OF COLOR

 THESE STRAW BALES WERE SO COLD THEY HAD TO BE WRAPPED UP TO KEEP WARM

So yesterday there came a light tap at my door.  I see a tall dark stranger standing there.  I open the door and it's the Amazon guy with a package.  What!!  I didn't order anything unless the Moon is in there.  I cut open the package and inside were two more boxes of #1 Melita coffee filters.  With 80 in a pack, I now have approximately 350 coffee filters here.  Oh no I thought, have I gone and clicked on a wrong button somewhere on the Amazon site, and now for the rest of my life I will be receiving Melita coffee filters three times a week.  But, then I remembered my first attempt to order them when Amazon would not complete my order because they said there was something screwy with the account.  So, after getting the account finally straightened out I figured I would 're-order' the coffee filters just to make sure I had everything right.  Well I did, but hadn't realized Amazon had gone back to the original botched order and 're-sent it'.  By the way, I later realized I can buy these coffee filters at Home Hardware in Exeter, Ontario way cheaper than ordering them online from Amazon.  So, no more online Amazon coffee filters for me unless I've gone and signed up for a lifetime supply.  'Gadzooks', I hope not!!  

 OMINOUS WINTER SKIES

Al's Music Box:)) Here There And Everywhere is a song by the English rock band the Beatles from their 1966 album Revolver. A love ballad, it was written by Paul McCartney and credited to Lennon-McCartney. McCartney includes it among his personal favorites of the songs he has written.  In 2000, Mojo ranked it 4th in the magazine's list of the greatest songs of all time.  McCartney began writing "Here, There and Everywhere" at Lennon's house in Weybridge, in early June, while waiting for Lennon to wake up. McCartney recalled: "I sat out by the pool on one of the sun chairs with my guitar and started strumming in E. And soon I had a few chords, and I think by the time he'd woken up, I had pretty much written the song, so we took it indoors and finished it up."  When discussing his song "Here, There and Everywhere", McCartney has often cited the Beach Boys' "God Only Knows", his favorite pop song of all time, as a source of inspiration.  In 1990, McCartney told Beach Boys biographer David Leaf that it was "just the introduction that's influenced [by the Beach Boys]", referring to the harmonies he and Lennon devised for the opening lines of "Here, There and Everywhere". McCartney added that, with this style of introduction, they wanted to capture the "old-fashioned" idea of a preamble to the song.  Rolling Stone has noted: "The tune's chord sequence bears Brian Wilson's influence, ambling through three related keys without ever fully settling into one, and the modulations – particularly the one on the line 'changing my life with a wave of her hand' – deftly underscore the lyrics, inspired by McCartney's girlfriend, actress Jane Asher.  The Beatles recorded "Here, There and Everywhere" towards the end of the sessions for their 1966 album Revolver.  The band worked on the song at Abbey Road Studios over three session dates – on 14, 16 and 17 June.  Before carrying out overdubs, they taped 13 takes before achieving a satisfactory basic track.  The recording is noted for its layered backing vocals, which McCartney, Lennon and George Harrison spent much of the three days attempting to perfect. McCartney mentioned in the 1989 radio series McCartney on McCartney that the vocals were meant to have a Beach Boys sound; he has also said that he was trying to sing it in the style of Marianne Faithfull.  McCartney's lead vocal on the recording is multi-tracked.  In his book Revolution in the Head, Ian MacDonald also comments on Harrison's lead guitar part being given a mandolin-like tone via a Leslie speaker effect, before it adopts a "horn-like timbre" for the song's ending". 

GROANER'S CORNER:(( Do you realize that the only time in our lives when we like to get old is when we're kids? If you're less than 10 years old, you're so excited about aging that you think in fractions.  "How old are you?"  "I'm 4 and half."  You're never 36 and a half, but you're 4 and a half going on 5! That's the key. You get into your teens, now they can't hold you back. You jump to the next number.  "How old are you?"  "I'm gonna be 16."  You could be 12, but you're gonna be 16. And then the greatest day of your life happens: you become 21. Even the words sounds like a ceremony--you BECOME 21. YES!!!!  But then you turn 30. Ooohhh, what happened here?? Makes you sound like bad milk. He TURNED. We had to throw him out. There's no fun now. What's wrong?? What changed???  You BECOME 21, you TURN 30, then you're PUSHING 40...stay over there, it's all slipping away...  You BECOME 21, you TURN 30, you're PUSHING 40, you REACH 50...my dreams are gone...You BECOME 21, you TURN 30, you're PUSHING 40, you REACH 50 and then you MAKE IT to 60...Whew! I didn't think I'd make it.  You BECOME 21, you TURN 30, You're PUSHING 40, you REACH 50, you MAKE IT to 60, and by then you've built up so much speed, you HIT 70!  After that, it's a day-by-day thing. You HIT Wednesday, you get into your 80s, you HIT lunch. I mean my grandmother won't even buy green bananas, "Well it's an investment, you know, and maybe a bad one."  And it doesn't end there...Into the 90's, you start going backwards: I was JUST 92. Then a strange thing happens, if you make it over 100, you become a little kid again: I'm 100 and a half!!  Age is a funny thing.

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Young Son: "Is it true, Dad? I heard that in some parts of the world a man doesn’t know his wife until he marries her”

Dad: That happens in every country, son.

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Got home from work today to find my kids have been on ebay all day.  If they are still there tomorrow I will lower the price.

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A man has a racehorse that never won a race. The man says in disgust, "Horse, you win today or you pull a milk wagon tomorrow morning."  The starting gate opens and all the horses take off running except for the man's horse which is lying there asleep on the track.  He kicks the horse and asks, "Why are you sleeping?"  The sleepy horse raises his head and says, "I have to get up at 3 o'clock in the morning to pull the milk wagon."

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Al's Doggy World

Meanings::

Kellys Corner

STEAKS IN THE DESERT

 ABOUT TO TOUCH AN OCOTILLO PLANT

Al's Art Gallery

THE STORY OF HOW WE BECAME THE BAYFIELD BUNCH:))

 THE EYE OF THE SQUIRREL IS UPON YOU

Another dull and grey January day left me with little inspiration to get interested in things.  Pheebs and I did get out for a car ride but it was only for a drive down to the end of Bayfield River Road and back.  Winds were whipping up yesterday's new fallen snow into little white whirly gigs dancing across the white and barren-looking Siberian farm fields.

 OH HOW I HATE WINTER

I had another go this afternoon with the iPhone and despite having written instructions and some YouTube stuff, I still couldn't make much sense out of what I was trying to do.  But, I'll keep plugging away at it.  I also cleaned up a kitchen cupboard and found 13 cans of assorted Campbell soups and two large unopened Jif peanut butter jars.  Kelly loved Jif and it can be hard to find sometimes so this was her stash I found.  I'll give them to Sabra and Ben when they come to sort out things in their Mom's room.  

Imagine my surprise when I woke up Sunday morning, peered out the window, and saw that the fairies must have come in the night again and blown most of the snow out of my driveway.  There were much bigger tire tracks in the snow than earlier in the week when someone had been here and also blown out the driveway.  I have a hunch who those two good Samaritans were and I owe them both a big 'Thank You' when I see them.  

 THIS WAS THE ONLY SPLASH OF COLOR I SAW ON OUR MORNING RIDE

 THIS FARMER HAD BETTER PLOW OUT HIS DRIVEWAY SOON OR HE WON'T BE GOING TO TOWN

Someone asked me a while back where I get all those pictures for Al's Art Gallery and the answer to that is, 'Facebook'.  I stumbled upon those various types of artwork a while back when I noticed that if I clicked on a scenic nature picture, or maybe a dog, I would then receive more nature pictures and dog pics.  Pretty soon I began collecting the ones I liked and started putting them into folders to later share on my blog.  Right now I have folders entitled 'Paintings' with 1,275 pictures in it. 'Winter' with 211 pics, 'Dogs' with 316 pics, 'Cartoons' with 346 pics, Meanings with 186 pics, 'Spring' with 37 pics, and 'Christmas' which is down to 23 now from about a hundred a month ago. at this time  As of today, that is a grand total of 2,395 artistic works and growing.  Ridiculous, ya I know.  I have totally overwhelmed myself with these artistically beautiful pictures and clever sayings, but I just love them and thought readers might enjoy them too.  Some people are just so gifted and talented whether with their paintings, drawings, photos, artwork, or words.

A Blast From Our Past:)) It was 16 years ago today I wrote a post entitled, Traveling With Our Best Pals which at the time were our 3 dogs, Max, Checkers, and Cora.  It is the story of how we became 'The Bayfield Bunch'.  

Al's Music Box:)) Those Were The Days is a song composed by Boris Fomin (1900–1948) but credited to Gene Raskin, who put a new English lyric to Fomin's Russian romance song "Dorogoi dlinnoyu", with words by the poet Konstantin Podrevsky. The song is a reminiscence of youth and romantic idealism. It also deals with tavern activities, which include drinking, singing and dancing.  The Welsh singer Mary Hopkin covered "Those Were the Days" as her debut single in 1968. Produced by Paul McCartney of the Beatles and arranged by Richard Hewson, the song became a number one hit in the UK and Canada, and also reached number two in the US on the Billboard Hot 100 behind the Beatles' "Hey Jude". The song was included on Hopkin's 1969 debut album, Post Card.   Mary Hopkin's 1968 recording, with Gene Raskin's lyrics, was a chart-topping hit in much of the Northern Hemisphere. On most recordings of the song Raskin is credited as the sole writer, even though he wrote only the later English lyrics, which are not an English translation of the Russian lyrics, and not the music.  The Raskins were international performers and had played at London's "Blue Angel" club every year, always closing their show with the song. Paul McChartney frequented the club and, being quite taken with the song, attempted unsuccessfully to get several singers and groups, including the early Moody Blues, to record it.  After the formation of the Beatles' own Apple Records label, McCartney recorded Mary Hopkin performing the song at Abbey Road Studios in London.  He said later, "I thought it was very catchy, it had something, it was a good treatment of nostalgia... (Hopkin) picked it up very easily, as if she'd known it for years." The song was eventually recorded in over twenty languages and by many different artists. The song was held out of the top Billboard Hot 100 for 3 weeks by The Beatles 'Hey Jude' The B-side of the record in the UK and the United States was a cover of Pete Seeger's 'Turn! Turn! Turn!', which had been a US number-one hit for The Byrds in 1965.  The Russian origin of the melody was accentuated by instrumentation that was unusual for a top-ten pop record, including balalaika, clarinet, hammered dulcimer, cimbalom, tenor banjo, and a children's choir, giving a klezmer feel to the song. The cimbalom was played by Gilbert Webster. Hopkin said in 2015, " I did not play guitar on 'Those Were the Days.' Paul played acoustic guitar."

 STARING IN THE SUNROOM WINDOW AT ME THIS AFTERNOON

GROANER'S CORNER:(( A man sat with his wife while she sipped on her glass of wine, as she said, “I love you so much, you know. I don’t know how I could ever live without you.”

Husband: Is that you or the wine talking?
Wife: It’s me talking to the wine.

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You might be a reneck if::
- You live close enough to town to get garbage service, but don't use it because they won't come down your driveway to get it.
- You have ever removed the 3-9 zoom scope from your deer rifle to use at a KISS concert;

Your idea of a neighborhood watch program is tuning into "America's Most Wanted".
- You own more than two clappers.
- You go to Wal-Mart to people watch.
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A cheetah and a lion are racing...
The cheetah wins...
The lion says, "You a cheetah!"
The cheetah replies, "Nah, you a lion!"

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- I know a surgeon who puts organs back in upside down.  He says it’s an inside joke.

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A husband stepped on one of those penny scales that tell you your fortune and weight and dropped in a coin.  "Listen to this," he said to his wife, showing her a small, white card. "It says I'm energetic, bright, resourceful and a great person."
"Yeah," his wife nodded, "and it has your weight wrong, too."

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Al's Doggy World

Meanings::

Kellys Corner

 IN OUR FIRST MOTORHOME JUST AFTER I PAINTED THE KITCHEN AND LIVING ROOM

 AT ONE OF OUR FAVORITE CRACKLE BARRELS SOMEWHERE BETWEEN MICHIGAN AND CALIFORNIA

 OH HOW WE LOVED OUR DESERT WALKS AND MOUNTAIN HIKES

Al's Art Gallery