ALWAYS A FEW TWISTS AND TURNS ON THIS HIGHWAY OF CONFUSEMENT

 GREEN IS INCREASINGLY REPLACING WHITE

A big heartfelt thank you to everyone from Lorraine and I for all your caring thoughts, comments, acceptance, and understanding.  It had become increasingly difficult for me to write my blog, and leaving key things out knowing I knew something the readers didn't.

 STOPPED FOR A LOOK OVER GODERICH'S HARBOR 

For the second day in a row, we had the morning's sunrise beaming through the pine trees and landing on the living room floor.  And our temps were on the rise and we were already above freezing by 9 a.m.  I think we topped out at about 55F later in the day.  The snow is not only dripping off the roof, it is running off in streams of water.  And a series of warm days ahead just might put an end to all these big piles of snow lying around.  Of course we still have a month of unpredictable weather ahead and some of our more damage storms can occur in March.  Pheebs and I made it out for our morning car ride, and how nice to see farmer's fields once again emerging even further from winter's snow.

 DON'T KNOW WHAT THIS IS BUT IT'S ALREADY GREEN AND GROWING

Lorraine and I headed off to Goderich this afternoon and had a close call in front of McDonalds.  I signalled and began my turn into McDonalds when I suddenly realized the entrance was blocked off by a yellow gate.  We were now stopped crossways in front of two lanes of oncoming traffic.  Luckily, traffic was able to slow down in time and I was able to squeak around a nearby corner out of their way.  I wondered to myself how many motorists have and will be caught in this dangerous situation today.  McDonalds is apparently undergoing renovations or something so if your from this area and planning to stop at McDonalds in Goderich......beware!!  Also, the same thing with Tim Hortons in Grand Bend.  Beware of its blocked entrance for presumed renovations as well.  A drive down to the harbor to see if the road to Rotary Cove was finally free of snow.  It was not.  Following that, we headed to Walmart for a few groceries and a prescription for me to pick up.  On the way to Food Basics we went through the drive-thru at A&W and I got myself a Double Buddy burger and a coffee.  Not a big fan of fast food places, Lorraine passed on a Double Buddy burger. 

 ONE OF THESE DAYS I WILL CATCH HER LOOKING IN MY DIRECTION

I wonder how many readers over the years knew that Kelly's name wasn't really Kelly.  It was Gail.  Kelly had picked up her nickname somewhere in the shades of the past and in her friend's circles she went by the nickname of Kelly.  The only time I had heard Kelly called by her real name was when her Mom and Dad, Brother, and Sisters spoke of her.  She also used Gail on any legal and medical documents.  In Lorraine's circle of friends, she is often known as 'Woodsy' so you might see that name popping up in my posts.

MOST OF THE SNOW ON OUR SHED ROOF HAS ALREADY MELTED OFF

 MY SNOWY PATHWAYS ARE QUICKLY DISAPPEARING AS WELL

  HOW NICE TO SEE CLEAR BLUE SUNNY SKIES THROUGH THE PINE TREES

I had an appointment at the Bayfield Library this morning with the lady who usually does our income tax each year at no charge.  Kelly always dealt with that so everything about all this  income tax stuff is totally new and confusing to me.  Because of Kelly's passing the lady said our income taxes for 2024 would have to be handled by a professional income tax person but she would be able to do them next year again.  Always a few new twists and turns on this highway of confusement I'm weaving my way along now. 

 ANOTHER CLUSTER OF FISHERMEN ON BAYFIELD'S SOUTH PIER THIS MORNING

Al's Music Box:)) She Loves You is a song by the English rock band the Beatles, written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney and released as a single in the United Kingdom on 23 August 1963. The single set and surpassed several sales records in the United Kingdom charts, and set a record in the United States as one of the five Beatles songs that held the top five positions in the charts simultaneously, on 4 April 1964. It remains the band's best-selling single in the UK and was the top-selling single of the 1960s there by any artist.  In November 2004, Rolling Stone ranked "She Loves You" number 64 on their list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. In August 2009, at the end of its "Beatles Weekend", BBC Radio 2 announced that "She Loves You" was the Beatles' all-time best-selling single in the UK based on information compiled by the Official Charts Company.  In Canada, the song was included on the album Twist and Shout. In the US, it was the final song on The Beatles' Second Album.  Lennon and McCartney started composing "She Loves You" on 26 June 1963 after a concert at the Majestic Ballroom in Newcastle upon Tyne during their tour with Roy Orbison and Gerry and the Pacemakers. They began writing the song on the tour bus, and continued later that night at their hotel in Newcastle, eventually completing it the following day at McCartney's family home in Forthlin Road, Liverpool.  In 2000, McCartney said the initial idea for the song began with Bobby Rydell's hit "Forget Him" with its call and response pattern, and that "as often happens, you think of one song when you write another... I'd planned an 'answering song' where a couple of us would sing 'she loves you' and the other ones would answer 'yeah yeah'. We decided that was a crummy idea but at least we then had the idea of a song called 'She Loves You'. So we sat in the hotel bedroom for a few hours and wrote it – John and I, sitting on twin beds with guitars." Like many early Beatles songs, the title of "She Loves You" was framed around the use of personal pronouns. But unusually for a love song, the lyrics are not about the narrator's love for someone else; instead the narrator functions as a helpful go-between for estranged lovers:  'You think you lost your love, Well, I saw her yesterday.  It's you she's thinking of – And she told me what to say.  'She says she loves you.....This idea was attributed by Lennon to McCartney in 1980: "It was Paul's idea: instead of singing 'I love you' again, we'd have a third party. That kind of little detail is still in his work. He will write a story about someone. I'm more inclined to write about myself."  Lennon, being mindful of Elvis Presley's "All Shook Up", wanted something equally stirring: "I don't know where the 'yeah yeah yeah' came from [but] I remember when Elvis did 'All Shook Up' it was the first time in my life that I had heard 'uh huh', 'oh yeah', and 'yeah yeah' all sung in the same song". The song also included a number of falsetto "wooooo"s, which Lennon acknowledged as being inspired by the Isley Brothers' recording of "Twist and Shout", which the Beatles had earlier recorded, and which had also been inserted into the group's previous single, "From Me to You".  As Lennon later said: "We stuck it in everything".  McCartney recalls them playing the finished song on acoustic guitars to his father Jim at home immediately after the song was completed: "We went into the living room and said 'Dad, listen to this. What do you think? And he said 'That's very nice son, but there's enough of these Americanisms around. Couldn't you sing 'She loves you, yes, yes, yes!' At which point we collapsed in a heap and said 'No, Dad, you don't quite get it!'"  EMI recording engineer Norman Smith had a somewhat similar reaction, later recounting, "I was setting up the microphone when I first saw the lyrics on the music stand, 'She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah, She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah, She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah, Yeah!' I thought, Oh my God, what a lyric! This is going to be one that I do not like. But when they started to sing it – bang, wow, terrific, I was up at the mixer jogging around."  The "yeah, yeah, yeah" refrain proved an immediate, infectious musical hook.  Unusually, the song starts with the hook right away, instead of introducing it after a verse or two. "She Loves You" does not include a bridge, instead using the refrain to join the various verses. The chords tend to change every two measures, and the harmonic scheme is mostly static.

 TONIGHT'S SUNSET AT BAYFIELD'S PIONEER PARK

 'WOODSY

GROANER'S CORNER:(( Moses was sitting in the Egyptian ghetto. Things were terrible. Pharaoh wouldn't even speak to him. The rest of the Israelites were mad at him and making the overseers even more irritable than usual, etc. He was about ready to give up.  Suddenly a booming, sonorous voice spoke from above: "You, Moses, heed me ! I have good news, and bad news."  Moses was staggered. The voice continued: "You, Moses, will lead the People of Israel from bondage. If Pharaoh refuses to release your bonds, I will smite Egypt with a rain of frogs."  "You, Moses, will lead the People of Israel to the Promised Land. If Pharaoh blocks your way, I will smite Egypt with a plague of Locust."  "You, Moses, will lead the People of Israel to freedom and safety. If Pharaoh's army pursues you, I will part the waters of the Red Sea to open your path to the Promised Land.  "Moses was stunned. He stammered, "That's...that's fantastic. I can't believe it! But what's the bad news?"  "You, Moses, must write the Environmental Impact Statement."

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- This is America. It is my God given right to be loudly opinionated about something I am completely ignorant of.

- Did you hear about the old man whose birthday one year lasted only one minute?  It was his sixty-second birthday.

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Two years after my heart attack, I was teaching my college course when I felt discomfort in my chest. I paused the class to pop my medication and felt better quickly.  “Now, if I ever do have a heart attack,” I told my students, “I will give extra credit to whoever gives me CPR.”  One of them shouted out, ”How much?”

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Al's Doggy World

Meaning::

Kelly's Corner

 A RELAXING DAY AT OUR RANCH SITTING JOB WITH RANCH DOG PEARCE AND CORA OUR LITTLE MOTORMOUSE IN THE PHOTO AS WELL

 THIS IS THE HERD OF CHICKENS WE RODE SHOTGUN ON AT THE RANCH

 THIS IS THE ROAD RUNNING PAST THE RANCH LEADING TO ARIZONA'S WHITEWATER DRAW WILDLIFE AREA AND WE WALKED THIS ROAD EVERY MORNING..... THE TWO RANCH DOGS  GLEASON AND PEARCE ACCOMPANY THE BAYFIELD BUNCH

SOMEWHERE IN THE GREAT AMERICAN SOUTHWEST

Al's Art Gallery

I HAVE SOMETHING TO TELL MY READERS

SUNDAY MORNING FISHERMEN ON BAYFIELD'S SOUTH PIER

What I am about to tell my readers now may be understood by many and maybe not so much by others.  A long time friend from the mid-eighties has re-entered my life after a long absence.  In 1984 as the newly installed manager of a one-hour photo lab in Stratford, Ontario, I was tasked with hiring two new employees.  One of those two employees was a gal by the name of Lorraine.  Lorraine was a single Mother with a young daughter and I was a single guy following a failed marriage.  I had already been sober nearly 5 years at this point.  To make a long story short, Lorraine and I soon became a couple for the next four years, and it was her little daughter Laurissa that I have sometimes blogged about being the only little person I ever got to know in my life.  Laurissa and I were like two peas in a pod.  At this same time, Lorraine met both my Mother and Father as well, although they had been divorced since I was a small child.  For Lorraine and I, working together every day in a very stressful environment and living together as well, the strain became too much and we agreed to split up in the Spring of 1988.  It was an amicable split and we remained friends.  We even went downhill skiing a few times after that.  As the years wore on, we weren't in contact much anymore until after I met Kelly.  Lorraine's Mother and I had really got along well and when Lorraine's Mother, dying of cancer, asked through Lorraine to see me, I drove to Listowel Ontario to see her Mother for one last time.  Shortly after that, Lorraine's Mother passed away and Lorraine phoned us at the Weenie Roast Ranch.  I was at work and Kelly took the call.  Lorraine asked Kelly if it would be alright if I accompanied her to her Mom's funeral.  Kelly was fine with that and I learned later that they actually had a long phone conversation. (Oh Dear)  I did accompany Lorraine to her Mom's funeral.  After that, years again passed until Lorraine phoned and asked Kelly if it would be alright to invite Kelly and I to Laurissa's wedding.  Of course it would be alright, so Kelly and I attended Laurissa's wedding in Listowell, Ontario.  Following that, nearly three decades passed and I never heard from Lorraine again until about 6 years ago when she found me and my blog on Facebook.  She became a faithful blog reader and we occasionally messaged back and forth with things like, 'how's it going', how's Laurissa doing, I enjoy reading your blog, etc.  Lorraine was also on Kelly's Facebook friends list and Kelly was on Lorraine's.  Lorraine was one of Kelly's unwavering supporters through the last few years of Kelly's liver illness and we stayed in touch.  Sometimes Lorraine would read things about liver disease and send them to me on Facebook and have me relay them to Kelly.   In the last months of Kelly's life and after her passing, Lorraine's unwavering moral support on Facebook helped me through those difficult times.  Also through Facebook I had previously learned that Lorraine was an avid walker spending many days walking around Stratford's Parks and Avon River.  I casually mentioned to her that maybe in the Spring when the weather is nicer I'd take a drive to Stratford and go for a walk with her around the river.  Well, that kind of got the ball rolling and a while ago we agreed to meet for a sit down face to face chat.  It had been over 30 years since we had seen each other.  Yes, we had both physically aged with me at 80 and her at nearly 71, but the old camaraderie was still there.  The laughs, the kibbitzing, the memories.  Two years ago, Lorraine retired from the LCBO. (Liquor Control Board of Ontario)  She had worked at the two Stratford locations for 26 years and also for the past 26 years has lived by herself in an apartment in Stratford.....And that dear readers kinda brings me up to now.  Lorraine, referred to as my longtime friend in a couple precious blogs, has periodically been driving over from Stratford and helping me with things like cooking, cleaning, organizing stuff, and especially with getting me up to speed with this darn fangled iPhone thing of majig.  She even cooks for Pheebs and the two of them are best buds.  Lorraine lost her little dog Tasha just over a year ago.....So, what does all this mean??  It means that if all goes well, you will be seeing Lorraine's name pop up more in my blogs in the future, as we spend some time together and maybe lay out some travel plans for the future.  At 71 and 80, time is running out for both of us so we'll see what happens.  As I said at the beginning of this post,  some folks will understand and some folks will not.  I hope you will all see this as I see it.  I know Kelly would because she was always a positive and realistic thinking person.  Had our situation been reversed with me being the one who didn't make it, Kelly would have gotten on with her life as well.  It was something we had talked about and encouraged each other about.  So, with that I now step back and let the cards fall where they may...........

 NICE TO SEE THE BAYFIELD RIVER FLOWING AGAIN

 WITH WARMER DAYS ON OUR DOORSTEP THIS LANDSCAPE OF FROZEN ICE AND SNOW ON LAKE HURON WILL SOON CHANGE

A BUSY BAYFIELD COFFEE MORNING IN FRONT OF THE SHOPBIKE COFFEE ROASTERS ON MAIN STREET

WORK CONTINUES ON THE RESTORATION OF THE ALBION HOTEL

What a beautiful day with an abundance of sunshine and above freezing temperatures.  Pheebs and slipped into Bayfield and back.  I wasn't long in getting myself outside looking for any little bit of puttering I could find.  Pulled some more snow off of the shed roof, shoveled a short path to have access to an electrical outlet, hooked up a different overhead light in the sunroom, and with shovel and rake smoothed out some semi-frozen lumps of mud at the end of our driveway.  Bird feeders needed to be refilled as well.  This kind of day was like an early Spring tonic for me with all the melting going on and snow sliding off the roofs.  How grrrreat it was just being outside accomplishing something and feeling useful today.

 VACUMING OUT THE SUBARU EARLIER IN THE WEEK

 LAST THURSDAY WAS NOT A GOOD DRIVING DAY

 SO NICE THIS PAST WEDNESDAY TO FINALLY SEE FARM FIELDS EMERGING FROM UNDER ALL THE SNOW

AREA CREEKS WERE FLOWING

Al's Music Box:)) Michelle is a song by the English rock band the Beatles from their 1965 album Rubber Soul. It was composed principally by Paul McCartney, with the middle eight co-written with John Lennon. The song is a love ballad with part of its lyrics sung in French.  Following its inclusion on Rubber Soul, the song was released as a single in some European countries and in New Zealand, and on an EP in France, in early 1966. It was a number 1 hit for the Beatles in Belgium, France, Norway, the Netherlands and New Zealand. "Michelle" won the Song of the Year Award for the Year in 1967 and has since become one of the most widely recorded of all Beatles songs.

 TONIGHT'S SUNSET AT BAYFIELD'S BEACH

 IN A FEW MONTHS PEOPLE WILL BE SWIMMING HERE

LORRAINE DROVE OVER FROM STRATFORD TODAY AND WE SLIPPED OUT TO WATCH THE SUNSET

 LORRAINE'S A BIT CAMERA SHY SO I WILL HAVE TO EASE INTO THIS

TONIGHT'S SUNDAY SUNSET

GROANER'S CORNER:(( A man who absolutely hated his wife's cat decided to get rid of him one day by driving him 20 blocks from his home and leaving him at the park.  As he was nearing home, the cat was walking up the driveway.  The next day, he decided to drive the cat 40 blocks away and try the same thing.  As we was driving back into his driveway, there was the cat! He kept taking the cat farther and farther away, but the darn cat would always beat him home.  At last, he decided to drive a few miles away, turn right, then left, past the bridge, then right again and another right and so on until he reached what he thought was a safe distance from his home and he left the cat there.  Hours later, the man calls home to his wife: "Jen, is the cat there?"  "Yes," the wife answers. "Why do you ask?"  Frustrated, the man answers: "Put that damn cat on the phone. I'm lost and I need directions!"

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- Reversing the car: "Ahh, this takes me back."

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During a terrible storm, all the highway signs were covered with snow. The following spring, the state decided to raise all the signs twelve inches at a cost of six million dollars. “That’s an outrageous price!” said a local farmer, “but I guess we’re lucky the state handled it instead of the federal government.” “Why’s that?”
“Because knowing the federal government, they’d decide to lower the highways.”

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You might be a reneck if...
- Your master bathroom has the words "porta-potty" written on the side. 

- You can't take a bath in the winter 'cause the stream is frozen.

- You only bathe when it rains.
- You think "Dueling Banjos" is classical music.
- You refer to the Surgeon General's Warning on a pack of cigarettes as your medical encyclopedia.
- You go to garage sales to shop for Christmas gifts.
- You're 42 and still have clowns come to your birthday party.
- You think 'possum is the "other white meat".
- Your husband spray paints the upholstery of your car to make it look new.

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Al's Doggy World

Meanings::

Kelly's Corner

 MORNING HIKE HIGH UP IN THE SAN YSIDRO MOUNTAINS OVERLOOKING BORREGO SPRINGS, CALIFORNIA

 IN ELFRIDA ARIZONA AND THE DOGGY'S NAME IS MATTIE

 THIS WAS THE DAY WE TOURED THE QUEEN MINE IN BISBEE, ARIZONA

Al's Art Gallery