International Cat Day

In honor of International Cat Day Miss Kitty wants you to know that in her opinion every day is cat day, you just don't know it.
She also said that if anyone needs lessons in casual napping she's available for instruction for a nominal fee.

It Has to Go

Yes, it has to go and it's all my fault.  This is the couch in our family room, the room we spend most of our time in and I hate this couch.  I bought it and I should have known better.   I hate shopping, except online and so I thought I'd buy my couch online.  I went to a furniture store I'd bought from before, picked out a style I liked, a fabric, chenille, that I know wears well, and a color I could live with even if I didn't love it.
They brought it out at no extra charge and it looked fine.  Over time it wore fairly well, except for one problem, none of the cushions are reversible.  I hadn't even thought to check for that, I'd assumed that all loose cushion couches were reversible, well there not.  I can't reverse the cushions, can't flip them over and so they're wearing in ways they shouldn't, it doesn't look good and I'm not happy.  Don't think Miss Kitty is happy either.  She, who never scratches the furniture, preferring her scratching post, has started sharpening her claws on the end of the couch.
So this Fall, when the dust has settled I will venture forth, check cushions carefully and get me a new couch.  The Salvation Army is welcome to this one.

Burmese Python

I don't want you to think I'm just posting random photos of the wildlife found in Florida.  This 18 foot 3 inch Burmese Python was found and killed in the Everglades National Park last week.  To be specific it was found near the tramway in Shark Valley.  What does that mean to me?  Well, we've biked and walked that tramway and in fact have gone off on side trails from it.  The fact that something this big and this awful was lurking there scares the B'Jesus out of me.  We were there in February walking those trails.
Park officials estimate nearly 100,000 of these critters are now in Florida and it's a disaster for the wildlife.  They eat and kill everything, including alligators.
People need to stop releasing their unwanted animals into the wild.


On a lighter note, the new header is one of my favorite paintings, Mac painted it years ago and I never take it down or trade it for another painting.

A Bit of an Obsession.

Had to do a bit of grocery shopping today, that always puts me in such a good mood.  Why do people park their grocery carts in the middle of the aisle and leave them?  I hate moving other folks carts, but I moved more than a few today.  I wasn't doing heavy shopping and I wanted to get it done quickly, so I was flying down the aisles.
I was in search of, among other things bacon, I have a yen for a good BLT, a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich.  Bacon is so fattening that I almost never keep any around, but I picked up a pound of good looking pork bacon, not chicken bacon, not turkey bacon, not tofu bacon, the real honest to goodness stick to your ribs, and your hips and thighs bacon.
Then I found some good looking rolls to make my BLT.  Yum.
Our daughter started this, she'd been in search of a BLT in Japan without much success and was bemoaning the fact.  That got me drooling, I mean dreaming about having one too.
And even worse I got to thinking about the bacon butties I always eat in England, I swear they have the best bacon in the world.  Ours is streaky and fat, tasty yes, buy not like the English bacon.
Actually I can't wait to get to England, I always bacon butty myself across the country when we're there.
Oh well, time for some housework before I can enjoy my sandwich, boo-hiss.

Monday

It's Monday, not as hot as it has been, but boy oh boy the humidity----it's horrible.  Trying to do anything just leaves you covered in sweat.  So of course today was the day I'd decided we needed to switch rugs, take the one in the dining room where no one ever goes, except Miss Kitty, and put it in the family room where we basically live.

Now the family room rug

The one in the family room had a black background and everything and I do mean EVERYTHING that came within 10 feet of it fell on it and looked awful.  I vacuumed it religiously and 5 minutes later it looked like we'd dumped our shoes out on it.  It was getting to the point where I hated that rug.  The one in the dining room  had a cream-colored background, dark stuff will show up, but not every little crumb, bit of fluff or lint will.
So I emptied out the heavy coffee table and dragged it off the rug and vacuumed the rug, moved the chairs out of the dining room and yelled for Mac.  He moved the rugs, swept everything and helped me move the dining room  table and chairs.
Now we were both covered in sweat and though it was only about 81º in the house and only around 11 am we turned the air conditioner on.  Can't wait to see our electric bill this month.
The rugs look better.  We also pulled out the runner under the tv, it matches the black rug and put it in the entryway.
Then to cool myself off I did a bit of ironing.  I don't iron much, just pillow cases, table cloths and cotton dish towels.  This time I had a couple of blouses to iron too.  I don't have many blouses that require ironing, but these two do.  When I wore the navy blue one, I thought, I haven't worn this in a while, I wonder why, I like it, it fits well, looks good on me.  Well the reason is that I have to iron it, so it spends a lot of time hanging in the closet.
Then it was into the pool to cool off and then aerobics.  I'm through for the day except for fixing lunch, chicken cacciatore.

Now the dining room rug

Five on Friday

I'm late, I'm late, definitely turning into that White Rabbit of Alice's.  But I am joining in with Amy at Love Made My Home and others for Five on Friday.

Not much crafting, not much cooking, not much doing anything, too hot, too hot, too hot.
So what have I been up to?
1.  Well way more time than I expected to spend has been spent on the England in the Time of Richard III class that I'm taking from the University of Leicester.
This week focused on the development of written language and the first books.  I learned far too much about the printed alphabet.  I mean look at this, can you read it, would you want to?

2.  I now know about ascenders, descenders, bowls, serifs, headlines, baselines, majuscule and minusule.  And now that I know that what more do I know about England in the time of Richard III?

3.  I did learn the Richard owned a number of books including:  De Re Militari (concerning military matters,  Vegecye of Dedes of Knyhthode (Deeds of Knighthood) and Historia Regem Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain)

4.  I've learned that he could read French, English and Latin as well as speaking all 3.

He was obviously well educated.

5.  And I've learned that way too many people still  think Richard III is the monster that Shakespeare made him appear.

That was my week, how was yours?  Do join the others at Five on Friday.

Ninja Gator! Alligator climbs fence.

A friend of ours published this on Facebook.  Scary!  In town we have a park with old rice paddies and lots of alligators.  Backing up to the park are houses.  Most of the owners have erected chainlink fences thinking that's all they need to keep the alligators out of their yards.  I think some of them need to watch this video.

We had an alligator get out of the water and lay in our backyard once, scary as all get out.

My County

We live in a small town near Savannah, Georgia and I've notice that when I visit some Blogs it says I'm from Hinesville, I'm not, Hinesville is about 30 miles from here, it's where Ft. Stewart is.  We're much closer to Savannah, different county too.  There are loads of counties in Georgia, 159 to be exact, we're second only to Texas which has 254.
We live in Bryan County and it has county commissioners to administer the country.  Can't name a one, but if I said Bubba was a county commissioner I probably wouldn't be wrong.  I sometimes think half this state is named Bubba.  We're virtually a one-party county too, if you're anything but a Republican you don't mention it in polite company.  So every couple of years one good old boy or another gets elected country commissioner.  I'm not sure what the qualifications for the job are, but having read the bios of those who've run I have to say they can't be much.
Anyway, these are the folks who have brought us our round about/ traffic circle and I don't want you to think this was their only accomplishment.
A couple of years ago they built a beautiful sports park in our end of the county.  Lots of baseball fields, soccer fields, football fields, fishing lakes, walking and biking paths.  It's really quite nice, except for one thing.
For the sports fields they decided to put in artificial turf so they could save money on watering.  Did they do any studies on artificial turf, see how it worked in the MLB and NFL?  Did they look info  the increase in sports injuries because of the hardness of the turf?  Did they realize how hot artificial turf gets, particularly in a semi-tropical zone like we live in?  The answer to all these questions is NO, they did not.
And what they now have is artificial turf, that is way more expensive than real grass, that has to be watered down constantly so that it's not too hot to play on.  There has been talk of taking it all out and laying sod.
Oh, by the way, did I mention that you have to drive around the round about/ traffic circle to get to the park?

My county commissioners, gotta love them.

Monday Noon

The weather is doing me in, it finally cools down a bit, if you can call lower 90's down, then the humidity goes up and it feels worse than before.  Our morning walk this morning felt more like swimming than walking.  By the time we got back to the house our clothes were soaked, YUCK.
I washed sheets and towels this morning, big load, and for some reason the spin cycle didn't take out much water, so things were pretty wet.  Mac took the sheets upstairs to hang them and I threw the rest in the dryer which I seldomly use, but it's so humid they would never dry outside.
I picked my ring up yesterday and it looks beautiful!!!!  We haven't been able to take a decent picture of it, they all look fuzzy, but I'm putting one in anyway.
Also found the picture I took at the ballpark last week that shows how close we were to the action.
We enjoyed ourselves so much that we've already made reservations to go back again.
I've finally gotten around to reading Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel, I was only about 67th on the waiting list for it at our library.  I really like it, her writing style is very different, not particularly linear and you really have to pay attention.
I missed 5 on Friday, Friday sort of got lost in the shuffle around here, but I'm going to borrow an idea from Amy at Love Made My Home and tell you 5 things I like and 5 things I don't like.

I'm not going to list my husband and daughter because I more than like them, I love them.

1.   I like chocolate, I'd eat some every day if I wasn't afraid of weighing even more than I do.  I like chocolate anything, I've even eaten chocolate covered ants and a grasshopper.

2.    I like my car.  It's a pretty, white Mazda 3 Hatchback and it's so comfortable to ride in.  It says Hello to you when you get in and Good-bye when you get out, it has a temperature gauge to tell you the outside temperature, it has a 6-speed manual transmission and is fun to drive. Mac has a little sports car, a Mazda Miata, and it's cute, but I'm not going to lie and tell you it's comfortable to ride in, it's not.

3.    I like taking trips to England.  We made our first trip there in the early 70's and it was love at first sight!  Since then we've been there somewhere between 20 and 30 times.  It's a beautiful country with friendly people.  We would get back from one trip and immediately book the next.  I'm not much on stately homes and castles anymore, we've seen lots of them, but I do love moated manor houses and gardens.  Can't wait for our next trip.

4.    I like Skype.  When we first learned that our daughter was moving to Japan I cried, it had been bad enough having her 600 miles away when she was in Maryland, but Japan was half a world away. Then she set us up with Skpe and once a week we get to SEE and talk to her.  She's still a long way away, but this makes it better.

5.  I like sports, particularly baseball (yeah Braves), football and golf, not so much basketball or hockey.  It's fun to go to live games, but truthfully you see better on tv than you do in person and a hot dog won't cost you $9.00.

Things I hate:

1.  I hate  it when people don't acknowledge that  I  have send a gift.  I took the trouble to find, buy and ship it, can't you at least let me know it got there.  You don't have to send me a Thank you card, an e-mail is fine.  If you don't,  you're stricken from the list of people I send gifts to.

2.  I hate cilantro, it tastes like something you've scraped off the cellar floor.  If I taste it in something it all but gags me.

3.  I hate hot weather.  I use to love summer, it could never be too hot for me.  But as I've grown older I am less able to deal with it.  Spring and Fall are so much better, I just tolerate summer and I hate to see what my electric bill looks like this month we've had to use so much air conditioning.

4.  I hate going grocery shopping, I wish I could buy food online.  Well actually I can, but boy is it expensive.  If my local stores started offering home delivery I'd definitely be interested.

5.  I hate weeds, why can't they rot and die from too much rain like my plants do?  My garden is so full of weeds right now that it's embarrassing, but until it gets a lot cooler and less humid I'm afraid there's not much I can do about it.

Amy did 10 things, but I heat-soaked brain says 5 is enough.  Enjoy the rest of your week.

Just a Short Trip

We drove up to Atlanta on Tuesday for a quick getaway.  It's about 260 miles from our house to Atlanta and takes about 4 hours, when you throw in a stop for lunch.  Thank God for air conditioning because as we drove from Dublin to Macon (that's about half way) our  car said the outside temperature was 104º.  And it wasn't much cooler when we got to Atlanta.
We had picked a very special hotel to stay at, the Renaissance Concourse, a beautiful hotel with a central atrium going all the way to the top and glass elevators.  But the reason we chose it is because the rooms on one side had balconies overlooking the Atlanta airport runways and you can sit and watch planes taking off and landing.  Now I realize this might not suit everyone, but we really enjoyed it.

The reason for the trip to Atlanta was to take in a Brave's game, I waved to you Kay (I know she loves the Braves and always watches them) did you see me?  We had great seats on the 3rd base side and I could actually see the ball, Mac said he thought they were the best seats we'd ever had at a game.  We beat the Los Angeles Dodgers, that was nice, and even better we got a bobblehead doll of Freddie Freeman (the 1st baseball and Jonnie Gomes an outfielder), is very funny.

After the game we sat on our balcony and watched a few planes taking off, but we were both tired, so off to bed with us.
But the next morning we had croissants and coffee on the balcony and watched the planes for over an hour, could have stayed all day, but we had a long drive ahead of us.
It was a great little break.

An update on our traffic circle/round about; it's still causing problems,  and one of the County Commissioners said he'd  seen at least 5 cars enter the circle the wrong way.  No one seems quite sure how to solve the problem.  I'm betting they end up stationing a police officer there to direct traffic for a while.
Also, someone commented Anonymously on my post to let me know everything I never wanted to know about traffic circles/ round abouts.  I wasn't concerned with the correct nomenclature, I was concerned to how people were using it.

TedEBear asked to go the Atlanta with us so we took him.

Landings were really loud, landings not so much.

Traffic Circles/Roundabouts

Driver circles the roundabout Tuesday while another driver waits to merge from Belfast River Road. (Photo by Paul Floeckher)

Whatever you call them you find them all over England and the rules are simple, the cars in the circle have the right of way.  And if there is more than one lane of traffic in the circle you pick the one that matches your exit.  We love them, not the least because if we miss our exit we can go around the circle again and pick it up.
Now, our little backwoods town (we don't live in Savannah, just near it) has decided that a traffic circle is just what we need to reduce traffic tie-ups near some government offices.  It's nearly complete, lots of warning signs about the new traffic plan, lots of traffic cones to direct you into the circle and guess what, it's a mess.
It's just down from the local fire station and one of the country commissioners observed the circle has reported people entering the circle going in the wrong direction, and so requested that traffic  cones be set up to help,
Here's what the paper says.

New roundabout causing some confusion

Paul Floeckher

July 15, 2015 7:44 p.m.

The roundabout at Highway 144 and Belfast River Road should be finished on schedule, according to county officials. 

The traffic circle’s paving has been completed, and temporary road markings have been painted. Workers started installing the curbing separating the roundabout’s lanes Wednesday and will “probably be done by the end of the week with the project,” County Engineer Kirk Croasmun said at Tuesday night’s Bryan County Board of Commissioners meeting. 

Commissioners are now shifting their concern to ensuring that drivers use the roundabout correctly. 

“They have to understand the right-of-way,” Commissioner Steve Myers said. “The guy in the circle has the right-of-way.” 

A driver who pulls up to the traffic circle is supposed to wait for an opening in traffic and then turn right to enter the roundabout. The driver then is to make another right turn onto one of the circle’s exit roads. 

However, Myers said he observed the roundabout for a couple hours from the nearby fire station and counted five cars that turned the wrong way onto the traffic circle. The drivers were eastbound on Highway 144 and, accustomed to turning left to enter the South Bryan County Administrative Complex, made left turns onto the roundabout to access Capt. Matthew Freeman Drive. 

“I could not believe what they were doing,” Myers said. 

“You could hit somebody head-on,” Commissioners Chairman Jimmy Burnsed said. 

Myers explained that he and fellow Commissioner Carter Infinger asked the work crew to place barrels around the circle to help direct the flow of traffic. Myers said he has not seen any drivers making wrong turns since the barrels have been in place. 

“The problem is, the barrels are going to be gone, and people are going to take a left turn again,” Myers said. “It needs to have a ‘one-way’ sign.” 

That concern has been shared with the Georgia Department of Transportation, Croasmun said, because Highway 144 is a state road. The state’s response was, “We’ll monitor it” once the work has been completed, he said. 

Croasmun also pointed out that the barrels will be replaced by traffic bollards. The short posts will delineate the lanes of the roundabout and direct its traffic flow. 

“We’re not totally done yet,” Croasmun said. 

County leaders maintained from the project’s inception that their main concern was having it completed before the start of school on Aug. 3. Richmond Hill Middle School and the new McAllister Elementary are near the roundabout. 

Drivers have more than two weeks to acclimate themselves to the roundabout before school starts. Burnsed stressed that the speed limit on Highway 144 drops from 55 mph to 45 and then to 35 approaching the traffic circle. 

“I did take a carload of teenagers to go around the roundabout and show them how to do it,” Infinger said. “They had never done one.”
More changes will be made to the roundabout in the future. A widening of Highway 144 from Timber Trail to Port Royal Road is expected to begin in the first quarter of 2016. 

“When 144 is widened, the roundabout is going to be redone permanently at that point,” Croasmun said. “Remember, this is temporary. We wanted to get this in to make sure we had traffic control for the school.”

I predict there will be more than one accident before people finally figure this out.