I just got a response to post from 2008. Now normally I wouldn’t even give it the time of day, much less post something about it, it was spam after all, but it was interesting.

The normal spam I get usually says something about how much they like the blog, but always cuts the graphic layout down. There is, of course, a website that will help me with my layout. This one liked the layout, but wanted to debate me on my limited knowledge of the subject. Hmm, all well and good, I like a good debate every now and then. But the subject? Well it was the color yellow, ragweed and allergy season. That just happens to be one that is found in a few google searches.

I guess I could debate the color yellow. It could be lemon yellow, butter yellow, or any other type of yellow you like. I was going with Crayola yellow. Could be about ragweed. Most of the year it is green. Only in the flower blooms could you say that there is yellow in the plant. Could be about allergies. I’ve only had them for about 36 years, so I’m only an expert my experience. I’m not a Doctor and I don’t play one on TV. I guess I really don’t see a debate, or a definitive lack of understanding. It was a light hearted post, dealing with one color in the original box of 8 Crayola crayons. The ones I had when I started school.

Oh well, waiting for the next comment to trash.

My new phone (the droid with no name), chirps whenever I get weather updates. For the past few days, it has been trying to chirp its speaker off. There have been quite a few “Heat advisories”. I’m very curious about what makes it a heat advisory. Do they have these in places that normally get hot? Do the deserts in the SW have one every day of the Summer?

I realize that the heat can be dangerous. If you don’t get enough water, or if you push yourself too hard, heat related illness can be deadly. But I know people survived many years without air conditioning, without ice water and other cooling refrigerated beverages. How did they do that? (heavy sarcasm…)

Me, myself and I slow myself down on days like today. It may take me twice as long to do something. No need to push myself on the hot days. Days like today are mad for sitting in the shade waiting for that next breeze.

Hot summer days, and warm summer nights. Savor them, you will want them in January.

Not a post about Major League Sports, but of girls fast pitch softball and a coach I knew.

We started helping out because our girls were on teams. For my last few years of coaching girls softball I was his assistant. We tried to instill some knowledge of the game, but our biggest task was to get young teen and pre-teen girls to have some fun playing ball.

We had many good players, but sometimes their interests headed away from the ball field. We took this in stride and hoped that the girls had some fun. Funny I can’t seem to remember how many years I coached with this man, but I think it was 3. They were good summers.

Through the following years, we failed to keep in touch, even though my youngest was friends with one of his step-daughters. When we did see each other, it did bring back some of the those good memories. For years he walked in the “Walk for Life” to remember my dear wife. He will no longer walk that walk, he lost his own battle to the very opponent he walked against. I will miss the occasional meetings at Wally World or Taco Bell. I will miss a friend. Children will miss a father. A wife will miss her husband. And Cancer takes one more…

and so I did. Back before the beginning of Baseball season I made a promise to myself to go to at least 1 Major League game. That promise has been kept. The Tigers played the Mariners and won 7-1. There were fireworks after the game. Not a bad way to start the 4th of July weekend.

Comerica Park is a gem, a great place to watch a ballgame. The food was expensive, but very good, of course nothing else tastes like a hotdog at the ballpark. Wide selection of vendors, and most had TVs so you wouldn’t miss much game action.

Then there was the game. I’ve said before that I don’t usually care for blowouts, even when my team it winning. That is still the case, but the game seemed close until the later innings. It was 4-1 until the 5th, and then 7-1 after 7 innings. Even with that, the best play of the game came in the 9th inning with a double play off a fly ball deep to left center. Little Bits and I had a fun time at the ‘old ball game’.

A couple of pictures from the Ballpark will be added soon.

My youngest is now 18 19.

Funny, I started this blog post way back in December and I only got the first line typed. I have no idea what I was going to write about. But today I will actually write about my youngest turning 19. Today was her birthday. We had some burgers, brats and hotdogs. I did my turn at the grill. There was swimming before the storms came in. And there was conversations with family.

Today was a good day. Cake and presents (at least for the birthday girl) were enjoyed. The spirits were high.

But my youngest just turned 19. She has been a legal adult for the past year. I’ve allowed her to make her own choices. I would have allowed her to make her own mistakes, I’m not convinced that she made any. 😉 She is a lovely, wonderful young lady.

Today on her birthday, I wish her all the best. While times won’t always be good (we know that don’t we.), I hope she has the strength and maturity to handle the times she has. My main job as a parent has been ‘finished’ for the last year. I only need to advise and listen. She does have what she needs to succeed or fail in life. I hope for success.
Happy birthday little one.

I rented a BIG truck today. I then went to the Froggy’s house and help load up things into a van, a couple of pick-ups and The BIG truck. With this thing and that thing happening, the move didn’t start as early as we would have liked. It got hot, very hot. The vehicles were loaded up and we left B-town at around 1:45.

BIG truck liked to BOUNCE. I’m not sure if I would have been sore with just moving stuff, but I was sore after driving that BIG truck. It actually handled well, but it bounce me up and down in the seat for the entire trip to T-town.

At 2:45 we were emptying the vans and pick-ups. We had more help on the unloading end, so it went much faster. We took most of the stuff for storage. That was another adventure that I may write about when I have a bit more energy.

I’m still wondering why today reminded me of George Carlin… The link is not really kid friendly, it is George Carlin on stage…

https://youtube.com/embed/MvgN5gCuLac

On my last phone I could set ringtones for each caller if I wished. I could also download ringtones (usually for some nominal cost, but I never did that). On the new phone I can make my own ringtones. I can record something and set that to be a ringtone. Bits and pieces of MP3 files can become ringtones. The only limitation I can see is my very fertile imagination and the time I would need to spend on each ringtone.

I thought of recording each daughter saying “Hey Dad it’s me.”, but then I remembered that over the phone they all have similar vocal characteristics. I could record myself telling me which daughter is calling, but then anyone within earshot would know which daughter is calling me. Interesting concept, but not enough imagination yet.

I guess I could do my Stitch or Bullwinkle impersonations and make a slightly different message for each daughter. Maybe, maybe???

I could find bits of their favorite songs and set those as ringtones. One daughter is very, very easy to pick — Anything Star Wars or Frogs. I don’t think I’ve heard any phone that rings with a Bullfrog croak. Dogs barking for the young Vet Tech student?
Something that sounds tropical for the daughter in Florida? Or maybe the sound of a zoo, since I hear she has the start of one. And the oldest, hmm?? I will need to think on that one.

I currently have some picked out, so I can recognize some of my callers, but what about friends? Should each friend have their own ringtone? Should I group some friends together? Group my work contacts together? Have some annoying default tone for anyone not on my contact list? The choices seem to be endless, but I will get tired of this soon.

Do you want to have you’re own ringtone. What would it be?

Had a bit of nasty weather last night. I really didn’t think much of it at first. Being out in the middle of nowhere, I only hear the storm sirens when I’m outside. When there is thunder and lightning, I’m not outside. But my new phone likes to chirp when there are storm warnings, so I knew about what was happening.

The lightning flashed, the thunder rumbled, the wind was ripping through the trees. The phone chirped. It was an actual tornado warning. I did actually go downstairs to sit out the storm. It was ominous when the wind actually died during the heart of the storm. Seemed surreal. Then the lightning flashed, the thunder rumbled on again. Our lights flickered. The winds died down. All was well in my little corner of the world.

This morning I heard of some storm damage in the area. I haven’t been by any serious damage, but I did have to detour around some downed tree limbs this morning. I always hope people will pass through the storms safely. I haven’t heard any bad news yet. I hope all is ok.

Until the next storm, and in the next storm, stay safe.

What is it with me and high tech toys recently? I bought myself a book reader (read the many nook posts.) 😉 and now I have a new ‘smart’ phone.

All I really ever wanted in a phone was the ability to make phone calls. You know, dial the number, the phone rings and someone on the other end picks it up. Then you have a conversation until it is finished. You hang up and that is the end of it until the next call.

My first journey into the cell phone age occurred just a few short years ago. I thought I would get a cell phone for the two oldest daughters at home just in case they needed to get in contact with me. Little did I know that the the oldest of the two already bought a cell phone. So the extra went to the youngest. I thought that at 13 she was a little young to have a phone, but I did not want it to go to waste. I had that 2 year contract and all.

Just a little over 2 years later, my original cell phone would no longer hold a charge. So I went back to get another. I found out that there were no cell phone ‘deals’ on any phones that just made calls. They all had things like cameras, the ability to play music or even download news. Hmm. All I wanted to do was make phone calls. I got an inexpensive phone that did come with a camera, but I don’t think I ever took more than 5 to 10 pictures with it. I did use the phone part.

That brings us to late last week. Again just a little over 2 years have gone by since the last cell phone adventure. Everybody is now carrying around a ‘smart’ phone. These things can take good pictures. You can access your email. You can access the internet. You can even access your blog or other social outlet. There are even games to play on the phone. You might say you are carrying around a little computer that just happens to make phone calls.

Because of some updates to things at work, I was looking at these new smart phones. One of them would allow me to stay connected if I ever had the need. Since I could see a benefit to this, I was casually looking at new smart phones. The cost was a bit much, but I could see myself getting one at some point in the future. No big deal, my phone was working well, and I liked it.

Then came the fateful day that my cell phone died. It would no longer dial numbers. It would no longer turn on or off. It was almost less than a phone. I could still receive calls, and because of the lucky fact that I had the blue tooth turned on, I could make calls using voice commands. But I could see that it was not going to be a good way to go. The voice commands were (and still are) a bit inconvenient at times. Some of my contact names are very similar to others on the list. The voice calling would sometimes miss the actual person I wanted to call. So I took the phone in to see if they could revive it.

To make an already long story shorter, the phone was dead (and it would cost more than a new phone to fix it). I am now the proud or not so proud owner of a new ‘Droid’ phone. It plays games. It accesses my email. It post to my blog (if I had teeny-tiny fingers). It can take pictures. It can load videos. It help me when I’m lost. It can play music. It will even store books. And it even makes phone calls!

I’m not exactly sure about all of the features, but I may get used to them.

Apparently not much happened. I checked on various places that google found and the only reference for that date was that tennis star Arthur Ashe had bypass surgery. I found that Summer Solstice occurred at around 7:00pm Eastern Daylight Savings time. But then I knew that. I’ve known that time for most of these 27 years.

At almost exactly Summer Solstice in the year 1983, I proposed to my future wife. Later on she wondered why I picked that day. It was VERY early in our relationship, and it could have been assumed that this could cause problems. I stated as an absolute fact that the stars were aligned properly. My lovely wife knew, even at that point in our relationship, that I did not mean astrology. I was never a believer in horoscopes of any kind. She looked up what I meant, and found the time of the Solstice.

The timing was a complete coincidence, but it did help me remember that date. It was one anniversary that I could surprise her with. I always remembered to get her a little something special on the first day of Summer.

I remember that day even now. There are many important days that I tend to forget, but this will never be one of them. 27 years and counting. I remember that first day of Summer in 1983…