Scary times

I’ve been rather busy lately, but it seems to me that the news is telling me some scary things lately. I’m not sure that I WANT to know what they are saying! The elections in Iran are being contested, rallies are being held where masses of people are chanting “death to America” and “death to England.” And North Korea is imprisoning women reporters to hard labor prison camps and threatening the world with nuclear weapons if we impose sanctions on them! These are scary times, indeed! It is scary to realize that it is possible for so many lunatics to rise to power and threaten the security of the rest of the world! Makes one want to not turn on the news!

Flowers for my Aunt Lydia

My mother asked me to arrange to have some Birthday Flowers sent to my Aunt Lydia.  Normally my mother would have asked my sister to take care of that for her, but my sister has come down with the flu and my mother doesn’t want to bother her.  And Aunt Lydia’s birthday is coming right up!  So I took my laptop over to my mother’s house and went online to show her the London’s Flower Boutique website so she could choose for herself what arrangement she would like to send.  My mother was delighted because she is not used to being able to see pictures of the arrangement that she is ordering.  She’s used to simply saying “oh, send her a bouquet of something.”  It meant a lot to her to be able to see for herself just how pretty the flowers are going to be.

The London Ontario Flower Delivery service will be taking Aunt Lydia a very pretty pink hydrangea planter.  Aunt Lydia loves pink, and we thought that by sending her a pink hydrangea planter that she would enjoy it longer because it isn’t just cut flowers, it is a nice little plant that should last longer than a few days!  I don’t know if she will be brave enough to try to plant it outside or not; I suspect that it is not hardy enough for her hardiness zone to survive the winter up there.

Nest building

Yesterday I was out in the garage, working on my pickup truck.  I kept noticing a couple of birds flying in the garage, but didn’t pay a lot of attention to them.  After a while I realized that they were building a nest in the corner of the garage!  Now I’m faced with the dilemma about what to do.  Should I destroy the nest, or leave it alone?  If I allow the birds to nest there and raise their family, I’ll need to leave the garage door open all of the time.  I’m not real keen on that idea, since I have a lot of expensive tools in there.  And I’m not real keen on the idea of bird droppings in my garage, on my motorcycle, truck, or tools.  But I’m a softie at heart, and can’t quite seem to be able to bring myself to destroy the nest!  I wonder how long it will take from the nest building stage to the completion of the baby birds being raised!  I don’t even know what kind of birds they are.  Maybe I’ll pull out the bird book and see if I can Identify them.

Beach and golfing vacations

My Dad loves to vacation at Myrtle Beach.  He’s been going there every winter for a couple of weeks for the past five years.  He loves to play golf, and he says that Myrtle Beach is a golfer’s paradise!  He says that Mom enjoys going to the different Myrtle Beach Resorts; there are so many there to choose from!  He says that they have tried going to a different Myrtle Beach Resort each time they go because they like to “mix it up” a little bit.  Sometimes they stay in one of the Myrtle Beach Hotels near a golf course, and sometimes they stay in one near the beach.

This winter they want my wife and I to join them on their Myrtle Beach vacation.  It’s tempting because they’re offering to pay the whole way!  I know that there are a lot of great amusement parks and shows that we’d enjoy seeing!  And I know my wife would enjoy a round of golf or two with my Dad.  So, we just might take them up on their offer and go for it!  We could use an all-expenses paid vacation!

My Dad

My Dad is an avid hunter and fisherman. It really doesn’t much matter WHAT season it is, he loves to tromp around the woods hunting, or lazing around the pond fishing. It was a family tradition in his family for generations. He says he’s been hunting and fishing since he could walk! He started out with his grandfather and father, and now he does it with my brothers. He doesn’t usually come home with anything; I think he just enjoys being outdoors communing with nature and being with the “men folk.”