Coopers Hawk

I never can manage to get a good photo of the local Coopers Hawk. I get almost close nearly every year, but I never get his face. This time he was hunting in our woods and I just happened to have my camera out by the pool. I grabbed it in time to zoom in and get this shot. Just as I put the camera down, he flew up and landed on our barn, saw us, and freaked out and left. Below, is a photo of the hawk I took in 2004 or 2005 through my office window.

Puke

Worshipping liberalism

Haven't the Maryknoll sisters managed to completely politic themselves out of existence YET? I KNOW they are almost defunct, but it has to be a freaking miracle that they made it to 2007 and there are still, like, one or two 90-year-olds who call themselves Maryknoll sisters. But it is crap like this that have utterly lost them their band of looney lefties. I mean there just aren't that many loons left in the world who both worship liberalism AND want to remain celibate.

Your tax dollars at work

Houses for useless people.

I have a blue jean skirt, and I'm not afraid to use it

My Pentecostal inlaws are the coolest people on earth and that is coming from a serious papist.

Above is a shot of the weekend reunion of some of Mark's many relatives sitting around picking and singing. At right, you see even the little girls wear skirts. I was the only chick without a skirt there. But I have a skirt. One of these days I'm gonna wipe this makeup off my face, take off my diamond earrings, and put on my blue jean skirt.

Wait... maybe not the earrings. But, by Golly, I'll wear that skirt.

What kind of spider is this?

He's just ugly! We thought at first he was a fly caught in the Web, but this is the spider. He has a triangular sort of back. Maybe an egg sac? At right you see the spider's butt. And below you see the fancy Web he makes. He's smaller and differently shaped than the average Orb Weaver. I once saw a sparrow caught in an Orb Weaver's big, thick, sticky web. But this spider has a much thinner web that he runs across clear walking paths. The Orb Weaver tends to stay in gardens and weeds.One thing you don't want is to walk into that web face first. Yuck! We take a long stick with us when we walk in the woods at this time of year. Just to clear the way of webs. We don't intentionally tear down a spider's web but a lot of times you don't see them until you walk into them -- an unpleasant experience!

UpdateThe fabulous Pamela figured out what this spider is.

You think YOUR neighbors are bad?

Check out WTR's neighborhood. Haven't they made a movie about these people?

Get a Mac

BERLIN (Reuters) - A German man who startled his neighbors when he hurled his computer out of the window in the middle of the night, was let off for disturbing the peace by police who sympathized with his technical frustrations.

PCs are a menace to society.

Oh, so bitter. Oh, so liberal.

What an outrage that someone should write a book portraying men as good fathers, boys as creative, and American life as a good.

Well thanks to Newsweek that myth can now be exposed as crass nostalgia.

In her review of The Dangerous Book for Boys, writer Jennie Yabroff reveals as fatuous the very idea that a father might walk down a starlit path with his son, pointing out Orion. Or that a father might recite Robert Frost. Or that a MAN might know how a battery works.

Yabroff herself is so perfectly jaded and urbane (or she strives to hard to be) that these things are utterly beyond her comprehension. If they seem possible to you, or if they seem familiar, then you just haven't read the latest book about how there never were any good old days. Men are evil and boys are hyperactive and that is all there is to it in Jennie's world.

But seriously, I'm forced to wonder what she finds so fantastic about the apparently impossible world of Dangerous Book: That men actually know something? That fathers and boys have relationships? That parents somewhere dont call parenting *quality time*?

To me the book rings familiar. To her it seems fatuous. Im sorry she is so bitter, with a set of experiences so hard and sterile, but, given that, shouldn’t she really stick to reviewing books by Al Franken?

HT Jeff Battersby

Maggie takes a shine to Wendell

Maggie May is just crazy about Uncle Wendell.

Pool kids!

At poolside are my friends Jacky (a lurker to this blog) and Sandy, plus Mark and Mike (who cleverly fixed the gas line to the pool). In the pool are (from left) Caly, Jennifer, Sarah, and Kimmy. My! They are very good swimmers.

After a hot week, the pool temperature was 92 degrees -- nice and warm! Then Mark and Mike cranked up the pool heater to 95 degrees to test it and WOW it was like a spa vacation.

The pool temperature is surely higher than the air temp tonight. Low is supposed to be 55 and even though my Mac Dashboard Temp Gadget claims the temperature is 70 now....it's wrong. It's easily 60 out there. Chilly! It is July and it is supposed to be hot. It has been hot several days during June and July but it has NOT been unseasonably hot. Hell, it was supposed to rain all week and it didn't rain.

That's because man has never been able to predict the weather or temperature locally day to day, much less globally for the next thousand years. The swells want YOU to live without heat, air conditioning and especially cars. NOW, mind you, the swells will have all of these, because, hell, they are swell and can afford to buy indulgences like "carbon offsets". These are restrictions meant for the rabble.

Just another reminder that Global Warming is a religious belief, not a scientific fact.

John Smeaton. 'Nuff said.

Well... whatever he said: Bravo! This is the Scottish construction worker who thwarted the terrorist attack in London by giving a terrorist the boot.



And then!

High Life

A Question Mark butterfly enjoying the High Life Light.

He was soon joined by a Dragonfly, or as my nephew Brock calls it, The Helicopter Bug. I'm thinking this is the Twelve-spotted Skimmer. Feel free to set me straight.

Red-spotted Purple butterfly

They are common enough. I love their shimmering blue wings. This one was landing on the pool solar cover, no doubt soaking up some moisture.
Pool report:
Water temperature is 83 degrees. Air temperature is 90 degrees, although the ambient temperature is substantially lower, given the strong breeze. Mark is still working like a dog installing the pipes for the gas line to the pool heater. He is going to save us a bundle.

Pool update: Almost ready to party!

Yes Rose! Yes Jaime! The pool is almost ready. You guys are invited to come and laze a day a way.

Here is a photo update. Note landscaping is entirely missing.

Bush is still a coward

Scooter Libby was guilty of two things: Working for Dick Cheney and having an unfashionable nickname.

To pretend, as Bush did in commuting part of Libby's sentence, that there was any wrong doing, at all, of any sort, is cowardly.

George W. Bush can go to hell. And, no doubt, will.

This is in no way like Bill Clinton's false testimony because, as the Monica's cum-stained dress alone showed, Clinton was manifestly a liar. There was no such material evidence indicating that Libby lied to anyone at any time. Zero.