more cute pictures, at least I think they are cute

Well, I was emptying some boxes and found this water fountain that Dave's sister, Diana, gave him a while back. I cleaned it up and put some water in it and turned it on. Immediately the water started coming out of the flower on the side and running down from the top, gurgling and sputtering. Sparky hopped off my shoulder and went to the fountain. He was quite intrigued and was trying to find a way to take a bath in it. That is why he is all fluffed out. What a riot it was to watch him. I had to take pictures because of course he probably won't do it again when anyone else is around.

our child - well, not really, but he is cute

Sparky was so cute tonight. He decided to go over the window via the couch. He then found the cords for the shades and started climbing up them. Once up in the curtains, he peeked out from behind the curtains and then sat on the outside of the curtains for a bit. Then I held the cords out for him to climb/slide down. He did a couple of flips on the cord and then landed on the couch again.

Of course the batteries in my camera decided to run low at that moment and I had to reload before he got off the curtains. So the first few pictures were dark and then the latter ones were too bright. But I did take the time to make a small collage so that the blog is not bombarded with pictures. Of course if someone wants to see more of the cute lovebird, I will be glad to post more, because there are more.

It must be that Sparky is getting more comfortable in his new surroundings. He also wanted to check out the towel closet today. He has a special clucking sound when he is in the closet. Kind of a cluck, cluck, cluck. Sometimes when he is on your shoulder and you go into a dark room or closet, he makes a whistle that Dave taught him.

a good time was had by all

This last weekend Kari, Mark, and Charly came to visit. We didn't really do anything special. Just sat around and watched the grandchild grow. We had good food and watch TV, talked about sports, and other burning issues.















Then great-great grandma, great-grandma, and great-grandpa came over on Sunday.















Father, great-grandfather Les, and grandfather Dave with Charly and Sparky.















Grandma Deb and great-grandma Joanie















Great-great grandmother Helen.

Sister and her husband

Well, I have been trying to post this picture for a while, but there must be a new security thing with Internet Explorer and I kept getting a runtime error. So I tried it with Mozilla and was able to upload the file.

Aren't they a cute couple?

neighbors

Well, the neighbor across the street from us came over to say hi....we think. He is an older gentleman. He came to the door, rang the doorbell, and sat down in the chair on our front porch. This was at dusk one evening.

Dave went to the door and at first did not see anyone, but then noticed that the man was sitting in the chair. So he felt like he had to open the door. I put the bird in the cage and went out with Dave to "chat". Well, it was Bo from across the street. He came to say hi he said. But I am not sure that is exactly what he was trying to tell us.

I cannot detail the conversation, but can give you some of the topics he touched on. His wife died a couple of years ago. He misses her terribly. They were married 50 years.
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Then he tells how she died. She went to get her hair colored. When she came back her head itched. After a day or so, she went to the ER. There, either because of the discomfort or the pain, they gave her morphine. She was allergic to morphine. She died.

His daughter, he says, represents the big-wig doctors at the hospitals. He does not sound fond of his daughter. He says he has bought her a house and a car and she is not grateful.

He wondered if we knew the people who lived in our house. We say no, but that we met their children. He says that Mr. Delvecchio was a nice person. He says that one day Mr. Delvecchio came over to his house, which was unusual, and said good-bye. The next day he shot himself in the backyard, killing himself. His wife found him. (We did not know this.)

Then he says that the lady in the house next to him came over to his house one day, about a year after her husband had passed away. She missed him greatly and was wondering what she should do. Bo says he didn't know what to tell her. She went home and took an overdose of her diabetic medicine. (Yes, she died also.)

Bo says that he misses his wife greatly. His feet hurt him at night and he cannot sleep. He is in pain a lot. Nothing seems to help.

He had a mercedes (he used to work for Ford, had a little money). He wanted to sell the mercedes. A man in a junker car came by one day. Offered him 25,000 dollars cash (Bo was asking for $50,000). Bo said, you got the cash? The man said yes. He went to his car, pulled out a paper bag, dropped the cash (100 dollar bills) on the table. He said he would be back for the car the next day. Bo says how do you know I will not take your money and take off? The man says, I am from Columbia, I will know where you are and will come and get you. (Drug money?)

Now Bo has his boat for sale. He says this was a custom made boat. Someone has purchased it from him.

As Bo got up to leave, I said that I would like to come over sometime and meet his dog and that if he needed help with anything to not to hesitate to ask. He turned and said, this is a one time thing. I will not be back. No, you may not come to meet my dog.

Dave and I were perplexed. Did he come to say "good-bye"? It has been a few days since he came over and he is still around, so I don't think he plans on committing suicide as so many, if his stories are true, have done in this area.

I asked our next door neighbor about Bo. She said she wished that he had not told us about Mr. Delvecchio. She grew up next to the Delvecchios and seemed embarassed that I knew about it. She also doubts that either Mr. Delvecchio or the lady across the street went to his house before they died to say good-bye. She cryptically cautioned me to stay away from Bo. She would not say more.

Bo did say that his house was the first in this area. Then the trailer park was built. Then our house was the first house in the subdivision and used for the model home.

Not sure what to make of it all. But makes for an interesting story.

ghetto birds

At our apartment we liked to watch the birds in the backyard. We put out bird feeders and the birds would come and eat, a few at a time. Never too many. They all seemed to behave themselves well. The squirrels would sometimes be bullies and push the birds away. We saw cardinals, cowbirds, sparrows, wrens, woodpeckers, and sometimes a gold finch.

So when we moved to the house, we wanted to put out the bird feeders and did. Oh, my gosh....what a mistake. We didn't realize that ghetto birds hang out in this area. They swarmed the bird feeders. It was like a sight out of the movie, Birds. I had the bird feeders in the front, and I thought I heard a couple hit the front window. In fact, one of them was lying dead in the garden. It was a horrible sight. The only birds that came to the feeders were the ugly ones. The sparrows, wrens, grackles, and cowbirds. They were pushy and demanding.

I moved the feeders to the back of the house and decided that when all the seed was gone that I would not fill them up again. I hated seeing them act like that.

Then I told our neighbor about them. She said that one year she had tried to re-seed some of her grass and the birds kept coming and eating the grass seed. So she thought if she put some seed in a pie pan it would keep the birds away from her grass. She said they swarmed the pan and that later there was a dead bird lying in the middle of the pan.

Tonight, I saw a swarm of birds hanging out on the street corner. They found a piece of bread and they were all fighting over the piece, stealing it from each other, pecking at each other. I swear we have ghetto birds living in this area. That is probably the only thing I miss about our apartment.

America's Got Talent - jugglers

I missed the first part of America's Got Talent last night, so I was glad I could see the video of the Passing Zone. I thought they were good the first time, but the judges didn't like them. This time, I thought they were entertaining.

http://www.nbc.com/Americas_Got_Talent/video/index.shtml

Too bad this show isn't about real talent anymore, though. It is like watching a train wreck. And, boy, do we like watching train wrecks. Don't we?

real car pool

http://www.centralohio.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/BE/20060802/NEWS01/608020330/1002&template=BE

I thought I had heard of everything, but I heard this on the news and wanted to find the picture of it, but only found an article. A man decided that he didn't have enough money to fix the air conditioner and his kids wanted to go to the beach. But with gas being so expensive, he decided on a more economical way. He bought a plastic tarp and put it in the bed of his pickup truck and filled it with water.

What a clever idea. I will see if I can find a picture.

sweltering heat

One more day of the heat. How is everyone else holding up?

Me, I am thankful for air conditioning. Although this poor air conditioner is having a hard time keeping up. It is 80 degrees in the house now. I am thinking of moving my computer to the basement. Actually, Dave and I should have bought an air mattress yesterday and slept downstairs. Dave didn't sleep well. Me, I had a small fan on me. Not sure why Dave didn't want the fan. Maybe I just forgot to ask him.

We also were lucky that our electricity hasn't gone out yet. The lights went out for a second last night. Later we heard that quite a few people just south of us were without electricity. I guess they were without it all night. Then their's came back on and more people lost their electricity on the other side of the road (Warren).

I have been keeping all the blinds closed, using as little electricity as possible (although I have a fan running today in my office).

Dave works at DTE and they sent an email around to everyone regarding "internal load reduction". What that means is that DTE would be turning off half of their lights and not running some of the elevators and other energy conserving measures. Dave's office is in the bowels of the building and they had half their lights off. Then later in the afternoon, the rest of the lights were turned off. Only the computer screen and the lights at their desk worked. He said that if they were working with all the lights off again today he would come home. He doesn't do well in low light. He thinks DTE got something mixed up, because another department had all their lights on. Someone threw the wrong switch or something. Or maybe it was on purpose, as his department is a contracted service and not DTE employees.

Dave's internet radio program - 7/31/06

Monday, Dave and Al conducted their first internet radio program at the MAC Media Days. Three hour program. They did well. Players and coaches stopped by the table to be interviewed.

I thought they did very well. They only had three short breaks. Otherwise, they talked for three hours. Windbags. Actually, they were awesome.

I was the "producer", making sure the cell phone didn't lose its connection, communicating with Broadcast Monsters as to when the breaks would be, making sure Dave and Al were on time for the breaks, getting the guests to sit down and put the headphones on, wiping off the sweat from the ear pieces on the headphones, keeping track of who the guests were. It was fun.

Listen if you would like here

The night before, Dave was voted the new MAC News Media Association president. This is something that he wanted, but in the past the "rules" (and I use the term loosely and you will find out why in a minute), was that only members who were full time print journalists were eligible for this position. Well, the full-time print journalists finally realized that the membership was declining and that in this electronic world, they needed to revamp the association. The three past presidents and some other members are going to be a committee to back up Dave (Dave was the only one who expressed an interest in the position and is experienced in electronic media), helping him get the membership and rules available via the internet, getting deadlines set and enforcing them for voting for awards and contests, etc. Sounds like I will be also backing Dave up in this endeavor. (People were calling me "the first lady". yuk, yuk, yuk, very funny.)

But it is nice that all Dave's hard work is paying off. People are actually starting know who we are and have actually visited our website. Some journalists use Dave's website as a resource. That is our wish, that we slowly build up respect for what Dave does on the website. Maybe this year we can actually start getting some sponsors to pay for the costs associated with the website and radio program.