Booming Banter

The Memorial Day weekend has arrived at last. Schools out for Summer as Alice Cooper once said and there are two brothers very happy about that!

We are now set to do all things that spell summer. The fridge is full of sweet corn, brats to make dogs, burgers and all sorts of salad stuff.

The seasons first watermelon was  brought home today along with some peaches and mangos so it will also be a fruity fiesta too.

The local water park Zoombezi Bay opened today and our pool opens tomorrow.

My friend Laura and her daughter are coming to see us so we’ll have some good girl times tanning too!

This time of year is the very best. The whole summer lies ahead. We want to feel warm and lie in the sun and swim.

We just hope those scary storms stay well away

Blessing # 346 – Favorite Weekend

The bench is still a work in progress. Over the weekend some rope was purchased and some decorative braid to make the seat.

Monday a first attempt was made to weave these together into a masterpiece.

It was robust but ugly.

The work was a step in the right direction but that rope hurts. It gave me two huge blisters on the old fingers.

Pain resulted in a brainwave though. Could both additional strength and more appeal be achieved by crocheting the rope into a chain?

Yesterday the fingers were given a rest but today a second attempt to make the seat started.

Well this turned out to be a disaster.  Half way through it was deemed appropriate to test the strength of the seat. It was not nearly as strong as Monday’s effort and I went straight through it. That really hurt!

Next up came the weaving of the braid into the rope. You would think with a grandmother and mother both weavers by trade it would be in the blood. It’s not.

After multiple attempts the only way to describe the work was weak and woeful!

So after three hours plodding out came all the pins and we are back to square one.

Saving grace of today got to use my little sander and paint the bench again. Lesson learned anything requiring this level of patience and attention is not for me.

Blessing #345 – Mistakes We Learn From

Last week at our Tuesday Morning Group we came across an intriguing question.

In our study of Saint Peter we had come to the point in the Gospel of John where Jesus appears to Peter and several other disciples after the resurrection.

The disciples had been out fishing during the night and caught nothing. When Jesus appeared to them at dawn he asks them to cast their nets again and low and behold this time they catch a whole load of fish.

The question we encountered was why did John record the exact number of fish that were caught, specifically 153.

Had I read this alone I doubt I’d have given it a second thought but because we talked about it as a group it took on a whole new significance.

The number bugged me. Was there anything special about it? After a little playing around I found it could be divided by 3, 9, and 17. As 9 is a the square of 3 and both 3 and 17 are prime numbers it already took on a different aura.

A google search showed even more  intriguing things most of which I don’t understand. Two stand out though it is the 17th triangular number and also surprise surprise The Measure of the FISH!

This called for an email to my mathematical genius friend Michael to see if he agreed that this was a special number.

Happily he did and better than that he revealed the most interesting thing of all.

If 153 is turned into a binary number it becomes 10011001 that reads the same in both directions,  a Palindrome and a reminder that God is everlasting and unchanging.

Blessing # 344 – Puzzle Solving

The mint is doing a good job keeping the deer away from the other plants and is growing like a weed.

Time already for the first harvest and for the chef to get busy blending.

With the finesse of a maestro Krishna has transformed an armful of the green stuff into what can only be described as heaven.

Subtly blended with chilies and cilantro plus who knows what else we now have a load of chutney that will keep us hot and spicy for weeks to come.

Just a dab of this potion is sure to transform the blandest bite into a rip roaring riot.

It’s such a vibrant green it must be good for the body as well as the soul. If only we could get it to burn a few calories that would be magic!

Blessing # 343 – Versatile Veggie

The furball was awake at the first streak of dawn.

With his Cushing he is thirsty all the time. Now, with the beautiful warm weather finally here he is absolutely desperate for his breakfast bevy. He got a few ice cubes tossed in this morning as well.

Of course the consequence of the rapid intake is a rapid output so off he went to do the necessary.

The moon was really big and bright but it is so hard to get a good picture of it. Why is that?

Since it was cooler outside than in Dibs and I decided to toss the windows open and chill together he will his iced water and me with my coffee.

In the still of the morning we got to listen together to the birds chatter. They really did have a lot to say today.

Reminded me of the first time I ever heard a cuckoo. I was just four and had broken my wrist playing. I had to go to hospital a few times to get it checked on and on one of these trip with my Mom we heard the cuckoo.

We stopped to listen and Mom told me a sweet little rhyme that came back in my mind today just to let me know she hasn’t flown too far!

The cuckoo come in April 

She sings her song in May

She whistles her tune at the end of June

And then she flies away

Blessing # 342 – Early Call

Was super psyched up this morning as one of our favorite annual rummage sales was taking place.

So after Zumba and a quick trot with Dibley, Krishna and I hit the road convinced we were going to find many treasures.

The sale is so popular that it had been moved this year out of the Church halls to the county fair grounds. That gives you some idea of the scale of this event.

Along with hundreds of others we plodded through the field to the huge barn where the treasures were buried.

Everything was well organized and there was a lot to rummage through. Now absolutely convinced this was going to be a bank buster!

Well after a good hour and a half of searching all we’d found was a little dish no bigger than a mango!

Thanks to the find we’ve learned though that Senegal is a producer of fine China.

Must be fairly rare too as we can only find one other like it for sale online.

It has a number two marked on the bottom. What does that mean? Is it a second? Or part of a pair? Maybe one of you might be able to tell us some more about this.

Anyway it’s sweet and cute and may just get to stay here to be admired and cooed over for a while.

Blessing # 341 – Trinket Trove

Columbus is a fine city with great sports teams, entertainment, restaurants and parks.

The airport has good infrastructure and generally runs efficiently. There are connections to Mexico, the Caribbean and Canada as well as most major cities in the USA. What the city lacks though is any direct flight to Europe.

For years there has been talk of this coming and I’ve always dreamed Aer Lingus would step up and offer the must desired connection to Dublin.

So far no good!

Today though I thought I was dreaming when the morning news covered a direct flight to Edinburgh by of all things an airline run by a beer company.

Seems the BREWDOG company already ran a charter to London in the spring and this is a follow up to the initial success. How did I miss that?

A bit of research turned up that the flight is available to Brewdog “Equity Punks” aka investors for the sum of $1780 for return flight and five nights at the Brewdog HQ in Ellon Scotland to visit whisky distilleries.

A special brew will be served in the flight too along with Brewdog Blankets for a snooze when you’ve had a few!

So why is Columbus getting this special treatment. Seems our brewery district is the US HQ for Brewdog. 

Know what I’ll be serving with the hotdogs and burgers this summer. Might buy a share or two too! Next stop Bushmills?

Blessing # 340 – Charter Cheers

There was nothing good on TV last night and only so many HGTV makeovers or My 600lb Life shows that a body can take.

So thinking of something fun and wholesome to watch the decision was taken to find a free on demand classic movie. We hit on Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.

Must be at least forty years since I last saw it and Krishna never had. Well what a surprise it was.

Of course I remembered Howard Keel and all the singing and dancing, the men in their long johns and the remarkable matching of the multicolored shirts the brothers wore with the girls dresses!

What I completely forgot though was the part of the story where the Brides were forcibly taken from their homes against their will to live in an isolated cabin with seven men!

Of course all was well in the end. The girls fell in love with the boys and danced and married them! BUT those girls were kidnapped!

It may have been set in the Wild West but under no circumstances would we tolerate this plot today. Or would we?

Just makes you wonder how many classic family movies are out there that reinforce stereotyping. Can you think of any?

Blessing # 339 – Changing Views

Back in the 1960s we had a TV program in the UK called The Good Old Days. My Dad liked to watch it but I absolutely hated it. People dressed like Victorian Londoners and the artist performed music-hall skits. Those days may have been good but only if you looked at them with romantic rose tinted glasses.

This came to mind today as we passed a beautiful old Church about a mile from our home. It’s as old as the town itself with the first building dating from 1810.

Last Friday when we were coming back from the shops we saw a whole class of little kids stomping around the graveyard. It was cold and wet and miserable.

Today we saw another group doing the same thing under beautiful blue skies.

Just the luck of the draw on the weather but will the kids remember their field trip differently if they were frozen or roasting?

Aaron did this same trip as a fourth grader just as all the local elementary school kids do.

They  get to dress in keeping with the era. Aaron’s nineteenth century gear if truth be told was a Jack Sparrow costume pretending to be George Washington! I’d bought it at the Disney Store on a business trip to NYNY some time before and it served for Christmas and several Halloweens. Man that was such a good investment!

Anyway, today when we saw the kids waltzing around the Church yard Krishna and I talked about all they learn on the trip.

They’d learn about the work people did and maybe do a little bit too!

They’d face the facts that back in the day children were lucky if they went to school for a few years. They’d find that the average life span was much shorter and that infections we treat as nothing today could kill.

They’d also learn the names that were common in the area at the time and where the founders of the district came from. They’d find out what the people ate that they’d hunt and grow a lot of their own food and fish in the river and draw water from a well.

Might be fun to dress up and pretend but good lesson learned that we have so much to be thankful for today.

Blessing # 338 – Things we take for granted

This afternoon I said to Krishna that I should have stayed in bed today. There was just one calamity after another.

The most significant was that both the front and back yard hoses were left out all winter and have now ceased to the tap. I broke the back yard one trying to get it off. So instead of power hosing all the patio and porch I had to scrub it.

While Krishna was trying to work a miracle on the hose with WD40 I thought I’d take down the screens on the back windows and clean that stupid bit between screen and window.

How I wish I’d left it alone. What a mess and what a huge job to clean up years of grime that had accumulated over years. Note please that it is now CLEAN!

Throughout all this I kept thinking of a post from my friend Jackie this morning. She asked how many of us remembered backing books at school. Oh yes for sure I do and what secrets that backing could hide.

One dear friend from school days, who won’t be named, gave innocent names to books that contained quite lurid subjects. If I recall correctly Lady Chatterly’s Lover was disguised as Kidnapped.

Just like the gunk between the screen and window today no teacher would ever have been the wiser to the content of that book unless someone removed the cover. No one ever did but we had some biology lessons in English class!

Makes you wonder just how many things are hiding beneath the surface!

Blessing # 337 – Undercover