Lazy Holiday Stuff

Can it really be September 1st? Labor Day! Yea! To us in Cape May County, that means just one thing. They are going home! Yes, I know, "They" are a large part of our economic life. But to most locals, it is a happy day when at least all of them who have children returning to school, are leaving. The beaches are ours again!

I see that my counter for US Deaths in Iraq has gone missing again. Widgets are funny things. No doubt it will be back soon, if it isn't already when you read this. And sometimes when the site is under maintenance, it gives the wrong total. I now have another widget - a Schmap Widget. Found it Sunday, and just thought I'd try it out for fun. It, too, comes and goes. Guess it's just the nature of widgets.

I found some hummingbird facts, new to me. The hummers have been very busy at my feeder lately. According to the people at Hilton Pond Center for Natural History, down in South Carolina, the rubythroats that we see here fly down to central Mexico or Central America for the winter. I always thought they went farther than that. They say that recently some only go to south Florida or east Texas, which could be a result of global warming. I learned that they don't suck up the nectar we give them. They lap it like a cat or dog with their little forked tongues. And I learned that this time of year, you can't really tell the males from the females like you can in the spring, because the young males look like the females until they mature. What I already knew was that when we make nectar for the feeders, we shouldn't put red coloring into it, and that the proper ratio for the nectar is one part sugar to four parts water. Oh yes - and they say you can leave the feeders up as long as you like, because you might attract a few strays right into October. They don't really depend on our feeders though, because they eat lots of insects as well.

The Democratic Convention is over. I must say, I was pretty impressed. I thought there was a minimum of nonsense (Well, everything is relative.), and some of the speeches were pretty great: Kucinich, Gore, and Obama himself. A few that the media made much of didn't impress me much. Mr. McCain surprised us all with his choice, didn't he? I'm not sure if she will be good or bad - for him or for his opponent. Guess that remains to be seen.

140 more days.

I'm ready for cooler weather now. Actually, I was ready for it a long time ago, but now I'm really looking forward to it. I can't take the heat any more. It lays me low. Can't go anywhere much nor accomplish anything it seems. Please give me some nice, crisp, cool air.

Ok. Enough of this. Are you ready for a silly chicken joke?


























Well, I scheduled it for 9/1 early morning - honest. But it keeps publishing on 8/31. Oh well......
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OK. Another mystery. - I'm adding this about a half hour after I typed the above.

Since my counter is missing, I went to the iCasualties site where I've been getting my info for months now. Instead, I got a big red warning saying that it was an "Attack Site" (although they have no record of any kind of problem with it). Then I went to the site I got the counter from, and got an entirely different page than I had ever seen before, but no casualty information.

I contacted my son-in-law, who knows all about the workings of computers. He had a reasonable probable answer. Don't think I'm going to discuss it here at present, but the information will probably be back in a day or two. We'll see.