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Return of the Prodigal Cat

I started with a dog, you know. Her name was Samantha, which rapidly became “Sammie”; her mother was a purebred apricot poodle   and her father was a traveling salesman of some sort...whatever he was selling, she bought it.  Anyway, Sammie was a nice dog, a good dog...and not much more discreet than her mama—had three puppies under the couch...

Horticultural Report—Summer, 2017

Well, the ferns and the jack-in-the-pulpits were riotous this year and some even had to have some of their fronds evicted from the cozy jungle which they had created. There was green stuff everywhere! And moss!? The water feature/rock with a modest up-spout of gurgling liquid is burbling away but the water is encouraging a bumper growth of really...

Coming This Summer….

So, vacation time is here.  What to do?  Where to go?  How about museums--educational, right?--of culinary phenomena? You could start with the National Mustard Museum( formerly the Mt. Horeb Mustard Museum) in Middleton, Wisconsin, found on the National Registry of Hysterical Places, perched atop the Condimental Divide.  It features over five thousand various mustard-filled items from some sixty countries and...

National Holiday Alert!

We’ve missed half of the month but the BIG DAY is coming right up, so get ready for a celebratory observance of…National Ice Cream Day ! Would I lie about a thing like that? It seems that, actually, the entire month of July is National Ice Cream Month…and…the third Sunday in July is designated as National Ice Cream Day!...

Ya Shoulda Been There!

Ya shoulda been there! “There”, in this instance was actually two places where it was all happenin’ last week.  Not genuinely related places, really, but there were similarities, fo’ sure. The first one was the business-to-business open house at Facet Salon and Day Spa on Tuesday, August 6.  The parking lot at the TLC was hopping and they weren’t all in...

Comet ISON

AND…just in case you’ve been obsessing about the Comet ISON(International Scientific Optical Network—used by some Russian astronomers to first locate this fast-moving wonder) the one thing that most astronomers actually agree on is that it is highly unlikely to slam into the Earth, smashing us all to smithereens…that and the fact that nobody around right now is likely to...

And We’re Off!

Most recent R-C bulletin claims that the Old Farmer’s Almanac is predicting a very cold winter for much of the country. I have not got my 2022 copy yet, but it’s on my list to check out. As usual, there will, no doubt, be variations by specific locales, but I’m getting my woolies in order, just in case. Could...

Oddness Out There!!

Every so often something worth paying attention to pops up on my computer screen. This does NOT include the stuff in the SPAM folder from the vast number of outfits who seem to think that I am some dude named “Ivan” who can’t spell his own name; those people keep sending me info about “male enhancement”, directions to “new...

Busy Week! Heckuva weekend.

Lots of it was just stuff. You know, things that have to be done but really not planned for except in a sort of fly-by-night fashion--medical events, grocery shopping, yard work-- that kind of stuff. Then there were actually scheduled activities --lunch with the Nelson Literary Musical Club (All decked out in green they were; I wasn’t), choir practice,...

It’s Your Right … Exercise IT!

I’ve been serving as a poll worker for about seven years now and it always makes me proud to see a former student come in to cast a ballot; wish that I’d see even more of them. It used to be a regular thing in the seventh grade to take my classes down to the Precinct A polls on High Street to observe the voting; the poll workers were always helpful and welcoming and happy to explain the procedures to the kids. Pity we can’t do stuff like that anymore.

101 Coming Up Next!

Well, so we celebrated my mother’s birthday #100 in fine style, with a drive-by/ drive-through occasion on June 7 (Her birthday really was on May 21, but you know how things have been.). Most of the in-laws and out-laws were in attendance, although a healthy contingent of the family was off planting one thing or another, since it was...

My Kind of Month

October is my kind of month.  It’s interesting. The harvest is winding down; those shocks of corn so prized by decorators are actually passe’ .  Nobody uses them any more, unless they’re Amish, of course.  Corn pickers are where it’s at as far as harvesting corn is concerned.  They’re also one of the reasons why farming has always ranked as...

Hoppin’ Down the Bunny Trail

Most interesting Easter in a while. Got an invitation to brunch which I had to turn down because it landed smack in the middle of church, which ran long on account of technical difficulties to start with, then just because it’s Easter, involving all sorts of “pomp & circumstance” and majorly long hymns of celebration (Charles Wesley never could...

PARTY CENTRAL!!!

You know, the saying goes, “Be careful what you wish for.”  Ain’t it the truth! The Villager took a brief hiatus on the Fourth, giving staff and media stars (That’s you, Benjamin.) a little time to set off and/or observe firecrackers and recoup after all of the frenetic activity of the SummerFest—BEST EVER—and come out swinging for the rest of...

Missing The Chicks

I miss the chicks. Nothing to do with the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue; that’s got more hot chicks than a KFC convention. No, I mean real, live “Peeps”, the little , fluffy yellow (and sometimes other miscellaneous colors, especially if they’re just on the edge of getting real feathers) fuzzies that used to occasionally appear under the auspices of Stark...

Garden Fun…

So… I’m out playing caretaker here at the Manse and I’m deciding that what we’re running at this location is the animal equivalent of the food court at the mall when a whole cohort of teenagers--boys mostly--shows up to attempt to fill their hollow legs. The “water feature” is bubbling its little heart out and any creature passing by can...

Old Farmers Almanac

I love the Old Farmer’s Almanac…I don’t necessarily take it as gospel but I do love the miscellany of STUFF that is in it.  It is a veritable FOUNT of KNOWLEDGE of various off-beat and semi-useful pieces of information.  I say semi-useful because some of the wisdom that this publication imparts, I would rather not have to actually have...

Back in the Saddle

“Back in the Saddle Again…Out where a friend is a friend…Where the longhorn cattle feed on the lowly Jimson weed…We’re back in the saddle again….” (Was that Gene Autry?.  Gene had a sidekick named Pat Butram,  I think, who always says said his name so that it sounded more like “artery”. Made him sound like a medical condition. I...

NOT One Of My Better Weeks

Not one of my better weeks; suffice it to say that I’m now looking for a new car and not a rehab facility.  That’s the good part.  Time to move on. The rollercoaster begins again : school is starting!  Whooeee!  Anyone got an office/coffee klatsch/bowling league/civic group/ neighborhood betting pool going on whether the newly -added-on-to Garfield Elementary School will...

Are We There Yet?

And just where are we going again? By the time that we get there, I’m going to be so out of shape that someone will have to haul me over the line in a wheelbarrow. When the Y closed, it so disrupted my self-designed fitness routine that all of my muscles have declared a national holiday and I’ve had...

News Flash!

Here’s a news flash : Tbilisi, Georgia (the former Soviet Union region, not the Peachtree State): “Sausage-wielding extremists” (There’s a phrase to ponder, right?) invade a vegan café –Café Kiwi--during a film festival in the neighborhood and proceeded to fling  meat and fish at the café patrons.  The ten to fifteen men, wearing sausages around their necks and waving skewers...

Spam

Just in time for the summer cooking-out season, the Hormel company has now fessed up to producing ten--that’s 10 different kinds of SPAM.  Well, who’d a thunk it?  Yes! You have your regular old Spam ( which the company likes to call “Spam Classic”).  You have Spam Lite, Spam ”with real Hormel Bacon”, Spam with cheese, hot & spicy Spam...

Bikes Away

Well, the eighth annual Road Apple Roubaix was a smash ! Anyone coming into town on Saturday could testify to the popularity of the event, just by  observing the  parking situation. The nearest comparison might be a really big night at SummerFest or the last big drawing of the long-running Queen of Hearts raffle.  Cars, trucks, vans, SUV’s–any vehicle...

Cats and Bats

One more mystery solved...sort of. The questions here are :”Where have the bats come from?” and “Where do the bats go when they’re not swooping around inside the house?”  I mean,  they’re not hanging from the drapery rods waiting for the sun to go down or anything, at least I haven’t spotted them, though given the state of my expertise...

O Spring

O.K., it’s Thursday, this must be springtime. Holy cow!  What a wild one!  Haul out the long johns, Maudie, the daffodils done froze!  And what does the Old Farmer say?  Not much.  But you’ll be happy to know that on April  18, 2009, Aaron Caissie set a world record by balancing 17 spoons on his face.  Now there is a...

Another year, another centennial.

The Almanac pages that the papers often have are, at times, sort of desperate to come up with some event having happened on a particular date that is significant enough to mention at all. They have to resort to mentioning obscure baseball players hitting their first home run or the birthday of Foghorn J. Leghorn (from the...

Skin In The Game

Ever since  that piece about plastic surgery and the aestheticians who keep having the gall to send me email about how they can get me a “Facelift Miracle”(as if I needed such a thing), I’ve been noticing a number of items in the news about occasions where the focus is on skin and the display thereof. The first one to...

All You Need is Love

Well, not exactly. The Beatles got a lot of things right but this sentiment is not really gonna cut it when it comes to public works…like, say, the Portage County Park District. Saturday, April 22, was the annual Portage Park District Foundation recognition benefit dinner event, giving credit where credit was due to many of the folks (not all, mind...

Party On!

Well, yes, it IS that season of the year when all sorts of disparate groups have their annual Christmas parties.  The barrage has begun already. Hiram College hosted a seasonal soiree last week for Friends (That’s Friends, with a capital F), faculty types and festive individuals of all stripes, featuring a number of  tours de force by AVI, their supplier...

One Down!

Whew!  Do you remember a TV program from ages ago called TW3 (That Was The Week That Was)? Well, tweak it just a little to That Was the Week-end That Was and you’ve got November 4th, 5th , 6th and 7th , 2010 at this establishment.  It was --literally and figuratively--really cool! Thursday, the evening candlelight tour opening date of...

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