The End
O.K. So I want to invite everyone to the second annual M-O-M / T-A-T (Machine -O-Mania / Touch-A-Truck) coming up--rain or shine-- on Sunday, May 22 from 10:00 to 2:00 at J. A. Garfield H.S.; admission: adults--$5.00, kids--$3.00. It’s a fund-raiser for the Garfield Academic Challenge team, the QuizMasters, and gives kids of all ages a chance to see...
Good Grief
If it isn’t one thing, it’s another…how’s that for original thought? I went to my computer, the desktop, which is one of the newer dinosaurs, as compared to the iPads and tablets and such, intending to turn it on and get started on my weekly offering of deathless prose and witty repartee before journeying off into the wilds of assembled...
Time Flies
My, how Time flies! Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana. So, if the line above is an example of a “garden path sentence” or syntactic ambiguity or a pun, a double entendre or an antanaclasis—well, it would be, wouldn’t it—possibly by that great linguist, Groucho Marx, these recent weeks have been an example of pandemonium! (from the...
Forsooth!
The Settlers “Ye Old” State Renaissance Faire has shuffled off into history once again, leaving bags of gold for the Middlefield “Shop With a Cop” program and the “Middlefield Cares! Food Cupboard”. Generous supporters included the Nauvoo Family Market, White House Chocolates, Alley’s Grille, Mary Yoder’s Kitchen, Zeppe’s Pizzaria, EarthLight Art Source, Mangia! Mangia! and The Ghosts of Burton...
Law & Government
Many friends and neighbors are talking about drilling leases. I have had several clients bring them to me and have had dozens of people ask in general terms what they should say. My best advice is to get an attorney and ask him or her to review your lease. Even before you speak to an attorney, however, here are...
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...
Going, Going, Gone!
Well, going to an auction is often an adventure. This last one, though, was more than I had bargained for. First of all, it was being held at what must, surely, have been the last--or nearly the last--farm in Aurora. I saw a sign --kind of faded--that seemed to indicate that this was once the location of a working sugarbush...
No Computer! Received via email — Thank Goodness!
So…the lightning storm took out the computers—desk top, laptop, probably the remote control for the alarm clock, for all I know—and the Villager deadline is looming on Monday. What to do? What to do? The schedule is filling up : The computer guru who is working on the problem will be arriving with his bag of magic spells and incantations,(...
How’s your Easter Bonnet look with snow on it?
Good Grief! Polar Fleece and long johns, peeps and bunnies with frost on their little noses…er…beaks…er …whatever. Deep frozen chocolate eggs and jelly beans, rock-hard marshmallow anything. How crazy has this season been so far? This is Spring from the old days, the ones where hardy ancestors walked two miles to school every day, uphill both ways, rain or...
Caution ~ Auction!
The Kiko folks have taken to putting up signs of this nature along roads where one of their commercial activities is going on, and with good reason. These secondary highways are plenty full of just plain drivers, let alone the avid auction-goers looking for a place to park--without sliding into a ditch or quicksand (as I found to my...
Choosing The Right Caregiver
As medical science continues to find ways to help Americans live longer, it also requires us to examine some of the challenges of people living longer lives. The biggest, from both an emotional and financial point of view, may be providing ongoing care for a disabled adult. By the numbers According to the Family Caregivers Alliance National Center on Caregiving, 34...
Party On!
So...there’s this big birthday party at my house, see...first big event here since Christmas, see...significant birthday, see. Oy, oy, oy...such a party!So, the party is to be utilizing the park-like backyard and the covered porch and the custom deck and the flagstone patio and the flood-lit arbor (I told the local photographer, Ronda Brady, that the place was “wedding...
The machines are out to get me!
Does a computer count as a machine or a device? Matters not, they’re after me. So I’m sitting at the computer typing away at my much-anticipated column for this week, when, out of the blue—or whatever color cyberspace is nowadays—the screen went black (that color I know) and totally unresponsive. I wiggled and jiggled various plugs and...
Going Batty!
So...my question is, if bats (Myotis lucifugus--lucifugus means “flees the light”) are supposed to have such a great echolocation system in their little heads where they emit sounds and then decipher the rebounding sound waves to avoid obstacles and catch their dinner, why can’t they figure out the fact that my front door is wide open so they can...
Notes From The Vineyard
It’s been a good year, actually, let me rephrase that – it’s been a GREAT year! Sure, this year has definitely put up a good fight for us... we’ve survived some bad economic times, we’ve dealt with a loss of crop from a late freeze last year, we’ve dealt with losses of loved ones this year but as I...
Follow the Signs: Part III
This is part three of the story about running down a Model “A” Ford lead and purchasing the car. Jerry and I most often look for hobby cars that were never finished or cars that have sat in the garage for years and years, forgotten until a new owner or relative comes on the scene and wants to clean things...
Spring Thaw?
Was that it? The Spring Thaw...New Year’s Day was the whole thing? When the subject comes up for the rest of the season we get to say, “ Been there. Done that.” Doesn’t seem right somehow. We ought to get a chance to get out and wash cars or something; mine is middling filthy--salt-splash and mud-luscious décor bumper to...
This is Getting OLD
Don’t you just every so often look out the window or open the door or read the weather forecast and feel like the little boy on the internet the other day? The little guy must have been about four years old, bundled up to a fare-thee-well in mittens, hat , snowsuit and he was out shoveling snow, clearing the...
Fair Season
So here we are in the Fun Season...the Fair Season. Everyone comes up with a reason to promote hot grease and sno cones and enough sugar to sink the island of Puerto Rico. On any given weekend one can drive across the Buckeye State and catch a whiff of the abovementioned gastronomic outrages at nearly every turn....
That was a fine old time!
That was a fine old time! Well, if you weren’t trying to get anyplace in a hurry, that is. The annual Garrettsville community garage/yard/porch sale seems to have attracted quite a crowd for most of the weekend. Some of the narrower thoroughfares were a challenge for those just trying to get into their own driveways. Down Park Ave. some savvy...
Welllllll…..
No flies on us last weekend. The place was hoppin’. Basketball games all over the place; Geauga Theater opened its holiday run of “It’s A Wonderful Life”; Santa and his clones--you know they’re all the REAL Santa wherever they are--were breakfasting and eating pizza and just chatting with the younger set at several venues ‘round and about; the Home...
‘Tis the Season?!
“Tis the season! For just about everything, I guess. The other day, a container of blueberries and two squash magically appeared on my front porch sitting on some literature from the Jehovah’s Witnesses or some other well-meaning group and next to the comic strip umbrella from the AB-J. Tasty stuff! Then the model neighbors on the corner (You know who...
Notes From The Vineyard
2011... wow – I can’t believe it! Where did 2010 go? Oh well... now that 2011 is here, it is time for me to get started on all of my exciting plans for this year and not dwell on last year. I know that 2011 is going to fly by just as fast so I am ready to start...
We’re off to see the Wizard… er the Mouse!
Heading off to the Magic Kingdom, or whatever they call it in Florida. I really don’t know, having never been there. I’m hoping that enjoyment of the place will not be based solely on “riding the rides”, because I have not been on one of those things since godknowswhen, some time back when I was young and foolish (Only...
File Under…
File under “Sorry we missed this one.” New Years celebrators in London this New Year’s Eve were treated to an interesting array of flavored fun-type festivity-promoters. Indeed! There was banana-flavored confetti, there were orange-scented bubbles, peach-flavored snow, for starters. Mercy! So who first checked out this stuff? Somebody just stuck out his/her tongue and lapped up a healthy (?)...
It’s Navy Week
Avast, me hearties…and a “Yankee Doodle” doo to you! It’s Navy Week. It’s Navy Week and it’s being observed in Boston by the first sailing of the oldest commissioned ship in the U.S. Navy, the U.S.S. Constitution--“Old Ironsides”-- since 1997 (It’s been tugged to a few places but this is the first time under its own sail power since its...
Memories of Christmas Past
Isn’t it funny how a smell can instantly take you back to a time and a place where you first experienced it? For me, when I smell crayons, I’m six years old, and back-to-school supply shopping. My mom would take me and my platoon of siblings to Kmart, long before the invention of the world’s largest retailer. There we’d...
Law & Government
The primary election is over. Except for the Presidential campaign, some of you may not have known there were elections. Let’s be honest. Many of us realized for the first time at the poll that we had LOTS of decisions to make. For those of us who voted a partisan ballot, whether Democrat or Republican, we voted for several...
Election Red, White and Blues
Can we please have a rest until closer to November? Good Grief! It got so that I was seriously thinking of just letting the phone ring--I never do that--until the machine picked up or the caller got tired--no caller I.D. here, Chatty Kathy, no screening of calls. In the end, I did not do that; I’m always worried that I...
I’m Doomed
I know; this may not be news to some but I was sort of hoping to avoid a swift descent to the fiery furnace for another decade or so, maybe more if I kept moving and eating enough dark chocolate. This assessment has been confirmed by finding in yet another slick magazine in my too-wide assortment of subscription reading material(...
