Odd Afternoon

Today has had its odd moments. And the day started off very much like other Saturdays: mowing the grass.

After lunch I took a new book out to the swing on the front porch. It is "The Calder Game" which is the 3rd art mystery book by Blue Balliett. I read a lot of children's books. I like to know what my kids are reading. I've read the Harry Potter books, the Series of Unfortunate Events books, the Twilight series, the Spiderwick Chronicles (except for the 5th one, which I can't find)...

...where was I? Right, reading on the front porch swing. Well, I dozed off and decided to lay down on the swing. I didn't sleep very long before the telephone rang just inside my bedroom window, waking me up. Someone else answered the phone, so I didn't get up. Laying there, I picked up the book, holding it straight up over my head to read. I had heard a humming bird several times while I was outside. Suddenly, the hummer was right there at my hand, hovering over my head. I guess he was attracted by the red book. He was an inch from my hand! If I hadn't twitched, he might have landed on a finger.

I went back to reading the book. It has been so nice outside the past few days: wearable temperatures and very slight breezes. In a few minutes I noticed the wind picking up, WAY UP. The little pecan tree at the end of the porch was waving left but the one 10 yards away was leaning right. I looked across the road and those trees weren't moving at all. I thought maybe I had fallen back to sleep and was dreaming when L walked out the front door and one of the plants almost fell on her. She had a shocked look on her face. "Is a tornado fixing to start?" she asked. We watched as leaves and grass swirled in the yard and moved west toward our neighbor's carport, right past Mr. H's new weather station. We ran inside to check the reading. It had just recorded a 46 mph wind gust! How cool was that!!

Then it was time to take L to a spend the night birthday party. I knew where the road was, but hadn't been there in several years. There were balloons attached to stop signs and I just followed them: TO THE WRONG PARTY!! But the nice thing about living in a small rural area is that you know lots of people. The party I pulled up to was a family reunion of some church folks I knew. In fact, M had gone to a birthday party yesterday afternoon for one of the girls on the porch (not at that house, though, because I would have noticed being at the same house.) Mr. Mike pointed me in the right direction and we made it to the right party just a few minutes late. However, we forgot the sleeping bag in the car when I was distracted by hunting for Sunday shoes, so I'll drop it off a bit later when Mr. H and I go to a friend's house for them to plan their bike trip.

It turns out that 4 or 5 of the girls at the party will be picked up at 9 in the morning to go to church, our church. The mom of the little girl whose party it was remarked that she needed to check out this church. I hope she comes. It probably won't be tomorrow, because she'll still have quite a few girls at the house, but maybe the next week. I'm proud of all those parents that made a point of letting their daughters spend the night on a Saturday night on the condition that they be ready for church the next morning.

I Love My Job

Today was mentoring day at AES. I asked Mark what the assignment of the day was and he told me to look on his desk. I found the sheets and started reading over them. One of the large group activities included paper hopping frogs. I went online and found several versions of origami hopping frogs and folded them up.

He came by later and was surprised that I knew how to make them. (He should have known better.) We didn't use them today, but probably will in 2 weeks. Next week, the school will be on fall break on Thursday, so we won't get to go up there.

By the end of the day, my desk had accumulated quite a collection.

Taste This: It's Nasty!

Earlier today, L and her little buddy from down the street both came running into the house wearing YUCK faces and making a bee-line for the sink. They leaned over the sink and squirted the spray nozzle into their mouths and did a lot of spitting.

I asked them what they had gotten into their mouths and they said they had tried a persimmon off the tree in our yard and it wasn't ripe.

Let's look a little more closely at this story: "a persimmon" and "it" wasn't ripe. Sounds like a single piece of fruit to me. Did they break it in half and try it simultaneously? Or was it more like, "Eeeewww!! Taste this! It's NASTY!!"
"Ooooo, really? OK."

Book Meme

I got tagged by Jen

* Grab the nearest book.
* Open the book to page 56.
* Find the fifth sentence.
* Post the text of the next two to five sentences in your blog along with these instructions.
* Don’t dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.
* Tag five other people to do the same.

"Let us fear to leave Him. Let us be always with Him. Let us live and die in His presence. Do you pray for me as I for you. I am,

Yours..."

This is from "The Practice of the Presence of God" written by Brother Lawrence in the late 1600's as letters to friends.

Boy, this makes me sound super spiritual, doesn't it? But really, I had forgotten where I put this book. It was beside my laptop under a pile of mail. And I haven't even gotten to page 56 yet and the whole thing only has 112 pages.

I tag my eldest, her best friend (the Mississippi girl), Dr. T, Leagle Eagle, and dhcoop.

POST #200

Today was spent mostly outdoors, accomplishing some projects, planned and surprised. The unplanned project was setting up his birthday present, the weather station we got for him last night at Bass Pro Shop.

I took pictures of the progress. Here he is mounting the wind gauge and temperature & pressure sensor. They are mounted on a corner post of what, at one time, was the back deck of our mobile home. When we built the house, we moved it out into the middle of the yard for the girls to play on. It went from being the deck to being a fort.

Here are a couple more of the weather station on the fort.



The rain gauge needed to be mounted on a level surface about 3 feet off the ground. Wandering around Lowe's this morning, we decided on a PVC post with a flange on top. It's close to the propane tank so it doesn't create a new obstacle to mow around.









All the sensors are wirelessly connected to this command center. Tomorrow the plan is to get it all to download to Mr. H's computer. We're hoping we can set up a feed to weather underground. There's not anything located in George County there.

The planned projects were making a secure place for our garbage cans and working on the TV antenna. Mr. H is, at this moment, watching a game on ABC. The only reason he's not watching it on channel 13, WLOX, is because they are not broadcasting it in HD. Channel 3 from Pensacola is in HD. We haven't been able to watch 13 for a while without putting up with digital breakup. Earlier today, Mr. H aimed both the mid-range antennas toward the west and the UHF long range portion of our old antenna to the east. All our stations a screaming now.

And, last but not least, we can sleep soundly tonight knowing that our garbage will still be closed and upright in the morning, no matter what raccoons or rogue dogs do to them.

Happy Birthday, Mr. H

Today is Mr. H's birthday. He wanted to ride up to Hattiesburg this morning, so as soon as the girls were delivered to school, off we went. As we turned onto Hwy 49, I could see something up in the sky. As it moved closer, I recognized the Goodyear Blimp! By then, we had stopped in at Hattiesburg Cycle, so I pulled out the camera. (You can click on the picture and read the "Goodyear")

We had a good time just looking around. Mr. H got a new pair of riding boots and a new face shield for his helmet. We had lunch and headed back to George County so we'd be on time to pick up the girls. (Had to get to the house to get the car first!)

I remembered that I still had the camera in my pocket, so I took some pictures as we got within a few miles of the house.
We cross this river at least twice a day. It's the Escatawpa, but is locally known as the Dawg River, not to be confused with the actual Dawg River in Mobile County.

The next few are what would be considered our neighborhood. I love the look of these hay bales just after they have been harvested.


This last picture is our next door neighbor's place. They used to live in the upper level of the barn, then built a house behind it.

Tonight we went to Bass Pro Shoppe and let Mr. H pick out his birthday present. Here's the one he picked. We know what he'll be doing tomorrow.

Keep Looking Up

DC, our maintenance guru, just came into my office, broom in hand, and asked if I wanted to see something funny. My first response was self-defensive: "Is it a snake?" He assured me that it was not a snake, so I followed him out onto the front porch of our office. He had been getting rid of spider webs and dirt dobber nests. One of those mud nests was on the side of a light fixture on the porch. When he reached up with the broom handle and bumped the cover of the light, I was expecting something to fly out.

"Aww, he's gone!" he said.
"Who?" I asked.
"The mouse," he answered.

Apparently there had been a mouse running around inside the plastic cover of the fluorescent light fixture, probably hunting bugs. When DC came to get me, it took the opportunity to make his escape. Now I will be anticipating mice attacking from above every time I go out there.