Sunday, September 29, 2019

ManCat Monday

Apparently, through scientific research, it has been determined that a cat's affection gland is stimulated by snoring, thus explaining my cat's uncontrollable urge to rub against my face at 2:00AM. - Terril Hanley

Well we made it the end of the month of September. You know what that means, tomorrow starts Tock-Tober! So you know it is that time of year to show us your backside! Gotta blame this one on Derby, he loved to show his tocks.
So to cellybrate his purrthday which is October 20, if you could show us your tocks!  If that day doesn't work, then pick a day and show them off. Just leave a comment on my blog, the most recent post is fine, then we can some to visit your blog.
I will get things started early, here are my tocks!

Sportz Report

The Pack  -  they played last Thursday and losted the game in the last minute or so. They had a chance to win, but ARodg threw the ball so hard it bounced off the guy and the other team caught it. Oh well, mum figures that they may not be as good as they could be. They still don't seem to be able to tackle on defense.

Brew Crew - they are on to the post season as one of the wild card teams. They play the Nats on Tuesday. Mum watched the last game of the regular season instead of a feetsball game. They didn't want it to end, the game went into extra innings but they didn't win. End of the regular season with 89 wins in a 162 game season. We will see how well they do in the post season.

Buck Badger  - they won on Caturday afternoon, unbeaten.

Have a good week everyone!


Saturday, September 28, 2019

Caturday

HiYa, Ducky here. Happy Caturday. Things are getting off to a good, but slow start here. Mum has been catching up with the newsy paper and I am napping.

However, we have been seeing lots of peoples on the trail wearing the same shirt. Mum says there was a charity run / walk today. Started a bit farther down the trail, then looped through some streets and then back to the trail. She saw the signs on the streets asking peoples not to park for today.

Plus mum helped with the library book sale the past two afternoons. Thursday was bizzy, Friday not so much.
 Above is Thursday. Lots of peoples, the man in the chair had a box on his lap, the wife was filling up the box. Below is Friday, just a few people at a time in to shop. Mum managed to get the rest of the boxes from the far left side all emptied and on the table. Easier for people to find things then.
 Mum knows they brought in $996 green papers on Thursday, not nearly so much on Friday. Today is the bag sale. You get a paper shopping bag for $5 and all the books you can fit in it are your!
 Me playing peek-a-boo with mum the other night. I loves my mum.
So everyone have a wonderful weekend.

Thursday, September 26, 2019

Garden Thursday

Hello and welcome to Garden Thursday. Quiet time in the garden, mum mainly has to keep the grass down to a reasonable level.

Mum was out and about the other day and when she came home the naybors had finally trimmed off the back shrubs. They are their plants, so mum tries not to mess with them unless they cause her problems. So we can easily see the trail and the back naybors yard too.
Mum thinks she wants to cut a bit more back on our side, but will try to do it when they aren't around.
Yes, fall is here and the leaves are falling. These are coming off of our maple and they aren't really turning colors first. More like they got all dried up and just fell off the tree. Some trees near us are turning colors.

 The eggy-plants are still growing and mum didn't think she get anymore to eat, but she did find one small one growing! Give it another week and she may have to eat it.
Mum took the week off from the community garden, so no report from there. She will be back there next week.

That is all from the garden. Love Virginger, Glimmer, Trooper and Fleur.

Monday, September 23, 2019

ManCat Monday


A cat is more intelligent than people believe, and can be taught any crime. - Mark Twain

Crime? I don't do no crime or at least I don't get caught at it! Mum surprized me, she did a library run on Caturday, came home and got out the grass eater and did the job. It was a bit warm, but a good breeze so mum didn't over heat. Not much sun either. So she won't have to do this today. But she has a list of peoples she needs to call about stuff. 

Sportz Report

So much going on I can't just report on feetsball.  So I am changing to a sportz report.

The Pack in feetsball beat the Bronco boys from Denver. Heck that team is 0 for Wisconsin, they have never won in our state. Lambeau field is the only place they have never won in and we aim to keep it that way. The Pack is still unbeaten and they play again already on Thursday night.

The True Blu Brew Crew - our basey ball team is doing well in September. Right now they are tied with the Nats for the Wild Card spots. Plus the wild card game would be held in our stadium. At least if things remain the same.

Mum was bouncing between feetsball, basey ball for our team, plus checking up on the basey ball game with St Lu and them Cubbies. Lots of important sports.

Plus Bucky Badger won on Caturday. Bizzy, bizzy, bizzy!

Have a good week everyone.

Saturday, September 21, 2019

Caturday

HiYa Ducky here. Happy Caturday. Back to our regularly scheduled schedule. Mum is done reliving her trip from last years. Hope you liked the look back.

Gonna be a warm and muggy day today. We can feel the stickiness coming in the window, so mum will be closing the window soon. Also means she will be lazy and not try to mow the lawn today.

We have a really cool spider living in our big windows that go to the floor. This is an orb weaver spider and it is a good spider. It eats other bugs. Mum saw it the other day and got a pic. We have seen it since then too, so it didn't run away on us.
Me and mum watched the last episode of Serengeti the other day. Really cool pics of the big cats and others that live in the area. Can you find me in the first pic?

Otherwise things are calm and good around here. So good I can just take a nice nap or three.
 Happy weekend everyone!

Friday, September 20, 2019

Entertainment and Food

Entertainment

We didn't lack for entertainment, some professional and other that the crew or program directors put on. All of this was optional, you could go back to your cabin, but why not join in and have a few laughs or maybe learn something.

Every evening we got a little folder outlining what was up for the next day. Times of tours, talks, sailing etc. Plus if you were on board, they would announce something was happening. You could learn to tie knots or do fancy napkin folding if you wanted. Just chill out too.
 
 You could be busy or lazy, your choice depending on how you felt that day. Most evenings there was either entertainment that was brought on board, a singer one night, a guitar trio another. Then there was the crew entertainment as well. The motto was "What happens in the lounge, stays in the lounge".  So we got some good laughs at the expense of the program directors and crew.
 The first item, a message from the captain down through the ranks. Original message, there will be a solar eclipse at 9 AM, make preparations for everyone to view. The final message, the captain is disappearing at 9 AM.
 
 The guys had robes on that covered skillets that when they opened their robes and flexed their knees a ladle would come up and bang on the skillet.
 The Captain and Brano, doing their piano bit. They "stripped" from the waist down and played with their penis. Supposedly. They did offer lessons playing to only the men on the next day. I don't think they had any takers.
 My favorite of the wait staff, Clarrisse. A wonderful girl from Portugal who speaks 5 languages! Always a bright and smiling face.
Everyone of the staff and crew had such wonderful attitudes and helpful and willing to pitch in and make things happen and that made the trip enjoyable.

Food

We were well fed on the cruise. Three meals a day and you had to learn to pace yourself. I was happy to get home and find I hadn't gained any weight. I resisted the temptation to take pictures of the food, it is one of the more annoying habits the people seem to have. At least in my opinion.

Breakfast consisted of a buffet of fruit, pastries, hot foods like potatoes, scrambled eggs, bacon. Plus you could get an omelette or fried eggs. Plus they usually had specials each morning like sausage rolls, pancakes and French toast. Although the French toast was sprinkled with lots of sugar which is not how I make it. With an active day I wanted a good breakfast, so it was scrambled eggs, bacon, fruit and then a pain au chocolate.

Lunch. This meal was far too easy to over do it. I got in the habit of doing the salad buffet and the dessert. I would skip the special sandwich, pasta or whatever else they were having. I had more than enough to eat and they had pickled beets on the buffet and I loved eating them. You don't find them much on salad buffets in the US.

Dinner - you saved your calories for this meal. It was a full multi-course dinner. Appetizer, soup, often a salad, Main course was always a choice of meat, fish or vegetarian. Dessert was usually something fancy, often with chocolate. Or if you wanted to be mundane, you could have ice cream, but it was still served in a nice parfait glass with a wafer cookie and decoration.

Here are a few of the menus from a couple of the days. They included items that would be local specialties, information on the cheeses if you wanted the cheese course and the wines. I loved the wines, even the Chardonnay as it wasn't heavily oaked like some of the US wines are.
 
 
 

I did take a few pictures of dessert. The top one was at lunch, the other at dinner. Also baked alaska the final night.
Everything was yummy.

Thursday, September 19, 2019

Garden Thursday

Hello and welcome to Garden Thursday. It hasn't really turned to fall here yet. The days are shorter, but still a bit warm and humid at times. The garden is slowing down, a few flowers in bloom and mum bought some mums to add some color.
 
 Community garden is slowing down too. They still got foods out of the garden, the bean plant still is giving out a good quantity of beans and still has flowers on it.
 Carrots, onions and beets. Still have some carrots in the ground, along with the sweet potatoes to dig out. Then they harvested the little pie pumpkins, the beans and one cucumber they found hiding.
 A tote full of plants they pulled out and deaded leaves as well. It will be a few more weeks before they are completely done. Plus they may go back really late in October or early November to finish off the mulch pile!
 
 Plus it is talk like a pirate day so ARRRGGGH Matey's. Ye be walking a might short plank if ye don't have a piratey day.
 That is it for now. Love Virginger, Glimmer, Trooper and Fleur.

Wednesday, September 18, 2019

September 18 and 19

September 18


A day of mostly traveling from St Malo to Paris with a stop in Chartres to see the cathedral. So lots of time to just watch the French country side.
 
I caught this sign and road, somewhere nearby lives my friend Virginia! No time to hi-jack the bus for a visit, but I was in the area of France known as The Perche, the home of where Percheron horses were developed.
We got to Chartres about lunchtime so we were let loose to have lunch on our own and to find a few local goodies.
We then met up with our guide to take us through the cathedral and the gorgeous stained glass windows. The cathedral was not damaged during World War II.





The guide talked about "reading" stained glass windows, at least those from the 12th and 13th century. Bottom to top, look to see if there was a patron on the window and, then, looking for the rose windows.
As with many buildings it is being restored and cleaned, the after and the before on the quire screen around the altar.
The final hotel room of the trip, the last night was near Charles de Gaulle airport, so what should be a short jaunt in the morning to pick up the flight.
A quirk of the room, you had to put your key card in this slot to keep the lights on! But that way things get turned off, TV etc.
My last dinner in France, I went bold, I order chicken Pad Thai!

September 19

Homeward bound. There was a group of 6 of us on the same flight so we filled up the shuttle and even with all of the traffic we got a place to park near our airline. We were greeted by a rep of the tour company who got us all checked in for our flights, baggage tags printed, boarding passes printed. Then came the marathons of lines.

1. Drop off the checked bag, so get in a line and are asked by some people if you packed your own bag, then actually get it over the the airline people to turn it in. Got it up on the scale and it read 31 kilos. OMG, that equates with 68 pounds, I started off at 26. Maybe I bought a few things but I didn't think that much. Although I had stuffed everything I could in there to make my carry on as light as possible.

2. Walked maybe 50 yards and another check point, scanning boarding passes, nothing else and letting you proceed.

3. Boarder patrol. Gotta get the passport stamped for leaving the country, they even stamped it on the same page as coming in. Nice and neat.

4. Line for security. Get into a line, then they scan your boarding pass and put you into another line. What I found out later is that they are looking to see how soon your flight leaves, if you need to get pushed up to meet your flight, they walk you to the next area. So more lines but I had time. Security was easy, didn't have to take out phone or any electronics, so it was quick. They did put a sticker on my passport to show I had made it through security.

All of this took about 45 minutes and once you get through you are met with duty free heaven if you are a shopper. I didn't take any pictures, but all of the luxury French brands were there. Gucci, Chanel, Cartier. Not that I was going to buy anything or even wanting a look.
So about 30 minutes to kill before boarding started but I found the gate and was ready to sit. Flight to Detroit was uneventful although they kept feeding us. I swear about every two hours they came through with food and drink of some sort. I had an aisle seat and could see the bathroom so could do my thing when I wanted.

Landed, customs has changed on the US side as well. Put your passport in the scanner, answer questions, get your receipt. Then another line to be blessed by an actual agent. He wanted to know how much I spent. I guessed $500 and I was pretty close.

Claimed the suitcase and said farewell to my fellow travelers, dragged my bag over to the airline drop off and was very nicely directed to take the escalators up three levels to go through security. I did, no lines, although I needed to get my boarding pass reprinted to show I had TSA precheck.

Found the final gate at the farthest end of the terminal and could sit down and text my friends I was back in the USA and just waiting for the final flight in a few hours.

Final hop back to MKE, my friend was waiting right outside the terminal, we loaded up and were home in about 45 minutes. I could relax, sit down and have my lap invaded by my cat. I missed him and I think he missed me too.
It took a few days to get everything unpacked, sorted out and all. Get through over 2000 pictures, of which you have only seen a few.

It was an amazing trip, I had a great time and I am now on to figuring out what my next adventure will be.