I was going to attempt to give you guys a link a day for the December Advent season, as my gift to you. But I forgot to do it Monday and Tuesday and now it seems late.
So I will pass along one of the cooler links I’ve run into recently. It’s a Hubble Telescope Advent calendar. Man oh man, space photos blow me away, ever time. I snipped the url for you, but it points to Boston.com
http://snipurl.com/coolsky
Today was the day…Junior picked up the phone all by his lonesome and called my sister to ask her if she wanted to go apple picking. I can’t say I was upset, given that I love going apple picking more than I even like eating the apples after I’ve picked them. As I mentioned on Twitter earlier today, there was an unbelievable bumper crop of apples…more than I’ve seen in ages. We literally could have filled the bags on just the trees right next to the stand where you traded in your first born for a bag to fill. (Ya, it’s more expensive to buy an empty bag you have to fill yourself; on the other hand, my kid personally consumed about a pound of apples while we walked around.
I have a handful of some of the more interesting photos of the day up on flickr…
Junior plays in the City Championship for Little League Baseball tonight. I think it would be REALLY cool if they won. I mean, who doesn’t go into these things hoping for a win. I’ve never been on a team that won a championship. Thinking back to my Lassie League days, I was on the team that got stuck with all the strays. There was one girl who quite literally could not figure out how to swing the bat. What’s weird is that I can totally see the faces of some of these girls in my head, and we’re talking about not seeing them for 30+ years. Just as long as you don’t ask me their names, we’ll be good, I think.
Thanks to everyone who donated to Junior’s Jimmy Fund fundraising efforts, whether in person or on the Jimmy Fund website. You people rock, seriously. North Leominster Little League had 4 teams playing in the tournament (at various levels) at raised a total of $15,000. I think that’s very cool. I should not be hitting you up for anything here in the foreseeable future. Wait, no, I think I’ll start accepting pastry donations. Please, help support the, uh, American Pastry Association, with your kind contributions of pie, cake, danish, brownies and cookies. The APA is a fine and worthy cause, and, um, fresh, homemade pastry (or one of those big danish rings from the Dutch Kitchen) is greatly appreciated. Remember our motto – The APA: Fill Our Your Piehole!
Photo take today at Strawbery Banke, Portsmouth NH, as Mr. Dump made every effort on the planet to give me a typical touristy vacation day. They have some old-fashioned toys available for today’s modern child to try out. Junior was VERY taken with rolling a hoop and trying to get the little wooden ball into the cup. (Shades of Stewie Griffin, anyone?)
He was also very taken with the Jacob’s Ladder toy. Seriously, we were amused by how much he loved these hundred + year-old toys. I could trade in a bunch of his video games and buy some little wooden toys. I’ll bet that would go over really well.
Actually, this is a kid whose most valuable possession is a beat-to-hell blue plastic bat. So wooden toys might be good.
Please note the blinding sunlight in this photo (actually screwed up most of my photos so I have to add fill light in post-processing). After we grabbed a traditional Irish Pub [late] lunch at Molly Malone’s (Mr. Dump had bangers and mash, nuff said.) we headed home – into the worst thunderstorm so far this summer. And that’s saying something. I’m waiting for the power to go off.
The cool thing about forgetting something, is that unless you are trying to remember it, you have no idea that you forgot it. In many cases, forgetting something is a blessing, because you probably should not have had the piece of information locked in your head anyway.
Case in point: Tuesday night on the way back from a brutal baseball game (18-13 them, although we should have kicked their butts but what are you going to do. They basically stole home about 12 times on passed balls. Not a fun evening.) and Mr. Dump mentioned that he’d brought up a singer to one of the player’s grandfather, who didn’t really remember the singer. And I mentioned “what about that other guy….” and completely blanked.
The funny thing is that I could totally picture him. I had the hair and the mustache burned into my brain, but his name, a name I had used about a billion times in the long ago as my humorous go-to guys, had escaped. Couldn’t remember it. Mr. Dump couldn’t remember it.
This morning, I did a Google search sort of describing him, and I got some false leads, but a name in one of the false leads reminded me of this guy’s name, and now it’s stuck back in my head again.
Can anyone guess the answer? Here are your clues – you’ll have to click this link to get the answer, you buncha cheaters.
1. 70’s television commercial star
2. Elvis hair (not “elvish”, Elvis)
3. kickin’ mustache
