8-24-10
I’ve got about four squirrels who have staked out my back yard as their territory and a couple of more who come visit from my neighbor’s yard. One of my regulars is truly mental. It leaps into the air repeatedly for no apparent reason, does barrel rolls while digging holes in the yard and bounces off the base of a bird bath repeatedly, again for no apparent reason. It looks healthy, as all my squirrels do (they should be, with all the bird seed they steal), but truly does some bizarre things. The other squirrels leave that one alone. I had a roommate who called them “rats with bushy tails” but I find them rather entertaining.
- I get a lot more birds at my feeders these days since Watson passed. Weird, huh?
- The smoking ban is working with little comment so far. I have a friend who has lived in Tucson for 30 years who was home for the reunion recently and he remarked how nice it was to go to smoke-free taverns. He said they’ve had a ban in Arizona for quite a while and all the bars adjusted. Someone mentioned that we haven’t been through a winter yet where the smokers will have to go outside in the cold and frozen precipitation. He said, “Well our smokers have to go outside in the summer when it’s 100 degrees out.” How quickly do people in warm climates forget that their bad weather (100 degrees) is not the same thing as our bad weather (sub-zero cold and freezing rain)? They just don’t get it.
- The weekend police blotter has only one incident involving a smoking ban scofflaw and he was not wearing his pants at the time.
- Tuesday Sound Off.
Read It
State Treasurer
Those are the best candidates the GOP could produce for the race to unseat the fabulously unqualified Dawn Marie Sass? No offense but, there weren’t any under-employed CPAs or CFOs available? I thought the GOP was the party of the rich, the party of big business, for heavens sakes. You couldn’t talk Jack Voight into running again? The Libertarian candidate says the right things but electing a third-parry candidate is just so hard. Plus he’s from Madison, so I have to question his veracity.
Weekend Reading
Do you see a resemblance in more ways than one here?
I didn’t spend a lot of time spend a lot of time reading the internets this weekend, there’ll be plenty of time for that when the weather suckens, but there’s a couple of things you might consider reading:
- Noemie Emery in the Weekly Standard says we’re seeing a repeat of Michael Dukakis, not Jimmy Carter, as we had assumed. Not that this news is supposed to make us feel better.
- Brien Lee gives you yet another reason to quit smoking.
- I don’t why this story about a stolen viola was so interesting to me other than it’s nice to read good news once in a while.
- Also on the good news side, actress Andie MacDowell co-produced this nice 7 minute look at pre-game preparations for an Asheville Tourist (Class A Southern League) minor league baseball game. For baseball fans only.
- On the bad news side, what drew me to the Asheville paper is that the area is one of my daydream retirement spots and I saw an article which said that foreclosures there are at record levels. Bad news for them might mean that there is a bargain out there for me.
- Like I always say, it could always be worse. Check out what your property taxes would be doing if you lived in the Democratic Party’s Commonwealth Paradise of Massachusetts.
- Have you heard about this? No? Why, it’s almost as if there were a conspiracy to keep news of it out of newspapers and off the TV networks.
- Yesterday must have been the day for bloggers to visit botanical gardens.
Boerner Botanical
On a beautiful August day, I went back to a favorite spot in Milwaukee, the Boerner Botanical Gardens. This is a place I’ve been photographing for 20 years, since I moved back from Chicago to an apartment in Greenfield. Here are two pictures of the same tree about 20 years apart:
Conclusion: Twenty years isn’t a long time. If you’re a tree.
Boerner Botanical Garden Gazebo
Boerner was still in fine shape for what is now late summer. The roses were still in bloom, which surprised me for some reason. In a blessed change, there were more butterflies than mosquitoes. For once, I did something right and made notes about those plants which had the most butterflies attending them. I will plant more of these next Spring.
Boerner Butterfly Garden
Primrose and butterfly
The Koi were happy to see me.
Koi pond at Boerner Botanical Garden
There is a lot of water in Whitnall Park, tributaries of the Root River, I think.
Whitnall Park stream
Boerner Wetland Walkway
Saturday Paper
This should be a good day. Not hot, the rain’s done, I’ve got English Premier League football to go with my coffee and doughnuts and Packer pre-season football to end the day. Pretty good Saturday.
- Carroll College continues to expand. It now appears that the houses along the west side of College Avenue between Barstow and Grand have been targeted for takeover. These are some pretty nice houses. I like Tudors. The house which is listed in the article (202 W. College Avenue) belonged to Rep. Ann Nischke and her husband when she ran for mayor against Larry Nelson, by the way. Must have run into some hard times.
- Maybe the it wasn’t the weather which was extra warm yesterday. It might have been an inner glow from drinking some our radium-infused water.
- Jessica McBride sticks up for her Oconomowoc home boys. Cue Steve Martin with “Excuuuuuuse me!”
- Pete Kennedy asks if Waukesha is angrier than it used to be? The fact is that 90% of Waukesha doesn’t give a hoot, 5% cares only if it’s going to effect them and the other 5% includes you and me.
- Saturday Sound Off.
Windows Live E Mail Filter
I checked my “Junk” folder in Windows Live Mail and found some items which were not, in fact, junk. I found a couple of real e-mails which I should have replied to and a number of blog comments which shouldn’t have been filtered. My apologies to those who must have thought their e-mails weren’t important enough for me to respond to, I just didn’t know I had received them. I will endeavor to check the junk mail folder on a regular basis. It doesn’t seem to matter even when I have the best of intentions, I still end up offending people. Sometimes I just can’t catch a break.
August 20, 2010
I’ve been hearing an increasing number of train horns. If the city has again neglected to file the necessary paperwork, that is a function of the city administrator’s office.
- Our Lady of Lourdes is the biggest church festival around this weekend. Nice neighborhood, easy to get to and a nice festival.
- Oddest fish story of the summer.
- I’m still hoping to use my license after the first frost kills most of the mosquitoes. Even mowing the lawn has become a dreaded activity this summer because of the bugs. We need more bats.
8-19-10
I wasn’t particularly interested in anything I saw in either newspaper this morning but Wigderson’s got some good posts worth reading on:
- A boneheaded campaign effort by the soon to be former senator from Wisconsin.
- Advice for the Journal Sentinel on transportation devices.
- The ham-handed response of the Wisconsin DOT to Oconomowoc’s daring to question the costs of a “high-speed” rail station. Believe me, you’ll be happier for not pursuing a white elephant. Brookfield should be so lucky.
It’s Wednesday Already
Coulda’ swore it was Tuesday. That’s good, I guess. Another busy, frustrating week. Old dog/new tricks and I keep confusing sit up with roll over.
- Common Council meeting passed without any fistfights.
- Community Organizer Obama was in Waukesha County to raise money for Tom Barrett. Not one penny of the money Obama raised will help any individual constituent of Tom Barrett. For those of you who haven’t noticed, people don’t matter with the Obama administration, only government matters. They will tax and spend us into serfdom to support government agencies regardless of whether or not they have the consent of the governed. That defines the difference a major difference between what Democrats believe and what I believe.
- It’s not so much “We the people” with this administration, it’s “We’re the government”.
- Bonehead of the Day is from Brookfield.
- Mark Belling appreciates that Mark Neumann has changed his scorched Earth campaign.
Official Computer of the Waukesha County Clerk
