For so long

 

 

Every morning has been in the eighties for our morning coffee on the deck.  Suddenly, we’re seeing seventies.  Once, even low seventies!  We’ve been enjoying the long hot summer.  Not sure I’m ready for it to cool off yet.

 

Got our new improved covid boosters yesterday.  Left today open in case we felt terrible after.  Not so much.  A sore shoulder and crazy dreams last night.  I think that’s about it.

 

I found some grilled chicken thighs in the fridge to eat for lunch today.  It didn’t taste quite right.  As after-the-fact advice, Judy told me “No.  Don’t eat that.  It’s too old!”  I volunteered that dogs eat old stuff out of the trash all the time and it doesn’t bother them, so I should be fine.  That prompted her to admonish me that if I threw up on the carpet then, that I would have to be the one to clean it up.    :(

 

Highs in the mid-nineties instead of high nineties.  A sure sign of changing seasons.

Hey!

 

 

How about those Seahawks!

 

What an exciting game!

 

 

Hummingbirds

 

 

It’s the fall hummingbird migration.    Little ruby-throated hummers are passing through on their way to Central America.  We move the hummingbird feeders up to the deck for this.

 

 

Most of the time they look like this; really dark head and neck.

 

Then they turn and flash that ruby red throat!

 

There should be a flow of them every day for two or three weeks, then they’ll be gone.  This is a spectacle of the Americas.  Hummingbirds don’t live anywhere else on the planet!

 

On the move

 

 

Not Judy and me.  We’re at home.  Not Becky and Brian.  They’re planted in York.  Christie and Andy.  They’re working their way clockwise around Ireland!

 

https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/edit?mid=1i0mj2X93woiShn18mAhulhocBb8jglk&ll=53.30054093328225%2C-6.537694587703613&z=6

 

 

Communications

 

 

1964.  I had been away from home for almost two years, and overseas for more than one.  Judy’s 16^th birthday present from her family was a three-minute, person to person, very expensive, phone call to me.  Three minutes.  That’s a lot of pressure to make it count.  Otherwise, our only contact was handwritten letters, which could take a week or two each way.

 

2022.  England.  Ireland.  Texas.  York, Cork, and Edinburg.  Five thousand miles, six time-zones apart.  The weekly zoom visit with the girls carried off without a hitch.

 

An I-pad, a computer, and a telephone.  An hour-long visit?  No problem.  No pressure.  Real-time video and verbal communication.  What a charming time we live in.

 

ARE WE READY FOR SOME FOOTBAAAAL!!!

 

 

Thursday Night Football.  Football Sunday.  Monday Night Football; Broncos at the Seahawks!

 

The Broncos had hope.  They had John Elway.  Then they didn’t.  Then they got Peyton Manning.  Then they didn’t.  Russell Wilson.  Yeah.  There is hope again!

 

 

White-tipped Dove

 

 

Very plain looking large dove.

 

The name refers to the white tail-tips, that don’t show in these photos.

 

We don’t get them in our yard.  We need to go to one of the wildlife refuges to find them.  Every kind of dove has their own distinctive call.  We can recognize which dove is around, even when we don’t see them.  White-tipped Doves make a soft sound like someone blowing across the top of a bottle.