Before and After

It's my 100th blog post!! Way back in January '08, my first blog was about my kitty, so it's only appropriate that my 100th blog is about her too.

The above photo was taken last Friday, when she was blissfully unaware of what was coming. Once a year, we shear her down to what is known as a "lion cut." It looks really goofy, but come summer time, the hair is shooting out of her all over the place no matter how much you brush, along with a host of other problems. Up until now, we've always done the dirty deed ourselves. But this year we found an incredibly cheap groomer only about a mile away from us, so I took her there instead.

It only took 15 minutes!! She barely had time to realize what was happening! Although she did manage to hiss at the dogs in the salon while the groomer was shaving her butt. I guess she blamed them for her troubles. (Better them than me!)

When we got back home, I had the audacity to give her a bath. Her day just kept getting better and better.

She is much more frisky now that she is streamlined, but she does like to snuggle for warmth. (Something she doesn't like doing normally.) Note the fact that she has her paws and tail tightly curled underneath her now to keep them warm. I also think it's interesting that she seems to lose all her orange and black fur when she is sheared.

Maybe I won't tell her that she is going to get her shots tomorrow. I think that would put her over the edge.

Vintage Texaco

Our ride last Saturday also included a stop at a vintage Texaco station in Independence, WI. I couldn't quite figure out what its purpose was. It didn't look like a working gas station. Perhaps a museum of 50's memorabilia, or a classic car shop, or I don't know what.

They were closed, so it wasn't until I started searching on the internet that I found out it was a mechanical repair and auto sales shop. It was built in 1931 and was restored a few years ago. Here is an interesting video that tells about the history of this building.


A close-up of those neat old pumps.



They had a delivery vehicle sitting out front. I wish I could have driven a vehicle like this when I was a delivery driver many moons ago!



Techie Corner
I took the main image into Photoshop and gave it a "dreamy" effect to enhance the feeling of stepping back in time.

Clouds

We went on a 9 hour motorcycle ride through the rolling hills of Wisconsin last Saturday. The clouds were ominous all day, but they never dumped on us. The sky was pretty tame in this particular picture. I took it more for the beautiful view of the rolling hills. We pulled into the parking lot of Hansen's Hold-up Bar and Grill so I could get this shot. (We didn't eat there this time, but the view is incredible and they have decent food.)




When I looked the other direction in their parking lot, however, there were much more forbidding skies. We got a tiny bit of mist for about a minute, but that was it. The clouds kept the temp in the low 60's all day....in the middle of July, no less! It felt like a beautiful fall day and the riding was great.




Earlier in the ride, we stopped in Fountain City to stretch our legs. For some reason, the ornately designed vent on top of this building really intrigued me. That, combined with the mean looking sky, just begged for a picture.

Santa Rides a Crotch Rocket?

I've seen a lot of strange things in our neighborhood, but the last thing I expected to see this morning was Santa riding a crotch rocket. Now I know how he gets around in the off-season.





Here he is, making a careful ascent of his Yamaha R6 steed and navigating down the sidewalk to the driveway.


Techie Corner
Yep, they're blurry. I had to run and get my camera, change lenses, eject my memory card from the computer so I would actually get pictures, and hand-hold a telephoto lens while shooting through a dirty, sunlit window. Whew! I'm lucky I got any pictures at all!

Mona Lisa

While we were poking around Menards one day, looking at all the gardening accessories, I saw a display of boxed lily bulbs. They looked so forlorn and pathetic! Most of them had already sprouted in the box and were marked down for quick sale. I had always heard you should plant bulbs in the fall, but the back of the box said March-December, so I decided to give them a try. My philosophy on plants is, either they will live or they will die.

More time passed before I got them into the ground, so I had little hope that much would happen this year. But the ones that were growing in the package, kept right on growing once they were in the ground. This particular one is a Mona Lisa oriental lily. They are supposed to get 40" tall, but since these bulbs got started so late, the plants are barely a foot tall. Each one has one or two flowers that almost hang on the ground since the stalk is so short.

Hopefully they will be even bigger and more beautiful next year. Grow little plants, GROW!