In cooperation with:

The expression is, “A day late and a dollar short.”  But I don’t think that applies in our case.  We’ve had a very busy few days.  (Please Vanilla, I hope I have this right wrt. few. :pray: )

Friday, we celebrated Dad’s birthday.  That meant four hours of travel time, which was worth it for the family gathering.  I called it a paucity of family because some were not able to attend. 🙁

Saturday was the church’s annual hog roast, car show and blood drive.  That was an all-day commitment.

Sunday was the annual Sunday School Rally Day.  Sylvia was in charge and had lots to do.  At noon, we had a nice carry in dinner.  There were two women who had birthdays and Sunday was our anniversary, so we went through the line first. :up:   Sylvia was exhausted when we returned home.  She spent the afternoon resting while I watched the NASCAR race from Saturday night.  Rain delayed the night race start by about 90 minutes.  Less than half-way through, there was another delay that lasted nearly an hour.  I went to bed at a reasonable hour after setting up the DVR to record a couple of extra hours.  (Just in case . . . and it did prove necessary.)

Monday, we decided we were only a day late, and we were not a dollar light.  The sign was right.  I asked where she would like to go.  She hesitated and I suggested Papa Vino’s.

Sylvia responded, “I knew you were going to say that.”  She had been thinking the same thing.  So we had a beautiful meal in a very pleasant venue.  I am amazed at how simple the food appears and yet how great it tastes.  (There is probably a parable in there somewhere.)

As we do each year, we recommit ourselves to each other for as many years as God sees fit to grant us.  I am so blessed.

Last Friday, Sylvia’s father had another birthday.  He’s been doing that for several years. 😀   We’re hoping that he will continue for several more.

Sylvia and I drove nearly an hour to Dad’s house where we met her sister and brother-in-law.  The five of us then drove for almost another hour to a restaurant in Mt Pleasant where we met with her brother and another sister and brother-in-law.  They had driven nearly an hour to meet us halfway.  This has become a tradition of many years standing.  After a nice meal, we purchase ice cream and head to the park.  One of the sisters brought cake . . . and you know the rest of the drill.

Our favorite spot is by the river and next to the Michigan Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial.  We talk a lot.  And we laugh . . . a lot. :ha:  And we also take pictures.

Sylvia, Karen, Dad, Joyce and Bruce

After pictures, we all take a walk and talk.  And then we talk some more.  This year Dad decided to wait for us in the car, he was feeling cold.  We walked over the foot bridge and looked down on the river.  Checked out the ball fields.  The gals checked out a bench.

I mentioned that we might want to start back.  It was starting to rain.  It wasn’t much at first, but it was slowly increasing.  Maybe if we stayed under the trees.  That didn’t work very long. :rain:   We said our goodbye to one another, got in the cars and watched the rain begin to fall heavily as we were leaving.

Two hours later, Sylvia and I arrived back home.  It had been another great day.  We enjoy traditions like celebrating Dad’s birthday.  Do you do something special like that in your family?

Let’s explore another 51 together.  What do you say?  Shall we?

When I went out to take a picture of the garden for yesterday’s post, I saw a disturbance in the lawn.  As I looked around a saw more . . . a lot more.  The disturbed area looked like this:

Do you have any idea what it is?  I didn’t the first few times that I saw it, but eventually I discovered the culprit.  Have you figured it out yet?

I noticed movement on the lawn one night and when I investigated I saw the little fellow that was doing the digging.  That’s how I know that it’s a skunk, or skunks.  One surfeit (or is it “stench”) of this year’s babies grew up living beneath our garage.  That kind of adds an imperative to living in harmony with nature, don’t you think so?

I can understand why a collection of skunks is called a surfeit.  Seems to me that even one is an over abundance of them, but they really do have their place in the natural order.  As long as it’s not in my neighbors’ hen houses.  They don’t like that.  Not even a little bit.

From Surfeit to Paucity

Today is Sylvia’s father’s birthday– his 95th.  We’ll celebrate by meeting with other members of the family that live in Michigan.  We’ll enjoy a meal together and have cake and ice cream.  We’ll take a short hike and talk and just enjoy being together.  (They really are great folks and it is very pleasant to be with them.)

As the sun is setting we’ll load up the vehicles and head for home.  We’ll be feeling good about another birthday for Dad and another happy gathering of the clan.

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Hey fellow blogger, how do you organize your ideas, your photos, your post scheduling?  I need some help, but I also have some ideas.  Maybe we can help one another.  What do you say?  Let’s try.

Ideas

I get ideas.  Don’t we all?  But I’m talking about themes and topics for blog posts.  Sometimes an idea will come to me for a great post.  I’m kind of busy and don’t make a note of it.  Later, I remember that I had an idea, but can’t remember what it was.  Has this ever happened to you?

My messy computer desk.

I’ve had that spiral bound notebook (in the photo) with the aluminum cover and heavy duty rear cover around here for a few years.  It’s made for taking notes anywhere you are.  I’ve started writing down my ideas for posts in this.  When my “well is dry,” I come here to “prime the pump.”  It works.  That’s why I’m doing this post today.  I’ve been writing the core of the idea in the book.  What do you do?

For a couple of years, I used monthly calendars to record titles of blog posts in the date blocks.  In the margins I wrote down ideas for future posts.  I also kept a record of some of the interesting verification words that I found on various blogs.  Then Blogger went Captcha.  I’m sorry friend.  If you use that you are turning off people–big time.

Photos

My friend, Vanilla, mentioned to me recently that he has trouble finding photos.  I use lots of folders to organize mine.  Under My Pictures, I have a folder named Blog Stuff.  That is further divided into folders and sub-folders.  I have all my Wordless Wednesday photos in one folder.  I name the photos in the WW folder by a number/letter combination.  The number is serial, starting with 001 and incrementing by one for each week’s participation.  The photos for a given week are assigned a single letter to differentiate them and place them in order.  For example, the photos for my 96th week in WW (the car fire beside the expressway) are named 096a.jpg, 096b.jpg and 097.jpg.

The last few months, I’ve been dividing the general (non-theme or non-meme) photos into monthly folders.  I name the folders for the year and month (YYMM).  This month’s folder is “1209.”  I use naming protocols that sort into a convenient order.  To cut down on scrolling through lists, or thumb nails to find folders, I’ll rename the folder by adding “Z-” as a prefix to the name when the folder is ready to be archived.  That is working for now, but I may have to add an archive folder to separate the old stuff from the currently useful items.  Related to that, I put “0-” in front of WW for that folder so that it sorts toward the top.

A few years ago I adopted a file-name protocol for church photos.  I was receiving photos from multiple sources and had to keep them organized by when they were taken and who took them.  Further, some of the photos would be used on machines that were limited to 8 characters in the file name (not counting the extension, eg. jpg).  I used 6 numbers and two letters.  The numbers were when (YYMMDD) and the two letters indicated who and which.  “Who” being indicated by a single capital letter, while “which” indicated the photos from that day in lower case letters (a-z).  I still use a variation of that for my personal photos.  They sort conveniently into chronological order.  I like that.

What organizing techniques do you use?