I haven't seen any frogs this year. I think it's been too cold.

Word of the Day

Humongify - To make extremely large or enormous.

I actually resorted to unplugging my computer last night. HTP had unplugged his computer long before I did. After the third power glitch, I figured it was time. We got a nice storm last night. Right around supper time. I was helping #1 Son in his efforts to make pizzas. One in the oven, one on the grill. Quite frankly, last night was not the best time in the world to make a pizza on the grill. However, he managed to get the pizza grilled before the major part of the storm hit. It was raining, there was lightning, but it wasn't all that nasty...believe it or not. Anyway, we ended up with two very yummy pizzas for supper. As we were sitting down in front of the television to watch The Jimmy Kimmel Show, the picture became pixulated. Lightning flashed and boom! Out went the power. It came back on but the TV had to reboot itself. And then...not three minutes later, repeat the above. Then repeat again after another three minutes. At this point, I decided to unplug my computer for the night. All the constant power surges are not good for a computer no matter what kind of power strip you own. Having said this, I plugged my computer back in this morning, booted up, and everything is fine. We never got another power outage after that third strike.

We did get rain. Lots of rain. Attempting to watch TV while it's raining outside here at The Lake is something of a frustration factor. We have DirecTV. No cable. So far we haven't found a cable company that thinks it's worth their while to run a cable down our 1/2 mile driveway. Antennas don't work all that well and they won't work at all after the digital TV thing kicks in. DishNet and DirecTV are going to be the only choice for people here in rural America. Really rural America. They've got cable in the little town near us and in the city. We just don't live in town. Anyway, whenever we get sheets of rain, the satellite can't be found. Pixulation and then the black screen of death. Since this part of the country seems to get its share of heavy rain storms, the TV doesn't work too well if you want to check the weather. Not to worry. I've got a NOAA radio that will wake me up in the dead of night to warn me of dangerous weather. It'll even warn me about dangerous weather several counties away. That's OK. It was nice to learn all about the tornado watch that was issued for....was it Chisago County?....I can't remember. It was late.

So, to keep myself entertained last night, I could have read a book. I didn't. Instead I checked to see if my XM radio might be having similar reception problems to that encountered by the TV. It wasn't. I settled in with Gypsy to listen to Rusty Humphries and work on Sudoku puzzles. The rain had let up some by Gypsy's bedtime so I took her for our nightly perimeter walk and found out that one of our main floodlights had died. I'm not sure if it got struck by lightning or what but...I'm not really looking forward to fixing that floodlight. I'm pretty sure I don't have a ladder that will reach it. *sigh* Oh well...HTP knows about it. We couldn't fix it last night and it doesn't look like we'll be fixing it any time soon.

The weather outside is dreary and rainy and you can hear the distant rumble of thunder. Gypsy and I did our morning perimeter check in the rain...not too rainy...but it was rainier than the last time I took her for a perimeter check. We got 1 1/4 inches of rain last night. Seemed a bit more than that at the time but one of my rain gauges (the old-fashioned one) registered that amount. The electronic rain gauge only registered .98 inches of rain. I choose to believe the old-fashioned one because....well...just because. Since it promises to continue raining into the weekend and most of next week, I'll have to decide when to empty the old-fashioned rain gauge and reset the electronic rain gauge. Should I measure the continuous amount of rain that we're supposed to get? The grand total? Or should I dump for the next load of rain? I've decided that I'll wait on the dumping until it stops raining long enough for me to take a walk with Gypsy. There's really no point in dodging raindrops to empty out a rain gauge.

Murphyism of the Day

Santayana's Observation

Fanaticism consists of redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim.

Noteworthy Quote of the Day

In archaeology you uncover the unknown. In diplomacy you cover the known.

- Thomas Pickering