Hey! Where'd that loader and backhoe come from?

Can you say Section 179? Really, dear, they only cost half of what we paid for them.

Bye-Bye, Mighty Mouse.

I couldn't kill you, but I tried.

A minor Sunrise at Stornaway Jerseys

Click to enlarge. I'll keep an eye out for a major sunrise.

The Plot Thickens

http://www.scrappleface.com/MT/archives/002237.html

Meet Sheba!

Caleb came to visit for the weekend and brought along this kitty, currently named Sheba. He is caring for her for a vet student while the student is on vacation, but he may end up keeping her. She is pretty cute. She fascinated Panda but terrified Mouse, who backed away in horror when Sheba hissed. And she played for an hour with a balloon, spinning it around and around and around and around until she finally hit it just right with a sharp little kitty claw and popped it.

What's next?

This!

Ann Althouse and Me

At http://althouse.blogspot.com/ go to the section:

Has the Court "erased the Public Use Clause from our Constitution"?

and read the comments. I'm Dad, as usual, though it's taken more than two decades for me to think of myself as, in fact, Dad.

New Tractor!

Turbo-charged. Cab. Heat and AC.

I'm supposed to be impressed?

From a globe article about a polymath (He's also written a full-length rock opera!) statistician who works for the Red Sox:

>When he was 16, Van created a stat of his own, something to measure a hitter's productivity beyond batting average. He added on-base percentage, slugging percentage, and batting average, and called it ''combined triple average."<

Wow. He created a stat (of his own?) by adding three other stats together. Trouble is, they are all related, and the water just gets muddier, rather than clearer.

OTOH, we have the OOPO. It tells us the offensive production of a player relative to his opportunity to contribute, without being redundant. A truly unique stat.

Bias is an ugly thing.

All right, all right, if it's Aurora you want, it's Aurora you'll get.

So maybe it's true that I didn't end up with any pictures of Aurora at the party, but that doesn't have to mean there aren't any on the blog. Here she is at our house, with a kitten from the barn that she's thinking about adopting.

More Aurora, with the kitten, and with Laura and a bear in the background.  

Here's dessert, made by Aurora the other night--chocolate mousse from her grandmother's recipe. We liked the strawberry starfish decorations. And the mousse! 

Party at the Home of the Amherst Murphies!

There's lots to celebrate.

First a solo serenade . . . 

. . . and then a duet 

Dancing into semi-retirement, while Beecher plays the tunes 

She doesn't look 85 to me! 

They're dancin' fools.

Dancing in the kitchen 

"I was waltzing with my darling . . .  

. . . to the Tennessee Waltz . . . " 

What a gift!  

A card from the kids 

The stogie helps with the swing! 

Unca Don likes that one!

A swing and a miss!

Under the ball and ready for a hit!

A ruffed grouse family visits the Murphies

When Dad spotted a "weird bird" in the front yard, I grabbed the camera.

The bird was a ruffed grouse, and what looked at first like a few dead leaves blowing around nearby turned out to be babies. Dad saw five, though I was only able to spot two. You can see one of them, blurrily, in the lower right-hand corner of this picture.