Will the real Harry Potter please stand up?

"Ya, right, and I'm Minnie Mouse . . ."

Blogging Sherburne

Sherburne has a pretty remarkable collection of murals, for such a small town. Of course, this first picture doesn't show a mural-- although you can see some nearly-worn-off lettering on this building if you zoom in close. I included it because I just like the way this building looks. Plus, you can see where the Chenango Canal used to run in a curved path between the two buildings, and if you look down through the space, there are loading doors in both buildings where goods used to be taken on and off the canal boats. Living history!

Okay, now we're ready for murals and other, um, painted objects. Here we have what may be the only gas tank camouflaged as a grinder (sub, hoagie, whatever) in Central New York.

This is the newest addition to the town mural collection. I love it, of course, because I love Band Pageant -- after all, who doesn't love Band Pageant? But I do worry about what's going to happen if that fire engine and the marching band both keep going on their present paths. Also, I wonder how the recognizable Sherburne residents in this one like being memorialized on a wall!

This one is my favorite. Can't you feel the breeze?

From across the street, it's pretty convincing!  

Sadly, this one is peeling pretty badly. I hope the Big M has it touched up soon, or it'll soon be gone. Notice that there's a cat in the left-hand window, but the blithely-singing bird in the upper right-hand window isn't a bit worried about it. Maybe the windows lead into two different rooms.

Who ARE these people?

Greenpeace

"The US publisher Scholastic is one of the largest Harry Potter publishers globally," said our resident book wizard Judy Rodrigues. "If they had printed the book on 100 percent recycled paper, like Raincoast, its 10.8 million print run could have saved 217,475 mature trees."

The idiots at Greenpeace are telling us that it takes a whole "mature" tree to make 50 copies of the latest Harry Potter. I don't think so.

Recycling is a waste of energy, human and otherwise, anyway.

http://www.techcentralstation.com/072605B.html

Thought You'd Like to Know

The minivan that will take us to OBX and Rob Week has been reserved.

Read This

http://www.boston.com/sports/football/patriots/articles/2005/07/24/true_measure_of_qbs_heart_found_at_home/?page=full

Block that metaphor!

Matt Clement after last night's come from behind win:

''You start off negatively, who knows what it can snowball into. We hope now we can take the snowball and run with it."

The Ace Gang Goes to the Beach

. . . wearing clown noses.

"I'm just glad he came back."

http://www.boston.com/sports/baseball/redsox/articles/2005/07/20/eight_men_out_one_off_the_wall/

Along the same lines...

(not my cat. pictures of my cat with stuff on it to follow soonly.)

What is Manny saying?

"You're an idiot!"?

More Underdog

Aurora builds a swimming pool

DUCK!

Underdog strikes again!

You won't find Australian PM John Howard...

sitting in a corner of his basement sucking his thumb:

MAXINE McKEW: Prime Minister, if as you say you can't rule out that possibility that we could have potential bombers right here in Australia, what if today's announcement, this redeployment to Afghanistan and our continued presence in Iraq is all the provocation they need?
JOHN HOWARD: Maxine, these people are opposed to what we believe in and what we stand for, far more than what we do. If you imagine that you can buy immunity from fanatics by curling yourself in a ball, apologising for the world - to the world - for who you are and what you stand for and what you believe in, not only is that morally bankrupt, but it's also ineffective. Because fanatics despise a lot of things and the things they despise most is weakness and timidity. There has been plenty of evidence through history that fanatics attack weakness and retreating people even more savagely than they do defiant people.

Stuff on our dog

Four remotes and a telephone

New York is nervous

about David Ortiz.

It's exactly what it sounds like.

Stuffonmycat.com

Some Freys on Cape Cod

American Agriculturist Headline

America's Oldest MF weighs in on Farming

What do you suppose MF stands for? Male Farmer? Massey-Ferguson?

Powers of 10

Start 10 million miles from the Milky Way. Then move through orders of magnitude from stars to solar system to Earth to oak leaf to cell, until you are peering at the inside of an atom. Very cool.

A mystery

Why is this picture on this blog?? Stay tuned to find out.

Blogger, by the way, has changed its picture-publishing method. It is WAY easier now. When you open up a box for a new post, there's a picture icon (a little square like a window or a painting near the right-hand end of the row of icons.) Click it and a simple box pops up for loading a picture from your computer or from the Web. Much easier than using Picasa, and Picasa wasn't all that hard.

Wow.

http://www.boston.com/sports/baseball/redsox/articles/2005/07/11/the_kid_plays_hardball/

What a dink. But he's our dink. For now.

Johnny Damon:

''It knocks off one more free agent center fielder," Damon said of the Kotsay signing. ''A lot of teams need one. We'll definitely keep our eyes open when the season ends."

From the Globe. No, he doesn't qualify as a wanker.

Ya gotta love him

With the Sox trailing by three runs and Orioles first baseman Rafael Palmeiro playing off the bag, David Ortiz stole second base in the ninth inning. It was his first stolen base of the season and fifth of his major league career. ''They almost threw me out -- oh my God," Ortiz said. ''You have to enjoy that one because you're not going to see too many more of those. I looked in the dugout and saw Tito go, 'What the [expletive]?' I never go like that on my own. It's always on orders by somebody." Who would possibly issue such orders? ''It's a secret," said Ortiz, who added that yesterday was the first birthday for his son, D'Angelo.

from the Globe.

Farm Update

Which I'm getting to as fast as I can, ain't I? I know everyone is anxious about what's going on.

Almost had our 100th Jersey yesterday. Sonata calved a week early out in the pasture with a heifer calf. Brought 'em in, fed the calf. Bingo. Out popped a bull calf. Bad news. When heifer calves and bull calves are twins, the heifer calf has an undeveloped reproductive tract, making her useless for what we do here, which is make milk. We were at 100 jerseys for a few days last week, but Munch got to be annoying so we said goodby to her. No chance for 100 again for a couple weeks.

It finally rained for a couple of days, greening up the pastures and reducing the likelihood of having to keep the goldanged cows inside. I hate inside cows. When they're inside, they own ya.

Production dropped 15% in the heat a few weeks ago, and has rebounded a bit. We're not where we want to be, but very rarely are we.

A message from the Natural Food Co-op.

Well I'm sitting here on a computer at Case Center in Skidmore and I'd like to share with the rest of my family a couple special messages from the Natural Food Co-op that are tacked up on the wall in here.

First:
The EPA estimates pesticides (some cancer causing) contaminate the water in 38 states, polluting the primary source of drinking water for more than half of the country's population. Buy organic!

Second:
Organic foods have more vitamins and minerals, and thus protects you from chronic disease.

Believe it or not, the comma and the s at the end of protects in the second message were not typos by me, the posters were actually written that way. What I really like about the posters, however, is that they are both written in marker on construction paper, giving them that personal touch, and they're each signed with a heart. Ahh that wonderful natural food co-op. It's good to know that there are people out there who really care about our health, from the bottom of their hearts.


By the way, I'm starting to consider applying to Skidmore....



just kidding Dad.

Samantha Rose Bouley

Born 7/1/2005. 7 lbs. 3 Oz. Mother and daughter doing well. Congratulations to Eric and Michelle. How exciting!

Aurora had a bull!

Aurora the heifer, I mean. Mother is doing well, except for a touch of Mastitis in her left rear quarter.