We begin another weekend, the first one in July. This weekend is just a little different than most, however, as we celebrate a holiday. We salute all the wonderful young men and women who are spending this holiday doing their best to be sure we can have more. Sunday we celebrate the birth of our nation.
Along with the normal holiday fare, we are going to see some heat. The weather forecast is calling for temperatures to reach into the upper 80s, possibly even into the 90s in some areas, Sunday and probably into the 90s in most areas Monday. Wow!
The Gator Clan will probably perform a few weekend-type duties, like Gator Wife and Gator Daughter checking on the crops while The Old Gator Dude keeps an eye on the two Golden Retrievers that are part of our combined family.
Seaking of the Goldens, in the last post I had a picture of Gator Golden paying strict attention to a nearby chipmunk which was just outside GG's Invisible Fence. That was the best picture in the series I was able to capture, but here is another:
She's hoping beyond hope the chipmunk will make a mistake. Of course, it didn't.
This weekend will be an especially happy time for one member of our family. Our niece, the daughter of GW's brother, and a Scarborough police officer will become a married couple Saturday. That wedding, of course, is high on our weekend agenda. We sincerely wish the greatest and longest happiness of the young couple as they enter this new phase of their lives.
GW and I like ice cream. I'd bet most people do. We've been seeing an advertisement of the TV lately for a new cone from one of the larger ice cream and other dairy product companies. The picture of the treat on the television shows a nice waffle cone with a huge amount of ice cream showing above the cone and some chocolate peanut butter cups on top. It is dripping with chocolate and caramel sauce.
It looked delicious so GW brought a box home for us to try. Except that all that ice cream above the cone apparently didn't quite make the cones we bought, the ice cream was typical of that company: Pretty good. The caramel swirl ice cream inside the cone was nice and those little cups with a small amount of chocolate sauce on the top were just about as we expected: good.
Basically, the ice cream sundae part of the cone was very good. But that waffle cone, now that's another story. It may have been the singularly worst waffle cone I've ever had. GW said about the same thing for hers. It had the consistency of wet cardboard. Too bad. We decided that box of those cones will be the last this house will ever see. The box, incidentally, held five cones.
Finally, another gripe. Google hosts this blog and makes the space available to bloggers free. I'm happy with that but now must take a chance of getting the company angry with me. Although I do have my own web domain, in fact I own four of them, I use the Google News page as my home page. I've spent quite a while customizing it to present to me the news I want. Google, you see, spans the world looking for key words in news articles and making those articles available.
Thursday my home page looked totally different. Google, in its collective wisdom, decided that it knew more of what I want than I do. Although the custom series I want can still be generally accessed, my home page is no longer laid out "my way." And that new page is loaded with 80% of news I have zero interest in. The layout has also changed from neat sections to a crowded page.
I hate it!
I can't really complain because the price is right, but I sure do wish Google would give me the option to return to a functional page I can use rather than the dysfunctional one it thinks I need. I found a short section on the Google site of comments on the change. At the time I read them, not one person had a good word to say about it.
Perhaps I'll have to return to one of my own home pages once again.
By the way, I mentioned my feelings to my Fearless Friend. He also uses the Google News page. He wasn't as unhappy with the change as I said I was, so I'd have to admit the negative feelings of that change are probably not universal.
Enjoy your holiday weekend.
GiM