Why I Oughta...

Where in the World is this?   If you guessed it was right at the entrance to the Magic Kingdom, you'd be wrong.  This is a replica that is set up in One Man's Dream inside of Disney's Hollywood Studios. Here you leave today and enter the world of yesterday, tomorrow and fantasy.  Don't mind if I do.

The Babe picked out this set of 'Cross Stitch Booster' pins down at the Magic Kingdom earlier this year because she thought they were 'Minecraft' pins.    It is a nice set that she wore on her lanyard for most of the trip.  For those of you who are uninitiated (or just don't care), there's Mickey the Mouse, Dumbo, Pooh Bear and Stitch.  They each have 2 pinbacks on each of them.  The Pooh Bear one is the biggest and the best one, imho. We've started to put some of the girls pins on a corkboard in their room, but since we're not settled, that is just a stopgap measure.  But, even though it is just temporary, these pins are prominent on that board.

We've had these silhouettes done of the kids over the years and the same woman who did the first ones of just the oldest two, did these three.  If you know the kids in real life ( Is this real life?!? ), you'll note that these are *really* good.  How 'bout those 'lashes?!? We had these done down in Florida earlier this year and I shared them on our family blog a bit back, but figured I should post them here for diary-keeping sakes. How these are done is pretty amazing.  The kids sit for a woman who uses some tiny, super-sharp scissors and she looks at the kid for maybe two or three minutes while she cuts.  And in no time, she pulls one of these beauties out and we're all amazed.  We had the old set hung up in our house, but...since we have no house...these are sitting in a pile of stuff awaiting our next move.  Life on pause is great, isn't it?

That's the view from my office this week as the NFL has arrived and Chicago has rolled out the red carpet for them in the form of the second year of Draft Town.   Here's my post showing the setup from last year in 2015 .   They seem to have shifted the bulk of the activities towards the lake with the biggest tent area right along Lake Shore Drive and a few other tents and what look like broadcast booths scattered around Buckingham Fountain.  They also (if you look closely!) added a Ferris Wheel.  Which is weird, right?   Last year, all the action was confined east of Columbus with the biggest tent right on Michigan Avenue.  That's where the team representatives sat and talked on the phones.  They then 'walked' the picks across the street to the Auditorium Theatre .  Not sure if that's part of the schtick this year?   I think it is great to have this event here in town.  I'm sure that we - the taxpayers - are footing the bill, but I think that

I've written about the hostas at our old house a few times here on the blog in the past and being part of our shade gardens, they're one of my favorite things to tend to.  Perhaps it is because I grew up down in Frankfort on a heavily wooded lot that just about only allowed my Mom to have shade gardens?  Or, that they're mostly the domain of perennials that come back each year and there's something magical about those?  I dunno.  But...one way or the other, I like shade gardens. We had a really nice, maturing set of shade plants on the north side of our old lot.  We had ferns, astibiles , and plenty of hostas .  All sorts of hostas.  Some, like these , I picked up at Menards.  Some, were left overs from when the wicked lady moved out of the house and she *thought* that she plucked every last perennial out of the gardens only for us to discover the next year that SOME came back including some hostas.  And a special plant that came from my sister Sharon's house i

As if you didn't get enough of my drivel on a daily basis, right?  But...for *some* of you, there's a new place to keep up with things that I read and places I go and photos I take online.  It is my newish link/photo home on the web.   You can find it here . It is called "Over by dere".  Which, if you speak Chicagoese , you know roughly translates to : Over by dere. i.e. "over by there," a prolix way of emphasizing a site presumed familiar to the listener. As in, "I got the sassage at da Jewels down on Kedzie, over by dere.' For now, it is a home to things that I come across on the web that are somewhere in between re-Tweets and blog posts here on the blog. I haven't totally figured out what will be up there and how often, but there's enough that I've put up there that I figured it was time to share.  Besides...part of the reason for it is me thinking about vanity SEO and having this post up with inbound links to Over By Dere by

That right there in the photo is the *only* child of mine who was brave enough to go up and touch/pet this Peregrine Falcon that was on patrol at the Beach Club down at Sea Island .  The Bird - as we call her - wasn't afraid to touch this bird that is part of the falconry program at Sea Island .   Her older sister?  Not interested. As Nat will tell you, I have a fascination with all-things birds of prey.  When we're driving, I will always point them out when they're soaring above the highway or sitting on fence posts. Sea Island keeps their falconry program for two reasons.  The first is for hunting.  That part is something that I'm totally unfamiliar with, but it seems that you can 'hunt' for squirrels and such with these hawks . The other way these Peregrine Falcons are used is what you see above.   They have a guy who is in their Falconry program standing watch in the pool area of the Beach Club.  After talking to him, he said that the mere presence of