WHAT A DIFFERENCE . . .

Last March 10th I took some photos of new construction around StoneRidge, where we live.

Workmen were busily working on this new house, though if you click on the photo to expand it and look closely near the center you can see a couple of them taking a break in the shade.

Yesterday, I ventured out to find the home finished and occupied.

Even more startling was the change in what in March was just a vacant lot being cleared, leveled and surveyed.

As of yesterday, another house had been constructed and the lot landscaped.

It appears to be a modest house from this angle but look at it from the other side.

I can't remember and my earlier photographs don't tell me if the house between these two had been built in March. 

Now it joins the other in looking down on the StoneRidge golf course and the mountains beyond from it's cliff edge position.

Their view:

The song goes "What a difference a day makes . . ."

In this case it's what a difference six months makes.

THE FRIDAY FUNNIES

T.G.I.T.F.F.

(thank god it's the friday funnies)

Speaking of that OTHER Donald, you know, the blonde one . . .

That's it, folks. Have a happy weekend and don't stare at that cuckoo cat clock too long. But if you do, remember to keep laughing!

THROWBACK THURSDAY

September 11, 2001.

The day the twin towers in New York city were attacked by terrorists in airplanes and brought down.

Nearly 3,000 people were killed.

Tomorrow is the anniversary of that horrible day but those who died are not forgotten.

On the grassy lawn between the Prescott Valley Civic Center and the Police Station, three thousand flags are flying.

It is called the Prescott Valley Healing Field of Northern Arizona.

Each flagpole has a card attached with the name of one of the victims.

Only one came from my home state of North Dakota.

This is her card.

I never knew Ann but she came from my hometown and was the daughter of someone I grew up with.

I have sought out her card before and spent a moment at her flag.

You may have noticed the boots at the base of some of the flags. They are placed to remember firemen who died when the towers collapsed.

The display is put up by volunteers every year to allow people to commemorate the lives lost in the tragedy.

As President Roosevelt said of December 7th, 1941 when Japanese planes attacked Pearl Harbor, "it was a day that shall live in infamy."

September 11th, 2001 was another such day.

LONG LIVE THE QUEEN!

I guess Queen Elizabeth II has lived long.

She's 89 and today she became the longest ruling queen of the United Kingdom in history.

At something less than 23, 227 days she surpassed the reign of her great-great-grandmother, Queen Victoria.

Elizabeth was characteristically modest when commenting on the event, "Inevitably a long life can pass by many milestones - my own is no exception -but I thank you all and the many others at home and overseas for your touching messages of great kindness."

I can remember the day of her coronation very well. I was a 12 year old boy living in North Dakota, about 50 miles from the Canadian border. At that location our a.m. radio could pick up stations from Regina, Saskatchewan, and Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Of course the stations were carrying the coverage of the event live from London and I listened to it all day.

By this age, I had become engrossed in the tales of Sherlock Holmes and was a budding Anglophile so the radio broadcasts were like a dream to me.

63-plus years ago now.

Congratulations, Elizabeth!

TUESDAY TRAVELS

The political trail.

Some of the press badges I collected in my travels covering politics, from the 1968 national political conventions in Chicago and Miami Beach to the 1984 meets in San Francisco and Dallas. With stops along the way at Richard Nixon's 1969 inauguration and Queen Elizabeth's visit to California in 1983 and the Summer Olympics in Los Angeles in 1984.

The top row includes badges my grandfather and father collected attending Republican national conventions back to 1924.

What a long, strange trip it's been.

HAPPY LABOR DAY

So I left the house (rare these days) to see what I could find to photograph for the holiday.

Here's what I quickly saw through my windshield.

You will note a few scattered raindrops.

A little later, this was the view through my moonroof.

It let up briefly, allowing me to snap some pictures (for posting later in the week) but then it came back with a passion.

I found a high ground location to take the following series of photos.

The big building is our local Sam's Club warehouse. The barely visible hills beyond it are where StoneRidge (and we) reside.

That last one is looking east toward the heaviest rain.

I'm not complaining. 

We can use the rain.

I'm just wondering how the Faire on the Square in Prescott is . . . faring.

At least they've had two previous days of decent weather.

IT'S A BIRD, IT'S A PLANE, IT'S . . .

I was taking some photographs of a big storm cloud over the mountains yesterday.

When I transferred them to my computer and viewed them I saw a mysterious figure in the sky.

Right there in the center of the photo is . . . something.

Cropping the photo didn't help much. I still couldn't figure out what it was.

Is it a plane?

A big bird?

Maybe one of the ravens that inhabit our area?

Or maybe an insect that landed on my lens momentarily?

I took one other picture just after this and whatever it had been wasn't there in the second photo.

Just that nasty looking sky full of portent.

(The portent allowed only a few drops of moisture to hit the ground in our area.)

But writing this, this morning, did make me think of Jim Morrison.

A PRICKLY PRESENCE

Something you don't want to mess with in Arizona.

Just one of many different varieties of cactus that live in the Great Sonoran Desert and surrounding areas.

This one is a Prickly Pear and it's very sharp spines covering the pads are a few inches long.

But the smaller hair-like bristles are the dangerous ones as they detach easily from the cactus and can become imbedded in one's skin.

In Mexico the cacti are known as nopales and are eaten as a delicacy.

After the needles are carefully removed, of course.

But me?

I think I'll just keep on avoiding them and watching where I step.

THE FRIDAY FUNNIES

'Tis the last weekend of summer, so they say. 

So let's put it to bed with a bang. 

Or at least a laugh. 

Maybe a non-P.C. laugh or two.

Did I mention that some of today's humor is non-P.C.?

O.K.

Just so I warned you.

A special thanks to my contributors this Friday.

Have a terrific weekend and always remember to keep laughing.

THROWBACK THURSDAY

Same trip that took me to the Hello, Dolly set (last week's post). Sometime in the mid to late 1960's, RTNDA convention in Los Angeles. I was over-exposed by the photographer at CBS Television City studios, where we were entertained by the Smothers Brothers, among others.

The bags under my eyes and the lines in my face tell me it was a great boozy trip.

SMACKDOWN!

This scene sort of resembles a WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment) match.

Blackwell reigns and rests in the chair.

Muggles lies on the floor after being flattened.

But it wasn't that way.

It's just afternoon nap time.

Blackwell has found the chair to be comfortable for her snooze.

And Muggles, as is her way, collapses on the floor on her back.

At least part of her. 

Her top half appears to be on it's side but her bottom half rests facing the ceiling, with her rear feet poised.

I've never understood how cats can sleep on their backs but Muggles does it frequently.

By the way, that tube behind her on the floor is her favorite toy, packed with catnip. It's pretty stale now, I would assume, but she still plays with it.

Probably out of habit.

Like her sleeping posture.

Ho-hum. This post has made ME sleepy. Guess I'll join the felines in a bit of a nap.

TUESDAY TRAVELS

A rather disheveled-looking Captain Catalyst studies the Pacific Ocean near San Simeon in California a few years ago.

"What was that? Did someone say 'Rosebud'?"