Pics from Pump house 2 Katydid shell

Click on a picture to enlarge it
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This is my water bucket drainage system

When the leak first started getting 'fixed'

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I took this because it was the *only* dandelion I could see

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This is Twitches fave place (floor) and position (on back) napping and/or sleeping

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I just happened to look up and saw this Katydid's empty shell sticking on the tree

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550 .5.7.1 This message does not comply with required standards

Yesterday I got an email from someone with a @yahoo.com addy. When I hit 'reply' then send I got the below error message:

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I did Internet searches to find out why I get/got this. Got no answers that made it possible to change something/anything to make it send. I contacted Centurytel on-line-chat and phone support, they had no answers either. As usual, I obsessed about the error and why, so I tried *everything* I could think of changing, to no avail. UNTIL this afternoon. The original email yesterday had an URL in the body of the message ( Http://makinghomeaffordable.gov/ ). One work-around is to just add another email address to the "To:, Cc:, or Bcc:" window (2 different addies are the recipients), hit 'Send' and it went out with zero errors without me changing anything in the message. BUT if I just left the sender's addy in the To: window but took out the ".gov" off the end of the URL making it ( Http://makinghomeaffordable) it also went out just fine. I tried pasting the URL with dot gov in a NEW email message to my yahoo mail account, but it wouldn't go out until I took the gov off or added another recipient.
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I was thinking it had something to do with CenturyTel's mail servers, but the ONLY time I get the error is when the TO: is either @yahoo.com or @yahoogroups.com. Even then it's not all the time. Sometimes if I just reformat the message to plain text the message goes fine, or I take out the pictures, but even those things don't always enable me to send a message.
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I also tried changing the ZoneAlarm firewall settings, disabling the anti virus software, shutting ZoneAlarm down - nothing changed so I put them back to the way they were before all of this began. Didn't try completely uninstalling ZA or the anti-virus though.
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In summation : I personally believe it has something to do with Yahoo! and the .gov or other government letters in an URL in the BODY of a message. Just add another TO: address to the outgoing mail and it should bypass whatever or whoever's server is flagging it. It may still be flagging it on their end but at least your recipient DOES get it. (I got it at my yahoo.com address on-line). YMMV

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Thursday_to_Sunday

Thursday: Drove to our family's long time friends homestead and had a absolutely awesome time. We even got to meet a few of their friends right around them in the neighborhood.

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Friday: Went to Buffalo and bowled with a couple other home educating families (3). Nonetheless, a good time was had and my Epiphany was that it's obvious my Wii Bowling training did nothing for my real life game. LOL.

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Saturday: Went to a little bigger city and did receipt shopping (A/C) and grocery shopping. And when I say, "Grocery", I really mean food AND those things that weren't edible.

Late afternoon: Neighbor's daughter, boyfriend and their baby daughter came over and swam til it started rain-sprinkling. First time a 'neighbor' (mile away) has came and stayed for a LONG time. YAY!

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Today/Sunday: Took a much needed shower, Wii'd (body test), got very old door-closer part that's just been attached only with bent screws I couldn't UNscrew, so just left it. Today I finally got my "Tap & Di" set out, but after drilling the pilot hole the screw heads came off and I didn't need it after all. Watched Pirate's of the Caribbean 1 & 3. Next will be another "pirate" movie called El Dorado - by Disney. Pirate Sunday is what today has been. *smile*

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These are two of the two Poplar tree stumps from year that are STILL trying to come back. The one on right: That black stuff is "Pruning Sealer" which is supposed to keep them from "branching out", but it's not always successful. *sigh*

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Oh, and we now have 4 Solar Powered L.E.D. lights lining our driveway. We're SO stylin!

July 4th day/afternoon/evening 2009

(credit for the pic: http://tinyurl.com/qemb5g)
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Since there wasn't anything of interest on the four channels of 'local' television yesterday, we just watched movies on various DVDs that we've collected over the years. Knowing that we had seen them all at least 3-4 times meant that anyone who had an inkling to do something besides sit and stare at the television was free, as always, to do other stuff, and did. Which is actually a pretty typical theme for our TV viewing. I chose not to watch much on 'the tube', which meant I spent a lot of my time outside tinkering. For instance, I brought an empty lidded, metal can out of the shed and labeled it "glass only". Previously we just put whatever glass we had to dispose of in an old empty plastic ex cat litter bucket and either left it on the porch or put it in the shed. No one around here recycles or even takes glass so we just store wherever we have empty space. Another can that was being used to keep large bags of rabbit pellets for use as litter for the cats' litter pans was empty, so I put a label on it that says, "Non Recyclables, Non Burnables. Junk" on it. Then went around the porch and collected empty spray cans of wasp spray or whatever and put them in that can. When it gets full we'll decide how best to get rid of it.
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We played a few game of Wii Bowling. I did pretty well except that by the end of the session (3 games) my "status" had dropped below "professional". So when the ladies (DW & DD) who were the competition went to do other things, I played several games trying to get my status back up to pro and working on finding the best/most consistent method of lane placement and ball throwing. In the end I did get my status to the 'pro' level. In the late afternoon, after the girls got up from their nap, we once again played on the Wii (bowling) and then did some bowling 'training' by playing what is called "Power Bowling". That is suppose to help you figure out a way to knock as many pins as possible down in 10 frames that the amount of pins increases frame by frame depending on how many pins you make fall. Frame #1 is 10 pins. Frame #10 is usually 91 pins. Whoever has the highest total after those 10 gets bragging rights, but if you knock over a LOT of pins you can get a virtual medal. My wife did the best and got a silver medal. My daughter and I played around 5 games where she won 4 out of the 5 but the last one I won, which just happened to by my best game so far and got me a Silver medal as well. The reason we played so many Power Bowling Training games was because I couldn't have my 16 year old daughter out scoring me on the very first day she had done it, lol, when I had done it several times on prior days so should've been much better. Nothing like some competition to bring out ones best, eh?
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I also played a few games of Wii Tennis using one of my two Mii's that wasn't at the pro level to try and get him there. Since it was my newest Mii it had a pretty low status so it's going to take several more winning games against the Wii Coms to get him to become a pro. Once he gets there I want to team him up with my regular Wii Sports Mii in a partner's game against the Wii System's players and see how that goes. Anyway, it's not going to take very many more games of the alternative Mii playing the System Mii's before his level enters the pro level. See, I've found a way to expend very little energy using the remote/racket by using just wrist flicks (as opposed to full arm swings) so I win 99.9% of Wii Tennis matches. *grin*
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Then around 7:30 p.m we headed up to the Long Lane park where they shoot off fireworks every fourth of July and watched said event. Once it was dark enough for them to begin and then did, I wished I had taken my camera. I didn't bring it because before we left the house I was thinking, "Fireworks are fireworks and everyone knows what they look like", but since they (the fireworks professionals) decided to shoot them off closer to the park than they had previous years they displays seemed bigger and brighter. That of course would've meant better pictures, but nooooooo, I didn't have the camera. *sigh*
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That, my reader friends, is how we spent the 4th of July in the year 2009.
Hope your day was awesome as well!
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Traps, shoots, algae, filters

We went grocery shopping yesterday and while we were there we got a wasp/hornet trap to *hopefully* reduce the amount of them that greet us whenever we go into one of our 2 sheds. Today is the 2nd day, so far, as you can see, they *haven't* been trapped. Anybody know how long it takes them to find something like this?

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The last couple of days I have mentioned that I was outside pulling/plucking/whatever you call it Poplar shoots that have been coming up all over the yard. See, we cut down 3 adult Poplars last Fall but they don't want to stop repopulating, so they send out these shoots that pop-up from the roots they've sent out previously.

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We *finally* got the above ground pool's water clear and the algae that was floating around mostly out. However, there as been a LOT of it on the floor/bottom of the pool for so long that it's coated the bottom. Unfortunately even vacuuming didn't help. We added 2 gallons of white vinegar last evening, but so far there doesn't *appear* to be any change. I'm thinking we probably need to add a butt load of algaecide in an attempt to kill it. If that doesn't help de-slick the bottom, then we'll need to buy another scrub brush that attached to the skimmer pole and scrub the shit out of it.

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Lastly, this month is the third month since replacing the "old" water filter in the pumphouse with a new one. Was going to replace it with another new one today, but it doesn't look all that dirty to me, so I didn't. Maybe after 3 more months? We shall see.

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Pictures, social networks, and airconditioners

Took these pictures several days ago meaning to upload them to my Gather page. Obviously I have not done that yet. I decided that today is the day, but I am also including it on my blog. May even upload the pictures to my Facebook page. Speaking of my links, you'll notice that there is now a Tweet Me! icon on the bottom of the blog post for anyone to send the page's URL to Twitter.

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This is one of the regulars, possibly 'Phil' or 'Steven'. LOL. Actually, we can't tell them apart. We did notice that it was only the boys feeding for the last week or so. We're assuming that the girls are possibly tending their younguns or something. Anyhoot, just for the fun of it we say, "Hi Phil" or "Hi Steven" when a boy lands to feed, thinking it is more cordial then "hey there bird".
click=larger

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This is of the same little guy but I used the zoom function on the camera. Didn't come out as clear as I hoped it would.

Clickin biggens it. lol :)

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I've been thinking for days about writing in my blog, as opposed to just short comments on Twitter, Facebook, and Gather. The reason I haven't is because there really isn't anything of interest to report. It's been super hot for the two weeks prior to this one that's been only in the mid to high eighties. The weeks prior were mid to high nineties with 60% or above humidity. Our living room AC barely kept it below 80-85 until this week, then it kept it between 75-80 depending on how cool the morning lows are, how warm the outside temperature is and how many times the doors are open and closed.
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Speaking of AC's, the lady whom I've talked to verbally with the MS Society is now just waiting for me to fax her an actual invoice from wherever we want to purchase a better/higher BTU conditioner from so that they know *exactly* how much (if it's approved) to send the store. Problem is that pay day for us isn't until Friday, possibly Thursday if the bank is closed Friday for the July Fourth holiday. The big cheeses who decide whether I get financial help or not won't have another meeting until next Tuesday anyway, and that's when the lady can ask for help on my behalf.
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