Patriotism On Display...

 Sure, they're cute and fun. My son and I were car shopping and we turned on a street in Farr West, Utah, and saw patriotism on display. Other homes on the same street were decked out in Independence Day colors, but the corner house did it best.

It wasn't that long ago that blow-up displays put a person back a pretty penny. I don't know how much they cost back them--mostly because it didn't matter to us. We didn't really have a pretty penny to spend. Also, I remember them being much bigger.

 But, because we live in the greatest country on earth, those displays have become more affordable and more varied. You can get displays for any holiday. The other day my wife and I were in Hobby Lobby and I saw a couple of small displays for under $50. 

We passed.

My wife said we might not be able to keep them in our yard due to the winds.

I agreed.

Still, they are a lot of fun. It's a great way to show your holiday spirit, no matter the holiday. I just hope it's not that windy in Farr West.

Maybe It's Time For This Horde...

 I heard the grasshoppers were going to be bad this year. Since we live on a hill and behind our subdivision, there's nature for miles and miles, I suspected there would be a lot of grasshoppers out there.

I was right, and not so right.

Our house is surrounded by other houses. We've lived in homes where that's not the case. Growing up, we lived at the end of a street and on two sides of our house, was mountain. It was fun trying to keep the mountain weeds at bay. 

It was also fun trying to keep the bugs, the snakes, the raccoons, and any other mountain animal/bug at bay. 

This summer, we've seen some grasshoppers in our yard. They haven't been too bad. We've had some plants eaten, but other plants haven't been touched. Maybe they are out there, but it's not something we think about when we go outside.

Just a road away, homes have a street in front and a mountain behind. I've driven on that road and you can see many grasshoppers on the road, on the sidewalks, on the driveways. They jump up and fly both to and away from the car as I drive down the road. If I lived on that road, I'd be thinking differently about the horde of locusts (grasshoppers...) than I do now.

I guess it's all a matter of perspective...

And location.

Out With The Old, In With The New...Journal #77

 I caught the journaling bug years ago...well, decades ago, really. It's something I do, something that takes me only a few minutes a day. I used to write in a journal until all the pages were filled, but I decided to use one journal for every six months, two journals a year.

I've used that system for a long time.

Yesterday I finished up Journal #76. Today, I begin Journal #77. If I've written two journals a year, you can do the math to see just how long I've been writing in these things.

When I started, I could go to our local religious bookstore and pick up both the binders and filler pages. As fewer and fewer people kept journals, they discontinued the binders, but they still sold the filler pages. Now, they don't even do that. I had to call the company and order filler pages over the phone the last time I needed replacements. I remember having a conversation with the woman on the phone who said there will come a time when the company will no longer carry the fillers.

I don't exactly know what I'm going to do when I finally run out of pages. I think I'll print my own pages, cut them, and punch holes in them.

Thankfully, I don't have to worry about that for a little while.

Yes, it's a changing of the journal guard. Bring on 2024--the second half! Who knows what interesting things will be taking place.