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We’re close to the half-way mark for the Barnstable County Fair, which ends this Saturday.
The kids got to do rides (those who wanted rides) and games yesterday, good timing, since Peter was recovering from oral surgery and had at least a couple of hours of peace and quiet.
All of them won prizes, a break from prior years in which hard feelings about being outdone spoiled an otherwise good time.
We got to see the raptor show, which hasn’t been at the fair for the last two years.
The day was hot and humid, unpleasant. We must have walked 200 miles.
The boys and I didn’t leave the midway until after 10. I am hoping my legs will have recovered by tomorrow.

I don’t understand pet owners who think of their dogs as kids.
Some dog owners refer to themselves as “Mummy” and “Daddy”. They bring their dogs on “play dates”.
Worse, they expect other people to tolerate their dogs’ bad behavior as one might a neurotic child’s. “Bitsy was abused” is the favorite excuse for excessive barking, jumping on people, slobbering and even biting.
Given, it takes time and patience to be a responsible dog owner, especially if you’re raising a puppy. But that’s a far cry from bringing up a child; at least, it should be, IMHO.
I don’t think that cat owners are that irrational, but maybe it’s just that cats aren’t in-your-face kind of animals, especially the very big ones, who’d sooner eat you than beg for table scraps.

Back in the day, we used to debate among ourselves about whether or not to eat lobster tomalley, the green stuff you see if you’re consuming a whole lobster.
According to an article in Yahoo!News, the USDA has recommended for some time against consuming the tomalley, and now the Maine Center for Disease Control also is advising consumers not to eat lobster tomalley.
Tomalley works like a liver, filtering contaminants, and the high levels of toxic algae along the Maine coast are responsible for the most recent advisory.
It’s okay to eat lobster meat, though.

I am a loyal customer of your Mashpee store. I have no complaint at all about the store, your inventory or your employees. Indeed, I am always treated with courtesy and respect.
My reason for writing has to do with your audit policy around the handheld scanners.
I like to use the scanners and self-checkout because the process is more efficient, and I sometimes use the discount coupons.
Last evening, I was in a hurry to complete my shopping. When I got to the checkout, though, I was prevented from paying for my order because I was the subject of a random audit.
Immediately, the light at the self-checkout station starting flashing – an embarrassment because it indicates either fraudulence or incompetence on the part of the shopper.
I am an older woman, 62, but computer programming is my profession. While younger people often believe that we old-timers are incompetent about technology, many of us are not and resent being treated like simpletons.
Further, I am highly insulted by the implication that I am a thief. I’ve been audited once after a scan shopping session and found “not guilty” by store personnel. Your system has no good reason to tag me for yet another audit.
Although I am older, I have excellent credit and absolutely no criminal record. And in case you are wondering, no, I don’t believe that your system “randomly” selects people for audit. I suspect that some male chauvinist idiot who uses statistics to support their own prejudices has flagged women over 55 or 60 for particular scrutiny.
I know that the margins are thin in the grocery business and have no desire to steal from Stop & Shop. Further, I’m sure there are a lot of easy ways to steal from your stores without involving the scanner. You might consider implementing a technology that flags unscanned items when shoppers leave your premises rather than subjecting honest people to humiliation.
I have a couple of suggestions.
First, please give the consumer who has been “randomly” selected for audit the option of checking out their goods manually, rather than flashing the checkout lights to call a cashier.
Second, if a consumer has already “passed” an audit – don’t require it again within the next twelve months.
Third, you might consider doing a study of which cohorts of customers are subject to the most scanner audits. My guess is that you will find there are patterns which might surprise you. Better for you to discover this before Attorney General Coakley is asked to investigate.
Thank you for taking the time to read this message.

The kids and I went to the year’s first Circle by the Sea on Sandy Neck Beach tonight.
We brought everything as instructed: chairs, firewood, marshmallows, bug repellant and met up with a friend whom I haven’t seen for over a year.
We enjoyed the fire, the singing and the beach, and the kids said they’d like to go back. They collected what seemed like 50 pounds of rocks, including one that my friend said was good luck because it contains a circle.
Around the time that Emme and James decided they’d had enough, we started to see lightning on the horizon. As it moved closer and the wind shifted onshore, we picked up our stuff and went back to the truck. By the time I got home, the storm had reached the Cape; according to Nexrad radar, it’s hitting the beach just about now.

Starbucks is _not_ closing its stores in Mashpee and Falmouth.

Peter compared my recent rotten luck with employers to Zsa Zsa Gabor’s eight, or is it nine, marriages.
Turns out, Ms. Gabor has been married to her most recent spouse, Fr

My granddaughter was telling us that the songs they sang at her old camp (she refused to go this year) were “stupid”.
This really bothers me. I don’t recall liking camp, but truth be told and it’s a mystery why, the smell of balsam brings back happy memories, and very often, I find myself humming or whistling some of the tunes we learned around the campfire.
So, here’s a partial list for Emme. Some in the second group I learned when I was a Counselor In Training (CIT), so while the lyrics are innocent, they still aren’t especially age-appropriate right now, but will be in a couple of years:
White Wings (a great song, the white wings are the sails of a ship)
Lord, Blow the Moon Out, Please
Two Wings
The Ash Grove
Tell Me Why
Rise and Shine
Dona Nobis Pacem
I’m Happy When I’m Hiking
John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt
The Quartermaster’s Song
We’re here because we’re here
Boom Boom Ain’t it Great to Be Crazy?
When Sammy Put the Paper on the Wall
Great green gobs of greasy, grimy gopher guts
Do your ears hang low?
The Cannibal King (certain folk with a PC poker up their arses forbade this song at Girl Scout day camp but we sang it anyway)
On Top of Spaghetti
Here’s a terrific collection of lyrics but, unfortunately, no music to go with them: http://www.mikeleal.com/campsongs/index.html

So, the Obama campaign was compelled to fire off a self-righteous response to The New Yorker, of all publications, for its satiric cover cartoon depicting Barack, Michelle, a fist pump and paraphernalia related to unsubstantiated rumors about the candidate’s religion and ethnic sympathies.
I guess that means that if the country elects Obama, any criticism of the government would be repressed out of sensitivity to the President’s delicate sensibilities, something which, by the way, we haven’t seen during the Bush administration, even with its trouncing of Constitutional rights and civil liberties. For all his faults, Dubya does possess the ability to laugh at himself.
I thought Fox News was way out of bounds with its disgusting characterization of Michelle Obama as B-man’s Baby Mama, but it seems to me that the cartoon on the cover of The New Yorker is entirely in keeping with its tongue in cheek reputation.
Senator Obama does appear to have a skin problem, and it has nothing to do with color.

James and I took the WHOOSH “trolley” to Woods Hole the other day, and I’m sorry I forgot my camera.
This particular trolley (a bus, really) had a platform on the back where you could stand. It’s actually an advantage to be short, since anyone with a center of gravity above two feet would likely be pitched overboard, especially on bumpy Woods Hole Road.
We started at Pie in the Sky, spent some time at the playground, then stopped briefly at the Angelus Tower gardens, walked around Eel Pond and back to the ferry terminal.
James loves Woods Hole, absolutely loves it, and he was in such a great mood that he wanted to “make it up” to his brother for not allowing him to come.