'Company' at the History Boy Theatre

We attended a performance last night of the musical Company at the History Boy Theatre here in Jefferson. It was the first time we had attended one of their productions and we were not disappointed. Below is a couple of links about the play.
https://www.facebook.com/Historyboytheatrecompany

http://greenecountynewsonline.com/2015/05/10/history-boy-theatre-co-presents-company/

Light at the end of the tunnel?

I see that light a coming...maybe. I am getting closer to having all my chores done around here. I am working on a second flower/rock bed behind the garage. It will be one we see from the 3 season room. If I had the energy to put in two full days I would be finished, I say optimistically. At any rate, I feel better about things and may concede and leave something for next spring or summer.

Have you ever had a wren growl at you? We have a house wren in a birdhouse outside our back door. I can see it quite well and when I looked the other day Mr/Mrs Wren looked at me with one eye and the feathers under the chin puffed all up and there was a growling sound! No doubt about the message. It was not a welcoming one.

Our rain forest summer has blessed us with a gazillion or more mosquitos.  I apply bug repellant but still come inside and a few hours later notice more new bites. Then I want to growl like the wrens do.

Butch has been helping me with some of my projects as well as his own. (the antique mower) His project isn't going so well right now, but he is not ready to give up.

Yesterday Butch and I did a short tour. We went out to Spring Lake to see how many campers there were and the place was nearly full. It is a county park between Jefferson and Grand Junction Iowa. http://www.mycountyparks.com/county/Greene/Park/Spring-Lake-Park.aspx
Spring Lake holds many childhood memories for me because my family went for a dip in the lake almost every hot summer night. We would wait anxiously for Dad to get off work and then pile in the car to go to the lake. This was in the days of no air conditioning so it was a blessed relief to be in the water. After we had all cooled off we would get into our clothes and on the way back to town hold our swimsuits out the window to dry. It is a wonder we didn't lose them, but as I remember it we never did.
The lake and park are much more sophisticated than when I was a child. Some things are the same, like the skating rink and shelter houses but now they have camping and the grounds are maintained. It was more primitive in the 50's.

Yesterday on our tour, Butch and I came home the back way and stopped at a rock pile I had spotted at the edge of a farm field. We loaded up a few rocks and I have my eye on more. If we take it a bit at a time, it might not be so daunting.

So as you can tell not much of note going on here but we are having the best time ever not doing much.

10 uses for beer...besides the usual ones!

I doubt that Butch would give a stamp of approval to any of them! Colleen was telling me this morning, beer placed in a shallow dish will rid your garden of slugs. I think I will sneak some away from him and give it to the slug family.

http://www.prevention.com/health/life-hacks-using-beer

Data Breaches and Spam

Data breaches are rampant these days. A couple of days ago my LastPass password protector program had a data breach! So I changed my Google account password and my LastPass master password. Not all of my passwords were affected and by changing the two basic ones it should take care of it. I change the Google one every few months and I do have to write it down or I would never remember it. I feel the notebook I write it in is probably safer than having an easy password every hacker could figure out. So my new passwords are 11 digits long, upper and lower case and as random as possible.Geez!

 And then there is spam...Since I am all about Google I do not have much of a concern for spam but thought some might, so am posting this article I recently ran across.

7 tips to Help You Can the Spam

1. Never respond to unsolicited email. One response or “hit” from thousands of emails is enough for spammers to justify the practice. In addition, a response lets the spammer know that your email address is active, which makes it more valuable and opens the door to more spam.

2. Never send your personal information (credit card numbers, passwords, etc.) in an email. Spammers can fake the format of ANY trusted sites. Banks and other trusted sites will never ask you to send your password or credit card information by email. Not really an anti-spam tip, but a reminder… OK?

3. Never follow a spam email’s instructions to reply with the word “remove” or “unsubscribe” in the subject line or body of the message unless you are sure of and trust the source of the email. Normally, this is a ploy to get you to react to the email, which tells the spammer that your email address is valid.

4. Never click on a URL or web address listed within a spam email, even if the message tells you that’s how you unsubscribe. This is another trick to that tells the spammer your email address is valid. Once they know your address is valid it can be added to databases which are sold to professional spammers on DVD or CD for a few hundred dollars. And this will result in you getting more spam for sure!

5. Don’t fall for sites set up to help you remove your name from spam lists. Although some of these sites MIGHT be legitimate, most are really collecting valid email addresses to sell to spammers. If a collector gets your address and they know it’s a valid, working email address, it is worth a lot of money to them. They’ll put your email address in one of their databases and sell these databases to professional spammers. Not only won’t your email address be removed from spam lists, it will added to many spam lists. And you’ll get more spam.

6. Never allow your ISP to convince you that spam filtering is a service. If you have a choice, choose an ISP who does not use spam filtering. While spam filtering might seem to be a service and a good thing, remember that any time you allow another person to make choices for you, you’re going to end up with something you don’t like. What you won’t like about ISPs who filter your mail is that you’re not going to get all of your good email either – and you might not even be aware it existed. Do not use ISPs who tout spam-filtering or anti-spam features as a plus. If you don’t have a choice of ISPs in your area and your only choice is an ISP who insists censorship is good for you, get a Gmail account and set it up in your favorite email program. Gmail provides instructions on how to do this. And, remember, my fine friends, that Gmail also has spam-filtering too, but luckily for you, you have the final say. If something, like this newsletter, ends up in your spam folder, all you gotta do is mark it “This is not spam” and it will never be dumped in your spam folder again – it will always appear in your inbox where you want it (we hope!).

7. Consider allowing Gmail to get mail from your other accounts. While Gmail’s filters are not perfect, they’re the best we’ve seen. It’s easy to set Gmail to retrieve your mail from your other email accounts. When you do this, then Gmail is filtering all email before you retrieve it. And as we’ve said before, you have the final say whether something is spam or not — once you tell Gmail that something placed in the spam folder is not spam, it won’t be placed in the spam folder again.

Bell Tower Parade 2015

In Iowa Parades and tractors go together like ham and eggs. This is a collection of toy tractors, always a hit with young Iowa farmers.

 Keith Conroy, a classmate of mine from the class of '61 restores tractors and this is his latest effort.

 Jefferson has an honest-to-god A&W drive-in. Want a root beer float?

 Just thought she was cute...

 This was a float for a Day Care facility. That is one BIG baby!

 Will farm equipment get any bigger?

 Many sitting in my area thought this to be the most unique entry in the parade. A working Ferris wheel

 More big ol' farm equipment.

                                     Horses!!!

 Lovely tree on the courthouse square.

Gary and Susan came up from Missouri for the weekend and we have been busy with Belltower festivities and other fun like golf, walking and biking. Never enough time to see and do everything. It has been fun and it was some kind of miracle- it hasn't rained since Friday morning.