Taken this Morning

Purple Finch

House Wren

It’s World Password Day

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Trivia isn't trivial!

We moved up the ladder one rung and came in second place in the Hy-vee trivia night. All eight of us contributed to bring that win home. It was a fun night!!

Mr.Wren

Late yesterday afternoon I spotted Mr. Wren in a tree. He has taken up residence here for several years now. We have a couple of options for him to build his nest and get it ready for Mrs. Wren's approval. Yes, Guys, that is the way it works in the wren world. He works his hiney off getting a house all furnished and arranged. Then she comes round and sees if it works for her. If the answer is yes, she moves in and if it is no, then she moves on and he continues to work.

This morning I see a couple of birds "wrestling" in the tree. Soon one flies off and there sits Mr. Wren! He was victorious and has claimed the territory. His adversary was a song sparrow.

He is the champion!!

And yesterday this guy was getting a snack between rain storms.

Red-bellied Woodpecker

(Melanerpes carolinus)

Working on Trivia and other stuff

I asked the moderator, for want of a better word, if I could write down the questions he asks us. He said, "Yes, but why do you want to?" I told him I was doing a similar trivia program in Texas and it was quite successful. It gives me a break from putting together my own questions. Truth is I cannot and do not use all the questions. Some are not usable in my opinion.
Example:
From 2003 to 2007 a remake of a Japanese show called Takeshi's Castle ran on American TV. What was it called?
Answer: Most Extreme Elimination Challenge (MXC)

See what I mean? I had to do considerable research to reconstruct the question!!!
Oh well. Most of the questions make sense.
Tonight is Trivia night! Yeah!

Other Stuff:
We have had a 3-day session of iffy weather. They say we are in for another round late this afternoon. It sure is making everything lush with the moisture interspersed with bits of sunshine.

Here is my as yet untouched Rhubarb patch.

And we have a new visitor. He/She posed nicely for a photo. Did not blink even once!

Last nights storm

It was a rip snorter! The lightning shots and the thunder booms that make you cringe were abundant. We were in the motorhome for most of it. (See the post below) And the power went out for a couple of hours. We had an inch of rain and everything looks clean and crisp today. It was like the whole town went through a powerful town-wash. So since the power was out we came back in the house as soon as it let up enough to remain partially dry in getting from there to here and what else can a person do but go to bed. It was the best of storms for us, all the excitement and none of the damage.
1/2 inch rain on Monday and 1-inch rain on Tuesday. We are good for a while now.

While it is Fresh

While it is fresh in my mind I want to tell you about a few techy things I have finally made work. Pretty proud of myself at the minute. Last summer season I decided to give Hulu a try. The problem was that our 42" Vizio Smart TV in the house would work for Hulu but it kept having "blackouts" with the screen going dark and then sometimes it would come back and sometimes not. Extremely frustrating! I contacted Hulu, my Internet provider and anyone else who would stand still and listen to no avail. Somewhere along the line someone mentioned trying a newer TV so I went to the motorhome and the TV worked with Hulu just fine there. That was last summer and I had forgotten all that until we tried to watch Hulu last night in the house and again we had the "blackouts" so we went to the motorhome to watch the latest episode of  The Handmaids Tale. This morning I remembered that I could watch it on the computer if I wanted to and taking that thought one step further I could connect with an HDMI to my Chromebook and that has the added attraction of being able to use my bluetooth speaker as it is already paired to the Chromebook. Picture quality might suffer some but hey! My main goal is to watch the show in the house and also be able to hear it. For me this is a win-win-win!!  Doing the trivia events in Texas and being able to broadcast the music through my Chromeback and bluetooth was a factor in making all this come together. There may be a techy person out there that will get a chuckle over me and my revelations but I am pleased with myself and that is all that counts.

Finally some rain

Butch has had my rain barrel up and ready for over a week now and today we have some rain. Plants prefer rainwater. They do so much better with it so this is good news for me and my plants. I do not have many plants yet. Only the ones I hauled down to Texas and then back again.
Keri's Mom Roslie cleaned up the front part of our yard while visiting Keri before we made it back to Iowa. That really was a big gift to me to have all those leaves and twigs picked up as it freed me up to get at the backyard cleanup. Yesterday I tore into the back and made quite a bit of progress. I was hoping for a bit of time to get it finished before the rain started this morning. No grumbling here. We needed the rain. 
I awoke this morning at 5:00am to the sound of thunder. And I mean serious thunder! It never seems to be serious in South Texas. I am sure there are times but we never seem to be there when it does. There is nothing like a mid-western thunderstorm. It can really be a rip snorter! They say we are in for a 3-day possibility of severe storms so somebody will most likely get more than they want.

We sometimes miss the blooming of the tulips but not this year!

Ready to Bloom

 And son Jason gifted me with another of his sculptures.  I love them! Better picture later...

We have been having some vacuum issues. My Shark Navigator Freestyle would only work for about a second straight off the charger. Then if I put it back on the charger for a couple of hours it would work just fine. Frustrating to say the least. I do not get all fired up to clean house all that often so to get delayed by a cranky vacuum is very counterproductive. My diagnostic technician (Butch) has been a bit mystified as well. At first, he thought it was the charger and then he thought it might be the battery. It is not definitive even yet but we are leaning toward battery. 
And then Keri's Dyson handheld is doing essentially the same thing. We are going with battery.  

Tonights photos

We stopped out to Leo and Keri's for an update on the kitchen redo. An added bonus was the MOON! we noticed it when we came home so we drove to catch a better look at it. The fairgrounds were the perfect spot for the moon.

Keri now has a better view of the west windows while in her kitchen. Not all the little things are done but as the monkey said when he cut off his tail, "It won't be long now!"

Jefferson Iowa  moon on Sunday April  29th, 2018