I'm thinking

The Thinker

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sitting out in front of the

Detroit Institute of Arts

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is thinking

why didn't I check

the museum schedule

before coming down

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because it's closed

on Mondays

and Tuesdays.

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He's thinking I

should come back on

Wednesday.

Toasting and roasting day

Today (come to find out) is a hoilday!




National
Toasted Marshmallow
Day

You know what to do.

Random sky

Taken out of my sunroof while on the freeway. Just because.

Update in tomato land

A friend from another land (Canada) stepped in and might have saved the furry chipmunk by telling me that I may be dealing with tomato hornworms! Gahhhhhh!

This is what I now

have to look for

and possibly

d-e-s-t-r-o-y!

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So much for the Critter Ridder I bought (organic furry deterrent).

Tomato Catastrophe

News at 11:00!

Homley Homer who produced his first offspring back on June 25th has since been producing as advertised, although not to his full 5-6 foot size as promised. But today a devastating find:

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WHAT on Earth could be doing such cold-hearted damage to Homer's fruit???

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Could it be..................

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First seen back on May 23rd and hailed as a "food critic" I believe the truth is about to come out about this furry creature!

Buzzed

During the last few months I've been doing an in depth study of the flying insect we know as the bee.

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After closely watching their daily habits in and around my backyard I have come to the conclusion:

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Ford's place

More on yesterday's subject:

How do I not know about these things?

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Today it's the Edsel & Eleanor Ford House.

"House" is a bit understated describing this huge estate sitting on Lake St. Clair.

There is also a LOT of grass to mow. I mean A LOT!

Didn't get in the "house" but only toured the grounds which took about 2 hours. What a work out!

The D's island conservatory

Out in the middle of the Detroit river on an island

I came across a conservatory... with free admission!

How do I not know about these things?

Tulip experiment

Playing with AP-Elements and some tulips from this last spring.

Look through 11

Atmosphere and Environment XI

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50/50 Hawaii

Ua mau ke ea o ka aina I ka pono.
(The life of the land is perpetuated in righteousness - Hawaii state motto)
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August
21st
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50 years ago today Hawaii becasme the 50th state of the U.S.A.

What's Up, Doc?

My garden is still growing. The latest is some carrots (of carrot length), a bunch more beets and some green onions. The second planting of radishes resulted in dwarfs for some reason and they all went to the compost pile today. Sorry tiny radishes! However, the second planting of lettuce is doing fine and made an excellent salad with my dinner this evening.

Sad day in August

It's only the middle of August and not only did I see the snow blowers being put out on display at Lowe's BUT I also saw the Samuel Adams Octoberfest AND the Beck's Oktoberfest at the supermarket this evening. Both delicious - but not when it's in the mid 80's.

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IT'S STILL SUMMER!!!

Dig it

On the last road trip I discovered how full sized trees are moved from place to place. They use a giant trowel like the one pictured here. Someone must have forgot to put it away after planting these pines.

It is called "Plantoir" by Claes Oldenburg.

Another lighthouse

Here's a non-square light house over in Grand Haven Michigan.

I posted this pic on a new site I came across today Living In HD. Well the site is new to ME. Not sure how long it's been around. I'm hoping to win a 50" Plasma in their contest for Road Trip Landscape photo! Poor poor me doesn't have a HDTV. I still watch TV like our ancestors did on a tube television. Good thing I just got back from a road trip with actual road trip pics.

E-I-E-I-O

The other day I was driving through the sticks (I mean country) about 5 miles north of Kalamazoo Michigan and I passed a farm.

And on this farm they had a:

With a neigh-neigh here and a neigh-neigh there. Here a neigh there a neigh. Everywhere a neigh-neigh.

(That is if a zebra actually does "neigh".)

Lots of cars

Today was the 15th Annual Woodward Dream Cruise here in the Motor City. Well actually the cruise takes place on the 16-mile stretch of Woodward NORTH of the Motor City. Over a million of people came to my hood to look at cars. I really don't understand "looking at cars" but it sure was a BIG PARTY! And an even bigger traffic jam!















not my pic

More moon

Looks like my mobile cell blogging worked this time! Don't you just love technology... when it works. And I would like to thank Verizon for adding the ads to my post! Too bad I won't see any of the benefits from that advertisement but I'm sure they need all the monetary help they can get.

Anyway folks, around the same time as yesterday's mobile upload I took this pic with the Canon G9 of the moon in the sky and a gull on the lighthouse (a square lighthouse at that). Last week I posted The (full) moon seen round the world. Here it is in the last quarter. The gull looks very uninterested in it all!

Lake Mich in the morn

Cell blogging try again: Gibberish or beautifulness?

This message was sent using the Picture and Video Messaging service from Verizon Wireless!

To learn how you can snap pictures and capture videos with your wireless phone visit www.verizonwireless.com/picture.

Note: To play video messages sent to email, QuickTime� 6.5 or higher is required.

Mini trip #2

Goin' west until I hit big water.
(Lake water that is.)
.
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OH... and I saw NO meteors last night! Come to find out best sighting was late late late right before dawn. I don't think so!

Early morning shower

Long ago Perseus may gave slain Medusa but tonight (or early tomorrow morning) his constellation will be showering down on Earth. In other words, the peak time to see the Perseids Meteor Shower will be tonight between midnight and dawn. Put on some coffee because it's going to be a late night out!

Today in Windy City History

Today in 1833 Chicago incorporates as a village of about 200 peeps.

.

But they didn't have a big shiny Bean back then did they!

(I mean the Cloud Gate.)

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The pic is from a cold windy day in December 2006. Right now it's all about the bean and not when the pic was taken.

Hottest day so far!

Today was the hottest day so far this year (here at This is Eric's Blog headquarters that is). They say it "feels like" 105.

Heat index or apparent temperature is the combined air temperature and relative humidity in an attempt to determine the human-perceived equivalent temperature. To calculate this use the following equation:

Or just call your local weatherman. That's easier!

Rain in August

A much needed rainy day here.

But just remember:

"Never sell your hen on a rainy day."

Howl at the moon.

Last night was a full moon and here in the Detroit area we had clear skies and cooler than usual weather. A fellowette Blogspot blogger MargaretPANpipes posted on Monday that we take a photo of it from wherever in the world we are. Here it is from a few miles north of Detroit, Michigan, U.S.A.

I never had good luck with photoing the moon before so first I hit Google to read up on camera settings. Found good info at TZPlanet.com. Seems that I was assuming that since it was night time I should expose for a nighttime scene. Come to find out that is untrue since the moon is actually very bright (so you should wear shades). Here it is with my Canon PowerShot G9. Not spectacular but the best I've done to date and pretty good for a point-and-shoot camera. Just wish I could zoom closer.

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Update: Operation Moon Watch participants ranged from Australia, The UK, Louisiana, New Jersey, Ontario, Michigan (me), Missouri, California and Hawaii. Details at the moon seen round the world.

Fuzzy Butter

The butterfly bush in the yard finally produced a butterfly. I was starting to think it was faulty and should be returned. The fuzzy comes in to the picture here due to my camera accidentally being set to ISO 1600. Egad! 24 pictures later I discoved what had taken place. Oh well, I'll just call it all fuzzy.

B-E-E-T-S

Woody Guthrie sang about b-e-e-t-s not b-e-a-t-s.
(X - I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts)

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And on the small farm here we got some b-e-e-t-s! Picked 3 of them today but not sure what to do with them yet. Also picked a carrot. It wasn't quite carrot length yet but it was yummo.

Fire Breath

Here's a dragonfly that was very excited about the flowers on the arugula (that's an aromatic salad green also known as rocket, roquette, rugula and rucola, and is popular in Italian cuisine.)

Note: the Eat/Drink label applied to this post does not apply to the dragonfly but the arugula.

Nature Merge

From my travels last week: a 5 frame merge of a scene at the Chippewa Nature Center somewhere out on the 2.7 mile River Trail.

Drastically downsized for this blog. Sorry but space is limited.

Bigger bugs at night

While kicking back on the porch up north (a Michigan term) I saw a big thing fluttering. Turned out to be a huge moth drinking nectar from some flowers. I got two shots of him and then the flash pretty much ticked him off and he flew off into the night.

Good bye, country life.

Ahhh, back to the suburbs and my suburban mini-farm. And by mini I mean 0.00165 of an acre. I can't imagine taking care of 10.5 acres. That's 10.49835 more acres! Who's got that kind of time?

OE or Other?

From the library in the semi-sticks:
(the real library and not "the library")

Seems my blog posts from my new cell phone are a bit jumbled. Except for Tuesday's post about memories. What up with that? Will have to fix later (when I get home as in later) since the public library isn't the place for that. Mostly due to the limit on my log in time is almost up on this public computer. Damn RULES! See ya!

Oh, and the farm is a farm and has crops! Sugar beets I hear. But what's the diff between a sugar beet and a beet beet like I grow on my farm? I will investigate later (when I get home as in later). Note: what the farm doesn't have is internet & tv (the darn digital conversion never made it there yet). I feel like the Amish. Almost.

Crypticism 2

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Crypticism 1

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???e2?]n??y?8,'???w ? ?????? ??w???f????? ???l??-_??FP?] ???? M ??eP? ???r h? ???9(= ??

Don't leave memories at home!

Tip: when going on a road trip to take photos do not leave your camera's memory stick in your computer at home.

I eventually found that I had brought a MicroSD adapter so I used the tiny little memory card from my new cell phone... only 1GB but better than 0. And it all worked out just fine.

Mini trip into the semi sticks

Tomorrow I leave for a partial week at a farm. 4 days to be exact. Maybe 5? I don't think there's any crops (like MINE) or animals (like CHICKENS) but I hear it's a farm. Or maybe I hear it's a farm house. Maybe I should pay better attention. Anyway I'm going away BUT I have set up mobile blogging between "This is Eric's Blog" and my new cell phone. What's that I hear??? Oh, just the sign of relief! I hope this works!

If not... see you later!

Spud farmer update

Back on June 29th

I showed that my potato farm had just sprouted.

.

Here they are today! Not sure if there are any actual potatoes in there but they sure are growing green.

Fire bug

Lampyridae

better know as a Firefly

What's he up to in the daytime anyway?

Come to find out Fireflies / Lightning Bugs are neither flies nor bugs, but beetles.

It's the 21st Century

AWESOME CD!
Released on May 15th, 2009.
Green Day keeps getting better and better with age... a lot like me... oh, and wine too.












A sample: live and in HD.
(It doesn't quite fit in my format.)

Today in automotive history and today

Today in 1903 the first Ford,
a two-cylinder Model A,
was delivered to its buyer.


Today today (2009) Ford Motor Co. posted a second-quarter profit of $2.8 billion as the other two U.S. car manufactures come out of "poor management related" (cough cough) bankruptcy bothleaner, stronger, etc. and ready to ummmm... ummm... make cars and profit? I MEAN I MEAN bankruptcy due to unforeseen (except by the management at Ford) economic changes.

DON'T judge me. I grew up in a GM family and worked at Chrysler for almost 13 years. Just telling it how I see it.

Best food ever

Enough said.

(nachos)

Kitchens and projects 2

Project update from the other day:

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4-paint insides white. Ahhh... peaceful white.

5-paint outsides dark grey (or is it gray) as an undercoat

for the final process.

(of all 13 doors & 2 drawers)

More of My Cranbrook Garden Walk

Persephone - Goddess of Spring

Marshall M. Fredericks

In the woods I came across a "What the ?"

My Cranbrook Garden Walk

Today I met up with the RODP MeetUp group at the

Cranbrook Gardens here in Bloomfield Hills, MI.
I found a subject that fit into some of the themes of this summer:

fuzzy and buggy things.

I shall call it Fuzzy Bee Ball.

Kitchens and projects

13 DOORS & 2 DRAWERS

More painting fun!

1-strip last 60 years worth of paints and stains

2-sand them all smooth
3-prime them for painting

(more to come at a later date)