May is black fly season. The first two weeks of May only the male flies are out, and they are annoying enough but they don’t bite. The last half of the month, though, watch out! That is a dangerous time to be driving on the rural roads, as the black flies drive the moose absolutely crazy and they come running out of the deep woods into the highway in a vain attempt to escape the biting flies. As one drives through the countryside one can see the lucky horses that have owners that care enough about them to put fly sheets on their backs and over their faces. It may look odd to the casual tourist that doesn’t know much about horses, but I’m sure that the horses are grateful to have them!
Broken zipper
A few weeks ago I saw a zipper repair kit for sale online at one of those “bargain” websites. I had been looking for something to give my wife to use to repair the zipper on the hooded sweatshirt that she had hand painted several years ago. The zipper had broken and she had stopped wearing the sweatshirt, but she did not want to throw it away because she had spent so much time and energy hand painting the thing.
So when the zipper repair kit arrived, we hunted for a while to find the sweat shirt. It had been put away in the back of a closet and was being elusive. Finally we put the zipper repair kit in her sewing basket and had given up looking for the sweat shirt. Well, surprisingly enough, when my wife was looking for a gray skirt to lend to her sister to wear at a funeral, she found that sweat shirt and pulled it out of the closet.
We tried to use the zipper repair kit, but we were unsuccessful with our attempt. We broke two of the replacement zipper heads in the attempt. Very discouraging!
Frank Lloyd Wright was my father’s favorite architectural designer
When I was growing up, my father would take us kids out and drive around to look at open houses in different new neighborhoods. He made his living as an architectural designer and he was always looking for what the “other guys” were doing and what was the newest and trendiest thing in architecture.
He had designed the house we lived in, and although at the time I thought that it was not an attractive building from the outside, I have to admit that the interior layout was really very nicely designed. It wasn’t until I was a young adult that I learned that the inspiration behind the house was from the designs of Frank Lloyd Wright. I had never even heard of the name of Frank Lloyd Wright until the album “Bridge over Troubled Waters” was released by Simon and Garfunkel. I can remember asking my father who Frank Lloyd Wright was, and he told me that he was a famous architect. I always thought it was weird for Simon and Garfunkel to be singing a farewell song to Frank Lloyd Wright…. but it did pique my interest to learn who he was. And to be honest, he really was a very good designer!
How in the world did that happen?
Guest post by Linda Bradshaw
One of the scariest moments I have ever had was when I was driving to class and the hood of the car that I was driving suddenly sprang open! At the time I was driving about sixty miles per hour and all of a sudden all I can see in front of me is the solid dark blue color of the hood of my car! I could not even see any crack of a space down near the bottom of the hood for me to be able to navigate!
Well, what would YOU do if that happened to you? I was afraid to slam on the brakes, for fear of going into a skid. My mind frantically tried to remember if the stretch of road ahead was straight, or curvy, and I tried to remember if there was any oncoming traffic to worry about swerving into. I was glad that I was alone in the car because I am sure that they would have freaked out, making me a lot more nervous to boot!
After a quick glance in the rear view mirror to make sure that I would not endanger anyone behind me if I DID lose control, and seeing that there was no vehicle in sight behind me, I decided to try to steer straight ahead (praying that the road WAS straight) and to gently apply the brakes in such a manner as to not go into a skid. My guardian angel must have been on my shoulder that afternoon, because I managed to stop the car and put on my emergency flashers. I opened my car door to allow me to see a little bit and pulled off to the side of the road.
I put the car in park, and got out of the car. There were two men that had been mowing the roadside overgrowth near where this occurred and they came running over to see if I was OK. We all looked at the hood of the car and could not figure out why in the world it had flown open, but the fact that it DID fly open when I was driving so fast bent the hinges and the hood would not close all of the way. Fortunately for me, I had some rope in the trunk and the men helped me tie the hood shut so I could continue on my way. I drove straight to the car repair garage, and they gave me a loaner so I could go to class. And they fixed the hood for free, too. I wonder if this was a common problem with that kind of car; I never heard about a recall!
Lawyer up
Sharon called me to ask me for some advice on how to handle the problems that she has been having with her husband’s ex-wife. She has been a thorn in her side ever since she found out that Sharon was a part of his life. The most recent thing that upset her was when she was at the grocery store and was in the check-out lane and saw her walking into the store. Sharon tried to leave the store from the opposite door, trying to avoid detection, but within a few minutes of driving her car she looked in her rear view mirror and saw the ex-wife was tail gating her! I advised her to get the best Raleigh lawyers that specialize in family law that she can find. There’s no need of that!