Football & Baseball

We went to Cassie & Jack's house for a chili dinner today.  Tom & Darlene drove up from their home in the Annapolis area to see us one more time before we leave for the winter.  The last time they came up they went home in a terrible rainstorm, but lucked out this time.  It was great visiting with them since we don't get together that often since they are so far away.

Gerry made up a batch of mild chili and Cassie made a batch of hot stuff.  I can't handle the hot chile so we worked out a great compromise.  When we mixed the two chili's in a bowl we had three varieties.  I don't know about the other two, but my mild chili was great and I had two bowls of it.  Great food for a fall day.

This wasn't a good weekend for the sports teams I follow.  First off, my old high school has been having a good year and doing pretty well for them.  They played the best team in their conference and lost on Friday night, 21-7.   Then the Univ of MD scored 45 points on Saturday and lost 56-45.  That sound more like a basketball score.  Finally on Sunday the Redskins stunk up the place for the first half and then played decently in the 2nd half and wound up losing 20-13 to the Eagles.

The only bright spot was that the St. Louis Cardinal baseball team beat the Brewers and will move on to play the Texas Rangers in the World Series.  The Cards aren't my team, but since I grew up listening to them on the radio, I root for them whenever the Pirates aren't playing them.  So, it looks like west of the Mississippi river teams will be playing for the title.   At least the Yankees aren't in it and for me that is good thing.

I like to watch the football games but today I could have skipped them since it was so nice outside.  It was cool and very windy, but the sun was shining and fall is definitely in the air.  Getting to be late fall very fast.

We topped off the night by stopping by Rutters for some of their delicious coffee.  We are getting to be regulars at that place.  They have a rewards card available and we will get one for next year since we stop so often.  Maybe we should get one for the year and at least take advantage of it for the remaining time we are here.

Turkeys & Redskins

Today was the first weekend games of the 2011 NFL football season and the Washington Redskins opened up with their hated rivals, the New York Giants.  The last few years the Giants have handled the Skins with relative ease  winning nine of the last 10 games between the two teams, including the last six in a row.  Today was a little different for a change with the Skins taking the Giants 28-24 in a good game.  The announcers spent a lot of effort talking about the injured Giant players who didn't play in the game and ignored the number of injured Skins who missed the game.  Typical when you play a New York team since they get all the press, however, today we got the game.

On the way down to Cassie's house eagle eye Gerry spotted some wild turkeys in the field near the cabin.  We have seen flocks of 5-8 birds, but this flock was more like 20 mature hens feeding in the open field.  Gerry got out and had to walk across a ditch and through some woods to get pictures of the turkeys and managed to get 12 of them in the photo.  I am surprised she got that many since turkeys are so alert to anyone around them and dash off at the first sign of humans.  This flock must have been confident since they took their time heading for the woods.

Since she did such a good job on this photo shoot, I am thinking of booking her on a Grizzly bear shoot out in Wyoming this fall.  I wonder how close she could get to a grizzly?  Many years ago we were in Yellowstone Nat'l Park and she crept up on a large elk and got entirely too close and when she realized where she was, a hasty retreat was in order. 

It has continued to rain and this is the 8th straight day in a row that we've had rain up here on the mountain.  It was sunny and clear at Cassie's house 18 miles away and about 1,000 ft lower than us.  I don't see how those people in Oregon and Washington State can take all the moisture they get.  I would go stark raving mad if I had that to look forward to every year.

It looks like the expected terrorist threat was just a rumor or someone did a great job preventing anything from happening.  In either case,  I am glad that nothing happened.

Tomorrow morning we will drive down to Front Royal, VA to pick up our friend Hanne and bring her back up to the cabin for 5 days.  I hope she isn't reading this and seeing all the rainy weather or she might change her mind and stay down there.  We are looking forward to seeing her again after 2 years. 

Rain & Football

Are you ready for some football?  The Packers face the Saints this evening and we are going down to our daughters house to watch the game.  She is a Packer and Steeler fan and sometimes roots for the Redskins.  It will be nice to see a game that they really play all out to win rather than run in as many players as they can to see how well they do.  Of course preseason games are all about conditioning and finding that hidden gem of a player out there.

I know you all must be getting tired of rainy day stories, however if I didn't write about them there wouldn't be anything to write about.  Today was another day of heavy rain interspersed with drizzle and showers.  Tropical storm Lee sure did linger and take it's time getting up the coast and dumped lots of rain on the East Coast.  Our son-in-law called us from a cruise to the Bahamas to make sure we were all safe since his parents in Binghamton, NY were experiencing flooding in the area and his sister was evacuated from her home.  Hershey, PA right up the road from us had the worst flooding they have ever experienced.  We don't have those kinds of problems but it sure is wet and I hope we don't get any high winds soon or there will be a lot of trees uprooted due to the ground being soaked.

I went out a little this afternoon to see if I could get some pictures of the swollen streams and such but it rained so hard I couldn't roll the window down to take a picture.  The cabin looked eerie today and I got a couple shots of it and the meadow across the street.  I don't know if the pictures will do justice to how it really looked.   Don't try to adjust the color of the pictures since that is fog and mist clouding up the view.  It was so thick you could cut it with a butter knife as the saying goes.

This meadow to the right is where we see all the deer and wild turkeys during the early morning or late evening.  The turkeys don't always show up, but it is rare that the deer aren't there.  One of these days we will see the mother bear and her three cubs, but we aren't anxious to get to close to them.


Now I wish I hadn't sold my jon boat a number of years ago.  It could come in handy if this rain doesn't stop soon.

Meanwhile, off to watch the game tonight.  Update:  Green Bay 42 - New Orleans 34  Final  It was a good game until the 2nd half when it slowed down quite a bit.  New Orleans goofed when they tried for a first down instead of kicking a field goal.  The Packers then took the ball down the field and scored a touchdown.  They are both good teams and should meet again in the playoffs.