Kind of hard to focus with blood loss

No, this is not a Memorial Day post.  There are plenty of vets and families of fallen soldiers who can do a better job than I on that.  No, my story is letting you in on the rest of our holiday weekend such as it was.

Sunday, Scrappy and I attempted another picnic, this time at Shoaff Park.  No need for food porn-just variations on the last.  Our problem was one thing in two dimensions- 1) it was QUITE hot out, and the mosquitos are arrived; 2) our AC went out yesterday, and home was currently less-than-inhabitable until maintenance showed.  Thus, we tried the park.  But first, I had loaded up the bird feeder...

 ...and a rather odd bird soon appeared...

"All right with the pictures- and the dog!  I'll come back when you LEAVE!"

Which we did, but man it was hot...

...so hot, the FISH were hiding in the shade!

That orange chap was my boss, getting in shape for that silly Ironman business.  He was somewhat past his 12-mile mark for the morning here.

This spot was a bit cooler, not horribly buggy, but Mr. Boy wanted so bad to go around the big circle.  He'd have never made it.  So I loaded him back up and we went for a drive until the race started- and we got home just as the maintenance guy finished.  He brought in a package as well.

Those of you who went with me through the FB end of the Friday night debauch heard that I discovered the Monkees had put out a brand-new 50th anniversary lp, and somehow I managed to order it for Laurie.  At the time I said, this will be the lp of Summer 2016- and I stand by that.  Stand by for Monkees on the M10, possibly this week, and throughout the summer!

Anyway, after my guy in the Indy 500 came in 2nd, the A's dropped the Tigers again, and my boy in Nascar won the Charlotte 600-Martin Truex leading 588 out of 600 laps! -we ventured outside again to observe the three planet show going on.  And while I did manage one non-shaky picture of Mars and Saturn-

...my Jovian efforts came up a bit short.

Flash to Monday, where I have the brilliant idea of going to Fox Island... at least, the mosquitos thought it was brilliant....

 That was the one picture I snapped in the nature preserve before I feared that the skeeters might fly it away.  I saw a bunny at one point, and turned to see if Laurie saw it- and all I saw was Laurie's arms and a swarm!  Didn't we have bug repellant?  Sure!  The first spraying cut the attack from thousands to hundreds, and the second cut it from hundreds to dozens!  Eventually we fought our way to the beach...

But for a wildlife excursion, all we have to show for it is the bunny and a couple of tiny toads...

(Approximately life-size)

Afterwards, I had the next bright idea, which was to go to Rural King.  I had to call upon Bobby G.'s better half to help me remember the name of the place, which she then amplified on FB-

Helpful reminder

-and after stopping off for noon buffet at the nearby Pizza Hut, we ventured inside, where the first highway was getting my long awaited bag of Larry the Cable Guy's Biscuit'n'gravy chips, but the best part was chick football:

You see, this tub of chicks- prolly about 100 of 'em- had this little bitty piece of plastic fragment.  And one would get the damn thing, and take off with it, closely pursued by as many as were paying attention.  They would literally gang tackle the "ball carrier", the "ball" would change hands- er, beaks- a half-dozen times, until someone on the outside of the dogpile would get loose and run away until he in turn was gang tackled, jumping over would be tacklers and bystanders with all the grace of a drunken baboon.  On second thought, this was more like chick rugby.  Whatever, it made the day and occupied us for ten minutes or so.

And that, less these last few hours, was our Memorial weekend.  How was yours?