Time Machine week 90

It's October 18th, 1971- and boy, did I have to dig deep for a "what happened today"!  Today, President Nixon recomissioned and repurposed the former Army Biowarfare lab at Ft. Detrick, MD, as the Frederick Cancer Research Center.  Why is this even somewhat noteworthy?  Because here work was supposedly done that led to converting what had been a cancer virus in chimps into HIV.  Thus says  Alan Cantwell, Jr., MD, author, conspiracy theorist, and retired dermatologist.  I think I shall pass on trying to understand that one... if the government truly wished to eliminate the gay population, they've certainly done a bang-up job, and if the story is true, then the government truly can't do anything they propose right, and I'm not going to worry about this conspiracy anyway.

Welcome to a virus-free Time Machine.  This week, a six degrees that ends in ...MURDER!  Plus, the penultimate in Autumn Madness, a cameo by Bob and Doug McKenzie,  a slight detour in the stars of the states, and all sorts of other highjinks.  So, take off!

Hey, don't be using our line, hoser!

Starting with the world's #1s, a thick blanket of Mamy Blue has settled over much of Europe, with one of the few holdouts being the UK, where Rod Stewart has hit the top with Maggie May.  In the states, we find the Theme From Shaft at the top in Detroit- but with a newcomer snapping at it's heels, Dennis Coffey and the Detroit Guitar Band's instrumental Scorpio.  Minneapolis is divided between Maggie May and Superstar; as is Chicago, while LA and Pittsburgh have jumped on the Osmond bandwagon with Yo-Yo.  Superstar also tops the AC chart, while the Persuaders' Thin Line Between Love And Hate takes over on the R&B, and Lynne Anderson chalks up her third #1 on the country chart this year with How Do I Unlove You.

And that brings us back to our chart- the Cashbox hot 100- and this week's debuts.  Out of a whopping 17 debuts, I'm spotlighting 4- or five, if you will, because not only does the Pop Tops' version of Mamy Blue come in at #82, but James Darren's version breaks in at #96!  (Of course, in the US of A, it's Mammy with 3 Ms...)  Bread comes in at 77 with Baby I'm-A Want You; the Theme From Shaft which is currently ruling Detroit is now in our countdown at 67; and love it or hate it, John Lennon's Imagine comes in at #66 this week.

And that brings us to a pile of birthday songs- 18 (or 19, as it were) in fact!  Turning 30 this week, Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson's Say Say Say, John Mellencamp's (add the Cougar if you like) Crumblin' Down, Asia's The Smile Has Left Your Eyes, and Genesis' controversial Mama- controversial in that many thought it to be an abortion protest, which Phil Collins has debunked.  I say, it does the job whether it was meant to or not.

Turning 35, we have Andy Gibb's (Our Love) Don't Throw It All Away, Ace Frehley's New York Groove from the Kiss solo lps, Dan Hartman's dance hit Instant Replay, Eric Clapton's classic Promises, and a club hit called In The Bush by Musique, a studio group born of producer Patrick Adams.  I remembered this from playing on Dance Fever (there was nothing else on TV at the time, eh?), but what I didn't know was that it was banned on many pop stations for it's suggestive lyrics.  Me, I thought the only lyrics were "push, push, in the bush"... which now that you mention it...

Turning 40, we have- believe it or not- Mammy Blue again, this time by the Stories of Brother Louie fame.  Also- and better known- we have Steve Miller's The Joker, and a song called Painted Ladies by Canadian Ian Thomas, brother of "Doug McKenzie" Dave Thomas.

No, not me!!!!

Turning 45 (and setting aside a cheap joke about a Bobby Goldsboro debut called The Straight Life) we have the Supremes' Love Child, last week's 45 at 45 the Ohio Express's Chewy Chewy, the Classics IV with Stormy, and Dion's beautiful Abraham Martin And John.  Finally, turning 55 we have Rick Nelson's Lonesome Town- along with a song by the star from North Carolina!  So let's blow out the candles and get to the Stars of the fifty states!

Last week, pesky New Mexico cut in front of New Jersey!  But I didn't get a call from Chris Christie, so I guess we're okay.  Here's this week's five top charting stars of their respective states:

New Jersey- Sorry, Boss fans! The top act here, with 56 hot 100s and 13 top tens, is Dionne Warwick.

New York- How could it be anyone but Neil Diamond, with 55 hot 100s and 8 top tens?

North Carolina- That other song turning fifty was A Lover's Question by Clyde McPhatter, who tops out with 24 hot 100s and 2 top tens.

North Dakota- The pride and joy of ND is Bobby Vee, with 37 hot 100s and 6 top tens.

Ohio- The Isley Brothers, who logged 41 hot 100s and 4 top tens!

Our big mover this week is actually two, both moving up 20 spots.  One is the Grass Roots with Two Divided By Love which goes to 51; the other, the Five Man Electrical Band with Absolutely Right at 47.

The big dropper is a top 40, but I'll go ahead.  Mac and Katie Kissoon's Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep falls from 18 to 39 this week.  I was going to mention them in the Almost But Not Quite feature anyway, along with: The Guess Who's Rain Dance peaking at 15; Paul Stookey's The Wedding Song at 21 (falling to 26 this week), and The Poppy Family's Where Evil Grows at 50 ( falling to 55).


And Now, AUTUMN MADNESS!!! (I really gotta spring for that echo chamber, I guess...)

This week, we are at the final eight!  Next week, we'll do the last two round together and get a champion!  This week, the matches are so tight, I'm letting the voters call 'em!  (Of course, I forgot Laurie yet again, so it's a two man electorate.)

We've Only Just Begun vs Listen What The Man Said:  Voters say- We've Only Just Begun!

Wishing You Were Here vs Incense and Peppermints:  Voters say- Wishing You Were Here!

A Summer Place vs Angel Of The Morning: Voters say:  A Summer Place!

And, Strange Magic vs Summer Breeze: Voters SPLIT!  Thanks a bunch, guys!  In keeping with the theme of the project (see last week's comments for the scoop), I'll Take- Summer Breeze!

So this is the finals next week in Liverpool:  The battle of the s's (Summer Breeze vs A Summer Place) and the Battle of the w's (We've Only Just Begun vs Wishing You Were Here)- and then the championship!

And that brings us to the top 40 debuts for this week.  Coming in on the heels of a 9-spot jump to #40, Ten Years After with I'd Love To Change The World.  Up 6 to #38, Dawn's What Are You Doing Sunday.  Up 7 to #35, Marvin Gaye with the future R&B #1,  Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler).  And another 7 notch move to #34 for Freddie Hart with the recent country #1 Easy Loving.

The next crop of Martin HOFers will be coming up soon!  Take a gander at the MHOF page and see if there's someone you think should be there!  (God knows, I'll have to look it over, or I'll induct someone twice!)

"Hey, aren't we both in there twice?"
"Yeah, but the one is with the Beatles, chap!"

Three songs debut in the top ten this week, so three fall out.  The droppers are- Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey (9 to 13); Stick Up (8 to 17); and Woke Up In Love This Morning (10 to 23).


Al Green is Tired Of Being Alone- so he joined the top ten!  He moves from 12 to 10.

Stevie Wonder wonders If You Really Love Me, and moves it from 11 to 9.

And falling from 4 to 8, our Six Degrees.

Bill Withers' Ain't No Sunshine is known for the verse that repeats "I know" 26 times.  This was actually a fill in for lyrics he intended to write and add later, but the band talked him into letting it stay.  The lp was produced and arranged by Booker T. Jones of Booker T and the MGs fame.  One of the members of the MGs was one Al Jackson, Jr.- so good on the drums he was called the Human Timekeeper.  Jackson had been shot by his wife Brenda once in 1975, so it seemed kinda funny that months later she would go running into the street screaming he'd been shot by intruders into his home.  This time, he was killed; and  nine months after that the shooter was gunned down in a battle with police.  He turned out to be the boyfriend of Barbara's BFF- Denise La Salle, whose Trapped By A Thing Called Love is at #16 on this week's chart!

Canada's Stampeders stampede up from 13 to 7 with Sweet City Woman.

Joan Baez retreats a notch to 6 with The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down (get it?  A war song- retreats?  Oh, never mind).

Taking that notch is Lee Michaels with Do You Know What I Mean, climbing the spot to #5.

The toast of LA and Pittsburgh, Yo-Yo moves from 7 to 4 for the Osmonds.

Little brother Donnie holds them there by sitting at #3 with Go Away Little Girl.

Superstar hold the runner up spot with Superstar for a second week so that means the top dog this week is...

...Rod Stewart with Maggie May!!!!!


All right, another week's in the can!  See you next time.

Two walks and a story

Walk #1 was Saturday morning...

Everybody was out that beautiful morning.  There wasn't a lot of people anywhere- but there sure was someone everywhere.

Grass was still wet with dew.

Hey! the actual, permanent guardrails on south bridge are up!

Down by the swamp we found a puffball the size of a volleyball- and it sounded like a basketball when you tapped it!

We've all seen the pictures of road crews who painted lines over roadkill, litter, etc.  Well, how about leaves...

...and grass?

Near the ravine "hidden entrance".

See Scrappy looking down at the ravine floor?  That is what he made me climb under to get up topside a few days back.

This guy likes to pose.

That brings us to the story from Monday night.  About seven PM, we went down to the Hump'n'Dump to see what was shakin' and he spent some time sniffing a wiener dog named Rocky.  Named for Rocky Raccoon, I asked him where his Gideon Bible was, but his owner said she didn't want him getting shot up in a bar, either.  (You gotta know the song, youngsters!)  After they left, Rocky was replaced by a chocolate lab pup named Roscoe. (Why no pictures?  Getting too dark by this point.)  Scrappy and Roscoe, who was young enough to be just about Scrappy's size, hit it off right off the bat, chasing each other, sniffing each other ("Yes, that's a butt", his male master said at one point.)

 After a time, Roscoe took a shine to me (probably because my hands still smelled like Mancino's garlic sauce) and he had this little game.  He'd jump at Scrappy from different angles, with Scrappy making short, fast turns almost on his haunches to face him.  Suddenly, he'd pretend he was scared, and ran tail-between-legs behind me!  They did this on and off for quite a while.  Then I saw something I literally couldn't believe (and I don't think Roscoe's mom and dad could, either).  After jumping OVER Scrappy, and playing the circle game, Roscoe suddenly planted his front legs and snapped out his back ones in a sideways ninja kick right on Scrappy's butt!

Artist's conception.

By this time it was getting cold, and I asked Scrappy if he was ready to go.  He came running to answer, but when he was about 4 feet away, Roscoe stepped in between us.  Then he went on full offensive, and Scrappy was actually getting a little cheesed, even play-growling at him.  Finally his master called him (which hadn't worked too well all night) and SAcrappy came over to get his leash on.  Again Roscoe intervened- and by this I mean he got close enough that Scrappy's hook-up almost became Roscoe's nose ring.  But a good time was had by all.


Second walk, this afternoon.

Once again, we met up with Grandpa the giant ground hog.

It occurred to me today that I've never shared with you our "secret woods entrance by the big tree" (Which has a well worn animal path through the tall grass right to it).  Here's going in...

A lot clearer once inside.  The legendary big tree is dead center background.

Watch yer step!  Darn horse chestnuts are everywhere.

We checked out the little woods by the medical park.  Nothing much up there.

So, we went to The Spot.

I texted a picture to my boss.  She said it looked neat and wished she could go there.  I replied, "You might not if you knew what it takes to get here!"

Around the bend and up the bank- after doing all that texting, much to Scrappy's impatience.

And what do we find?  A pink plastic egg!

And this is where you come out... dry stream bed that runs between the two main rises in this side of the woods.

Moments later, we were going down the ravine trail when I noticed Scrappy- he was holding his right rear leg out when he walked as if he'd dislocated his hip!  I turned us around and was contemplating calling Laurie for rescue when Boofus just had to check the dens again.  He wrapped around a bush, and as I scolded him for being such an idiot as to wrap himself up when he was hurting, a funny thing happened.  By the time he was unwrapped, the limp was gone.  And never came back!  Gonna drive me to drinkin'...

Another boring sports post

Hey, have you been over to the NHFFL page lately?  Why, how else will you know if the State Ducks are still undefeated, or if the Clock BBQs won their big matchup against division rival the Elks?  How else will you keep track as the Purple division goes down the tubes? Pop over and check it out- it's 2 minutes you'll never get back!

In the meantime, I decided it's time to look at how my favorite hockey teams around the world are doing.  If you dozed through last time, in the interests of making a "level playing field" I'm counting all OT games as ties and giving 1/2 a win credit, and doing winning percentage that way.  In a few weeks, I'll be able to add out hometown Fort Wayne Komets to the mix, but for now, the "big 17":

Rouen of France, 4-0-1, .900 (tied for first/14 team league)
SonderjyskE of Denmark, 7-1-0, .875, 1/9
Val Pusteria of Italy, 6-1-0, .857, 1/8
Sanok of Poland, 7-2-2, .727, t1/9
Stavenger of Norway, 6-3-1, .650, 3/10
Sheffield of the UK, 4-2-1, .643, 4/10
Ocelari Trinec of Czech Rep., 7-4-1, .625, 3/14
Grizzly Adams Wolfsburg of Germany, 6-4-1, .591, t3/14
Reckord VSV of Austria, 6-4-2, .583, t2/12
JYP Jyvaskyla of Finland, 6-4-3, .577, 5/14
NY Islanders of the NHL, 2-2-2, .500, 13/30
Lokomotiv Yaroslavl of the KHL, 5-6-5, .469, t15/28
Geneva Servette of Switzerland, 5-6-2, .462, t7/12
Farjestads of Sweden, 4-6-2, .417, t10/12
Martin of Slovakia, 3-6-4, .385, 8/11
Lida of Belarus, 4-9-1, .321, 8/10
annnd  Tohoku Free Blades of the Asia League, 2-6-3, .318, 6/8.

Sometime next week I'll look at leading scorers again.

Monday Message

Yesterday, I got into a long drawn out Facebook battle with an atheist.  I know, I know, but it didn't start out on that topic.  A fellow blogger was making mention of Obama saying to the effect that we were not at war with Islam, to which I commented that they had declared war on us, and it was stupid to ignore that.  Being a good liberal (the dude claims he wasn't, but if it sounds like a duck, etc, etc), he fought me all the way back to the Ayatollah and finally as much as said that the Muslims had an excuse for attacking us because we "propped up Israel".  At this point, I shoulda just washed my hands of it. (Keep in mind, when I told him earlier I had to leave to take care of a couple of burning burgers, he said:

 "Translation: "Holy shit, I'm being swamped by unassailable logic, I need to make an excuse so I don't embarrass myself any more." Got it. Enjoy lunch.")

But no, and as his comments got ever more insulting of God, I made the decision to stand up for God, particularly on comments such as:

 "I'm letting him know he can wave off, because I got no use for him if he should happen to exist. An omnipotent being with the capacity to prevent evil who refuses to do so is sociopathic."


So am I posting this to bash him?  No, actually I wasted far too much time on him yesterday.  I'm here to bash myself.

It took me a while- and well after the fact- to realize what I was doing.  And it was a lesson God decided to teach me after I quoted Isaiah 6:

⁸ Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?”
And I said, “Here am I. Send me!”
⁹ He said, “Go and tell this people:

“‘Be ever hearing, but never understanding;
    be ever seeing, but never perceiving.’¹⁰ Make the heart of this people calloused;    make their ears dull
    and close their eyes.
Otherwise they might see with their eyes,
    hear with their ears,
    understand with their hearts,
and turn and be healed.”

 

The problem is, that applied to Israel, not to atheists.  You see, there's a different set of rules that God explained to me about atheists.  Not your "I don't think I believe in God, but I respect your faith" person, but the hardened, vocal, "I neither respect you nor your faith" person like this one and his ilk at the FFRF.  And God had to teach me it in steps.

 

First step:  Their hearts have been closed for a reason.  That reason I'll get to later; but because of this, to argue faith with them is not fighting man, it's fighting God.  The dude was right, he has this unassailable wall between him and God.    God let it be put there, and nothing I say or do is ever gonna break it down.  I cannot win here.

 

Second step:  This upset me because of many things-  I thought God wanted everyone to be saved; I thought, everyone had a chance at salvation;  I thought the only unforgivable sin was dying without having accepted Christ.

 

“I promise you that any of the sinful things you say or do can be forgiven, no matter how terrible those things are. But if you speak against the Holy Spirit, you can never be forgiven. That sin will be held against you forever.” — Mark 3:28-29

 

 

Third step:  The fallacy in the way I took this is believing that the sin being unforgivable required death as a final condition.  God explained to me through much prayer and debate, that Satan is a copier.  Just like we make a decision FOR Christ, and are forever sealed, people like this make a decision AGAINST Christ, against God.  That doesn't have to involve getting on one's knees and giving your heart for Satan;  just making the conscious decision that the concept of God stands in the way of what I want to believe is enough.  And while they are not exactly "saved" as a Christian is, the are..

 

Fourth step:  ...SEALED by Satan against any hope of change.  Thus you end up with someone who thinks like:

 

 "If I'm wrong, and your God *IS* omnipotent and capable of eliminating evil, pestilence, famine, and chooses not to? Then I will deny him to his face and want nothing to do with him, for he is not worthy of either respect or adoration."

 

 

The problem, I tried to explain to him, is that to assign God the same motive and purposes as man, makes man an equal with God... GOD=MAN, MAN=GOD.  Just what Satan wants.  But that doesn't matter to him.  He is sealed against God.  Not by choice of God, nor act of Satan... but by his own damned choice.

 

Fifth step:  Acceptance that I am only bashing my head here.  Despite my heart that says I have to do everything in my power to reach out to him, this is not what God calls me to do.  Encourage, call, learn and teach with... but don't waste time.  I cannot say that I understand why some of the ground sown on is hard-packed- that is God's to know.   I cannot say I will know peace in this life over people like this who are sealed away from God's touch.  But for us to come to God as He wants, it has to be a free-will choice.  Which means there has to be a choice... and choices inevitably come with consequences.

Sunday Message

To be the opposite of God, Satan has to put himself in a lot of compromising positions.  Two of them come to mind as I type this.  One, he has to sneak around where God is bold; and another is where God is sure of Himself, Satan can never be.

Satan will attack boldly physically.  But spiritually, where it counts, he has to move in increments.  For example, our prayer life- specifically mine.  He starts with a "that's good enough"; takes you to, "Oh, just a thought will do;" moves you to an "I'll get to that."  Pretty soon you come up against something that reminds you that you're doing a pretty punk job of communicating with God.  And Satan's hope is that, by that time, you won't be paying any attention.

So it was we find me last night, fighting sleep as the game between Ole Miss and Texas A&M moved into the fourth quarter.  Laurie and Scrappy had already went to bed, and I had to get up, move around, get a drink, because I wasn't far behind them.  As I settled in to attempt making it the rest of the way, the following things occurred.

Johnny Manziel chose a quarterback run, dodging tacklers right up the middle of the field.  As he broke into the second level, a glancing blow spun him sideways.  A second opponent was moving to strike low at the same time, with the result that as, Manziel spun, the player went head first into Manziel's hip.  They both went down; but the Ole Miss defender didn't rise.

The medical staff rushed out, and no more got to his side when they called for a gurney.  They would have to carefully move him onto a board, strap him in, and, move him onto the gurney.  Even his own teammates were kept back, and everyone- Manziel- dropped to a knee to pray.

Here is where the dots connect, as my sleepy brain processed the request, "pray for him"- and Satan's voice said, "No, you can't!"  Well, it was less than a voice, but it was more than sleepy laziness- it was an effort to keep me silent.   Satan, secure that he had thwarted God through me for a second week, now panicked at the thought that my slumbering prayer life was about to awaken.  In his panic, he'd lost his sneakiness, and stood exposed- as did I.  The prayers came, not just for the player, but for a lot of those that I had "put on the back burner" the last little while.  Why had this happened?  Not the part about Satan's panic, but why had he had success in the first place?

In our Christian walk, we come to one of two points.  Either the forgiveness that Christ gives us leads to obedience, and we walk the walk, pick ourselves up after stumbling, and move on- or we sin, say, "Thank God I am forgiven through Christ," and don't worry about it when the sin comes up again.  Obedience must be PRACTICED; temptation is "obedience practice".  Sometimes we do the "20 minute workout", or whatever they call it these days, and sometimes we do a couple of push ups, mutter, "I really need to lose some weight," and go grab a pop and a donut.  I think it should be clear that I had allowed myself a few too many donuts lately.

So it's back on the treadmill for me- and the first thing I saw on the treadmill was Ecclesiastes 5:

Guard your steps when you go to the house of God; to draw near to listen is better than the sacrifice offered by fools; for they do not know how to keep from doing evil.

Where it says "to draw near to listen", my Mom's old Bible says "obedience", and that is the point.  God will forgive us when we come to Him; but He'd rather meet the child of God who is obedient than the fool who has to come begging the same forgiveness over and over.

The player, while it hasn't been announced yet what his condition is, was awake and giving the thumbs-up as he was taken away.  Hopefully, I will be, too; but right now, like all of us, I'm still getting strapped onto the board.

And you thought a run was good exercise...

You should try a patented Chris and Scrappy tour through the woods.  Start out the usual way, through the fence row to Plex land, along what we call "Groundhog Road", to the woods entrance at the big tree- all this you can see on my "the Map" page.

 

Here we see our hero looking where he just "chased" a black cat to.

 

Click on the pic and you'll see that white blob is a chipmunk.  Saw a lot of them along the way.

Around the loop trail where we scared up Ms. Deer for the first time.  My battery was too low, and she too fast, to get any good pictures of her, but the walk basically devolved into unintentional deer tag again.  Now as we drop to the back trail section of the loop trail, I can bring up a map which will give you an idea of what's going on here.

As you can see, we followed the loop trail back into the woods (where we scared Ms. Deer farther south towards the creek) and down to the bridge.  I decided I'd give Scrappy a chance to splash around- and he decided he wanted an adventure.

 

Oh, but first we found this log, covered in "Halloween fungi"...

I though this was going to be a better pic that the other one of a 'munk.  Silly me.  And now, back to the bridge...

First, down we go to water level.

 

 

 And here we have where scrappy wanted me to cross.  I got a little wet, but not bad.

On the other side, we wandered along the bank and then turned south towards more familiar territory...

 

 

 ...the ravine, which we were at the bottom of, for a change.

I wanted to show you how nature had this tree ball up its roots into a great mass to hold it on the slope.  But somebody blocked most of it.

After climbing out of the ravine (not to mention fighting our way through enough thick brush that Scrappy began to panic a little), we took a bit of a break.  At least I did.  And I thought to myself about all the times I looked at the nice walking sticks at Johnny Appleseed and said, "Too Expensive!"  Could have used one getting out of the ravine.

Above, you see where we went next, to the far side of the main trail, where the best way to get through is follow this mostly dry stream bed that takes a windy course towards the creek.  Now the problem with a "mostly dry" stream bed is that the not-dry spots are nice and gooey.  Scrappy loves to follow it when it's gooey, and prefers to wander the other direction when it's dry.  Eventually we wind our way close to the creek- and the Deer comes bounding out again, heading (I thought) across the main trail and down the ravine.  I figure we're done running into her today.

Moments later, and mere feet away from our goal, we find that a nasty tangly tree had fallen across our path, leaving us no choice but to double back through heavy brush to get around the damn thing and all the neighbors it took with it.  Ten minutes later, we were there.

 

 Right above Scrappy is where we wanted to come out..

 

 

 ...but here's where we ended up, and it was actually closer to where we wanted to be.  Because, for me to get across unscathed (as if I wasn't plenty scathed already...)

I had to rock hop this line.  Believe it or not, I made it okay.  At this point, we had but to follow the bank around the bend north...

 

 ...to The Spot.  For you newbies, this is a magical patch of grass virtually Isolated from civilization that we often go to.  There's really only two ways there...

 

 

 One, the around-the-bend way we took today...

..and two, through a tiny break in heavy brush and over an ancient wire fence that you have to find a place knocked down enough for Scrappy to get over.  This was our way out today.

 

 You come out on the lower of the woods' two main ridges.  This is one of Scrappy's favorite haunts, as it is honeycombed with dens to sniff.  Here, much to my surprise, we ran into the deer one last time.  I would've bet money she was on the other side of the creek still.

 

 Couple of puffballs just "sprouting".

Next, we left the woods along "dead tree road" to another of Scrappy's favorite places.  The Barn where IPFW keeps a lot of its lawn equipment and other junk is a home for a large share of the indigenous ground hog population.  I started around the back side of the barn, where most of the dens are...

 

 

 ...when I looked up at the back barn doors, and saw a head peep out that hole, see us, and disappear back inside.

 

 

 Scrappy was unable to get any closer, despite our circumnavigation of the barn.  As we began heading generally towards home, I heard a marmot "all clear" whistle from behind us.

 

 There is also a small house near the barn, and it is also full of groundhog holes.  Scrappy always check this in vain.

So we began walking the tree-lined trail to the east of the soccer fields.  Suddenly, God heard my thought from back in the ravine (He must get bad reception from below trail level) and sent me this:

Not just a stick, but a stick perfectly designed for my height and grip.  I decided it was a good omen, and took it with us.  I named it Stick.

 

 

 Then it was time to take a break.  The tree-lined trail ends at the new soccer fields, which are banked up about seven feet or so.  So we laid back, sat back, breathed deep, and rested.

Then it was along the Plex road home, when we chanced upon a man and his white toy poodle.  This dog was about a third Scrappy's size, and a fourth his weight.  When the dog came over in his little poodly steps, they sniffed... and then the little guy stood up, growled and basically slapped Scrappy around (much to everyone's amusement.  As I told Scrappy, "C'mon, " to go, the poodle began to follow us instead of its master.

"C'mon, Conan, "  the man said.

"His name is Conan?" I had to ask.

"Yes," he said in one of those half sighs that indicated to me that he was really saying, "I didn't name the stupid thing!"

Laughing, I chuckled out, "Well, that's appropriate!"

It may have only been an hour-and-a-half, 2.2 mile walk, but I think we got lunch walked off quite well.