Battle (Six Sentence Story), Halloween Good Fences, Sammy's Poetry Day, and Brian's Thankful Thursday

A bit of a word before we begin the blog hops.  Yesterday's picture was chewed gum in the bottom of Carl's trash can.  Yes, it's an environmental disaster that so many who don't really need them seem to wear gloves these days, but for the janitor, they are essential!

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We've had a slight difficulty at the cat shelter lately.

Ringworm cases have been running rampant, and even aggressive treatment didn't seem to stop the spread.

All of the healthy kittens were sent to foster homes to protect them, and adoption days are on weekends at the pet store instead of daily in the shelter.

Healthy adult cats are in the colony rooms or offices on one side of the shelter and kept segregated with nothing shared between them and the infected cats except the fact that they're on the same piece of property.

The whole building has been cleaned and bleached and cleaned again to try to get rid of this persistent fungus.

Let's hope we are successful soon, the place isn't the same without kittens everywhere.

Linking up with Denise at Girlie On The Edge Blog, where she hosts Six Sentence Stories, and the cue is Treatment.      

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Gosia at Looking for Identity has taken over Good Fences, and it's now Good Fences Around The World.  Post a picture of a fence or gate, link back to her blog, and go visit other blogs to see what interesting fences there are out in this big world.     

It's still spooky fence season:

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It's Angel Sammy's Poetry Day!  Last week, out of habit, i posted a poem and it was supposed to be our week off.  This week i'm repeating last week's poem, and i wrote a new one for the same image.

 This week's image and my poems: 

Gotta get my exercise 

To keep up with this crew

There's quite a bit of crowd control,

That's most of what I do.

I keep them fed and comfy

And entertained, I'm no quitter,

But when I give them back at the end of the day,

I'm glad I'm just a daycare sitter!

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We never believed it would happen to us,

To have to many kids we end up needing a bus,

Now that we've got them, gonna hang on tight,

And do what needs doing to raise them right!

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Brian of Brian's Home hosts the Thankful Thursday Blog Hop.   It's time to share something for which i am thankful.  

Today i am thankful to be getting back to cleaning the office every other Thursday.  We stopped when we got sick, and then for the funeral and the office closed for the hurricane, but now we are going over there again this morning.

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Today is:

Apple Day -- U.K. (to inspire local orchard revival and celebrate local varieties)

Antillean Day -- Bonaire; Curacao; Saba; St. Eustatius 

Armed Forces Day -- Honduras (Dia de las Fuerzas Armadas; traditional date, now usually celebrated earlier in the month as part of Morazanica Week)

Babbling Day -- an internet generated day for Blatherskites

Boun Suang Heua -- on the Mekong River near Vientiane, Laos (second day of the Ok Phansa festival, the Boat Racing Festival)

Buffalo Racing Festival -- Chonburi, Thailand (lots of water buffalo contests, including fancy dress!)

Caramel Apple Day -- US (leave it to the US to add sugar to a delicious, nutritious snack!)

Conflict Resolution Day -- Association for Conflict Resolution   

Count Your Buttons Day -- whoever came up with this one needs to count his marbles maybe?

Egyptian Naval Day -- Egypt

Garbanzo Bean Day

Get Smart About Credit Day -- sponsored by the American Bankers Association   

Get to Know Your Customers Day -- third Thursday of every quarter

Global Iodine Deficiency Disorder Prevention Day

Humble Yourself By Having Your Picture Made Wearing A Bicycle Helmet Day -- no comment

Hurricane Bebe Day -- Funafuti, Tuvalu (commemoration of the destruction by this hurricane in 1972)

Independence Day -- Marshall Islands(1986)

International Credit Union Day -- World Council of Credit Unions   

International Day of the Nacho -- Mexico; U.S.

Jailhouse Rock Day -- Elvis' song hit #1 today in 1957

National Nurses Day -- Thailand

National Pumpkin Cheesecake Day

Overseas Chinese Day -- Taiwan (Republic of China)

President Ndadaye Day -- Burundi

Reptile Awareness Day -- hooray for snakes and turtles!  and lizards, don't forget lizards, and gators, and...

Seeking of King Look Under Your Mattress -- Fairy Calendar

St. John of Bridlington's Day (Patron against complications in childbirth)

St. Ursula's Day (Patron of educators/teachers, holy death, schoolchildren, students; British Virgin Islands; Catholic education, especially of girls; Cologne, Germany; University of Paris)

Trafalgar Day -- British Empire (noted, but no longer an officially holiday)

Anniversaries Today:

Juan Peron marries actress Evita (María Eva Duarte), 1945

Birthdays Today:

Jeremy Miller, 1976

Ken Watanabe, 1959

Carrie Fisher, 1956

Benjamin Netanyahu, 1949

Elvin Bishop, 1942

Judge Judy Sheindlin, 1942

Frances Fitzgerald, 1940

Ursula K. LeGuin, 1929

Edward Charles "Whitey" Ford, 1928 

Celia Cruz, 1925

Joyce Randolph, 1925

Dizzy Gillespie, 1917

Georg Solti, 1912

Edwin Myers "Ted" Shawn, 1891

Will Carleton, 1845

Alfred Nobel, 1833

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1772

Debuting/Premiering Today:

"Butterflies are Free"(Play), 1969

"Orphee aux enfer/Orpheus in the Underworld"(Offenbach operetta), 1858

Today in History:

Sultan Kilidj Arslan of Nicea defeats 1st Crusaders, 1096

Martin Luther joins the theological faculty of the University of Wittenberg., 1512

Ferdinand Magellen arrives at Tierra Del Fuego (Pacific Ocean), 1520

Sea battle at Dunes, Lt Admiral Maarten Tromp defeats Spanish Armada under De Oquendo, 1639

First display of the word "Liberty" on a flag, raised by colonists in Taunton, Massachusetts and which was in defiance of British rule in Colonial America, 1774

US Navy frigate Constitution, Old Ironsides, launched in Boston, 1797

Battle of Trafalgar, Adm Nelson defeats French & Spanish fleet & dies, 1805

The Penang Free School is founded in George Town, Penang, Malaysia, by the Rev Hutchings. It is the oldest English-language school in Southeast Asia, 1816

Joseph Aspdin patents Portland cement (Yorkshire England), 1824

Thomas Edison perfects carbonized cotton filament light bulb, 1879

First transatlantic radiotelephone message, Arlington, Va to Paris, 1915

Women are allowed to vote in France for the first time, 1945

Comet Ikeya-Seki approaches perihelion, passing 450,000 kilometers from the sun, 1965

The European Patent Institute is founded, 1977

The metre is defined at the seventeenth General Conference on Weights and Measures as the distance light travels in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second, 1983

Images of the dwarf planet Eris are taken and subsequently used in its discovery by the team of Michael E. Brown, Chad Trujillo, and David L. Rabinowitz, 2003

The European Parliament awards Cuban Dissident Guillermo Farinas the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, 2010

Kateri Tekakwitha is canonized as the first Native American saint by Pope Benedict XVI, 2012

The Parliament of Canada confers Honorary Canadian citizenship on women's rights and education activist Malala Yousafzai, 2013

Oscar Pistorius is sentenced to five years in prison for killing his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp, 2014

The Spanish government suspends Catalonia's autonomy in the face of a deepening political crisis over the region's push for independence, 2017

Excavations at an 8,000 year old site at Marawah Island, near Abu Dhabi, UAE, uncover the world's oldest natural pearl, 2019

Round We Go

It seems the biggest, hottest trend in south Louisiana's current attempts to get traffic moving is to build roundabouts or traffic circles.  (No, our traffic isn't all that bad when compared to, say, L.A., but that doesn't help when the interstate is turned into a parking lot again, or there's one big accident in town and every other street slows because it's a major throughway, and everyone has to go around.)

They seem to be popping up all over, and wouldn't you know it, the people here just aren't quite sure what to do with them.

They aren't that difficult, but some people are stopping to get their bearings, or missing their turn off and having to go around and around until they figure out which side is what.

And then we wonder why our car insurance rates are so high.  But anyway.  One man who travels through the four lane traffic circle in a city a couple of hours north of here says he's always in the wrong lane when he needs to get off, and can't get over.  His wife just tells him he's a lousy driver, but they've been married for over 40 years, and she's always teasing him.  At least, i think she's teasing about that.

Speaking of going around, ringworm is going around again, with kittens.  The shelter now has 10 cases, and i'm battling the fungus among us here, hoping it clears up soon.  My current weapons are bleach water (6 parts water to one part bleach), grapefruit seed extract (50 drops in a quart of water), and apple cider vinegar.  If i hit them with all 3, i figure, sooner or later something will clear it up.

Little Girl is excited about the news now going around that J.K. Rowling is going to make her book Magical Beasts and Where to Find Them into a movie.  She says Rowling is taking control of it, writing, directing, and making sure it gets done the way she wants.  If that's so, i have to say i admire her, as such a thing would drive me around the bend.

And rumor around the SEC has it that a poll was taken among Alabama football fans, asking them which away game in 2014 (next season, not the current one being played) they are looking forward to the most.  Their answers supposedly broke down as follows:
Virginia Tech 7%
Ole Miss 6%
Arkansas 1%
Tennessee 7%
LSU 79%

Can we safely say that Alabama fans like coming to Louisiana?

Have a great Saturday, everyone, whether you hang around the house, or whatever you do.





 
Today is:

Aloha Festivals Keiki Ho'olaule'a -- Oahu, Hawai'i, US (preserving Hawai'ian culture, with games, keiki activities, performances, and more)

Battle of San Jacinto Day -- Nicaragua

Big Mac Shoreline Fall Scenic Bike Tour & Ride Across The Mackinac Bridge -- Mackinaw City, MI, US (a one-of-a-kind bike tour; through tomorrow)

Flax Scutching Festival -- Stahlstown, PA, US (through tomorrow; demonstrations of the tradition of making linen out of flax)

Cochabamba Day -- Cochabamba, Bolivia

Eat a Hoagie Day

Eleven Days of Global Unity -- Day 4, Economic Justice (sponsored by We, the World)

Feast of the Triumph of the Cross/Elevation of the Life Giving Cross/Holy Cross Day -- Christian

Festivals and Matsuri of Japan -- several throughout Japan, today and for the next several, most as harvest festivals or traditional horseback archery rituals)
       including the O Sannomiya Autumn Festival, Tsurugaoka Hachimangu Festival, Tono Matsuri, Kishiwada Danjiri Matsuri, Tsurugaoka-hachimangu Reitasai, Yachi Donga Festival, and Furusato Hyappei Festival

Hug a Crabby Stranger Day -- okay, as long as i don't end up on the evening news

International Drive Your Studebaker Day -- an official event of the Studebaker Drivers Club Inc. (wish i could!)

National Cream-Filled Doughnut Day

National Iguana Awareness Day 2013

Nutting Day -- British Isles tradition, the hazelnuts are supposed to be perfectly ripe on this day

On the Waterfront Swap Meet and Car Show -- St. Ignace, MI, US (with a car show, truck show, toy show, and swap meet, there's something for everyone! through tomorrow)

Pilgrimage to the Black Madonna of Einsiedeln -- Switzerland

St. Notburga's Day (Patron of agricultural workers, husbandmen, peasants, restaurant servers)

Thimphu Tsechu -- Thimphu, Bhutan (Drukpa Buddhism festival; through Monday)

Unclear Ideas Display -- Fairy Calendar (Imps celebration)

Yom Kippur -- Judaism (began sundown yesterday, ends sundown today)


Birthdays Today:

Wendy Thomas, 1961 (Namesake of Wendy's Hamburgers)
Sam Neill, 1947
Joey Heatherton, 1944
Nicol Williamson, 1938
Walter Koenig, 1936
Harve Presnell, 1933
Clayton Moore, 1914
Ivan Pallov, 1849



Today in History:

Domitian becomes emperor of Rome upon the death of his brother Titus, 81
Harun al-Rashid beomes Abbasid Caliph upon the death of his brother, al-Hadi, 786
The first lighthouse in the US, in Boston, is lit, 1716
George Frederick Handel finishes "Messiah" oratorio, after working on it non-stop for 23 days, 1741
Napoleon occupies Moscow; fires begin that will not be fully extinguished for 5 days, 1812
Francis Scott Key witnesses the battle which inspires him to write "The Defense of Fort McHenry", later retitled "The Star Spangled Banner", 1814
George K Anderson of Memphis, Tennessee patents typewriter ribbon, 1886
President of the United States William McKinley dies after an assassination attempt on September 6, and is succeeded by Theodore Roosevelt, 1901
Groundbreaking for the United Nations headquarters in New York City, 1948
The Soviet probe Luna 2 crashes onto the Moon, becoming the first man-made object to reach it, 1959
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is founded, 1960
The first American saint, Elizabeth Ann Seton, is canonized by Pope Paul VI, 1975
President-elect of Lebanon, Bachir Gemayel, is assassinated, 1982
Joe Kittinger becomes the first person to fly a hot air balloon alone across the Atlantic Ocean, 1984
The Toronto Blue Jays set a record for the most home runs in a single game, belting 10 of them, 1987
Kiribati, Nauru and Tonga join the United Nations, 1999
Historic National Prayer Service held at Washington National Cathedral for victims of the September 11 attacks; a similar service is held in Canada on Parliament Hill, the largest vigil ever held in the nation's capital, 2001
In a referendum, Estonia approves joining the European Union, 2003