Once There Was A ...

A short fairy tale of woe and doom. Once upon a time there was a company named Google who also happened to own another company called Blogger. One fine day, one product of Google ceased to work with the only product of Blogger. True to form, Google acknowledged there was a problem for some users and proclaimed that they were working on the issue. After weeks of problems logging in to Blogger using Google's Chrome browser, today it seems to work mostly work correctly again. You might think that such idiocy wouldn't happen with products all under one owner like that, but ... So the moral of the story? Not even all the ducks in one family swim together is a straight line all the time.

In any case, today was Memorial Day and it was a nice and slightly cool day until about 4pm when the forecast 50 mile an hour winds and hail hit. It all cleared out in time for me to fire up the BBQ to cook for the small celebratory crew of L, her mother, my mother, and me. So we had a great repast and sat around the table talking for a bit over desert. All in all a very pleasant evening.

One of the topics of conversation was the question: Do you count relatives by marriage as "relations" or not? The original train of thought came about from L and my attendance at a high school graduation party for the daughter of a golfing buddy. At said party we ran into a person who is related via marriage to me through the fact that he is the cousin of my uncle's wife. We also ran into the brother of another aunt's late husband. I would consider those all relatives (even if a bit distant). On the other hand some people do not consider any marriage tag-a-logs other than spouses to be relatives. So what do you think?

(Those of you who share my devotion to science fiction will find the names more meaningful. {*grin*})

I'm Back ...

Or at least trying to be.

Blogger has made it darn hard to get back. Somehow they broke their interface when using Chrome and LastPass. The little light bulb above my pointy head finally turned on and I fired up another browser to login and do this post. It doesn't seem to have been a good month for Blogger. This has been the worst period for outages and odd errors since I started writing this blog. I sure hope it is not a harbinger of the future!

So just to get everyone up to date, this has been a month of getting some gardening stuff done (and the onions all planted) and the arrival of spring weather. Out here in the semi-desert the coming of spring means thunderstorms and sometimes even rain. This month has been a wet one compared to most years - one of the continuing changes due to climate change. The winters have been geting dryer and the springs wetter and more stormy. So now we are waiting for it to dry out enought to get the rest of the garden planted. And of course once it is planted, that will be the last moisture we will see for the rest of the growing season. {*grin*}

Time to get back to work preparing for an upcoming Humane Society event. Now that I have a way around the Blogger idiosyncrasies, I hope to post regularly again.

I'll leave you with one of the better editorial comments on the recent Blogger shenanigans from The Odd Blog:

Caption: Ann Althouse, relaxing at an undisclosed location following the attempt on her life by Blogger.