Clean up after your dog signs

Above is the Canadian sign telling you to clean up after your dog.  And below is the Montana version of the same sign, Missoula Montana to be exact.

Who says they are more liberal in Canada?! A little more international perhaps, but the Montana version was done in oil..

Dead and gone

Dead and gone, my grandmother used to say about people.  Dead and gone..  Not just dead, but dead and gone.  Well one way to be remembered is to build things.  You might be dead and gone but the things you build will out live you.  Even the memories you build will out live you.

Mr. Carraway has been dead and gone for years, she'd say about a neighbor who lived down the street. She was always talking about the Carraways.  I formed a mental image of these people I'd never met.  Mrs. Carraway was living when my grandmother talked about them.  Of course they're all dead and gone now.  

Mrs. Carraway might have been my grandmother's only close friend in the neighborhood in those later years of life.  She seemed to be full of life though, or at least my grandmother breathed a lot of life into her.  I imagined Mrs. Carraway to be quite the gal, but I never thought to say, let's go meet this Mrs. Carraway.  It was enough to hear my grandmother talk about her.

I've been doing a remod on a bathroom in the cabin my dad built years ago.  He built things to last but everything has it's time. I had to put in a new shower.  I think about my grandmother and the other old folks who would come to stay in the cabin.  The memories we built there trickle out of the walls.  So I built my new wall connected to the walls he had built so many years before.  It was father's day and I was feeling pretty connected to my father.  He's been dead and gone for years now.

Back in black

Blackberry that is.. Don't get me wrong,. I do like my Samsung tablet, but I could never warm up to the phone without a physical keyboard on it.  I do a lot of texting and the hunt and peck method on the touch screen just didn't work for me.  It was actually frustrating and made me feel like one of those people who never learn to type.

My thumbs know where the keys are on the Blackberry without looking for the most part.  Just like regular typing the words flow out effortlessly and it's a good feeling.  Not so on the touch screen with the Samsung.  I had to hunt and peck with my index finger.  I'd slowley hit the wrong keys and spend most of my time correcting mistakes.  Sometimes I'd just say to heck with it and not send the text.  I suffered with that for long enough.  I tried the option where you drag your fingers along and all of that other crap, and I don't want to talk text as I don't want the whole world hearing what I'm texting.  The keyboard kept turning if I didn't hold the thing straight.  I do admit that the online experience was better on the Samsung but it wasn't something I used very much.

I thought the track pad on the Blackberry had failed.  That was why I got the Samsung in the first place as my service no longer had Blackberry.  Very sad.. so I went in hunt for a place that could fix mine.  I charged the battery and the phone worked.  I'm not sure if it got wet when I took it skiing or not, but now it works and I'm back in black.