Still plugging along....

I cannot believe that it is Thursday already....the week has flown.  It is time for the Willy Nilly Friday 5 again...I think I skipped it last week.  Going to try to get 'er done this week, though.

1.  We pass the above Toyota truck going to and from Lorelei's house.  We have been driving by it for a couple years and it is always just like this.  We often wonder what the plans are for it.

2.  Every now and then it hits me just how many songs have the word 'rain' in their Title.
     a.  Have You Ever Seen the Rain--CCR (Creedence Clearwater Revival)
     b.  Who'll Stop the Rain--CCR
     c.  It's Raining Again--Supertramp
     d.  Rainy Days and Mondays--The Carpenters
     e.  Here Comes the Rain Again--Eurythmics (Annie sings as if it takes no effort at all)
     f.  Rainy Day People--Gordon Lightfoot  (Oh, my, I forgot how much I love this!)
     g.  Rhythm of the Falling Rain--The Cascades
     h.  No Rain--Blind Melon
     i.  Set Fire to the Rain--Adele  (Can anyone else sing like her!!!)
     j.  November Rain--Guns N' Roses (Who could forget this one?  My favorite by them!)
I was only going to list 5 'rain' songs, but just couldn't stop. 

3. Sorry, but I forgot:
    Fire and Rain--James Taylor
    I Wish it would Rain Down--Phil Collins
    Let It Rain--Eric Clapton (I didn't remember this...just saw it and though how could I forget this?)
   And I thought of this earlier but almost forgot...yet could I ever forget
   Smokey Mountain Rain--Ronnie Milsap
   and
   Mandolin Rain--Bruce Hornsby and the Range
I think that is all I will list for now...but found others I like...what rain song did I leave out that you love? 

4.  I don't know how many times I have ran into blog posts/people that mentioned that it is the little things...and it is.  Take time to savor them.  Like this milkweed blossom getting ready to pop open.  A lot of things I have truly appreciated since I was a young kid, but milkweed was not one of them and I often wonder how I could have been so blind to its true beauty.

Just look at it--isn't it gorgeous?

5.  I just finished Blind Courage by Bill Irwin....Bill Irwin was blind but he, with his Seeing Eye dog Orient walked/hiked the Appalachian Trailm which is over 2000 miles long. 

6..  I am still having glitches with computer/google.  Blogs did not want to open for me this morn.  Some opened fine, others not at all, but they did this evening.  I still have visits to make.  I still feel like it is google...because I have a Windows laptop and a Chromebook and both are messing up.  Today, it was the search function that did not work.  I had to go to Bing to do searches...and I know a lot of people use Bing and others, but I find one thing that works and tend to stick with it.

Edited to add:  I just have to add one more rain song:
Early Morning Rain--Gordon Lightfoot
and one more and I am really dating myself with it, I remember liking it when it was new
Here Comes that Rainy Day Feeling Again--the Fortunes.

Swampland, sky, and a question...

Monday, before heading to the Heron Viewing Station, we swung by this swamp area that we found a few years ago...We did not see one single turtle, or blue heron, or duck....but there were a ga-zillion dragon flies...

Almost all were this kind...it is cropped...mainly just to make it square...we fooled around here and as we were getting ready to leave Roger told me to look....

It was such a glorious day, even if it was hot and muggy.
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Now to the question, did anyone else have problems with youtube today?  Not only did I have trouble with you tube, my gmail account has acted up.

With youtube, if I looked up something, then clicked for google to list the videos, I could click on a video and it would play.  But if I went to Youtube and looked up something, maybe the commercial part would play, but the video I went to see would not load, no matter how long I waited.  This happened even with my chromebook, so don't think it was my computer.  However, I cleared the browsing history and cache and it seems to be working better.  I am almost afraid to say that, though, cause I thought I had solved it a time or two throughout the day only to be wrong.

As for Gmail, I have been able to get my email, but different things about gmail would not load.  I could not check the little boxes to delete an email, the delete button did not show up half the time.  Just so many little things.  It has been a very frustrating day...I think I visited two blogs this morn, and had trouble with both of them.  Restarting my computer, I was able to see them, but then same old thing.

I have just now visited a couple and going to post this while the posting is good.

Just a bit of whining!

I couldn't resist these shots of the thistle...

Not sure how bad out of focus this will look to you...the center is not too bad for me, but the bottom of the pic is pretty bad and the outer portion of the top is none too good.

(In this shot above the outter stickery parts are more in focus.)
 It is the fault of the wind...it never stops here in the Midwest.  At least any time I am trying to take a picture of something like this, it is either blowing or it starts to blow.

So, any picture that is in focus, is simply a stroke of luck and timing.

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It poured the rain last night...at least 3 different times that I am aware of.  The river was up yesterday, but I would bet it is out of the banks today after all that rain last night.  I don't think I have ever seen it rain this hard, except maybe one time in the 1990's.

We were coming home from Indianapolis...I am not sure why we were over there.  We had a Dodge minivan and it was relatively new, so had to be along 1992-93-94...it started raining.  Just literally like pouring water out of a bucket.  Our windshield wipers quit working...the wiper motor torn up.  I have always believed it had something to do with the amount of water they were trying to deal with.  I think it stripped something in the motor.

We were on a state highway, no place to pull off the road.  I had to open my window, hang my head out and watch the side of the road to tell Roger how to drive.  The rain slowed down right after this happened, thank goodness. He could half way drive, and I didn't get soaked too bad.

Anyway, that is the type of rain we had last night, and got up to actual coolness this morn, but it has heated up some this evening.  It was 82ºF the last time I looked.  I just now hung out a load of clothes.  I think they will get most of the way dry.  Rain is in the prediction for almost every day this week...depending on whose forecast you are going by so I wanted to do what I can.