A Quiet 4th of July

Note: For some reason some readers are not able to see the photos in today’s blog.  If you can’t, try going to gypsyjournal.net

After living in Florida for six years, where the week preceding and the week after the Independence Day holiday always sounded like the D-Day invasion, we had a quiet day and evening yesterday. We heard some fireworks going off in the distance, but that was it until sometime in the evening when one of the neighbors popped a few off.

I know that some veterans and a lot of animals are terrified by fireworks, but we are fortunate that Alli doesn’t seem to notice them any more than she does thunder. She may look in the direction of the sound briefly, but that’s it. And the kittens don’t seem to notice much at all except each other when they’re busy playing, which is pretty much all the time. I’m wondering how they will react once the temperature cools down a little bit and I’m able to do some shooting.

As I’ve said before, Alli and the kittens get along well. She is very curious about them and sometimes will chase them until we correct her. I’m sure she thinks this is unfair since they chase each other all over the place. German shepherds were bred to be herding dogs and it’s funny to see her sometimes use her foot to push them sideways to get them to go where she wants them to be, or when they are headed someplace she doesn’t think they should go. As you can see here, tiny Mai Lin has absolutely no fear of the big bad doggy. About the worst Alli does is lick their faces.

Except for taking the dog out to go potty and play ball a few times, I didn’t do much at all yesterday. I answered a few emails in the morning, checked the Fed Ex tracking on something that was supposed to have been delivered Monday, but now looks like it may be here today or tomorrow, and took a nap in my recliner in the afternoon.

One of the emails I received was from someone who won one of our free drawing prizes, an autographed book by an author friend of mine, two years ago. I contacted him when his name was drawn back then and told him to send me his mailing address and I would get it on its way to him, as I do with everybody, and I never heard back. A couple of months later I realized he still had not replied, so I sent him another e-mail and still got no response. Eventually, after a year or so I put the book in another blog drawing and sent it to that winner. When I told the man that it was no longer available, he was very upset, saying that the blogs are obviously a rip off. How can something be a rip off if you don’t spend anything to enter? And if a prize is important to you, why don’t you claim it? If I haven’t heard from a winner after 90 days, the prize goes back into the rotation for another drawing.

And as if you haven’t seen enough pictures of our critters so far, here is one Terry took last night of Alli sitting on my lap. Is that look pure love or not?

And finally, here’s a chuckle to start your day from the collection of funny signs we see in our travels and that our readers share with us.

Thought For The Day – I know how it will end for me. One of my kids or grandkids will unplug my life support to charge their phone.