Can you see the family in this photo?
Look in the middle and you can easily see mum and dad:
They’re watching out for their child, a ‘tiny bunny’ who is about as big as a tennis ball and 100 times as cute! S/he’s hiding right at the edge of the lawn near a juniper…
And yes, these photos were taken through our binoculars 🙂
That’s our fridge, or rather a portion of it. Every available inch (and more! is covered in magnets. Eventually we ran out of space and am now covering the insides of our metal front doors. Is there no end to this magnet-buying madness? Not in sight, surely…
This post is a somewhat random showcase of some of this sprawling collection. Sometimes they have a story, sometimes not. But it shows the variety amidst the madness 🙂
This weird alien magnet was one of the very first we got. It was purchased about 25 years ago from an unusual discount store in Utica, where we lived at the time. This guy has therefore graced five fridges in his life, and still has pride-of-place.
Incidentally this type of magnet – rectangular plastic printed front with magnetic back – is very common now and ubiquitous in stores everywhere. But back when I got him the shape and size was novel, and coupled with the art one of the reasons he caught my eye.
Two of the many examples of (often free) advertising magnets. The first was given to me at a bookstore in mid 2000, and the second we probably got when we bought subs at the now defunct restaurant. In addition to these, we have everything from rental car agencies to lawyers offices to pet grooming services to even meat sellers magnets on our fridge!
A lovely magnetic memento crafted for us on the spot at a work event my wife’s work put on a few years back. A star of our collection 🙂
This is an example of a ‘kept gift’. I bought this for someone whose name rhymes with ‘Learned’ and never gave it. If he finds out he’ll curse me forever until he remembers the bird magnet I just gave him for his birthday, which he will then tweet a picture of along with the message: “Best gift I’ve ever been given!”
Tacky 3D tourist magnets are rarely bad and often – as in these examples – fantastic. There’s quite an assortment of these on display, each as garish as the next. This is a category that grows with every trip!
Speaking of trips, this is a cross-stitched Stonehenge magnet KLS made from a little kit purchased right at the Stonehenge visitors center! It’s a lovely thing, only about an inch square, and another prized magnet.
This is a weird one. I purchased this in NM when I visited Florence years back and it’s to date the only magnet I have featuring Satan. Although I do have a Cthulhu… ?
Last but not least one of my very own creations, an invader made of Perler beads. I made several of these and gave some away. In fact I’ve been thinking of making more. Want one?
That’s it for now, but there’s many others, including in categories not shown here (such as lenticular, otaku, ‘naughty’ and wrestling). Want to see more? Let me know!
We had our first significant snowfall overnight; 4 inches according to the local weather.
It’s very light snow – almost intangible – and therefore sticking to everything prettily.
It’s very cold out as well, which gives me hope this may not melt quickly. Walking around taking these photos was an uncomfortable experience 🙂
That’s one of our old squirrel feeders. It’s useless now – you can see where the squirrels chewed through the plastic – but I leave it up because it’s become part of the backyard.
It’s rare we get a snowfall like this before I leave for Oz. Even though it’s just a little snow, this was a pleasant surprise.
Our AC developed a bad leak and it was time to replace it. Due to the work that had to be done, it was a good time to replace the water heater as well.
That’s the old equipment above. The AC was about 35+ years old, and the water heater 15-20. Both of them had lived long past their natural lifespans 🙂
The new systems are much more energy efficient and much quieter. It took two guys about ten hours to install everything and they did an incredible amount of work in that time. The lead installer (who resembled Santa!) told me he’s been doing 5 installs a week for 27 years!
We’ve now replaced every appliance we got with this house except the oven and the mower. The latter is over 40 years old now and I actively neglect it yet it fires up every year and does it’s job. I wonder how many more years it has in it?
Yesterday was July 4, which meant fireworks! Of course we’d already had a pretty good ‘show’ last Sunday, not to mention letting the odd ‘cracker’ off here and there over the last few weeks. In short: a fortnight of fireworks!
We drove to NH a couple of weeks ago to buy some since they are cheaper there and you can get ‘launchers’ which aren’t legal in NY state, and between than trip and the ones we had bought locally we had a couple of hundred dollars worth to set off. This was 60+ fireworks, most that look like this pre-firing:
Some are slightly exotic, like those that ‘light up’ via cellophane ‘windows’ at the front:
Or the hand ones, very creatively named:
We even got – for the first time – some ‘smoke’ fireworks. We learned that in Vermont these are all that is legal!
As I said we had a great time setting these off the past few days. Lots of sparks and pretty colours and loud noises! Cracker night is every bit as good as it ever was!
As I have the past few years I’ve made a video of some highlights. I hope you enjoy it 🙂