Photo Finish Friday - New Year's Eve

Looking ahead to the new year....




... or waiting for the party to start!

Happy New Year, everyone.

Photo Finish Friday is the brain child of Leah, over at the Goat's Lunch Pail.

Calf Update

Hayseus is doing very well. He spent a couple nights in the barn as a precaution, but is now outside in the fresh air.

Oh, Holy.......

......calf?

Meet Hayseus, our little Christmas surprise!





Imagine his surprise when the Rancher happened to spot one of the heifers lying in the snow, apparently in the midst of calving! He managed to sneak up on her and give her a little assistance, and she is now the proud mama of a handsome young calf. The first-time mom is quite protective of her calf, and will probably make a good mother, as long as she will stop licking him long enough to let him get a drink!
The Rancher gave him a little jump-start, and hopefully he will survive and thrive. It is cold here, and the poor little guy may lose the tips of his ears and tail, so send warm thoughts this way to help the weather smarten up, 'kay?
(Calving season isn't supposed to start around here until the middle of March. Someone must not have told this heifer.)
Merry Christmas!

Photo Finish Friday - Christmas Eve

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Feliz Navidad, God Yul, Happy Solstice, Happy Festivus!!



Whatever your flavour, all the best of the season to you!

Recipes!

So.
The Bag Lady is trying to get into the spirit of the season.
She thought that perhaps she needed to do some cooking to spark her Christmas spirit. She has baked Shortbread cookies (they're all gone already..... must make more) and made a batch of chocolates, which have also all disappeared perhaps she started too soon?

So she is going to do some marathon baking tomorrow..... shortbread, chocolates, butter tarts (which means making pastry using homemade lard!) and perhaps some snacky things like Spicy Ritz Bitz. She loves these. They are easy and delicious, and disappear like magic!
In the spirit of the season, she is going to share a couple recipes with you. Don't even TRY to count the calories in the chocolates. Really.

Spicy Ritz Bitz

2/3 C olive oil
1/2 tsp dill weed
1/4 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp lemon pepper
1 full pkg Uncle Dan's Original South Salad Dressing
1 box Ritz Bits mini crackers

Combine all ingredients, spread on cookie sheet and bake at 300F for 15 minutes.

Butterscotch Peanut Butter Chocolates

Melt together 1 pkg each of
Chocolate chips
butterscotch chips
peanut butter chips
Add
2 cups crushed potato chips (I know, I know, a health food blog this is not!)
Press into mini candy cups (the little foil or paper ones that look like muffin cups)
OR
drop by teaspoon onto wax paper.
Allow to cool (if you can wait that long)

Hoover Deer (edited)

The Bag Lady is having a terrible time getting into the spirit of Christmas this year! She hasn't put up a tree yet, and has only had the odd twinge of desire to do so. It seems like a lot of bother. Grinchy Baggie.

She did try to take some pictures of her outdoor Christmas lights, but they are blurry and out of focus. Sigh. These are the only ones that aren't too bad, but they aren't very good, either....





She was in her kitchen last night and something moved outside her kitchen window. It startled her, because she knew her dog and cats were all sleeping in the living room. She looked out the window and saw a deer eating birdseed off her deck! The woodpeckers that frequent her bird feeder occasionally go a little berserk and fling birdseed out of the feeder like they paid for it themselves are trying to find the only good one in the bunch! The deer was doing the Bag Lady a favour by cleaning up the mess the woodpecker made. She was hoovering up those sunflower seeds like she was starving.
(edited to add some really poor photos)

This was taken last night.....

She came back this morning with her young'un:


"If I could figure out how to reach that........"

"Uh oh..... busted!"


"I can see you..... can you see us?"

Photo Finish Friday - Bison

The weather in the Bag Lady's neck of the woods has been decidedly wintery lately, which has made her pine for the long, warm days of summer. She searched through her photos and realized that she hadn't shared this picture with you.

She and the Rancher took a drive one balmy evening last summer, and spied this herd of buffalo, complete with suckling calves.


The Bag Lady feels better just looking at the greenery and sunshine in this picture!

Ode to Old

Fifty three:

the odd pain in the knee
....
constantly feeling the need to pee
(especially when I laugh or sneeze!)
......
but I can clearly see
---
the alternative, I'd rather not be.

So, okay, the Bag Lady is not much of a poet, but she did survive another birthday.

Edited to add: Thanks, Hilary, for this:



Glad my terrible poetry made you smile!

Visiting Venison

The Bag Lady looked out the other day and saw she had some visitors in her yard!


She grabbed the camera and took some pictures through the glass (they were so close to her step that she didn't want to spook them by opening the door!)


They snacked on some birdseed that had fallen by the deck, then continued on their way. Fortunately, the Princess was sound asleep and not on guard duty at the time, or the Bag Lady wouldn't have been able to get even these poor quality pictures. There are actually three deer in the pictures, but one of them apparently wasn't interested in birdseed. If you enlarge the second picture, you can see him near the spruce tree in the right rear of the photo.

Fer Cryin' Out Loud

This is not ordinarily a "political" blog. The Bag Lady usually prefers to keep her head planted firmly in the sand leave politics to people who know more than she does about such things. Occasionally, though, something so ridiculous or idiotic happens that she simply cannot let it pass without some comment. Such a thing happened the other day while the Bag Lady had half an ear open to the television news while she was doing something else.

By now you are all, no doubt, aware of Julian Assange and his WikiLeaks. The Bag Lady has not been paying a huge amount of attention to exactly what his 'leaks' consist of, but she tends to think that a little light shining on some of these documents is not a bad thing at all.

On Nov 29th, Calgary professor (and former advisor to Prime Minister Harper) Tom Flanagan made a tongue-in-cheek comment in an interview on CBC regarding Assange. He said, “I think Assange should be assassinated, actually. I think Obama should put out a contract or maybe use a drone or something.” The Bag Lady heard this statement and dismissed it as a slightly tasteless joke.

Imagine her surprise the other night while listening to the news to hear that Mr. Flanagan was being investigated for "counselling murder"! It was a freakin' joke, people! Tactless, yes. Indictable? C'mon.
The University of Calgary has since determined that Professor Flanagan was expressing a personal opinion and will not be sanctioned.

What bothers the simpleton Bag Lady about this is the fact that it is indicative of a greater problem with society. No-one is allowed to honestly express themselves in public. We all have to be so careful of what we say or how we say it because we may possibly offend someone (or incite an unbalanced person to act on our words). It seems to the Bag Lady that it was a huge waste of resources to investigate Professor Flanagan. She wonders how many people dug into his past and scrutinized his actions, trying to determine if he was a terrorist inciting action. How many humourless people analyzed his words, his body language and his intentions before they came to the conclusion that he just might have blurted out something ridiculous in an unguarded moment.
And how many of us have done something similar? Granted, not on national television, but the Bag Lady is willing to bet that every one of us has said something without thinking.
The Bag Lady is actually quite famous for speaking without thinking. Ahem.

She hopes she can sneak this blog post under the radar of the thought police..... 'cause really, they shouldn't waste a precious second of their time investigating something as negligible as the Bag Lady's thoughts!

Monday Snorefest

Let's face it, the Bag Lady has been boring lately. She hasn't been blogging much because she hasn't been doing much worth blogging about! She hasn't had anything make her angry enough to rant about (which is too bad - she loves a good rant now and again) and she hasn't won any lotteries, or gone on any fabulous vacations. She hasn't seen anything hysterically funny or even mildly amusing to share with you.

She had a virus or something on the weekend and was feeling poorly enough to spend a day lying on the couch, reading. (That's her excuse and she's sticking to it!) Her computer has been causing her some grief lately - taking forever to load almost every page she wants to look at. Has anyone else been experiencing problems with Google, or is it really just her computer? (Can a computer catch a virus from a human?)

The Rancher went back to work last week and has been working night shift, so the Bag Lady has been spending her days trying to be quiet, and doing her housework in the evenings after he goes to work. She doesn't like the disruption to her routine, but that's the way the mud flops (as the Rancher would so eloquently say).

She has been thinking about decorating for Christmas. She and the Rancher will be going elsewhere for Christmas; and with the Rancher on night shift, they probably won't be doing much in the way of entertaining, so she is thinking lazily seriously about doing a minimum of decorating this year.

The weather has been wintery, but not extreme. There have been some gorgeous sunrises lately, and the Bag Lady has a photo or two, but with her computer behaving the way it's been behaving, she wasn't patient enough to wait for a picture to load in this post. With any luck, the computer will sort itself out soon and she can share a picture with you.

Photo Finish Friday

As the Bag Lady pulled out of her driveway on her way to work earlier this week, she was pleased to spy a small herd of deer in the neighbouring hayfield.

Movin' On

The Bag Lady has been having trouble with her internet connection. It has been quite spotty over the past month or so, and she has called her internet provider several times. Sometimes she has actually even managed to speak to someone, rather than just listen to a recording.

The second-to-last time she spoke to someone, she was told they would send a repairman out, but he did not materialize. She was forced to call again on Friday, and spoke to a different person. This one talked to her at length and asked for a description of what was happening. He diagnosed the problem as a faulty radio receiver and assured her that there would be a repairman in her area on Tuesday. Of course, Tuesday is the one and only day she is not at home, but she sincerely hopes that this time around, someone does show up and replace the receiver, because it is extremely frustrating to not be able to access the internet when she needs to!

It has been a very busy time for Baggie lately. She had a table at the Christmas craft sale in her little community on the weekend, so worked there on Friday and Saturday. Then she spent Sunday helping to move her mother-in-law into town to a brand-new apartment in a senior's complex. Her mother-in-law was hesitant about the move, but decided that she would give it a try, at least for the winter. She can always move back out to the farm when the weather warms up, but in the winter, when it's bitterly cold or blizzarding, she thought it might be nice to just be able to go down the hall to the common area and visit with someone rather than having to bundle up, warm up the car and drive somewhere on nasty roads. There are several people living in the complex who are friends or acquaintances of hers; after all, she has lived her entire 82 years in this area, but it was a difficult decision to leave the place she has called home for 61 of those years! The Bag Lady is sure that her mother-in-law will be back out at the farm occasionally, bringing things back that she has decided she doesn't need in town, and searching for things that were forgotten or misplaced, like the remote control for the television that the Bag Lady knows she placed in mother's purse, but appears to have jumped out somewhere along the way!

Winter Pursuits

The Bag Lady has been playing around with her blog template. She keeps changing her mind about what she wants to use for the background picture (there are so many to choose from!) She tried a winter picture, but it made her want to put a sweater on. Then she tried one with barbed wire, but it made her want to put a bandage on..... ouch! And the picture with rain drops made her want to wipe the screen.

She didn't think a picture of jelly beans really represented her life, and neither did a picture of the Eiffel Tower. She finally settled on barn boards. At least, that's what they look like to her! She couldn't figure out how to change bear to part with the blog header picture, though.

Don't be surprised if she changes it again some day. But don't hold your breath waiting for it to change - she will probably forget all about it. That age-related attention deficit disorder thing again.

In case you were wondering, it's still darned cold at her house, so she's been spending an awful lot of time indoors, playing games on facebook indulging in intellectual pursuits, and cleaning out closets. She and the Rancher spent a portion of the weekend cutting and stacking firewood. The cats have shown their appreciation for all that hard work by sprawling as close to the woodstove as they can get.

If you've suffered through this incredibly boring blog post and made it this far, reward yourself by slipping over to visit the Bag Lady's cousin, Leah, at the Goat's Lunch Pail, and wish her a happy birthday!

Hobby Yarn

Well, winter has arrived at the ranch. There is a mini-blizzard raging outside and the wood-stove blazing away inside. The Bag Lady thought about going to town today.... for about 10 seconds. There is nothing pressing enough to force her into the cold. She has dragged out some yarn and is knitting a scarf. She is not a very good knitter, but she loves the process, so she has a lot of scarves. Funny thing is, though, she rarely ever wears a scarf. Sigh.

She also knits funny looking, misshapen dishcloths. She uses lovely multi-coloured cotton yarn for her dishcloths. Then, when it comes time to launder them, her brain goes into germ panic and she bleaches them, which ruins the lovely colours, so all of the Bag Lady's knitted, misshapen dishcloths are the same colour.

Beige.
At least they all match.

The Bag Lady's mother was an expert knitter, and the Bag Lady has fond memories of her mother, sitting in her recliner, knitting and watching baseball. The Bag Lady's mother was not a big baseball fan (actually, the Bag Lady suspects her mother just liked watching all those handsome men running around... ahem), but she could knit up a storm while watching television and never drop a stitch. The Bag Lady, on the other hand, can listen to the TV while she concentrates really hard on finding the stitches she dropped when she actually dared take her eyes off what she was doing in order to peer, blurry-eyed, at the action on the screen for a minute!

Does anyone else have a craft they love to do (but do it really badly?) Please tell the Bag Lady that she isn't the only lousy knitter in the world! Someone else out there must do something really poorly, but love doing it so much, they do it regardless. Anyone?

Oh, okay, the Bag Lady is just plain odd. And if you think her knitting is bad, her crochet skills really suck!

It's Monday, Isn't it?

The Bag Lady is wondering exactly when winter will arrive, and when it does, exactly how bad will it be?

There were a couple skiffs of snow in October, but it didn't stick around and the weather has been quite mild for this area for this time of year. But that is bound to end. In fact, the Bag Lady thinks it's going to end today.

It rained here yesterday, and of course, the temperature dropped overnight, so it turned to freezing rain. The forecast is for snow flurries - according to the weather channel, it is supposed to be snowing right now. According to the Bag Lady's own weather channel (her kitchen window) it is not snowing, the rain has stopped and the sky appears clear (well, except it's still dark.... but she can see stars and she hasn't banged her head on anything. That she knows about. Head injuries can be tricky, though, can't they? If you bang your head and it causes memory loss, will you remember banging your head? Something to ponder.)


And, in the time it has taken the Bag Lady to compose this babbling nonsense, the sky has clouded up, so she thinks there is not much chance of a gorgeous sunrise like this one from a week or so ago....

Photo Finish Friday - Redecorating

(The Bag Lady's internet connection has been extremely spotty lately, which is causing her great anxiety and inconvenience because of the home-based business she is attempting to start, as well as really annoying her because it's keeping her from the even more important blogging!)

Here is the "before" picture of her bathroom (which she forgot to take until she already had the primer coat on, but heck, the bathroom was white originally, so it's close enough... well, except she doesn't usually need a stepladder to do her business!)


And here is the unfortunate "Creamy Carrot" choice.... (what the heck was she thinking??)



She is very pleased with the end result, even though the process reduced her to tears at the time! (Sanding between coats is not a step to be skipped!)




Well, what do you think? Was she right to switch horses in the middle of the paint job?

Photo Finish Friday is the brainchild of Leah, over at the Goat's Lunch Pail.

Remember

The Bag Lady's father and two of his brothers served in WWII. The Bag Lady has, in previous years, posted pictures of her father from his navy years, and has some of his things from that era. Recently, she was going through a little zippered pouch that belonged to her father and came across some photographs. One of them was a picture of one of her father's brothers in his army uniform.

This was taken in Stanley Park, Vancouver, BC.

The Bag Lady's uncle (who is, coincidentally, the father of Leah, who writes the always interesting blog, The Goat's Lunch Pail) is on the right.

Carrot Complaints

The Bag Lady has been redecorating. She decided way back in April to paint the bathroom.
It was white.
It was boring.
She thought "Colour! What that little bathroom needs is some colour!"
It is no longer white.
But the Bag Lady is having paint troubles. The paint that she bought isn't covering very well, and the roller marks from the previous coat are showing through the next coat. (Yes, she knows she should have used tinted primer, but she didn't have any and she didn't want to run to town to buy tinted primer when she had a perfectly good can of white primer that had scarcely been used..... just hush!)
She is going to slap another coat on today, and if it doesn't cover better than the first two, she is going to hang sheets all over the walls. Well, maybe not. But she will start to feel a little desperate. You see, she has a party planned for later in the week, so she really wants her house to look nice. What she really doesn't want is streaky orange walls in her bathroom.
Sigh. ("Creamy carrot" looked so pretty on the little tiny paint chip. If you ever visit the Bag Lady, be sure to bring your sunglasses in case you need to pee. Really.)

Photo Finish Friday - Sunrise

Who stole the week?



There have been some gorgeous sunrises around the ranch lately.

Photo Finish Friday is the brainchild of the Bag Lady's cousin, Leah, over at the Goat's Lunch Pail

Somewhere Warmer

The weather in the Bag Lady's neck of the woods has been relatively mild lately. There were a couple of days last week that were cold with a little snow, but it melted, and yesterday was a beautiful, sunny day with a bit of a breeze and enough warmth to be outside without a parka, gloves and toque sweater.

In spite of this, the Rancher found it felt cold in the house, so he lit the first fire of the season in the woodstove. Ahhh - there's nothing quite like heat from a woodstove. It surrounds you and caresses you with it's warmth, soaking all the way in to your bones.

The Bag Lady has been on a bit of a cleaning binge. She tends to ignore housework during the summer, giving everything a "lick and a promise", for the most part, because she has so much to do outside, and, really, who wants to do housework when they can be outside, enjoying the sun and warmth? Especially in the north, when every moment of summer is to be savoured and enjoyed to the fullest because always, in the back of your mind, is the thought that winter is just around the corner. Winter, with it's cold, short days and long, colder nights, is not the Bag Lady's favourite time of year. Oh, there are things about winter that she likes..... err.... (hang on, she's thinking!) The sun sparkling off freshly-fallen snow is pretty......
Actually, if there weren't snakes and really big bugs in the warmer climates, she would move in a heartbeat!

But there are snakes and really BIG bugs elsewhere, and she belongs on the TV program "Hoarders" has a few baggage issues it would take years to thin out her belongings enough to be feasible to even consider moving so she stays put. But if she ever were to move, it would definitely be 'somewhere warmer'. Although, when she does think about moving, she ponders where she would go. 'Somewhere warmer' seems a little vague. When you factor in things like earthquakes, tornadoes, tsunamis, volcanoes, cyclones, brutal high temperatures, and snakes and really BIG bugs, her neck of the woods starts to look pretty appealing. The summers are gorgeous with long (no, really, they are long) daylight hours and warm temperatures, there are no volcanoes close by, the mountains protect us from even the most enormous of tsunamis, tornadoes are rare, and earthquakes even more rare. Oh, there's always the chance of an asteroid hitting close by, but that could happen anywhere. There are mosquitoes, but she has never seen a spider bigger than her hand! And all three of the snakes are non-poisonous garter snakes.

So she'll probably stay where she is, whining occasionally about the cold in the winter (but never about the heat in the summer!) and dream once in awhile about living 'somewhere warmer'.

Is that a cobweb in the corner? Look at the dust behind that...... time to get out the vacuum.....

Photo Finish Friday - Almost

The Bag Lady has had a busy week (where the heck does the time go, anyway?)

She has nothing, however, to show for her busy-ness, which is par for her course. Oh, yeah, her house is reasonably clean, and she has paid attention to a few things that were clamouring for it, but really, there is so much more that needs to be done! She couldn't possibly be slowing down a little in her dotage, could she? It certainly does seem to take her a lot more time to get a lot less done. Perhaps part of the problem is her ARADD (age-related attention deficit disorder) - she is starting to get a wee bit forgetful - if standing in the middle of the hallway with a vacant mind expression, wondering why (and sometimes where) she was going - is indicative of forgetfulness. (Where the heck was she going with this story, anyway?)


(imagine picture here)



Blogger would not let her upload a picture for Photo finish Friday, which is why you ended up with this disjointed, pointless little tale of woe..... sigh.

Have a great weekend!

Saucy

The Bag Lady took this picture quite some time ago, thinking she would blog about making salsa with completely home-grown ingredients.... and then promptly forgot to post it. She also forgot to take any more pictures, although she DID remember to actually make the salsa.

She has one last bowl full of tomatoes that are finally ripe, but there aren't enough of them to make a large enough batch of salsa to can, so she will probably just cook them up and make spaghetti sauce. A few tomatoes, some onions, garlic and ground beef will make a tasty sauce, don't you think?

Photo Finish Friday - Lava Beds

Driving from Boise, Idaho to Missoula, Montana, you drive through an enormous lava bed, covering hundreds of miles. The Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve has incredibly interesting and informative displays and pamphlets, and the Bag Lady wishes she had spent more time exploring the park.




Photo Finish Friday is the brainchild of Leah, over at the Goat's Lunch Pail.

Kittens

The Rancher decided he needed barn cats. The neighbour had kittens in his barn. The kittens were duly moved to the Rancher's barn, then to the barn at the Rancher's mother's place. There is hay stored in both barns, and the Rancher's mom loves kittens, but the Princess doesn't. Every time the Rancher went out to feed the kittens, the Princess tried to have them for breakfast, so the Rancher moved them for their own safety.



The Bag Lady was on her way somewhere the other day and happened to see this bird on the side of the road. There were actually two, but the one on the other side of the road was quicker at getting out of the way. The Bag Lady thinks this is what is referred to as a partridge in these parts. Or it could be a prairie chicken. It's definitely some kind of grouse.


After she took the picture and went on her merry way, she spied a coyote at the end of the road. She hopes he didn't see the grouse. She is choosing to ignore the fact that later on in the day, traveling on the same road, she spied a pile of feathers.

Photo-Finish Friday - Western Movie

While on their vacation, the Bag Lady and the Rancher drove through a canyon that made them feel like they were in a western movie! You know the movies involving canyons with really steep walls -- either the posse is chasing the bad guys to their hideout, or the wagon train is being watched by Indians lining the canyon walls.



The Bag Lady admits a slight sense of disappointment that there were no Indians in warpaint and a greater sense of disappointment that John Wayne was nowhere in sight.

Photo-Finish Friday is the brainchild of Leah over at the Goat's Lunch Pail.

Baggie, Get Your Gun

Yesterday, the Bag Lady came home from work to a bit of drama. About half of their cows are at the Rancher's mom's, still on fall pasture. In the morning, the Rancher went down to his mom's and learned that there had been a couple of dogs chasing the cows.

The Rancher didn't see the dogs but his mom did, and she said they were both really big. Later in the morning, the Rancher took a walk through the pasture and happened to notice that one of the really old cows didn't look quite right, so he took a closer look. He was dismayed to find that the cow had been attacked.When the Bag Lady got home from work, he took her to the pasture to show her.

This is one of the first cows the Bag Lady bought, many years ago. The Bag Lady is inordinately fond of this cow, and has vowed that she will never again know the horror of the auction market.
She is really, really old and slow (the cow is, too) and deserves to live out the rest of her life in peace.


From a distance, her injury is scarcely noticeable


But when you get a little closer, it becomes apparent


Something had her by the ear and tore it




The cow was very nervous when the Bag Lady was taking pictures of her - she kept stepping from foot to foot, unsure whether she should try to run away. Sadly, she is too old to run, which is probably why she is the one who was injured.

The Rancher called the municipal district office and was told that there is no animal control officer (dog-catcher) in our area. He was advised to "take matters into your own hands", which, if the dogs come back, will be exactly what happens.

It's a Wrap

Last week, the Bag Lady harvested her garden, and one of the items was a very small cabbage. She wanted to do something different with it.

First, she cut it up:



Then she mixed it with some ground pork, spices and a few other ingredients, and wrapped it in home-made wonton wrappers:



Fried them in hot oil:


And, voila! Deep-fried wontons:


They were PDG (pretty darned good), if she does say so herself!

A Two-Hour Cruise

On their last day in Coeur D'Alene, the Bag Lady and her party had booked passage on the last dinner cruise of the season on the lake.


The day dawned damp, dismal and dark. The Bag Lady and the Rancher went on a little tour of the city. At one point, they sat in their vehicle in the parking lot of a collection of stores, the rain pouring down so hard that it was almost impossible to see!

Once the storm passed, they went for a walk along the shore.


Several hardy souls were out jogging, walking and generally taking the fresh air. There is a lovely park there, filled with enormous old trees.

There is a boardwalk surrounding the Coeur D'Alene Resort, built over the water.


There is even a little bridge, allowing motorboats to access the harbour.



While the Rancher and the Bag Lady were on the bridge, admiring the view, a pair of Canada Geese flew in, honking in that distinctive way that says "I'm landing, what about you?" The Bag Lady watched as they appeared to be preparing to land on the resort hotel, then changed their minds and flew past. She and the Rancher commented on their strange antics, and were amazed a few minutes later when the geese came back and actually landed on a balcony of the hotel! Neither of them had ever seen a goose land on a building (of course, where they live, there are no tall buildings for geese to land, so, for all they know, geese in the southern parts all live in resort hotels, and only live on ponds while on summer vacation in Canada much like humans, roughing it at the cottage.)


This is the resort hotel (where the geese live)


The weather stayed relatively decent (didn't snow, which for Canadians is still summer) so the dinner cruise was not cancelled. The meal was very good, and after they ate, the Bag Lady's party spent most of the rest of the cruise on the open top deck, enjoying the view.


There was a bald eagle perched on a piling sticking out of the water quite a distance away from the Bag Lady (hence the rather blurry photo)



The Coast Guard managed to get us around the lake and back again to dry land within the two hours allotted for the cruise.

(And yes, the Bag Lady was humming the theme from "Gilligan's Island" while they waited to board. She's old now, but wasn't one of the lines in the song something about a two-hour cruise? Or was it three? Crap, she can't remember.)