New speaker, campsite birds, a broken chair and a funny text

I said in a previous post that I ordered a small, portable, battery operated speaker with volume control.  It arrived and I love it.  The photos below are of my new speaker.  It's the best small portable speaker I've had yet.

AmazonBasics 3.5mm Aux Portable Speaker (Amazon photo)

 

Since I said I'd post a review of this speaker, I'm doing that today, but unfortunately, when I went to get the link for you this morning, it showed the speaker is sold out, and they don't know if it will be available again.  I was going to give it a glowing review, but there's no point now.  If you're interested in an MP3 or Audio product for a Holiday Gift, check out this link.  It will take to to the Amazon.com page for those items. And if the radio above is available, I highly recommend it!

Last evening one of the ladies in the group, Chrisma, invited us all for a bowl of delicious shrimp bisque at 5:00.  Another lady, Sue, made some fantastic cheese biscuits - made from a mix she got at WalMart.  It comes in a box by Red Lobster and if you like their biscuits, you'll love these.  Then for dessert the soup maker also had fresh baked cookies.  Yum, it was all so good, I had seconds of everything!  Thank you both for a wonderful dinner!

When I went over to the campfire for our soup dinner, my canvas chair had a rip in it, so had to borrow a chair.  After dinner I brought mine back to camp and tried to fix it.  First one row of red stitches, then another row of white stitches, then I glued it, top and underneath, with E6000 glue.

Next I duct taped it on the the top and bottom of the repair.  I hope it holds, or I'm going to end up on my butt!  I've been assured by my neighbors that if that happens, they will help me up.  It's been holding pretty good so far. 

My second chair is a really good one, but very old.  When I hold it up to the light, you can see through it.  It's fabric is getting thin, so I'm expecting it to fail any time now.  I thought it would be the first to go.  So, I'm searching for new camp chairs.  I have to go to town tomorrow, and maybe I'll see what's available.

Here are some bird photos snapped in the last few days - first Gambel's Quail:

Next, House Finches - these birds are all over the place in Arizona and New Mexico.  I always seem to be getting photos of them.

I think this little guy is a Say's Phoebe:

And I think the next two photos are of a juvenile White Crowned Sparrow.

Feel free to correct me if I've gotten any of these bird types wrong.

Have you seen the lists of test messages gone wrong?  I saw this one the other day and had to pass it along:

Sounds like something I'd do.   ; )

Welcome to our new Followers:  Jean Fox, laurie aggas and Virginia Martynowicz!  None of these new followers show any information, no blog or "About Me" info, so I can't tell you anything about them, but we're sure happy to have you all following along with us.  So, from Katie and me,welcome aboard to you all!  :)

From me and Katie, have a great day, everyone!  :)

You'll NEVER guess what I bought yesterday

My friend Hazel said she saw the perfect stroller for Katie at one of the resellers in town, and yesterday we drove over to take a look.  I decided I wanted it, and the man who owns the store said to get the dog and make sure she liked it, so I got Katie out of the car, put her in the stroller, and the man and I took turns pushing Katie around the area.  She just sat there looking around, enjoying her ride.  I was surprised at how she just took to it, like it was normal - business as usual.  Maybe her first owners had a dog stroller?

I've been wanting something like this for when I want to take a walk longer than Katie wants or if the ground is too hot.  Or when we walk to town, or over to the Big Tent in January - this will be perfect.  It'll keep her up off the ground and out of the foot traffic, and it has two net areas that I can use to stow purchases.

It looks like this model, the Baby Jogger II-16, was sold starting 1999/2000 for $250, so this is a good jogging stroller, and is now probably 13-14 years old.  It was marked $50.00, but I got it for $40, a bargain!  It's in pretty good condition, and I couldn't believe how easy it is to use.

This morning I had my normal bag of daily trash, and also some boxes to toss.  It would have taken two walks to the dumpster to carry it all. So I put it all in the stroller, put Katie on her leash and off we went.  It went up little hills, down little hills, over rocks and sand - all super smooth.

The wheels come off easily, it folds up and will be easy to keep inside if needed, but I'll probably keep it outside, locked to The Palms in good weather.

And here's the Princess in her new stroller with the canopy up:

 And with the canopy down:

Then we walked down to the fire pit area - everyone pitched in for wood, and I wanted to get my money in since they brought the wood today.  I wheeled Katie down in the stroller and she sat happily all the way and then sat in it while I stayed and talked.  Then one of the guys, Bill, brought three large pizzas and wings from town and we all chowed down.  Katie just sat in her stroller watching everything.

Pretty cool, huh?

From me and Katie, have a great Monday evening, everyone!  :)

4 Quartzsite things: creepy, puzzling, delicious, and cute

First creepy:

I moved a rock and under it was this guy - he immediately walked to the nearest rock for shade, so I think he's a shade critter.  He looks like he might be from the scorpion family?  (If you don't mind critters like this, click on him twice to see him closer.)  UPDATE:  These insects are Solifuges - small spider-like arachnids also called sun spiders, camel spiders or wind scorpions.  Thank you to Becky and gumo for the identification.  :)

This is another one - smaller, he was under a smaller rock, and also scurried to a pile of little rocks to crawl under.

 They gave me the creeps, but - being Super Blogger, I had my camera ready to report on their activities.  :)

Second is something puzzling we came across.  Katie and I were walking the other morning, and near a bush we found this:

I was showing my neighbor and he put his foot there so we could document how large this is.  Right in the middle is a pile of sand - I think a big animal urinated here during the night and clawed the sand over the wet spot like a cat does.  It was pretty big, though, and I was puzzled about what kind of critter we have in this area with feet/claws that big - wandering around outside The Palms at night.

Two days later Katie sniffed it, and knocked the top of the sand off and it was still wet underneath.  Have you seen anything like this? Any idea what kind of animal was here?

Third is the delicious - you're going to have to trust me here.  Hazel and I went to Blythe on Saturday.  I had some business to take care of, and afterward we were starving and went to Denny's.  I grabbed my camera to bring in and take a picture of my full plate of delicious breakfast.  I haven't done that in a while - but I was so hungry, I forgot the camera until I was done. 

This is the best I could do for the breakfast photo:

Boy!  Was it good!  :)

And Fourth, the cute:

Katie has a new toy, an Elephant.  She was so excited the first time she saw it.  She immediately played with it, threw it up in the air, shook it, etc.  Then she just left it alone.  I keep Elephant sitting up in the corner of the couch in front of that pillow.  This morning Katie was sitting on her quilt making noises like she was excited or wanted something.  I looked over and she kept glancing over at the Elephant.   Finally she grabbed it and bit it to death.  Figuratively speaking.  She had so much fun with it.  Every so often Katie gets feisty, and it's really fun to watch her.  So cute!

Welcome to our newest Follower, Papoojack!   He has a blog that hasn't been updated in a while, but there are some pretty good jokes on the few posts that he's published.  Definitely worth a look!  Thanks for following along with us, Papoojack, Katie and I are happy to have you aboard!  :)

From me and Katie, have a great day, everybody!  :)

My favorite feathered visitor - always!

My first Roadrunners of the season!

I was hoping I'd see a Roadrunner this year - last year I don't think I had any good shots - and I've had four different Roadrunner sightings so far, once in another site and three times walking through my site on it's way to the wash.  I think I must be on a Roadrunner walking trail.  :)

These are all the decent photos I've gotten so far:

And my last Roadrunner shot for today:

I'll get more.... and I'm hoping to get better shots, too.

From me and Katie, have a great Thursday, everyone!  :)

Wordless Wednesday - Creative Doodles

Some people have so much imagination.  These make me want to create some of my own.

From Me and Katie, have a great Wednesday, everyone!  :)