Riffday: give me one memento in time

Did you know that items that you save to remember a person or event are spelled m-e-m-e-n-t-o-s?  I just found that out.  Well, I don't know that I'd ever thought about it before, but when I went to spell it in another place a  minute ago, I typed "momentos," based on "moment."  Then there was this red squiggly line, so I had to look it up, so now I know. Mementos. Do you collect mementos? or Mentos? I have a keychain collection that I augment when we travel, but it's occurring to me that I already told you about that, so.... moving on. 

It's smoky here. But according to the newspaper, it isn't our smoke we're smelling, it's smoke from out of state. We do have some local fires, but not big ones. Here is a picture I took about halfway between here and UTown while I was driving this week.  It's zoomed way in, and from my phone, so it doesn't look as impressive in the photo as it did in person.

MadMax is going to his first school dance this weekend.  They had dances several times a year while he was in middle school, but he was never interested, and I was happy I didn't have to hassle with it.  Now he has a sweet friend that he has been "dating" for six months (which means that they text constantly, and not much more at this point), and he is suddenly all about going to the Homecoming dance this weekend.

I've been busy so it just occurred to me yesterday that we had to come up with something for him to wear.  It's not nearly formal enough for a tux, but my friend's daughter who is a senior says he needs a shirt and tie (not to mention a nice pair of pants).  Wish me luck.  What the heck are we going to be able to find in a small town at the last minute?

Here are the somewhat disoriented deer that greeted me when I got back to the parking lot in UTown after class yesterday (you may have already seen this photo on FB).

Oh, and a last minute update:  here are my dear friend L and me, looking like we know what we are doing with a fishing pole (but don't believe it for a second).   L and her partner caught many, many fish while they were here-- I lost count.

I didn't catch any, except the one that everyone accused me of catching even though I had nothing to do with it.  I put the pole down, with the fly neatly attached to the cork bit above the reel.  The fly must have come undone and started trailing in the water, because about 30 minutes later, the rod started to rattle and there was a little baby fish on the hook!  Only about six inches, but I did get to reel it in.

Miss Nell returns from her adventure down under on Saturday! We can't wait to see her! And someone today was my 15,000th pageview!  thanks for stopping by, no matter which number you are!