Good morning or good evening, wherever you may be, across the nation and across the world. It is just past 8:00 a.m. in "The City."

We have no watches, advisories, warnings, nor weather alerts in effect at this time. The sun rose earlier @ 6:49 a.m. and it will set later this evening @ 8:37 p.m.  

Our current temperature of 45° is a slight recovery from our overnight low of 43°, but it feels like 39° with a wind out of the west @ 12 mph. Today's high is forecast to reach 53°, which is about 10° warmer than yesterday. Tonight's low will drop to a very seasonal 43° once again. 

In a short sports report, the now 9 - 9 Cubs swept the now 7 - 7 Mets en route to a 10 inning 4 - 3 victory. Today's game features RHP Kyle Hendricks, 0 - 2, taking the mound once again for the boys in blue for a 2:40 p.m. start.

The Cubs piled on the Mets on Wednesday night with a 16 - 4 win which included Javier Baez batting from the left side of the plate, but also hitting a grand-slam home run from his regular right-handed stance.

My beloved 12 - 7 Red Sox have now dropped two in a row. Wednesday nights loss to the Pirates' 3 - 6. and last night's loss to the 12 - 7 Mariners, their opponent again tonight @ 7:10 p.m. when LHP Martin Perez, 0 - 1, makes his next start. 

The 7 - 12 Tigers are struggling, having won over the 9 - 10 Pirates Wednesday night, 5 - 2, with Spencer Turnbull pitching a solid game in the second half of that double-header to get the win, but then they came to ground and lost to those same Pirates yesterday afternoon. 2 - 4, as RHP Jose Urena, 0 - 3 couldn't get the job done. Tonight's game @ 7:10 p.m. features rookie RHP Casey Mize, 1 - 1 on the hill for the Tigers versus the visiting 10 - 7 Royals. 

We got out without the fur-children yesterday to run several errands. I wasn't going to take along my camera, but I was encouraged to by Mary and that allowed me to take some pix that I might have otherwise missed.

Our first stop was only my second entry into a retail store in 2021. We have visited medical practitioners for checkups and also the hospital for our Covid-19 vaccinations, but those were a necessity. Yesterday's errands were only somewhat necessary. 

At any rate, it felt odd to encounter people in the retail-world after so many months of forced isolation. It will take getting used to.

Our next stop was a curbside pick up at the Village Baker in Spring Lake.

Not very dangerous, but an eclectic collection of admonitions and directions. 

Spring Lake, at the end of a the road. 

Duh!!

I'm not sure about the point of this, but interesting.

We also traveled to Lake Forest Cemetery where the first shot I took was this young deer.

One of Mary's favorite spots in the cemetery.

 I found this plaque on the wall there. I thought it was a great epitaph.

I was experimenting with aperture settings when I took this pic.

Same here. I had to close the aperture quite a bit to shoot directly into the sun through the trees. 

We finished our errands at The Bookman and Health Hutt and then home to our fur-children.

Late last night, I finished that novel I've been reading that had been suggested by Mary. While parts of it were fascinating, I was not overwhelmed. I had previously finished two crossword puzzles and we also watched another episode of Primeval before dinner. 

Today, back to more mundane and lighthearted prose for me. Mary is hoping that here orders from the big-warehouse computer-based retailer arrive today and perhaps the thread she needs for another project may come too from another source.

A possible safari with our fur-children should be in the mx for today too, as they are probably bored with doing nothing too. Ciao.