Good morning or good evening, wherever you may be, across the nation and across the world. It is just past 4:00 a.m. in "The City."

The current temperature is 51° under partly-cloudy skies. The sun will rise today @ 7:08 a.m. and set later @ 8:21 p.m. Today's high is forecast to reach 76°, also under partly-cloudy skies. As of now, the NWS is forecasting a 50% chance of showers Sunday morning, so I'll wait on watering the vast gardens to see what happens.

In the words of the immortal Ken "The Hawk" Harrelson, the regular play-by-play announcer for that other team fro Chicago, "Put it on the board, Yes!" My birthday has come and gone and I had a terrific day. I received well-wishes from family and friends and at my age, every birthday is a gift.

As planned, I took that ride on my bicycle to commemorate the day. Along the way, I used our Olympus DSLR to take a lot of pix. I rode through downtown GH and then out to Harbor Island and finally through Linear Park.

This park is on Harbor Island, which is also home to the soon to be shuttered Sims Generating Plant.

Sims is a coal-fired generating plant that has to be closed or upgraded at a cost in excess of $30 million! You can guess what the BLP Board chose.

This sculpture is at the entrance to Linear Park,

As I rode through, I noted that the high water levels of the past several months, have visited the park and Harbor Island too. Naturally, the ducks love it!

As another immortal, Yogi Berra once said, "When you come to a fork in the road, take it."

This is the lower part of the path through Linear Park. Fortunately, there is a bypass on an upper level.

The ducks didn't seem to mind having their pix taken.

Perhaps so many humans pass by, that they don't waste energy on the "Fight or Flight" response.

This pair just ignored me.

Since I was on the north side of the channel, I was able to take some pix of our coal tipple and other sights along the channel and Harbor Island. 

The coal tipple.

Fuel storage tanks.

Gravel stored at Verplank's Dock and a truck heading there.

This wooden trestle is part of the tracks belonging to the MMRR.

As a side note, GH has been allowing building on just about any open piece of land in the city. This seems to be exacerbating the flooding of homes near to the new construction, like these condos.

Condos starting in the $350s, but probably more in the $400 k range when completed. However, you can see that the price of living near downtown GH is high and getting higher all the time and hasn't deterred sales even slightly.

They look like single-family homes, but they are indeed condos.

As I rode back towards the manse, I took some pix of random places and things along the way.

The Purple Rose beckons customers using these three ladies as bait.

A little bit of fertilizer goes a long way to foster the blooms on Mary's roses.

As does regular watering of the planters out front.

Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon, many more zucchini will need to be harvested.

I'm getting verbose, so I'll truncate my commentary on the world of baseball.

The Cubs are now just one game behind the AL Central leading Cardinals, following the Cubs' convincing defeat of the Brewers, 7 - 1. Cole Hamels returns from the paternity list to start today's game @ 2:20 p.m. EDT.

It took 15 innings on the West Coast, but my beloved Red Sox defeated the Angels in LA earlier this morning, 7 - 6. Still, the Sox are firmly holding onto 3rd place in the AL East. Tonight's game begins @ 9:07 p.m.

The Tigers still can't catch a break nor a baseball apparently. They fell to the the AL Central leading Twins, 5 - 13. Tonight's game starts @ 6:10p.m.

The WhiteCaps took a game from the Lugnuts, 6 - 5 last night. The Caps move on to Dayton for a game against the Dragons tonight  @ 7:00 p.m.

Today promises to be another beautiful day in GH, partly-cloudy, but no rain in the forecast. I plan to paint some, read some, and watch baseball. That is until the Michigan Wolverines are hopefully on TV tonight. I have already asked Mary to prepare my viewing snacks/meals.

Speaking of meals, Mary made my requested spaghetti-role casserole for my dinner last night and it was superb. She used some of our own tomatoes in the casserole. I followed dinner with my annual slice of Key Lime Pie, from JWs. They have a policy of giving a free slice of pie or cake on your birthday. Let me say, that it was unbelievably delicious. We ate diner watching a Rom-Com movie on HULU™ starring Hugh Grant and Marisa Tomei entitled The Rewrite. As is always the case, I love a good Rom-Com movie.

Otherwise, we have no specific plans for today and that's fine with me. Ciao.