August 4th already!

How did it get to be August 4th? Yikes, there are only 143 days until Christmas!  Once again, I don't know what happened to all those Christmas crafts I was going to start on at the beginning of the year. I was going to knit and crochet my little fingers to the bone, making treasured gifts for family and friends. I don't know how everyone will manage without all those dishcloths from me. 

Well, let's forget about Christmas for now and concentrate on summer.

There's still plenty of time for backyard summer barbecues, such as this one in Brazil. The men are obviously very hungry and getting impatient for the hamburgers. I wonder what the two women on the right are gossiping about. It can't be fashion.

What's a barbecue without beer?  This is a 1907 photo of the Burgess Brewery water tower in Pilsen, Western Bohemia, in what is now the Czech Republic. Pilsen is known worldwide for its Pilsner beer, a type of pale lager. This can be purchased at your local grocery if a trip to Bohemia is not convenient.

Now that we're all stuffed with hamburgers and beer, let's mosey around a little and work off a few of those calories.

First stop, "Sunset over the Snowdon range" in North Wales.

In working on my family genealogy, I have found that I have a lot of Welsh ancestors on my mother's side, mostly with names I cannot pronounce.  For example, my 22nd great grandfather was named Hywel Ap Trahaearn.  At least that's what I've found on Ancestry.com - it has yet to be verified.  I'm a little skeptical of online information about people who were born in the 12th century.  I once got sidetracked by some bad information and for several days I was insufferable because I thought I was descended from European royalty. It got so tiresome waving at everyone.

Now we are easing back into modern times with this April 6th, 1940 picture of steeplechase racegoers at Aintree, England.  This card says the tram's white bumper and masked headlights were in readiness for the blackouts to come. I hope all these people had fun that day because they sure had some rough times coming up.

No blackouts here. Two beautiful cities at night, Prague and Barcelona. The huge temple in Barcelona is the Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Família. It is a privately-funded Roman Catholic church that has been under construction since 1882 and is not expected to be completed until at least 2026.  No, those are not typos.  Here is a model of what the completed temple will look like:

I'd better be going for now. But first I'd like to get your opinion on the new hairdo I'm considering, modeled here by a Finnish hedgehog. 

I think it's perfect for me. Modern yet timeless.