Night time sure brings out the critters in our neighborhood.

I was freaked out to discover there is a family of skunks living amongst us. I took out one of the dogs for a late night potty break and ran up on them in the driveway. It is an obvious mother skunk with 4 babies, although the babies aren’t tiny – they are about half the size of the mother. They are the weird mostly white color of skunks. Not like the Pepe Le Peu cartoon skunk that is almost all black with just a little white stripe. These skunks are about half white. At least that makes them easier to see in the dark – so I turned a 180 and cut short the potty break.

This morning we detailed the yard and got up any and all trash or food source that they could get into and I replaced the lightbulb at the back door so we don’t walk out of the basement in the dark and unexpectedly encounter Mama Pepe or any of her brood.

The wife says we should be getting our “economic stimulus” check from Uncle Sam just about any day and has been day dreaming about what we should spend it on. Last night we surfed a few web sites and did a little shopping to make up a wish list and budget our anticipated money.

One site that I particularly liked was 1-800-4clocks which is all about clocks, especially grandfather clocks. I never realized there were so many different kinds of grandfather clocks and so many different things to consider before purchasing one.

First of all, there is the clock maker to consider. The long established and top brand names include Howard Miller, Hermle, Seth Thomas and Bulova. Of course there are others, but those are the ones that I recognized right off and the ones that I focused on shopping.

Then you have to choose the clock cabinet style and type of wood finish or metal color. Then there is the clock face to consider and you also choose the chimes. On the 1-800-4clocks website they have a little button that lets you listen to samples of the different chimes. That is a nice feature, because I wouldn’t otherwise know the difference between the different ones, although once you hear them you think, “Oh! Of Course!” because you do recognize them after hearing them.

The website even has a blog that is a collection of short articles relevant to grandfather clocks. I read the post titled, “Grandfather Clocks Help Define Decor” and knew right away that we should go ahead and make buying our new grandfather clock a priority, and it appears the wife agrees!

There’s a little town in southern Tennessee that has a lot of history. One of the better histories has to do with the man who invented the Milky Way bar and founded the Mars Candy Company, Frank C. Mars.

Frank and his wife, Ethel, bought a farm in Pulaski, TN and named it the Milky Way Farm. They bought all the adjoining land that they could over the years and ended up with almost 3,000 acres. They bred saddle horses, race horses and cattle on the farm, built a horse race track on the property, and their stables were the home the 1940  Kentucky Derby winner, Gallahadian, as well as many other champion thoroughbreds.

When the Snickers bar was invented by the Mars Candy Company, Frank named the candy bar after one of his horses.

The home they built on this estate was 25,000 square feet and had 21 bedrooms. The property also had 30 barns, 70 cottages and many outbuildings, including the famous “Crooked Sheep Barn.”

The property is now owned by a developer from South Carolina who is turning about 1,000 acres of the estate into a gated community and upscale village.