rained most of the night

It let up in time to go for my morning walk, and then started again. It's keeping things cool anyway.

dang

this time it sounds like L.A. might really burn down....and there's a fire in Yosemite....did David and Tree go hiking up there again already? I guess they were going up above the tree line anyway, but still.....I bought a pound of deli-sliced turkey breast for $2.50.....half price with the card beep.....it's going to take a while to eat that many turkey sandwiches.... but they'll be cheap! Going to be non-AC days here for a while sounds like, save some money there too.....and Labor Day weekend comes up next.....on the Sirius radio they have guest disc-jockeys on holiday weekends, so on #18 for Labor Day the Secretary of Labor is going to DJ.....that's what they said, sounds strange....they said she was going to play "hard-working" songs......

92 million dollar man

Well, Rivers looked real good in the first half against the Falcons.....another San Diego and Atlanta game.....but 92M? Nice work if you can get it. Sometimes the Atlanta fans seemed a little mixed up....the Falcons would move the ball and they would start doing the Braves tomahawk thing.....sausage, toad in the hole over easy, O.J., black coffee for breakfast. I'm eating apples for snacks right now instead of bananas.....50 percent chance of rain today.....

very nice

here this morning.....got a good rain yesterday late in the afternoon, but it cleared up so they could play football, and the Clinton Red Devils won 28-0, with their strong rushing game. Breakfast was poached egg on grains and granola toast....I'm thinking of braunsweiger and swiss cheese half sandwich for lunch, and I walked to the little market and got a slice of country ham and three pieces of beef rib real cheap, which will probably make for three dinners or so....I'm going to braise the beef rib for tonight, and can fix some ham and grits for Sunday dinner. I still have some squash, and some salad....for the sides.

evening news

the storm is getting here just before the evening news.....do the folks in California need some of this rain to dose the fires? Too bad, don't know how to do that.....sounds like Aunt Betty's old neighborhood is under evacuation....

a dollah nine

I used a coupon that came in the junk mail and got a Southern Style Chicken Sandwich and a sweet tea for a dollar and a dime. That was pretty good, I thought....at McDonald's ......it was a tasty sandwich, too.....I had gone out driving looking for Ora again....I mean I was looking for where Mr. Byrd's store had been, and the old tumble-down cotton warehouse which had actually at one point been the railroad stop called Ora. The road off the highway doesn't cross the train tracks right there anymore, so you have to cross at another place and go on Branch Road...and off between the road and the tracks in the trees at one point you can see some fairly large ruins of brick walls, which I take to be what's left of the warehouse.....I stopped by the church yard for a couple of minutes too....make sure the folks aren't causing any trouble.....

days like these

I could hear it raining a little in the middle of the night, and it was cool and damp on my morning walk. Online I see that it's going to be 104 or better at the Resort where I used to live, with maybe 12 percent humidity and the resulting high fire danger. It calls for 94 even in Goleta, which is right next to the ocean. Days like that could be pretty rough in SoCal, because the wind will come up too, and the air will be full of dust......

hoe-cake

I guess I'll fix meat and two for supper....pork chop, fried apple, and cornbread again. When I make cornbread it takes a few days to finish off, but it will keep just sitting out....gets better maybe....I make it thin, maybe one inch instead of two.....W.B. would complain if the cornbread was too thick or at all moist in the middle...he would throw it down on his plate and say "What is this, cake?" W.B. was always such a charming man. When I went out to the mountain man thing at Mesa Verde one year, they had the black-powder shooting and stuff like that, and they fixed some hoe-cake with lunch.....they took real thick corn batter and put it on a wide old hoe and set it in over the oak coals....and it didn't take long to cook......oak smoked cornbread.....

meanwhile, back in Escondido

which means "hidden or secret (place)".....
High temperatures near the coast will be in the 80s with highs a few
miles inland in the 90s and several miles inland above 100. Highs in
the inland valleys will reach 105 to 110 with 95 to 105 in the upper
deserts and 110 to 115 in the lower deserts. Highs in the mountains
above 6000 feet will mostly be in the 80s.

later that same day....

it's staying relatively cool, and on the radar there is a big glob coming up from the south, so maybe some rain this evening....I hope it doesn't interfere with the taunt drama of another clash of the titans....the Padres and the Braves.....maybe nobody at all would show up to watch.....what I thought was funny the last couple of nights was that there was so little crowd noise you could hear this guy going "Hot dogs! Hot Dogs! Get your weenies! Get your weenies!" He was being picked up over the announcers' mikes, I guess....or do they mix in microphones with the sounds from the stands? I like the sound effect they put in of a "swish-pop" when a guy pitches hard....that can't be for real, can it? Do they have a real sensitive mike that picks up the sound of the ball going through the air and hitting the catcher's mitt?

move the Padres to Atlanta

The Pods took the second game 12 to 5.....the worst scoring team in the majors comes alive in Hotlanta.....the newspaper said the game was "sparsely attended".....it looked downright empty....I had a salad and cornbread last night.....the avocado from Chile was not a food bargain....the grains and granola bread makes good toast....it has some grains in it I've never heard of before.....like "whole spelt" "whole kamut" and "whole quinda".....I'm glad they are all whole, I wouldn't want any cheap over processed quinda in my toast, let me tell yuh.....closed up the house early this morning, what with 100 percent humidity and getting up around 90 again....

got the mowing done

meat and two last night....chicken livers, cornbread, cole slaw.....and the Padres have a three game series with the Braves....the Padres actually won a game last night....went 12 innings....I got bread that says it's whole grains and granola.....I'm thinking of a half sandwich with that for lunch, in other words, one slice of bread, with avocado and swiss cheese.......it was cool enough to mow the lawn before the sun got up too high, but that will still work up a sweat....which is a good thing, exercise wise.....everybody gotta sweat sometime......I got my vehicle registration and plate decal for 2010 in the mail.....is the future here now? I don't think 2010 will be quite like the movie.

eat, drink, and be merry....

lots of good food news today (see below)

Food and whether or not

Obese people had lost brain tissue in the frontal and temporal lobes, areas of the brain critical for planning and memory, and in the anterior cingulate gyrus (attention and executive functions), hippocampus (long-term memory) and basal ganglia (movement), the researchers said in a statement today. Overweight people showed brain loss in the basal ganglia, the corona radiata, white matter comprised of axons, and the parietal lobe (sensory lobe).

"The brains of obese people looked 16 years older than the brains of those who were lean, and in overweight people looked 8 years older," Thompson said.

sugar is a drug

Although added sugar is not directly linked to heart disease, it is associated with risk factors such as obesity, high blood pressure, high levels of triglycerides, and high levels of C-reactive protein, which has been linked to oxidative stress and inflammation, says Linda Van Horn, a registered dietitian and chair of theAmerican Heart Association's Nutrition Committee.

I ran out of bread

so I went shopping on Tues instead of Weds, missed the 5% deal...oh well...I got apples and salad and bread and eggs, and swiss cheese two for one....and an avocado, from Chile. I didn't get the lawn mowed, got side-tracked on something else.....I put on my dirty jeans and crawled under the back porch, because yesterday when the washing machine was spinning I could hear creaking noises from maybe the porch underpinnings.....but there are brick columns under the water heater and where the washer is, and nothing looked like it was about to fall through or anything....this old house creaks sometimes at night too, randomly....I guess a lot of them do....might get up around 90 by late afternoon they say.....not much chance of rain here, but they did cancel the space shuttle because of weather?

glad there's no Chili's around here, that I know of

Chili's Smokehouse Bacon Triple Cheese Big Mouth Burger with Jalapeno Ranch Dressing
1,901 calories
68 g carbohydrates
138 g fat (47 g saturated)
4,201 mg sodium

Any 21-syllable burger spells trouble. This is as caloric as four Burger King Double Cheeseburgers, and has as much fat as 15 Pillsbury Grands! Flaky Layer Biscuits.

laundry day

The laundry basket was full, so the machine is running now. It would have been a good morning to run the mower also, but I'm too lazy....maybe it will be cool Tuesday morning too, and I can mow the weeds....the people that do GoLaurens.com started GoClinton.com today .....pretty similar websites, but I guess the Clinton one will have more Red Devil and Blue Hose pix for football season, etc....

this guy in the book I'm reading

keeps eating omelettes.....so last night I had to fix one myself with two eggs, cheese, onion, and mushrooms....I put some catsup on it....or is it ketchup? It's a science fiction book, so he just has to ask the kitchen to do the fixing, and then give it back the dirty dishes when he's done.....I've almost finished that 2 pound sandwich from WalMart, today should be the last day for that lunch I guess.....I had sausage scramble, the last of the cantaloupe, and sourdough toast with marmalade for Sunday breakfast.....the weather is nice and cool and overcast again....yesterday it did heat up enough by late afternoon to close the windows and turn on the air....maybe it won't get that hot today.....the Braves and the Marlins play a one-thirty game....I think I get that channel.....

Colton's Birthday

Nice morning here....cloudy and a cool breeze, not as humid.....took an extra walk through downtown....hardly anything open.....skillet dinner last night, chicken livers, squash, onion, mushrooms, olive oil, parmesan cheese.....poached egg breakfast today.....getting low on orange juice, might go out and get some more....or I could probably leave that 'til Monday......

Friday morning again

Better chance of rain today......watched the Braves play the Mets last night, that was interesting...complete with the New York skyline at sunset.....fixed a pork chop with mushrooms and more steamed squash for dinner, and ate a bag of popcorn during the baseball game....I guess PC is back in gear, there is more traffic on the streets.....now that school is back in, you have to be careful crossing Elizabeth.....those mothers late with the kids are vicious drivers.....

degrees north

About seven this morning it was 74 point something here.....and it said that the high in Goleta would be 72 for the day.....and I noticed that Clinton and Goleta are both 35 degrees north....so San Diego cousins are actually further South than the Southern cousins, who live to their North by the distance between San Diego and Santa Barbara, more or less. But I guess some live further south than Clinton.....anyway, I need to get more disposable razors....I guess a pack of those lasts pretty long, since the last time I bought them was in Escondido....I get the cheapest kind at CVS. CVS in Clinton is pretty much the same as CVS in Escondido, but with no alcohol. No drinking alcohol. The 1.5 liter of scotch that was $12 at Escondido CVS is almost $20 at Clinton ABC. And Clinton is a lot closer to Scotland than Escondido is .....go figure....the chicken livers with mushrooms and the steamed squash with onion made for a good meal last night...Dan says that he does not remember Joan's chicken livers with fondness.....I think she overcooked them somehow, because mine don't have that rubbery texture which maybe Dan is thinking of....the best chicken livers were those that Brian used to bring home by the pint from Donahue's Chicken Basket where he worked after school for a while....

Senior Wednesday

I did stop at the desk inside the grocery store....customer service is at the tobacco counter for some reason....and I filled out a form and got a Senior thing to go on my key-ring and get beeped, for the 5% off on Wednesday. I only spent a little over 20 bucks, but a buck off is a buck off! I got yellow squash and green squash and white onion and more bananas.....and mushrooms and chicken livers, and some small boneless center-cut pork chops. And peanuts and popcorn for watching baseball games....I haven't purchased any Cracker Jack since they did away with the box. Did you ever take the empty raisin box from your brown-bag school lunch and blow through it to make a sound like a kazoo? My oh my....I wouldn't want to be going back to school on a muggy day like this.....hurricane weather.....kinda like earthquake weather in SoCal.....

big adventure

I drove over to Wal-Mart....well, anything's a big adventure to me....I went to get more Blue Goo, the official pain relief gel of the Lakers....before I left Clinton I stopped for gas, it took 8.5 gallons....looking in my check book, the last time I filled up was July 3rd. Gas expense is not a real biggy for me.....anyway, a sign in front of a bank on the highway said it was 86 degrees at 10:15, but it didn't seem that hot to me....it was real nice driving I thought, whatever it is that's blooming now smells nice.....well I got the Blue Goo and then went through the grocery section, and found some good deals....one was a pound of slaw for a buck twenty-two. Another was a two-foot long 1.88 pound sandwich with roast beef, ham, turkey, jack, provolone, lettuce, mayo, mustard, and tomato....well, I'll have to pick out the tomato, but what the heck? The sandwich was marked down from $5.98 to $3.50.....so 3.50 plus 1.22 is 4.72.....and I've got enough submarine sandwich and cole slaw for a bunch of lunches. I closed up the house early this morning, since this looks like one of those days when it will pay to try to keep the night air in until the AC comes on in the afternoon, probably around four-thirty or so.....

Claudette

The forecast for the tropical depression that's down in Florida right now is that it's going to go sort of up into the middle of the country, instead of coming this way at all. So there's only a 20% chance of rain here, even though it's cloudy looking this morning. I went to the library and found some more sci-fi books, had oatmeal for breakfast, and a banana a few minutes ago. Got the invitation to David and Nikki's wedding.....but that's long trip from here to San Diego, so I won't be going. I talked to Caroline on the phone yesterday, they are going camping somewhere close to their house next weekend, for Colton's birthday on the 22nd, Saturday. My package got there OK already. I think I've got a packet of cornbread mix and a can of chili con carne that will do for dinner, and then I'll need to go shopping again. BiLo gives 5% off the total to seniors on Wednesdays.....maybe I'll wait until then, and ask how you get that set up....it's for 60 and older, so I more than qualify!

sourdough french toast

country sausage patty, cantaloupe chunks, orange juice, black coffee. Continues cool and overcast, haven't had to run the AC in days, which is a good thing. They say that fire is 60 miles south of Frisco, so I guess it's 60 miles south of Brian too....wonder which way the smoke is blowing.....could probably look at it from outer space if I poked around long enough on the web, I suppose.....the church across the street is going to have it's 100th anniversary.....at first they were called the Fire Baptism Holiness Church.....that sounds painful!

safari 4

I turned on the machine and it told me to upload Safari 4 and a security update, so I did. And now the browser seems to be running faster, which is a good thing I suppose. I don't like it when the machine changes things usually....old farts don't like change, generally speaking.....but this time things didn't seem to screw up. A couple of years ago Microsoft took it into it's head to update my HP laptop, and screwed it up so bad I had to junk it. Anyway, low 70's this morning, overcast.....last night I fixed a hamburger and pork-and-beans for supper....breakfast today was the poached egg, etc....I vacuumed and mopped already ....nothing in the mailbox today...it's easy to tell when the Letter Carrier goes by, you can hear her talking on her Bluetooth.....yesterday I got the thing in the mail to renew my vehicle registration.....$35 to get the new tag....I watched Terry Gilliam's Brazil last night.....those Oxy people are wierd.....

backhoe out back

It was cool again this morning with overcast and some breeze, so I went out early and ran the lawnmower.  I did the front yard first, and when I got to the back yard I saw the city had a backhoe out in my neighbor's yard digging up the water line.  A two inch pipe was leaking.....so now I've finished mowing, and would like to take a shower but there's no water pressure.  I talked to a city worker over the back fence, and he said they should have it back on in a half hour or so, but the water would be dirty at first.  So I guess I'll try running the spigot near the back steps first, after they leave.  But right now all I can do is towel off sweat, and sit under the ceiling fan....Was an oatmeal morning.....haven't read the comics yet, 'cause I went out and started the yard work right after my walk, trying to catch the cool of the morning.....school starts here next Tuesday....dang, Summer went fast!

R.I.P. Les Paul

I guess Les Paul has passed away at age 94.  He sure had a good run.....they had a thing about him on the DOC channel not long ago, he was a real character.  I don't have a real Les Paul guitar, just a no-name bolt neck knock off I got in a pawn shop for one bill, forget about the tax.  I took off the pick guard so it would look like Mike Bloomfield's, and took off the big string because Keith Richards does that....and years later I popped off the frets with a Boy Scout knife, and rubbed the neck down with a bar of soap, to make a fretless for slide.  The switch and pots are pretty much useless, but if I run it through the Pedal Farm fuzz into the Fender Champion re-issue I get this really cool bottleneck sound going pretty easy.....go to YouTube and look for something with Les and Mary Ford.....amazing stuff.....and tomorrow they start playing all of Woodstock on Deep Tracks, in the original song order......must be some Les Paul guitar in there I'm sure.....

13th

68 degrees and 100% humidity when I went for my morning walk.....foggy.....I think I'll go to the store today and get orange juice, oatmeal, paper napkins, and butter.  I got my natural gas bill yesterday and paid it with the bank bill pay thing, which actually just mails a paper check to the Gas Authority anyway?  Somebody needs to get into the 21st century.......

Wednesday night

Watched a couple of 1930's comedies on TCM, I love those old things.....rained a whole lot earlier in the afternoon....I had fish and grits and slaw for supper.....I Amazoned some toys to Colton for his birthday next week, I hope they are something a two year old boy will play with....I'd play with them myself, at least at that age, I think.....sorry Blake, I didn't do anything for yours.....thought about it though.....

the Old Farmer

must know something, here it is the 12th and cloudy, rain on and off, cool....in the 70's....well, we were all cool in the 70's, weren't we....those of us that were born already.....getting lost here....not much to report on the food front, same old food as the last few days....might need to go to the store soon, since I'm running low on oatmeal, and paper napkins....and something that escapes my mind at the moment.....woke up tired, that's not right is it?  Sometimes I think too many dreams actually tire me out in my sleep.  Sure is quiet this morning....the people with lawnmowers have given up I think, because the rain keeps coming back........sometimes it looks to me like half the people in this town mow the lawns for the other half, and in turn they get them to mow their lawns.....and they all have $30,000 Dodge crew-cab trucks and $7,000 John Deere riding mowers....yard work must pay well around here.....and they are all americanos, which is something you wouldn't see in SoCal...

if you don't like the weather

just wait a few minutes....there's some kind of front coming through right now that's dropping the temp from around 100 down to around 70 as it comes down from the north....bringing wind, rain, thunder, etc...with it.  And then the weather lady on TV says after that blows through it will heat up to 80 again by the time it gets dark.....

Dog Days were popularly believed to be an evil time "when the seas boiled, wine turned sour, dogs grew mad, and all creatures became languid, causing to man burning fevers, hysterics, and phrensies" according to Brady’s Clavis Calendarium, 1813.^{[citation needed][page needed]}

[edit]

dang dawg days

The Rev. Gary Davis, grandfather of the fingerpicked "Piedmont" blues was born in Laurens....they just said that on the radio...I had forgotten....but I wanted to mention the 26,000 year cycle of astronomical precession, which makes the Dog Days in modern times slightly different than they were in Plato's day.....Sirius rises with the Sun on some different days now as compared to then, if I'm understanding what I'm reading.....the Old Farmer says August 11 is the last day, but I don't believe that....it's going to keep going for a couple more weeks I bet....

profanity

It said in the paper this morning that someone had done research that shows that swearing when you stub your toe does in fact ease the pain.....ain't science wonderful?  (Profanity) hot again here today.....don't think bad language will ease the heat though.  %&*@# it all.  Another day to stay indoors, in other words.  On the food front, the sourdough bread makes tasty toast to top with my morning poached egg.  Plenty of food in the fridge, so I don't have to go out in the heat and forage......

heat index

At 11:30 in the morning, it's 90 outside, and the humidity raises the heat index to 95.  It's about 80 inside, with the AC not running yet.  Today was an oatmeal breakfast, and I had a bunch of grapes half an hour ago.  I'm going to eat a piece of cold fried chicken, a buttered slice of rye bread, and some olives for lunch.  With a glass of wine.  It's not really butter, but a heart-wise spread made with canola oil or something like that.....last night for supper I ended up eating chunks of cantaloupe and some green seedless grapes in a bowl with molasses and wheat germ sprinkled over the fruit.  I was watching the Braves play the Dodgers in L.A.  I also ate a bag of popcorn, during the game.  They were out of my favorite 12 grain bread at the store earlier this morning, so I bought sourdough, for a change.

don't know what I want

Just like the great mass of humanity?  Last Sunday I was kinda hungry around supper time but didn't know what to cook, so I just fixed huevos rancheros con frijoles e tortillas ....sorta breakfast for dinner.....here I am in the same pickle again.....maybe I should just keep eating at the salad stuff, use it up before it starts turning brown around the edges.....but I've had that two days in a row already.....

Sunday breakfast

Sausage scramble, cantaloupe, rye toast with marmalade, orange juice, black coffee.....the package says "Hot Country Sausage"....and it is, the sausage and the country.  Yesterday it stayed cool enough in the morning to take a walk over by the mill park area....that makes a pretty good walk....today it's warming up faster I think, so I don't anticipate going anywhere.....

Saturday

Low clouds and fog this morning, which is a good thing I think, since it might mean that it won't get as hot as they have been predicting, or maybe at least not as fast.  At the market yesterday I did get all kinds of good salad stuff......and a cantaloupe....and some grapes.....I also got country sausage and more eggs, and corn-bread mix....and they had apple juice two for one, so I got a couple of those.....so the bowl of salad last night was good, with beet slices and olives and mixed greens and some other stuff.....couldn't find much to watch on TV, they were showing "Sixteen Candles" because that Hughes guy died?  I watched a little, but it was just too painful....I think I saw what's-her-name in some BBC type show a couple of years ago, she was pretty good...or maybe that was someone else....anyway, we've got birthdays for Blake, Bree, and Colton coming up?

Friday morning

I did go to the jazz thing for a while, not a real big crowd there.....Back at the house I found a baseball game on Ch.40, the Drive playing at Flour Field in Greenville....that looks like a real nice ball park.  They were talking about the football games that are going to be on Ch.40....Sept.5 they are going to have PC and Furman.....and on a Thursday night thing they are going to have a Clinton HS game....I don't think they gave the date.....I'm going over to Bi-Lo and look for fruit and salad fixings....on these hotter days I don't really feel much like a hot dinner.....it's the weekend of no sales tax, but I can't think of anything I need to buy....in Oregon, they don't have a sales tax.  I had the oatmeal breakfast; it was 64 degrees when I went for my walk.

still Thursday

It's staying nice today, 81 right now and not that humid....I walked over to the bank earlier and got some ones to buy my newspaper in the mornings....and went through downtown (that doesn't take long) and stopped by Wilson's Curb Market to get the Clinton Chronicle.  Not really a whole lot of interest in the Chronicle....you can access it online if you Google it.....they have a jazz quintet this evening at the train tracks....I might go over there for a while, if it's still cool...and if it doesn't start raining.....you have to bring your own chair....or I sit on a bench on Musgrove, and the sound bounces up between the buildings.....these Thursday things got rained out a few times, so this one tonight is a catch-up, I think.  It's cool, the band just stops in the middle of the song when the train comes by, and then picks up on the beat after it's gone.....

Thursday morning

Go to this site for augmented reality  http://layar.com/   What won't they think of next?  Thursday breakfast is a medium poached egg on rye toast, with orange juice and black coffee.  The morning weather is about 70 degrees with scattered high clouds.  David said in an e-mail that he had to go to a meeting in Buelton....and Dan said he should get the battered fritters.....I think he should get the pea soup.  The only time I stopped at Pea-Soup Andersons I got the cup of soup with the half sandwich.  That was plenty, as their half-sandwich is as big as a whole sandwich from some places.  I ignored the sweets display on the way out.....they put the cash register right in the middle of the baked goods, to tempt you to buy something sweet before you hit the road again.  They have honeydew melons advertised right now, I think I'll look for one next time I go shopping.  Thousand Oaks lost to the Dominican Republic in a baseball game in Easley, which was on ESPN2, that was kind of interesting.....but the starting pitcher for the California team pretty much lost the game early with some wild pitching.  

2nd inning

 I was flipping through the channels and found the Braves at the Padres.....the Padres are already down 3-0 in the 2nd.....and the dang stadium looks like it's empty!  It's a day game....but still, are they doing that lousy? I suppose they are....all I do is look in the paper and see that the Dodgers and the Angels are still in first, and then wait until almost the end of the season to follow it any closer.  Cool here now with the windows open and a breeze....it rained at around five or so, and brought down the heat.  I was out on the front porch looking at the rain, and the lady across from the front of the church came out to walk her dog like she does every day.  It's a real old dog that goes real slow....the lady is pretty old too....but, anyway....she had an umbrella, and was trying to get the dog to walk with her under the umbrella....she doesn't use a leash, and the dog usually just wanders around sniffing things as they walk along.  But today she kept calling the dog to come to her, and it would come and sit, which would be the normal drill.  But then she would start walking again, and the dog would start wandering....and then they would do the whole thing over.  They only got about a block and she gave up and went back to the house.  I don't think  the dog cared at all about the rain, anyway.

out through the woods

After being so hot yesterday by mid-morning, today it was actually still pretty nice, so I took a drive out on some little roads through the forest.....the kind of road where you don't see any other cars the whole way.....it was cool and pleasant out there.....and eventually I hit back on a highway and came back home.  A little bit of a diversion from sitting around the house....and while I was driving I thought of something I can do with that leftover chicken and rice....I can throw in some black-eyed peas and have Hopping John for  couple or three dinners....that'll get me up to the weekend.  Last night there was dry lightning around ten, so it must have been later than that before I got to sleep....

the diverter

Last night I read a really scary article  http://money.cnn.com/2009/07/31/news/companies/dina_wein_reis_fraud_trial.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2009080316    It's about a scam called "diverting"....another way crazy people in New York divert money into their own pockets.  Well, it's a Wednesday, so breakfast was oatmeal with raisins, bran flakes, and molasses, with orange juice and black tea.  Dinner will be back to chicken leftovers, after last night's splurge.  I have two bananas that need to be eaten soon.  Probably eat one this morning.  At seven this morning, right before my walk, it was 68 here and 100% humidity.  It was 59 in both Coos Bay and Oakland.  I mowed the "lawn" yesterday morning, finishing about 10....at which point I was soaked and sodden....the T-shirt I was wearing remains a sodden lump on the floor at the foot of the bed....in this humidity nothing will dry out....and I swear the weeds grew back overnight anyway....oh well.....

First year

One year ago the City granted my Occupancy Permit....I had to pay some amount, and they sent a guy over to see if there were any water leaks or obvious fire hazards, since the City provides water and fire protection.  Then I had to go back to the office with the piece of paper and get my Permit.  And then they sent out another guy to turn on the power and water.  And I took my Permit to the Gas Authority and paid another fee and this Authority sent out two gas guys who fired up the water heater, and took a look at the heat pump gas pak thing and said it should work.  So, to celebrate one year going by I went to Whiteford's Giant Burger and got the 10 piece shrimp dinner.  It is the most expensive dinner on the menu, about eight bucks, with tax and tea.  I looked at the receipt, and the tea was only 40 cents, because it was an SR tea....a senior tea?  The meal included fries, slaw, and three small hush-puppies.  The slaw was really good.....the fries were the first I've had in months....It was around five when I drove over there, and it was 93 or so outside.  By the time the Jeep air-conditioner started blowing cold air, I was there.  The place was pretty empty, but I guess they were doing some drive-up business....