Saturday - June 22, 2024

[howard lee]

Good morning.

Lots of rain here in the Northeast since yesterday afternoon. A bit of a break later this morning and then more thundershowers in the afternoon. High temperature of 91° today. Have I said it has been hot here since Tuesday?

Stay cool, folks.

[millring]

Ink was a fantastic album.

Another 4ordle day. Off to do mail in the heat. It's getting me down, but I got heart. Miles and miles and miles of heart.

Ever noticed goat's beard? Looks just like a giant dandelion -- so much so, that I bet you've seen it and thought that's what it was. If you see HUGE dandelion puffs by the roadside, that's what you're looking at.

A friend stopped by the house the other night and mentioned that he'd been in contact with the guy who owns the rights to the name "Popular Mechanix". My friend (the guy whose airplane won an award at the Oshkosh flyin a few years ago) is obsessed with old post war magazines -- PM PS, etc. He has an idea and he's worked out a well-done pitch complete with episodes roughed in....anyway, the guy loved the idea and I do too. It would be episodes kinda like "The Repair Shop" where the futuristic projects that were the covers and stories of Popular Mechanix would be built and tried out.

Have a nice, if hot, day.

[Cornflake]

Good morning. It will be ordinarily hot here today with a 30 percent chance of showers. It's definitely looking and feeling monsoonish. More clouds. Higher humidity.

Yesterday I got my photo exhibit up. It was very satisfying. Today I need to have three conversations with neighbors about the problems with our irrigation system. Two conversations should be pleasant, one probably won't be. It's like dealing with an HOA that doesn't have a board to decide things. We have to compromise and work things out or the water gets shut off altogether.

I did two truly dumb things when playing Wordle and I was lucky not to bust.

Enjoy your day.

Wordle 1,099 5/6*

⬜🟨🟨⬜⬜
⬜🟨🟨🟨⬜
🟨⬜🟩🟨⬜
⬜⬜🟩🟩🟨
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

[concertinagirl]

Our Church is holding its annual fundraising festival this weekend. Scott and I are volunteering. I am tending bar and Scott is cooking burgers. Church festivals are numerous and very popular in this area. Lots of great music, food and fun and, best of all, the Churches make some money to keep things going.

Have a great day, everyone.

Jan

[Marty]

Good morning.

62F-75F mostly sunny.

Saturday Shop today but I think I'll be doing less and less of those as the Summer progresses. We are going to be doing some traveling and not just the Kauai and Key West trips but weekend getaways also.

But there will be shop today and then lunch will Billiam at Casa Azul Agave.

[paleo]

Rain this morning, then rain again late afternoon.

Yesterday afternoon I made my way to the Benton County Fair in Vinton. Last time I was there was about 9 years ago and I'm sorry to say it's even worse now than it was then. The 4H portion is being run by the Iowa State university extension office, and they did a pretty good job. Other than that almost nothing to attract visitors.

I walked thru the almost empty exhibition buildings, then in the vendor building found my artist friend Barb. She had a booth selling her art. She also had a very comfortable spare lawn chair. I sat and visited and watched people for about 2 hours before moving on to the animals.

I visited the cows, horses, fowl and goats, but skipped the pigs. Beautiful animals especially the horses. I like horses.

I'll make a visit to the Urbana Farmer's market this morning, not much there either, but I like the people.

[concertinagirl]

Jun 22, 2024 8:25:50 GMT -5 paleo said:

 

Yesterday afternoon I made my way to the Benton County Fair in Vinton. Last time I was there was about 9 years ago and I'm sorry to say it's even worse now than it was then. The 4H portion is being run by the Iowa State university extension office, and they did a pretty good job. Other than that almost nothing to attract visitors.

Lar took me to the Benton County Fair.  I saw my first demo derby there.  I thought I would hate it.  I ended up finding it very exciting and really enjoyed it.  I loved the race as well.  My favorite race was the big cars that made the loudest noise.  I wasn't prepared, however, for how filthy I would end up being.  I had dirt in my hair and every other place that wasn't covered by clothing.  So much fun.  Wonderful memory.

[Tamarack]

Hot and humid again. Relief predicted as a cold front comes through tonight, such that mid-80s next week will feel comfortable.

Feeling confined indoors, a total first-world problem for a middle-class person who can afford to run air conditioners.

Some woodworking time today, working on a platform bed for our eldest granddaughter. I will be using my panel saw to cut plywood sheets and and assembly table. The panel saw is a bunch of 2x4s on the garage floor and a circular saw. The assembly table is a 4x8 sheet of 3/4" particle board on the basement floor. If there was lots more space in this old house I would have permanent raised benches; I am fortunate that my aging joints can still handle getting down and up from the floor.

The other endeavor for today is setting out a live trap for a neighbor's wayward cat, which has traveled from a couple of blocks away and been sighted behind our garage. The difficulty is in trapping the intended cat and not a raccoon, skunk, or possum.

[dradtke]

Ellsworth Cheese Curd festival today. Some friends are playing there at noon, so we'll head over for a while and hope the rain holds off.

[TKennedy]

Another cloudy drizzley day. Big project is working at Pat’s storage garage where she has a massive amount of “antiques” she has accumulated over 30 years and never sold. She is having a big garage sale next weekend to cull the herd.

Whatever does not sell is going to the dump. There are a few cool items. Anyone interested?? I can post pictures.

[billhammond]

Jun 22, 2024 7:55:06 GMT -5 concertinagirl said:

Our Church is holding its annual fundraising festival this weekend. Scott and I are volunteering. I am tending bar and Scott is cooking burgers. Church festivals are numerous and very popular in this area. Lots of great music, food and fun and, best of all, the Churches make some money to keep things going.

Have a great day, everyone.

Jan

Any church that has blonde babe bartenders is preaching MY kind of religion!

[kenlarsson]

Good morning. Got motivated this morning and did a long ride on the street bike. Getting ready for a supermarket run and then it's rest and relaxation for the rest of the day. Sunny and warm here so there'll probably be some pool time. Have good ones peoples.

[billhammond]

This is Rock Valley, in far northwestern Iowa, where National Guard helicopters were sent to rescue residents from their rooftops.

[howard lee]

What a crazy couple of days.

We drove to Northampton, MA, on Thursday morning for an afternoon tour of UMass at Amherst. I insisted on renting a car. My wife insisted on borrowing a several-year-old Kia Soul from her friend. I balked. Guess who won? (If you guessed not Howard, you'd be correct.)

So we drive up, park, check in, and go on this grueling, mostly outdoor, two-hour tour of UMass, in the heat. The campus of this place is huge and caters to 20,000 students. Tour over. We drive back to the lovely little town of Northampton because we have a tour of Smith College the next morning and Amherst College that afternoon. Found a nice little brewery for dinner in walking distance from our hotel.

We check out of the hotel yesterday morning early and meet a friend of mine from 40 years ago whom I have not seen in 35 years, for coffee and croissants. For the last 22 she has been a professor of sociology and environmental studies at Smith, so she and I were delighted to reëstablish contact (and she tells me she started playing bluegrass mandolin in 1998—boy howdy!—and comes to New York every couple of months, so jam sessions could occur), and Her Grace was happy to have some of her questions about Smith answered. This only went on for an hour—hardly enough time for a reunion.

The tour of Smith was great; only one other young woman (who played us a fabulous Beethoven piano composition on a grand piano in one of the student lounges) and her mom, and the rising sophomore physics major who guided us was smart, articulate, and sweet. Obviously not from New York City. As I expected, Her Grace was excited about the school and said she could see herself attending Smith and being totally comfortable there for a number of reasons, both academic and social. Hell, I want to be an 18-year-old female and go there.

Then we drove over to Amherst and had a partial tour of Amherst College. We met a close friend of Her Grace's from her high-school class, who drove up with her mom. The young women did not care to see the rest of the campus, so we said good-bye to the friend's mom (who was driving on to Vermont) and the four of us started to drive back to Brooklyn, where we would drop the friend at her home, pick up the dog from my son's home, and finally get home ourselves.

It rained. A lot. The wipers froze in mid-stroke. I could barely see the road. Damn. No way was I going to chance the highway. The third auto repair garage we found back in Northampton was open for another 35 minutes, and these nice, studly young mechanics with burly beards started troubleshooting the problem. They took the wipers apart, checked all the fuses, voltage, and determined that the motors were on their last legs. They got the wipers to work, sort of, 60 bucks later (no replacement motor was available) and suggested we leave them on. This was at 5:00 pm. We hit the road. The wipers worked for a while. Then they gave out with one last wipe, on I-84. It rained. We pulled off the highway and waited. The rain stopped. We started off again. We ended up pulling off the road every 20 minutes to wait out the rain, which was traveling south, as were we.

Naturally, I was furious. We all just wanted to get home. By the time we were halfway across Connecticut, it was getting close to 7:00 pm and daylight was fading. You can't drive on an Interstate in the rain with no wipers as darkness is falling. I pulled off the road, found a local gas station, and asked where we might find a place to spend the night. We ended up at a (kind of) swanky golf resort hotel, where there was a weekend wedding party and a family reunion in progress, and yet... they had two double rooms for us. And it was still raining.

We spent the night. I woke up at 2:20 am and could not get back into a deep sleep. The rain had abated by morning. We checked out at 8:30 and I had V drive us because I was sort of delirious. Rain was predicted for late this afternoon, there as well as here in Brooklyn. But we made it between storms! Dropped our friend at 10:42 am and picked up Bianca from my son at 11:02, as planned, on a sunny Brooklyn morning.

I never borrow cars from people. Aside from the mechanical safety factor, there is the liability factor that puts me off. I prefer to rent, where I know (usually) that the car has been gone over and everything is in working order. "Let's borrow L's x-number-of years old Kia Soul. She doesn't need it and we can save a lot of money by not renting one." Right. The hotel cost us about three times what a car rental would have, and we would have been home 15 hours earlier.

But we are home, if a bit ragged and worn out, and I am definitely not going to the barbecue a couple of the families are throwing for a Thai exchange student who is going back home at the end of semester. It's supposed to storm again at 4:00 pm, anyway.

The moral of today's gripping tale of adventure is: Henceforth, we rent!

[Cornflake]

What an ordeal, Howard.

I don't like to borrow anything. If I borrow a guitar, my belt buckle will scratch it. If I borrow a vacation cabin, some major appliance will die while I'm there.

We toured Mount Holyoke, down the road from Smith, with younger daughter some years back. We also toured Wellesley. Lovely places but very expensive. I was greatly relieved when our daughter decided to go to U of A.

[howard lee]

Jun 22, 2024 14:03:00 GMT -5 Cornflake said:

What an ordeal, Howard.

I don't like to borrow anything. If I borrow a guitar, my belt buckle will scratch it. If I borrow a vacation cabin, some major appliance will die while I'm there.

We toured Mount Holyoke, down the road from Smith, with younger daughter some years back. We also toured Wellesley. Lovely places but very expensive. I was greatly relieved when our daughter decided to go to U of A.

We sat out some of the rain over dinner in Holyoke yesterday but did not see the school.

Yes, they are pricey. We have been saving and investing for a long time, and I want her to have the best education possible, and to graduate with little or no debt. Our dentist is in her fifties (emigré from Ukraine) and told me she still has five years to go before her dental school loans are fully paid off! What? I may not be around when Her Grace is mature and fully established, so I would like to think she will have a good head start that I was partially responsible for providing. A smaller, private college may be the best fit for her, too.

[Cornflake]

Makes sense. I'm lucky that my father was willing and able to pay for my college on the condition that I always worked to cover part of the cost, which I did.

[theevan]

Hot tip:

When picking a Costco rotisserie chicken, pull the skin off in sheets and place in a hot skillet. It will render the schmaltz and leave the skin as crisp as a potato chip. And super yummy.

Wendy's in the kitchen preparing chicken spaghetti (truly a redneck dish) for tonight's birthday celebration with daughter Tiffany and son, um grandson Micah (it's really complicated...and an amazing story).

My mom went to Smith. She finished at KU, not sure why she left Smith though a relative once told me she thought Kathleen was kicked out. Wouldn't surprise me.

[Cornflake]

"She finished at KU, not sure why she left Smith though a relative once told me she thought Kathleen was kicked out. Wouldn't surprise me."

A friend of ours got kicked out of BYU. When I first learned that, I naturally wondered why. She didn't say. It seemed tacky to ask. It was probably nothing worse than the stuff I did in those days. I suspect that BYU is an easier place to get kicked out of than some schools.

[paleo]

I was never kicked out of a school, but I could name several bars that have kicked me out.