The Leader of the Universe.

I told earlier in this blog that I don't tell anybody what my religion is because I don't want to get into contests over whether or not I am 'saved' in the appropriate manner or if my morals are Bible-based, therefore 'true.'

But every now and then on Sunday I get the urge to go to church and pay my respects with my brothers and sisters..  The Catholics come in the morning at 10 and the Protestants, usually Baptists, show up about three in the afternoon.  And I usually hit the Baptists because they have the most seriously good fast piano music that seems to come out like rock n roll without the sex and drugs, and still stirring for all that.

For a full fifteen minutes before the service last Sunday, the minister played a continuous medley of songs that rivaled some professionals I've heard do the same thing.  Then we sang one or two.  I had goose bumps.  But from that point it all started going down like a bomb picking up speed as it lost altitude.  The country is in terrible shape. (True.)  This may be the last days. (Maybe..) Lots and lots and lots of people are going to hell because they didn't make an adult decision to designate Jesus Christ as their personal savior.  (I guess sex, drugs and rock n roll are OK after that, you just say 'I'm sorry' after the smoke clears.)

By the time we got to the part where the preacher's wife was sorrowful about a girl she knew who had been killed in an automobile accident, and who is undoubtedly experiencing the pleasures of eternal hell because she hadn't made an adult declaration for Jesus Christ, I was ready for a nice quiet read of Sigmund Freud and a good cry.  I had an English murder mystery instead and found great comfort in that.

 

                                                         

I have a new amulet that I am wearing around my neck.  (There used to be an Orthodox cross, a gift from a fireman friend in Russia.  And most people around here seem to think I am Orthodox although they're not sure what that is.)  Now I have a creation from China that looks like a round amoeba and is surely 99% lead and one percent pot metal to hold it together. Three dollars and niiney-nine!  Must be having a burnout on Christians.  I have to figure out what to tell people it represents.   Jesus blessing the Flying Saucers sounds good.  It's that big round thing in the picture, not the colorful stringy thing.  That is some true jewelry, a tourmaline tennis bracelet set in sterling silver.

Your religion, my religion, who flung poo!  I don't know what God is, energy, the Universe.  Or maybe we all just wink out when we die.  Hope not.  Can't tell from here.  I know what I call God and I have deeply felt and firm principles about how my God would like me to live this life.  Don't we all?  As much as I hate organized religions, I think Jesus Christ is just fine and led an exemplary life worthy of emulation.  It's his Fan Club who screws it all up.  Ta!

The murky bottom of Catfish Bay.

I asked a woman for a date today. For supper.  At Frischs'. It turned out not to be a fortuitous question. She replied "Probably, but do you know Jesus Christ?"  That should have warned me about something right then.  I told her he was a pretty good friend and great conversationalist.  Perversely she has to pray about it and 'take counsel.'  I am thinking that I am getting into something way to deep for me.  I need to pick possible supper dates more wisely.  Like a nice trailer trash girl. Or a heavily muscled biker bitch. When she got to the Personal Savior bit, I mentioned, in addition to Jesus, Allah, I Am Who Am, Buddha, Freya, Jack and Diane, and Vishnu.  I think that might have scared her off.  She started breathing heavily. It was not excitement.

We had a deal here in town last year where the wife in a very religious family disappeared and turned up later in Florida with the husband of a lady who had 14 cats.  Not a great way to start a relationship.  Married and all.  The In Depth commentaries were attempting to solve the puzzle of why two otherwise perfectly normal people would do something like this.  Hell, I knew all the time:  he got tired of cat hair in his Fruit of the Looms and she got tired of being beaten to death with church, bible and Jesus.  (Been there and have the t-shirt.)  They divorced their respective spouses and are now living together in the real world.  Do I approve?  Well, you never know what you can do until you're choking to death.

In the sixties, in college, we had a group of people we called PK's - Preacher's Kids.  After twelve or more years of having religion crammed down their throats, they were inevitably the first ones who got into the kind of mischief we were all warned by our mothers about - sex, drugs, booze and rock 'n roll.

If you think this is a statement on religion, it isn't.  It's about who you date.  Whenever I discuss my religion with anybody they always want to convert me because I am not somehow Saved in the proper manner. Like the lady in the first part of this story.

 

 

This tiny lake we have here outside my window is about one hundred feet deep.  Used to be a limestone quarry.  Every boat I've seen out there this summer contains people who show no vestige of a life vest of any kind.  The first one was a grandmother and three grand kids, little grand kids.  Happily splashing along in a paddle boat.  Today there were some bass fishermen doing the same thing.

Now you can most assuredly drown in two inches of water, and in one if you're really creative.  But you drown a lot better in one hundred feet.  Kind of like, more completely.  If you get far enough down the catfish and snapping turtles will eat you and save us the trouble of calling the Police and Fire Department.  Makes me think you might get to know Jesus and company very intimately and pretty fast.

Ta!

Two's a Crowd.

                                                    

There are two issues today that I think worth commenting about and I'm going to start with the school test cheating scandal in Atlanta, Georgia.

BUT CAN YOU MAKE CHANGE ?   The Georgia Bureau of Investigation has released an eight hundred page report that a number of teachers and administrators in the Atlanta school system have deliberately cheated on tests designed to indicate where students stand in educational areas of language, math and other subjects.  There is a great  froo-frah going on including claims that teachers were told by principals and supervisors that students would pass achievement tests or else.  Presumably meaning they would be fired from their jobs if scores weren't up to snuff.

When did we Americans start getting the idea that the object of education was to pass achievement tests?   During my education in the 50's and 60's I learned reading, writing, arithmetic.  I had it drilled into me.  I also almost flunked Chemistry, Latin and something else, I forget.  Did a fine job in Biology and American Government. I didn't have to take a standardized test to enter a community college in 1986.  I just had to have passed high school. In spite of all that...

I write something almost every day of my life including this blog.  I know good words to use that I get from a cornucopian vocabulary mostly amassed before I graduated from college.  I've used math almost daily, especially in work settings, and particularly when I worked with fertilizers and pesticides in the business of grounds maintenance.  Did some pretty complicated calculations with a pencil and a note pad standing in the middle of a forty-acre field. Sometimes just in my head. Got it right. And I know what the capital of Sri Lanka is - it was Ceylon back in the olden days.  (Now you guess...)  And where most rubber comes from, and from what kind of living tissue (guess that one too...).  And I don't need a fancy cash register to tell me how much change somebody's owed.  I do that in my head.  Have done since I was 13 with a paper route.

I like my way better.  They didn't have to fire any teachers for teaching me writing with no tests.  I learned to write.  Period.

CREDIT RATING.   Is this one of those "we should have seen it coming" matters?  Of course it is!    President Obama has told us and the world that we are still a triple-A country no matter if we only officially now have a AA.  

If I apply for a credit card and the bank I apply to does a financial check on me and finds that I have four other ones and owe a total of over ten thousand dollars, they are going to send me a form letter back saying "No you can't.  You are so extended in relation to your income that we don't think you can reasonably pay us back on time."  Standard & Poors did precisely the financially correct thing.  This country is so over extended with debt it's no wonder Apple has more money than the United States government.  Possibly Apple should run the country.

Ta!

Relationship Locomotive.

When I was  old enough to roam part of the town by myself, trains looked like this. Except for steam engines. I thought they were gigantic, a little scary, and probably a lot of fun to drive.  This railroad is long gone and so is the engine, an F-series EMD (General Motors) locomotive.  It might be pulling a train across the bridge from Louisville to eventually run down 15th Street past my Uncle Benny's lumberyard in New Albany.

The Dodge Coronet over on the right side is a beauty too.  Send one for Christmas please.  Nobody makes nice cars in America anymore.  Since about 1995 they have all looked like suppositories or turds depending on how you feel about them.

I had a conversation with Bee-Bee last night. Pretty short.  She had some troubles on her mind and I asked her if she might want to sit on a bench by the lake and talk about it.  In front of God and everybody.

"Well I don't know, I thought you were going with Jinx.

"What's that got to do with it?  I'm not going with anybody.

"Well I'm not ready for a relationship right now, and I don't want to be seen running around with some other woman's man.

"Wait a minute.  I'm just talking about a conversation.

"Well you know when Flay was going to school she walked in with some guy who belonged to another woman and she threw a rock at her and cut her head. And she needed ten stitches.

"When was this?

"About 1943. 

Bring me Little Abner and a Doctor Pepper!  I think that when all little girls from Kentucky were about 11, some preacher, or nun, or mother, or uncle, told them that whatever a man asks if you, it's about having sex. No matter how he frames it. Or a relationship. (Infer sex...)  Well there you go.  And you wonder why I read mysteries and take naps.

I am going to find the Meals On Wheels lady and help her with her deliveries.  Ta!

How Tom went to the hospital. Maybe.

 

	Hans Zimmer - Show Me Your Firetruck .mp3
	Found at bee mp3 search engine

Mabel Ruth and I were standing in the hallway.  We do that a lot, we are trying to start a Senior Residence scandal, being visible enough so that people start talking about us and rumors fly through the air conditioning.  We actually need a couple stools and a little table so we can sit comfortably and drink our coffee as we pretend to paw at each other.  This whole business will become pretty problematic when we become romantically involved.  There is only so much that you can pretend to do in a hallway before some old bitch calls the police. 



Anyway Mabel and I were groping in the hallway when a group of folks with speed in their step and intensity in their eyes came down and asked if we'd seen Tom.  Tom Bomb (remember him?) not Tom K. recently famous.  He was supposed to meet them for church and he didn't show up. 

One short, muscled woman with her feet apart in a fighting stance, lugging a huge Bible: "He always shows up when he's supposed to."  I think she was calling the shots because she told somebody to call the VA Hospital and see if he was visiting folks there.  Also everybody else shut up when she started talking. We told them to call Maintenance, and we gave them the phone number, and somebody would come up with a passkey and open the door to figure out if Tom was dead on the floor.  Or in his bed.

Ed Maintenance (that might be his last name) came up and opened the door:

"is he dead?"
"He's asleep.  On the floor."
"He has a coat and tie on and no pants."
"It must have been the heat.  That can kill people you know."
"He's waking up."
"He helps a lot of people, you know."
"He's confused, he doesn't know where he is."
"I still think it's the heat, it can kill people you know."

Mabel and I recommended the paramedics.  We were unheard.   Tim Wonderful came down the hall and asked a lot of questions and then said he had to go back to his room to get his blood pressure stuff.  He is a former something-having-to-do-with-emergencies kind of guy.  He took Tom's blood pressure and said it was ok.  "I think we will just take him to the hospital," said the fighting woman.

Somebody else was trying to talk some sense into a receptionist at the VA and pretty soon Tom came feebly out the door, with pants on, in a check suit, briefcase and umbrella and said he was ready to go to church.  They all disappeared.  Mabel and I stared at each other then laughed.

When the church smell disappeared from the hallway, I said urgently to Mabel,"If you ever find me dead in bed or on the floor, just call the paramedics right away and tell them to take me to Kettering Med."  "But then what would we do about the fun in the hallway?," she said. 

Ta!

Where have you seen this picture before

Friday got interrupted by a flash from Oslo about a bombing and chaos in the building where the Prime Minister has his offices.  It's early days yet but at this hour the police are trying to count the dead and numerous injured.  Including some campers, some of them children?, on an island about eighty miles away. The picture is graphic.  Don't click on it if you don't like graphic.
                                               
The toll will go up, of course. Apparently the perpetrator is a home-grown terrorist who was dressed in a police uniform, who detonated the bomb in the City center and then drove to the island to wreak his havoc there.  The pictures reminded me graphically of the Oklahoma City bombing some fifteen or so years ago.  Poor Norwegians.  Everybody is taking their turn, USA, Spain, Russia, Great Britain. I am shocked again just now, 11:00 pm.  Another flash.  Norway Police are now saying that eighty people have been killed in the youth camp on the island.  I am totally shocked.

The gossip here tonight is about Tom and Loretta.  Tom lives on our floor and Loretta went into his apartment two nights ago and stayed for some time.  I have no idea why she was there.  Possibly to discuss the Book of Moses or have high tea.  Loretta is black (diversity is terrific until it hits the second floor here) and Tom is not.  Last week they were all talking about Tom and how he just isn't the man he was and his faculties are weakening, and he's opinionated. Decided they didn't like him much. 

All the old lady wags had their say ("No fool like an old fool..." ) Tonight they believe Loretta went in to rob him and they are going to tell him how to handle things so Loretta can be asked to leave as a tenant.  Laughing all the way, I told them they were all jealous, Tom was getting sex and they weren't.  Then I walked away before they could start in on me.  I will be the villain tomorrow and then I will have something to gossip about with Mabel.  We both keep fighting fit laughing at everybody else.  Ta!

Blew it right down the street - 2

More on the storm last night:  Actually there was more than one area of severe damage, another being Woodman Drive and Dorothy Lane.  Tonight (the following night) there are 19,000 customers without power and line crews from Tennessee and Indiana have arrived to help the locals.  I know because I saw strange trucks at Steak and Shake where a friend and I went for supper tonight and I walked over to look at one.  Indianapolis.  I fancied that over a peach milkshake and a guacamole cheeseburger.  Which was not on the diet.  Our favorite Frisch's was closed because of no power.

                                                          
I would like to say that the storm blew the few bitchy people here out of the 11th story windows but, unfortunately, they are walking around today. Picking up their mail.  Having cat fights.  It must be the heat.  Right now I am sitting in front of a fan AND air conditioner saying "Oh God!  That feels so good!"  Ta!
                                                

Blew it right down the street....

We had a hell of a storm here last night about 9 or so.  The first time in years that I put my book down during a storm and walked over to the window and just watched it.  An hour and fifteen minutes of storm with lots of lightning and twenty continuous minutes of hail which made a lot of noise bouncing off my air conditioner.  There are some pictures here, none of which were taken by me, they were viewer submissions to one of the local TV stations.

I live about half a mile from the point of the most damage (Woodman and Woodbine for those who live in Dayton) and there were a lot of traffic lights out this morning.  Some roofs came off newer apartments.  Thank God for my solid 1960's building.  I think a couple windows blew out on the upper floors and I know some screens came off.  No dents in the top of my car from the hail, if there were I would have left them there as souvenirs. More hot and humid today.  Maybe more storms tonight.  I have a couple good books ready if the promised entertainment doesn't materialize.  Ta! 

Poodles, Fire, Beggars and Traffic.

I got my favorite and only nurse riled up last night when I told her the news story about the guy who tried to beat his wife with the family poodle.  (The dog died, she had minor bruising, he's in jail).  Nurse jumped out of her chair and started screaming about family violence, God, white slavery and something else I didn't get because I walked away laughing.  She launched!  Well I thought it was a hoot.  If I were the cop that got called to this I would have requested a photographer before I even went in the house.  Uh, watch out who you get your medical advice from.  She may hit you with a dog!

                                                         


The Canada geese are gone.  I think somebody from the new management brought a team in the middle of one night and absconded with them.  Things are looking up! 


And we had a fire call one day last week.  The alarm went off.  I felt my door to see if it was warm (it wasn't), opened it and didn't smell any smoke, and went back to sleep.  My afternoon nap.  In a few minutes two engines and a ladder pulled up along with a Chief.  I am told.  Apparently one of the nice old ladies on another floor put some eggs on to boil and then got in her car and went to the Dayton Mall.  The burnt eggs exploded all over the kitchen and part of the entrance way and the entire floor smelled like somebody tried to fast-cook a possum. With fur.  I gather something like this happens about once every 2 months or so.  Thank God for a steel and concrete building!


                                                                                         

                                                                                    

The City of Dayton has a new ordinance.  Homeless people ( panhandlers to the landed gentry) can no longer stand on street corners or freeway entrances and beg "Will work for food."  Or, "Not hungry, just want beer money."  The Chief of Police whines that they don't want people stepping out in front of cars and getting hit.  Most people really know that the landed majority just don't want their neighborhoods looking tattered around the edges. I think that for every stop or arrest the officers make, the Chief should buy that person (homeless) one decent meal.  If he is willing to afford it.  What you see is not what you get.....

Same deal with the Red Light Traffic Cameras.  Some few have been in operation for 8 or 9 years and more are being installed.  "It is to save lives" say the City leaders.  Oh for heaven's sake!  It was about money then and it's about money now.  The City gets $55 for every red light ticket (even though they don't have the personnel to identify and collect the offenders.  Some collection agency is doing it now).  When I was a little kid I was told that it was a sin to lie.  I must have been the only one they told.  Ta!

Why I love dead people in Iceland

If you're not fond of the occasional book you can feed this one to the birds.  I love dead people in Iceland because that country suddenly is producing mystery authors of some talent.  The plots are all murder but the locations, language, customs, values and myths are as different as a bat from a buffalo.  Yrsa Sigurdardottir has written a couple fine stories with great skill, including My Soul To Take, and a fellow named Arnaldur Indridason has a good handful in print, of which my favorite is Jar City.  

                                                                   

I am having great fun reading these.  The Swedes have come up with some equally capable new authors and there is a homicide in Lapland called Snow Angels,  a land that is totally dark twenty four hours a day in winter.  Or if you want something grubby and familiar to read, go to the grocery and get a copy of the National Enquirer.


An idea for a greeting card from a dead people book:

(front) "This has been a stressful time for both of us..."

(inside) "...so would you please go to the nearest piranha farm and throw yourself in one of the tanks." 


Ta!


 

Why I love dead people in England

We went from icy winter and cracked ribs to solid rain for weeks.  The ark-building shops opened up again and each ark held two cats, two dogs, two men and forty women.  Which is the approximate composition of the population here.  Now it is hot and humid and High summer is two weeks away, the longest day of the year and a work-free holiday in Sweden, Finland and Norway.  Lucky them.  

The compressor on my air conditioner crashed so, after a couple days, Maintenance brought up a swell sixty-pound job guaranteed to keep dry ice solid, make coffee in the morning and start the bacon.  And it did all that for three hours and died.  The compressor was fine but the fan refused to rotate.  Maintenance is now looking again for me for a replacement.  I have to emphasize that the air conditinoer is my responsibility, not the Complex'.  That's in the Rule Book.  But a little baksheesh goes a long way here and I will get one that works.  Free.

 

The bedbug scare is over and, over the past week, I have unpacked all my clothes and hung them back up, and replenished the contents of my dresser drawers.  The canvases and framed pictures are still sitting out because, if it cools off some, it might be fun to hang them on the walls.  ANd with this I am doing dishes, cooking, cleaning, working with addicted kids and managing an afternoon nap.  Or a morning nap some days just after breakfast when my blood sugar goes up and my eye lids go down. 

We have two House meetings tomorrow, one about bedbugs, which may be causing some problems on at least one floor. It will be sparsely attended.  And one about Medicare which will be well attended by old folks claiming Foul Operating Procedures.  Well it is a government operation after all. 
                                                       
I have lost thirty pounds since I've been here, eight months now.  This has been caused by the spring rains and stress over the loud and intrusive Canada geese.  Who have mostly flown away now but will be back in April again.  Also in the rule book there is a section about not feeding the fowl as it attracts them and they bay and honk for bread crumbs.  This morning one old biddy (did I say --tch?) was feeding an entire family of them from a large bag of something.  I think that somebody should go to her room tonight with a two-by-four and slam it into both her ears until she understands that being nice to the nice geese is not nice.  I wish it could be me.

While doing dishes this morning I invented a recipe for a gumbo of brown rice and either chicken or pork tenderloin with blackened seasoning.  I am going to make it in the crock pot in a day or so and try it out on Mabel across the hall.  She is (a fine!) 87 and could eat nails for breakfast without it affecting her.  She also uses mountains of salt on her food.  She is healthy as a horse.  She does not need a doctor. That is Mabel's picture somewhere here.  She is as suave as I am and I love having her for a neighbor.  Maybe she and I together can beat the goose-woman to death!

I am reading Charles Todd World War I mysteries and I have just watched UNSTOPPABLE which is about train wrecks and heroism.  High adventure. 

I don't know how the title fits in here, it was supposed to be for something else.  But I promised it in an earlier post, so there it is!

Ta!

I still don't have bed bugs.

I've had two critter inspections and come out clean.  So I told the fellow "Fine, DON'T come back and [fleeking] spray!"  My week is shot.  All the people who wanted to talk to me or get together last week are now phoning me and asking if I'm dead.  The apartment is a trash pit.  Tomorrow I am going to start putting things back together.  Slowly, with a nap or two in between and the phone disconnected.
                                                   
We had storms last night, very hefty ones, and the winds blew the big screens off the windows and out into the lake where the ducks used them to fish from.  Maintenance brought them back today smelling like Trout (Fishing in America, remember that old book?)
                                                          

Aging gracefully?  I'm not sure there is one.....   A 91 year old lady made eyes at me and told me she preferred Younger men.  She was wearing a sign around her neck: "Don't put your hands on me unless you mean business."  When young girls start calling you Sir, you know you're on the downhill slide.  When they tell you you're sweet and you remind them of their grandfather, you've just about hit bottom and you better find an Older Woman for yourself. When I finally hit bottom I am going to sit in the sun and dream and hit people with my cane!

More sooner or later when I get the place back into shape.  Ta!

I don't have bed bugs.

When your clothes
are in bags
you dress
in rags.

Mostly because  last week I saw a critter on the arm of my easy chair.  We're not going to use the hated word 'bedbug' because too many people are making too much money off them.  This place has 435 units and, at any given time, two or three units have the problem.  I am told.  The management is so proactive that if anybody even has a dream about having critters, they make an appointment with the bug  killers (Extermital) to do an inspection.  Which, of course, happened the next day.  I had saved the critter sealed in plastic, in the freezer, where he died from terminal retardation and the inspector agreed it was a genuine critter.  He then tore the place apart and looked in places I didn't even know I had -- and told me that if I had any critters he sure couldn't find them.  He has a degree, he should know.  Bugatory, PhB, LLC.  But said that, since I had found one on the premises, they would be treating my apartment.  Badly, from what I hear.

I have had to pack all my clothes, bed linens, bath linens, caps, jackets, boots in bags, all of which to be run through the dryer in the laundry for 20 minutes to send the critters to their reward.  And placed into new clean bags for the next four weeks (4 treatments). All my framed pictures had to be taken down and placed on display, for inspection, all the furniture moved three feet from walls (one of the guys is pretty fat...)

This past Friday was treatment day and I stayed home all day with my door open, from 7 in the morning to 4 in the afternoon.  Nobody showed to tear up the place and make it smell bad.  I reported this to the Front Office today (Monday), they got the info from the Terminators that they were here and nobody lived in that apartment.  They finally decided that I did live here and there was going to be another inspection this week.  If there were no signs of 'activity' found, there would be no treatment.  Apparently the single critter I captured got drunk one night and wandered in the wrong apartment door.


I have about 14 bags sitting on the floor.  A half dozen framed pictures.  I trip on them when I go to pee in the middle of the night.  A thrill a minute.  Extermital gets about $100 per hour.  They are driving Cadillacs to and from work.  My place looks like the great windstorm of 1937.  I can still reach my mystery books and my pipe.  All is well.  Until next visit.  Ta!

Nurse

I call Jane my Resident Nurse and Case Worker.  She has fine medical advice and knows where to get your taxes done or your hemorrhoids shrunk.  If you're a senior.  And for free.  Back in the day Jane was a fine Biker Bitch with all the appropriate habits.  She looked exactly like Faye Dunaway and had a Hungarian mother (she says closer to Transylvania than Budapest...) and a father of some eastern European type.  One day she saw the light, turned herself in to the police, got probation, completed nursing school.  Became a nurse and retired from that.  Found God.  Embraced celibacy .  Has a fabulous sense of humor.  Was married to the same guy, earlier, that one of my girlfriends was married to later.  Is now 74.

                                                               
If I write a poem here it will perfectly describe her.

There was a little girl
Who had a little curl
Right in the middle
of her forehead.


When she was good
She was very, very good.
And when she was bad,
She was horrid.

Ta!

Pretty Quiet

I feel rushed today.  I am supposed to meet with a Rotten Kid, have new brake pads put on the car, have an air conditioner installed, for which I'm supposed to be present.  I stewed about schedules until this morning and then decided to just stop everything in its tracks. Instead I went to a tobacco shop, Kroger's and a drug store and then came home and took a nap.  The place needs cleaning and that will just have to be accomplished tomorrow.  Tonight I am lounging in ratty old clothes watching NCIS and, later, drinking chocolate milk.  Tomorrow everything will still be where it is today and I can tackle it then.  

I am learning how to eat out again.  Finances have improved considerably since I moved here and have no utilities to pay, and less rent.  I cook most of my meals because I like to cook and I'm pretty good at it.  But it's nice, for a change, to head to Frisch's or Moonlight Chili on the odd night I don't feel like working in the kitchen.

                                                      
It is Flood City in the area here.  We don't see any of it because we live in the highest part of town.  People keep driving through water covering roads and getting stuck, giving the Fire Department plenty to do.  This Senior Living is good for that.  I don't have to go anywhere.  Groceries will deliver food in a pinch for a moderate $10 fee, or I can take the Project Mobility bus to any of the big stores and let them drive around the puddles.

It's quiet.  It's raining.  I'm snugged up and happy inside and nothing much is going on.  Ta! 

All gone

A little something to cheer up your Monday. 

                                                                              

Not a good day for Osama. First, he doesn't get a Royal Wedding invite, then they blow his head off.

What Happened When my Computer Died.

It's a perfectly gorgeous spring day. Trees are flowering and budding and some are starting to leaf out. And it's starting to look like a state park again. Woodpeckers, muskrats and the feral cats are exploring under bushes on the banks of the lake. I took some sun this morning out front and a woman named Cindy made it a point to introduce herself and make sure I remembered her floor and room number. A high floor. She said I ought to come up tonight and gaze at the view with her. She is a champion bungee jumper. My mother told me to be careful around women like this. I will have my rope and safety harness with me.

When my computer died I took it to a fix-it place. It took them two weeks to tell me they had made a check of my system and it would be folly to put new money into an old box like mine without any guarantees. Whatever was on my hard drive was also unrecoverable so I took the thing home, removed the hard drive and trashed it (there was stuff on there my Mother wouldn’t approve of) and donated the remainder to a worthy cause. I didn't look for a new unit for awhile because I'm personally reluctant to jump in right away and burn up the energy it takes to start a new project. I used the computer at the public library to pay bills and check my e-mail, I missed that. I also found that I didn't like not having the morning news at my fingertips with my first cup of coffee. That got quickly replaced with a collection of Sherlock Holmes stories, and the morning paper my neighbor across the hall left for me. There was no news anyway. Libya was in crisis and the congress of the United States would have done more good there than here. I wasn't bored. And I finally got around to getting a new box, a refurbished Dell with a guarantee, and all the attachments including a big flat screen for a little under $200. Now I have to hook it up to the Internet so I can cruise for pipes, tobacco, used CD's (The Doors Light My Fire to be specific) and carry on my international correspondence.

What I missed: My e-mail; morning news from the source; buying the odd thing online (possibly pipes from Germany or Poland...?) Other than that I didn't miss it much. I must spend less time cruising the net than I thought.

Since the computer died I fell on the ice once and got the wind knocked out of me, and a second time at a filling station and broke two ribs while knocking the wind out of me. During that time winter stayed around for awhile, then things warmed up a bit. The Canada geese returned (Big Rats with wings and a lot of noise...).

I think I am Russian Orthodox. I told the girls one night at the evening get-together that I never discussed my religion or my politics as I had found that was the fastest way to get into a good fight. A lot of the women here are highly committed rock-root Baptists and believe you can be saved only in a certain fashion. One wanted to know if I believed in Jesus Christ as my personal savior and I told her 'yes' but didn't tell her who all else I believed in, in case any of them were asleep up there. Then a fellow named Tom (We have a lot of Toms here...) saw the Coptic cross I was wearing around my neck (a present from a fireman buddy in Russia) and said 'I know! You're Orthodox!' 'You never can tell' I told him. The girls think I'm Orthodox and that they have cracked my secret. Most of them don't know what an Orthodox is, but they are convinced that I am one. One or two are waiting and salivating and brushing a shine on their Bibles and knowing they will catch me out some day with The Truth.

Tom Bomb, the inveterate liar and preacher, and my neighbor, was talking about stocks and bonds on his cell phone in front of us the other day --- and the phone rang! We rolled back and forth on the hallway carpet laughing out loud and Tom kept talking. He has so many schemes to try to impress people that he doesn't rmember what they all are.

Kroger's has stopped delivering day-old donuts and specialty bread on Mondays because too many fat women were fighting over them. One gal waddled into the truck before it was even unloaded and started stuffing chocolate items into a Lillian Vernon shopping bag. I'm sorry to see this, it was more free entertainment than a Bob Hope show. The fat girls will have to eat red meat and finishing nails now for breakfast in order to stay fighting fit.

I will be asking some of you for e-mail and U S Mail addresses because some of that, unfortunately, was on the hard drive which got thrown in the trash. Yes, I had all the important stuff backed up on disks but didn't plan for total shutdown so there we are. Now I am going to listen to some more Rammstein. Idon't understand German but they do some very fine hard rock! Ta!

Of Bombs and Bugs

Tom Bomb lives next door to me.  If you think that’s his real name you’re crazy.  He’s in impeccable physical shape for what his age must be.  I think he does one hundred pushups every morning with one arm.  He is always well groomed and affable and has a serious Jesus streak that comes out in preaching and other conversation.  He runs a Bible study class a couple times a week and has two students out of four hundred possible learners. 

I sat down this morning with him in the front lobby to talk for a bit.  He told me about the Big Three (Russia, China and the US having a big fight over something and soon) and then told me that Arizona is about to blow up, so is Maryland and be sure to watch Michigan.  I think he was talking about The Rapture, not football.  Tom is such a good deceiver that he believes most of what he lies about. On Monday his mother is Russian (Tom is black) and on Tuesday she’s Mexican.

He’s fun to be with in the music room with a piano (he and I) and a couple ladies with guitars jamming on Southern gospel music – which has more guts and drive than any songs I ever heard out of the mainline churches.  He and others help a lot of people, singing and playing music in hospitals and nursing homes and the occasional church where they don’t know him real well.  He visits sick people.  He is an ok neighbor, there are worse.

A lady asked me the other day, if you put a strip of sticky tape on the floor under your entrance door, would it stop bedbugs from coming in, or was it an old wives tale.  Now as far as old wives are concerned, I always wanted one who went pretty much her own way.  The companionship just isn’t the same if you sit on the balcony and smoke your pipe with your favorite cat.  Besides cats cost five hundred dollars here.

Of course sticky tape will stop bedbugs.  Kind of like those mouse and roach traps.  The bugs get their feet stuck on the tape and can’t move them.  But if the resident is playing music, rock and roll is best, they sway back and forth from left to right.  This is the origin of the Bug Dance which you can watch right below here.

It is very cold here and there’s a big hole in the ice in the middle of the lake with footprints leading to it.  I imagine somebody threw a big rock in.  Ta!