Well…didn’t get out of bed until 6:30 or so this morning and I should feel more rested than I do…just want to lay down on the couch and go back to sleep…not sure why I’m so worn out but I am sure I don’t like it…if finally did rain last night and it’s still spitting out there right now but I was really hoping that it would rain all day and give me an excuse to stay off the bike today…I have work to do on the car and need to get it done…I think I’ll work on the coolant today if I can get the lower radiator hose off to flush it out…the coolant has turned into gel and that can’t be good for the car…not sure if I’ll get on the bike first…I think I can take a day off to do other things but if the job goes well, I can ride this afternoon…I did have to work on the entry door to the garage yesterday since it had stopped latching and there is no way I was going to leave it unlocked…had to move the striker plate and make it more stable so the latch would connect with it but that only took about 15 minutes and now it locks….the garage is 80 years old and whoever set up the latch just cobbled it together like a lot of the stuff around here….not much to do today….just the car stuff and laundry…I wonder if i should change the oil today, too? The stuff in the car only has about 2,000 miles on it and it is a full synthetic so I guess it could wait a while…and I need to pick up a filter…got the new oil last week and just forgot to get a filter…and I need to see if I have any blue silicone to seal up the drain plug…probably should just get a new drain plug…maybe I’ll do that and wait to change the oil….more later…
Let’s talk a little music…
Well…first, happy birthday to Ringo…while I was reading through one of the sites I do every morning, I came across an article that tried to rate the 50 best live rock albums of all time…and three of my favorites were in the top ten, and I agree with their pick as number one…Live at the Fillmore East by the Allman Brothers..or I should say I can live with that pick, but I would have put Four Way Street by CSNY at number 1 while this guy put it at number 7….where I have a bone to pick is that Alive in America by Steely Dan wasn’t even on the list or Twin Peaks by Mountain…I mean what’s not to like about the song Nantucket Sleighride that goes almost 31 minutes? The Eagle’s Hell Freezes Over wasn’t on the list either or Live Bullet by Bob Seger…..there were a lot of obscure bands that I’ve never heard of on the list but that’s not that unusual since I really have stopped paying attention to new music….anything newer than the 90’s has gone right over my head and I don’t care much about it…other than SD and Donald Fagen, that is….not sure why I always get sucked into these types of articles but it was a nice respite from the regular news for a few minutes….
July 7th
Well…darn…the rain that was supposed to hit us last night has skimmed by to the north by about 50 miles and it looks like it’s happening again right now…and it would have rained all night and into today if it would have happened…darn…but it looks like it may rain later today so I’ll keep my fingers crossed….I did sleep okay last night and I’m not as sore as I should be after the abuse I heaped on my body yesterday but my legs do hurt some and I can live with it….not feeling too motivated right now but I know I have to do the grocery run here in a little while and then on the bike….I did have to run the ac unit last night with all of the humidity but I shut it off when I hit the sack after running it for an hour to cool my bedroom down….and that seemed to work okay….and it’s only going to be in the 70’s out here today so I probably won’t have to run it again….I am going to hit the beach later in the week and get a swim in…I am still contemplating a do nothing day soon….I mean I’m retired and should be able to do one of those once in a while….just fooling around should be the reward for working my whole life since I was about 11 and started mowing lawns….I do need to work on the guilt I feel when I’m not being “productive” and just let it go but that is going to be really hard for me….especially since I have so much to do around here and no one else is going to do it…oh, well….more later…
That was number 9,000…
Well…I’m not sure how much of an accomplishment it is, but that last post was the 9,000th one I’ve done since I started this thing many, many years ago….that kind of makes me want to think about if I’ve really done what I’ve wanted to do with this site….could it be better? Of course it could…but damn, I’ve sat down at this computer 9,000 times…not sure what else I’ve done 9,000 times that has been a choice…I know I try to be honest about my life and how I feel about politics and the other topics that I talk about, and a lot of you keep coming back to read it so I must be doing something…not sure if it’s right or not, but it is something….and it looks like I’ll keep doing it as long as I can and have something to say….it really does give me something to do and, even after 9,000 of these, I still look forward to doing it every day…my constant outrage about things has waned some over the past couple of years, but this old guy can still do a rant or two that is semi lucid….I’d probably still do it if no one was reading but it is nice that quite a few people come here every day…thanks for that….
I’m sore….
Well…cripes, I was right….I knew my elbow wouldn’t react kindly to mowing the lawn today and the swelling is back in it again….not as bad as it was but I really had hoped that it was healing enough so I could get some pain free time over the summer…and I finally was able to go full out on both rides today both out and back and the last run back from the beach I kept the bike in high gear the whole 6 miles and went as hard as I could…full sprint for 6 miles and I wonder what took so long to get to that point his year…I mean, I’ve got almost 2k miles on and just got fit enough to do that? Normally, it takes only about 500 miles to get to that point but I wonder if I was ready and just didn’t do it? I do know that my legs are sore and stiff from it and I really hope the rain we’re supposed to get tomorrow will keep me down to one ride…oh, it did rain out here last night and there were lots of puddles along my route but the storms had fallen apart all day over the lake so I thought the last one that was over Wisconsin when I went to bed would do the same…it made mowing much less dusty and that was welcome….it is so damn humid out here that when I opened my freezer, it looked like it was filled with dry ice and the clouds filled it…never saw that before….
190 traitors…
Well…I wonder how many repubs in the House were actually involved with carrying out the attack on January 6th? With their vote against the January 6th commission this week, it would appear that there are 190 traitors in the house…that’s how many voted against the investigation with the disingenuous explanation that the attackers were just “tourists” that didn’t do anything wrong so the attack doesn’t need to be investigated…now, if the 500 people that have been charged in the plot didn’t do anything wrong, how have they been charged with multiple crimes? Even the idiot trump is getting into the act calling for the officer who shot and killed one of the attackers to be “lynched” at one of his fascist rallies last weekend….if I were any of these repubs, I’d be shaking a little about what is going to be found…at the very least many of them were involved in supporting the attackers through the big lie and many still spout that lie every day…get over it morons, trump lost…and you are going to when the truth comes out….
July 6th
Well…running late this morning with not getting out of bed until 7 or so but that doesn’t mean I slept well…tossed and turned all night and feel like I didn’t sleep at all….and I can’t figure out how my right elbow still hurts when a lot of the swelling is gone…it’s not as bad as it was but it’s going to hurt even more after I mow the lawn today….sat here and watched the storms fall apart…again… last night and I wonder when it’s going to rain again….it’s been pretty dry out here and I think we’re now in the drought area that takes up most of the center of the state….but, I’m not going to water my lawn at all…will just let it go dormant but that means I’ll probably lose the young grass that just came up…..I think I’m going to need a day off of everything soon just to make the pain go away from riding too much…and forcing myself to keep going every day is wearing on me…it would be nice to just get up and do nothing for one day…you would think that would be my life being retired but my well developed sense of guilt won’t let me waste a day….that was going to be the plan after I bought my house but I don’t think I’ve taken a day off since I moved out here….and I won’t today….need to get on the bike here in a minute and then back here to mow the lawn and the vacant lots and then cook for lunch…..I am going to roast some green beans to have with the chicken I’m making for lunch….going to use the same method I use for asparagus with olive oil, garlic powder and dried onions in high heat…have had beans for a couple of weeks now and I may have enough plants to have them almost every day…I do want to try pickling some of them later along with the cukes….that should be good….more later…
A few things…
Well….again, there have been a bunch of small things happen that really couldn’t support doing a whole one, so I think I’ll just do a shorty with a few in it…first…I found a multi tool in the middle of the street a couple of days ago that looks like it’s made out of stainless steel and is in pretty good shape….not sure if I’ll ever use it but I couldn’t let it sit there and get run over by cars…I’ve gotten over a week without getting a flat on the bike after I added the electrical tape over the spoke ends…so I may put the new tire back on that wheel soon…but I’m having trouble with the shifter on the bike, having to adjust it every day to keep the 5-6 shift working, so I may take it apart to see what is going on….I did look for pontoon boats to buy but even ones from the 70’s are over 3 grand and I don’t want to spend that much…and a marina slip is over 300 bucks a month and that is almost my house payment so that won’t work…the deer out here are weird…twice in the past week I’ve had on just standing next to the trail so close I could reach out and touch it and it never moved…I have been looking for a cheap motorcycle to buy since I’d like to have one more of those before I can’t ride one anymore…if I can find something under a grand I think I’ll buy one…probably a Japanese one since they are reliable and probably something small like a 650 or so…oh, and I think I may have to get my rides done in the morning there was a traffic jam of bikes on the trail and no one appeared to know that they can’t clog up the whole trail…didn’t get out for the second ride until almost one and that might have something to do with it…one last thing…I did get out this morning and picked up a little one gallon pump sprayer for 10 bucks and got all of the weeds treated with just 4 ounces of weed killer…took a lot of time but I can use the exercise…and I picked up some coated screws to fix the front porch boards that were loose and they even came with the star tool to fit in the head….and my cheapo drill/driver put them right in so that was cool…okay, that’s it…no more later….
This is scary…
Well…just read a pretty scary article about the drought that has been widespread across the west where the rivers are essentially drying up with the lack of snow and rainfall and if conditions stay this way for much longer, places that depend on these rivers like Phoenix will become unlivable…and this is not something that is going to happen in the far future, but in the next decade or so. But that’s not the scary part, since droughts usually end at some point, water conservation and changes in lifestyle can get you through until the rains and snow come back….but this new study paints a much more dire picture, that climate change is causing the aridification of most of the west and the deserts that were once confined to the southwest are going to spread north to Colorado and that these changes are going to be permanent, making much of the west uninhabitable at the population density it now supports. and we have one party in this country that doesn’t even believe that any of this is happening, even though they can readily see that the Colorado river behind the Hoover dam is down almost 150 feet and towns that were flooded when the lake was filled are re-appearing since the water is so low. Soon, there won’t even be enough water to generate electricity from the dam and that will impact Las Vegas…but, they still do nothing…even repub reps from the states that are drying out still don’t care and are still blocking doing anything about it….one study says that with new information and data on the amount of heating it may already be too late to fix it even if we stop burning fossil fuels right now….but still the repubs will do nothing as the country burns…
July 5th
Well…damn, I’m glad the 4th is over…it was like a damn war zone up here last night with all the fireworks and the only thought I have is where the hell do they get the money to spend thousands on fireworks? It went on and on last night from dusk until 11 and my whole house smelled like a giant firework….that’s something I am going to bring up with the city commissioners when I talk to them later this summer….didn’t get up til almost 7 this morning and that makes me late to do this and will make me late to get on the bike but I may only do one ride today…the wind is supposed to blow 20 mph this afternoon and I’m not sure I want to work that hard….and there are warnings to stay out of the lake today with waves that are forecast to be 3 to 5 feet with rip currents…and with the wind that strong, it will mean a sandblast day so the beach is out today…I do want to get out there sometime this week to get some color and I’m thinking of doing a whole week on the beach for that…I do have to get out to depot this morning to get a pump sprayer to attack the weeds and crab grass without spraying the whole lawn but I’m not sure if I’ll do that today with the rain that is coming later….more later…