Trying to Catch Up

I'm sure I've used this title in my blog before, it seems like I'm always trying to catch up.

The internet has been back on for a couple of days, but I had to go buy a new phone yesterday. The power surge fried the old one. I guess I should be glad that all we lost was a modem and a phone. It could have been something more expensive, like the refrigerator. The computers are all on surge protectors, but not the refrigerator. In comparison to the gas explosion in the bay area, our little power surge was nothing. I'll take SMUD (our local publicly-owned power company) over PG&E any day.

I had to take my new glasses back to Lenscrafters yesterday. They had switched the lenses. One pair is for driving and one for reading the computer screen. Melanie picked them out for me, so they are both very trendy and tasteful. The computer glasses, however, have big dark sides that block my view. They totally do not work for driving, which is what I ended up with. I went for almost 20 years with no prescription change. In the past 3 years my eyes have changed drastically, they just keep getting better and better, so the prescription I used to have for reading the computer screen is now for driving. ?? I don't know, I just say "thank you."

While I was at the mall I had to walk around and look at things. Not only are there shops along both sides on two levels, but there are booths down the middle of the walkway. At one booth there were some sort of cute little middle-eastern girls selling beauty products made from Dead Sea minerals. Yuck, that name is not a great selling point. The girls were very pesky, like gypsies. They'd reach out and grab a person by the wrist and drag them back to the booth, buffing the person's nails and yammering away with their sales pitch at the same time. They had two pitches: "I see you have your nails done..." for the women with nice nails; and "I see you do your own nails..." for the women without.

I've been using mine to dig in the garden. They look like little spades, with the dirt still under the nail. But the salesgirl just kept buffing them and talking away, until I had the shiniest filthy nails you've ever seen. She wanted me to buy a packet of care products for $105. Pleeeeease. Do you know how many garden spades I could buy for that much money?

Those of you who know me well will appreciate this picture:

The white truck is home! It was at a repair shop for 3 or 4 years (I've forgotten). I bought this truck new in 1978. It has only 120,000 miles. That's because for at least the past 10 years it only ran occasionally. My brother is going to take a look at it and make an official diagnosis. I only need it to pull the trailer and haul hay. Compared to the ranch trucks, many of which have 500,000 miles on them, mine still looks pretty good.

This morning I sat outside drinking a cup of coffee, though, and this is what I saw overhead.

The flock of local buzzards was buzzing around. It seemed like they were checking out the truck, I hope that's not prophetic. Or maybe something had expired in the fabulous corn maze.

Later, I found this cutie poking its little head up from a crack in the concrete.

A pavement petunia.