I'll Take It in Everyday Ramblings

Today I saw the first open daffodil of the year as I was out on a walk. This shot is from this morning in the neighborhood. I’d say the flower clock is officially open now for the season. This is when the colorful fun begins.

I have been buying seeds and I need to get started on them. Yesterday it was an organic basil variety and some colorful daisies. I also need to get down and start weeding around my plot as it isn’t only the flowers that are coming on, and now I have a way to get the weeds into the community compost.

Down by where I wait for the bus across the street from the grocery store next to Department of Transportation land where they have sprinkled giant concrete boulders to keep people from camping in there, lately, I have been seeing the plastic bags that hold packs of 24 bottled water and literally hundreds of bottle caps.

This has been going on for maybe 5 weeks. The transit people and the grocery people clean the bus stop but don’t clean the area behind it. Monday while I was waiting for the bus, I saw two guys down the big street wrestling a grocery cart with maybe five 24 packs of bottled water across to the other side in the middle of traffic. They drove the cart down to where I and two other people were waiting for the bus.

They pulled the packs full of bottled water out of the cart, threw them on the ground. They had box cutters and were cutting the wrapping off. I asked then in as neutral a voice as I could manage if they would mind telling me what they were doing with the water bottles.

“Emptying them” was the muffled reply.

The only thing I can figure is that they are buying the water with food stamps (which you can do) and dumping the water out to redeem the plastic bottles for 10 cents apiece. For drug money I assume.

The idea of this waste makes me slightly crazy.
The bus came.

Who does one contact about something like this? The grocery store? The non-emergency police line? Metro trash clean-up? The newspaper?

Today I started the Bodyweight Stars program. They said today and Saturday are going to be easy and then it gets progressively harder. I can tell already that while I will make some progress, have fun, and get cool ideas for my own classes in a modified form, this challenge is way out of my league.

Still, that hasn’t stopped me before. I will persevere at a level that works for me.

I saw my new doctor again this week. He wants me to have another stress test. So, I will do that week after next. Next week I have the jury orientation for the trial in April. Ugh.

In the clinic there were teams of National Guard deployed to help with the overload.

My second shingles shot is next Monday, Valentine’s Day. How romantic. :)

We have the beach house booked for the last week in March. Our statewide mask mandate for indoor spaces is coming off that week. I suspect they will still require masks on the buses and trains for a while longer. Our cases are dropping but people are still dying every day from this thing.

This is the last quarter Most Honorable is teaching two classes but with Kes as weak as she is the logistics are going to be more challenging than normal. At least with a good mask I can take the train down to their place.

I am doing that on Friday. Tomorrow is Kes’s 74th birthday.

Lot’s going on. Right this minute we have blue skies, and it is a balmy 56 degrees.

The news is so disturbing, I am grateful to have this respite.

Last updated February 09, 2022