I intended to write here this morning... in These titles mean nothing.

July 25, 2015, 5:17 p.m.
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Well I intend to write here a lot and then almost never do. Something gets in the way. Other computer places sometimes. I wandered around FB this morning finding things that lead me to other things:

a version of the Stones’ Gimme Shelter compiled of musicians around the world. It started with a quote - It is in the shelter of each other that people live. A proverb attributed to the Irish.
a map of rates of gun murders through out the world. Turns out the US is bad but not the worst. Mexico, parts of South and Central America and South Africa are worse than we are. The map maker didn’t have stats for all the countries in the world and it listed the rates per capita, as in the US’s rate was 3.5. There must have been some fine print somewhere because if 3.5 people are being murdered for each person living in the US, what are we doing sitting here?
I tracked the travels of an old friend who has been seeing the world - Mexico (safely), Cannes, Rome, Florida - all since March.
I looked at bridesmaid’s dresses.
Rod Stewart put on a concert in Cedar Rapids last night. The woman who does reviews for the Gazette is a FB friend, name dropper me. He did a good job. Kinda sweet guy. Holds up pretty well. Had an impressive stage show. Here’s a link to her review: (be warned, she liked him) http://www.hooplanow.com/subject/life/arts/music/review-sexy-stewart-brings-rhythm-of-his-heart-to-cr-20150725
I looked at some political stuff. Left a few trenchant comments.
Deleted a few too. It’s very easy to say the wrong thing. Always. (Just looked up the word ‘trenchant’. It means vigorous, incisive, sort of sharp edged - root is cutting, related to trenches.
I just got told I had good taste in men. How nice. Men in question were: Dan Damon, Sydney Urshan and Joseph Wambaugh. Do your own research.

So - having shot my Saturday wad so to say at another website, I am now here.

Here at the kitchen table - facing west instead of south - fan on.

Full of semi-junk food. Graham crackers and an apple, peanut butter on toast - oj and left over sugar pop and diet on ice. What can I say? I’m out of rules. I do and eat whatever comes next.

Gracie and I went for a short walk fairly early this morning. Humidity is high. It’s like walking on the bottom of a swimming pool. You can feel the wet on all six sides of you.

My current obsession is steps. Fitbit is graph crazy. Basic ones I look at are the daily 15 minute increment one and the last 28 days. They are both bar graphs coming up from the bottom. The 28 day one has a horizontal line showing daily goal of ten thousand steps. When I started walking I had a hard time getting enough steps in on weekends. On days I work I come home with between three and five thousand steps so it only took a fairly long evening walk to get me over the top. Starting out on a ten thousand step walk when you aren’t terribly in shape or terribly motivated is hard, so I had a number of weeks with good numbers for weekdays and not so good for weekends. Finally toward the end of June I buckled down and extended my route a bit. It has to be dog friendly because Gracie is my trainer and I don’t want her getting in trouble. But.... after getting a straight 28 days of over ten thousand steps my graph smoothed out and looked really good. I’m motivated. If I miss a day it will take me another 28 days to get it that way again.

Life is silly. We like to count. We use fingers and toes and what else is available.

The 826 has a flat tire. One of the big back ones. It had new cheap ones when bought it. They did ok until we started using them to haul big bales. I just had a tire conversation with the farmer. He added up his tires once to impress a girl friend. It was less than two hundred but more than one hundred. The big ones are expensive. The little ones are too but the big ones are really expensive. He told me how the new radials he put on the cab tractor the year corn was so expensive made it work better. Transfer of power.

I am of an age that remembers flat tires. When I was first married we or maybe should be I since I always remember being alone when it happened would have flat tire and after flat tire. The time I kept two spares in the trunk in case the spare needed a spare. I don’t remember if I was instructed which to use first or not. The time the guy who stopped to help me said the guy who’d put that tire on the last time had tightened the bolts up pretty tight. I can almost remember his name. They were the farmers with the Irish name south of Palo - Irish were rarer there than they are here. He was on his way to town selling cattle - a truck was hauling them - he was in a separate vehicle. I was on my way to work at Collins Radio. Would have been in 1965 or 66.

Now if I were to discover a flat tire on the Buick I would be shocked. Shocked I tell you. Ah that leads to tales of the Buick. It is perfectly dependable. I never doubt it will start. I never doubt it will get me to where I am going. It zips along, up hills and down. It’s quiet. Most of its important functions are stable and reliable. ...... It has little to no air conditioning, the driver’s window is stuck closed, the coolant system has a persistent leak. All three conditions have been addressed professionally to little avail. Oh well. The tires stay up. It starts and it gets me where I want to go. So there. Little Buick from Rockville Centre New York. Who knew it would end up dodging deer at 4:30 am on weekdays and going to Logger games on weekends. The former owner knew it was a sporty number though when he left the OTB pencil stub in the center console.

I have an idea for the next family dinner. I think we are going to each tell a story afterwards. Not necessarily a long one but we will all pay attention to what the others have to say. We will do it with dessert. I will report back on how well it works… and how creative we all are.

Washer is rumbling in the basement. I got behind on my laundry and this is not a good time to do that. For shame. Dog trainer Gracie has bee so good to remind me that there are steps to the basement and steps under the clothes line. Of course she tell me that after I’ve let all the clothes in the house get dirty.

I’m behind again - almost eternally - on my mail reporting. I get caught up, I get behind. Viscous circle. Sticky, you know? Jim says I should quit. I still have the box the scanner came in to I can return it. I make a few bucks a month doing it. Not quite g-string money, but close. Except when I do a bad job of it, I feel guilty and I’m sure I’m not pleasing the mail gods either.

I’ve written about this in the past and some people have asked questions but I don’t answer them. So I probably won’t answer them this time either. Suffice to say, it’s one of my inadequacies. And the fact that I don’t have the guts to cut the string - g or otherwise - is part of my vast character failings. Plus I’m not much of a housekeeper.

Well, hell, that was fun. I bitched about things I won’t talk about.

I finished Wambaugh’s Finnegan’s Week. I lent it to a woman at work. Before I did that I copied a few lines from almost the end of the book. Wanna hear them?

Book is about a male detective and two female detectives, one his age and one a younger US Navy detective. Navy cops can’t have a bullet in the chamber of their guns so there is a slight delay in use thereof, plus the warning sound of the slide pushing the shell in. Just a little note there. Book was set and written in the earliy 1990s so perhaps a lot has changed. Perhaps not. It was set in San Diego with a lot of loving, local color.

OK, the quotes that brought unexpected tears to my eyes:

‘..when we took her on, I said to my boss, ‘This little sailor’s going to be an amazing detective.’‘

and

‘that’s when the Marine broke into a grin wider than the Halls of Montezuma. ‘That kid,’ he said, ‘is one gung-ho, stainless-steel, U.S. Navy issue, baaaaad dog detective.’

Now that I read it after going to the trouble to hand write it in my work notebook and now to type it into my entry I wonder why I was so impressed. I guess it was because the female was being given credit first by her superior and second by Wambaugh. And now by me.

Now I’m reading Dreiser’s An American Tragedy. Books to be read at work must meet stringent standards. They must be small enough to fit in my lunch bag. They must be worth reading. And most difficult of all they must be books I can risk damaging. The world of work is not kind to books. The trips back and forth, the sharing with food and drink, the sheer toting - all are pretty hard on a book. And I love books. Books and men. Damn. Anyway I picked out this paperback with the idea that it’s a common book and I can always replace it. Most likely it will go back on the shelf a little more worn and stinky than it left but it will still be readable.

I read An American Tragedy sometime in my youth. I think I read Sister Carrie too. Dreiser recorded the gritty urban life of the early 20th century. He’s known for being a bit negative and a bit lefty too. This all comes from memory, I’m too lazy to google. Besides when I start a book I want to have a little freshness on its side. I want the book to tell me who and what it is.

This story of course is famous for the movie that was made from it. Montgomery Clift is the poor but ambitious young man whose pregnant girl friend is Shelley Winters. At the same time the company owner’s daughter who happens to be Elizabeth Taylor notices him and he thinks maybe he can do better than Shelley. So he takes Shelley out in a rowboat and comes back alone. Things do not work out well. They never do.

Note: movie was called A Place in the Sun.

The book is big and interestingly written. We start out with Clyde’s family, who are street evangelists. That is a hard life, especially for the kids who do not necessarily share the calling. Daughter Hester runs off with an actor, and soon after Clyde joins the work world, first as an assistant soda jerk and then as a bell boy in a fancy hotel. The book is set in Kansas City. Dreiser’s world of bellhops and males on the way up is very good. Neither Shelley nor Liz have shown up yet but I’m sure I’ll get to them eventually.

My diary writing is too unfair. I write nothing and then I write everything. I am at loose ends on weekends. I have time. I should cook up a bunch of entries and put them in the freezer and release them during the next week. Sure. I should do that but I lack discipline. I’m not sure I even believe in discipline. I am a free spirit. I wander. Yup, that’s me.

Ok, I’m going to visit my laundry equipment and move on with my life. Have a good weekend, friends. Be good. Have fun. Etc.

Oh here’s a picture of some yellow flowers.

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