Good morning GH. It is just past 1:00 AM in "The City" and the current temperature is 43 degrees under partly cloudy skies. We are heading for a high of 47 under sunny skies by about 2:00 this afternoon. It looks as though the showers will hold off until Wednesday and the snow showers until Friday. The chance of precipitation will be 50% for the three days Wednesday through Friday.

I had an interesting day on Monday. Mary and I walked Sugar the Weather Dog for some morning exercise and then I set off to pick up those prescriptions and stop at the various hardware and grocery stores. At the first stop I was unrequited At the second less so, but not entirely satisfactory. At the final stop I was able to get some things for Mary and get my prescriptions. Then I came home and waded through the installation of the new smoke detectors I had purchased and their associated paperwork. By then, I was spent. Mary asked me to do a tiny amount of work for her, and for that I got to sit at my desk, so I was okay with the request.

I had to get new smoke detectors because the upstairs one started chirping every 30 seconds, an indicator that the detector was defective. I decided to replace both the upstairs and downstairs detectors with ones that had ten year life span batteries. A bit more expensive, but the peace of mind that comes from having to not change batteries made them worthwhile.

Today, not much is planned. I will get that spaghetti squash in the oven, and have it for dinner. I will get the bathroom cleaned for Mary's guest. Speaking of bathrooms, I decided that the faucet aerator in the upstairs bathroom needed cleaning. I got it apart, cleaned it, and then couldn't get the parts to go back together correctly. I finally removed what I determined to be a restriction plate and voila, the faucet now flows freely and fully. But now I can't run the faucet at Talladega in a NASCAR race. I couldn't pass the post-race inspection. Oh well, those are the breaks.

Somewhere in the course of the day, Mary came in to tell me about a shooting at a school in Nevada. The young shooter wounded two students, killed a teacher and then himself. Mary told me that she knew that I would probably have done the same thing when I was teaching, try to protect the students. She knows that somewhere there is a widow and maybe children who are grieving just as she would. I know that teachers are like that, they think of their students before themselves. I grieve for the young shooter, the teacher, and his family. There are no winners in this type of situation, just regular people who do what some call heroic deeds.

So that's about enough for today. Time for some sleep. Ciao.