Good morning GH. It is just past 2:00 a.m. in "The City." Currently the analog thermometer in the Weather Window is showing a temperature of 60°. The National Weather Service is predicting that our low this morning will be 51°, or is it 50°. They are also predicting that our high today will be anywhere from 71° to 78°. Yesterday they predicted that it would rain, but it never did. Somehow I doubt that the predictions for the rest of the week will be any more accurate. I guess I'll have to skip the daily predictions for a while. Nonetheless, Sugar the Weather Dog will get a a morning walk in a few hours. That's after the sun rises at about 6:08 a.m. I say about, because the source for my times is that same National Weather Service site. That's also true for my sunset time of of 9:10 p.m.

Speaking of Sugar, we were sitting about the living room reading yesterday afternoon when something caused her to leap up and run to her hide-e-hole. No explanation seemed plausible to us. One thing about Sugar is that she is never at a loss for a surprise. Maybe it had something to do with our getting up at noon and her walk coming at about 1:00 p.m. Mary's system of having biscuits upstairs is apparently satisfying to Sugar. I got some fish oil for Sugar at the health food store the other day to help in her shedding. We apply it to her dinner food, and she seemed to really likes it. I think that Mary discovered why. This bottle of fish oil has a fruit flavoring to make it more palatable. Apparently Sugar finds it to be so.

Speaking of Mary, she detoured on our morning walk and went to the health food store and the local independent book seller near our home. She got a different brand of sauerkraut. At the bookstore, she got a copy of the N.Y. Times book review and a magazine of some type. She shared some info from that magazine that sounded interesting, so now I"ll want to read that too along with the book review. I came home and did a little weeding and watering. Then I settled in after walking to the guitar store around the corner for replacement strings for Blue and Ivy.

Since we didn't have any plans for the balance of our short day, Mary used what she had in the house for a tasty dinner of linguine with spinach and olive oil. Or maybe it was fettuccine. Either way, it tasted good. That was a follow up to her lunch meal of sandwiches of faux meat and cheese for me and Swiss cheese with mustard for her. Both sandwiches had fresh tomatoes for garnish. She also found a way to use the spinach dip she made the other day as a side. It tasted great.

I must have missed the southbound train earlier. The northbound train passed while I was still up, so here are the numbers. The usual twin EMD GP 38 locomotives towing 46 covered hopper cars, four of those dreaded black tank cars, and one lone white tank car.

Since I'm on the subject of transportation, and for those of you into ships/boats, I am going to add some information from Dick Fox's Grand Haven Tribune column, Ships Log. According to Mr. Fox, all four of our active local docks have now received visits from cargo ships, carrying coal or other aggregates. .

In sports, the boys in blue found another way to lose to the Giants, this time by a score of 0 - 5. The Tigers also fell, in their case to the As, 1 - 3. However, my beloved Red Sox are on a roll, as they once again defeated the Braves with a score of  4 - 0. That's three in a row for those like me who are counting. The Caps also were victorious over the Dayton Dragons by a score of 8 - 1.

Today a walk with Sugar whenever we get up, followed by reading. I have to finish changing the strings on Bridget too. I may change out the screen for the front storm door once I apply the tape to the Sugar proof Plexiglas™ panel. I've tried various fixatives that haven't held, so I am going for the tape that I believe will.

Mary is enjoying her time off before her next project. Me too. Ciao.