Good morning or good evening, wherever you may be. It is just past 1:00 a.m. in "The City."

What a day today is expected to be. Sunny skies, a high of 76°, and no rain in the forecast. In short, what's not to like? We actually got a tiny shower in the Tri-Cities area yesterday, but not enough to make any real difference, unless you were riding a motorcycle or air drying the laundry, which I was. As Mary said, "Another rinse."

However, part way through the afternoon, STWD repaired to her hide-e-hole when the construction at the municipal complex became thunderous. She was certain that it was thunder or fireworks, so she closeted herself.

Fortunately for me, she was available in her role as STSD in the late morning, and ably assisted me when I baked the latest incarnation of my world famous banana nut bread. Breakfast, here we come. Mary bought too many bananas for she and Sugar to eat, so they had to be converted into bread. I was all too happy to oblige. In addition, my kitchen activities also allowed me to make more applesauce. Not as much as usual, because the apples are from last year's crop and turned rotten in many cases. We'll wait for this years crop to buy more.

Trainspotting was excellent yesterday. At 9:35 a.m.,the regular cast of locomotives, 2057 and 2019, rolled through, towing 6 DBTCs heading south. At 3:33 p.m., the same locomotives rolled back north, this time towing 2 DBTCs, 2 gray tank cars, 3 box cars, and 7 CHCs. All good for a train spotter who lives on a reality scale train layout.

In between breakfast and lunch, Mary and I took the morning walk with the intrepid weather dog after Gwen had departed for home.

Sports was a mixed bag. The boys in blue fell to the Reds, 4 - 5, as their pitcher coughed up a home run with the game tied at 4 - 4, leading to that loss. The Tigers fared better, as they had the reverse score, 5 - 4 in defeating the Mariners. My beloved Red Sox lost the first game of their double header to the Angels in Anaheim, 1 - 11. When last I checked, they were losing game two. Oops, they lost game two, 3 - 7. At least the rain out on Sunday allowed them to miss another loss.

Late yesterday afternoon, Mary finished her work and we traveled north to the big-box electronics store to get a replacement for my computer's external monitor. It has been blinking on and off for a few weeks, so I knew that something needed replacing. While the return process wasn't too bad, and in fact we got the exchange, it wasn't that great either. Customer service was not their forte, to say the least. However, I did get a store credit for about $21.00, since the price of the monitor had dropped since this time last year.

Today, I am going to do my best to keep my personal promise and do as little as possible. It seems that every time I say that my plans are to do as little as possible, I do more than I expected.

The sun will rise at 6:24 a.m. and set at 9:17 p.m. Ciao.