Good morning or good evening, wherever you may be. It is just past 5:00 a.m. in "The City."

I may have to say goodbye to an old friend, because my old eyes won't let me see well enough to solder the new battery into my mini-helicopter. It looks as though I may have to take my final pilot's test on one of its larger cousins. One more try on the mini-copter, but I am not holding out hope.

In sports, the men in blue and the Tigers have a two game series starting later tonight. Just like the recent series between my beloved Red Sox and those self-same Tigers, I have two horses in the race. In this case, at least one of the teams has a shot at the post season. Both teams were off yesterday. Speaking of my beloved, they lost to the Indians, 2 - 8. The Caps were off.

Today's weather won't be T-storms or any storms until later tonight, if ever. In other parts of MI yesterday, there were high winds, four inches of rain, hail, and downed trees and power lines. Like all too often, the rain passed to the north and south of GH.

Trainspotting yesterday was very rewarding. At 10:45 a.m., the southbound run of locomotives 2057, and 2019 passed by. In their wake were 14 CHCs, one DBT, and two box cars, not heavily laden. The northbound run occurred at 3:38 p.m. Same locomotives in reverse order, towing 13 CHCs, 12 DBTCs, two white tank cars, one very rusty tank car, and two gray tank cars. All were heavily laden by the feel of the way the house was shaking.

The day started for myself and STWD in a walk and then a trip to the kitchen to get the vegetable broth started. Here's a picture of that effort.

So aromatic.

Also in the kitchen, I started work on my latest baking effort, baguettes. Mostly the early effort was putting the ingredients in the bread machine in the right order and pushing the start button. I then went outside to water, and that proved to once again be prescient. When I returned to the kitchen, I had to wait for the dough to come out of the machine. Following the directions, when I placed it on the floured board, I punched it down and waited 10 minutes for it to rise once again.

The recipe called for the separation of the resulting dough to be divided equally into two pieces for shaping into long narrow baguette loaves. Fortunately for our dinner plans, Mary came along to add her gentle touch to my manly efforts, or dinner would have been a lot different. 

As you can see, her efforts paid off.

It was now time for the loaves to rest and relax until dinner time. That allowed us a chance to go to the big-box grocery store. There is a story in that trip, that I'll leave untold.

Once we returned, it was Mary's chance to put her superior culinary skills to work.

Chopping of garden fresh vegetables, green peppers courtesy of Sally, and zucchini from our gardens.

Sauteing for effect.

Broiler ready.

The delicious outcome.

I like to think that it was my baguettes that made all of this possible. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Later today, I plan to finally get back to doing nothing. Maybe, just maybe, those promised showers will make their way to GH. I'll play the girls, read some of my non-fiction book, after I go for the morning walk with STWD. The sun will rise at 6:52 a.m., and set at 8;44 p.m., just before those showers. Ciao.