Good morning or good evening, wherever you may be, across the nation, and across the world. It is just after 3:00 a.m. in "The City."

The current outdoor temperature is 72° under clear skies. My DTWS is reporting 75.2º on the front porch and 73.9º on the deck. According to the NWS, light winds of 5 mph make it feel like 70°. Today's high temperature is forecast to be 84º under sunny skies with a relative humidity index of 61% and only a 5% chance for additional precipitation. I watered the vast gardens yesterday evening.

According to my DTWS, the barometric pressure is 29.33" and steady, while the NWS is reporting 29.93", and rising.

The sun will rise this morning @ 6:10 a.m. and it will set later @ 9:28 p.m.

The local pyromaniacs are still tormenting STWD. Now, they're also tormenting me. Don't get me wrong, when I was younger, I liked the fireworks displays. However, those displays either took place in the golf course behind our home, or in the local park. In either case, the displays were in the hands of professionals, not every Tom Dick, or Harriette with too much money and not enough brains who then set off their own displays in nearby backyards.

I was watering last evening, when one such explosion was set off just a few doors down and was so loud, that it scared STWD into her hidey-hole and me into dropping the watering can I was using on the front porch. That's over the top.

In good news, our A/C is now working. As Mary opined, "We have cold!" It took the technicians until after 6:00 p.m. to finish the installation, but it is now 73° in the manse. The technicians will return today to double-check their work.

I got tired last evening and came up to our media room to watch TV. I was watching one of my favorite movies, Singing in the Rain when I fell asleep. I awoke to the movie Annie sometime later.

I was thinking the other day about some sayings that I had heard over the years. One of them was from my maternal grandmother, Nane, who used to tell us to "Stop acting like sausages!" I never quite knew exactly what she meant, but the meaning was clear to us. "Knock it off!" One of her rare uses of profanity, and how I learned that she knew the words was the direct result of my brothers and I tracking mud onto her freshly cleaned carpets.

My dad had a few sayings too, like "I'll box your ears", which meant I"ll hit you upside the head. Or, "I'm not heating the outside", which we all knew meant to close the door. Or, "I'm not made of money" or the alternative, "Money doesn't grow on trees." One of my favorites from an unknown source was "Your father wasn't a glassblower", or another of my personal favorites, "You make a better door than a window." I took those to mean stop blocking my view. And who can forget, "You weren't born in a barn!"

Of course, there is a saying that is probably Chicago based, "I've got dibs!" That could mean in the backseat of the car or in the City of Chicago proper, it was used when someone had cleared a parking space after a heavy snowfall and then placed chairs or other sundry items in that space to claim/hold the spot, I e, "Dibs!"

I suspect that most everyone has some favorites of their own.

Today, I have an appointment at the orthopedist for further assessment on my baking yak. Overall, it has been feeling much better, especially when I can take ibuprofen on a regular basis. I hope to get a more professional medical opinion, one that is a lot better than my own anecdotal one.

Elsewhere in the local news, our governor has reinstituted some of the restrictions on indoor dining in MI, as the number of Covid-19 cases is once again rising. Some of that rise can be attributed to the young people who recently crowded into bars and did not wear facial masks. We are going to see still more cases and deaths if people don't take this virus seriously.

My father used to say than an expert was someone from out of town. I accept that there are people in the know who are not trying to scare people with a "Hoax". Yet, they're being threatened with harm or recall over their very real pronunciations of doom and gloom. The comedian Ron White has a saying that goes like this, "You can't fix stupid!" The fictional Forrest Gump said it best. "Stupid is as stupid does." Nuff said.

Ciao.