Good morning or good evening, wherever you may be, across the nation and across the world. It is just past 4:30 a.m. in "The City."

We have a current temperature of 73º under partly-cloudy skies. Today's high temperature is forecast to reach 81º, also under partly-cloudy skies. That's about 1º warmer than yesterday. Tonight's low is forecast to be 66º, also a near repeat of yesterday. The chance for rain/T-storms this morning down to 15%, but hearing thunder so... The chance for storms increases again tonight and will peak around 11:00 p.m. @ 60%. We shall see. I think it was a prescient move on my part to water the vast gardens yesterday. The barometric pressure is falling, so that may be an indicator of precipitation, but I'm not holding my breath.

The "Big Lake" is still at record levels, but that isn't helping my crops and the vast lawns of the PE.

Veggie update! We ate two of our tomato harvest yesterday. The balance of our garden's tomatoes continue to turn red, and the cucumbers continue to come in, albeit more slowly as the growing season wears on. Still, I anticipate more cucumbers to ripen to go along with more fresh tomatoes.

Mary's plans for some of our first tomato harvest came to fruition yesterday, as she placed them atop hammish sandwiches and garnished those sandwiches with a thousand island dressing and lettuce on rye bread. We had mashed potatoes as a side dish.

I had told Mary that I must have pictures before, during, and after cutting the tomatoes open, not to mention a taste test. In all facets of my request, she came through. The taste was excellent and reminded us how much we miss fresh tomatoes the balance of the year.

Here are those tomatoes as photographed by our Senior Staff Photographer.

Carefully sliced before being placed on the sandwiches and taste-tested, also courtesy of our Senior Staff Photographer.

Baseball news was mostly positive yesterday, as my beloved 6 - 9, Red Sox took another game from the Blue Jays, 5 - 2, with RHP Matt Barnes getting the win and making his 2020 record, 1 -1. The Sox welcome the 8 - 8 Tampa Bay Rays to Fenway tonight @ 7:30 p.m. No Red Sox pitcher has been announced for that game.

The 8 - 5 Tigers once again defeated the hapless 3 - 13 Pirates yesterday, as RHP Spencer Turnbull, 2 - 0 got the win. The Tigers are supposed to be home tonight in Comerica Park for a game against that other team from Chicago and their 8 - 7 record @ 7:30 p.m. EDT. RHP, 0 - 0 Michael Fulmer, gets the start.

The Cubs are still off until tomorrow. I'm still not sure if the MLB™ season will continue through all the scheduled games, nor am I sure that it should.

We spent some time in the media room finishing the Season-3 ending episode of Downton Abbey. I asked Mary to make some popcorn before we came upstairs so that I could get my theater popcorn needs partially sated. I sure do miss my weekly trips to the local theater and those ginormous buckets of popcorn and the humongous cherry-colas to wash them down. Sigh.

Today, we haven't much to do other than to put on my handyman's hat and do some light repairs in the kitchen. Our soap dispenser on the sink is leaking, so it needs to be replaced. I ordered a replacement last Tuesday which arrived last Thursday and it is just now ready to open due to the risk of Covid-19 transmission. I miss the old days of calling John, our handyman, to come and do things that I used to do around the manse, but which I was glad to have someone else do in my stead.

Perhaps I could write quite a long-list of the things that I miss about the before times, but they are gone and won't soon be returning, if ever. Sigh.

We'll likely do more reading, more binge-watching, more music playing, more lounging, etc. Ciao.