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

The weather was strange yesterday. In spite of the low probability for showers/T-storms, yesterday evening, the NWS was actually correct, for once. We had a goodly amount of rain, quite a bit of thunder and lightning, and I got the fur-children out just before it all began.

As of now, we have a current temperature of 66° under partly cloudy skies. Today, the sun will rise @ 6:46 a.m. into those partly cloudy skies and the high temperature will reach 72° with 81% relative humidity. Later tomorrow night, the sun will set @ 8:52 p.m

John is nearly finished with the painting in the media room and my office. He still has to rehang the ceiling fan that nearly fell from the ceiling, the fan that started this latest round of home repairs/painting.

I spent some time doing those indoor chores that I mentioned in my previous post and learned that the appliance repairman should lease space from John's office here in the manse. While the repairman isn't here as often as John, he visits regularly enough to keep our old but serviceable laundry and kitchen appliances in working order. As Mary says, repairs are less costly than buying new and they also keep the old appliances out of the landfill. I guess that's a win-win.

The Cubs may have gotten some good news on their day off. Cubs' President Theo Epstein updated the media and by extension Cubs fans, on the condition of starting catcher Willson Contreras. He will be on the DL for rehab for a minimum of two weeks and maybe up to a month or more. Epstein did not speculate on whether the injury to Contreras was season-ending. Contreras has been a major part of the Cubs offense over the last several weeks.

However, the recent trade for catcher Alex Avila from the Tigers looks prescient right now. In addition, the Cubs will recall rookie catcher Victor Caratini from their AAA affiliate in Iowa to back up Avila. The Cubs are in AZ tonight for a game against the D'backs @ 9:40 p.m. As of now, the Cubs are still in 1st place in the NL Central with a record of 59 - 54, one game ahead of the 2nd place Cardinals who have won six in a row and two games ahead of the 3rd place Brewers.

The Tigers lost another one to the Pirates, 5 - 7. They are still in 4th place in the AL Central with a record of 52 - 62, nine games ahead of that other team from Chicago. The Tigers welcome the Twins to Comerica Park tonight @ 7:10 p.m.

My beloved Red Sox were off yesterday, but the 2nd place Yankees, the Sox' next opponent tonight @ 7:05 p.m., lost to the Bluejays, 0 - 4 to fall to 4.5 games behind the idle Sox.

The Caps game with the Great Lakes Loons was suspended last night after nine innings with the score tied @ nine all. That game will be resumed today @ 6:00 p.m., before the regularly scheduled game against the Loons @ 7:00 p.m. The Caps have a 1st place lead in the MWL East of  32 - 12, which is 3.0 games over the TinCaps.

Elsewhere in the manse, I didn't get to make my soup. Instead, I tried a new vegan recipe for vegan gyros. To make those, I also had to make an extraordinary beest, some home made Mrs. Dash™ and with some timely assistance/rescue from Mary, I was able to create a very tasty lunch and add another dish to our rotation. Mary has to tweak the recipe a bit, to make it more user-friendly, but the final result was excellent. In addition, if Mary had not arrived to pull my cooking out of the proverbial fire by making the home made Tzatziki sauce, I would never have survived.

Otherwise, we took the fur-children for their morning safari and then Mary settled in to do some indexing which I had the chance to assist with as I added some page numbers and plurals for things that can be counted, a basic rule in indexing.

We did get to the chiropractor yesterday afternoon, but Ginger's final tryout before her crate goes into storage was delayed since John was here painting. I also tried to get Ginger to go out around 3:00 a.m., but like often happens with her big sister, STWD, she wouldn't go.

Today, more indexing, more cooking, and more reading. I've given up on the latest book I was reading as it just wasn't working for me. Ciao.