Good morning or good evening, wherever you may be. It is just past 12:00 a.m. in "The City."

This time for sure. By that I mean that I'll be keeping it short, or at least shorter than usual, I hope. How's that for equivocation?

I spent the afternoon in the kitchen baking zucchini biscuits with basil and nutritional yeast and homemade buttermilk that used powdered soy milk as its base. It worked perfectly and the biscuits came out great. I followed the biscuit baking with some vegan Italian meatballs, with homemade pesto. In both cases, the basil was from our garden as was the zucchini for the biscuits.

I did have to interrupt Mary's work and send her to Health Hutt to get some TVP, textured vegetable protein for the meatballs because I failed to check to see that I had all of the things I needed for my cooking/baking. My bad. I would have gone to Health Hutt myself, but I am still experiencing difficulty walking due to my hip. The morning safari with the fur-children was challenging enough.

Once I was done in a very hot kitchen, the biscuits had to be baked @ 500°, I sat down to rest. Mary came down and made some cucumber salad with one of our numerous cucumbers and served that with the vegan sausages I made yesterday. Dinner was my vegan Italian meatballs, served on my zucchini, nutritional yeast and basil biscuits topped with Mary's down and dirty mushroom gravy. Of course, I liked dinner, because anything with gravy on it is good with me.

Sports news yesterday was 100% positive. All of my teams won.

The Cubs had to make their fans sweat until the bottom of the 10th inning before a couple of wild pitches loaded the bases and Alex Avila nailed a two RBI single to ice the win over the Bluejays, 6 - 5. Javier Baez received an honorable mention from his manager and his teammates for some heads up base running and newly acquired catcher, Rene Rivera, got his first hit as a Cub in his first at-bat. The Cubs now have an NL Central record of 66 - 57, good enough for a 1st place lead over the 2nd place Brewers of 1.5 games and 2.5 over the 3rd place Cardinals. The Cubs are off today and play @ Cincinnati Tuesday night @ 7:10 p.m.

My 1st place in the AL East, beloved Red Sox, dispatched the 2nd place Yankees @ Fenway, 5 - 1, to move to 71 - 52 and a 5 game lead over the Yankees. The Sox travel to Cleveland to face the Indians tonight @ 7:10 p.m.

The 1st place Caps righted their ship in a big way, defeating the 2nd place in the MWL East Bowling Green Hot Rods, 15 - 4. That gives the Caps some breathing room as they now lead the Hot Rods by 1.5 games. Those two teams play today @ 11:35 a.m.

Along with Mary, once I was done with my kitchen activities, I repaired to my office and continued my work editing the latest index. It is tedious work for both of us. I'd finally had enough and sat down in the media room to watch The Untouchables starring Kevin Costner. After I was done with my viewing, I took both of the fur-children out for their late-night duty calls and then I locked us in for the night. Mary was finishing watching Pride and Prejudice, I believe, when I returned upstairs with the snack she prepared for me. Now she has gone to bed to fortify herself for another long day of indexing. I'll be there soon.

The current temperature is 71° under partly cloudy skies. Today, we expect a high temperature of 78°, also under partly cloudy skies. For people in the Tri-Cities area, seeing the eclipse will be a challenge. The sun will rise @ 6:57 a.m. and the eclipse will begin shortly after 1:00 p.m. and will peak at between 75% and 85% between 2:10 p.m. and 2:30 p.m. The sun will set for sure @ 8:37 p.m. Ciao.