Good morning or good evening, wherever you may be, across the nation, and across the world. It is just after 5:30 a.m. in "The City."

The current outdoor temperature is 74° under clear skies. My DTWS is reporting 76º. According to the NWS, light winds of 7 mph make it feel like 74°. Today's high temperature is forecast to be 84º under sunny skies with a relative humidity index of 70% and a 15% chance for a stray T-storm. Yeah right. 

I watered the vast gardens heavily yesterday and I'll be watering again today, as every plant on the palatial estate seems to need it during this extended drought. The forecast from the NWS is for the upper 80s and lower 90s for at least the next ten days.

According to my DTWS, the barometric pressure is 29.33" and falling, while the NWS is reporting 29.96" and falling slowly. Falling barometric pressures indicate that the forecast for a stray T-storm is close to accurate. 

 

However, there is still an Air Quality Alert in effect until 9:15 p.m. tonight for Muskegon, Ottawa, Kent, Allegan, and Van Buren Counties. 

The Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy has declared an Action Day for elevated levels of ozone to be extended. Pollutants are expected to be in the unhealthy for sensitive groups range. People and businesses are urged to avoid activities which lead to ozone formation. These activities include: refueling vehicles or topping off when refueling, using gasoline powered lawn equipment, and using charcoal lighter fluid. It is recommended that active children and adults and persons with respiratory diseases such as asthma limit prolonged outdoor exertion.

Sadly, I saw numerous people mowing their lawns with gasoline-powered equipment when we were on our Fast Lane™ run yesterday. I guess it is like the call for people to wear masks and avoid close contact with others during this pandemic, largely ignored. The pictures taken by the news media over the holiday weekend at the lakes in MI are scary as people gathered in large groups, ignored the need for masks, etc. Sigh.

The sun will rise this morning @ 6:13 a.m. and it will set later @ 9:26 p.m.

There is good news on the baseball front. Well, maybe. The Cubs open their shortened season on Friday, July, 24 @ 7:10 p.m. EDT, with a game at the "Friendly Confines" against the Milwaukee Brewers. The "regular" season closes on September 27th with a game against that other team from Chicago. However, there are issues regarding every other day testing of the players, so those dates are more tentative than one might expect. More on my beloved Red Sox and the Tigers in a future blog. 

I did take some pix while we were out yesterday of the vast gardens and the "sights" of our fair city. 

Masks? Social distancing? Nah!

Avoid large gatherings? Nah!

Our basil is doing very well.

A little water, a voila!

A bud on our tomato plants. I saw some tiny tomatoes too!

The lots at the Grand Haven State Park were jammed on a Monday afternoon as people tried to escape the heat.

We saw license plates from many states as we traveled. So much for keeping the virus localized. We have come to the painful conclusion that the future will be one filled with a lot of time in the manse as we pursue our various hobbies and crafts. We have plenty to keep us busy, but there are so many places we wanted to go this year. Sigh.

Otherwise, I  have a doctor's appointment to have some sutures removed. I've convinced Mary to do the driving to the local office since she can wait in the car for the few minutes the appointment should require. Ciao. 

Good morning or good evening, wherever you may be, across the nation, and across the world. It is just after 3:30 a.m. in "The City."

The current outdoor temperature is 70° under clear and no longer hazy skies. My DTWS is reporting 71º. According to the NWS, light winds of 8 mph make it feel like 70°. Today's high temperature is forecast to be 85º under sunny skies with a relative humidity index of 67% and still only a 5% chance for additional precipitation. We have a 50% chance for T-storms on Friday.

I must water the vast gardens heavily today. I'll be watering a lot for the foreseeable future!

There is an Air Quality Alert still in effect until 8:45 p.m. tonight for Muskegon, Ottawa, Kent, Allegan, and Van Buren Counties. It is recommended that active children and adults and persons with respiratory diseases, such as asthma, limit prolonged outdoor exertion. I wanted to ride my bike this year, but as I am not as young as I used to be, but then who is, 85º with an Air Quality Alert in effect is not the ideal condition for bike riding, especially in light of the Covid-19 need to wear facial coverings also still in effect.

I realized earlier that the time I rode my bike to Madison, WI from Palatine, IL I was 47 years of age. That's 22 years ago. Adam and I used to ride what we called the Tour DeKalb then too. What a difference two decades can make. Sigh. 

Our A/C continues to work well. I finally got down tot he man-cave to check out what the technicians from Aire Serv of The Lake Shore had done and the installation is first class in every respect. They moved the small pump that ejects the condensate from the evaporator to a lower location and created an outlet for its power source. While I was down in the man-cave, I heard the pump come to life and watched as it did its job.I recommend these people for any work that you may need.

I was outside with the fur-children yesterday morning and noted that our hydrangea bush had bloomed, creating a dazzling display of floral beauty. So, Mary had me cut several flowers for her indoor display. Here are some shots of the flowers on the bush and in her indoor display.

Unfortunately, while a picture may paint a thousand words, it cannot do justice to these flowers.

Nice arrangement!

I also took some pix of other roses in Mary's rose garden and other flowers that are growing in the vast gardens too.

 

A good soaking produces copious rose blooms!

Daylilies are in abundance.

As are other lilies!

I completed the floor washing and Mary did the dusting yesterday and we are done with our housekeeping. It feels good to have nothing on the radar for today except for some telephone calls. While I have to water today, that's all I have to do. I like it! Oh, we may have to go to the Fast Lane™ for some groceries, but that won't take long. Ciao.

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

The current outdoor temperature is 70° under hazy skies. I can confirm that part of the forecast by my personal and anecdotal look out the WW. My DTWS is reporting 72.7º on the front porch and 71.8º on the deck. According to the NWS, light winds of 8 mph make it feel like 72°. Today's high temperature is forecast to be 85º under sunny skies with a relative humidity index of 66% and still only a 5% chance for additional precipitation. 

I watered the vast gardens heavily yesterday, so I may be good until Monday. However, given the forecast from the NWS for the upper 80s and lower 90s for at least the next ten days, I'll be watering a lot for the foreseeable future!

According to my DTWS, the barometric pressure is 29.39" and rising, while the NWS is reporting 30.04", also rising. Rising barometric pressures indicate that the forecast for no significant precipitation for the foreseeable future is accurate. However, there is an Air Quality Alert in effect until 8:00 p.m. tonight for Muskegon, Ottawa, Kent, Allegan, and Van Buren Counties. 

The Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy has declared Sunday, July 5th...to be an Action Day for elevated levels of ozone. Pollutants are expected to be in the unhealthy for sensitive groups range. People and businesses are urged to avoid activities which lead to ozone formation. These activities include...refueling vehicles or topping off when refueling...using gasoline powered lawn equipment...and using charcoal lighter fluid. Positive activities include...car pooling...biking to work...delaying or combining errands...and using water based paints. It is recommended that active children and adults...and persons with respiratory diseases such as asthma...limit prolonged outdoor exertion.

The sun will rise this morning @ 6:11 a.m. and it will set later @ 9:27 p.m., the same as yesterday.

 

Along with the watering of the vast gardens, I got the upstairs dusted and vacuumed, albeit with a slight change to Mary's computer screen layout. I should have closed the lid, but I didn't, so she had to come behind and fix my faux pas. I started the laundry too, but Mary finished it while I was occupied elsewhere. She also finished baking a loaf of whole wheat bread that tastes great.

I still have to finish the downstairs dusting, wash the floors in two bathrooms, and the kitchen too, but that shouldn't be as difficult. A man's work is never done. Sigh.

It looks and sounds as though the amateur pyromaniacs are done for a while. STWD spent most of her night in her hidey-hole dressed in her Thundershirt™. That seems to help a lot. However, late last night we had to force her to go out for a final visit. Naturally, just as she arrived in the back-forty, a humongous blast occurred and she was sent scurrying back inside never to be seen again. I feel so sorry for her as she has never dealt well with loud noises and that has not improved with age.

Otherwise, I hope to do as little as possible today. The fur-children wanted to go walkabout yesterday, but the air quality was so bad, and the temperature and humidity so high, that we weren't so disposed. Maybe that will change as the days go by, but...

I spent some time earlier this morning playing with Lorelei, my baritone ukulele. She and I sounded good, but I still have to think about the fingerings for the chords, something that is now second-nature on the guitar for me. Ciao.

Good morning or good evening, wherever you may be, across the nation, and across the world. It is just after 8:00 a.m. in "The City."

The current outdoor temperature is 72° under partly-cloudy skies. My DTWS is reporting 74.8º on the front porch and 72.7º on the deck. According to the NWS, light winds of 7 mph make it feel like 72°. Today's high temperature is forecast to be 87º under partly-sunny skies with a relative humidity index of 60% and only a 5% chance for additional precipitation. That 88º is 4º warmer than yesterday. I'll be watering the vast gardens again today and for several more days, as the temperature forecast from the NWS is for the upper 80s and lower 90s for at least the next ten days!

According to my DTWS, the barometric pressure is 29.53" and rising, while the NWS is reporting 30.03", and also rising. Rising barometric pressures indicate that the forecast for no significant precipitation for the foreseeable future is accurate.

The sun rose this morning @ 6:11 a.m. and it will set later @ 9:27 p.m.

Speaking of roses, in a tangential way, Mary was out in her rose gardens yesterday and cut some for her flower room. Here they are in all their glory alongside the other plants in our foyer.

As always, a great aroma!

Today is the Fourth of July, as most everyone knows, a day to celebrate the Declaration of Independence and the birth of our nation. It's also John P's birthday. In honor of that occasion, I have included a clip from YouTube™ from one of my favorite old Warner Brother's musicals, Yankee Doodle Dandy starring the late James Cagney as George M. Cohan, the author of that song.


 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVkscRLqOlQ

I made some vegan Italian meatballs yesterday and also found another old family recipe for vegan hot dogs that should be a big improvement over my last effort. 

Otherwise, we'll endure another day of amateur pyromaniacs as they attempt to burn down the surrounding area or maim themselves or others. An article in a recent edition of the Grand Haven Tribune written by Marie Havenga and Meghan Haas highlighted the dangers of amateur fireworks displays. A corollary article written by the Tribune's Nick Moran, described the booming sales of fireworks to amateurs that included a statement that said, sales of fireworks are "Skyrocketing!"

Unfortunately, those sales include everything from sparklers, which are very dangerous for children, to bottle-rockets, and often include huge exploding displays. "The bigger the firework, the faster they’re selling", as one merchant put it. Sigh, we ain't seen nothing yet.

Sadly for STWD, amateur fireworks displays are allowed in GH from June 29, until tonight @ 11:45 p.m. Then it's over for another year. That is unless the pyromaniacs have leftovers to set off at some other time, say around the time when our annual Coast Guard Festival is usually held at the end of this month into early August.

Otherwise, today is a day for some housekeeping here at the manse. Now that our A/C is working and the windows are closed, we can get things dusted. You never realize how much dust accumulates in a short time with the windows open. Ciao.

 

Good morning or good evening, wherever you may be, across the nation, and across the world. It is just after 3:30 a.m. in "The City."

The current outdoor temperature is 68° under clear skies. My DTWS is reporting 72º on the front porch and 73º on the deck. According to the NWS, light winds of 1 mph make it feel like 68°. Today's high temperature is forecast to be 85º under sunny skies with a relative humidity index of 69% and only a 5% chance for additional precipitation. I'll be watering the vast gardens again today.

According to my DTWS, the barometric pressure is 29.45" and steady, while the NWS is reporting 30.01", and also steady.

The sun will rise this morning @ 6:10 a.m. and it will set later @ 9:27 p.m.

We are all done! The A/C is working beautifully, and the heating system is totally piped in and ready for the cooler temperatures, whenever they arrive.

I made some vegan hot dogs yesterday following someone's old family recipe. The taste is good, but I'm not satisfied with the texture. The hot dogs are too dry. I think it has to do with too much chickpea flour, which we used in lieu of the soy flour that the recipe listed. That or the recipe needs some tweaking. The jury is still out. I still like my vegan bratwursts and Italian sausages better.

I went to my orthopedic appointment yesterday for an evaluation of my yak. I still have good range of motion with only minimal discomfort, so I am not contemplating any new therapy at this time.

The MLB™ teams have returned to their home ballparks for an abbreviated spring training. This will be a much shorter season with tweaks to the schedule to minimize travel and to maximize TV revenues. The playoffs will be even stranger than the actual season. Roster limits, pitching requirements. When the games go into extra innings, the team that is up to bat starts with a man on second base. I dunno about you, but to me, that ain't baseball.

I was going to add-in some thoughts about the way that the world is going right now, following an article Mary sent me regarding the changes in schools necessitated by the Covid-19 virus. Smaller classes, split shifts, masks, etc are all in the mix. But, what happens when the students actually arrive in classrooms. Some won't come out of fear of exposure. Others won't come due to transportation issues. Others won't come because of a conflict with a parent's work schedule. Many plans look good on paper, but the reality is likely to be quite different.

Do I expect that we will get back to the way it was before this pandemic? Maybe someday. Maybe in five years. Maybe after a vaccine has been developed and deployed. Maybe after therapeutics have been made widely available. Lots of maybes, but little data on which to base real plans.

Today, we hope to read and watch more Poldark. We watched one and one-half episodes yesterday, so we have the second half to finish later today and then another full episode to watch.

As mentioned, I have to water and that about the extent of my outdoor activities.

STWD is still not liking the pyromaniacs seemingly insatiable need to make noise, but at least with the A/C working and the windows closed, it isn't as loud as it might be. Ciao. 

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.

Good morning or good evening, wherever you may be, across the nation, and across the world. It is just after 4:00 a.m. in "The City."

The current temperature is 70° under clear skies. My DTWS is reporting 72.0º on the front porch and 72.0º 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 87º under sunny skies with a relative humidity index of 65% and only a 5% chance for additional precipitation. More watering tomorrow.

According to my DTWS, the barometric pressure is 29.33" and steady, while the NWS is reporting 29.94", also steady.

The sun will rise this morning @ 6:09 a.m. and it will set later @ 9:28 p.m.

The local pyromaniacs are still tormenting STWD. Sigh. Therein lies a tale for later in this blog

I drove to GR yesterday for that appointment and everything went well, that is unless you consider the fact that these days, I like being a passenger more than a driver. The other day, Mary asked if I needed to practice my driving skills. I told her no, my skills are fine, however, I don't feel a need to drive anymore. My trip yesterday confirmed that to me. Too many lane narrowings, stalled cars, detours, and a souped-up Mustang that looked like something out of the movie Road Warrior to make driving enjoyable. I could tell that the Mustang had been modified by the huge intercooler visible in the car's nose and the sound it made as it passed my Jeep™ when he got tired of being behind an old guy doing the speed limit. I don't know if everyone gets to this point, but I have.

I think from now on, and whenever possible, I'll follow that old commercial from the Greyhound Bus Company™, and leave the driving to Mary. As a driver, I am now a much better navigator. Here is a promo commercial from Greyhound™ to illustrate my sentiments.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vfh-2zcm7BA

The A/C installers arrived yesterday afternoon to start the demolition/removal of the old central A/C system. They seem to have made significant progress, much to the consternation of STWD. As you may recall, she does not deal well with loud noises, and the banging required to remove the old equipment was too much for her.

As previously promised, here is the balance of that aforementioned tale about my trip.

Along Lake Michigan Dr., the non-expressway route to GR, I espied multiple tents and stores hawking fireworks, including one that advertised commercial-grade displays/munitions. Almost all of the local towns, villages, and cities won't be having their Fourth of July displays this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which is getting worse by the day. So, I believe that all too many pyromaniacs will begin their own displays starting late tomorrow night and continuing through Saturday night. We'll have to put Sugar in her Thundershirt™ and hold her paw as much as we can. I feel so bad for her as she can't understand the whole fireworks thing.

Here is a pic of the "Cutest Dog on the Planet" in a more tranquil time.

In-person she is even cuter!

Today, the A/C installers will arrive around 8:30 a.m. to begin their day. Hopefully, they can get the system up and running by day's end.

Otherwise, we will do our best to conserve whatever cool air we can find here at the manse. That may mean that we and the fur-children spend a lot of time in my studio where I have a window A/C unit purring away. Ciao.