The current version is usually posted at http://wlweather.net/Pcw/

Beeson Banner for June 2024

 

3 June 2024

I put a box of Bikeabouts back into the attic.  Then I brought a box marked "Crochet World" down, but it appears to contain Workbaskets.

That was all I could stand; it's extremely hot up there.  Pity the fan doesn't work.

 

Thursday, 6 June 2024

I've been too busy doing to write.  No emergency rooms were involved.

I need to change the battery in my pen light.  I don't think it will ever come to my attention when I have time to deal with it.

I'm halfway through dressing for a ride to Open Air for impatience, with a stop at Mary Anne's to dump nine bras that don't fit.  I'm keeping two for emergencies.

00:27 7 June 2024

Mary Anne's store wasn't open, but the donations were, so I got rid of my stuff.  Bought a dozen impatience plants at Open Air, and a bag of candy at the health-food store.  The carob-coated peanuts are a disappointment — they have the texture of palm oil.

I took a side trip to see the sycamore — the solution to "save" it is to chop up the roots instead of cutting it down.

I passed the St. Anne's rummage sale at the fairgrounds and went in, but did not find anything to buy.  Might have been something among the clothing, but I didn't feel like searching — it was time for lunch.

 

Friday, 7 June 2024

I just learned, to my astonishment, that there are Dewey Decimal numbers for fiction.  They are used only by libraries that are large enough to use the Library of Congress system, but don't.

". . . any genre crossover made the Dewey system crawl off in a corner and whimper."

I feel that fiction should be strictly alphabetical by author, with any genre separation that's desired accomplished by spine stickers.  You can put more than one sticker on a spine.

According to my calendar, I had a knit-together with Linda on Sunday, Dave and I went to Fort Wayne for the last (foreseeable) time on Monday, I washed a sheet on Tuesday, we saw our financial advisor and Dave saw the dentist on Wednesday (noodles for supper), and Dave saw Dr. Kamanda on Thursday while I rode to Open Air Nursery.  Dave got home first.  I'm planning to wash another sheet today.  And maybe plant some impatience.

Punching in neglected notes, I find on Sat 25 May 2004 the line "deer Clarke".  The year is clearly a misprint.  "Deer Clarke" means that I saw a deer crossing the street about a block from where I turned onto Clarke, but I've forgotten what street it was crossing.  Probably Park.

 

Saturday, 8 June 2024

I went that way again today; it was definitely Park.  I'm sure I used to cross over to Clarke on Tamarack; the anti-bike lane on Fort Wayne must have been extended.

I got an early start on the farmers markets tour today, and had time to take in a couple of garage sales.  I bought a folding knife and a bag at each one.  A canvas grocery bag at the first, and an insulated lunch bag at the second.  The lunch bag has an adjustable shoulder strap, so should be good for taking stuff to dinners at the church.

I will, of course, give it a good scrubbing before using it for food.  It's too stiff to wash in the machine, so I'll have to do it in the sink with a brush.

I've been reading last month's banner, and found the mysterious note "steak at half-past five helps me to remember the order of things."

I had bought a steak on Thursday, and got home too late for Dave to try the recipe he'd read in the paper.  On Friday and Saturday there were other reasons, so when we got back from the emergency room at 5:30 on Sunday, it was urgent that that steak be eaten, so I pan broiled it.  (And meat is what the doctor would have ordered for what lay ahead of him.)

I bought another steak later — and Dave didn't like the recipe he'd read.  But he gleaned the advice that one should get the griddle very, very hot and keep flipping the steak until done.  Which is the way I've always cooked steak.

 

Monday, 10 June 2024

We'll be leaving for Goshen in a few minutes.

Yesterday, I thought I'd be early for church for a change, but a little past the bridge, one of my sandals fell apart and I had to come back and change.

The strap could be re-attached with Gorilla Glue, but the white paint that makes the strap look like leather is flaking, and I never liked those sandals very much, so I binned them.

Our next trip to Goshen, four weeks from now, just might be our last.

But we have to stay all day.

 

Wednesday, 12 June 2024

When I tried to open the pen to see what battery was needed, I discovered that the battery was fine — I'd forgotten how to turn the light on.

Today is finally a good day to wash hot whites and nothing more urgent on the schedule.  When I turned the canvas bag I bought at the garage sale inside out to wash it, I found a label saying "All cotton/wash in cold water/do not use bleach".  It came through the hot wash just fine, and didn't even become a lighter shade of unbleached.

So I'm finally caught up on sheet washing.  But the bed will need changing by the next time we get a washing day.

Dave came through yesterday's Mohs surgery just fine, and drove himself home afterward.

 

Thursday, 13 June 2024

The lift chair that arrived yesterday is finally sit-inable.

The chair was *not* designed to be assembled by someone who needs it.

I emptied the recycling bag of grocery bags today.  And when I unpacked the groceries I'd bought after dumping them, I found a torn bag and put it into the recycling bag.

No such thing as a clean counter, an empty laundry hamper, or an empty recycling bin.

I took a side trip to the sycamore.  The new sidewalk covers a substantial portion of its remaining root field.

In the evening, I washed clothes.  Now I have clean socks to wear tomorrow.

 

Friday, 14 June 2024

When I got up to close the curtains, I saw a lightning bug.

I had my semi-annual exam today — next one is in December.  I passed every test — but the results of the blood tests aren't in yet.

Stopped at Kroger on the way back to pick up a free pie (I chose chicken corn chowder), and found, at long last, a box of frozen fried chicken!  That used to be a staple.  It's Banquet, but some Banquet things are good.

Yesterday, when I made trip after trip into the house with the things I had bought, Dave asked "How do you get all that stuff on your bike?".  I told him it was fifty years of experience, but the real explanation is that I brought in each item as soon as I pulled it out of the pannier, having parked outside where there is no table to sort things on.

But experience does tell — today I got fifty-five dollars worth of stuff into one pannier, needing the other for the attaché case that I took to the appointment.  No way I could have done that in the sixties.

 

Sunday, 16 June 2024

There's ten dollars and change more in my wallet than Quicken says I have.  I wish I knew how I did that so that I could do it on purpose.

I went to Meijers yesterday afternoon.  I've often wished that in addition to digestive biscuits, milk-chocolate flavor coated digestive biscuits, and milk-chocolate flavor coated Hobnobs, they sold plain Hobnobs.

And yesterday they had *four* McVities cookies!  But the fourth was dark-chocolate flavor coated digestives.

I bought one of each.

 

Tuesday, 18 June 2024

At a little after one in the morning, I scored ten at Hexavirus.

What I really wanted was to check the weather, but the internet is down.

The next appointment on either schedule is the picnic and fireworks on the Saturday after next.

I saw lightning bugs when I closed the curtains, but none now.

Noon:

The internet got up before I did.

I pushed the cultivator around the garden, and hilled up the potato.

Then I felt a drop of rain and took down the laundry I forgot to take in yesterday, using panic mode.  This was, of course, *after* Abe had mowed under it.  (We get the lawn mowed on Tuesdays.)

The rain didn't develop.  The garden could use some.

Evening:

I need to ride twenty-five miles tomorrow, but can't think of anywhere to go.  Spring Creek is too far, Kohl Plaza is too near, and Claypool is boring.

 

Friday, 21 June 2024

After midnight again.  I didn't go anywhere on Wednesday, and have forgotten what I did instead.

Oh, I did go somewhere:  Dave mentioned that we were running out of soda, so I drove to Kroger and bought four twelve packs.  And some moose track ice cream.

On Thursday, I rode my bike to Sprawlmart to get the handicap-parking tag that Dr. Darr prescribed last Friday.

Since I wanted to go to the BMV first, I decided to go counter-clockwise, forgetting that that meant crossing 30 twice.  This upset me so much that I went into Ziebart's to check whether the trailer-park residents had beaten a path through the woods.  This was a long shot; since Aunt Millies stopped selling bread, there has been nothing to walk through the woods for.  And sure enough, every streak that looked thin enough to walk a bike through was blocked by poison ivy.  And I suspect that there is a creek in there.  Google maps does show a pond, which probably explains why it's still a woods.

But it turned out that crossing 30 was quite easy.  I absent-mindedly got into the left-turn lane.  (I usually go straight, then cut through parking lots to Orthopedic Drive.)  It turned out that everyone who wanted to turn left was ahead of me, and I had the part of 30 that I wanted to use entirely to myself, then traffic allowed me to get into the left-turn lane at just the right time.  (Right behind a police car — been seeing a lot of them, one from Nappanee, but I've forgotten where I was startled by that.  Probably Sprawl Two.)

So I didn't have to sprint across two right-turn lanes, two westbound lanes, two eastbound lanes, and a wide median — from, often, a carlength or two behind the stop line.

Things went quickly and pleasantly at BMV, and I was given the card on the spot.  It's now in my go bag, together with two receipts that I must file elsewhere in case I have to report it lost or stolen.

I went into Dollar Tree, Running's, Rural King, and Dollar General, but didn't find anything I wanted.  Well, I found "Majestic bleach" in non-awkward gallon bottles in Dollar Tree and Rural King, but the label didn't give me any clue as to what kind of bleach it was, let alone how strong it was.

On the way back, I saw that Sweet Corn Charley's tent was up.  So all we had for supper was two half-size ears of corn each, with lots of butter.

And Moose Tracks ice cream.

I had half of the remaining firecracker wrap for my bedtime snack, together with all of the remaining fresh kale.  Which had gotten rather limp, but I boil kale until it's *very* limp.

Oops, I forgot to take my gloves out of the washing machine.  They were soaked in sweat long before I got home, so I soaked them in plain water for a few hours and spun them out.  Meant to give them a second rinse, but not at 1:35.  I hung them on a sock dryer.

My shirt got a rinse-and-spin, and is back in the closet.  My do-rag and bra are still soaking in dilute ammonia.

Noon:

Now rinsed and hung up to dry.  Together with a week's dirty clothes.

When doing the Sprawlmart loop counter-clockwise, I walk through the cross-country trails to Sunset drive, to avoid the section of Wooster Road that Google Maps lights up green, in accordance with the League Against Bicycle-riding's idea of streets particularly suitable for playing with wheel toys.

I missed the turn and turned around when the sight of Christ's Covenant Church told me that what I'd taken for a false path was the real thing.  I slowed when I saw what I took for a young deer standing in the [look up name] trail just beyond the turn, calmly looking at me.  I realized that it was a full-grown doe when a spotted fawn came out of the underbrush to join her.  They wandered off showing little concern for the presence of an apex predator.

Other pleasant news:  I could find no sign of the lily-of-the-valley infestation that had concerned me on a previous trip in the other direction; someone must have taken care of it.

 

Monday, 24 June 2024

On Saturday, I came back from the usual farmers markets tour with my do-rag wet, so I put it into a bucket and wore my other one when I went to Kroger after lunch, and also put the other one to soak, and later added my bra.  I haven't been able to wear a bra two days recently.

6:03 PM 6/30/2024

I didn't have time to write at the time, so this recap is based on memories that are pretty stale.  Also, the important parts are hearsay.

First-person parts first:

Monday was predicted to be a good day for outdoor exercise, and it had been a while since I had an all-day ride, so I planned to circumnavigate Pike and Center Lakes clockwise, with stops at Silveus Crossing, Walmart, and pOpshelf.  I would cross SR 15 on 350 N, north of Pop Shelf, and come back on 175 E, stopping at Aldi if I hadn't packed my panniers at the first two stops.

While eating pizza at the Silveus Crossing Family Express, I reflected that on my previous stop here (on the round-two-lakes tour by way of Leesburg and Oswego on May 16) I'd gotten my welfare checked, and kept looking for a police car to drive up.

After spending nearly two hours in Walmart, I had checked out and was putting on my hats and gloves in the ladies' room when my flip phone rang.  It had been so long since I got a call that it took me a while to remember that I have to put it on speakerphone to hear anything.

It was a Winona Lake policeman.

Now for the hearsay.

Dave had been sitting on the front porch watching the cars go by, when he realized that they were all unmarked police cars, going back and forth in front of our house.  So he got into the car and went to the police station to see what they wanted.

When someone with a history of strokes starts acting oddly, you assume the worst.  They called in Community Assistance Resources Emergency Services, which I gather is a branch of the fire department.  Dave said later that it was a trillion-dollar program Trump started.  I don't know how Biden missed it when he cleaned up upon taking office.

The officers also gave me contact information to get Dave a bracelet in case it happened again, and we did call that afternoon, but by the time the call was returned on the following day, we had realized that a bracelet, at this time, would be more trouble than help.

Jumping ahead of the story, when Dave was making an appointment with Darr, as the policemen had suggested, I realized that he hadn't taken his morning pills.  Missing his pills makes him weird, but not *that* weird.

Tuesday afternoon he was called in for one more test, and that revealed an infection that Dave said that the tech said could account for everything all by itself.  So he's on antibiotics, and I forgot to remind him of his three-o'clock pill this afternoon; I think it was five when he got it.  (Gets up to set timer for nine.)  (There will also be flutes playing, which were never turned off after Al no longer needed medication at nine, and some other automatic reminder.  *Somebody* is bound to remember.

Back to the first-person account.

The policeman said he wanted to talk to me.  I told him that I was at Walmart on a bicycle; he said don't worry, take your time.  A woman named Melody offered to take me in her van.  She is new in town; I wished, later on, that I could invite her watch the fireworks from our back yard.

When we got there, I rushed inside to see what they wanted while she backed out of the handicap space into a regular space.  The same policeman who had called went out to unload my bike from the van, so I never saw her again.

I'm not sure what all happened in the station.  Dave had been sent home.  I promised to see to it that Dave called Darr's office.  Two people from CARES said they would come to our house to check Dave's meds at 11:30 the following day.

When Dave called Darr, he got an appointment at 10:00 with a practitioner who isn't our regular NP.  This made for a busy Tuesday.  She established that it hadn't been a stroke.

I'm pretty sure Dave made another call, but I forget who to.

At any rate, it was nothing much but we had quite a kerfuffle finding that out.

And I'm a bit nervous about trying to circumnavigate the lakes again.  I'd try it counter-clockwise, were it not that McElroy Hill is one-way north for cyclists over eighty.

 

Wednesday, 26 June 2024

Today I got milk on the bag I washed on Wednesday the 12th.  I turned it inside out before putting it into the laundry basket and noticed that I'd washed the ink off the "All cotton/wash in cold water/do not use bleach" label.

I went to Aldi to get chips for Saturday's fireworks, but Weather Underground says there's a good chance there will be no fireworks.

I'd planned to buy chips on Thursday, but tomorrow is the only day in the forecast when I can dry a sheet on the line, so I'll stay home and do laundry.

 

27 June 2024

Also washed the sunscreen off my black knickers.  I fear that they will be covered with white stains before I mount up again.

Steve repaired our barn roof and cleaned the house roof and gutters today.

We had meatballs and noodles for supper tonight.  The noodles took more than five times as long to cook as I allowed for it, weren't quite done when served, and I burned the meatballs.  I'll serve frozen fried chicken tomorrow; that's sure fire.

I remembered to get the egg carriers out of the cooler and put two of them into the freezer with a cup of water each in them.  Eighteen eggs are laid out to devil tomorrow, and I have the ingredients for the cheese dip and the yogurt dip.  I'll make the yogurt dip tomorrow so the garlic chives will have time to infuse, and make the cheese dip at the last minute.

I just now verified that I know where the candle warmer is.

Weather Underground still says thunderstorms for Saturday, but the probability starts dropping from 77% at seven in the morning, to 23% and still falling at ten in the evening.

I haven't heard of a rain date.  I think that they re-scheduled the show for fall the last time it was rained out.

 

28 June 2024

A pleasant surprise.  I got the egg carriers out of the freezer intending to add water to level the ice, but the peaks of the ice fit into dents in the egg trays, so I'm leaving well enough alone.

Sherry and Linda came for a visit this morning.

19:33 — half past seven.

Eggs devilled and in presentation trays, yogurt dip made, two cans of each flavor of soda in the soda fridge, ice in the ice bucket and bucket in the freezer, I know where the candle warmer for the cheese dip is, the chips have been brought into the house, tires on the bike are hard and it's ready for the farmers markets tour . . .

And Weather Underground says it's all going to be rained out.

 

Saturday, 29 June 2024

I got into my knickers without getting sunscreen on them this morning.  But I'd be marking them up good while typing this if I hadn't postponed sunscreening my arms until just before I put on my jersey.

I opened the side door of the garage to empty my water bottles before putting fresh water in them, and saw that last night's rain had left a small puddle in the park.  A clutch of baby ducks were practicing swimming, and mama duck stood lifeguard near the edge.

An hour and three-quarters before the fireworks started, Dave came into the sewing room and said "Did you invite anybody, like Donny and Darryl?"

Duh.

There's a new B&B across the street where we could have put them up.

 

Sunday, 30 June 2024

I was actually cold on my way to church today.

 

Monday, 1 July 2024

A rather busy weekend. I don't think I mentioned the party for Dave & Jeanie's fiftieth.