I have a question about shutting down Agent that I would like to ask on the Agent newsgroup. But I think about it only when shutting down Agent.
Dug up the onions today, and laid them out in the garden to dry. I dug the garlic several days ago and it's bleaching on the picnic table. I have about a hundred times as much garlic as I need.
Nearly everything is pitifully weedy.
In the intervals of doing the wash, I was ripping seams at the picnic table. When returning after the first time my timer went off, I decided that a patio chair would be more comfortable and took the cushion that I left out in the rain a few days ago.
It isn't quite dry yet. Since my jeans are already damp, I continue to use it -- it will dry faster on the patio than in the garage.
The sweat stain didn't come out of my do rag, and my best bra acquired new and startling orangy stains. Then I saw brown stains on my Floral Basket dress -- but that turned out to be baskets showing through from the other side. Whew! I don't like that dress very much, but I have only three summer dresses. (And I'm not terribly fond of the other two, either.)
I rode to the Visitor Center yesterday. If you are determined enough, you *can* get there from here.
I stopped in at Payless Shoes as a matter of principle, and found a pair of tan sandals. I prefer dark sandals, but if the shoe fits, buy it! Aside from color, they are pretty much like my well-worn sandals except for lacking pull-on loops at the heel. Also stopped at Sally's Beauty supply and bought another plastic pumice. I found it in a clearance display, so it's lucky that I had the impulse to go in even though the old one is only half worn away.
The Visitor Center had the map I went after, but it is somewhat disappointing. There were no county maps -- perhaps I should have *asked* for a Whitley County map, but when I asked for bicycle maps (having forgotten that the name is "Michiana Area Bicycle & Pedestrian Facilities Map"), she brought out a folder of print-outs from the Web. I happened upon "Michiana . . ." while browsing the brochures.
When it covers only Elkhart, Kosciusko, Marshal, and St. Joseph Counties, I wonder what's with "Michiana" -- those counties are close to Michigan, but no cigar.
<examines credits> It's short for "Michiana Area Council of Governments Bicycle & Pedestrian Facilities Map. But you'd think they'd leave themselves room for naming another map someday maybe.
I'm trying to keep clean while waiting for time to walk to the Boathouse. I basted patches on an old pair of jeans this morning, but it was naptime when they were ready to stitch. I came to wish I'd finished them: I got up just as Dave had decided to walk up Chestnut Street to see what was going on, and when I jumped into my clothes to go with him, I had to put on my best pair of jeans.
Which aren't all that great; I've got to get around to sewing hooks and eyes on my new pair. After I get around to *buying* hooks and eyes.
We walked all the way to the hotel, switching to Sunday Lane where it becomes a walkway. It's a beautiful shady walk with lots of planted "wildflowers" in the park. But Park Avenue was very sunny and I got home badly wanting a shower. I changed into grubbies and Culta-Ezed the garden first. It needed it badly, and the job should be done again tomorrow. I also picked up all the onions I pulled a few days ago and moved them to the picnic table; I need to spread out some newspapers and bring them into the garage.
Buying bar-type eyes to sew on my new jeans was my major accomplishment this morning. Spent quite a while poking around the site to see whether I wanted something besides bars and round rack dividers.
I've been wanting to organize my half of the closet for a long time -- when I sort things, they don't stay sorted because I can't see where to put stuff back in, save for never-worn garments going clear to the back -- so I was delighted to see exactly the label I wanted on the Manhatten Wardrobe Supply site.
Then check-out revealed that I was spending almost as much on shipping as on merchandise; if I hadn't found the rack dividers, the shipping would have been substantially more than the merchandise. Which, though a shock, wasn't a surprise -- my habit of reading the entire catalog before placing an order goes clear back to Sears and Roebuck.
Then Dave got me a virtual credit-card number to pay with, and sent it to my computer four different times. First time, his computer claimed it was in my root, but Explorer showed no such file, so he e-mailed it to me. I downloaded the e-mail with JOY98, then backed up Thunderbird onto JOYXP (XP was bought as a back-up computer, but proved much better than 98 for web crawling, so I place Web orders from my secondary computer.) The back-up took quite a while, because I have a ludicrous number of archived e-mails and haven't figured out a way to back up Thunderbird without copying all of them. Then I restored the back-up copy of Thunderbird from the back-up file, which never takes very long (I presume that MozBackup has a way to skip files that match files in the destination folders), opened Thunderbird, and was about to copy the number when Dave said he'd figured out how to put a Notepad file on my desktop. So I cleared the desktop and looked: no file. This time it didn't take us long to realize that it was on 98's desktop, so he sent it a fourth time and I used that copy to paste into the order blank.
After I printed out the receipt, I noticed that there were only two sheets of paper in the printer, and opened a new package to refill it.
Thank goodness one gross of bars is a lifetime supply!
When I checked my mail after supper, there was a note from UPS saying my package is due here on Tuesday.
Tuesday is also the first day that Dave can have O's Computer look at the stuck switch on his computer. All the cameras will be down until the computer is repaired or replaced. And he just received a new camera, too!
I Culta-Ezed the garden today, and it looks pretty good. Found an onion, a garlic bulb. and a potato smaller than the garlic.
Now that I've got the weeds out, I should plant radishes or some other quick-maturing crop. There are greens that like cold weather.
I noticed this morning that the bruise I first noticed the day after the Fiasco de Columbia City is completely gone. The small one that appeared on its rim a few days ago is pale but still uniform. If I knew how I get these, I'd stop doing it.
Every morning I resolve that when I've used up my Neutrogena Age Shield Face, I'll buy Neutrogena Wet Kids to replace it. I took it for granted that putting on high-powered sunscreen without leaving white streaks was a time-consuming process until I bought the Wet Kids stick for the backs of my hands. Just rub it across once, and you're done -- and both screens are 70 SPF.
And I suspect that the 70 I spread very, very thin on my face doesn't offer as much protection as the 30 that I slop thickly on my arms and legs.
For those who are saying "???? special sunscreen for the backs of the hands?": stuff on hands rubs off really, really fast even if you don't wash them, so I needed something that I can carry in my pocket. (I do hope that it isn't a summer-only product.)
I'm planning the usual Farmer's Market tour today. With a stop at Owen's on the way back to buy peanut butter. I thought we had a jar in the freezer, but it's "creamy", which Dave doesn't like. I don't know how we come by all those jars of "creamy"; I haven't bought any on purpose since I gave up making peanut-butter cinnamon balls.
Finally got the peanut butter today, when I bought a roasted chicken for supper. Delicious, but I ate too much. And now I want to go back for the other wing.
I took the computer to O's just before they closed on Monday. Come Tuesday, Dave went in and learned that it isn't a stuck switch, it's the motherboard. They think they can salvage the hard drive. Dave's cameras are going to be down for a while. Also our bookkeeping program. Dave installed a new copy on JOYXP and put the latest back-up on it; it may stay there until the next crisis.
Monday Morning, Dave got a chunk cut out of his nose. It wasn't nearly as bad as expected, and he was out of the operating room in minimum time, without skin grafts. The part of his nose poking out from the dressing looked like plastic when I first saw him, but it turned normal color when the swelling had gone down a little. When he scrubbed the blood off Tuesday, it looked fairly normal except for the line of stitches. And it's still a bit swollen.
On Tuesday he didn't need the strong stuff prescribed, just Tylenol, so he was able to drive to O's himself. He brought a sub back from Jimmyjohns next door, which we split for supper.
And tonight I bought a pre-cooked chicken, but tommorrow I'm going to have to resume cooking. Probably something made of left-over chicken.
I had my teeth cleaned this morning, and I'll have to go back on Monday to have a cavity filled.
Al was checked out recently and is Just Fine.
On Tuesday I did the wash and sewed half the hooks and eyes on one pair of my new jeans, so I had new pants to wear to the dentist today -- with safety pins on one side. There's time to do the other side tonight, but I don't feel ambitious.
Nor do I feel up to getting ready to ride a quarter century tommorrow, even though I have a new route.
A while back I read about a Warsaw-to-Elkhart race, and somehow that drew my attention to Pisgah Marsh in the opposite direction. It's a very nice quarter-century ride, once you somehow get to the north side of US 30, and I could come back between the Barbee Lakes, but (yawn) we have a boardwalk right here in town. Of course the Pisgah boardwalk is higher, and you have to park the bike and walk.
Checked Google Maps Satellite View, and the boardwalk looks longer than the Beyer Farm Trail — at least there are more turns to it. Seem to be gazebos at intervals along the way.
There's no way to look at both trails at the same time, so I may be using larger magnification on the Pisgah Marsh trail.
It's a pity that the local bike club doesn't have an active mailing list. There must be some places to go around here.
Dave says that I can buy good pizza at the Barbee Hotel. His data is out of date, but Google Maps says there is still a restaurant there. Of course Google Maps is also out of date.
When I went to the grocery yesterday, there was a lot of digging going on at the Krebs Trailhead Park. From Market Street, and in a car, I couldn't see what was going on. The place has been looking finished for weeks, save for landscaping.
The nearest hole was very deep, and in the corner of two streets. Perhaps they are hooking up the plumbing in the restrooms.
Grump. Searched for web sites about the park, and learned that it's all done with voluntarily- contributed money. There goes my hope that they were drawing down the funds devoted to the destruction of Market Street.
Unusually short cascade this morning: a while back, the light bulb in the sewing room burned out and I replaced it with the first bulb to come to hand, which was rather dim. Since I've been sewing on the patio, this didn't annoy me enough to Do Something, but today Dave came in to fiddle with XP, and complained that he couldn't see to use the computer. So after he left, I swapped in a hundred-watt bulb, which was the brightest bulb in the caddy. (We seem to be out of Reveal, and I gather that it's illegal to sell color-correct incandescents now, so I'm not going to bother to hunt.)
(And no, the curly bulbs won't do. What with the various eye problems I have, fluorescent light just won't focus.)
I had to pull the caddy out of the closet, and there had been a lot of dust and dirt under it, so I fetched the broom to sweep out the berth before putting the caddy back. Then when I started to take up the pile of dirt, I saw that it wasn't much dirtier than the rest of the floor, so I swept the entire kitchen.
And I remembered what I'd been doing. But I sat down here instead of doing it.
I'm wanting my nap even though I haven't digested breakfast yet.
On the way home from the Farmer's Market, I detoured to take a lap around the Krebs Trailhead construction site. ??? A chunk of railroad? Yes, complete with ties, ballast, and rails; only needs to have the rails spiked to the ties. The rails look as though they'd been buried a long time; might be part of what they dug up preliminary to digging foundations for the restroom building and the shelterhouse. Also some short pieces of rail lying around; it's not clear whether they are scraps or part of another decoration.
So when I checked Google News tonight, the second- highest headline is "Historic Railroad Reconstructed in Warsaw". I don't think that exhibiting a hundred feet of rails constitutes "reconstruction".
The story says that the "scraps" I saw are to be made into a sign explaining what the rails are.
Dave went to the air show while I was touring the markets, then in the evening we walked to the old- car show together. The show was supposed to close at six and it wasn't five yet, but half the cars were gone and we just barely got to the calliope before the trailer it was in was closed up for transport. The owner said that an auto museum stores it for him.
Good news: another Stacy Page story said that they are going to bike-lane Center Street before they desecrate Market. Unfortunately, bike-laning doesn't cost much or take long -- which, I think, is what endears it to FOBs.
("Friends of the Bike" are people who will do *anything* to promote cycling, as long as it doesn't involve knowing anything.)