---L--P+----1----@10--2----+----3-----        R        

      This afternoon I finally got up the 
   energy to take the winter's accumulation of 
   cardboard, brown paper, and magazines (and 
   half a basket of junk mail) to the Town 
   Hall.  They'd piled up some dirt around the 
   boxes, so stretching to the narrow little 
   slot didn't hurt as much as it used to.  It 
   helped that someone had left a box of 
   Compton's Encyclopedia beside the dumpster, 
   so I didn't have to bend clear to the ground 
   to pick up another few sheets of paper.  
   Still took a while to feed it all through.  
      Afterward I went to Olsen's to see whether they 
   had a grubbing hoe; I didn't expect them to have 
   one, because they are a nursery that has a 
   few tools in one corner.  I won't be 
   <em>too</em> surprised if I strike out at 
   Price Greenleaf -- and what a shame that I 
   didn't remember them when I picked up 
   Erica's pills a few days ago.  But while 
   looking around, I noticed the bucket of zinc 
   markers and remembered that I'd used the 
   last of my half dozen while planting onions.  
   I'd remembered the price as a quarter and 
   these were sixty cents, but that's still a 
   lot cheaper than markers that aren't a tenth 
   as good.  Decided to buy ten and not come 
   back for a couple of years -- then after I 
   put the groceries away, I got out my can of 
   ancient seeds and decided to use some of 
   them up by planting short rows thickly sown, 
   and used up all ten markers immediately.  

   28 April 1995  
      Triple take: when I got back from 
   Colonie, there was a package in the door -- 
   an envelope of the sort used for mailing 
   small non-breakables.  Aha, says I, Lady 
   Grace finally sent my bra.  Picked it up and 
   saw "Craft Gallery" on the return address, & 
   figured it was only my back-ordered knitting 
   needle.  Opened it & was puzzled by the hank 
   of yarn.  There was supposed to be yarn with 
   the needle, but only a little card of heel-
   and-toe yarn.  Dime dropped when I read the 
   label & remembered ordering persian wool to 
   make a pair of socks after finishing the 
   afghan.  The needle for the afghan is from 
   Patternworks.  Then a while later I glanced 
   at the window to see Margie bringing in the 
   mail (whichever one sees the mailman first 
   empties both boxes) with a package under her 
   arm, again one that looked as though it 
   might have clothing in it.  It was addressed 
   to Dave, from his mother.  
      He couldn't wait until his birthday, of 
   course -- it's a lovely shirt.  
      I made a bad choice of shirts yesterday.  
   I heard a prediction of afternoon showers, 
   and wondered whether I should cancel the 
   trip, since I'm not in shape yet and a chill 
   when you're tired can be dangerous.  Decided 
   the risk was small, since I'd be in the car 
   or near shelter most of the time, and one 
   can wait out a shower.  But just in case, 
   I'd better not wear any cotton.  So I peeled 
   off my cotton undershirt and dug into the 
   drawer where I'd stored away all my winter 
   undershirts the previous day.  Alas, the 
   only short-sleeved winter undershirt is 
   polypropolene, and the afternoon turned out 
   warm and sunny -- I nearly fried.  
      Didn't help that I never thought of 
   taking sunscreen, so I didn't dare to peel 
   my long-sleeved jersey off my winter-white 
   skin.  However, when not under a roof I was 
   generally moving fast enough that it wasn't 
   too bad.  
      I mentioned last August that they had re-
   opened the crossing of Washington where it 
   cuts Springsteen, but I didn't explore to 
   see where the other end of Springsteen went.  
   I'll never know now -- the cut end has been 
   replaced by a Walmart store!  Very 
   convenient; next time I go to Colonie, I'll 
   stop at Walmart on the way out.  (Should 
   have checked to see whether they have a 
   parking place.)  The access road has been 
   cut between Walmart and Rapp, but only by a 
   gate, which doesn't bother bicycles any.  
   The gate is the unlockable kind, so I 
   presume that they mean to leave the roads 
   there for emergency vehicles.  
      It was a good trip, aside from sweating.  
   I forgot to take my muffin bars along, but I 
   remembered them on my way into Price Chopper 
   to buy cat litter, so I got three bananas 
   and a box of breakfast bars.  The box said 
   each bar contained a quarter of the "Daily 
   Value" of nineteen nutrients, and I disposed 
   of four bars before I got home, so I presume 
   that I overdosed on something.  
      I found, by the way, that a 
   10<1/2>"x15<1/2>" jelly-roll pan is just 
   right for one cup of muffin mix, one cup of 
   sunflower seeds, and one cup of raisins.  I 
   greased it lightly and then put in a layer 
   of sesame seeds, and it didn't stick at all.  
      When I ordered the persian wool, I 
   couldn't resist the temptation to order a 
   fancy crochet hook with a fat handle and a 
   tube to slip over the business end when it 
   isn't in use, but when I tried it out at the 
   Auxiliary meeting yesterday evening, I 
   couldn't work with it at all and switched to 
   the hook I've been carrying in the case of a 
   felt-tip pen.  
      I've started another antimyfrieda to 
   proofread my oblong-afghan instructions, and 
   bagged it up to take to the meeting, since 
   it's just the right size to work on in 
   public. Alas, I remembered the instructions, 
   but forgot the chart.  So when I got to 
   "Work Row 13 of the chart" a few minutes 
   after the other girls arrived, I had to 
   start crocheting a ball cover.  I'm using 
   five different colors of wool in my afghan, 
   and only one of the balls is covered.  When 
   you are tossing them around all the time, 
   they need hairnets.  
      I think it would be a good plan to get 
   into the habit of riding to Colonie every 
   Thursday.  After a bit, perhaps I can start 
   from here.  
      Got a little more shoveling done in the 
   garden, and planted the dill seeds.  Didn't 
   plan to plant them quite so soon, but the 
   packet got wet.  Have a few more catnip 
   plants to move before I can plant the 
   gherkins.  
      The first bindweed is up -- in the 
   aparagus bed where I have to pull it leaf by 
   leaf, of course.  I'm not going to have 
   things in the garden all my way any more.  
      Also have picked an asparagus spear.  Hope I 
   don't forget to cook it for breakfast. 

   29 April 1995  
      Didn't feel like asparagus for breakfast.  
      Today Dave brought his new hamshack desk 
   into the dining room -- after measuring 
   every door in the house.  It makes the room 
   look much neater.  
      Now I've got to clean up my half.  
      While clearing off the old table, we 
   found a Flye catalog I've been looking for 
   for months.  We put it on the old printer 
   and promptly buried it under other papers.  
      The 47" needle came in today's mail, a 
   couple of weeks earlier than predicted.  I 
   knitted it into my afghan, and spent the 
   evening muttering "boy, this afghan soaked 
   that needle right up!" because the stitches 
   were as crowded as before.  When I got up to 
   go to bed, I discovered that I'd dropped 
   another 47" needle into the easy chair.  
      I believe I've got five 47" needles in 
   the afghan.  
      Spent some of that knitting time watching 
   Babylon 5, but not much.  I finally 
   succeeded in recording an episode I hadn't 
   seen -- and the tape ran out just as the 
   plot got going good.  
      The timer had turned it off a split 
   second before the tape ran out, and I'd set 
   it for four hours at 4:30.  That should have 
   caught a show that ends at 7:00.  
      Maybe I'd better check the TV guide.  It 
   took a looong time to fast-forward through 
   the two one-hour shows before it -- perhaps 
   one of them was a two-hour show.  
      Was thinking it was time to take another 
   look at the video store, but it has been a 
   metal-detector store for more than a year 
   now.  

   30 April 1995  
      With the 47" needle was an advertisement 
   for hairnets for balls of yarn.  But though 
   the "Nifty Nets" are only forty cents each, 
   I think I'll stick to my hand- crocheted 
   nets.  I'm thinking of tatting a 
   "mignonette" net out of Speed-Cro-Sheen or 
   some other size 1 thread.  
      Dave fired up the lawn mower today, and I 
   mowed the front lot almost back to the maple 
   trees.  
      TV shows sure get hard up for something 
   to palpitate about.  Some show -- perhaps 
   Sixty Minutes -- read a letter from a 
   soldier who said that if ever he is ordered 
   to shoot unarmed American civilians, he will 
   desert.  We were supposed to be alarmed 
   about that!  
      I'm reading <i>The Thor Conspiracy</i>, a 
   book about how things might be if the EPA 
   got all the power it wants.  The BATF looks 
   like a more likely candidate to bring 
   western civilization down, but to be 
   published in 1995, the book had to have been 
   written before the Waco incident.  
      The fellow has quite a story to tell, but 
   he hasn't the foggiest idea how to tell it.  
   Here is one of his better paragraphs: "It 
   shook him thoroughly; he knew the EPA was 
   wrong.  There were no trials or juries -- 
   only judges: young men and women with 
   automatic weapons turned loose on a town.  
   He still got sick when he thought about 
   mothers with children being cut down as they 
   ran.  And now the EPA was being hailed in 
   the media for its forceful and decisive 
   action in preventing further bloodshed."  
      Not too bad in isolation, but if the 
   previous two pages had been written 
   properly, only the last sentence would have 
   been necessary.  And I still don't see Andy 
   as a shaken man.  Indeed, until looking 
   back, I had mistaken Andy for Dale.  The 
   story starts with Dale running for his life, 
   but from page five to my bookmark at page 
   twenty-two, it's all told through Andy's 
   eyes, gradually leading me to remember Andy 
   as the opening's fugitive.  
      It's too much to expect Burkett's 
   description of the destruction of Belden to 
   leave me weeping with rage the way Card 
   would have written it, and I wouldn't want 
   him to leave me sick with horror as Drake 
   would have, but it isn't too much to ask him 
   to convince me that the events upset 
   <em>Andy</em> -- and even a beginner could 
   signal his turns when he jumps from head to 
   head.  
      The blurb says the author is primarily an 
   author of non-fiction.  I suppose he could 
   be carrying over the habit of playing down 
   the emotional aspects of what he has to say, 
   and perhaps he feels guilty whenever he 
   invents a convincing detail.  

   2 May 1995 
      That's spring for you: I haven't finished 
   mowing the lawn, and there are already 
   unsightly tufts of orchard grass in the 
   front lot.  
      We think my car has a gasoline leak.  I 
   didn't smell anything while taking out the 
   trash, but my nose is a trifle stuffy.  
   There is a dark spot on the pavement under 
   the car, on the same side as the filler cap, 
   and it didn't rain last night.  
      Started smelling gas when I topped off 
   the tank -- perhaps the leak is in the fill 
   pipe.  
      Poor Fred -- I filled the kitchen with 
   smoke while pan-broiling hamburger patties 
   for breakfast, and he thought the windows 
   were going to be open all day.  It's not 
   that warm quite yet.  
      Fred has decided that he's got what it 
   takes to be an outdoor kitty.  The last time 
   he escaped, we took a few laps around the 
   cars before I could chase him back inside.  

   3 May 1995  
      Twice this morning, I took the bottle of 
   hot oil out of the fridge, intending to put 
   some in my tea.  I'm going to have to store 
   it farther from the grenadine.  
      A long time ago I bought a bottle of 
   Rose's grenadine syrup, intending to put it 
   into fruit salad, but I haven't used much of 
   it because it has no flavor.  Lately I've 
   taken to making a pot of Celestial 
   Seasonings "Mandarin Orange Spice" for 
   breakfast, and sweetening it with Rose's 
   grenadine does add a little cherry flavor.  

   4 May 1995 
      I did go to Colonie today, but discovered 
   a little snag: the crossing where 
   Springsteen ends in Walmart's parking lot is 
   <em>one way</em>.  So I had to ride all the 
   way to Rapp, and ride back on the other 
   access road.  Couldn't see any other 
   crossings from the intersection, and this 
   stuff is too new to be on the maps.  
      Which is made irrelevant by another snag 
   in the plan to ride to Colonie every 
   Thursday: I've seen Walmart now, and I 
   bought more books than I can read before 
   next Thursday -- or, rather, more books than 
   I <em>ought</em> to read before next 
   Thursday.  There is no reason to go back 
   before there has been time to replenish the 
   50<cent> funnybooks.  Funnybooks are scarce 
   among the action comics, so I have to go 
   through two long boxes to find half a dozen.  
      I remembered to take my muffin bars this 
   time, and put the remaining "breakfast bar" 
   in my pocket too, but had a taco salad at 
   Walmart's instead.  I teased the clerk about 
   saying "sauerkraut" instead of "sour cream," 
   whereupon she presented me with a little 
   saucer of sauerkraut!  Y'know, gang, 
   sauerkraut ain't half bad on a taco salad; 
   you perch a little pinch on each slice of 
   hot pepper and it kind of mellows it.  
      The real joy of having a stop at 
   Walmart's on the trip is that they have 
   restrooms, right next to the snack bar so 
   that you can wash up first--and there's 
   another set at the back of the store.  
      I bought some clearance poly-cotton to 
   test Dave's shirt pattern with, a gallon of 
   reconstituted grape juice, and a spool of 
   nylon twine.  When I did the wash yesterday, 
   I used the last of the old spool to make a 
   clothesline for the rags.  

   6 May 1995 
      I've finally cut out my black denim 
   trousers.  Started yesterday, but Dave came 
   home for supper and I pulled the assembly 
   off onto the floor -- I'd been ironing the 
   denim on the dining table -- and the cats 
   enjoyed the new carpet until this evening.  
   Frieda killed the piece destined to be the 
   front several times while I was cutting out 
   the back and the little pieces.  Discovered 
   that a rotary cutter is much easier to use 
   if I draw around the pattern with a pencil, 
   then remove the pattern before cutting.  The 
   ploy was inspired when I cut out the front, 
   which I wanted to cut away for a jeans-style 
   pocket without mutilating the pattern.  This 
   will make two fewer hooks to sew onto the 
   waistband, and will have the front flap 
   entering the seam at right angles instead of 
   merging into it, which will be easier to sew 
   and ought to make it more durable.  
     'course, it does mean that the extra eyes 
   for adjusting the waistband will be front 
   and center instead of tucked away under my 
   elbow -- but this is working clothes.  
      And they are black.  

   8 May 1995  
      Got the pants sewed together yesterday; 
   now need to press & top-stitch one more seam 
   and add the waistbands.  I plan to tape the 
   hems, because the cloth is thick, so I 
   reeled off six yards of the gray tape and 
   basted a mark every twelve inches, partly to 
   mark the part that had been soaked, and 
   partly because I was curious as to whether 
   it would shrink.  A yard shrank to 34".  
      Decided to take the tape out of the water 
   just before I started pressing seams, and it 
   worked out neatly: laying a strip of wet 
   tape over a seam while I ironed it dry 
   flattened the seam beautifully.  I may cut 
   myself a twill seam-pressing cloth from one 
   of the cotton tapes.  
      I found the holes in the bottom of the 
   iron a great nuisance; I'll have to keep an 
   eye out in thrift shops for a repairable dry 
   iron.  For pressing seams, a little travel 
   iron would do.  
      Sunday morning, Dave said "Erica wants 
   in.  I groggily peered at the clock and said 
   "Nonsense; you let her in last night."  Then 
   I remembered that it was still light when I 
   started to cut out the pants at 8:00, and 
   Dave had been in bed for some time then, so 
   nobody turned on the porch light.  I spent 
   the entire evening in the living room where 
   I couldn't see her out the window, and might 
   not have heard her meow -- though so far, 
   she seems to think that meowing works only 
   when you want out, so she probably didn't.  
      Not only did we have a hard frost that 
   night, she was out at least twelve hours, 
   having gone out when we got back from pizza, 
   which was before Babylon Five started at 
   6:00 -- and when I got out the pills, I 
   found that Saturday's arthritis pill was 
   still in the box!  
      She took a long nap in the entry, then 
   went upstairs to bed.  
      While ignoring my poor kitty, I stayed up 
   until midnight reading one of the books of 
   short stories that I bought on my last trip.  
   Nothing to write home about.  It's very hard 
   to write a good short story, because it's 
   difficult to lay out your background, 
   introduce your characters, set up your 
   situation, etc. in such a small space.  
   That's doubled in spades in fantasy, where 
   you also have to explain the laws of nature, 
   tell what species your protagonist is, etc.  
   This collection tried to short-circuit that 
   problem by describing a medieval-type fair 
   and having everyone use this common 
   background -- but though the stories are all 
   at the same fair, and more-or-less on the 
   same world, no two are in the same universe.  
   The story that was described as a proposal 
   for a novel was less excerpt-like than many 
   of those that were meant to be complete.  
      The editors saved the best story for 
   last, an amusing tale of an inept wizard who 
   cast two evil spells that added up to one 
   good spell.  It was slightly marred by the 
   assumption that medieval women of the 
   working class put on a clean shift every 
   morning, as if they had washing machines, 
   but I must remember to look for more fiction 
   by Elizabeth Waters.  

   10 May 1995  
      Yesterday two or three boys and a great 
   load of equipment came and mowed all of 
   Margie's lawn, and tore up and reseeded part 
   of it.  I was surprised when they left 
   without running their little tiller through 
   the place where her elm-stump rotted out.  
      I didn't happen to see them using that 
   enormous riding mower, or the walk-behind 
   that was bigger than most riding mowers.  
      Poor Dave!  He came past Ellenbogen's 
   just as I was backing out of my parking 
   space, so he went home and waited for me to 
   come and fix his lunch.  And waited, and 
   waited.  Meanwhile, I was at the hardware 
   store, where I didn't find a suitable hoe 
   but did find a packet of lamp wick, and at 
   Super Value buying his supper.  
      Which I absent-mindedly put into the 
   freezer in a bag of TV dinners.  It wasn't 
   brick-hard when I made the meat loaf, but it 
   was a bit lumpy to mix in.  Dave raved; 
   perhaps it was the stale cheese bread; more 
   likely it was the Knorr boullion cube; Dave 
   do like things salty.  
      The loaf also contained some chopped 
   scallions from the last clump of mis-placed 
   winter onions.  They are starting to go to 
   seed, so the timing on that worked out 
   nicely.  Except that the planted onions 
   aren't anywhere near ready to use.  I'll 
   have to buy one of those huge slicing onions 
   that Dave loves.  
      Past time to dig the catnip out of the 
   raised flowerbed and put some Joe Rickets 
   strawberries in.  After all that time spent 
   moving catnip out of the garden, I think 
   I'll move the catnip from the flowerbed into 
   the garden -- but in rows.  
      Yesterday I finally got the last of the 
   mowing done -- about a week after time to 
   start over at the front -- but it's too wet 
   today to mow up some dried clippings for 
   mulch, and I doubt that they will be fit to 
   mow up when the sun comes out on Friday.  
      I hope we're one of the spots that get 
   showers today; misty drizzle isn't enough to 
   bring up garden seeds.  After the previous 
   rain, the ground under the pines was still 
   cracked and dry.  
      It was a dry winter and a dry spring, and 
   there are no reserves, but nothing is 
   hurting for water yet, not quite.  
      Also got the wash done yesterday.  Today 
   will be a good day to finish my new pants -- 
   which I need, having thrown my old pants 
   into the wash after mowing the tall grass -- 
   and maybe cut out a shirt or do some 
   mending.  

   Thursday 11 May 1995  
      Grump.  I just tried to put a new wick 
   into my old lamp, and discovered that it was 
   a trifle too narrow and about twice too 
   thick.  
      Haven't found kerosene in a bottle yet, 
   either.  "Scented lamp oil," I learned 
   several years ago, smokes.  Probably meant 
   for the same kind of lamp as the "new 
   improved oil lamp wicks."  
      Somehow or another I got to bedtime 
   yesterday without having got anything much 
   done.  The all-day rain did the same; when I 
   took the garbage out in the evening, the 
   ground between the house and the windbreak 
   was bone dry.  This morning, I discovered 
   that I'd forgotten to close the driver's-
   door window in my car after going to the 
   dentist on Tuesday, and no mischief had been 
   done -- though I did have to towel off the 
   edge of the seat.  
      When I came out of Super Value, it was 
   raining about as hard as it could without 
   risk of washing.  I hope that's an omen -- 
   inside and out -- but it's only dripping 
   now.  And I'm not upstairs stitching or 
   scrubbing.  

   After lunch: 
      Thought a mouse had gotten into the house 
   -- Frieda cornered a salad-dressing cup 
   under the convector.  I fished it out for 
   her.  
      Balanced the bank statement before 
   checking my addition on the outstanding 
   checks, so I didn't.  
      CompuServe Magazine's "Mensa Puzzler", 
   which is supposed to be so complex that 
   you'll be driven to GO MENSA to get the 
   answer, usually calls for high-school math.  
   This month's puzzle, a third-grader could 
   work in his head.  
      A waiter sets a dish of dates in front of 
   three sleeping men.  Each wakes, eats one-
   third of the dates, and goes back to sleep.  
   (I presume that they were pitted dates, 
   since each man thought that the others 
   hadn't had any.)  Eight dates remain.  How 
   many dates did each man eat, and how many 
   more dates does each man have coming?  
      I'll set you another puzzle: how many 
   dates should you say were left if you want 
   to extend the puzzle to four sleeping 
   diners?  It would be more plausible, in this 
   case, to say the men were sharing a dish of 
   cherries or small local plums.  
      Perhaps I should send the magazine some 
   simple riddle.  If they print your 
   "puzzler," you get $35 in credit.  
      We had leftover meat loaf for lunch, and 
   Dave praised it again.  I'll never have that 
   assortment of stale breads again, though.  
      But if I see spinach bagels on the old- 
   bread table, I'll grab them to make meat 
   loaf.  

   15 May 1995  
      There were puddles on the driveway this 
   morning, and when I carried the catbox out, 
   the ground between the house and the 
   windbreak was actually wet, so I started 
   wondering whether we'd had some rain last 
   night.  We don't have a rain gauge, but 
   after a bit I remembered that I'd forgotten 
   half a buttermilk carton beside the oak tree 
   when I planted the hop vine.  Judging by the 
   amount of water that I dumped out before 
   putting it into the trash, we may have 
   gotten up to an eighth of an inch of rain -- 
   a downpour, by recent standards.  
      The three-day prediction, though, is for 
   weather that's damp but doesn't water 
   anything.  
      The oaks are leafing out.  Dave was upset 
   when I commented on the one close to the 
   house -- that's no place for an oak, he 
   said.  
      I don't expect to be around when it's as 
   big as its mommy.  At any rate, it will be 
   easy to cut down for at least ten more 
   years.  
      Stump will probably be more durable than 
   those left by the birches and the elm, 
   though.  
      I sorted the stack of junk mail Saturday 
   and got a thrill, which turned into 
   disappointment on Sunday.  
      As I frequently complain, I have never 
   liked my cycling shoes.  They are size 40 
   and I take a 39.  The one-strap Velcro 
   closing not only doesn't adjust the fit the 
   way laces do, it pops open at the most 
   inconvenient times.  My left cleat has been 
   broken for a couple of years, and now the 
   leather has worn through at the toe and heel 
   of that shoe, and the nylon mesh underneath 
   can't hold for long.  I've long been 
   searching for a new pair of shoes.  
      So I checked the Performance catalog more 
   from duty than hope, and there was the 
   Chronos!  Price is $59.99, which is almost 
   cheap for a cycling shoe now that they come 
   in umpty-bump incompatible "systems," and it 
   not only accepts a slotted cleat, you can 
   buy a spare cleat to put on when you wear 
   out the one you put down when you stop.  The 
   fastenings are Velcro, still, but there are 
   two straps instead of one, which should help 
   both the fit and the tendency to pop open.  
      So yesterday just before bedtime I sat 
   down to fill out the order blank -- and 
   found that the women's model comes only in 
   "Narrow" -- defined as width B.  There's no 
   way I could force my D width toes into that.  
   And the smallest man's shoe is 7, defined as 
   equivalent to the 40 I'm slopping and 
   sliding in now.  
      I think I'll write the company and ask 
   whether the replacement cleat can be nailed 
   to the Pacer shoe, or can it maybe be bolted 
   to the Specialized GC Sport.  

   16 May 1995  
      Got the four tomato plants set out today.  
   I set a milk jug full of water to the south 
   of each one to shield it from the noonday 
   sun.  
      My clothes from Title Nine Sports arrived 
   today, so I tried them out by riding my bike 
   to Indian Ladder.  I was planning to go from 
   Indian Ladder to Super Value, but they 
   happened to have some vine-ripe tomatoes, 
   which had been shipped in form-fitting 
   plastic.  You really can get good tomatoes 
   in the off season -- if you pay $2.29/lb.  I 
   had been planning to go to Super Value for 
   the components of the big juicy hamburger 
   that Dave has been pining for, including a 
   tomato, but decided to take the bird in hand 
   even though it meant going home before 
   riding to Super Value.  So I put in a couple 
   more miles than I planned.  
      Got a few unplanned things at S.V. & 
   stuffed my panniers, so it's good that I 
   disposed of the apples & pears first.  
      Clothes worked, though the "FROG" bra is 
   rather tight when I'm not leaning forward, 
   and "Supplex" (nylon) shorts don't slide as 
   easily as wool shorts, so that I had to keep 
   rising off the saddle to let my flab sproing 
   back.  The shorts also make it urgent to get 
   a skirt to put on when I get off the bike.  
   And this is one of the most modest styles of 
   shorts on the market!  
      Time to get around to ordering a pair of 
   double-knit wool shorts from Flye.  I have 
   the style sheet, but not the price sheet, so 
   I'll have to call them, and I never think of 
   it during business hours except when I have 
   some other job in hand.  
      Might be quicker to write and ask for a 
   price sheet.  
      Buds on the seedless Concord and the 
   southernmost Concord are swelling.  
      Many of the strawberry plants are in full 
   bloom.  Looks nice poking out of the 
   woodruff in the flowerbeds.  
      Still nothing but catnip in the raised 
   flowerbed.  
      I'm disappointed in the polycotton for 
   Dave's shirt.  I thought it was no-iron, but 
   it came out of the washer looking like rayon 
   underwear.  It's soft and loppy like rayon, 
   too, which will make it hard to cut, but 
   should make a comfortable shirt.  
      And the yarns of the cloth are shiny like 
   rayon.  I'm beginning to wish I could take 
   another look at the label on the bolt.  

   17 May 1995  
      A week or so ago I said to Dave, when is 
   the Continental sale over?  He said, "Uh, oh 
   -- remember how I nagged you for the date?"  
   But he went to Argus and bought tickets -- 
   round trip, anybody want to fly from Albany 
   to Purdue on August 7? -- for Flight 3116 
   out of Lafayette at 10:40 on Sunday, July 
   23.  
      They had a terrible time finding the 
   airport, which, apparently, isn't called 
   Purdue Airport any more nor yet West 
   Lafayette.  Finally found it under 
   "Lafayette" -- with a note that it's five 
   miles south of Purdue.  Last time I went 
   there it was on the southern edge of the 
   campus, but some part of Purdue has to be 
   five miles north of the airport.  
      Good thing it wasn't filed under the name 
   of the county.  I have no idea which county 
   Lafayette is in.  

   18 May 1995  
      Sigh.  It was such a relief to hand those 
   two file buckets of MHW stuff over to the 
   MHCC editor -- and now I desperately need to 
   file some stuff to get it off the piano and 
   the printer before it gets lost, and there 
   is no more space in the file drawer and no 
   obsolete files to toss out.  The only 
   solution I can think of is to buy a file 
   bucket.  

   20 May 1995  
      It was raining yesterday when I hung up 
   the clothes, then I went upstairs and, 
   apparently, slept through a shower.  The 
   rainy day not only didn't water the garden, 
   it didn't slow the drying of my laundry.  
      We had our first thin-crust pizza at 
   Smitty's tonight.  It was much thicker than 
   the regular pizza you get some places.  
      After I fed the cats, I changed my pants 
   and went out to mow the patch of weeds where 
   Dave insisted on moving the picnic table (he 
   likes a lot of half-dead spots instead of 
   one three-quarters dead spot.)  Put the last 
   of the gasoline into the mower first, then 
   decided that as long as I had it running, 
   I'd mow the front lot.  First time I've 
   mowed the lawn in my good shoes.  May make a 
   habit of it; it's annoying to change, and 
   one of the old touring shoes I usually wear 
   has broken in half.  
      Then I sat down and played computer games 
   until Dave's mother called.  Having been 
   woke up, I got up and ironed five shirts.  
   Not including the new shirt that Dave's mom 
   sent him for his birthday; even though it's 
   marked "all cotton," it came off the line 
   ready to put back on.  And one of the shirts 
   that I ironed is marked "permanent press"!  
      Had to get the ironing done tonight; I 
   dampened three of the shirts yesterday, and 
   they'd have stunk if I'd left them until 
   tomorrow.  I don't dampen shirts often & 
   think it will be a long time before I do it 
   again; that little lukewarm iron takes a 
   looong time to dry fabric -- even the thin 
   muslin of two of the shirts -- but it steams 
   pretty well.  

   21 May 1995  
      Hey, I think we're getting some actual 
   rain out there.  Good thing Dave locked Erk 
   in before he went to bed.  She spent last 
   night out again.  But this time it was 
   warmer and she'd had her arthritis pill.  I 
   found her on the step when I started out for 
   the paper, let her in, gave her a pill and a 
   snack, fetched the paper -- and she went 
   back out when I came in.  
      The lilac is in bloom, and so is the big 
   oak and the butternut.  I don't think I'd 
   seen oak blossoms before.  
      I ran the mower out of gas in the back 
   lot today.  No doubt the front lot will be 
   shaggy again by the time I finish it.  

   22 May 1995  
      I neglected to pull a weed in the cats' 
   pot of wheat, and yesterday it started 
   blooming and I recognized it: a viola!  
      How on Earth did it get there?  
      The violas in the flowerbed -- on the far 
   side of the house from where I got the dirt 
   for the pot -- are putting on a show.  

   24 May 1995  
      It's starting to rain again; the racing 
   team that was riding by when I noticed it 
   didn't look worried, but those that wear 
   glasses may need to wipe them.  
      The rain on the 21st didn't last much 
   longer than it took to mention it.  
      Rode to Colonie -- from Price Chopper, 
   still -- yesterday, then came home and spent 
   a few hours helping the auxiliary plant 
   flowers and prune juniper trees that are 
   supposed to be little bushes.  I went to bed 
   in severe need of a shower.  
      Should have taken some aspirin, too.  
      I wasn't much use this morning 
      The wee fine stuff I saw coming up in the 
   dill row a few days ago has vanished.  I 
   should have strung hose around the house and 
   sprinkled the garden.  The potatoes are 
   finally coming up, though.  I was beginning 
   to think that two plants was all I was 
   getting out of the thirty sets.  
      I think that the jerusalem artichokes are 
   tall enough that I can resume hauling mulch 
   in a few days.  
      Hoot mon!  There is water dripping out of 
   the downspout!  And puddles in all the low 
   spots on the blacktop.  

   25 May 1995  
      When I saw <i>The Man-Kzin Wars</i> 
   (Larry Niven with Poul Andersen and Dean 
   Ing, copyright 1988) at Canterbury Tales, I 
   took it for a novel I've seen heavily 
   advertised.  Instead, it's a short story and 
   two novellas.  About thirty pages into the 
   middle story, I skipped to the last one.  
   "Iron" read like the work of a promising 
   beginner, or some no-talent fresh out of a 
   good workshop.  It followed all the rules 
   for telling a good story, but you could 
   <em>see</em> it following the rules, the way 
   you can see a fourth-grader remembering the 
   words to a great poem he can almost recite.  
      I was flabbergasted when I turned back 
   and saw that it was by <em>Poul 
   Anderson</em>.  Was it a parody?  Did he 
   mail in his first draft?  
      When Dave left for work this morning, he 
   reminded me to close the windows if it 
   rains.  I'll believe in rain when I see 
   some.  
      Joe Donato is supposed to drop in this 
   afternoon and replace our outdoor faucets.  
   Now is a fine time to think of it, but the 
   way the back faucet didn't work is that it 
   wouldn't turn off.  I could have watered the 
   garden with it by turning on the water at 
   the inside valve.  
      It was certainly lucky that the faucets 
   had inside valves.  I don't understand why 
   all the other faucets don't have shut-off 
   valves.  We've got a panel to remove to 
   expose the pipes to the bathtub, but there's 
   nary a valve in sight; I don't know what the 
   panel is for.  
      Including a shut-off valve when plumbing 
   is installed must be more complicated than 
   it looks.  

   26 May 1995 
      We have finally gotten a nice prolonged 
   rain, and it isn't just misting down either.  
      Joe didn't show yesterday, but is supposed to 
   come today.  Presumably in the afternoon when it is 
   supposed to be partly cloudy.  
      And then it's supposed to be clear and 
   sunny for the parade tomorrow.  

   27 May 1995 
      Finished my afghan today.  I wish I'd 
   made it a little more long and less wide.  
      Attended the parade and the Friends of 
   the Library book sale in Voorheesville this 
   morning.  Brought back as many paperbacks as 
   would fit into my pannier, so I'm set for 
   reading matter for a while.  
      Made a discovery.  Voorheesville has no 
   place to park a car, and I wouldn't have 
   enjoyed the morning in my cycling clothes 
   even if I had something presentable 
   (Everything is stained, shabby, and too 
   tight -- except for a pair of lycra shorts 
   so thin that I can easily carry them in a 
   pocket even though they are knee length.)  
   The Elks are kind enough to let me change in 
   the ladies' room in their lodge, but of 
   course one has to go there to use it.  I was 
   trying to puzzle out a way to ride and walk 
   in the same outfit.  I can ride that far in 
   my sneaks, and I could wear a T-neck and my 
   purse instead of a jersey.  But jeans abrade 
   my knees unbearably, and pants ain't exactly 
   as easy to whip on and off as a wrap skirt.  
   Then I remembered that the memorable one-
   block ride had taken place in off-the-rack 
   jeans, so I pinned up the ankles of my 
   broadfalls, and found that I could ride just 
   fine.  I'm no longer so impressed with 
   myself for finishing my first Century 
   wearing jeans -- they must have been my 
   custom jeans with the taped seams and button 
   tabs at the ankles.  I'm not interested in 
   trying to repeat the feat, but I've just 
   simplified the logistics of short trips.  
      Pity I've just replenished my supply of 
   everyday pants.  Adding tabs to finished 
   seams would be far from easy.  

   1 June 1995  
      On the other hand, the tabs have to be 
   added after the seams are sewn anyhow -- to 
   make the pockets hang right, the outseam 
   allowances have to be pressed in a direction 
   that would make tabs point to the front.  
      The too-cold season has ended and the 
   too-hot season has begun.  I'd forgotten all 
   those sweat-soggy entries I typed into the 
   Banner last year.  
      I discovered, the last time I went to 
   Voorheesville, that jeans <em>do</em> rub on 
   your knees when your knees are wet.  
      So I've either got to find a source of 
   decent shorts or design a jersey with a 
   skirt to let down when I get off.  
      For short trips, my walking shorts would 
   probably work even though they are cotton.  
      A few days ago, I pulled up a bindweed 
   and got a piece of root a quarter inch thick 
   and five or six inches long.  Wasn't the 
   first root I pulled up either.  But the 
   others were the same diameter as the stems 
   and I seldom got more than an inch.  Perhaps 
   all these shallow, sprinkling rains have 
   drawn them to the surface.  
      I sprinkled the garden today -- rather 
   thoroughly, since I forgot the hose was 
   running.  Joe didn't come today -- again!  -
   - but I connected up the hose and turned on 
   the valve in the basement.  
      I think I'd better re-plant the dill and 
   the radishes.  The dill vanished, and the 
   radishes never showed.  The last time I 
   looked, though, there was a pair of 
   curcurbit-looking leaves in each of the two 
   hills of gherkins.  
      I don't believe I ever mentioned 
   <i>Generation Warriors</i>, Anne McCaffrey & 
   Elizabeth Moon, 1991.  It appears to be the 
   conclusion to the <i>Planet Pirates</i> 
   series mentioned on the cover of 
   <i>Sassinak</i>.  It was like the other 
   books in this universe in that I enjoyed 
   reading it, but felt cheated at the end.  
   This time it did come to a conclusion -- by 
   having the god-like Thek, with no imaginable 
   motive, step in and put everything to right.  
   This after firmly establishing that the Thek 
   did not interfere in the affairs of the 
   ephemerals except when the ephemerals 
   interfer in the affairs of the Thek -- at 
   the beginning, they referred to an incident 
   in which Lightweights and Heavy Worlders 
   were fighting over the possession of a 
   planet, and the Thek stepped in and said 
   "Excuse us, guys, but that's <em>our</em> 
   planet, and has been since your ancestors 
   were amoebae."  
      And it's a constant irritation that the 
   humans who were genetically adapted to high 
   gravity are <em>taller</em> than the 
   original stock.  
      I got a sackfull of books from the 
   Memorial Day book sale, among them Lois 
   McMaster Bujold's <i>The Warrior's 
   Apprentice</i>  (1986).  This has the 
   structure of a comedy, as Miles Vorkosigian, 
   a dwarf who wants to be a warrior on a 
   planet that worships physical perfection, 
   tries to get a date with his bodyguard's 
   daughter and the solution to each mishap 
   leads to a bigger problem to be solved by 
   more desperate means until he has, quite by 
   accident, founded the Dendarii Mercenaries.  
   After his acquittal for high treason, the 
   emperor, to Miles' great relief, takes his 
   army off his hands and orders him confined 
   to the military academy he broke both legs 
   trying to enter in the opening scene.  The 
   girl, alas, married Miles' chief engineer 
   and became the commander of the Dendarii 
   mercenaries.  
      Not many laughs in it, but it's a rip- 
   snorting adventure, and I was taken by the 
   characters, particularly Sergeant Bothari, 
   the bodyguard.  That's partly, of course, 
   because I've met him in previous books -- 
   particularly "Barryar," which explains why 
   he's insane.  
      I've also read a volume of Andy Capp 
   cartoons, and most of a slim volume of 
   eighty-four stories called "The Rest of the 
   Story."  Supposed to be by Paul Harvey, but 
   I gather that the next-to-the-last story 
   gives the REST OF THE STORY on that.  
      I've no idea what else is in the bag.  

   2 June 1995   
      I just checked the mirror, and the fat 
   lip isn't as conspicuous as I thought it 
   was.  When Fred comes stomping around my 
   head at night, I grab him and use him for a 
   pillow.  Which doesn't seem to discourage 
   him any.  (When wild cats get tame, they 
   overdo it.)  Last night I knocked him off 
   balance, and his back foot grazed my lower 
   lip.  As you may know, he can't retract his 
   back claws...  
      On the other hand, he spent the rest of 
   the night on the cedar chest.  
      It's about time I washed the wool flannel 
   I protect the pile of blankets with.  Don't 
   have another "cat sheet" to use in the 
   meanwhile, though, so I have to remember it 
   on washday.  

      Evening: the good news is that we had a 
   nice, drenching thundershower.  The bad news 
   is that I didn't see it coming soon enough 
   to call Erica in.  She's afraid of storms, 
   so she can't be enticed -- or swept with a 
   broom -- out from under the car when it is 
   raining.  
      I'm beginning to think I'll have to go to 
   bed and leave her out all night.  
      Went after the bindweed with a spading 
   fork today, and got quite a lot of root.  
   Can't do that close to plants, though.  
      And I found it rather strenuous.  

   3 June 1995                     
      I looked at Erica sprawled on the 
   blacktop and said that she looked slept in.  
   Dave said "She's <em>really</em> having a 
   bad fur day today."  Then he added that I 
   should have seen her last night.  He got up 
   some time in the night to let her in and rub 
   mud off her with paper towels.  This morning 
   he found a bite mark on her tail.  
      As soon as she'd had breakfast, she 
   wanted back out.  We persuaded her to nap in 
   the window instead, but about eleven I 
   couldn't stand the whining and opened the 
   door.  
      Afternoon: I picked up a garage-sale map 
   at the New Salem Reformed church, but after 
   hitting all the sales between here and the 
   church, I was too tired to be interested, so 
   I toured the rummage sale, had a "lunch 
   special" (sausage, peppers, & onion in a 
   roll, with a glass of Pepsi), and came home.  
   I'd seen a crock pot on the way out and 
   meant to pick it up on the way home, were it 
   still there, but I mis-remembered and went 
   past the place.  Since I hadn't been looking 
   forward to bungeeing a round object to my 
   rack, I didn't go back.  It was too big a 
   pot for two anyhow -- and, come to think of 
   it, I failed to look to see whether the 
   crock could be removed for washing.  I did 
   buy a small iron skillet just like the one I 
   use for scrambling one or two eggs; I have 
   often wanted to cook two little dribs at the 
   same time, but not together.  Also found a 
   set of oatmeal dishes at the rummage sale; 
   I've been looking for something to eat our 
   cereal from for a long time.  And I bought a 
   wooden cane at the first garage sale I 
   stopped at.  There has been many a time I 
   wished I had a cane in the house, and this 
   one seemed to fit.  It looks as though it 
   has had some serious use.  The walkers and 
   the aluminum cane were much less worn, so I 
   didn't ask any questions.  
      I was tempted by a kitchen chair, but 
   decided that if I had something to sit on, I 
   wouldn't work as hard at finding a place to 
   buy dining-room chairs.  No, I wasn't 
   planning to bungee it to the bike; that sale 
   was a short walk from the firehouse, and I 
   thought I could stash it and come back in 
   the car.  
      Hit the Locust Knoll Craft Sale on the 
   way back, and Howard Coughtry had some nice 
   picture frames -- but I'd gotten neat and 
   removed every last expired shopping list 
   from my purse, so I didn't have a note of 
   the size of our ham tickets.  I want to get 
   one frame for both.  
      Oh well, said the fox, the $5.00 frames 
   didn't have any glass in them so I'd still 
   have to go to the frame shop, and I wasn't 
   honestly interested in the $40.00 frames.  
   They were made to hold a pair of pictures, 
   but on a desk or in a bookcase.  
      I think Dave came home while I was out.  
   There's a new T.V. between the tuner and the 
   power supply.  
      Evening: Dave is displeased because the 
   tv/vcr has only one tuner, so that you can't 
   watch one show while recording another.  I 
   like the new machine -- you press fast 
   forward and release it, instead of having to 
   hold it until the end of the break, and it 
   fast-forwards much faster and gives you a 
   better idea of what you are fast-forwarding 
   past.  And you can tell what it's set to do.  
   Which is to record Babylon Five every 
   Saturday until told otherwise.  
      I thought tonight was going to be a 
   repeat of last night.  I didn't think to 
   call Erica in until the storm had started, 
   and she did not respond.  So I knitted a 
   while and watched Babylon Five -- a filler 
   show, and rife with implausibilities.  (The 
   storm on a "small dead moon" was the least 
   improbable of the sour notes.  Dr. 
   Franklin's instant romance with a widow of 
   three hours was the most jarring.)  
      Then I tried again, but the storm was in 
   full swing and I didn't really expect her to 
   respond.  She hadn't been under either of 
   the cars earlier; now it was dark, and it 
   was too wet to kneel on the pavement.  While 
   I was fiddling with the garage door, trying 
   to leave it high enough to admit a cat, but 
   no higher, Erica made a break for it -- 
   she'd been in the cellar all the time!  
      I fielded her and everyone is snug 
   inside, so I can call it great weather.  We 
   had clear and sunny for the New Salem Garage 
   Sale, the Locust Knoll Craft Fair, and 
   Sandy's auction, and now we're getting a 
   nice rain without too much storm.  Looks as 
   though June will make up for April.  
      Sandy sold all of Fred's tractors today; 
   most for much less than they are worth, but 
   she's shut of them; she even cleaned out the 
   dump.  Wrenching to see them go, but nice to 
   see all of them lined up in the sunshine.  
   She mowed a hayfield off 85-A to hold the 
   auction in, and the auction started just as 
   the garage sale ended.  Dave and I came in 
   for the end of the auction after we had a 
   Florentine pizza (broccoli, tomato, and 
   garlic garnished with spinach).  The guy who 
   bought the Bellarus came with a well-worn 
   flatbed, so I think he knows machinery.  
   Dave says he helped install the air 
   conditioning in the Bellarus.  
      I asked about Fred's fire truck, but she 
   said it had been vandalized so they hauled 
   it to the dump.  
      Hey, the cord on the earphones is long 
   enough to reach the computer.  I may try to 
   learn how to take code on a keyboard.  

   4 June 1995 
      And today I've got a turrible backache.  
   I should have bought both canes.  
      I think the new skillet is an antique; it 
   weighs about half as much as the old one.  
      The china bowls I bought look thin and 
   delicate, but while washing them I realized 
   that they are quite heavy; they feel about a 
   quarter inch thick.  The edge of the bowl is 
   cleverly flared to make them look dainty.  
   The outside curve is short and sharp; the 
   inside curve is longer and so gentle as to 
   create the illusion that it flares less than 
   the outside instead of more.  
      It's harder to throw a cloth over the ham 
   equipment now that there's a TV in the 
   middle.  I threw the old card-table cloth 
   into the wash and dug out one of the 
   Osnaburg curtains that I intend to replace.  
   Was thinking of cutting it to fit better, 
   but Dave is still looking at computer ads, 
   so I shouldn't get rambunctuous.  The 
   Osnaburg was cheap, but another batch won't 
   match.  And I've never measured the 
   leftovers to see whether there's enough for 
   three more door curtains -- I might have to 
   piece those that I made too short.  
      To think that this radio-cover project 
   started as a shower cap for one tuner.  It's 
   a good thing it never came to the top of my 
   priority list.  

   5 June 1995 
      Grump.  The backache is still in session.  
   I think it might be over tomorrow, though.  
   I should be careful what I buy at garage 
   sales.  
      The cane helped, when I finally 
   remembered that I had it, not by giving 
   support, but by making it possible to stand 
   up straight without tensing.  
      Joe is taking our plumbing apart.  Just 
   in time; Dave was about to hire Frisbee.  

   6 June 1995 
      After I stopped editing and took up code 
   practice, I also stopped being picky about 
   what I'd save for junk paper, and started 
   using both sides of obsolete letterhead.  
      But it will be a while before we work 
   through the GEAR '89 Saratoga letterhead to 
   the Step in Line for '89 letterhead.  
      Backache still in session.  This morning 
   I discovered that a recycling bin balanced 
   on the head works better than a cane.  On 
   the way out, I commenced wondering how I 
   would put it down.  (I'd picked it up by 
   dragging it into the doorway, then standing 
   three steps down outside.) But the handles 
   are at the top of the bin, so I could let it 
   slide down my front and get it about a foot 
   from the ground without bending at all.  
   Then I dropped it.  
      The latest issue of "Ultra Cycling" came 
   with a sample of "Aeroshield," a tinted 
   windscreen you are supposed to clip onto 
   your helmet to save wearing sunglasses.  
   I've never been tempted to wear sunglasses, 
   but I thought I'd try it -- until I found 
   that the "patented Aerotachment" has to go 
   exactly where my rear-view mirror is 
   mounted.  
      Oh well, said the fox, you have to allow 
   three days for the glue to set, so I might 
   not have done it anyway.  
      Pity I no longer go to MHW meetings, 
   where I could get rid of it.  But then,the 
   next MHCC meeting isn't until October, so 
   I'd have been stuck anyway.  
      The new faucets seem to work; I haven't 
   tried the one out back yet.  I'd better hook 
   up the short hose and use it to wash out the 
   catbox, which is due for cleaning today.  
   The faucet in the front was still working, 
   but showering, which was the first sign of 
   decay in the faucet out back.  I learned, in 
   the process, that the proper name for an 
   outdoor faucet is "sillcock." What would you 
   call the same tap mounted on an isolated 
   pipe instead of a sill?  Probably still 
   "sillcock"; how often do you turn pancakes 
   with a pancake turner?  
      I didn't understand until just now what 
   Joe meant when he said that he had a hard 
   time re-connecting the ground cable for the 
   lightning rod.  The new sillcocks are 
   <em>plastic</em>.  
      According to "The Miracle of Language," a 
   tap was originally a bung.  Started out 
   meaning "a piece cut out," then we adopted a 
   "tap" that meant "strike lightly" from 
   another tongue, so the meaning of the noun 
   specialized to "piece cut out and pounded 
   in."  Then somewhere along the way we 
   switched to "bung" for a solid piece pounded 
   in and "tap" for a bung with a cock in it.  
      The book didn't discuss "cock."  
      A grateful chore: embroidering four more 
   eyes on my everyday pants so that I can hook 
   the waistband an inch smaller.  I fear that 
   it may have more to do with the yielding 
   properties of cotton than with the exercise 
   I've been getting.  
      Perhaps I should try on my polyester 
   pants.  
      The cane is no help at all today.  I must 
   be getting better.  Riding to Indian Ladder 
   and to Super Value yesterday helped -- rests 
   the back without letting it stiffen up.  
      So I'm trying to make myself go out 
   again.  

   7 June 1995 
      Was spell-checking Bill Dunn's letter, 
   which I finally finished punching in a week 
   or two back, and noticed the phrase "my 
   favorite cook of thirty years."  So he has 
   to be in his late forties at the youngest.  
      After punching it in, I noticed that on 
   the back of the envelope is written in 
   pencil, "Nancy Eliott and Katie Dunn, 729- 
   165 St, Hammond Ind."  Presumably they are 
   "My Angels," but how did Katie come to be 
   living with her mother after she was 
   married?  Perhaps it was intended that the 
   letter be sent to the mother and forwarded 
   to the young bride, but how did Cousin 
   Blanche come to mail the letter to 
   Grandmother in 1945?  (The postmark is 
   illegible, but "1945" appears between the 
   postmark and the cancellation.)  Why didn't 
   Grandmother send it to Katie?  Does 
   circulating the letter mean that Bill 
   himself wasn't around to tell his war 
   stories?  
      Whoops.  Just remembered that the 
   daughter's name was Patsy.  At least a child 
   that Bill met in his travels reminded him of 
   "Patsy, five years ago."  
      And how did the letter come to be among 
   my sewing patterns?  
      Backache isn't as bad this morning as 
   yesterday, but I'm tired of being tired.  I 
   did go out for a lap around the block after 
   making snap tabs for my pants.  They work, 
   but they are ugly.  And "Ginger Snaps" are 
   kinder feeble.  Hope I remember, when I make 
   my next pair -- which should be at least six 
   months off, since I have a fairly-decent 
   pair of denims, and a never-worn pair 
   patiently waiting for me to sew on two 
   hooks.  I have, at least, put the pants, 
   hooks, needle, thimble, and #8 thread into 
   the knitting bag beside the easy chair.  
      I hope I remember the scheme of turning 
   the hem to the outside and making the tabs 
   the ends of a strap laid over the raw edge 
   of the hem.  
      Meanwhile, I've got to work out tabs for 
   the black denims.  Took surprisingly long to 
   make four tabs and sew them to my blue 
   denims.  I ironed a couple of shirts while I 
   was at it, sitting on the corner of the bed 
   for the whole procedure.  I think that this 
   is the first time that I've set the ironing 
   board down to chair height since we were in 
   apartments and I used it for a sewing-
   machine table and a typing stand.  Now I'm 
   using a typing stand for a sewing-machine 
   table and half a room for a typing stand.  
   (My typewriter is on three pieces of 
   furniture and still has a component on the 
   floor.)  
      I don't think Nancy knew what a neat 
   wedding gift she was getting me; my "Mary 
   Procter Ironing Table" is thirty-one years 
   old and still in perfect shape -- and a most 
   versatile piece of furniture, stout enough 
   to hold a full-size sewing machine or an IBM 
   Executive.  I was astonished that it was 
   square on both ends, but I hadn't been using 
   it long before I commenced to wonder how 
   people had ever got the idea of doing such a 
   silly thing as tapering one end of an 
   ironing board.  
   
      The trouble with an electronic things-to-
   do list is that the only way to cross 
   anything off is to delete it; instead of a 
   long list of crossed-off accomplishments, 
   all you get is the ever-lengthening list of 
   things you wanted to do yesterday.  
   
   8 June 1995 
      I ironed two more shirts today, and 
   didn't even consider doing it sitting down.  
   I seem to be nearly over the backache.  So 
   Dave's got it.  He wants me to take it back.  
      I'm not quite perfect.  Frieda thought I 
   was teasing her with her supper; I was just 
   waiting for my back to go into bending mode.  
      The school-budget [vote?] yesterday 
   didn't help.  I dilly-dallied until the 
   sporting event ended, and there were parents 
   out the door halfway to the parking lot.  
   Walking over wasn't bad -- except for one 
   step, when I didn't notice that the pavement 
   was a couple of inches lower than the lawn -
   - but I sure hated standing in line.  
      The Ginger Snaps were even feebler than I 
   thought.  One of them pulled loose from its 
   anchor and I had to dig down to the bottom 
   of the pannier for one of the safety pins in 
   my first-aid kit.  It was so hot yesterday 
   that by the time I got to the post office, 
   my jeans were glued to my body and I had to 
   lay the bike down and step through the 
   triangle to mount.  I walked from the bank 
   to Super Value rather than remount.  
      So I called Flye today to ask what size 
   check to send with an order for shorts, but 
   they weren't in.  

   9 June 1995  
      I'm reading <i>The American Monomyth</i> 
   by Robert Jewett and John Shelton Lawrence 
   (1977).  It's a discussion of the religious 
   aspects of the American fondness for stories 
   of "an Eden-like society helpless in the 
   face of evil but rescued by an outsider, a 
   superhero, who then disappears again."  It 
   does give food for thought -- after reading 
   the discussion of TV's version of "Little 
   House on the Prairie," I understood why 
   Michael Landon's next role was that of a 
   meddling angel -- but the authors are a bit 
   monomythic too.  In discussing Star Trek, 
   after horrifying us with a description of 
   the boy who "had his hair cut and eyebrows 
   shaped in slanted Vulcan style...almost 
   always wears a blue velour shirt...and has 
   taken on...Spock's mannerisms," and 
   referring to the young man who had his name 
   changed to Spock, they present a photograph 
   of Star Trek "cult regalia" -- taken at a 
   costume party.  
      The "sexual renunciation" of the 
   superhero is so important that when the 
   redeemer is a young girl whose power lies in 
   her innocence, only one sort of innocence 
   can be meant, and the female redeemer 
   remains "eternally prepubertal." Little 
   Orphan Annie does, but Heidi's story ended, 
   and in sequel after sequel, Pollyanna grew 
   up, went to college, got married, and had 
   children.  I presume that she'd have become 
   a grandmother if her popularity had held 
   out.  
      Well, we may assume that if Pollyanna had 
   been a television show, she would have 
   remained eternally twelve --but later on 
   they discuss a "redeemer" who was a mother, 
   and asserted, snidely and without citing any 
   evidence in the story, that she had produced 
   her children by parthenogenesis!  
      The book accounts for a great deal of the 
   evil in the world, but there's more than one 
   myth out there.  

   11 June 1995  
      Just saw yesterday's episode of Babylon 
   Five.  A rerun, but somehow all I'd seen 
   before was a piece of the overplot.  Which 
   is based on the assumption that space is so 
   tight on the space station that Earth 
   Central has started charging the commander 
   rent on his quarters.  Some of the scenes in 
   the main plot were shot in "Downbelow," 
   which appears to have cubic acres of 
   unoccupied space.  
      I wonder whether the villainy of Psy 
   Corps (the theme of the main plot) ties into 
   the attack of the Shadows -- or is the 
   overall story also paced by weaving together 
   unrelated plots?  Perhaps, as in real life, 
   the two evil entities know nothing of each 
   other but nonetheless enhance each other's 
   destructive activity.  
      In what sense can a part of a space 
   station be said to be "down below"?  Since 
   Babylon Five is spinning, I'd expect "down" 
   to mean toward the shell, but space near the 
   shell would be prime quarters where the 
   inertial force best approximates real 
   gravity.  
      The station seems to have a front and 
   back.  Perhaps "Downbelow" is aft.  
      Hmm.  "Five miles long" -- and the 
   picture shows it as more than half as thick 
   as it is long.  Say it's split into layers 
   forty feet thick, though the ceilings are 
   seldom anywhere near that high.  If you 
   unrolled that thing, it would cover a very 
   large area.  
      Perhaps it's hollow and only a few layers 
   near the shell are habitable.  This is 
   supported by the way nobody ever goes to an 
   area where gravity is noticeably different 
   from Earth normal.  (They do have creatures 
   who breath a different atmosphere from Earth 
   normal.)  

   12 June 1995  
      Oscillicat!  Dave waited to let Erica 
   amble in before leaving for work; before he 
   was halfway down the driveway, I let her out 
   again.  A little later I responded to an 
   imperious "meow" to let her in, and noticed 
   a stack of letters waiting to be mailed -- 
   about $35,000 in paid firehouse bills, I 
   think Dave said.  When I came back from the 
   mailbox, Erica was waiting impatiently to be 
   let out.  
      Dave put on the wrong glasses when he 
   woke up.  When I inquired, he said that he'd 
   played a few computer games while waiting 
   for Erica to respond to her whistle in the 
   middle of the night.  
      I'd called her before going to bed, but I 
   forgot that she'd been trained to answer to 
   a whistle -- when she happens to feel like a 
   Tender Vittle.  

   14 June 1995  
      Boom!  More like a crack, but there were 
   a lot of low notes in the resonance -- like 
   blowing a small hole in a large object.  
   Seemed to come from the highway department, 
   but that seemed to be the origin of the 
   flash that preceded a blackout, and that was 
   up on the hill someplace.  Got to be a blown 
   transformer, though, because the TV turned 
   itself on and started making a terrible 
   noise -- I promptly turned it off again -- 
   and it turned out that the printer wasn't 
   quite through printing my "free stuff" sign, 
   though through enough, and the computer 
   reset itself.  
      I smell sun-warmed ripe wild strawberries 
   every time I go out to the road, and the 
   clover and the mock orange are at the height 
   of bloom.  Pleasant to compute by an open 
   window these nights.  
      A robin has built a nest in the mock 
   orange, in full view from the entry window.  
   Quite hidden from the bedroom window; I 
   presume she picked a spot not visible from 
   above on purpose.  Also not evident when 
   walking past the bush outside.  So I can't 
   see whether there are eggs in the nest, but 
   there's a bird sitting on it.  With the tail 
   toward the window; must be certain that 
   predators won't approach from that 
   direction.  
      Haven't seen the cats take notice yet.  
   They can't see out that window without 
   jumping up on the sill.  
      Hope somebody takes the junk I left out 
   by the road.  Maybe I should have taken out 
   the bag of plastic peanuts too.  Somebody 
   must be about to ship something.  
      Dave suggested dumping the plastic 
   peanuts on Mailboxes Etc.  It's worth a try.  
      I fed him the first Joe Rickets 
   strawberry today.  It wasn't honestly ripe, 
   but they are getting there.  
      Next year they'll be in the raised 
   flowerbed, and easier to pick.  

   15 June 1995  
      I'm in better shape than I thought.  I 
   rode to Guilderland today, and not only 
   didn't get home wasted, I never seriously 
   considered stopping for a rest on the long 
   hill by the biological station.  
      Came home at rush hour, though.  Seems as 
   though no matter when I leave, I want to 
   come home the same time everybody else does.  
      I had lunch at the Continental Bakery -- 
   a purple danish, and an unlabeled thing with 
   apricot filling.  The danish was better; it 
   tasted like fresh bread.  87<cent> total.  
   Then I spent about the same at Little 
   Caesar's for a "small" Coke.  Didn't really 
   want it, but I needed to use their washroom.  
   I put the cup in a bottle cage and sipped at 
   it through the rest of the walking tour, 
   which may be part of the reason that I came 
   home in good condition even though I was 
   having the trip instead of my nap.  I seem 
   to get on better with cycling if I have a 
   little bit of sugar at frequent intervals.  
      My blue denims were damp, since I mowed 
   poison ivy in them yesterday, and I never 
   did replace the truant Ginger Snap.  While I 
   was puzzling over how to confine the brown 
   pants, which are a trifle shorter and cannot 
   be pinned at the ankle -- not to mention 
   that the fabric is too flimsy to pin -- the 
   dime dropped and I <em>rolled them up</em>.  
      Dave came home for lunch not long after 
   yesterday's momentary-but-spectacular 
   blackout.  When I described it to him, he 
   said "that might have something to do with 
   the NiMo truck in front of the high school."  

   16 June 1995  
      Mowed some more poison ivy today.  I 
   think I can finish the field in one session 
   now, and I'm well away from the edges, where 
   the ivy is worst.  
      I started mowing Friday, & the two boys 
   in charge of Margie's lawn came Saturday.  
   Lawrence didn't start until Sunday.  It's 
   highly unusual for his lawn to be the 
   shaggiest.  

   19 June 1995  
      OSHA strikes again.  When putting a pair 
   of shorts into his car in case of emergency, 
   Dave mentioned that the turnout gear is so 
   uncomfortable that everybody fought 
   yesterday's brush fire wearing shorts and 
   sports shirts.  
      The fire was started by a train, and 
   extended from Onesquethaw to Guilderland.  
   Since Onesquethaw noticed first, everybody 
   else was listed as mutual aid.  
      They had a time getting the trains 
   stopped so they could put apparatus on the 
   tracks, which surprised me.  I thought there 
   were only one or two trains a day.  

   19 June 1995  
      They're stopping trains again.  This time 
   it appears to be entirely in Onesquethaw's 
   territory, but they sent for New Salem's 
   brush truck.  
      I was just about to go out and mow the 
   lawn, where I can't hear the phone.  The 
   brush truck just passed under the power 
   lines and will be at the scene soon.  
      It's exceedingly hot and humid today, and 
   you need a water bottle just sitting there.  
      Ambulance message to hospital: "He was 
   struck in the head with a hammer and is 
   complaining of headache."  
      I wonder how many miles of trackside you 
   could sprinkle with a standard tank car of 
   water?  
      Fire's out, so I guess it's safe to mow 
   poison ivy.  I don't want to put on long 
   pants.  

   20 June 1995  
      Caught Messrs. Jewett and Lawrence in a 
   bit of the "mythic alchemy" they assail in 
   "The American Monomyth."  In describing 
   Heidi's "perfect" record as a redeemer, they 
   list all the people she has met, 
   conveniently omitting the truly vile Frau 
   Rottenmeier, who merely dropped off stage.  
      Actually, Heidi was more of a therapist 
   than a redeemer; the people she rescued were 
   unhappy, not sinful.  
      And I'm plenty ready to believe that a 
   girl brought up by servants could be 
   pampered into an invalid, then recover when 
   treated to fresh air and a chance to do for 
   herself.  No miracles are required.  
      Was supposed to be cooler today, but less 
   hot is the best you can say for it.  Still 
   over eighty on the outdoor thermometer.  The 
   thermometer on the thermostat stands nearly 
   three-fourths of the way from 80 to 90.  
   Maybe I'd better go outside.  

   June 1995 
      Pleasant out this morning.  Dave dropped 
   the Saab off at New Salem Garage and drove 
   the Toyota to work.  Caused me momentary 
   consternation when I began to prepare to go 
   to Delmar to fetch Erica's pills, but the 
   spruce tree filled in for the missing 
   vehicles.  
      I'm in the habit of using a front bumper 
   for a bike rack while I fill my bottles and 
   pack my panniers.  
      All's I have to do now is to change my 
   pants and print out a shopping list, so I 
   suppose I'd better get on with it.  
      Dave says that the radio said that a 
   water pipe broke in Dalton's in Warsaw, 
   causing a steam-and-hydrogen explosion that 
   injured several people.  I hope he finds 
   something on the Web when he comes home for 
   lunch.  
      It was about one when I got back from 
   Delmar.  Not sure when I left.  (I've 
   <em>got</em> to get around to buying a 
   watch!)  It's not as far as to Guilderland, 
   I believe, but much hillier.  I came home in 
   good shape, and I hurried a bit.  A little 
   way into New Salem South Road I steered 
   around water spraying into the road and 
   realized that I'd left the sprinkler running 
   in the garden.  Doesn't seem to have drowned 
   anything, but it's a shameful waste of water 
   when there's a shortage.  They're starting 
   to refer to the dry spell as a "mild 
   drouth."  
      Stopped at Stonewell for sausage, and 
   came back through the village, since that 
   route is flatter.  Was surprised to see 
   LeVie open, but there was hardly anything 
   local but the strawberries.  I told someone 
   recently that if you have enough bungee 
   cords, you can carry anything, but you can't 
   bungee strawberries.  I bought a few 
   apricots.  
      Before I got around to changing out of my 
   Lycra shorts, Dave came home and I hopped 
   into the Saab with him to go fetch the 
   Toyota, which he'd left at New Salem Garage.  
   Absent-mindedly turned to pass through the 
   village even though by car it's shorter 
   through New Salem, then realized that I 
   would pass LeVie's again.  So I stopped and 
   bought a quart of strawberries.  
      I was disappointed in "Spellsinger" 
   (Allen Dean Foster, 1983).  Nowhere on the 
   cover, in the blurbs, or in the front matter 
   can I find any hint that it's only the 
   introduction to a series.  My first clue 
   came when I noticed that there were very few 
   pages left and the story had not yet arrived 
   at the flashforward in the prologue.  The 
   flashforward wasn't labeled as happening in 
   the future, so when I came to the Plated 
   Folk planning the battle in the 
   flashforward, I was some confused and kept 
   checking the blurbs trying to find the 
   excerpt.  This is the first battle in the 
   war that the cover says that this book is 
   about, so the series must be a long one.  
   The Plated Folk were still rounding up their 
   soldiers when the pages ran out.  
      What there was of it was a page turner.  
   The opening was particularly cute as our 
   hero, vulnerable to a transportation spell 
   because he's high -- seems to be set in the 
   sixties despite the copyright date -- looks 
   up to see a five-foot otter in maroon 
   velveteen pants, vows to find out what his 
   supplier has put into his grass, and almost 
   at once returns to thinking about 
   examinations and his thesis.  
      There was the occasional sand-grain of an 
   oddly-used word.  The only one I remember is 
   the repeated use of "arboreal citizens" to 
   designate citizens capable of flight.  
      I deleted the Saturday-morning PBS sewing 
   show from the VCR's schedule after one 
   viewing, but I did learn something.  When 
   gluing down one of the patches of her wall-
   hanging kit, the hostess remarked that one 
   has to watch out for energy-saving irons 
   that take much longer to set glue.  Low 
   power fits my iron's symptoms much better 
   than the low thermostat settings that I'd 
   been blaming for its reluctance to iron.  
      Neat way to save energy: make the iron 
   use half as much energy per hour by making 
   it run for three times as many hours.  If I 
   buy another iron, I'll check its wattage 
   rating.  
      The butane iron in the Lehman's catalog 
   is looking better and better.  And it's 
   cordless!  

   25 June 1995  
      Today Dave dug out the upstairs air 
   conditioner, took it apart, cleaned it, and 
   installed it in the bedroom window.  
      Today our fat, thick-furred Fred resumed 
   his summer career: trying to get into the 
   bedroom.  
      Maybe I should put an extra sandbox and a 
   dish of water in the closed room and let him 
   live there.  

      I finished crocheting covers for the 
   balls of yarn I mean to knit into socks, but 
   haven't done anything else.  
      Got a new idea for ball-cover lace while 
   working the last one.  Maybe I should write 
   it down and keep it in my purse.  
      Started knitting a sock while watching 
   yesterday's tape of Babylon Five.  It was 
   the ground-pounder episode (an army-passing-
   through story which could have been set in 
   any era), and I didn't rave over it the 
   first time I saw it.  
      Also did a few minutes of work in the 
   garden in the less-hot of the evening.  
      I finally got up the nerve to print out 
   my query letter for <i>Shuttle Solitaire</i> 
   and send it to Threads Books.  
      So now I'd better figure out what I'll 
   say in the proposal if they ask for one.  

   26 June 1995  
      Just noticed that it's exactly two weeks 
   to departure time.  
      I've got nothing to wear!  
      At noon, Dave (who was home for lunch) 
   alertly lured Erica in just before the first 
   thunderboom.  She retired to the cellar and 
   I haven't seen her since, but the bowl I 
   left in the cellarway hasn't any Tender 
   Vittles in it.  
      Got the garden watered yesterday and 
   Saturday -- Dave did it again trying out his 
   new ftt-ftt sprinkler -- and I pushed the 
   cultivator through it and hoed up the spaded 
   patch before the showers started, so it 
   should be in pretty good shape.  
      I hate to think what it's going to look 
   like when I get off the plane on July 23!  
   We're most likely leaving on the tenth, and 
   that's too long to leave a garden in July.  
      Anybody want to travel from Albany to 
   Detroit or Lafayette on Aug. 7?  Dave bought 
   me a round-trip ticket because it's cheaper.  

   27 June 1995  
      I just gave up on reading Past Master 
   (R.A. Lafferty, 1968).  It's much easier to 
   follow than most surrealist stuff, but there 
   doesn't seem to be any reason I should want 
   to.  

   28 June 1995  
      My red lilies bloom at the same time as 
   the madonna lilies, and they are shorter. If 
   I remember that when they have gone dormant, 
   I'll dig them up and replant them in front 
   of the madonnas.  

      I noticed getting some exercise 
   yesterday!  It was a longer trip than I 
   planned on.  My boarding passes had become 
   available the previous day, so I rode out 
   Normanskill-Johnston to Stuyvesant Plaza, 
   cutting through Woodwind Apartments to 
   Schoolhouse.  
      After picking up the ticket, I noticed 
   that the bagel shop was being remodeled and 
   wouldn't re-open until July.  Peaches and 
   Cream doesn't have any plebeian food on the 
   menu, so I settled for a double-dip 
   strawberry ice-cream cone, which they called 
   a single-dip gelatto.  Miraculously emerging 
   from both the Book House and Alfred's 
   fabrics empty-handed, I made a pit stop at 
   the post office, refilled my empty bottle at 
   the drinking fountain, and rode up Fuller in 
   search of "Just a 2nd."  After executing the 
   extremely difficult left turn onto Railroad 
   Avenue, I remembered that I wasn't headed 
   for Northway Mall and had wanted to turn 
   right.  I really ought not to be in the 
   habit of turning on Railroad at all, because 
   the next left-hand side road intersects 
   Railroad, and hasn't got a steep hill, 
   railroad tracks, or swirling traffic.  
      "Just a 2nd" looked more like an odd-lot 
   store than a second-hand store, but they 
   have just opened.  Piles of monitors, 
   keyboards, circuit boards, etc. but about 
   all there was in the way of whole computers 
   was notebooks.  I bought a CD "World Atlas," 
   but Dave tells me that I wasted my $5.  I 
   figured an atlas would have maps in it, but 
   it's a collection of photographs and sound 
   files -- the sound files won't play on our 
   computer -- and all they have in the way of 
   maps is the indexes that you use to pick out 
   the pictures you want to see.  I knew I 
   should have gotten the collection of classic 
   literature instead.  That seemed to be a 
   simple ASCII file of every open-domain 
   goodie they could lay their hands on; could 
   have been a useful reference, and there were 
   a lot of things in there, in the glance I 
   took at the table of contents, that I ought 
   to have read by now but will probably never 
   check out of -- or find in -- the library.  
      Also located two sources of computer 
   paper and a "Cheapo Depot" that, alas, is 
   open only on Wednesday through Saturday.  If 
   I have reason to go back to Railroad Avenue, 
   I'll make it a Thursday.  
      I meant to come straight back, but as I 
   was returning down Fuller, I swerved into 
   Six-Mile Park looking for a calm place to 
   eat my muffin bars.  I'd bought a watch in 
   Stuyvesant Plaza -- when I finally found one 
   with a recessed set button, it was only 
   three dollars!  -- but I hadn't thought to 
   ask for the time so I could set it.  I was, 
   nonetheless, pretty sure it was well past 
   lunchtime.  The lake was completely 
   surrounded by fathers and sons with fishing 
   poles, and the path beyond the lake was 
   fully exposed to the broiling sun.  I 
   finally stopped under a bridge, leaned my 
   bike against the slat-filled chain-link 
   fence separating the path from interstate-
   like Washington Avenue, and sat on dry grass 
   beside a graveled bridge support.  
      I had planned to eat under a memorial 
   tree a few yards farther on, but the 
   memorializers had, after planting it on a 
   pile of fill at the edge of a borrow pit, 
   thoughtfully surrounded it with blacktop, 
   and it failed to survive last summer's dry 
   weather.  There was a bunch of new twigs 
   about elbow height on the trunk, but they 
   didn't look prosperous.  The current dry 
   spell was front-page news -- above the fold 
   -- both today and yesterday, so I'll be 
   surprised if there is even that much left 
   the next time I pass.  
      I think the care taken to exclude water 
   from the tree's roots is particularly 
   appropriate when one considers that it's a 
   memorial to a well that used to stand beside 
   King's Highway, which used to connect 
   Schenectady and Albany 
      The bridge in question was Rapp crossing 
   Washington, so I decided to come on out the 
   other end and go home by Rapp even though 
   that way is longer and uses more state road.  
   Passed Walmart, but it was on the other side 
   of Washington, and by then I was starting to 
   feel tired.  This was partly because my 
   lunch had been inadequate, and I thought 
   that a nice syrupy cola would help a lot, 
   but the next patch of city would be Paradise 
   Foods, a health-food store.  
      Lo and behold, Paradise was having a sale 
   on "China Cola" at 69<cent>/bottle.  After 
   buying half a pannier of nuts, I poured a 
   bottle of cola into an empty water bottle 
   and it did much to buck me up.  I think I 
   would have been able to grind up the 
   biological-station hill on 155 without 
   stopping, had I not come to a narrow stretch 
   several yards long.  A crevasse between the 
   roadway and shoulder leaves a strip of safe 
   pavement only a foot wide.  
      After dismounting, I noticed a patch of 
   gravel-sized chunks of broken pavement near 
   the far end of the narrow stretch, so I was 
   right to walk it.  On a busy road like 155, 
   with a sharp drop-off at the edge of the 
   pavement, gravel in the road is the last 
   thing you expect.  
      On a busy road like 155, with a sharp 
   drop-off at the edge, it could have been the 
   <em>_last_</em> thing I expected!  
      I had some water left in my bottle when I 
   came through the village, but I was still 
   stupid enough to forget to stop at Super 
   Value for bread and milk.  
      I was long overdue for food when I got 
   home, but felt so dirty that I showered 
   first.  
      I ate this and that and the other and 
   found myself both stuffed and starving while 
   shopping at Super Value.  The check-out girl 
   asked, "You aren't on your bike today?" I 
   said "No."  
      I had four more miles in me, but I'd put 
   my gloves in a pan of water to soak out the 
   sweat, and thrown my only pair of shorts 
   into the laundry.  
      That's my story and I'm sticking to it.  
      Those shorts are so thin that I ought to 
   dip them in water while the sweat is still 
   wet, and roll them in a towel, like nylon 
   stockings.  
      I guess that's why they make them so 
   thin.  Being able to wash them that way 
   would be handy for multi-day tourists, if 
   they can stand the squeak-squeak of nylon on 
   leather all day.  
      I've got a pair of wool shorts on order.  
      I'm about ready to order a polyester 
   jersey.  Wearing plastic is better than 
   doing without pockets.  But nobody has 
   anything thick enough to wear without an 
   undershirt.  
      I found a new Watt-Evans at the Book 
   house, but $14.00 for a paperback is 
   ridiculous.  I went to six, and I think I 
   paid seven once, but at fourteen, I think 
   I'll look into seeing if I can find the 
   hardcover on interlibrary loan.  
      I noticed this evening that Erica was 
   licking her fur off again, and had visions 
   of making an emergency run to the vet 
   tomorrow, but Dave found a small wound at 
   the edge of the bald spot and Erica seems to 
   be taking care of it herself, so I poured 
   some peroxide on it.  She took this in good 
   heart, but I wasn't sure I'd got through the 
   fur and gave it another dose, and she said 
   that was <em>quite</em> enough.  
      So I poured some peroxide on Dave.  It 
   didn't fizz; I think the spot was a pre-
   existing freckle.  
      Writing that caused me to look at the 
   assortment of marks Frieda left the last 
   time she caught me knitting, and I noticed 
   that my left arm is peeling.  I didn't think 
   I got that much sun; I was wearing Child 
   Garde.  That arm did look rather diseased 
   when I came in yesterday, but I attributed 
   that to Frieda's efforts, the heat, and the 
   chalky-pink patches of Child Garde.  The 
   left side gets burnt when cycling because 
   one is on the shady side of the road when 
   the sun is from the right, and Frieda goes 
   for the left arm because I'm more likely to 
   let her immobilize it.  
      Frieda loves to lick, but when she gets 
   going good, the little hooked claws come 
   out, so she has to catch me trying to 
   concentrate on something that keeps both 
   hands full.  After batting her off several 
   times I get tired enough that if she 
   escalates slowly, I may ignore her.  She's 
   careful to fall asleep on my lap often 
   enough that I think that this time she might 
   not be trying to lick.  

   29 June 1995  
      The auxiliary met at Smitty's tonight.  
   The acoustics in the family dining room are 
   terrible, so I haven't the faintest idea 
   what the meeting was about.  Get a dozen or 
   two people talking and it sounds like four 
   or five hundred.  I counted thirteen women, 
   seven on one side of the table and six on 
   the other.  We ate two sandwiches, two 
   pitchers of beer, one pitcher of diet soda, 
   and most of four eight-cut pizzas.  I also 
   had a mug of root beer I'd ordered when I 
   arrived a quarter of an hour early.  

   1 July 1995  
      Instead of the predicted showers, we are 
   having a nice rainy day.  It is, of course, 
   the day I wanted to mow the lawn and 
   absolutely had to do the wash.  
      I hung two loads of wash out between the first 
   two showers, got them partly dry, and now 
   have them festooned about the house.  
      Didn't wash yesterday because I went to 
   an NYBC Newsletter committee meeting at 2:30 
   yesterday.  You can't drive downtown because 
   there is no place to leave the car, so I 
   meant to drive to Westgate and ride down 
   Central Avenue.  But at the last minute, I 
   decided the morning was shot anyway, so I 
   rode all the way.  Started a couple of 
   minutes after ten, and got back a little 
   before six.  Stopped only once after leaving 
   the meeting at three or four; don't know 
   what took so long.  Navigating around cars 
   parked in the driving lane didn't help, and 
   I missed the fork and stayed on Central all 
   the way to Ontario, which I followed to 
   Western, so I encountered more double 
   parking than I would have had I left the 
   congested area by way of Western.  
      The location of the meeting makes me 
   wonder about the New York Bicycling 
   Coalition.  It was in the Social Justice 
   Center, which shares a bathroom with the 
   Peace Offering Store -- which has a sign in 
   the window offering a discount on 
   merchandise to anyone willing to profess to 
   be a homosexual or lesbian.  Sign also 
   contained a grammatical error of the sort 
   made by people who stick "his" into a 
   statement for the sole purpose of being seen 
   to replace it with "their."  
      I stopped at Stewart's on Western for a 
   ham sandwich and bottle of 
   "Re<em>fresh</em>er" on the way in, and an 
   ice-cream cone on the way out.  Arrived in 
   downtown about half-past eleven, and went to 
   Lodges to get underpants, three tennis hats, 
   and a half dozen washrags.  Passed a church 
   thrift store on the way back, and bought two 
   cards of Bucilla Heel and Toe yarn, which 
   has long since been discontinued.  
      By good luck I walked too far west before 
   starting back up the hill, and chose Dove to 
   return to Central by.  This brought me up 
   behind the old Harmanus Bleeker Library.  
   I'd checked it out on the way down the hill, 
   but there is no sign of the Bryn Mawr Book 
   Shop on the Central side, so I thought that 
   their imminent move had already happened.  
   Being a trifle tired, I didn't find anything 
   I wanted to buy, but in an upstairs room 
   there were a lot of best sellers from the 
   turn of the century, which I'd have liked to 
   sit down and leaf through.  
      I think they could make a few extra 
   pennies by renting easy chairs and selling 
   lemonade.  
      I awoke from my nap today to find 
   something or the other going on in 
   Clarksville on the scanner.  Could be the 
   breaking of the drought caught someone in 
   the Clarksville cave, which floods when it 
   rains.  (Dave later said that it's another 
   cave that floods.)  

      I had an actual single-dip ice cream cone 
   at Stewart's.  They called it a "kiddy 
   cone."  
      They've got the patients out of the cave, 
   one of them with hypothermia & the other two 
   merely cold and dirty.  

   3 July 1995  
      Cultivated the garden today in the hope 
   of conserving Saturday's showers.  The 
   surface was damp only in the areas we had 
   watered, but I still think we got 
   significantly more rain than the 0.05" 
   reported in the paper.  
      The handle on the cultivator finished 
   breaking a few laps from the end, and I had 
   to finish the job with a hoe.  This made me 
   feel much abused; I'm not in shape for that 
   -- and not in training; it was impossible to 
   skim the surface the way Daddy did.  Over-
   deep hoeing didn't matter much at the edge 
   of the garden, though, and I got a few 
   bindweed roots.  
      I thought I couldn't have a new handle 
   for the Culta-Eze because Esmay Products of 
   Bristol Indiana has gone out of business, 
   but as I was puzzling how to re-repair it, I 
   remembered that a popular seeding machine 
   has a handle just like the handle on the 
   Culta-Eze.  So I might be able to buy a new 
   one after all.  

   5 July 1995  
      I had an exciting fourth.  I wrote an e-
   letter to my sister, and darned my riding 
   gloves.  
      I was surprised at how well it turned out 
   -- I didn't think one <em>could</em> darn 
   leather.  I used silk buttonhole twist, so 
   it shouldn't cut the leather and pull out.  
   I also anchored the darning threads in the 
   polyester back whenever possible.  
      For those of you who know how riding  
   gloves work: on the palms, I used chamois 
   patches, one backstitched with #D silk and 
   one glued on with contact cement.  
      (Silk is sized by letters; A is sewing 
   silk and D is buttonhole twist.)  
      I do wish I'd been smart enough to ask 
   Jack Papa how many size extra-small gloves 
   were in that stash he found, and buy all of 
   them instead of just one pair.  I doubt that 
   Elmer Little will ever make any more, and 
   there's only the slenderest hope that a 
   riding-glove maker will buy the pattern.  
      After eating hamburgers Dave cooked over 
   charcoal, Dave went upstairs for a nap and I 
   took pillows, a blanket, and a copy of 
   <i>Tom Swift and his Giant Robot</i> into 
   the back yard.  By "Victor Appleton II," 
   text 1954, pictures (Tony Tallarico) 1977.  
   I found it completely without merit.  It 
   didn't even have the awkward attributions 
   that gave rise to the game of "Tom 
   Swifties":   making up such sentences as 
   <"Let's get married," Tom said engagingly.> 
      Such little amusement as the book 
   provided came from watching "Appleton" avoid 
   adverbs.  But the habit dies hard.  Though 
   most of the time he used unobtrusive 
   "said"s, on one half-filled page, Tom 
   shouted and demanded, Marco stammered, Tom 
   persisted, Marco hesitated, Tom was blunt, 
   (Marco answered without attribution), and 
   Tom was genuinely puzzled.  
      <i>The Space Gypsies</i>, which I read a 
   week or few back, has more merit -- but not 
   much.  It's by A.M. Lightner, 1974.  I had 
   the distinct impression that Lightner found 
   three or four Rommany words somewhere and 
   thought that constituted research.  I did 
   not at any time feel that she knew even as 
   much about gypsies as I do.  And the plot, 
   such as it was, was rambling and random and 
   depended on co-incidence more than a fantasy 
   that postulated that the coincidences were 
   brought on by magic would dare to do.  And 
   such turning point as the story had depended 
   on the assumption that killing meskits near 
   the settlement would cause an increase in 
   the numbers of their favorite prey in 
   unexplored territory!  I'll swallow giant 
   worms creating volcanos, but not that.  
      Not to mention that the pet meskit 
   required the help of three men with shovels 
   to kill a small worm at the edge of the 
   volcanic area, but had no trouble at all 
   killing a giant worm in the middle of worm 
   country.  

   6 July 1995 
      When I saw <i>The Power of Blackness</i> 
   by Jack Williamson (1974, 1975, 1976) lying 
   where I'd left it until I got around to 
   writing this review, I thought it was a book 
   I hadn't read yet.  Nothing memorable; lots 
   of hitting, as Groo puts it, and the author 
   isn't really big on plausibility -- the 
   "swarm folk," who live in Dyson spheres, are 
   so afraid of influencing other cultures that 
   they are secretive, lest other folks adopt 
   their obviously-superior ways of doing 
   things, yet they are dismantling a planet 
   out from under a culture when there are 
   plenty of uninhabitable chunks of rock free 
   for the taking.  The hero takes the name 
   "Blacklantern" in a "we Hadacol it 
   something" scene.  The people of said planet 
   have been burned black by countless 
   generations under a hot blue sun, so the 
   bigots they run into are twentieth-century 
   white-American bigots, not the more-
   plausible nineteenth-century British bigots.  
      The planet does seem to have some size to 
   it; though everything important is within 
   walking distance of the capital, one gets 
   the impression of people moving around in an 
   area at least as big as the Forty-Eight 
   States.  (I once read a fantasy story in 
   which an entire universe was about the size 
   of the U.C.L.A. campus, and had a much 
   smaller population.)  On the other hand, the 
   climate is absolutely uniform from pole to 
   pole, nor does the weather vary.  
      I got the impression that the sections 
   were originally printed as a series of 
   novellas, which could account for the triple 
   copyright.  
      Time to pack.  I seem to be well fixed 
   for jeans and T-shirts, but everything 
   dressy that would come out of a suitcase 
   reasonably intact has long sleeves, except 
   for a dress that fits much too tight.  

   7 July 1995  
      The last weekday before we leave.  If 
   I've got something to do besides buy stamps, 
   return my library book, and get cash, I hope 
   I remember it before five o'clock.  
      Nine twenty: it's raining about as hard 
   as you could want it too, but I don't expect 
   it to last very long.  
      Pity I didn't remember leaving my car 
   window open while it was still sprinkling 
   lightly, but this doesn't promise to be a 
   day when one minds a damp shirt.  
      It has already gone back to sprinkling 
   lightly.  
      Yukko.  I was in such a hurry to buy 
   stamps and get home before Dave did that I 
   forgot to insist that they not be stomach-
   turning.  I've got fifty one-ounce stamps 
   and ten two-ounce stamps and every last one 
   of them trivializes the word "love".  

   8 July 1995  
      The paper said that we got a quarter inch 
   of rain yesterday, and we usually get more 
   precipitation than the measuring station 
   does.  Might get some showers this 
   afternoon, but there is no more in sight.  
      Cultivated the garden this morning, with 
   my legs sticking to my jeans through most of 
   it.  It was much easier than it has been; 
   the handle of the cultivator is nice and 
   rigid now that Dave has repaired it.  The 
   bindweed, alas, is poised to take advantage 
   of two weeks away followed by a fair.  

   From a letter from Mary: 
      "Harriet['s] ... cat, Willow, is one of 
   those white blue-eyed deaf cats, who is most 
   fortunate on the 4th, as she can't hear all 
   the explosions.  But neither, when she's 
   sleeping soundly, does she know when her 
   cruel mistress has invited 1/2 a dozen 
   people over, who rudely invade her space 
   without warning or permission.  You should 
   have seen Willow's face when she awoke from 
   her snooze to find herself surrounded by 
   ***strangers***."  
      Reminds me of Charley seeing rain for the 
   first time.  

   9 July 1995  
      Got out of bed, changed the sheet, and 
   started laying out stuff to pack.  I was 
   sure Dave had more pairs of his newer socks 
   than that.  
      Bedtime: grump.  I asked for a leaflet of 
   international postage rates in case of just 
   such an emergency, but I can't remember 
   where I put it.  So I'll have to take the 
   Canadian letter with me and hope to 
   encounter a post office before too many 
   days.  
      The grapes are doing very well for "dead" 
   vines.  They are spreading all over the 
   place, the fruits on the concords look as 
   though they were due the week after next 
   instead of the month after next, and the 
   grapes on the seedless concord vine are 
   already bigger than they usually are when 
   they are ripe.  
      But all the suitcases are by the door, 
   and I don't think I forgot anything except 
   to tie up the vines regenerating from the 
   roots of the grape that died two years ago.  
   I'd like to take this opportunity to get a 
   straight trunk so that I'll know what I'm 
   pruning.  

   24 July 1995  
      I'm not even dressed yet, and I feel like 
   going back to bed.  
      I'll bet Northwestern Airlines is glad I 
   haven't found that laptop I want yet.  I 
   waited at four different gates in three 
   different concourses yesterday, and was 
   <em>not</em> carrying the flight bag that 
   converts into a backpack.  
      I tried twice to call Dave during the 
   only forty-five minutes he wasn't at home 
   waiting for me to call, then gave up.  
      My fingers were sweating too much to knit 
   much, but I read almost all the way through 
   <i>The Lathe of Heaven</i>, which is 
   supposed to be famous among some group or 
   the other, but it struck me as merely 
   something suitable to fill up a long wait.  
   Only LeGuin could write a coherent story in 
   a universe that is remodeled every time the 
   hero has an "effective" dream, which I 
   suppose is the source of the fame.  
      Dave has already made up the banks for 
   the first night of the fair, and a beautiful 
   poster of how we did last year.  Since it's 
   presumably still on disk, perhaps I should 
   tell him that he mis-spelled "expenses."  
      Dave bought a "hutch," a shelf just high 
   enough to clear his TV/VCR, to set on his 
   desk.  It makes the hamshack much neater 
   despite the presence of a box marked "$500 
   quarters," a roll of tickets, and some 
   document-size Ziploc freezer bags.  
      I was relieved to find that that my round 
   robin hadn't come when I wasn't at home to 
   deal with it -- but when I was gone two full 
   weeks, I should have gotten a postcard 
   saying that somebody had mailed it to 
   somebody.  You aren't supposed to keep these 
   things more than ten days.  The stationery I 
   ordered did come, but the shorts I sent for 
   long before that didn't.  Dave had 
   everything sorted out, so it didn't take 
   long to set aside those envelopes that I 
   have to do something about when I open them.  
      Good thing I forgot that the Red Rose tea 
   is in the upstairs freezer.  When I was 
   roodling around for it in the downstairs 
   freezer, I smelled that Dave forgot that he 
   was supposed to empty the cat box when he 
   got back.  
      So I'd better get a shirt on and carry it 
   out.  Dave says that Erica has spent this 
   entire hot spell in the cellar.  I wonder if 
   her sensitive feline nose is fading.  

   Wednesday, 26 July 1995  
      It's going to be a scorcher.  I was 
   sweating in wet cotton shorts at the fire 
   this morning, and it was barely our normal 
   time to have breakfast.  

      Dave was toned out for a "shed fire" a 
   half hour or thereabouts before the alarm 
   went off.  Before leaving, Dave said he knew 
   those folks and it was a "great big barn," 
   but I thought it a very small barn -- 
   perhaps the size of a two-horse stable, 
   though I didn't go around the house to look 
   at the remains, so don't take my word.  
   Heard some firemen saying it was a 
   "controlled burn" that got out of hand.  
   It's amazing how many people haven't the 
   foggiest idea of how to burn trash, or the 
   slightest fear of fire.  
      After a while Dave called me to say that 
   the boys were thirsty.  They called in that 
   the fire was out while I was putting my 
   clothes on.  I tried to call the chairman of 
   the fire committee, but dialed the number 
   above the number I meant to dial, then 
   dialed the number I'd looked up in the book 
   and it was the wrong DeLorenzo.  Then I 
   dialed the number Patty's in-law gave me and 
   got her machine, so I was in it alone.  
   Found the water dispenser & rinsed it out, 
   then retrieved the key to the cooler while 
   the jug was filling, ran back up the stairs 
   to find it running over, put the lid on -- 
   it's a full-top lid so that you can scrub it 
   out -- then let some water out so that I 
   could lift it, wrestled it down two flights 
   of stairs, discovering in the process that 
   the lid has to be closed carefully and then 
   still leaks a little.  That's when my shorts 
   got wet.  Thence back to the cooler, where I 
   realized that getting into the cooler 
   doesn't give you access to the cases of 
   soda.  I nabbed four cans of diet soda that 
   had been rejected at the work party on the 
   previous evening, and put the key back on 
   the old scaling hook in the lounge in case 
   someone with a key to the cooler-lockers 
   came along.  Then I got out my map and tried 
   to guess which part of Stove Pipe Road to 
   aim for.  Made my guess and started to back 
   out, when along came the little tanker.  I'd 
   met it on the way in; it took exactly as 
   long to fill my tank as theirs!  It was out 
   of sight before I could get out of the 
   driveway, but, like my little tank, it was 
   sloshing.  The wet pavement confirmed my 
   guess and I caught up with it on New Salem 
   Hill, where it was doing about fifteen mph.  
   The fire was very close to the intersection 
   of 85 and Stove Pipe.  
      They were very glad to see my little tank 
   of water, especially the guy who had 
   collapsed under the OSHA-required turnout 
   gear, which was much too warm for weather 
   that had me sweating in wet cotton.  One of 
   the boys had been dispatched to Stewarts for 
   soda, but it didn't arrive until after the 
   four cans of diet soda had vanished.  
      The boys hung around for quite a spell, 
   putting hoses back on the trucks etc., then 
   I returned to the firehouse to realize that 
   I have no idea where they keep the dish 
   soap.  Hunted for a while, then settled for 
   scalding the jug.  The tap water in the 
   kitchen is hot enough to consider stuff 
   rinsed in it scalded.  Dried the lid and the 
   inside with a paper towel -- couldn't find 
   the dish towels either -- wiped the outside 
   with a scalded dishrag, and left it to air.  
   Mustn't forget to go put it back into the 
   closet.  We tend to lose those big jugs.  
   It's about the size of a five-gallon bucket, 
   but with the space taken by insulation, I'd 
   guess it as closer to three.  At least, I 
   can lift it (though not out of a deep sink) 
   and I don't think I can carry five gallons.  
      Just dug a hill of potatoes.  Small and 
   few, but so smooth that I didn't wash them 
   before putting them into the crisper.  
      The wild garlic and the New York Softneck 
   garlic got ripe during the first week that I 
   was gone.  The elephant garlic is still in 
   full bloom, and having allowed it to bloom, 
   I feel that I ought to let it set seed.  
   Because we'd had a good rain just before the 
   plane came down -- and I knew before Dave 
   told me that it was the first good rain we'd 
   had -- I felt that it was urgent to get the 
   garlic out of the ground.  On Monday, I 
   started pulling and cleaning the wild 
   garlic, but soon ran out of space on the 
   picnic table to air it.  I then noticed that 
   the ends of the stalks that I'd cut the 
   bulbil-heads off of were curled like grape 
   tendrils, so I tied a nylon string between 
   two of the locusts and hung the plants on 
   the string by their prehensile stems.  I 
   didn't get going good until it began to cool 
   off and hadn't done a quarter of the wild 
   garlic before it was almost time to go to 
   the work party, so I yanked the rest of it, 
   including the softneck garlic, and left it 
   lying on the ground with clods on it.  
      The next morning most of what I'd hung 
   was lying on the grass.  I thought at first 
   it had blown off the line, but rain and dew 
   had softened the tendrils and made them let 
   go.  But the dampness also made them pliable 
   enough to tie in knots, so I re-hung it.  It 
   was rather like doing fine needlework, save 
   for the dirt on my hands after I started 
   fetching in what I'd left on the ground.  It 
   wasn't nearly as easy to brush the dirt off 
   (using the roots of the bulbs for brushes) 
   as when it was freshly pulled, and the 
   difference in the two batches is plain to 
   see.  The stems had started to dry stiff 
   again by the time I finished.  
      I put the softneck garlic on the table.  
   I think it will be ready to braid tomorrow, 
   so if I have the time to braid it, I can 
   donate some to the bake booth.  
      I have a load of whites in the washer and 
   a pile of shirts waiting their turn.  I 
   guess I did that because we need the rain.  
      I went to the Methodist thrift shop 
   yesterday and found an iron which looks very 
   like the one I burned out, except that the 
   handle-shape is fifties; mine is from the 
   sixties.  Since it was only $1.50 and the 
   price tag said "tested," I bought it.  I've 
   been needing to iron two of Dave's cotton 
   shirts ever since I got home -- he'd washed 
   them while I was out -- and the air 
   conditioner is running in the bedroom, so I 
   might try it out today.  
      Also bought a hardcover (Curwood) and 
   five paperbacks.  I chose "Crisis" because 
   it was plainly a collection, masquerading as 
   book six of a multi-volume novel, but I 
   think I'll send it to Canterbury Tales 
   mostly unread.  The theme is Groo's "lots of 
   hitting." Leastways it was in Steve Perry's 
   "Ky”dai" and MacMillan/Kurtz's "Distress 
   Signals."  But them and "Tarnhelm" were all 
   I've given a fair chance, and Yarbro never 
   was a fun author.  Might try a few other 
   authors before tossing it.  
      Evening: time to go to the work party.  
   I'm too stuffed to do anything strenuous -- 
   had a big dish of ice cream, almost half 
   what they sell you when you ask for "small", 
   after a big fat hamburger.  
      Not surprisingly, my cotton shorts 
   <em>still</em> haven't dried.  I was glad 
   that I took a pair of pinking shears to my 
   lightest pair of poison-ivy pants yesterday.  
   I had meant to mend my "new" shorts before 
   wearing them; the patches have worn through 
   in embarrassing spots, so I'm even gladder 
   that it's cooled off enough to wear my 
   grubbies to the work party.  
      I read in Tightbeam, which came today, 
   that the proper name for what I've been 
   calling a common universe is "shared world."  
   In all shared-world stories, each author 
   puts his own spin on it.  Walt Kelly's Huey, 
   Dewey, and Louie bear a striking resemblance 
   to Pogo, and someone once remarked that 
   Wagner's Conan was very like Kane, Jake's 
   Conan was the spitting image of Brak, etc.  
   One author in the Kzin shared-world even 
   managed to find an excuse for featuring a 
   female Kzin smarter than the males, though I 
   gather that one of the premises laid out 
   when the world was set up was that the 
   female Kzin are non-sentient.  
      Likewise, "Ky”dai" seems to come from 
   TV's Kung Fu with only light touches of the 
   scenario laid out in the prologue, and 
   "Tarnhelm," now that I place Yarbro, clearly 
   features vampires.  Some of the other 
   authors are writers I'm familiar with -- I 
   should read some of those stories from this 
   point of view.  
      We had a good, persistent rain, but it 
   seems to have ended, just in time for the 
   work party.  
      And I've got a jug to put back in the 
   closet.  Time to put on my grubbies and get.  

   July 27, 1995  
      This morning's paper says that 
   yesterday's good rain was disastrous in 
   Albany.  They got half an inch in half an 
   hour and popped lids off sewers, flooded 
   basement apartments, collapsed flat roofs 
   when the drains clogged, etc.  
      Seems to me that somebody wasn't paying 
   proper attention to drainage; Albany slopes 
   steeply to a river, and it should be easy to 
   get rid of water.  Guess they never thought 
   they'd need to, but a flat roof is an 
   incredible folly in an area that sometimes 
   gets yards of snow.  
      Sunny today, so I'd better finish that 
   wash.  My shorts are still wet.  
      The garlics got a good washing.  

      How late was it when we left the cellar?  
   First I tried to throw out the night 
   watchman, then we arrived at home and Dave 
   asked "Where's your car?"  
      I decided to leave it at the fairgrounds 
   all night; I can ride the bike after it 
   tomorrow.  
      Forgot to take the four garlic braids to 
   the bake booth.  
      It's 11:58.  

   28 July 1995  
      I was late for Wednesday's work party, 
   and parked across the street because the 
   gravel lot was crowded.  When I went home, 
   as I was peeping and peering and trying to 
   guess whether it was safe to emerge onto 
   85A, I remembered that I shouldn't have to 
   be doing this because the guys who repaired 
   the driveway also switched the signs to make 
   the one-way traffic circulate in the normal 
   direction, and the normal exit has a fine 
   view in both directions.  
      Durned if some idiot didn't re-reverse 
   the signs and put me back to exiting at the 
   entrance, which is in a dip and hidden by 
   trees.  
      I've got time to clean a little garlic 
   before the fair, but just barely.  Dave is 
   already at work, but there is little to do 
   until 7:00 and it's 5:30.  But I've got his 
   stamp pad and hassock fan, so I shouldn't 
   dally much.  

   31 July 1995  
      My plans for today were to resume feeling 
   normal and start catching up.  
   Unfortunately, I forgot to go to bed last 
   night, and sat in the leather chair leafing 
   through a book I'd read at least twice 
   before until one in the morning.  
      In addition to the shed fire, NSVFD had a 
   false alarm at suppertime on Wednesday.  I 
   had just started clearing the table to lay 
   out cold meat, and Dave was gone just long 
   enough for me to pay two bills that had been 
   on the table, so it didn't disrupt us much.  
      I parked across the street every night of 
   the fair, and came out the marked entrance 
   every night so that I could see what I was 
   barrelling into the path of.  

      Well, that woke me up.  I left the cellar 
   door open, and when I started out with a 
   basket of laundry, Frieda was airing herself 
   at the top of the steps.  I ignored her, 
   knowing that she is terrified of the 
   outdoors and runs inside when disturbed.  
   Instead, she yowled in terror and ran 
   outside.  
      Alice, I would like to take back 
   everything I <em>ever</em> said about Coon's 
   obnoxious meowl.  
      I went around her to herd her back toward 
   the door.  She ran into the windbreak and 
   yowled for help.  I went into the windbreak, 
   careful not to get between Frieda and 
   safety, and she dashed around me to the 
   front of the house.  So I went to the front 
   to open the door she's accustomed to seeing 
   open, and she ran to the front door, the one 
   we never use, and yowled to get in.  Opening 
   that door involves violence, so I opened the 
   entry door and called to her.  By this time 
   she was hanging by her front feet from the 
   screen in the upper half of the front door -
   - a wire screen, I was relieved to note; 
   most of our screens are flimsy plastic film 
   -- and yowling.  I unbuttoned one foot and 
   then the other until I got both free at 
   once; yowling is continuous now.  Then I had 
   to walk around the feed line and antenna to 
   get to the other door.  I didn't think much 
   of carrying a terrified cat away from 
   safety, but aside from blood-curdling 
   screams and a face that would make grown men 
   flee in panic, she behaved like an angel 
   until I got within leaping distance of the 
   door, when she tore a hole in my jersey and 
   ran inside.  It was a ragged jersey I hadn't 
   liked much when it was new, by good luck.  
      She still isn't speaking to me.  
      Which I don't mind a bit.  
      After lunch: Frieda is avoiding me again.  
   She was the best friend I ever had while I 
   was boning chicken for Dave's sandwich.  
      Dave came home for lunch about noon, and 
   fetched the box of bags after he'd eaten.  I 
   had them all counted by about two.  There 
   weren't many left; we'd done more than we 
   expected before they started steaming clams 
   at the tear-down party.  
      Then I fetched in the clothes I washed 
   this morning.  Hung a freshly-laundered hat 
   on the peg, then looked inside the one I was 
   wearing and tossed it into the hamper.  In 
   this heat, my hats get dirty almost as fast 
   as my socks.  The one Alice washed just 
   before I left her went into the wash when I 
   unpacked -- I'd been using it to pad the 
   handle of my carry-on, and my hands were 
   sweating while I trotted from concourse to 
   concourse.  
      Gone put some hot whites in to soak, and 
   wash them tomorrow.  Pity I didn't soak them 
   yesterday, because it's a lovely drying day.  
      Have you heard the expression "one-ounce 
   pack"?  While I had all that money lying 
   about, I clipped two $50 bundles, bands and 
   all, to my postal scale and found that they 
   weigh a trifle less than four ounces.  That 
   would make a one-ounce pack twenty-five to 
   thirty dollars.  Must be a very old joke.  
   ("you can go anywhere with a one-ounce pack 
   if it's an ounce of dollar bills.") 
      I wonder how much an American Express card 
   weighs.  

      From a letter from Paula Morris: "If they 
   can't fix the potholes, they should at least 
   put depth markers on them."  

   4 August 1995  
      Further experiments refined the estimate 
   to $27/ounce.  
      I'm soggy and wet already.  Yesterday's 
   weather was pleasant: 80 degrees and high 
   humidity (my wash never did get honestly 
   dry) but it was overcast and there was a 
   good breeze, so I finally got a little 
   garden work done.  It was purslane, not 
   bindweed & I thought years of persecution 
   had paid off -- then I noticed the 
   completely-buried tomatoes.  The tomato 
   vines were the only plants to get a good 
   deep watering just before I left, so I 
   figure it was drought, not persecution, that 
   retarded the bindweed.  Purslane flourishes 
   in drought and doesn't seem to suck water 
   away from the plants; the only damp soil I 
   dug up was from where I'd just pulled a row 
   of purslane.  It also distracts the 
   groundhog, who likes purslane better than my 
   gherkin vine.  (But he took all of the dill 
   to season it.)  
      I pulled purslane from some of the area 
   where root crops had been, so I could plow 
   it with my five-tine cultivator to turn up a 
   garlic, a few onions, and one potato.  
   Pulled the red and yellow onions along with 
   the purslane.  The yellow onions are small 
   and not many, and the red onions didn't even 
   return my sets.  Haven't prospected the 
   multipliers yet, but suspect that I'll 
   barely have enough to preserve the strain.  
      Despite late picking, the garlic is 
   terrific.  I've a big box of wild garlic 
   with a few elephants on top to give to Bob 
   Farley when Dave remembers to take it.  I 
   counted out just five wild bulbs to stash 
   away for seed so I won't have such a surplus 
   next year.  I hung up somewhat more of the 
   New York Softneck, but there are fewer 
   cloves to a bulb in that.  I haven't held 
   back any of the elephant garlic, since the 
   plants that bloomed are still in the garden.  
   I'm hoping to save some garlic and onion 
   seed to see whether it does anything 
   interesting.  I've never succeeded in 
   raising onions from seed, but at least once 
   that was because I didn't tell Dave the 
   nearly-invisible plants were there.  The 
   little zinc markers should be a big help 
   with that.  
      It lightninged and thundered almost 
   continuously while we were trying to get to 
   sleep last night, but I see no sign that it 
   rained here.  
      Mysterious blackouts all over the place: 
   Dave got a day off work, was called back a 
   little before lunchtime, and was soon back 
   again because the power was off again.  
   Haven't noticed anything here -- maybe the 
   printer fouled more often than usual while I 
   was addressing the Writer's Exchange 
   Bulletin.  
      I've been lazy today, and stayed inside.  
   I left the window on the half-bath open, and 
   every time I open that door, I think it's a 
   freshly-vacated shower stall.  
      Getting gloomy out & it's only half-past 
   one.  
      One thing Dave did with his intermittent 
   day off was to bring home a Jeep that Darryl 
   just bought at an auction.  I took it for a 
   lap around the block, and we are seriously 
   considering it.  I hate to part with the 
   Toyota that has served so loyally -- will 
   the Jeep start first time every time all 
   winter?  But it <em>is</em> leaving a trail 
   of rust.  I checked the jack compartment, 
   and it's too late to start carrying it in 
   the trunk.  There's been a hole in the 
   wheelwell all winter and the jack is rusted 
   into its clever clamp.  
      It's raining quite hard, and straight 
   down like a noreaster.  Couldn't be Erin yet 
   though; last I heard of it, it was going the 
   other way.  
      Wish I thought it was something that 
   would push this Bermuda High out to sea.  

   5 August 1995  
      As I was drifting off to sleep yesterday, 
   I was reflecting that I'd been lazy all day 
   and hadn't done a single thing, if you don't 
   count mailing three letters that I wrote the 
   day before.  I rode my bike to the post 
   office to have them weighed, and stopped at 
   the library on the way back.  I hadn't 
   gotten anything done after coming home from 
   the library because I had nothing much for 
   supper, and I read "The Tightwad Gazette" 
   and a couple of magazines instead of looking 
   up one or two of the subjects on my list 
   because it was time for my four-o'clock 
   snack and I hadn't brought any food.  Then I 
   remembered that my lunch had been one 
   drumstick off a broiler left over from the 
   Punkintown fair, and at breakfast I was so 
   fed up with fried eggs that I fried one for 
   Dave meaning to cook something else later, 
   and later never came.  
      No wonder I was lazy all day!  
      And I had two ears of corn in the crisper 
   that I'd bought the previous day, intending 
   to make corn cakes that Dave much prefers to 
   fried eggs -- and I always eat more of those 
   than Dave does.  
      It was much less humid when I came out of 
   the library than it had been when I went in.  
      A story about the enervating weather on 
   the front page of the paper sometime this 
   week ended with a quote from a weather 
   expert: "It's summer."  
      When August comes, can September be far 
   behind?  

   6 August 1995  
      I don't know how to deal with nice 
   weather.  We had the fan airing the house 
   after noon, and the garden is too wet to 
   work after yesterday's rain.  I hope some of 
   the rain that postponed the Firecracker 400 
   extended north of Indianapolis!  
      On the other hand, now that it's cool 
   enough to work outside, the grass is too wet 
   to mow.  Maybe tomorrow.  The situation is 
   getting desperate, even though it didn't 
   grow significantly while I was gone.  
      Sat up until after one writing a letter, 
   then Dave woke up to try to use World Wide 
   Web, hoping it would be a little faster when 
   everyone else was asleep, and I went 
   upstairs and darned until he came up at 
   three or four.  Took the usual time to fall 
   asleep, but I woke up at the usual time and 
   didn't feel groggier than usual -- but it's 
   naptime and I think I'll take my nap.  
      Finally tried out my "new" iron today.  
   It puts out billows of steam, and irons with 
   authority even though I didn't turn it all 
   the way up.  Appears to be in perfect 
   condition except that the button to work the 
   sprayer is missing, and the soleplate is 
   sticky.  I'd scoured it with Bon Ami, but it 
   needs steel wool.  
   <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> 

   8 August 1995  
      While reading the paper this morning, 
   Dave said "Hey, it's the eighth!"  I 
   suggested buying a steak for tonight, 
   waiting until the weekend, and ignoring our 
   anniversary completely.  He suggested buying 
   me a Jeep.  
      I think we've settled on that, but it 
   leaves me kinder stuck for a suitable 
   response.  Maybe I can put an antenna on my 
   Jeep.  
      Mowed the lawn by the front door 
   yesterday, and collected the trimmings for 
   mulch because the buckhorn is going to seed.  
   I don't want to mow the front lot -- 
   everything is in glorious bloom.  That's 
   going to include a few ragweed soon, but I 
   think I can wait until the Queen Anne's Lace 
   fades a bit.  There were a few buckhorn and 
   plantain among the pretty weeds in the front 
   lot, but they were all close to the driveway 
   -- those that I saw, anyway -- and I pulled 
   them.  With the recent rain, they came up 
   easily.  
      Perhaps it's time to nag Dave into 
   burying his cable.  We meant to do it during 
   the spring rains, but there weren't any.  
      I've cut out a new poncho shirt -- from 
   rather rotten drapery duck -- and hope to 
   get into sewing mode.  While running around 
   in ragged cut-offs the last few days, I 
   remembered that I've always wanted a tennis 
   skirt.  Since it's for the house and garden, 
   why not?  
      My experiment of cutting the front of 
   broadfall pants away on a line similar to 
   the front pockets of blue jeans eliminated 
   the stress point nicely.  However, it also 
   removed too much front to leave room for two 
   hooks on each side, and didn't cut deep 
   enough that a single hook could keep the 
   pocket from peeking out.  So I figured that 
   next time I'd leave the entire front 
   waistband, instead of cutting it to match 
   the front.  Who knows, I might want to carry 
   something that's supposed to hang from your 
   belt.  
      Or, with that naked bit of waistband at 
   the end, one could sew a skirt in with the 
   pants without having a pile-up of fabric at 
   the side.  The skirt could avoid the stress 
   point where a hem changes into a seam 
   allowance by simply not having side seams; 
   if it swings open and shows the shorts, so 
   what?  I could, in fact, leave a bit of a 
   gap at the sides so the side hems wouldn't 
   pile on top of the seam allowances.  

      When I went out for the trash bins, 
   Margie told me that she's got cancer in her 
   liver and has to go back on chemotherapy.  
   She says that she doesn't want to, but her 
   children told her she couldn't just give up.  
   At least she can eat, if she takes lots of 
   small meals.  
      She looks as white as Aunt Grace.  I 
   didn't mention that.  

   August 9, 1995  
      Three auxiliaries catering the fire, and 
   I was the only lady there without an 
   appointment.  It was ten or twenty minutes 
   before two when I left the scene, but forty 
   after when I got home.  Takes a while to 
   scrub two big insulated jugs, a plastic box, 
   and a Rubbermaid Roughneck.  
      Egad.  I forgot to clean the coffeemaker.  
   I have to go back anyway, because I left the 
   jugs airing in the kitchen.  
      Coffee went over like a lead balloon, but 
   those few who did take it seemed eager to 
   get it.  Guilderland brought a big cooler of 
   hot dogs and another of meat and cheese on 
   split rolls.  Somebody brought a sack of 
   brownies and a sack of some sort of 
   chocolate-covered cakes, in single-serving 
   packets.  Those went surprisingly slowly.  
   Guilderland and another auxiliary each 
   brought a big jug like our ice water 
   dispenser, filled with orange Gatorade; when 
   the third Auxiliary left, they emptied their 
   jug into Guilderland's -- as did I, much 
   later, after topping off the two one-gallon 
   insulated pitchers of water.  The Gatorade 
   had been gone for a while when I decided to 
   leave.  
      Dave picked up two boxes of soda after 
   calling me, and Guilderland had a cooler of 
   soda -- both were completely gone well 
   before I left.  Which was a relief, because 
   I could use that cooler as a table for the 
   drink dispensers.  
      Just a chimney and the south wall of the 
   attached garage were standing, and one of 
   the firemen said that they were lucky.  The 
   propane could have blown up three hours 
   sooner, when they were all in bed.  
      A man from Suburban Propane was supposed 
   to call there that afternoon to investigate 
   a smell of gas.  I don't think anybody 
   thought to call and cancel.  

   10 August 1995  
      Gawsp!  An article about the seasonal 
   abundance of "zukes," in yesterday's Life 
   and Leisure section, referred to "foot-long 
   zucchini" as "<em>almost</em> ready to 
   pick"!  (emphasis added) 
      Dave didn't see any reference to the fire 
   in this morning's local section, and neither 
   did I, but the second time I leafed through 
   checking all the headlines, I noticed that 
   one of the pictures looked familiar.  Didn't 
   show much of the destruction.  The caption 
   said only that Ben Dawson, 13, suffered head 
   injuries in the blast.  I presume that this 
   was the fellow who went through the wall on 
   a sofa.  The location was given as Grant 
   Hill Road.  I wasn't halfway to Grant Hill 
   Road when I met Dave directing traffic, but 
   I suppose they might have re-named the 
   northern end of Voorheesville Main Street 
   during the 911 shakeup.  
      Found four ripe tomatoes this morning.  I 
   was beginning to think the "coldset" vines 
   weren't ever going to produce.  

   Arachne  
      <i>Apocalypse</i>, with a little cross 
   under the "o"; by Nancy Springer, copyright 
   1989, Nancy Springer.  When I saw "Hell hath 
   no fury like the four horsewomen" on the 
   cover, I knew this book was a lightweight, 
   but I like good trash.  The book worked hard 
   to lose me; reading the first sentence of 
   the prologue was like straightening out 
   three yards of crochet thread that had been 
   hastily crammed into a sandwich bag.  
   Chapter One opens with Cally riding 
   horseback to take her mind off her empty 
   belly, which is a promising start; it 
   appears to be in the present day, and even 
   when horses were the usual way to get 
   around, someone who rode for exercise or as 
   therapy most likely had an adequate supply 
   of worldly goods.  Plunging on in hopes of 
   finding out why she can't ride her mare home 
   and tell the cook to make sandwiches, I 
   immediately came to a scene in which Cally 
   reflects bitterly that her husband chose a 
   safe and boring horse for her -- if you 
   delegate a choice to your husband, he's 
   <em>supposed</em> to pick something 
   reliable; anything else would suggest that 
   he wanted to get rid of you.  The 
   reflections on her horrible hubby were set 
   off by an unusual action of the mare: she 
   set off on her own hook, ignoring the reins, 
   and took Cally to a forest god.  Upon sight 
   of him, Cally goes into a fantasy straight 
   out of a **** and **** film.  Startled me; 
   Springer isn't one of your heavyweight 
   authors, but what books I'd previously read 
   suggest that she can write better than to 
   need to do that.  Then as I was throwing it 
   onto the trade-in pile, I remembered that 
   I'd bought it at the Methodist thrift shop!  
      This is not good trash.  

   Arachne 

   11 August 1995  
      <i>The Adventures of Alyx</i>, Joanna 
   Russ, copyright 1967-1970.  This is 
   advertised as a novel, but it's obvious that 
   Russ never intended the stories to be 
   printed together; there is no sense in the 
   sequence, the various biographies don't fit 
   together, and the stories aren't even all 
   the same genre.  The first one is a clich‚d 
   fantasy, the young missionary corrupted by 
   the big city with the usual romantically-
   dirty underworld.  Much is made of Alyx's 
   six-fingered left hand (the first woman's 
   sixth finger was used to create the first 
   man, so most women are missing a finger on 
   the left hand), but fingers aren't mentioned 
   in the subsequent stories.  
      The second story, which <em>might</em> 
   take place in the same hills from which the 
   missionary came, is the story of an abused 
   wife who knocks out her husband with the 
   handle of his whip, then runs off with a 
   pirate.  
      The third appears to be a sequel to the 
   first, and tells of a tough thief in a 
   fantasy land encountering -- and defeating -
   - Clarke magic.  
      The fourth and longest is the story that 
   inspired the blurbs for the "novel": the 
   "transtemporal agent" assigned to lead a 
   motley collection of rich tourists out of a 
   resort caught in a "commercial war," it 
   turns out, is a Greek thief who was 
   accidentally rescued from drowning by a time 
   machine.  The tourists are unconvincingly 
   and inconsistently deprived of their modern 
   tools because the enemy can detect 
   technology, so Alyx's primitive skills come 
   in handy.  The trek is so boring that Russ 
   enlivens it with even less-convincing 
   accounts of Alyx's fornications with one of 
   her charges.  I do intend to finish reading 
   it when I've nothing better to do.  
      The opening page of the last story 
   suggests that it is a mundane "psychological 
   study" of a six-foot, four inch girl 
   visiting a middle-class American family 
   during the Flapper era, but I presume that 
   the very short Alyx will show up sometime, 
   if I bother to read it.  
      Trash, but not the good stuff.  
   @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ 

   13 August 1995  
      This afternoon, I cleaned all the full-
   size onions from my 1995 harvest and put 
   them all in one bag.  There's a strip of 
   small onions about six inches wide across 
   the width of the picnic table.  (That 
   includes tops.)  
      The harvest of oregano is dry; it's about 
   time I put it into the freezer and picked 
   some catnip to put on the trays in the oven.  
   There's plenty of oregano, and there's 
   blossoms on a great deal of it.  
      I used my new three-tine fork to turn the 
   bacon this morning, and the oddly-light heft 
   of it started me to thinking about the way 
   things are made -- which in turn reminded me 
   of the constant theme that Alyx's 
   "composite" throwing knives aren't as 
   accurate as the metal knives the enemy could 
   have detected.  Shucks, man, we've already 
   got the techniques to make <em>ceramic</em> 
   knives tougher and sharper than ancient 
   Greek knives.  By the time people make 
   tourist resorts out of entire planets, 
   perfectly-balanced custom knives ought to be 
   almost cheap.  
      I'm wearing my new poncho shirt.  Took 
   <em>hours</em> to make it yesterday, partly 
   because I haven't done it in over a year, 
   and partly because I was trying out a new 
   way to reinforce the underarms.  Sewing bias 
   tape over the seam seems to work 
   beautifully, and it shouldn't take me as 
   long next time.  
      Today I'm cutting out my tennis skirt.  
   Spent the whole morning copying my pants 
   pattern as a shorts pattern, and now I feel 
   like taking a nap.  Assembling it won't be a 
   job to finish in one sitting either; there's 
   four patch pockets, two hanging pockets, 
   five mock-fell seams, two waistbands (front 
   and back), . . .  
      Kinder wish I'd put some pleats in the 
   pattern; baggy shorts are all the rage right 
   now.  Could do that when I cut them out; I'm 
   inclined to draw around a pattern before I 
   cut it out with a rolling knife, so simple 
   alterations can be done on the cloth.  

   14 August 1995  
      Nearly ten when I went out to mail a 
   letter, and Margie's paper was still in the 
   box, so I put it in her door.  I took her 
   yesterday's morning paper in the middle of 
   the afternoon.  
      On the other hand, the stuff I put in the 
   door is always gone the next time I look, 
   and chemotherapy is <em>supposed</em> to 
   make you feel lousy.  It isn't necessarily a 
   sign that things aren't going well.  
      I'm planning the big bike trip today:  
   from Western to Central and back again.  A 
   couple of miles, I guess.  We're out of cat 
   litter, so I have to go to Price Chopper -- 
   don't like to go on a Monday, since some 
   places aren't open, but I put it off last 
   Thursday, and they promise thunderstorms 
   tomorrow afternoon, and I emptied the last 
   sack this morning -- should have emptied it 
   yesterday, poor kitties.  
      Gone have to plan a trek to the vet 
   pretty soon.  Aren't too many weeks of pills 
   in Erica's bottle.  
      I found, while cleaning the Toyota to put 
   my bike in it, that I'm already thinking of 
   it as Darryl's car.  There's still some 
   preparation to do on the Cherokee, but Dave 
   says that they've already refurbished the 
   air conditioning.  That's the most important 
   feature for him -- but he plans to drive it 
   only when there's snow on the roads, so I 
   think he could do without.  I prefer an open 
   window, as long as the car is moving.  
      Laredos have power seats, but not power 
   mirrors.  It should be the other way around.  
   It has more knee room, so I may not slide 
   the seat back as far to get out.  Or just 
   forget to do it before turning the engine 
   off until I learn how to squeeze through.  
   It also has automatic shift, so I don't need 
   to get the seat forward before I can start 
   the engine.  

   15 August 1995  
      Just caught the "W" at the beginning of 
   the Albany County Emergency Repeater's call 
   letters.  This so startled me that I didn't 
   hear any of the other chirpings as 
   characters, identified or not, until it got 
   to the dahdahdahdahdah dahdahdahdahdit at 
   the end, which I've always had time to 
   interpret.  
      I wonder what the word rate is.  It's 
   more than 15 wpm.  

   16 August 1995  
      "Nobody Beats the Wiz" took a half- page 
   ad in the "Plugged In" spread in today's 
   paper, and I'll bet the ad manager's 
   disappointed.  
      They've been buying whole sections nearly 
   every day since they opened.  
      There are only four streaks on my leg 
   now, so I guess Fred is in danger of getting 
   the blame.  I tried to force my way through 
   a fallen pine tree, and a cone raked me on 
   the calf while I was backing out.  When I 
   got home, I showed it to Dave and said 
   "people will think I've been abusing Fred."  
      Dave said that he didn't think Fred had 
   enough control of his polydactyl feet to 
   claw me on purpose.  I thought he could, but 
   had to admit that he couldn't make six or 
   seven equally-spaced parallel lines.  Six of 
   his fourteen front toes are on his thumbs, 
   like an extra foot, and one of the extra 
   toes has a defective claw.  But four toes on 
   each front foot are in a row, and, when I 
   check his defective claw, about as far apart 
   as the scratches.  It's hard to put a ruler 
   on your own calf, but I make it a shade more 
   than seven-eighths inch from the first 
   scratch to the fourth.  
      I finally ventured into the trails at Six 
   Mile Park, and, like Edison, learned a great 
   many things that won't work.  There is a 
   connection to Railroad Avenue, but it runs 
   along Fuller and is overgrown with poison 
   ivy -- for which reason, I'm not sure that 
   it goes all the way through, but anyone who 
   beats a path through poison ivy must be 
   going <em>someplace</em>.  It would be about 
   as easy to cross Fuller twice and make that 
   difficult left turn at the top of the hill, 
   and there's an easier turn if only I can 
   remember to go one more block to Warehouse 
   Row.  
      There's a bridge over the creek flowing 
   into the lake, which led me to believe that 
   the footpath that begins at the end of the 
   road might lead to Railroad Avenue.  Alas, 
   it leads back to the shore of the lake.  A 
   less-beaten path seemed to continue toward 
   the buildings I could see across the lake.  
   Forgetting that following the shore to my 
   right would lead me back to the bridge, I 
   followed it.  By the time I was quite 
   certain that the path had degenerated into 
   an animal trail, I wasn't at all sure of 
   being able to follow it back, but that's a 
   teensy patch of woods.  Judging my direction 
   by the roar of the interstates, I was able 
   to intercept the beaten trail and get back 
   onto the pavement.  
      By accident or design, the trails are 
   laid out to make the tiny park seem large.  
   Quite an asset inside a city, but they try 
   not to advertise it -- elbow-to-elbow people 
   would spoil the illusion, and it's a 
   reservoir.  
      Yesterday I was thinking about how to 
   describe the lake to you, and realized that 
   though it was obviously a dammed lake, I 
   hadn't seen the dam.  Then I realized why 
   the lane from the parking lot up to the 
   snack shop is so steep!  
      Having found the earthen dam, I wondered 
   where the spillway was -- the square pipe in 
   the lake in front of the pumping station 
   isn't at all logical as an inlet for the 
   pump, and I'd wondered how the pumping 
   station managed on the dribble that was 
   running into the drain on Monday.  (We're 
   still running a deficit of rain.)  
      I wonder if rainy weather ever raises the 
   lake enough to cover the spillway and leave 
   it marked by a whirlpool.  (It is, 
   sometimes, a square hole in the water.)  And 
   can they open a hole in the side to lower 
   the lake for maintenance?  
      That was on my way back from Canterbury 
   Tales.  Funnybooks are usually scarce among 
   the 3/$1 comics, but on Monday there were so 
   many that I didn't go through both boxes.  
   May have missed something wonderful!  I paid 
   $10 cash, and I think all my paperbacks were 
   covered by the books that I brought back.  
   But I also bought two new copies of Groo, 
   and credit applies only to used books.  
   Dallied too long to get #7, but I have #8 
   and #9.  
      My four tomato vines have finally gotten 
   into gear.  Despite the covering of 
   bindweed, I found enough little tomatoes to 
   crowd a windowsill.  (So I put them on both 
   windowsills.)  
      I think I mentioned last summer that I 
   was changing the shape of the garden to 
   accommodate the loss of the cottonwood and 
   the growth of the oak.  This spring, I 
   hauled last year's leaves from where I'd 
   stashed them in the windbreak onto some sod 
   I meant to kill.  The circle of Jerusalem 
   Artichokes (sunchokes) in the lawn took a 
   bite out of the new patch of garden.  
   Yesterday I looked at the patch of 
   artichokes from the back for the first time 
   since leaving for Indiana.  They are so much 
   taller where they touch the mulch that I 
   appear to have planted two varieties!  
      Come October, we shall see whether the 
   tubers have enlarged in proportion.  
      I meant to go to the Methodist Thrift 
   Shop after supper last night, but chickened 
   out.  Which was a good thing, because I 
   finally finished cutting out my skort, and 
   can get the pieces out of the living room 
   now.  
      There was just enough whole cloth to make 
   the shorts, so I'm making the skirt from the 
   long scraps left from cutting out slacks -- 
   at least three pairs of long pants; how much 
   of that brown twill did I <em>buy</em>?  The 
   scraps suggested making the skirt in 
   overlapping strips, but it will be much 
   easier to piece a pleated skirt.  
      Shorts and a poncho shirt made from my 
   old duck curtains would make a nifty 
   playsuit, but I don't think that any of the 
   curtains are sound enough to use for 
   anything that's more trouble than a 
   pillowcase.  
      Must get around to making a duck 
   pillowcase; sometime during the trip, I left 
   behind one of the overcases for my travel 
   pillows.  
      I think I caught "A609" from that last 
   station break.  I wonder whether there's an 
   "A" in the call letters.  I'm pretty sure 
   they end "609" -- which is the primary basis 
   of my identification of the "6".  
      There's a rumor that my new car is over 
   at Import Motors getting something done to 
   its differential.  
      I wonder whether we should ask them to 
   drill a hole in its roof?  

   17 August 1995  
      Dave took my hanger case with him when we 
   split up in Turkey Run, that being the least 
   suitable case to check on an airline.  (The 
   latch tends to pop open when the case is 
   thrown around.) When I got home, it was 
   sitting open in the bedroom, still 
   containing Dave's sweatshirt and the stuff 
   of mine that I'd decided I could do without.  
   I put my dress in the closet, then unpacked 
   my cases and threw the stuff that didn't 
   belong in the bedroom into the hanger case, 
   and draped the shawl of Mom's that Alice 
   gave me over the open lid, wondering where 
   to put it when the glove chest was already 
   full and I didn't want to keep it on a 
   hanger.  
      And by the time the fair was over, I'd 
   stopped seeing it.  
      Today I finally unpacked the hangar case 
   and put stuff away, and got many a surprise 
   at what I found.  The lemon jellybeans are 
   still good, luckily.  
      Got another surprise when I tried to 
   throw all my sandals into the suitcase so I 
   wouldn't forget to take a pair next year -- 
   at home, I go barefoot or wear my ragged 
   house slippers when it's too hot to wear 
   shoes.  I thought I had two pairs of white 
   sandals and a practical brown pair, but 
   could find only the dressier white sandals.  
      On the third hand, while hunting for the 
   sandals, I found two pairs of my double-knit 
   house slippers that are safe only on 
   carpeted floors.  I'd been meaning to make a 
   pair to take next year, and now I don't need 
   to.  

   18 August 1995 
      
   Arachne  
      Even for the middle of a trilogy, Anne 
   McCaffrey's <i>Damia</i> (1992) was a 
   disappointment.  
      I suppose the long stretches that read 
   like "What Has Gone Before," and the way 
   there is no more information in the book 
   about the near-death of Damia's future 
   father (which crisis caused The Rowan to 
   overcome her agoraphobia) than is in this 
   sentence -- I suppose that those things 
   refer to events in <i>The Rowan</i>.  But 
   there is no excuse for having the Rowan's 
   name first mentioned halfway through the 
   book, and then failing to give a clue as to 
   who "Agherard" is.  Nor is there any excuse 
   for giving no hint anywhere as to what a 
   Rowan is, or why a Rowan is so important 
   that her best friends call her Rowan and 
   forget her name.  If it's simply that she's 
   a powerful Prime, she should be called 
   Callisto.  
      (The spelling of "Agherard" is probably 
   way off; I can't find it again.)  
      It's supposed to be Damia's story, but 
   half the pages have been turned before the 
   Rowan meets Jeff, and Damia is their third 
   child.  The first half-hundred pages are 
   devoted to establishing that copulation is, 
   at most, good medicine for tension, and that 
   having manners or morals means that you lead 
   a narrow, constricted life that stifles your 
   children.  
      Capellans, though human, are green.  No 
   explanation for this curiosity is ever 
   given.  Human space is twice invaded, by two 
   unrelated alien races, each bent on 
   exterminating everything in its path, but 
   this is of no significance except that 
   taking part in the defense -- a matter of 
   minutes each time -- influences the personal 
   development and romances of the characters.  
   (The first defense happens entirely in "What 
   Has Gone Before" style; perhaps it was dealt 
   with in <i>The Rowan</i>.)  There is no plot 
   or point to the book, except that Afra and 
   Damia were born, grew up and (trumpets) 
   became lovers.  
      One incident is built on the infamous 
   "idiot plot." Damia burns out her first 
   lover and blights his promising career -- 
   because none of the exceptionally well-
   trained telepaths in charge of bringing her 
   up bother to tell her that it's possible.  
   One of them does say "be careful" as he sees 
   her off to her first assignation, but says 
   nothing about what to be careful of.  Real-
   life parents teach bicycle riding this way, 
   but they don't know any better, and real 
   life is under no obligation to be plausible.  
      The incident is significant only because 
   it was an unpleasant experience for Damia, 
   and because there will be a scandal if the 
   boy finds out how prominent her family are.  
   After reading the first report from the 
   hospital, nobody has any interest in Damia's 
   victim, he is never heard from again, and 
   Damia never has a twinge of thinking that 
   she owes him something.  
      McCaffrey thinks that coon cats wash 
   their food like coons.  The artist who drew 
   the front cover thought that "coonies" 
   <em>were</em> raccoons.  And if Barque Cats 
   are so blooming important, I think that the 
   kid seeing his very first Barque Cat at the 
   beginning of the story should have noticed 
   that they have significantly more mass than 
   a child old enough to walk, instead of 
   allowing us to assume that they are cat- 
   sized cats until the second half, when 
   Rascal, left to baby-sit, prevents Damia 
   from toddling out the door.  
      Every fifty pages or so there was some 
   jarring misuse of a word, as in "Damia 
   subscribed it to the alien metal."  In 
   context, one can tell that Damia 
   <i>ascribed</i> it to the alien metal.  
      Later, I picked up <i>Restoree</i> (1967) 
   while cleaning, opened it to see whether I 
   remembered the opening, read the whole first 
   chapter, and was very nearly unable to get 
   back to work even though I've read the book 
   and remember it well.  
      Hard to believe the same author wrote 
   both books.  
      There's a family resemblance between 
   Sara's Mil and Damia's two evil races, and 
   <i>Restoree</i> is also a romance.  But we 
   care about the trials of Sara and her lover; 
   it isn't "Bing!  I'm personally developed."  
   @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ 

      Yesterday, after the third time my bun 
   fell onto my neck, I coiled my hair on top 
   of my head -- far from easy with sticky 
   hands.  This stayed put so well that this 
   morning I decided to pin my hair up while my 
   hands were still dry.  Dave said that I 
   looked like a grandmother.  I retorted that 
   I'm old enough to have a right to look like 
   a grandmother, but between you, me, and the 
   gatepost, I look more like Ma Kettle.  
      And none of my hats fit.  
      Got the nail aprons washed this morning.  
   Last night, I put them on to soak with two 
   yellow-brown pillows and a double dose of 
   soap.  The pillows came out snowy white, and 
   the aprons don't look bad.  Finally cleared 
   the picnic table of onions, and cleaned it 
   up to serve as a folding table -- pillows 
   have to be whomped on a table a few times 
   while they are drying.  Didn't take much 
   whomping to restore these pillows' 
   fluffiness -- but they didn't have much 
   fluffiness to restore, so I won't be trying 
   to find out what they're made of.  

   19 August 1995  
      What is there about a sleeping cat that 
   makes you want to tickle his belly?  I 
   refrained, but Fred didn't get to sleep 
   long.  I went downstairs and rattled a 
   cheese wrapper.  
      16:35 -- I copied "chronological" at 10 
   wpm, and I think it burned me out; I missed 
   the next three or four simple words 
   entirely, and shut off the receiver.  
      When Margie's mowers did her lawn, they 
   did two swaths of mine and got most of the 
   Queen Anne's lace, after which I mowed two 
   swaths along the road and got most of the 
   ragweed, so I thought it would be a while 
   before the front lot needed mowing.  But for 
   days I've been noticing that the mowed part 
   looked raggier than the unmowed, and today 
   the mowed orchard grass was definitely 
   taller than the unmowed -- partly because it 
   was straighter; mainly, I think, because the 
   strips nearest the driveway and the road get 
   extra water.  Parts of the lawn that are 
   entirely grass are entirely brown.  
      So I fired up the mower and took four 
   swaths along the paved edges.  And then 
   mowed the spot where the picnic table was -- 
   finally got around to making Dave help me 
   move it -- and a good bit of the back lawn.  
   Both lawns need mowing again, but aren't 
   tall enough that you can be sure where 
   you've been, so I'm holding out for rain.  

   22 August 1995  
      I'm planning to mow the front lot 
   tomorrow -- after cleaning out the Toyota.  
   We are supposed to pick up the Jeep at noon 
   tomorrow.  
      Dave has signed up for Global One, a 
   local internet server.  A few days ago they 
   asked him for a word more than three letters 
   long, and just then Frieda walked through 
   the room.  Much to his surprise, our e-mail 
   address is FREDA@GLOBALONE.  
      Dave says that he didn't know there was 
   an "i" in Frieda's name.  I've never settled 
   whether it was Frieda or Freida, so maybe we 
   should just leave it out.  
      Went to the Methodist thrift shop today.  
   Got five books from the five for a dollar 
   table, and was then much surprised to see a 
   great stack of yard goods.  Prices were very 
   tempting, and many of the prints were 
   attractive, but how can you tell what to 
   make of it if you don't know what it's made 
   of?  I bought a piece of white cord-weave 
   piqu‚, thinking that I'll find a use for it 
   sooner or later, and I'll have an idea of 
   what to make of it after it's washed.  Then 
   I found some black stuff that looks suitable 
   for summer pants, eight yards for $5.50.  
      Moving down the table, I spotted a packet 
   of #3 sock needles, blue like my sock 
   needles, and started digging in the box.  
   The #4 needles were also the color of my #4 
   sock needles, so I got carried away and also 
   bought two crochet hooks and a plastic 
   bodkin bundled together, an unlabeled bundle 
   of gray sock needles, and a package of bias 
   tape.  The way my luck was running, I 
   expected to find pink or blue cotton tape, 
   but the only package of bias was gray 
   polycotton.  Looks more like straight poly, 
   but it's double fold.  
      There were lots and lots of zippers in 
   the box.  
      But I might as well give up looking at 
   the clothes.  Only scrawny little girls 
   throw their clothes out while they are still 
   fit to sell.  One of the church ladies said 
   that she's there every week, and yet very 
   rarely finds anything in her size.  
      Should have copied the brand name off 
   that size-six windbreaker, though.  The 
   pockets were big enough, and the pocket 
   zippers were right-side up.  I'm on the 
   verge of having one custom made to get those 
   features.  
      I wonder when it last rained?  
      I'm washing tomorrow.  That should do it.  

   Arachne  
      Upon second reading, <i>Restoree</i> 
   relies heavily upon co-incidence.  The 
   improbabilities pile up so high that the 
   <em>characters</em> notice.  
      And yet I still wish the book had sold 
   well enough for McCaffrey to be obliged to 
   tell us what sort of children the ugly man 
   and the girl whose beauty was created by 
   plastic surgery produced, and how it came 
   that Earth-type humans live on Lothar.  
      One thought-out sequel, though, not an 
   interminable stream of indistinguishables.  
   @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ 

   24 August 1995  
      Came in from hanging the clothes, saw the 
   Saab in the driveway, and freaked out -- I 
   hadn't heard Dave drive up, and I'd had no 
   idea it was that late.  Came in, called, no 
   answer.  I was getting annoyed at him before 
   I remembered that he drove the Jeep today.  
      I was mistaken about remembering power 
   seats: it's power windows.  But while trying 
   to let the hot air out of the parked car, 
   and finding myself unable to turn the key to 
   "acc," I discovered that the Jeep has 
   <em>vents</em>!  I thought vents went out 
   with running boards.  Former owner must have 
   failed to notice them; they were glued to 
   the weatherstripping all around, and the 
   hinges were so stiff that I thought I might 
   break the glass trying to pry the vent open.  
   Once moved, they loosened up and are no 
   stiffer than necessary.  
      The owner's manual covered the stuck key, 
   but I forget what it said.  
      While hanging the clothes, I remembered a 
   childish rhyme.  Can you read it?  

          YY UR 
          YY UB 
          IC UR 
          Y Y 4 me.  

      Caught a glimpse of a TV show in which a 
   representative of Calvin Klein said that 
   anyone who considers their billboards and 
   bus ads indecent has a dirty mind.  I wonder 
   how many times he had to rehearse his speech 
   before he could deliver it without giggling?  

   Evening: 
      There are more flowers in Margie's lawn 
   than mine, now.  The front lot got seedy, so 
   I mowed it.  I noticed some budding 
   goldenrod; it's probably the first time in 
   thirty years that the lawn has been left 
   long enough for goldenrod to get tall enough 
   to recognize.  
      The effluent of the mower looked like 
   chaff at first, but got greener and more 
   abundant as I worked back toward the house 
   and into the afternoon shadows of the trees.  
   I scattered lots of trefoil seed, and the 
   old plants should bloom again.  The oregano 
   is taking over; it seems to thrive on 
   drought.  The oregano out back is just 
   perfect to harvest, but I cut and dried all 
   I need from the plants that ripened sooner.  
   I did put fresh oregano and fresh thyme into 
   the spanish hamburger I made to use up fresh 
   tomatoes yesterday.  Dave loved it -- for 
   lunch today; yesterday was drill night.  
      I wish I had noted the date when Danny 
   told us that Margie was in the hospital for 
   at least a week.  I think about half the 
   week is gone.  One of her girls is staying 
   in her house to feed Rascal and look after 
   things, but I've never seen her.  I presume 
   she's gone during the day.  
      There's usually at least one vehicle on 
   Margie's side of the lot, though.  

   25 August 1995  
      This morning the house is so cold that 
   the cellar feels warm, but I refuse to close 
   the windows.  
      Sounds like a good time to steam-iron the 
   cotton shirt I washed Tuesday.  
      We were surprised to find that the cell 
   phone was still in the truck when it was 
   delivered.  Seems to be standard on a 
   Laredo.  Dave thinks maybe we can use the 
   phone support for a radio; I thought perhaps 
   we could also use the cable, but I've yet to 
   find the antenna.  Opened the hood thinking 
   I could follow the wires, but all I saw was 
   about two cubic yards of small, close-packed 
   components.  One of the components looks 
   like the "Gaz" cylinders for the camping 
   stove, except that it's white instead of 
   blue.  
      I wonder why a phone made specifically 
   for a vehicle would have a handset instead 
   of a headset?  Perhaps they were afraid 
   they'd be accused of encouraging drivers to 
   use the phone while the car is moving.  

   26 August 1995  
      The TU appears to have acquired a gadget 
   that prints a page-size sheet and folds it 
   in half over the spine of a section.  I 
   think it's supposed to attract your 
   attention, but I usually throw them out 
   without looking at them.  The one I peeled 
   off the sports section today was headed 
   "Nobody beats our picks," in reference to 
   "Nobody Beats the Wiz."  
      I haven't opened any of the Wiz ads, save 
   at first when I didn't realize that they had 
   the whole section, and I'm not sure what 
   NBtW sells, but I'm beginning to think I 
   ought to find out where the store is, and go 
   there if it's on my way to someplace.  
      Advertisers seem to have caught on that 
   people don't read the spine strips, and both 
   strips on today's paper refer to Saratoga 
   ("the August place to be"), so we might have 
   fewer of those nuisances in September.  
      Heavens!  It's almost Century Weekend.  I 
   don't think I'll take part this year.  
      When I shoveled out the Toyota, I found a 
   map of the Century and couple of not-
   <em>too</em>-interesting books I'd read 
   between customers while manning a water 
   station.  
      Dave hasn't gotten around to changing our 
   Global One address to BEESON yet, but since 
   it's a local company, he's pretty sure we'll 
   be the first to ask for it.  
      Had a tough time steam-ironing the shirt.  
   I absent-mindedly set the iron on "linen," 
   as if using the energy-saving model, and the 
   markings on the thrift-shop iron assume that 
   the cloth has been dampened; I should have 
   been using "wool."  
      I use the newer iron for pressing seams 
   and hems; "twirl it to max" is an easy 
   setting to remember.  
      This morning, it was so cool that the 
   furnace came on (I turned the thermostat 
   lower as soon as I noticed), so I put on a 
   T-shirt instead of a poncho shirt.  Now I 
   think I want my arms covered indoors too!  
      I'm down to final assembly on the shorts.  
   When I blithely thought how easy it would be 
   to tuck a skirt into the waistband, I forgot 
   about having four seam allowances one on top 
   of the other.  It doesn't help any that my 
   pants pattern requires considerable easing 
   at the waist, and the brown twill isn't co-
   operative in that operation.  
      And I changed the pocket and forgot to 
   change the back waistband to match.  
   Luckily, there are plenty of scraps long 
   enough to cut a new one.  
      And now's a fine time to remember that 
   when it's hot enough to wear shorts, I 
   always wear a poncho shirt that comes 
   halfway to my knees.  
      But as I said, I want it to wear in the 
   house and garden.  
      If I don't start riding my bike more, I'm 
   going to have to let my patterns out in the 
   hips and belly.  
      Brr.  I think I'll go put my summer shirt 
   on <em>over</em> my T-shirt.  

   27 August 1995  
      Yesterday I cooked a handful of almonds 
   in my grits.  I was surprised that they 
   didn't get soggy when boiled.  I was even 
   more surprised that they dyed my grits blue.  
   Maybe it was some sort of reaction between 
   the yellow pigment from the skins and iron 
   from the saucepan.  
      It surely must have rained sometime in 
   August, but I don't remember any since July.  
      Dave found the end of the antenna cable.  
   The Jeep's cell phone appears to have used 
   an antenna stuck to a side window with a 
   suction cup.  Not a usable location for a 
   two-meter antenna.  

   Arachne  
      <i>Out of this world</i>, Lawrence Watt-
   Evans, 1993.  
      Real-life people do compare bizarre 
   occurrences to fiction; vicarious experience 
   is all the applicable experience they have.  
   Someone longing for the cavalry to come and 
   free him, whether from prison or from 
   bindweed, is sure to have a fictional model 
   for his fantasies.  But it's very dangerous 
   to let the characters in a story constantly 
   compare themselves to characters in a story; 
   it breaks up the willing suspension of 
   disbelief.  
      Watt-Evans is almost good enough to get 
   away with it.  Almost.  
      But I suppose I'll pick up the sequel 
   when it comes out.  Watt-Evans is very 
   scarce.  (Why do all the best authors write 
   so <em>slow</em>?)