Tomorrow is the first day of fall. It is raining here, a result of tropical storm Beta, which looks to be causing nothing but some minor flooding and a heavy surf in Galveston. I'm at work, but wishing I was sleeping in.
Rainy days do that to me.
I spent yesterday afternoon cleaning up after myself at the lakehouse, putting away tools that have been strewed around the carport all year, as I worked on various projects. The boathouse is done. The floors are done in the upstairs, and I put back the dry wall over the hole I cut in the ceiling to to repair the upstairs shower drain..My 18 foot flat-bed trailer is full and overflowing in the driveway with the detritus of the boathouse build and the floor remodel. I finally got the non-functional washer and dryer out of the carport. We never used them, and they had become a catch-all for left over hardware and tools.......slowly marinating in grease, dust and leaves.
I filled up two huge plastic tote boxes and two smaller ones with tools and useable left-over materials. Most of that will go to my local storage out there next weekend and the trailer will finally go to the dump. I filled up two big garbage bags with trash and leaves. I'm not finished with my clean-up, but it's almost done. I have some lumber and drywall and some roofing metal that need to go to storage too. But a couple of quick trips to the storage and a trip to Llano to the waste transfer station will do it. They'll probably charge me a hundred bucks to empty that trailer.
My fall agenda is lighter, but I still would like to get the lost freeze plug back in the old Mastercraft and get it back in useable condition. I think I'll move it to a warehouse after that, and maybe put my MG under the carport and get it running again. It needed clutch work when I parked it......must be five years now. The carbs will have to be rebuilt. Who knows what else. Rust never sleeps. Time just gets by so fast now, at my age.. The kids are after me to get our old jetski functional....it needs a steering cable, which I ordered...but I got the wrong swivels...got to order more.
The night time temps are back in the low 70's I hope to get some fall tomatoes...it's been a good year for tomatoes, but the August heat put a stop to fruiting.
I saw that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has died...and that Trump wasted no time in announcing he would be picking a woman to replace her...sort of a a typical Trump trick.....a way to provide cover for appointing a sixth Catholic. It's sort of like the old joke about how many Aggies it takes to screw in a light bulb. How many Catholics does it take on the US Supreme Court to reverse Roe v. Wade?
I think Roe was a good decision, if not legally bulletproof. As pointed out by Levitt and Dubner, access to abortion is the most important reason we have seen a huge drop in crime for thirty years. It's rife with irony that the religious folks who are so consumed with walking back Roe are the same ones always worried about crime. They don't get how it works......and don't want to get it.
Nobody complains about the way the Supreme Court has eroded our rights by upholding asset seizures by cops with no proof of a crime. Nobody talks about Citizens United allowing corporate money to completely dominate congressional elections....It's hot button issues like Roe...and the 2nd Amendment.....those are what Americans get worked up about.
The election is a little over 40 days away, and Biden is still enjoying a slight lead in the polls, but the Democrats are nothing if not expert at grasping defeat from the jaws of victory. Their platform is as wormy as a rotten old boat parked for too long in a warming Gulf of Mexico..Trump is sure to do any possible grandstanding he can to try to turn it around, including starting a war, or announcing troop withdrawals from the Middle East, or announcing COVID is cured, even if it isn't. And with all the mail-in votes that can't be counted until after the election, there is a decent chance of angry people hitting the streets.
It truly sucks to be an American voter, with the bad choices we have to pick from. They only seem to get worse, not better.
COVID levels had fallen to decent (very low) levels here, but kids returning to school and a further re-opening of most businesses might cause them to head back up. The curve has turned back up as of last week, but so far it isn't a steep rise. Time will tell.
The Diner is awfully quiet. With RE in the hospital the forum amounts to a death watch, with old posters and lurkers showing up to check on him. I'm glad to see he still feels good enough to post something that lets us know he's still alive. I'm sorry my old friend is feeling so poorly, but this has been coming for a long time, and the ending is already written.....just not the timing. I hope he can bounce back one more time. I'm sorry he doesn't have family to look after him at a time like this.
I felt like I should drop in here, just to say hi. Hi, RE, hope you see this. Hope you aren't in too much pain. Hope your medical treatment goes however you want and need it to go. A hospital is not a great place to die. Hang in there if you can.