Author: Peg

I do enjoy watching the weather out my windows. All three of them. Each one faces dead east.

I am not at my very perkiest today. But, so what exactly do have to be perky about? 

Don’t have to be very perky to work on butterflies. I am still playing with the idea of making a bunch of different butterflies and putting them in a Riker mount box, sticking them with pins, making tiny labels and putting them in one of our resident art shows as “art”. But first, I need to master 6 different butterflies. 

Dining Report.

I had a grilled cheese sandwich. Tonight and tomorrow I will be eating in our “Formal Dining Room”. I am not at war with the food in that dining room, not because it is better but because I rarely eat in there and I don’t want to attack two fronts. 

Just recalled this is “Margarita Monday” at our saloon.  Perhaps I’ll go fortify myself for the Formal Dining Room experience with a Margarita. For an old folks asylum, our bartenders have a nice heavy hand. 

Trying to think of something positive and upbeat and failing miserably. Try a little harder.

1. 1. 1. Air conditioning
      2. Electricity
      3. Indoor plumbing
      4. Drinkable water
      5. Heirloom tomatoes and nice peaches
      6. Coffee
      7. Friends

See, Peg, things aren’t as crappy as you think they are.  

Note to Carlton: Working on “accepting the things I can not change”. But nowhere does it say that I have to like it!

It is summer in Washington. It is supposed to be hot. And it is. Tomorrow, according to “they”, it will be hotter. I shouldn’t complain. The A/C hasn’t failed. There is nowhere that I have to go. And, there is absolutely nothing that I can do about the weather. So, I take a little walk around The Asylum

On to the food section.

No, I didn’t eat it. I had a “Summer Berry Salad”. 

There wasn’t anyone eating outside. The joint is usually packed at this time.

It’s hot. 96° hot. But, “they” are promising hotter on Saturday and Sunday. Keep up the good work A/C.  

My personal campaign for better food is starting to show tiny little hints of progress. For example. They stopped the “Special grain” of the week.  And they served pizza at lunch today. Frankly, my pizza wasn’t all that good. But. I don’t usually eat lunch so just nibbling at the pizza was fine with me. And they get points for effort. That’s why I went to lunch to support their efforts. And to eat with my friends. We played “ladies who lunch”. 

I didn’t have this. I had beer and a veggie burger. The burgers, veggie and otherwise are fine. As are the grilled cheese sandwiches and the BLTs. 

Sometimes it’s hard to come up with good news. Well. 8 House Republicans voted to codify the right to birth control and other contraceptives. 195 voted against the bill. So, is that good news? It’s raining right now. But that will increase the humidity. So, is that good news? 

Yesterday’s dinner. Not good news.

Note to management: When the food is consistently bad everything else just seems worse. Management doesn’t have to eat this stuff. They don’t even have to look at it! 

Good news. The A/C is working. Our chillers have been known to crap out, so, working A/C is the good news.

Long long ago, Carlton and I found this somewhere. We might have tweaked it. Or not.  I put it on the blog in September 2012.  I found it when I was poking around being sure that the old stuff was OK. It is still a good guide for when it’s time for me to go. 

Living Will Form

I, ____________, being of sound mind and body, do not wish to be kept alive indefinitely by artificial means. Under no circumstances should my fate be put in the hands of pinhead partisan politicians who couldn’t pass ninth-grade biology if their lives depended on it, or lawyers/doctors/hospitals interested in simply running up the bills.

If after a reasonable amount of time passes, and I fail to ask for: (Check appropriate items)

______a Martini
______a Margarita
______a Scotch and soda
______a Bloody Mary
______a Beer
______a Gin and Tonic
______a Glass of wine
______a Steak
______Lobster or crab legs
______the TV remote control
______a bowl of ice cream
______a mug of coffee
______Sex or
______Good Dark Chocolate

It should be presumed that I won’t ever get any better. When such a determination is reached, I hereby instruct my appointed person and attending physicians to pull the plug, reel in the tubes, and call it a day.

At this point, it is time to call the New Orleans Jazz Funeral Band to come and do their thing and ask all of my friends to raise their glasses to toast the good times we have had.

Signature: __________________________Date: __________

Thinking about Carlton. A big wave crashed into a wedding party at Carlton’s beloved Hulihe’e Palace. 

And, today’s food report.

After much whining, I upgraded my PHP from 5.6 to 7.4. When I am sure that everything is OK, I’ll take it to 8.something.  

I got to wondering: “Why hadn’t I kept PHP up to date?”  I think I stopped worrying about stuff like that during Carlton’s last year. Which was followed by my year of getting myself into The Asylum. And, by then, I had forgotten the necessity of a little website housekeeping from time to time. 

And, I’ll get that SSL Certificate. 

There is a lot of Covid around The Asylum. At least 16 cases on the nursing care floor. And more than a few in “independent living”. We kind of figure out who is sick via a well-developed rumor mill. I don’t see them locking us up again. They might close the dining rooms and make us eat in our rooms. But, I think that’s about as far as they will go until people start dying. And, that is OK with me.

Watching the weather in Europe. Really glad I was there a month ago and not now. I keep thinking about all of those gardens. I remember one of them had a spring that they used for watering. But none were prepared for 100° plus temperatures. 

And I remember more than one unairconditioned hotel room.

Hot hazy sucks the life out of you kind of a day. And, I don’t have too much life left to suck.

That brings me to Prez Biden. A man who is a little older than I am. Exactly what makes him think that a 2nd term would be a good idea? I know what pushing 80 is like. Oh, we can fake it. Pretend that everything is peachy. And, that all of the bits and pieces that are required to make us functional still function. But who are we kidding? 

I started thinking about dear old Joe when I considered upgrading to a newer version of PHP for the blog. I am running 5.6.something. It is at least 8 years old. And must not have been supported since 2018 or so. Time for an upgrade. Well PAST time for an upgrade. 

Do you know what I thought? “I had best do this while I still have enough brain cells to get the blog going again if this upgrade fails.”  That’s the way you think when you are closing in on 80. 

I know a lot of 80-something people. And, none of them should be running a small town, much less a  country.  SO, Democrats – for the love of the USA – find a viable candidate. (I know. Wishful thinking.)

Back to PHP. Thinking I’ll upgrade tomorrow. It should be OK, but if it isn’t, know that I will be working away to get the blog back on track. 

Muggy, hazy, hot, lazy summer sunday. Did laundry. Went to Columbia Pike Market for peaches and tomatoes.  Did some origami. Accomplished very little, but I didn’t kill anyone.  Should get credit for that!

On the food front, they had spaghetti tonight.  My friends all enjoyed it. And, for the first time in recent memory, the food was actually hot. I am not much of a fan of spaghetti, so, I had my default BLT with a side of avocado.  

Lots of covid in The Asylum right now. We no longer think we are going to die of covid. Just be hugely inconvenienced. Inconvenience beats dead any day.

Got a new book that I am looking forward to starting this evening: Ten Tomatoes that Changed the World by William Alexander.  

This morning after breakfast I decided to escape. So, I hopped a bus and went to Old Town Alexandria. One dollar and about 60 minutes and I was there. The plan is to get some exercise and maybe just maybe some lunch.

It’s a little over a mile from the bus stop to the Potomac River. Lots of shops and RESTAURANTS along the way. After checking out a couple of boutiques and the only thrift shop on the way to the river – I wander past The Warehouse. The chalkboard outside mentions “Lobster and Avocado Cobb Salad”. Happily, they found a table for me. They were very busy, Brunch you know.

There wasn’t a hint of collard greens, turnip greens, kale, bulgar, or quinoa anywhere on their rather extensive menu. 

Note to self: Do this more often.

When I got back to The Aslym (another dollar and 60 minutes) I discovered another bunny. Can not get too attached to bunnies. In Virginia every year 80% of the rabbit population is eaten by predators. Mother Nature is a Bitch.

That was a bummer. But

Things are fine if one takes a very narrow view of things. And, as I get older my focus gets narrower and sharper. I can not change the world or the country. Maybe I can get better food here at the Asylum. Maybe not. As Sundar Pichai said “Scarcity breeds clarity”.  

Speaking of scarcity: Net worth. Since Jan 01. Notice a trend? 

Today, I took more bird photographs using wildly inappropriate gear. This time the phone.

Maybe someday I should take right camera and the right lens and try for a real bird photo. 

Meanwhile back at the dinner table.

One of the advantages of keeping lots of emails is you have proof that the food was better 3 years ago and it’s not just your imagination.