The Perseids meteor shower will peak just before dawn (around 5:45 am) tomorrow, Monday, August 13. This year should be good viewing, there’s a new moon and clear skies are forecast.
Yesterday, Onset Village hosted the annual Cape Verdean Festival. Centerville wrapped up its Old Home Week.
A new NOAA research vessel, the Henry Bigelow, was open to the public yesterday at the Mass. Maritime Academy in Buzzards Bay.
The Falmouth Road Race begins at 10 am tomorrow (Sunday).
Even as late as 5 PM last evening, traffic on Route 25 headed to the Bourne Bridge was backed up five miles.
Killing Them with “Kindness”
Laws that force parents and caregivers to put children in the back rather than the front seat have tripled the number of hypothermia deaths in the United States.
In other words, three times as many children have died of hypothermia (heat exhaustion) after these well-intentioned laws were passed than before such laws were on the books.
This, according to an AP article that recently appeared in the Boston Herald.
No one should be riding in the back seat of a car or truck unless they are physically able to extricate themselves, whether they are children or adults.
What I’d Like the Presidential Candidates to Say
Withdrawal from Iraq is a foregone conclusion, so for me, this is not a pivotal campaign issue.
Here’s a few I’d like to see discussed on the campaign trail:
Continue reading What I’d Like the Presidential Candidates to Say
Scars
We’ve all heard “get over it” and variants thereof.
The thing is, I don’t believe that people do get over certain “its”, like poverty or abuse. Rather, they get better at hiding the effects so as not to irritate everyone else.
I wish people were more honest about the impact of hard times or trauma on their lives. Their experiences are instructive in the school of survival.
What’s to be learned from a trust fund baby? Knowing how to build a house from scrap materials or make hard cider from apple orchard dropping would be infinitely more relevant, not to mention more interesting, than a lesson in avoiding capital gains tax.
Gardener’s Diary
I finally cleaned out the flower boxes that were inundated with the results of the “mystery” seeds: a weedy, horrible mess.
Picked up 10 6-packs of annuals at a 2 for 1 sale: purple salvia, cream-colored marigolds, portulaca and a few orange and yellow zinnias.
There were enough plants to spread over 4 flower boxes, and the difference is night and day. Unfortunately, my poor nasturtiums had pretty much been choked to death, and I managed to pull up a morning glory plant by the roots.
What a disaster, but the porch looks 100% better now.
The tomatoes are doing fine. Fingers crossed.
It’s much more comfortable tonight than it has been. Last night I tried doing without the air conditioner and ended up waking up around 2:30 in the morning. Turned the ac on and got several more hours of sleep. The forecast is for dryer air, with the humidity returning later in the week.
Busy Saturday
Yesterday was hot and humid, and I counted 10 tiny tomatoes on the plants in the back yard.
After weeding and watering the container gardens, I went to BJs for a cake and a duck. The cake was our dessert contribution to the family reunion that afternoon, a combination homage to the reunion and to Bob’s birthday. The duck was for CM.
There was barely time to change and head north to Plymouth. I was lucky, managed to dodge traffic both going and returning. There were many horror stories about 2 and 3 hour drives from north and west of Boston.
MRI
Having your first MRI at age 61 is a little like getting your tonsils out when you’re an adult, an otherwise predictable life experience deferred. It turns out that several friends have had this expensive ($1,500 per scan) but generally non-invasive procedure, and at much younger ages than I.
My turn finally took place last night at Shields MRI of Cape Cod, in West Yarmouth.
A Special Day
Robert Andrew is 12 today, and I was thinking about the day he was born and his various adventures and misadventures since.
He’s a fabulous child.
Tomorrow, there’s going to be an extended reunion of Bis Nonna’s relatives, so we’ll get to honor Bob with a cake and maybe a present or two.
As for today: while birthdays tend to be low-key events at his house, I hear there are festivities planned, partly because of the insistence of one of his friends.
So, happy birthday to Bob, and wishes that his last year before becoming a teenager will be a full and happy one.
Summertime
Whoever said the living was easy this time of the year? If anything, it’s more stressful: getting the same amount of work done with fewer people, coping with more traffic, living with heat and humidity.
Guile, Defeated, and the Consequences Thereof
I know someone – a relative, in fact – who has connived and schemed his whole life to get what he wants.
He got his comeuppance recently via a very bad deal, the consequences of which, unfortunately, affect me.
Continue reading Guile, Defeated, and the Consequences Thereof