Dusty Hill

 Learned yesterday of the passing of Dusty Hill, bass man for Z Z Top, and by all accounts an all around cool guy.

My favorite Hill quote - "Here we are - same three guys, same three chords."

Rumble

 

Rumble strips have been around for quite a while.  The first ones were installed on the New Jersey Turnpike back in the early 50s.  They are there to give the inattentive driver a wakeup call, and it is generally accepted that whether they are on the center line or the shoulder they have saved numerous lives.

Some cyclists hate them, and the Amish convinced the State of Michigan they were dangerous to horse-drawn carriages, but most states like them and their use has become pretty universal. 

My first  encounter with rumble strips, though, was with one perpendicular to the road.  Some states in the middle of the country install them on rural highways to warn of upcoming intersections.  In my case, I'm pretty sure it was in Iowa.  We were zipping down a two-lane blacktop with tall corn on either side of the road when I drove over my first rumble strip.

Did it get my attention?   þ

Did I stop at the intersection in plenty of time?   þ

Did I need to pull over for a while?    þ

Can rumble strips induce heart attacks?  Mmmmm, Maybe.

No Dial Tone II

 Still no dial tone - no phone service.

The estimate for restored service has now moved to July 31st.

No Dial Tone

 For the past several days, we have had no land-line telephone.  

We have DSL (digital subscriber line) and the phone plugs into the back of the DSL modem.  It doesn't seem possible (it is, they come in on different wire pairs) but we have had uninterrupted internet service, just no phone.

CenturyLink says there's an area wide outage, and update texts on my cell phone keep promising the trouble will be corrected soon.  So far, their predictions have been wrong.

It is always aggravating when something you're paying for doesn't work, but honestly I haven't missed the phone at all.  Lack of the phone has actually been pleasant.

No one we really want to talk to ever calls our land line.  The calls we receive are from political fund raisers, various (usually bogus) police organizations, folks trying to sell extended warranty on our truck or consolidate our credit cards.  Then there are the ones saying they have detected a problem on our Apple computer (never had one) and lately, at least one a day that wants to buy our house.

I have no idea whether they'll get the phone back on any time soon, but, the more I think about it, the less I care.

11 Years Ago

Eleven years ago at this time, we were on the Oregon Coast.

This is a repeat of a post from back then: 

Dogsh#t Daisies

There are lots of flowers, both cultivated and wild,  along the southern Oregon coast.  Just south of Brookings is the Elk Valley, which bills itself as the Easter Lily Bulb Capital of the World.  There are acres of lilies about four inches tall and currently in bloom.  Laborers are in the fields harvesting the bulbs.

Along the banks of the Chetco River, where we are staying, are a variety of flowers in bloom, including the daisies shown above.  We harvested a few, and Honey made a bouquet for the trailer.

Included were Daisies, Marigolds, Sweet Peas and Bird Vetch – the tall spikes with the trumpet-shaped purple flowers; all collected along about 150 feet of riverbank.

It looked really nice and brightened the living room, but about an hour after it was finished we started smelling puppy poop.  We scowled at the dogs, checked under table and chairs and behind the couch.  Honey inspected the bottoms of all our shoes with no result, but we were still getting an occasional whiff that was unmistakably doggie doo.

We endured it for several hours; then, just before bedtime, Honey smelled the bouquet.  Wild Oregon Daisies smell just like dog crap!  We had noticed the smell in spots along the path – blamed irresponsible pet owners –but we never made the association.

Who would have thought those pretty flowers would smell like that?

More Deer Stuff

 Yesterday was the first day in over two weeks when we didn't have at least 20 minutes of rain, and we've already had a thundershower this morning.

This has accomplished a couple of things:

1. The grass that is usually turning brown by this time of year is lush and green and really tall.
2. It is too wet to mow, or just about any other outdoor activity.
3. It has also provided us with an excuse for spending literally hours each day watching the deer in our back yard.

We have learned several interesting facts about white tail fawns.  

For example, when they get wet, they will shake like a dog.  They also spend several hours a day grooming themselves (or each other) like a house cat.  They spend quite a bit of time taking naps, and even though the grass is a brilliant green and they are reddish brown with spots, they can lie down in less than a foot of grass and disappear.

We have wondered how they communicate.  A website I checked says a doe calls her fawns with a sound like THIS.  But we have never hear her make a sound.  She usually comes to collect her kiddos just before dusk, and Honey thinks she communicates with them by a sort of semaphore.  Mom flicks her tail in a certain way and the fawns look up and start heading her way.  Then they all melt away into the woods.

Watched

 

Back in 2016, I wrote about my Citizen brand watch that had bit the dust after years of perfect service.  You can look it up, or I can just tell you that I had it repaired at the factory.  It cost a small fortune and took over two months to get it back.

A few years later, when it quit again, I bought a Lige watch, a cheap Chinese imitation, on Amazon.  It cost less than the repairs on the Citizen, and I got it in less than a week - seemed like a no-brainer.

That watch lasted until last week, and the particular model I had is no longer available. Unlike the Citizen, which did not require a battery, the Lige does, but I can't get the case open to replace it.

I've ordered another Lige, and it should be here Friday.

Meanwhile, I'm getting pretty sick of checking my bare wrist.

My Thought of the Day

 

Oh, Deer

Hadn't seen the deer in a few days, and Honey was getting worried about them.  Then yesterday her walking partner, Melodye Winkler, spotted the mother in her back yard when she got home.

Later, one of the fawns showed up in our back yard. I first noticed him because a batch of squirrels were chasing themselves around and he tried to join in.  They apparently like deer in their games of tag and all ran up trees.  If that bothered him, it didn't show; he just went back to grazing.

I got Honey out to see, and we watched him for about an hour.  Finally, he laid down and went to sleep.

 You would think seeing the fawn would have made Honey happy, and it did for a while. Then she started worrying that he had been abandoned.

Black Rock

 

I've always been a Spencer Tracy fan.  In a time when everybody over acted, Tracy was always on point, always believable.  

A couple months ago, after watching Guess who's coming to Dinner, I told Honey that my favorite Spencer Tracy show might be Bad Day at Black Rock. A search on DirecTV failed to show it anywhere, then, after watching The Last Hurrah on Turner Classics the other day, Honey tried again.  She found it on one of the pay-per-view channels, recorded it and we watched it this weekend.

With the exception of one of the early Star Wars shows, I can't think of any movie that was as good the second time around, but this came close.

Bad Day at Black Rock wasn't a huge hit.  It did get Tracy a best actor nomination at the Academy Awards, and a win at the Cannes Film Festival - and he did it with just one arm! 

If, like Honey, you've never seen it, it is certainly worth watching.

The Picture