Several people have asked me how it feels to be 70. Do you feel any different? For the record, the answer is yes. It’s really been hot. I was never this hot when I was 69. In fact I remember at 69 I was often cold. I’m not sure I’ll be able to handle 71.
It’s so hot I’ve reverted to full summer mode a month or two ahead of schedule. Full summer mode means an end to all outdoor projects and a switch from shorts to bathing suit as a daily uniform. Good thing the heat killed off the yellow flies. I gather up my goodies – book, soduko, laptop – and head down to the dock early in the day. It’s usually 10-15 degrees cooler with a nice breeze off the lake and with an occasional jump in the lake for an instant cool down, I can be nice and comfortable all day long. I just leave my XM radio on full time down at the dock tuned to The Coffee House channel with an occasional short switch to Fox News to make sure the rest of the world is still there. Now that I have that wireless internet critter hanging on the laptop, I could even check my email if I gave a damn. This will probably be my mode now until October.
Good news on the big 12 front. Texas decided not to go west to the Pac 10. Hopefully Oklahoma will make the same decision. I’m guessing Texas and Oklahoma have been closely coordinating on it and agreed to stick together. I never liked Nebraska anyway but do hate to see Colorado break away. I would have been better with Colorado joining the Mountain West to strengthen that conference and join Colorado State and Air Force.
As I’ve mentioned, we’re getting more veggies out of the garden now than we can consume. Of course we could freeze or can the excess but the reality is that we have garden stuff available 9-10 months a year so there really is no compelling reason to preserve. So we end up giving away a fair amount, mostly to family or to Nancy’s friends at Bridge and Quilting. That’s not always a one way street since we get an occasional box of blueberries, eggs and yesterday some beef. One of the recipients of our harvests raises cattle so she reciprocated in kind – steak for cucumbers.
So far this Virgin Mobile thing seems to be working out ok. I don’t know what the actual speeds are but it seems consistent with the wi-fi networks we’ve been hooking to. Never not had coverage and our usage pattern seems consistent with the cost I was looking for. Five days into it, we’ve used 30Mbytes against the 100 Mbyte, 10 day top off card I started with. I’ve also purchased a $40 card/1Gbyte/30 day card to give us a full month to home in on our usage rate. What I’d love to find is that the right amount for us is the $20/300Mbyte/30day card but my gut tells me that they cleverly avoid offering the sweet spot at $30 for 500 Mbyte. Perhaps the winning formula will be to sign up for a regular 300 Mbyte plan and keep a few of the $10 top off cards handy just in case.
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