.Nancy’s operation went fine. The procedure is done with just a strong, valium like sedative so the patient is awake for the whole thing but feels nothing like pain – a bit of pressure but no hurting. It took a grand total of 15 minutes from the time I left her to when they called me from the waiting room to get her. Within a couple of hours, she said things were much brighter. They provided a series of eye drops which are used a few times a day and a clear patch to use for protection when sleeping. Other than that, nothing special. No bending over. We went back to the doc this AM for a followup and he confirmed that everything is progressing as expected. She has to go back again next week but the big surprise was when he said he’d do the other eye next month. Turns out that you usually get cataracts in both eyes and that you usually have them taken care of consecutively and then get a new prescription for eye glasses after both are done. That explains why whenever we told somebody that Nancy was getting the surgery they asked if this was the first eye or the second eye.

Took the covers off the garden and we didn’t escape without damage. Most of the young stuff got nailed. Mature plants survived just fine but stuff planted since mid January and, in some cases, even further back was hammered. I’m not really upset about that because we’re quickly approaching time to plant warm weather stuff so the space won’t sit idle for long. The pics are the cauliflowers I picked today. We’ll get 8-10 meal size packages for freezing from these. I set the napkin holder in to give you some scale. Combined they weigh just over 10 pounds. You might recall several months back I focused on a new cross between brussels and kale called FlowerSprouts. They didn’t make it. They were growing nicely but I could tell they would be much slower than anticipated and likely to run into trouble in the hot weather so we’ll just have to wait until next fall to try these.

The neighbor with the chickens (2) asked if I wanted the chicken poop he raked out of the pen. You bet I do! So maybe the eggs for lettuce trade I had envisioned is going to be a poop for lettuce deal instead. I’m ok with that. Should heat up the compost pile a bit but you wouldn’t think you’d get much volume from two chickens. We’ll see.

Made a nice batch of calcium chips for the tomatoes. A couple years back Nancy chucked her old Cuisinart because it was just too hard to change blades and remove the container from the base. I rescued it to use for chopping potting soil into the finer grade I prefer and it turns out it’s perfect for chopping up eggshells. Why would I want chopped eggshells? Anybody who’s grown tomatoes is aware that sometimes the fruit rots on the bottom or blossom end. It’s a condition called blossom rot. What causes it is a lack of calcium in the soil – enter the eggshells. I learned that sprinkling or crushing an eggshell in the same hole where I plant the tomato cures the problem. It works, no kidding. A little trick is to bake or nuke the shells for a couple of minutes before chopping to kill off the bacteria and make them a bit more brittle.

Nancy cashed in her second cacciatore coupon – doesn’t look like she’s going to forget about them. This time I made parsley instead of spinach pasta. I put it in the cuisinart dry instead of blanching it. The end result was good but the dough was much drier and harder to work with. That made the noodles less tender, which I liked a little better.

Sports: Just watched my first ever Rugby game. It was two teams that I have close ties to – Samoa and New Zealand. The guys that poured our driveway in Utah were from Samoa or Tonga (whatever) and I did a report on New Zealand in the fifth grade. I didn’t like it quite as much as regular football but way, way more than soccer. If you’ve ever watched a soccer game you understand why the fans can get really violent – run, run, run and score nothing. I think if there was a regular Sunday afternoon rugby game, I wouldn’t hate it so much when football season is over.

It froze last night – a bowl of water I placed on the deck was solid ice. Maybe not as cold as early last month but still cold enough to do serious damage to unprotected stuff. As soon as it was warm enough for human life, I went out and checked the tomatoes hidden under the water walls. Sure enough, they looked perfect – probably never even knew they were in danger. I’ve got another half dozen ready to plant in the garden but I held back to see how well (or not) the protection worked. I’ll plant those in a few days when it’s supposed to be back to 80. If I remember correctly I have 12 of those walls so I should have this season covered.

Nancy and I did a job that I have been dreading for a couple of years. She’s been haunting me that we needed to pull down the curtains throughout the house to wash them. They looked just fine to me and my experience with taking down curtains is on a par with my experience in tackling a plumbing job. It sounds simple but when you actually start messing around with the hangers, bad things happen. They pull out of the wall, are rusted together, break off – all kinds of things that just make the job way more than a simple cleaning job. With that said, for whatever reason she decided to do it herself and I knew that would be disaster piled on disaster. At least I appreciate just how delicate the process was with respect to the hardware whereas her primary concern was with the curtains. Turned out that I had installed all the hardware very well the first time and the design of the brackets was beautiful – actually came apart and went back together with not a hitch in the getalong. I will say that when all was said and done – the curtains washed, ironed and back up on the windows – I don’t see a bit of difference. Nancy does so I guess that’s all that matters. Now if I can just hold this job off another 10 years. Could this count as a Valentine day present? Can’t hurt to try.

When I picked the sweet potatoes in October, there were a couple that were way too big whole and we set them aside with plans to cook and mash sometime in the future. Then we totally forgot about them. Nancy came across them this week and they were sprouting. I hadn’t planned on putting in any sweets this year but this seemed like a sign so I took three of them, set them in a container and added water. Assuming the sprouts r
eally take off and leaf, I guess I’ll be planting sweets in late March or early April. I’m fairly sure I know why the roots didn’t develop as well as I’d expected last year so this could be a break through.

Nancy has cataract surgery Wednesday. Seems like everybody we know either has had it done or knows plenty of people who have and they seem to survive just fine. I guess it’s one of those surgeries that used to be scary 50 years ago but is routine now. Still scares me a little

Update on George – he’s home and feeling well. Lost 23#’s in the last week based on removing excess water. His heart valve is in such shape, that they couldn’t get the catheter into the valve. The game plan is to have another specialist take a look at what graphics they now have to see if there’s a way to go in and clean up calcium deposits that are messing up the valve action or whether he has to get a new valve now. If they can do a temporary fix that buys him a couple of years, there’s a new procedure that incorporates a new valve into a stent rather than trying to replace the old valve with a new, organic valve. I read about the procedure a few months back and it sounded promising. Apparently it’s been done in Europe with good results for several years but just now being introduced/allowed in the US. There’s a hospital in Miami that’s been doing it for a few months with a good success rate so if cleaning up the old valve buys him a couple of years, that procedure should be much more mature.

Update on the muck operation. I pulled 8 wheel barrows full up to the compost piles and intermixed that with the other stuff. It sure looks good but it’s really a tough job to dig it out and then roll it up to the piles. I’m recruiting number one son to join in the fun – if I can get 10 more loads before he crashes or rebels that should really do me. Oops, that didn’t happen. Too many other honey do’s in the way plus non-optimal weather conditions. So I’m back to do a few loads each day. I use a giant claw on a 6′ steel pole to pull muck from the bottom up onto shore. I let that drain and dry for a couple of days and then shovel it into a wheelbarrow. As long as the weather holds dry and the nurseries continue to pull from the lake, I can keep this process going. I guess you could look at it like the silver lining behind the incredible shrinking lake. Silk purse/sow’s ear. This muck is deep black but has no odor so it’s really peat like. I would have thought it would have a strong sulphur smell but it doesn’t. We’ll soon know whether it’s as good a garden amendment as I’m thinking. If nothing else, I’m getting a good workout and wil have created a nice place to launch and land the poke boat.

Covering the garden again tonight. I knew it was too good to be true that we could go the rest of the season with no frost or freezes. Shouldn’t be anything damaged and this one is possibly the last. I’ve got the drill down to such a science that it only takes an hour or so to get everything covered and the good news is that a brief hit like this will whack off a load of bugs. The very few seedlings I have that are in a delicate state will just spend the weekend in the bathroom. I put them in the shower stall, close the curtain and no one’s the wiser. Last thing was to pick a few goodies out of the garden that will hold us over for the few days until the covers come off – spinach, lettuce, onions and a few sprigs of parsley.

I’ve never had much trouble growing parsley in the cooler months but this year the crop is sensational. You might be thinking parsley is parsley, what’s the big deal. This year the leaves are dark, dark green and crisp. Think of the darkest green spinach you’ve ever seen and double it.

Politics – After Santorum won a few primaries, I’m liking my prediction of a brokered nomination at the Convention this summer. Not that I particularly care for him, but the more the delegate count splinters, the more likely it is that no candidate will get the required 1155. Not sure who the surprise candidate will be yet but am leaning towards either the Indiana Gov or Jeb Bush. The Jersey Gov will be in it as well, especially if Jeb just won’t jump in. Christie’s “in your face” mannerisms might work to overcome his NE liberal baggage, especially that late in the game. It didn’t work for Guiliani last cycle , I think because he got in too soon, but that was then and this is now. Wonder if Obama’s incredibly stupid move on the Catholics had anything to do with Santorum’s uptick. Kind of doubt it and think his plan has been to just hang in as the lone conservative when Gingrich crashes. I think that works for him, not enough to make him the eventual candidate, but enough to keep things stirred up until the convention.

My neighbor George is in the hospital to get a heart valve. He’s known that the valve would eventually need attention for quite some time but his cardiologist gave him reason to think that was a few years off in the future. A few weeks ago he came down with a bad chest cold or something that sounded like a chest cold that knocked him for a loop and left him very short of breath and stamina. Last Friday he consulted over the phone with his family doc who advised him to head right for the emergency room. At that point another cardiologist got in the loop and said he had experienced a mini heart attack and that the condition of his valve was such that it needed immediate attention. The original heart guy practices out of the hospital in Daytona Beach so on Monday, they took George, by ambulance, over to the hospital there. That’s probably a good thing since that’s a brand new, state of the art facility. Personally I’d probably opt to go to Shands or Mayo because this is likely to be more complicated than normal. George had Hodgkins as a young guy and was treated, successfully, with radiation. It killed the cancer, but it did damage to much of the tissue in the area, maybe the source of the heart valve problems. The irradiated tissue makes healing a tough issue so this surgery is not likely to be your garden variety event. Fingers crossed.

We’re freezing veggies at a good clip with a dozen or so bags of cauliflower and broccoli already done. The next candidate is spinach and chard. It’s clear that we just can’t keep up with it and it’s likely to start bolting within the next couple of weeks.

Got the first of this year’s tomatoes in. Normally this would be at least a month too early but this year has been exceptionally warm and I have protective covers that are supposed to protect down to 27 degrees. It’s possible but not very likely that we’d see anything near that cold. The photo is the first two plants protected by walls of water. The large green plant is the last lettuce left in that row and will be picked and converted into a salad for somebody by the end of the week. If you look really, really closely just to the right of the milk bottle, you might see a bit of green. That’s an anti-nematode marigold, a Golden Guardian. They grow wild now so I just pick out the ones popping up where I don’t need them and transfer them to where they can do some good. If all goes well, these should be producing by April. I have 10 more plants at the same state in the green house but I’m going to hold back planting for a few days to make sure these first two don’t crash. I have a 95% confidence factor but why take the chance.
Those patio tomatoes I put in last December have blossoms so we should actually be adding a little red to the salads in March. This is the same container where I planted carrots all around the tomatoes. Obviously the tomatoes don’t mind the company and the carrot tops sure look good so this companion planting seems to be performing as advertised.

There’s a big disconnect between all the talk of a bad economy and my observations in Central Florida. Drove down to Altamonte yesterday to have lunch with some old friends and hit Costco for the big buy – load up the freezer with meat etc and to pick up a couple of fire extinguishers which we saw in the sale brochure. This was mid day on a Thursday when you would expect lower traffic and lower crowds. The biggest problem we had was finding parking spaces at the restaurant and at Costco. That’s if you don’t count a line at the restaurant that reached outside the building and into the parking lot – 11:15am; that’s if you don’t count having to wait in the checkout line at Costco for 20 minutes – all cash registers open. The roads were jammed at every turn. We find this same situation any time we hit that area – day, night, week day, weekend.
Economy vs traffic, crowds, costco, restaurant. On Saturday we went to Sam’s in Daytona – same experience. This is a giant Sam’s with an enormous parking lot and we the only parking was in the far forty. It was so busy, there were no shopping carts available. Can you imagine that? That wasn’t too big a deal because we were there for a one item purchase – another freezer. The few other necessary items we were able to just carry around the store. Probably not having a cart saved some money for sure.

We decided we needed a second freezer because freezer #1 is full and usually full. And there are more veggies coming out of the garden than we can eat for sure, even counting the loads we give away throughout the week. For example, right now there are 5 cauliflowers that need picking and loads of broccolli. We could eat spinach every night, lettuce three times a day and still have plenty to give away. So we decided it makes sense to freeze the overflow. Last tomato season we could have made quite a bit more spaghetti sauce but ran out of storage space long before we ran out of ingredients. The level of productivity has crept up on us, no doubt due to the soil improvements, so that no matter how good a job I do at staggering the plantings, our cup runneth over. Anyway, we’re in the food freezing business again.

I found the motherlode of muck – by accident. I was looking for a spot to land the poke boat and pulled onto the shore on my neighbors property. It’s better access there and I’ve always used it during low water conditions but since it’s lower than ever, I can’t drive the boat up as far onto shore. I stepped out of the boat, thinking that I was on nice firm, albeit grassy, shoreline. Wrong, I went knee deep into muck with one leg while the other was still in the boat. I attempted an olympic move to get onto hard shore which turned into a Special Olympic move but still did somehow manage to get the top half of my body and one leg onto stable shore. I worked the other leg out but the shoe was a casualty. The good news is that this should be an incredible source of muck for the garden. I started the harvest and interestingly, I can stand on hard, firm shoreline and just a foot further out, is the soft stuff. I dug/scooped out one wheel barrow full and up to the garden where I plan to let it sit a couple of days to dry out before assessing exactly what I’ve got. In addition to having a potential soil additive, I’m also getting a nice place to land the boat, deep enough to float the boat right up to hard shore to launch from.

Follow up – we now have fire extinguishers in both cars and the truck. Lesson learned.

Had a funny one the other day at Big Rig. We were checking out and the owner was working the register. I laid out my AMX card and he looked it over carefully then said to me “are you a hit man or something”. Very straight face. I looked at him like what did you say, and he says “your card says Terminal Connexions and I wondered what that was”. I heard that more than a few times in Utah but that was the first time in maybe 10 years. I gave him the story but he didn’t have a clue what a computer terminal was. Don’t know whether I mentioned it before but I learned a while back that since that card is a Corporate card, it doesn’t show up when someone calls for a credit check. When we refinanced to take advantage of these low interest rates, the bank showed us our credit scores and I asked exactly what went into the numbers, mine was a bit lower than Nancy’s. They said the reason was that she had some credit cards and I didn’t. I said I had an AMX that went back about 25 years and I broke it out to show her. She looked at it and said that wouldn’t show on a credit check since it was a corporate card. Interestingly my VISA didn’t show either – had that one for at least as long as the AMX. That one is attached to my Merrill Lynch account so it too is hidden from the credit check folks. Of course they were all over Nancy’s Kohl’s and Penney’s cards and made her credit rating a bit higher than mine. Weird.

Think we’re going to have another go at the chickens. Harley is beefing up the pen and is determined not to let the raccoons get the better of him. Before the last guys were converted to ‘coon food, I had brought up a few outer leaves from the Chinese cabbage to try as chicken feed. According to Harley they went crazy for it. I would guess they’d deal with old lettuce the same way so when I was talking about converting lettuce to eggs, this puts an entirely different spin on it. Too bad I don’t still tie trout flies.

Did something totally new to that cauliflower shown in the previous post. Leaving it whole, I spread some butter on it, slathered it with barbecue sauce, wrapped it all up in aluminum foil and put it on the grill alongside a whole chicken. I guesstimated 45 minutes for the cauliflower and an hour fifteen for the chicken. Perfectly timed and tasty. To me, cauliflower has very little flavor on it’s own so you can dress it up lots of ways. When people say they love cauliflower I ask them how they fix it and it’s usually drenched in cheese – so I know they love cheese.

Voting proved to be quite exciting. We drove up to the place, voted, stopped at the Post Office on the way back and then stopped at home for Nancy to load the car with some quilting stuff. I was in the house when I heard this screaming and yelling for me to hurry. I came out and saw smoke billowing out from under the hood of the car. I popped the hood and saw flames, big time. While Nancy was hunting for a fire extinguisher, never found, I started beating it out with a floor mat and saw right away that it was a squirrel nest burning. Based on that I turned the hose on and quickly extinguished it. Nothing was really burning other than the nest itself so a catastrophe was averted. Actually this is the third time we’ve had a nest built under the hood of one of the vehicles. On both other occasions I spotted it when checking the oil – the first was on a trip to Missouri and we had probably driven 1000 miles before spotting it. So we’ve been very lucky and need to start checking more frequently. We drive the car almost every day, yesterday for sure, and it probably takes days to complete a nest so really this particular nest could have been there for a few weeks – since the last time I checked the oil. I probably need to start patrolling the car port area with the pellet gun and teach these critters some respect.

While on the vote, in the end a telephone call pushed me over the edge. I answered the phone and there was Chuck Norris, aka Walker Texas Ranger, on the other end. Turns out he and his wife are both supporting Newt. I can’t begin to tell you how many hours I spent with Tommy and Simon watching Walker reruns when they were just little guys, so if he’s supporting Newt……………………

The spinach is doing exceptionally well this year – the first time. The first couple of years it was a total disaster, independent of the variety. Then last year I tried a heritage variety, Bloomsdale, and it did fairly well – not incredible, but certainly better. This year I was out of that seed and went back to a variety (Space) I had from year one. I had my doubts because the seed was old and because it was a variety that had failed before. This time it performed well – so well that I extracted about 20 seedlings and put them in cups for a friend to grow. That was 6 weeks ago and I’m picking abundantly right now so I gave him a call to see if he was picking also. None of his spinach made it but all the lettuce, cabbage, and broccoli did. I remember him showing me the spot he intended to plant and thinking that the soil looked sandy and exactly how mine looked a few years back. So that cements it that my spinach problems were soil related – spinach just doesn’t do sandy soil but goes gangbusters in heavily composted soil.

The beets shown are the latest attempt using a different variety. Even though this is an improvement over previous attempts, I’m not content with the roots – more than half had totally wimpy roots. You can see that the greens are beautiful and we have plenty of folks that want those so all is not lost – actually more folks down here eat the greens and pitch the roots. I’ve eaten some very young leaves raw in salads but never as a cooked green. Based on the dark green and red color, they must be loaded with iron. My thoughts now are that what’s missing in the soil for really nice roots is Phosphorous. The nice tops say there is plenty of nitrogen so I’m going to switch from an 8-2-8 fertilizer to a 10-10-10 blend – the middle 10 is phosphorous . I’m thinking either blood meal or bone meal is high in phosphorous and will research that further. Just threw in the cauliflower picture to balance the page.

As predicted, the chickens didn’t last very long. Raccoon or equivalent got them a couple nights back. So much for the lettuce to egg trade route I had envisioned.

Tom came up over the weekend so we could check out the fold boat before a potential camping trips in a month or so. It has a few problems that need to be fixed but certainly nothing serious. I think what it needed most was to be run for a couple of hours and we did just that. It wasn’t running well when we first got underway but after a couple of hours it clipped right along at high speed and would idle perfectly for trolling. I’ve always been amazed at just how well that boat performs with just a 5 horse outboard. I know it’s hard to believe but it will actually plane with both Tom and I in the boat – neither one of us is a light weight but the boat itself is well under 100 pounds and I guess is shaped just right for performance. Actually think it idled down to a slower speed than the electric motor and never missed a beat in an hour of ultra slow running. Along the way, caught a nice size speckled perch. Just to be on the safe side, I dumped what remained of the old gas and cleaned out the gas filter. The gas that was in it was over a year old so possibly that was the cause of the initial running problems.

Used the opportunity to do another smoke job – beef ribs again. I cut the time down from 7 hours to 6 this time and the ribs were really better – still falling off the bone but nice and moist. Last time they were falling off the bone but too dry. Getting the hang of it.

We’re coming up on the first of Feb and I plan to get seeds started for some of the serious summer stuff. Aside from tomatoes, which I have already started, that list includes peppers and egg plant plus a few more tomatoes in different varieties. This is actually a little earlier than I normally would start some of this but this long stretch of beautiful weather has me lulled into a false sense of security. Since I have plenty of seeds the downside isn’t too great – if winter comes back, I fall back to plan A. If not, I have a real head start and am totally prepared if summer heat comes too early. That wouldn’t surprise me a bit.

Romney clearly delivered the most “pain in the ass calls” so he doesn’t get my vote. Gingrich wasn’t far behind so he too loses my support. I’ve decided to write in Nancy’s name. Does that count as a Christmas present for 2012?

Finally got back on line at the house. The first two days were equipment problems on their end (supposedly) due to the solar flare activity; the second two days were cockpit at my end – I just didn’t know the proper way to reset the modem after the outage.

The lake is within a few inches of being the lowest it’s been in 10 years. Unless things change fairly quickly, no doubt it will be. We haven’t had an inch of rain cumulatively in a couple of months but the nurseries keep pumping, watering fern. bummer. At this point it might be ok to drop another foot and let me get some bottom cleanup done. Maybe scoop out some bottom muck for the compost pile – you know, the silk purse, sow’s ear thing. The weather is incredibly nice this winter but all my fishing spots are high and dry so no use even trying. Well, not exactly true. I just decided to get in the poke boat and paddle around the lake. It would have been stupid to do that without having my rod with me for an emergency situation. I spent about an hour pitching a small spinner jig along the edges of lily pads searching out specs and actually managed to catch 2. They were way smaller than normal so I wasn’t faced with a fish stringer crisis. The pads are usually growing in a few feet of water but now it’s a few inches so it’s really tough to retrieve a cast without catching some bottom grass. Still, it was nice to get out and just enjoy the water.

Found another interesting restaurant in downtown Deland. This is a Mexican restaurant but not the typical taco kind of food but rather cuisine from Central Mexico and, for the most part, totally unrecognizable to folks like us that do more standard Tex-Mex. For our Wednesday dinner out, this is a bit on the upscale side, but ……………… The decor was excellent, the food excellent, live music and just a generally good place to be. It made it to our list of places we’ll revisit. It’s just a few doors down from the Greek place we like and a new upscale Italian place opens at the end of the month in the same general vicinity. So between wine shops that offer wine and appetizers to a nice variety of mid to upscale places to dine, downtown Deland is really picking it up. In fact to show just how big time Deland is going, there was even a small group of “occupy Deland” hippies waving signs down the corner.

Why will Romney win Florida? Simple, lots of old folks who remember Newt being a whack job occasionally and lots of displaced yankees who are ok with a less than conservative candidate. I’m probably going to do a write in since I just can’t see me pulling the lever for any of the candidates.

My container garden is starting to expand beyond my original intentions. I now have patio tomatoes, carrots, lettuce and beets. The nice thing about using these smallish planters is that you can keep the environment perfect – not enough sun, move them; too much sun, move them; too cold, move them. I’m picking lettuce leaves for salad so that particular crop is a complete success. Got excellent germination with the carrots and have about 3 dozen growing between and around the two patio tomato plants in the same container. The beets have already surprised me a bit. Beet seed is hard so it’s a good idea to soak them before planting. Even then it usually takes a week or more for germination. This time around I soaked the seeds for 12 hours, then let them dry about the same and they’ve germinated in 3 days. I’m thinking that may be because it’s been warmer than when I normally plant beets – 80 degree days, 60 degree nights. That’s 10 degrees warmer than normal mid January weather and probably 20 degrees warmer than last year, a very cold winter. It’ll be a few days before I have a handle on germination percentage but I suspect it’ll be just fine.

My neighbor’s tenant, Harley, has decided to start raising chickens. I have to admit I’ve thought about it but have to think that with all the wildlife we have around here, putting chickens out could be questionable. Wonder if bears eat chickens? This could work out well (for us) if Harley is interested in swapping eggs for lettuce or for whatever the crop of the moment happens to be -one tomato for one egg seems about right to me. I could also see letting him the chickens peck around in the garden – assuming they will eat weeds and insects, leave a high nitrogen deposit or two, and not mess with the goodies.

Forgot to mention a little tidbit I picked up at the square foot garden seminar. Everybody, I think, puts egg shells in the compost pile. Basically they never really break down. The valuable info was to pop the egg shells into the microwave for 30 seconds then put them in a bag and crush them into little bits and pieces. It works. I’ll be putting tomatoes in the garden in a month and that’s where the calcium makes a difference.

Figured out how I’m going to decide who to vote for – I guess I have to vote but not really liking any of the choices. Every time we get a piece of junk mail or a campaign phone call, I mark it down. Before going into the voting booth I’ll count the number of times we’ve been pestered and whoever has bothered us the least, gets my vote. So far Romney is losing on phone calls but Newt is a close second with junk mail. Paul and Santorum are tied with zero. It’s not just a straight, one by, kind of count. If the call comes in between 9am and 5pm, that gets one point; 5 points if outside that time band; 10 points if it happens exactly when I’m interrupted – as in dinner or during the nightly news.

I think I may have been sun flared on Tuesday and Wednesday. I heard on the morning news that the sun was sending out some gigantic rays or something and it could disrupt communication kinds of things. I came in from yarding around 11am and tried to connect on line only to find a big “not activated” tag on the Virgin Mobile screen. That does happen from time to time so I have a ritual of restarting the computer and then trying to find solutions or solace from a help screen. All to no avail so I called Virgin Mobile – rather tried to call Virgin Mobil. All I got was a busy signal which I’ve never experienced before. When I tried later, it never even got to the busy signal – just started making some kind of bubbling sound for a minute or two then an automatic hang-up. I suspect there are a billion or so others trying to call them. Flared. Interestingly (to guys like me) the signal strength is 10db higher than normal. That’s quite a bit higher in db language so having a good strong signal is not the thing effecting me. We’ve got clothes hanging on the line drying – wonder if they’re getting flared too? I can see them as I bang away on the keyboard and don’t see any suspicious glowing. This posting is being done on Wednesday via the library wi-fi.