FEVERISH FRIDAY

My thermometer.  Outside my front door.  At noon today.

Today's forecast high temperature: 113 degrees Fahrenheit.

But never fear, dear friends.  Sunday night the low temperature is forecast to be only 79. Positively chilly.

Of course there are some advantages to this weather.

That's the late and legendary Ann Miller singing and dancing a song from the movie "Kiss Me Kate."

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My neighbor, whose house I'm keeping an eye on while he's away, had his yard crew come this week and trim a palm tree or two in his back yard.  They piled the spent leaves in front of his house and left.  A day or two later I heard a terrific racket outside and went out to investigate.  It was a truck with a wood chipper behind it.  This crew was trimming some trees and disposing of the wood.  They were right next to the fallen palm tree branches but do you suppose they touched them?  Uh-uh.

So today was trash pickup day and I went out yesterday evening and put as many of the branches in his trash can as would fit and put it out to be picked up.  Thankfully, it was.  But that still left a bunch of branches on the ground.  So I went out this morning and piled them into his trash can to wait for next week's pickup.

For those of you unfamiliar with palm trees, the branches have many sharp barbs along the edges.

They are fierce and can hurt you.  So a pair of heavy gloves and carefulness is necessary to avoid being wounded.  I had both and wasn't.

Oh, and I've always heard that scorpions love to hide out among the leaves.  I kept a fairly close eye out for them but didn't see any.

It's all just life in the desert.

Oh and for those of you keeping track, it's 12:53 p.m. right now and the temperature is up to 106.

Enjoy YOUR Friday!

SHE'S WATCHING YOU

Our sweet little Muggles has her green eyes focused on you.

Beware!

By the way, the space station passes over Phoenix again tonight:  June 5th, 8:51 p.m., passing from west-southwest to north-northeast, easily visible for about 6 minutes.

SUMMER FOOD

When our neighbor left for his home in Canada the other day he asked us if we'd like some shrimp and ribs.  He said his wife was worried about the food spoiling if there was a power outage.  Well, of course, being neighborly, what could I say but YES!

Last night SWMBO prepared a shrimp cocktail to take care of some of the seafood.

To accompany, some hummus and some homemade guacamole.  

I love friendly neighbors.

I love summer food.

I am a happy camper.

SKY WATCHING

SWMBO and I just saw the Space Station pass over once again.  This was a long pass...in a clear sky for about 6 minutes.  I must be getting old.  I find this amazing and fascinating.  Years ago I was stunned to be able to see the Big Dipper and the Little Dipper.  We now live in an area of very lightened skies from all the ground light.  But we can still see the Space Station passing over us at a height of more than 200 miles.

Amazing!

AIRPLANE FOOD

Some of you may recall my mention in a recent post of when SWMBO and I took a couple of tasty sandwiches from local sandwich shop Duck and Decanter on an airplane.  Here's that mention from May 30th.

The sandwiches are so good we once stopped there on our way to the airport and got our own airline food for our trip to England.  When we opened the bags on the plane we were the envy of the place.  We each had picked a sandwich called The Whole Thing - imported ham, oven roasted turkey breast and Italian dry salami.  The smell of garlic filled the airplane cabin and had mouths watering everywhere. 

Anyway today I was reading the Prescott (Arizona) Daily Courier and was struck by this article written by Judy Bluhm.  Maybe we started something!

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In other news, I'm still waiting for my new computer to arrive.  (Tick-tick-tick)

UPDATE:  The new computer arrived shortly after I wrote this.  Looks good, runs great.

THE MIGHTY QUINN

The new stars get younger and younger.  Take, for instance, young Quinn Sullivan.

That was a few years ago.  Quinn is a teenager now, 13 or 14, he's gotten taller, his voice has deepened but he is still wailin' on that guitar.

The commenters say it all, comparing him to Stevie Ray Vaughn, Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck.  He has a sparkling future, not to mention a not bad present.  

THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY

THE GOOD

Acting on an advertising supplement SWMBO received in the mail this week, we set out to explore Food City today.  This is a supermarket chain that tends to operate in and caters to areas with a large Hispanic population.  I was surprised to learn that the chain is part of the Basha's family of stores.  But SWMBO was struck by the low prices on produce.  Upon entering, it was like the supermercados we remembered from our days living in Mexico.  The produce was excellent and the prices were as low as my wife had hoped.  I was thrilled with the displays of spices in plastic bags at what I think are excellent prices.  SWMBO said the display on a rear wall of the store had everything any Mexican cook could want and there were many she had never heard of before.  So that was a great experience and one we will repeat.

THE BAD

I finally found a computer tech and he came to the house a couple of days ago and tried several fixes on my non-functioning PC.  He couldn't be sure of the problem but took the computer to his shop, promising a return this morning.  He said it appeared as if the video card needed to be replaced.  Today he was back and told me the bad news.  It's the motherboard that needs replacing.  There were a couple of swollen capacitors on it, probably because of their location next to the heat sink for the video card.  But he said fixing it would probably cost as much as buying a new computer.  Since I've had this one for 5 or 6 years or more, I asked him if he could build me one.  He said yes and that the price would be about $500.  Well that's probably cheaper than I would pay for one in a store so I told him to go ahead.  He said he'd probably have it done by Monday.  I like this guy, he appears to know what he's talking about and his shop is only a couple of blocks away so he'll be close if I have future problems.  So, actually that's kind of good and bad but I put it under the BAD heading.

THE UGLY

The weather.  It's 98 outside right now and supposed to top 100 in the next few days.  SWMBO is worried about the coming utility bills but we will survive.  I asked her this morning how she liked Phoenix so far, other than the heat.  She said she loved it and so do I.

Weather through the Midwest has been and continues to be really ugly.  Much worse than here with tornadoes occuring through many states.

And finally, just to stay with the theme of this post and I'll let you pick where you want to place it - today is the 83rd birthday of the man whose movie inspired the theme: Clint Eastwood.

Oh, no, that's how he looked way back when, even before that iconic movie.

Here's "the man with no name" from the Spaghetti-western that resurrected his career.

And here's how he looks today.

He made some good, maybe even great, movies in his day but after his performance at last year's Republican National Convention, I think maybe his day is . . . over.