Good Morning Everyone. Clear and a bit cooler at 74° here in North Central Texas this morning. Only made it up to 95° yesterday and almost rained in the late afternoon. The weather radar actually showed it to be raining here, but my weather rock was dry. One of those "evaporated before it hit the ground" events that we occasionally have.
I did the weekly grocery/beer trek yesterday without incident. Folks in this area are taking this pandemic resurgence seriously. Looked like over 95% of the customers are wearing masks now. Kroger is in Denton County where there have been nearly 3000 confirmed cases and 37 deaths. Most of them have been in the southern part of the county where it borders Dallas County. Dallas has 22000 cases and 380 deaths. Our county still has no deaths and just 43 confirmed cases.
During my trip yesterday, I noticed something new. Since outdoor dining is not restricted, many restaurants are cordoning off part of their parking lots and setting up tables (with shading canopies) out there. They don't need as much parking area as before since indoor seating is still limited to 50%
Didn't get a chance to mow yesterday, so now I am behind a bit. I did get back to check on my hayfield which is doing well after the rain ten days ago.
Looks delicious...after it becomes part of a cow!
Heard from my wife on South Padre Island yesterday. All is well down there but the authorities are beginning to clamp down on social distancing a bit, and they closed all of the indoor bars. Most bars along the Gulf Coast have generous outdoor capacity, just no A/C. She was checking on my status because she hadn't gotten any response to the "irrelevant" text messages that she had been sending. She did admit that she wasn't really expecting one to begin with!
The quietness of the neighborhood was later interrupted when the local VFD showed up with two fire trucks and a 4000 gallon tanker truck from the county. One of my neighbors was burning trash and plastic cladding on scrap copper wire; which produced a lot of black smoke that was apparently visible from the fire station about seven miles away. Neighbor had notified the county sheriff's dispatcher of his plans, but
they hadn't taken the time to notify the VFD. He is an electrician who does a lot of rewire jobs and he gets a better price for the salvaged copper if the cladding isn't there. It's probably not legal to burn that stuff, but he has been doing it for 40 years and no one has complained.
Let me start the three day weekend with one of those delicious BLT's this morning Flo.
So, thanks for the all of the likes and comments yesterday regarding my layout scenery progress;
Tom O, Patrick, Guy, Chad, Sherrel, Greg, Chet, Phil, Joe, Jerome, Curt, Louis, Tom, Garry, Ken.
Didn't get a lot done in the train shed yesterday, household chores kept getting in the way. I did manage to paint the trim on the top of the Salon, but that's all.
I didn't feel like getting out the fine tip brush and doing the window sills at the time.
Greg - The thing that makes Houston's humidity and heat worse is the smog produced by all of the petrochemical plants down there along the ship channel. Same issue in Beaumont, Port Arthur and Corpus Christi as well, just not as bad.
Wives just don't seem to understand the intricate complexities of meat grilling. And trying to find a polite way of explaining it to them is risky at best. I prefer to "let sleeping dogs lie"!
Sherrel - Speaking of gas, three months ago it was under a dollar a gallon here, now it has risen to $1.79.
Time to move on. Everybody have a great Independence Day weekend.