Evening, everyone.
Bill, we all miss your morning opening of Flo's place. Come back!
Yes, I'm still alive, just busy as heck. Dianna's maiden aunt passed away at 92 years of age so we had to spend two days down in Greenville, which is about halfway between here and Mobile. Southern funerals are a big deal. One day you go to the viewing and the next day you go to the funeral. In between, you eat - a lot. I think I gained about 5 pounds.
Greenville is kind of a strange little town. It's a classic Southern town, almost like the one on my layout, with a courthouse square and the stores surrounding it. I hadn't seen it before but I was surprised how close my idea of what a Southern town should look like was correct. The town is not doing well economically and I don't think anyone who's not related to someone there has moved to Greenville in 25 years. I was sure enough the only Yankee there, except for a few other unfortunate spouses. Everyone knows everyone, which is kind of spooky. I was walking around downtown on Sunday morning taking pictures and had at least five people, including the local cop, stop me and say they didn't remember seeing me around these parts before. As soon as I told them why I was there, I was OK, but I got the feeling that outsiders were not very welcome.
Tony, makes you wonder about those two guys. I'd be contemplating making a phone call to the FAA but I'm the naturally suspicious type.
Rex, the NCAA was very unhappy about our last excursion with the cheerleaders so I think we can forget them. Ken told me he has a huge basement and big pool. Sounds like the perfect place to see how many things he has in the garage that will float. I'm glad you're the guy doing the painting, not me. At least it's less than the blast furnace temperatures we had last week. We had some decent rain last weekend some my lawn is only half brown. We might get some more in the next couple of days, especially in your neck of the woods.
Chris, I'm sorry to hear the job insecurity things still isn't getting better. I wish I could say it will somehow improve shortly but I'd be lying.
10 deputies just got laid off in my former department in California and it looks like they'll lose at least 20 more. This in a department that was already chronically understaffed. At least you're in Florida, not California. Florida still has half a chance to get its house in order. California is toast.
Brickbuilder, welcome to the coffee shop. Flo owns it and it's a tradition you have to pick up the tab if you're new. Don't worry, though, I bypassed the porterhouse and eggs for a simple sirloin.
Do you have a first name we can call you? I hate typing long screen names.
BOC, looks like the jet is starting to meander south again so you should dry out some. How's your lake?
Jeffrey, you guys have really been getting the heat. It's "only" been in the low 90's here so at least I can walk to the mailbox without getting heat stroke.
We played our first league coed softball game Thursday night. It was, to say the least, a disaster. We played the team that has won the championship for the last four years and it was a slaughter. We lost to the mercy killing rule when it was 25-0 after five innings. We had one inning that lasted 40 minutes. They scored 17 runs before we could get three outs. We had 16 people on the team there but our coach, who also pitched the whole time, didn't rotate anyone out of the line up and some of the guys were about to fall over. We had fresh people on the bench and they couldn't do any worse than the ones we had playing. I was the DH and got one up and did manage to get one of our three hits in the game. I don't know what to do about the coach. Since we were going to get a whipping anyway, most coaches will play everyone to give them some field time. This is a church league and I can't be as direct with the coach as would be if this was just a recreational league but I need to find a diplomatic way to tell him not to do that again.
Sorry I missed a whole bunch of other posts but I hope things are going as well as they can for the rest of the regulars. I did actually manage to get some layout work done. The traffic light was too low for the new SW-1500 on the downtown spur so I installed three Model Power traffic lights that are on poles and higher up. These work too so they are a nice addition. One thing I found out is that it's a bad idea to have to drill three big holes in your downtown with all the scenery completed. Stuff that's glued down doesn't like magnitude 8 earthquakes. Took me about two hours to fix all the damage.
so some brown shirt (not me) at the meeting ask, "how can you omit the hand book?" they (the Suit) said, "O' were round filing the hand book and rewriting it to meet the changing needs of the county!
