Christmas is coming

 I have no big story to report but here are a few of the things that have been going on since my last post.  

Kathleen and I have been fishing and hunting a few times.  We really like the Delta but we are not good at fishing and the weather has been against us regarding water fowl.  On our last trip we caught one little striper, maybe 10 inches long, and set it free.  Then when we got back to the dock a sea lion swam up to us with a BIG striper, about 22 or 26 inches long, in its mouth.  It threw its head back and swallowed it.  Then it dove two more times and swallowed even bigger fish when it came up from each dive.  I really think it was taunting us.  It caught those three fish before we even got the boat out of the water.

As for waterfowl hunting, well, except for one canvasback that was on the water (legal but not sporting to shoot) all the birds have been flying too high to shoot.  We need blustery, overcast, and rainy weather for good duck and goose hunting.

We've launched onto the main channel at the City of Antioch's Marina but because of wind, boat traffic, and currents we prefer the Holland Riverside Marina.

Oh, Kathleen bought me an early Christmas present: A membership in the CWA and entrance into the hunt lotteries!

The Christmas tree up.  The wreath is above the door.  Kathleen, the boys and I have been reading one chapter of Luke's Gospel each day since the start of the month.  We've been doing the advent wreath services I compiled a few years ago.  All the present have been wrapped.  I have two turkeys (One for Christmas Dinner, one for 12th Night), three hens (for Poules du Provence on the 3rd Day of Christmas),  8 pounds of homemade Italian sausage and 7 pounds of homemade Greek sausage (for Christmas breakfast), a double crown roast of pork (also for Christmas dinner), and a big beautiful ham (For St. Basil's Day) in the freezer.  I still have to mail out Christmas cards and fruitcakes.  I found an address for my son Devon.   I haven't seen him or talked to him in 10 years.  I'll mail him one and see what happens.

I'm surprised I never mentioned it on this blog but a couple of years before the divorce I began buying Lemax Christmas village pieces for Anselm and Basil.  After the divorce I was too poor.  I started up again this year.  It has been fun giving them another one every few days during Advent.  I don't buy them new but I look for deals on eBay.  It's a lot of fun.

Something I did not do this Advent is read the Advent Storybook to my boys.  I'm a little bit sad about it but they are too old now, I think.  They are reading Luke now.  Oh well, if I ever have grand children I'll get to read it aloud again.

Did I tell you that my old boss at the Census Bureau asked me to apply for other position with the Bureau?  She emailed me a few weeks ago and asked me to submit my application before the opening was announced.  I have an interview scheduled tomorrow afternoon.  If they hire me it will be at 4 grades higher than I was at when I worked for them back in August, September and October.

 

Seed Companies I Like

I used to only buy plants and seeds from Home Depot or a local garden store in Cupertino named Yamigami's.  But Kathleen and I started watching videos put out by Roots and Refuge Farm about a year and a half ago.  And from those videos and some of the other fans of those videos I became a customer of several seed companies.  In no particular order, here are my favorites.

1. Wild Boar Farms in northern California breeds crazy beautiful tomatoes.  

2. If you like cool looking stickers to put on your lap top or bumper in addition to rare vegetable seeds to plant in your garden look no further than Victory Seeds.  They are also the only supplier of tobacco seeds I know about.  I bought some but I haven't planted them yet.  This is one of my favorite companies to do business with.  Very fast delivery.

3. A problem I have in my garden is a lack of pollinators.  I think it is because the landscapers in my neighborhood use a lot of pesticides, but I am not sure.  Helping me solve that problem by offering seeds for dozens of pollinator attracting plants is Park Seed.  They also sell tall seed starting trays.  If you've ever tried to start seeds in a typically sized tray you hae run into the problem of your seedlings getting too tall before you are ready to plant them in the ground.  There "bio-dome" product helps with that.

4. Maybe you've heard of the Open Seed movement.  It is a reaction against Big Ag's efforts to patent seeds and use the law to control access to food.  Fedco Seeds is on the forefront of the movement.  Support them!

5.   The Name says it all:  Totally Tomatoes.

6.  I like Pinetree Garden Seeds, a family owned business out of Maine, and I wish I'd read their article about gardening without breaking the bank before I started gardening.  Also, they sell seeds for a black brandywine tomato that is absolutely gorgeous.

7.  I haven't actually bought anything from MI Gardener but I watch their videos on youtube.  They have helped me so much with my garden I feel like helping them out by putting a link to their seed business on this list.  They taught me how to grow beets, how to prune bell peppers, and lots of other stuff.  I am sure their seeds are high quality, too.

8.  This is a seed company all preppers should love; also anyone who pays attention to the past because they know the future needs the past.  Seed Savers is a seed bank, a business, and a political movement.

9. High Mowing is, really, an organic and non-GMO seed wholesaler but they sell to the public, too.    

10.  Gosh, the seeds from Hudson Valley are good, but the packaging is art.  You're going to love opening your mail and finding these beautiful seed packets inside.  You'll want to frame them and hang them on your walls.

11 & 12 .  It's kind of funny that Fruition and Baker are the last companies on my list because they are the companies I get most of my seeds from.  I love doing business with them.  They always helpful on the phone, quick to deliver, and the seeds I buy from them have high germination rates.  I think these two companies are responsible for 1/2 the food grown in our garden.

Election Worries

I woke up this morning and checked the news. All kinds of people in the media and politics and punditry are panicking about the President not admitting he has been defeated. I think there is nothing to worry about, and I encourage all those who might be worried to consult Article 2 and Amendments 12 & 20 of the US Constitution, and 3 U.S. Code ss 1 -18) You will see that in the selection of the President there is no regard for the votes of the people . Though I think he lost the vote earlier this month and is behaving foolishly, I do think his words since Election night provide a reminder to the American people that we do not elect the President ; the Electors meeting in their Sate capitols elect the President. And Electors are chosen by the State legislatures according to the procedures established by each of the legislatures. (The legislatures of Connecticut, Georgia, Delaware, and South Carolina have all in past years forgone a vote of the people and chosen the Electors themselves.) Now, if President Trump keeps saying he won after the Electors cast their ballots on December 14 we might have a problem. Until then there is nothing to worry about. Its all just a bunch of noise from people who want to sell your eyeballs to advertisers.

Starting Seeds Indoors

The New Ferns

The New Flowers 

Today, Kathleen got tired of seeing all the bare dirt in the garden   so she went to the garden center and bought a bunch of flowers.   Now, where once had been tomatoes, and basil, and
radishes, and   beets there are splashes of color.  And in one place that is shady,   except for three hours a day, she planted ferns.

 I am trying something new.  Usually, I plant seeds directly in the   ground or transplant seedlings purchased from a nursery.  But   today I planted seed indoors.  12 little pots are planted with Beni   Kodima watermelon seeds, 12 little pots are planted with Sierra   Gold cantaloupe seeds, and 12 little pots planted with Solly   Beiler cucumbers. My goal is to have all of these plants in the ground in early February and begin harvesting in late March.  If even 1/2 of the seeds germinate, grow, and produce fruit I will be very happy.  

The melons I am growing for the neighborhood kids but the cucumbers are for me.  Kathleen bought me a T-Fal canner some time ago but I rarely have enough cucumbers at one time to haul it down from it's shelf and put it to work.  It is my hope to have bushels of cucumbers to pickle next summer.  

Anselm has been talking to a Navy Recruiter.  Because of Covid-19 shut downs has not had any luck getting in to the sheet metal or pipe-fitter apprenticeship programs.  His plan had been to become a reservist and train to be a SeaBee.  But since talking to the recruiter the plan might be changing.  They are dangling dive school (for underwater welding) if he goes active instead of reserve.  And yesterday he took the ASVAB and scored very high, so now the recruiter wants him to train to be a nuclear reactor operator.  It is an important job but it doesn't translate in to the civilian career he says he wants.  Well, he's an adult now so he can do what he wants.

St. Matthew's Day

Last night was much fun.  The boys were here.  Kathleen's kids were here.  We did the Christmas wreath service, ate the cioppino (I used rosemary and thyme from thegarden, and bay leaves from a , and then I gave everyone little presents to kick off the fast.  Yes, I gave each person a can of smoked oysters.

Today, my name day, I worked out in the garden.  I transplanted all the basil plants from around the garden to one of the planter boxes that is kind of shady.  We've tried growing onions, carrots, parsnips, poppies, tomatoes, beans, and cucumbers in that box but it just doesn't get enough light.  The only thing that ever does well there are pumpkin vines, and that is because the vines grow into the sunlight. I have read that basil does well in shade.  I am hopeful.

I shot another squirrel in the garden.  I've lost track of how many I've killed since I started shooting them in the spring.  They started eating the garlic bulbs a couple of days ago.  I have never heard of squirrels eating garlic, especially when there are lettuce and cabbage plants nearby.  Very strange.

Today's harvest was small but, hey, it's November so I'm not complaining.

First day of the Nativity Fast

Basil, Kathleen's youngest son, and I went to church this morning but the church was full (Wuhan restrictions) so we didn't stay.  We stopped at Noah's Bagel's o te way home.   had my first bagel in a couple of years.  WOW!  It was good.  It was poppy seed with peanut butter.  Then I went to the grocery store to buy the ingredients for Grandfather's Cioppino.  They are all sitting on the table waiting for me to get started but I took a few minutes to go out to the garden to cut some rosemary and redwood to make an Advent wreath.  Starting tonight we'll light one candle and do the readings each Sunday and Christmas Eve, then it will be Christmas.

Hunting, Fishing, the Garden, and Getting Ready for Advent

Kathleen, Basil, and I went camping last Saturday morning.  We fished (caught nothing) and hunted (shot nothing) at San Luis Reservoir.  It was the first cold night of the winter, getting down to 33F.  While we were there we went by the San Juaqin National Cemetery and the Korean War Memorial.  I wanted to do that because Basil ha heard people say the U.S. is a colonial power that only takes from the world.  I wanted him about my Uncle Fred who fought in Korea, and to see the graves of some of the 33,686 American's who died to save a tiny insignificant county from the gaping maw of Communism. On the way home Sunday afternoon we stopped as Casa de Fruta and had deli sandwiches for supper. 

Yesterday Kathleen and I team taught her American History class.  We were dealing with the Modernist/Fundamentalist conflict in American Protestantism.  In one hour we dealt with Hegel, Marx, Wellhausen, Allbright, Fosdick, Bryan, Darwin, Franklin, Washington, Coolidge, the Mayflower Compact, James Brookes and the Niagara Bible Conference, the split between Princeton University and Princeton Theological Seminary, the Lyman Brothers, the 5-Fundamentals, and much more besides.  It was a lot of fun.  I hope she lets me team teach with her again.  She said her students really enjoyed it.  They were texting questions to her late into the night.

Last night Kathleen and I drove over to the San Antonio Valley.  We were looking for a wildlife preserve where I could shoot turkey and pigs we never fond it.  It appears that the maps were inaccurate.  What we did see were lots of small cattle ranches, a nut orchard, 2 white tale deer (I don't have a deer tag), and 3 amazingly beautiful tule elk bulls. (I don't have an elk tag).

Today at dawn, after finishing morning prayers I went out to the garden.  I saw no squirrels to shoot.  That's a good thing.  Maybe, I've reduced the population enough that they won't be a horrible pest in the spring and summer. There were no raccoons in the live trap.  (There was a juvenile opossum in the trap yesterday.  I set it free.  They don't hurt the garden.)  While I was out there I counted twenty-one ducks (they were flying too high for me to make out what kind of duck.  My guess is mallard, since we have more of that than anything else.), a ruby throated hummingbird, a seagull (Not sure what kind.  It was flying too high.), a pigeon, two crows, a red tailed hawk, five Canada geese, three goldfinches, a red breasted nuthatch, two mourning doves, and some kind of flycatcher.

Right now we have growing cucumbers, green leaf lettuce, red leaf lettuce, onions, garlic, broccoli, kale, radishes, sugar snap peas, acorn squash, bell peppers (IT TAKES THEM FOREVER TO MAtURE!!!!), lots and lots of beets, eggplant, spinach, broccoli, green cabbage, five kinds of basil, thyme, parsley, rosemary, oregano, Brussels sprouts, and, of course, the two lemon trees and three grape vines.  (We are thinking of planting two apple trees.)

Well, it' almost 10 o'clock in the morning.  I should, I guess, eat breakfast.  After that. I'll sart getting ready for the start of Advent on Sunday.

Work last night

Last night at work I did something pretty neat. You might have heard that there is a national ammunition shortage. (It happens before every election but this year is worse because of covid.) What you might not know is that the shortage isn't just modern cartridges but extends to reloading supplies (e.g. primers, gunpowder, and empty casings) and black powder/muzzle loader supplies. Well, last night a couple came in looking for .50 & .36 cal bullets (not cartridges. just the lead.) and black powder. And we didn't have any. So I showed them how to make black powder and where to go to get the ingredients, and, using a pocket knife and pliers, disassemble .50 BMG rifle cartridges and 000 shotgun shells (000=.36 caliber) so they can use the lead therefrom in their guns. The end result: They bought all the .50 BMG and all the 000 buckshot we had on the shelves, and the customer has a new hobby.

I think I should get paid extra for that.

Pumpkin and Pistol

 Sunday night the boys came over and we ate a Pumpkin Stuffed With Everything Good.  Rather my version of it, which is better.  I use croutons made from day old baguette buttered and dusted with powdered sage and thyme, and I use 1/4 pound of bacon, cubes of beef, and slices of bratwurst all fried in bacon grease. And I use more cheese and cream, too.  Oh, and many 12-15 cloves of garlic sliced in half and fried in bacon grease, too.  It's a dish that can be changed many ways and still be amazing.

After the dinner we watched John Wayne in Henry Ford's 1939 film, Stagecoach.  I wanted to take them to see it at the Stanford Theater in Palo Alto this year but, because of COVID, the theater is closed.  I took Anselm there to see the movie when he was 5 but he didn't remember it.  He remembered the theater but not the movie.

Yesterday, Kathleen and I worked in the garden.  I think I like the winter garden as much as the summer garden.

Last night I completely disassembled and rebuilt my pistol.  It was the first time I had done it since I bought in 1994.  It was long over due and much needed as the gun would not cycle nor would the magazines eject properly.  I replaced the recoil spring, lubricated the firing pin, cleaned the carbon build up off of every surface (It was carbon on the grip screws that was hindering the magazines.), and greased it up.  Now, it's as good as the day I bought it.  I've very happy about that.  Hmmmm.  Maybe I should become a gunsmith.

Vegetables and Shotgun Maintenance

I had a nice day.  This morning Kathleen and I picked up some seedlings from Valley Verde: cabbage, lettuce, parsley, broccoli, sugar snap peas, and Brussels' sprouts.  We transplanted them in one of the beds where the kale seeds I planted never germinated. (I don't know why the never germinated.  The seeds in the other bed are doing well.  It is a mystery.)  We also pulled out the last tomato vine and the last three zucchini vines.  We won't taste those again until next summer.  Right now, in addition to the seedlings we got today, we have pumpkin, acorn squash, melon, spaghetti squash, cucumbers, bell peppers, eggplant, and Thai chilis growing. 

The last time I went shooting with Kathleen my shotgun malfunctioned.  I went, today, to the hardware store, bought a special screwdriver, and took the whole thing apart, I mean the whole thing.  I had already cleaned it and blasted it with a powerful solvent a couple of days ago so it was clean, but it still wasn't working.  Therefore, today, I did EXTREME maintenance on it; probably, the first time since the old side-by-side was made in 1944.  It works perfectly now.  I heartily recommend Birchwood Casey's "Gun Scrubber" solvent. (It's so good you can't ship it into California without a license.) and Hoppe's #9 Black Gun Grease. 

My whole shooting life, since I was a 17 year old private in the Army I have only used Break Free CLP on my guns but this job needed something a more powerful. I will still use Break Free CLP for regular cleaning and lubricating but it's nice to know there are other products available when my regular product isn't enough.

A note about this shotgun:  Long ago I used to share this Blog with Jeff Miller.  This gun and two others were his dad's guns.  When Jeff's dad I bought the guns from his widow.  I have one and each of my brothers has one.  When my dad died and I inherited his library I gave many of the books to St. Katherine College but the most important of them I gave to Jeff Miller.  He has our dad's books.  We have his dad's guns.

Kale, Beets, and the Priesthood.

The weather is still warm so I planted some more beet seeds and kale seeds in the ground.  If everything goes well they should be ready to harvest in mid-December.  I've never planted anything so late before.

I saw this on the website of the OCA today.  It is a fairly desperate presentation of a very soon to occur priest shortage.  I predicted this shortage more than 10 years ago, when the bishops decided to require the completion of a three year M.Div. program before ordination.  That means a total of seven years of school, the first four of which have nothing to do with the priesthood, are required with no guarantee of ordination.   

Let's look at a 18 year old right out of high school and living in Fresno, California.  He works full-time as a painter, and lives at home with his parents.  Amazingly, he gets all his classes and graduates from Fresno State University with a degree in business in 4 years.  According to Fresno State's website, that student will wind up paying $80,000 for that degree.  Then he quits his job goes to St. Vladimir's Seminary in New York, where the lives in the dorms for three years (or nine months out of those years.  The other three months he has to find somewhere else to live.) That will cost him another $66,000.  But unlike Fresno State where he was able to just go to class and ignore the whole "campus life" thing in order to hold down a job, the seminary is really big on "campus life" and keeping the seminarians busy with mandatory extra curricular activities.  So this imaginary man can not hold down a job while attending seminary.  

But hey! After $146,000 dollars he now has a M.Div. degree (With that money he could have bought a house in Fresno.) and a three year interruption in his work history, and because he is too young to be ordained (He must be thirty according to Canon 14 of the Quinisext Council) he can't get a job as a parish priest.

But there is a better way to do it:  He's been an acolyte since he was 5, so by the time he is 14 he should be able to be a reader.  So Make Him A Reader!  And during his high school years he attends all the services and meets with the priest, together with all the other young men in the parish to study the Bible and learn the jobs of subdeacon and deacon.  And while serving in his parish as deacon he continues studying with his priest.  And by the time he is thirty, he might be ready to be a priest.  And look at this:  He didn't have to put his life on hold, leave his job, leave his parish, move across the country, and spend $66,000 on a seminary degree.  And the church gets hundreds new deacons, and priests every year. 

The summer is over

I finished up my work for the U.S. Census Bureau this week.  It was a good way to finish up the summer.  Most of my work was here in San Jose but they sent be to Reno for a little over a week and to Stockton for five days ending Tuesday of this week.  While I was on the Stockton trip they named me to the permanent travel team, and I thought my next trip was going to be Wyoming and Montana where I would finish up the census on Oct 31.  But then, the very next day, Wednesday of this week they shut down all our operations.  Well, it was fun while it lasted.  Now, I'll look for something else.  I still am working part time at Bass Pro Shops but that is only a few hours a week because of Covid. (The health department only lets us serve 2 customers per hour at the gun counter and two customers per hour at the ammo counter.)

A lot has happened in the garden.  About 2 weeks ago we took delivery of a truck-load of horse manure and covered all the beds with it.  Then we planted beets, garlic, kale, and radishes.  Everything except the garlic has sprouted.  I don't know if I mentioned it or not in earlier posts but we made an 8 foot tall tube out of cattle panel, set it in a trash can full of our compost, and planted a bunch up stuff in it last spring.  All the vines climbed to the top and have produced spaghetti squash, butternut squash, cucumbers, melons, and last and getting ripe right now, a pumpkin 6 feet up in the air.  We planted some beit alpha cucumber seeds a few weeks ago and harvested the first one yesterday.  We have a volunteer acorn squash in a 2' pot.  We had filled the pot with our compost but, I guess, our compost doesn't get hot enough to kill all the seeds.  But that's okay.  There are six acorn squash on the vine.  And we still have four potted zucchini vines from the spring that are producing.  Not as much as in June but each still produces one or two per week.  The star of the garden right now is the eggplant bush.  We have given away a lot of eggplant to neighbors and there are 8 or 9 on the bush getting big and ripe right now.  Today, I mailed a bunch of our Thai dragon peppers to my brother in Modesto. 

A couple of weeks ago, Kathleen and I visited Fort Bragg, a little coastal town in northern California.  We rode the Skunk Train, ate at some amazing restaurants (Silver's and the North Coast Brewing Company), watched seals playing in the harbor, and stayed at the Anchor Lodge.  Almost everything in town was closed because of Covid, but the Silvers and  North Coast had outside and socially distanced seating.  

Oh!  We found out that there is a small preschool that visits the garden a couple of times a week.  The teachers talk about the different plants, the compost bin, take measurements, etc.  They also sampled some of our millions of sungold tomatoes when they were still growing.  When we found out they were visiting the garden Kathleen gave them cucumbers.
 
I made 6 fruitcakes today.  Well, they are still in the oven so, to be more accurate, I'm still making them.  Basil Wenceslas is coming over tomorrow and together we'll make six more.

A Christmas List

 Kathleen has been watching me gather Christmas presents for other people and store them under the bed for the last few weeks.  Almost every day I was in Reno she would call me and tell me another package had arrived and I would say, "Don't open it.  Just put it under the bed."  And she has watched as the pantry filled up with dried fruit in anticipation of making the Christmas Fruit Cakes.   Well, yesterday she asked me to write a Christmas list for me.  So, in no particular order here it is.  

1.  A trip to Seattle and back on The Coast Starlight.

2. A subscription to First Things Magazine.

3. A stay in the Old Faithful Inn.

4.  A Fiskars garden trowel.

5.  Baking paper.

6.  A 20th century table lighter and ashtray set.

7.  A copy of These Truths We Hold.

8. A SW/LW/AM/FM/WB radio by C. Crane or Eton that has an antenna port so I can run an antenna up to the roof, and can use AC or DC power or DC only with an adapter.  A transmitter would be cool too but that might be too expensive.

9. A box of MREs.

10. A subscription to Ancient History Magazine.

11.  The Lamp.

12.  An icon of the New Martyrs of Libya.

13. An Icon of St. Basil the Fool-for-Christ.

14. Any book by Fr. Dimitru Staniloae

15. A meatloaf pan.

16.  Russel pull-on boots for hunting.

Last trip to Truckee/Donner/Reno for 2020 and an Eagle Scout.

Kathleen and I went to Reno last Friday night.  I promptly got altitude sickness and was no good most of Saturday.  I had never experienced that before, and I hope I never do again.  It was misery but I started feeling better late on Saturday.  In the afternoon we went shooting at Reno Guns and Range then out to dinner at Wilde River Grill.  I had meatloaf.  Kathleen had braised beef spareribs.   On Sunday morning we stopped at St Anthony Church to pray before going up to Donner Lake to get the boat.  We had to get the boat because the berth I rented back in June was only until September 20.  So, we strapped it to the roof of the car and drove it home.  Now it is in Kathleen's garage.  I'm going to have to do something about that.

When we left San Jose on Friday night it was horrible smokey and still very hot.  Reno was the same.  While we were gone something must have happened because when we got home the air quality was much improved and the temperature was much lower.  It is almost like a normal September.  I'm starting to plan for Thanksgiving.

Covid is still messing with my life.  One of my goals every year is to be in church for all the Great Feasts.  I have never achieved this goal.  I was off to a good start with Nativity of the Theotokos but due to restrictions put in place because of Covid none of the parishes in the in the San Jose area had services open to the public.  So, maybe, next year.

Exactly a week ago tonight, Anselm Samuel (AKA the Little Boy) attended his last Boy Scout Troop meeting.  Technically, he hasn't been a Boy Scout since the spring when he turned 18 but Covid messed stuff up and there were no more troop meetings from before he turned 18 until last Wednesday.  And at that meeting, he was given the emblems of the Eagle Scout rank.  He did it.   Fewer than 5% of the boys who start out as Cub Scouts attain the rank of Eagle Scout.  He started in 2008.  It's been a long 12 years.  I  am super proud of him. 

Darkess at Noon, Working in the Garden.

I didn't have work for the Census Bureau today and I'm on leave from Bass Pro Shops until Sep  17 so I took advantage of this time to work in the garden,  I took all the tomato vines out of one bed (So, yes, we are having fried green tomatoes at supper tonight.), chopped them up and threw them in the compost pile.  Then I dug up the whole bed to loosen up the soil and and mix straw into it.  About 6 inches down it was very compacted so it really needed to be broken up; and the straw should help with water retention.  Then I transplanted six basil plants from various places in the garden to the north 1/5 of the bed.   In the remaining part of the bed I transplanted onions we started in a 2'x1' pot back in March.   There were hundreds of them in the pot, all totally root bound.  I separated them transplanted the biggest 40, gave some to the Indian woman who showed me how to grow garlic a couple of years ago, and some to the HOA's landscaper to take home and put in his garden.  What was left over went in the compost pile.

There was ash from the fires on the ground this morning.  On cars and on the balcony, too.  One of the fires, a small one was about 1/4 mile from my house but San Jose Fire Department extinguished it in just a few hours.   The smoke is so thick today that I had to turn on the lights in the house and the street lights (they come on automatically when it gets dark outside.) came on about 11 a.m.  The sky is dark orange and even the hummingbirds are confused.  They are acting like it is end-of-day feeding time.  The nice thing about today is that it is cooler than it has been in a week.  

The Garden and How I Cook Eggplant.

Today we lost three red kuri squash vines and all the beet seedlings  to the heat.  I tried picking cherry tomatoes but many of them fell apart in my hand, cooked on the vine.  This heat is brutal.

Gretchen asked me to post an eggplant recipe.  Because eggplant is new to me and I do not understand its properties very well this is all I do:  Slice them thin (1/8 inch - 1/4 inch),  sprinkle with salt pepper, and garlic powder, then lay them in a pan of very hot olive oil.  I fry them about a minute on each side, or until dark brown.  Its simple but it tastes good.

Home Again.

The time is just a few minutes after midnight on Monday.  It has been such a crazy couple of days.  On Saturday I woke up in my hotel in Reno, and drove to Incline Village where I had been assigned about 70 difficult cases.  After reviewing the case histories and seeing what I was facing I didn't really expect to close more than ten at the most.  But by 4 o'clock p.m. I had closed more than 20.  So I decided to head back to Reno and not work any overtime because my two youngest sons were on their way to Reno to spend a couple of days with me.  In the hour it took me to get back to the hotel my boss's boss had been fired and we had been ordered back to California.  So, I called my sons and told then to do a U-Turn and go home.  And when I got to the hotel I packed up my stuff, checked out of the hotel, and started for home. 

When I got to Verdi I stopped to buy gasoline, check the oil, and check the air pressure in my tires.  And that is when I noticed that I didn't have my key to the house.  I had lost it.  That shouldn't have been a problem because Kathleen would be home and would be able to let me in.  But she wasn't home.  She was at Pismo Beach in San Luis Obispo County.  So I had to drive to Pismo Beach to get a key to the house.  So, after driving from Reno to Incline Village, working all day, and then driving back to Reno I had to drive another 440 miles to to Pismo Beach.   Oh, I did do something really fun on the drive from Reno to Pismo Beach.  When I got to the summit of Donner Pass I put the car in neutral and coasted down the hill.  I descended 5,000 feet over 49 miles and didn't touch the accelerator from Donner Pass to Applegate.  At Applegate the road started to flatten out and my speed dropped below 40mph so I gave it the gas and sped down I-80 west  to I-5 south to Hwy 41 west to Hwy 101south.  I passed by Shandon where my two oldest sons lived with their mother about 25 years ago.  I drove past the ranch where my oldest son died 10 years ago. And I drove through Atascadero where 30 years ago my first wife chose her drug dealer over me.  (I was inexperienced and naive and did not recognize what was happening.) 

Except for Pismo Beach, where I took my two oldest sons to spend an Independence Day with my parents and my Uncle Fred and Aunt Nettie,  SLO County is not a happy place for me.  Bitter memories of my own failures, her betrayals, and my sons' suffering.  It was 1:55 a.m. on Sunday morning when I arrived at Kathleen's hotel room.  

We woke up about 9 on Sunday morning and I took Kathleen and her kids to breakfast at The Sand Castle.  Then I drove home. On the way home, (Hwy 101 the whole way.) I stopped at my oldest son's grave in Paso Robles and prayed for him.  Someone had put a little American flag on his grave.  Standing there at his grave I suddenly started sobbing and the strength went out of me and I almost fell.  I had to leave.  The pain was too great.  A decade later it has not faded.  

When I got home the thermometer in the garden said 105 degrees.  The garden was completely wilted.  We lost two squash plants and a lot of fruit.  

I don't have to work Monday.  I'll just work in the garden and try to stay cool.

Nevada

 I’ve been living in a hotel in Reno for the last 8 days while working for the U.S. Census Bureau.  I’ve been driving all around Washoe County and have fallen in love with it.  It is beautiful.  

Kathleen came over the mountains to be with me for a few days.  We went to the shooting range a few times.  She is getting good with the six-shooter I bought her.  

Today I wennt to church at St Anthony Orthodox Church.  The priest there is the brother of the priest who use to be the deacon in Saratoga.  It was the first time I’ve seen a priest since March.  Wuhan virus, insurance companies, Governor Newsom, and cowardly bishops: Damn them all.

The Census Bureau asked me to stay in Reno for another week.  It ought to be fun and worth quite a bit of money.

Doing nothing on the taxpayer's dime.

I was supposed to be out, going door to door, counting people for the United States today, but two hours ago the computers failed and I have nothing to do but, as my boss texted me, "Stand by for further instructions."   So, I am standing by. 

While standing by I went out to the garden with Kathleen and picked some cucumbers and tomatoes.  I am amazed by the graffiti aubergines.  They are very pretty, having purple and white stripes.  The larger ones are 10-12 inches long and 4-5 inches in diameter.  This is our first time to grow them and we are not sure when to pick them.  I turned the compost and buried a dead opossum in the middle of the pile.  I did a little Christmas shopping on eBay and Amazon.  I looked at the news about the fires raging all over California. I looked at the Apple Farm website as a possible getaway for Kathleen and I in October.   I've been there a couple of times, the first time in 2010, but have never actually spent the night in one of their cottages. 

Update:   They fixed the problem.  Off to work I go!

2nd update:  I'm home from work now.  The census is so much fun.  I love getting to meet all my neighbors. East San Jose is a pretty rough place.  Some people would call it a slum.  But the criminal element gets all the attention to the detriment of the reputation of the neighborhood.  I meet lots of really nice people.  Most of them go to church at Our Lady of Guadalupe, the biggest Catholic Church in the neighborhood, or to Five Wounds, the totally gorgeous Portuguese church.    Most of the rest go to one of the various Pentecostal churches in the neighborhood, such as La Puerta Abierta or the "Oneness" East Valley Pentecostal Church, or to one of the several small baptist churches. I don't ask everyone where they go to church (its not one of the census questions) but it there is a Cross above the door or araound the neck of the person wha answers the door I always ask, "Hey, you're a Christian!  So am I! Where do you go to church?"

I wanted to mention that my son Anselm is taking Kathleen's course on economics.  It is a course she and I designed together and is, I think, pretty amazing.  He is not officially enrolled because he is officially a high school graduate, but because he never took an economics course he wanted to take one.  If were not for the wuhan virus he wouldn't be able to take her course, but because of covid she is teaching all her class online, which means my son can take the class.  His nameday was a couple of days ago so I bought him three of the textbooks for the class:  The Law by Bastiat, The Road to Serfdom by Hayek, and Economics in One Lesson by Hazlitt. 

Work for money, work for love

Yesterday I finished all the training for the Census Bureau.  Now I'm just waiting for my boss to call me and tell me when I can go out and start counting people.  I'm pretty excited about it.  It's fun to do a job mandated by the Constitution.

I'm still working part time at Bass Pro Shops.  It is only part time because of Wuhan restrictions.  The health department only lets us serve two customers per hour at the gun counter, and only two customers per hour at the ammo counter; not that we have any ammo.  For example, there is a nationwide shortage of all the most popular kinds.  We've been out of buckshot since March.

My instructor from last semester's waste water management class sent me an email and asked me to apply for a job in his department.  He is the director of public works for a small city here in the Bay Area.  I  submitted my application late last night but wont hear anything until October.  Governments have very slow hiring processes.  This brings to three the number of waste water management departments I've applied to since I finished the training.

Also yesterday, I helped Kathleen with her classes.  I wrote the first assignment for her history class (it has to do with identifying values that motivate people to make the decisions we call history) and gave her the readings and assignments for the first six weeks of her economics class.  Plato, Aristotle, Bastiat, Marx (He's been in the grave for 140 years but he is still killing people.), Smith, Hazlitt for the first six weeks.  In the second 6 weeks, I think, she is going to do Hayek, Friedman, and Keynes.

Today I began growing bacteria for the garden.  Yes, we are composting but I think the nutrients we have been putting into the soil are not getting into the plants because the bacteria are getting killed by the heat.  (Hot soil is a hazzard of growing in raised beds.) So now I am growing bacteria and in a few days I will pour it all over the garden.  Then I'll cover the ground with a good mat of straw to keep the soil from getting too hot.