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.

Demons

 

I don't think I have ever mentioned this event on this blog but I was listening to an interview Kevin Allen (Memory Eternal!) did of a priest who specializes in exorcism and I remembered this this strange event.  In 1997 I was at Crown Books on El Camino Real   in Sunnyvale California.  (Me encanta ser Californio!)   I used to be a voracious reader and would pick up any book to see what it was about.  (I am more discriminating now.)  I was at a Crown Books store one night and the tile of a book caught my eye:  A Course In Miracles.  Well, I was a Christian. and I believed in miracles. So I picked it up off the shelf and opened it.  Then a strange thing happened.  The letters on the page rearranged themselves into a bull's head.  And the bull spoke to me.   "We are not for you" is what it said.  I knew it was a demon.  I closed the book and set it back on the shelf.  I was afraid and began to weep.  I almost vomited right there in the bookstore.  Now, many years later,  I understand that the demon must have been afraid of me or, more likely, the Holy Spirit in me.   Now, if such a thing were to happen I would just ask the archangel Michael for help and throw some holy water.

Guns and Ammo

 It was a good night at work.  One of my coworkers and I talked an Air Force officer out of buying a Remington 700 PCR chambered for .308 Winchester and into a Ruger Precision Rifle chambered for .338 Lapua.  Then we convinced him to buy a Vortex Viper HSLR scope.   The company really ought to pay us commission.  But maybe not, for last week I talked a fearful  apartment-dwelling man out of buying a very expensive and very powerful hand gun (He would have shot through the walls and killed his neighbors!) and into buying a can of pepper spray instead.  It all depends on what I think is best for the customer.

Making Do

Today is the Forefeast of the  Transfiguration.  In normal years Orthodox Christians take grapes to church to be blessed but we can't go to church this year.  I don't know how to bless grapes but I picked some off of one of our vines,  put them by the icons, and sang the Troparion and Kontokion of the feast when I did Sixth Hour.  The grapes are pinot noir and are not ripe yet because of shade from nearby trees and clouds in the sky.  I'll leave them there until tomorrow, the actual feast day.  Then, I guess, I'll feed them to the goldfinches.

In other news I shot another squirrel in the garden this morning and harvested enough cucumbers to make two more jars of pickles.

I started with the census bureau yesterday.  It's just a couple of hours of training each day until next week.  I'm happy for an opportunity to earn money.

Saint Basil's Day (The other Basil)

Today is the feast of St. Basil of Moscow, the patron or my youngest son.  So, while praying the ninth hour today we got to sing the Troparion for St. Basil of Moscow.

Most of the beets, kale, and pumpkins - all the pumpkins, actually- we transplanted two weeks ago were destroyed by squirrels.  But we are still getting 5 or six big tomatoes, a dozen little cherry tomatoes, and three or four zucchini every day. (The squirrels, even though I shoot them, get more of the zucchini than we do.)  I've put up six quarts of pickles.  I really wanted more pickles but there have been very few bees in the garden this summer, so thought there have been many flowers there have not been many cucumbers.  I don't know what to think of that.  The carrots did not do well.  But the bell peppers are doing amazing.  The pumpkins we planted back in February were harvested and all but one given away.  I started more cantaloupe and pumpkin 2 weeks ago on the back balcony.  Tomorrow I'll transplant then into the garden. The turnips and radishes did really well but I'm really the only person in the house who likes them, so I won't plant any more, I think.

A word about the tomatoes:  The Cherokee purples did not do well.  We only got three or four off each vine.  The real star among the tomatoes this year is the Lemon Boy vine.  It is prolific and is the best tasting tomato I have ever had.  We might plant three or four of them next spring.

I ordered some short growing season watermelon seeds from Baker Creek.  They should be here in a couple of days.  I'll sew them directly into the ground and hope to harvest them in early October.

Kathleen and I have been doing a lot of fun stuff this summer.  We go shooting at Coyote Sporting Clays pretty often.  And, of course there are all the trips to Tahoe/Truckee/Reno.  (Basil and I went last Sunday and Monday.  He had a great time on the boat.)

Something kind of neat happened at dinner tonight.  Kathleen and I were talking about the reading list (Bastiat, Smith, Friedman etc.) for the economics class she teaches when Anselm, who graduated from high school two years early so did not take the economics course high school seniors take, asked Kathleen if he can take her class.  And since she, like all teachers in the county, is teaching online he can take it.