Cloudy, Cloudy, Cloudy!

Been putting up with this almost daily and today is no exception. The above picture was taken yesterday. All the clouds with no rain sure screws up the solar and means no AC running off of solar even though its still hot and muggy. It had gotten up to 108 earlier, but the temp is now down to 100 with the clouds.

This was taken last night and there was one heck of a lightning storm going on on the other side of 9 Points Mesa. It was far enough away that you couldn't hear any thunder, but the show was spectacular and I sat out front and watched it until about 10:30 last night. Would have sure made for some good photos if I could have caught the lightning flashes.

Below pictures were also taken last night.

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Old Shoes & What Not

Pretty bad when you have to resort to blogging about an old pair of shoes, but there isn't a heck of a lot to blog about so this is part of it.

First off my eX bought these for my birthday (I think 8 or 9 years ago) This is the second pair she bought me and I guess I wore the first ones another 8 or nine years, but the first ones didn't suffer near the punishment these and me have. As you can see they are in pretty sad shape, but I don't have to wear them. I do have several other sets now, but none are as comfortable as these. Most shoes I've had in my life the soul always went first, but not these. If I could have a new set of shoes grafted on these souls I think they would last another 8 or 9 years.

BTW these are SAS shoes and they are a little on the expensive side so I doubt that I'll ever have another set unless SAS is watching and wants to send me another set for the unsolicited advertisement. On second thought in that case if there is such a thing as SAS snake boots they might work better down here. ;) When I can no longer use these for combination indoor/outdoor house shoes it will be like loosing an old friend!

Now back to the shoes. Notice the hole in the tip of the right shoe. There's a story behind that. We'll get to that later, but first a warning to the married ladies.

My neighbor came over one afternoon and we were sitting on the front porch drinking beer and discussing the usual BS. After a few beers he decided that we should head down to the nearest sports bar, but I had no intention of doing that. Unfortunately he brought it up one more time just as my wife at the time was walking out the front door and when she heard him say we need to go to the bar she huffily said "You are NOT going to a bar!" Whoops! Bad move! I went from having no need or want to go to a bar to "The hell you say!"  in a flash. My neighbor took his car and I took my bike. Once at the bar he started buying shots of peppermint schnapps one right after the other for some time. I finally decided enough was enough and left. Was a fun ride home NOT, but I made it almost to the driveway of the house and lost the bike in the street in front of our driveway.

Now that there hole in the top of my shoe came when the bike fell over on my right leg and there was a chrome bullet mounted on the bottom of the foot rest. That chrome bullet managed to go through the shoe right between my big toe and the toe next to it without hurting either. I was trapped though because I couldn't lift the bike off of me and couldn't reach up under it to untie my shoe to get my foot out. There is a lot more to this story that I won't get in to at this time (some comical and some not), but anyway the moral to this story is "Never tell your husband he is NOT going to do something because it could have disastrous effects and might make him do it to spite you.

And some picture from last night.

The bottom one was taken at sunset looking North believe it or not.

And yesterday I came up with the hankering for some fried potatoes and pinto beans. I had some cooked ground beef in the fridge and some potatoes and a can of beans. Also had some chopped onion and tomatoes diced up so fried the potatoes and onion and then added the beef and diced tomatoes. It was so good I ate three big helpings and I'm not a big eater. I shared some with Shelah and she went through it in a very short time and would have no doubt loved to have more.

Bugz, Bugz, Bugz...

I got a quick .2 inches of rain yesterday evening. Wish there would have been more, but I should have gotten about 40 gallons of catchment out of that.

Problem is when we get rain here or right here where I live it brings out thousands of pesky little flying bugs. They look like the equivalent of flying piss ants they are so tiny. They are attracted to white light, but the amber or yellow bug lights don't seem to attract them. I have both in here and after the rain I made the mistake of opening the door long enough for lots of them to come in here and pester the crap out of me. They will fly in your eyes, up your nose and in your ears and are just all around pesky little shits! I finally turned off the white light, left the bug light on and opened the door and that seemed to allow the outdoor solar lights to attract the ones I hadn't already killed back out side.

That big brown spot isn't dirt its bugs! (Thousands of them)

They also clog up the screen in the water catchment system and I need to take that loose again and clean it.

Fender Bender "The true Story"

Since this happened there have been at least two stories come up about how it happened. First was that someone backed in to it at the party and the second one is that I backed in to someone at the party. Both are pure Bull Shit! Who knows what other stories will come up sooner or later.

The true story is that I was headed to Study Butte for a second load of water and some supplies. I had the trailer on back of the car of course to haul the water. On the way there I passed a guy beside the road who had just had a blowout. I knew the guy and the locals know him as Howard. He is considerably older than me, much smaller than me and appeared to be having a hell of a time trying to get the tire changed on the heavy duty Dodge pickup. I went past since 118 was too narrow to turn around in so I pulled off at the next place I could pull up in. (An unfinished driveway)

I'd started backing out and a car was coming around the curve south of there so I pulled back in. When It was SAFE??? I started backing out again and forgot about the trailer being behind. It jackknifed and did the damage seen in the pictures.

At the time Howard was parked on what little shoulder there was in the above picture.

This picture shows about where Howard was parked (Right side) and where I tried the turn around (Left side)

After the damage was done I was so PO'ed at myself that I just went on in to Study Butte and hoped someone else would stop and give him a hand. (We do try to look out for each other down here) Anyway... When I came back by on the way home he was still there, but had a couple of other people helping him. I did stop though just to make suer he had all the help he needed. He said yes so I came on home and spent the rest of the day and most of the night beating myself up for doing such a stupid thing. Ever heard the old saying "No good deed goes unpunished. Held true for both my niece Madaleine and me this time. I'll be taking the car back to Odessa in a couple of weeks and hope my insurance covers it. She wanted to put it in the shop to be fixed and get me a rental to come back in until its fixed. I said no. I'll bring the jeep back and live with it.

And on another note
Not sure where Weather Underground gets their data from, but its always from 5 to 10 degrees cooler where it is coming from than it is here.

Actually when the site was showing the above it was 111 here.

Needless to say the clock is not right on my indoor/outdoor thermometer. At the time of the picture I was running the AC off of solar, but being its nearly totally cloudy that only lasted about 45 minutes. Right now its running off the genny, but I'm about to cut it off and switch back to solar since its raining in several places around here and the temp is now down to 98 degrees. BTW the humidity has felt awful high all day so the 111 degrees felt every bit of it!

Libra Party? / Haul'in Water

A Libra Party at the ranch Saturday. Lots of fun, good music, good food (Including a fish fry with fish caught recently in the gulf.) There was sort of a Pot Luck lunch with it and the verioty of different foods was amazing.

The water supply was getting a little low for my liking so I hauled a load of watter from down south. 125 gallons which doesn't seem to effect the 1550 gallon tank too much  I don't imagine I'll ever see the big tank full unless we get lots of rain though. I was able to transfer about 2/3rd tank of water by gravity flow letting it equalize between the tank on the trailer and the big tank. That took all night, but the pumping process the next day did the rest in about 30 minutes. That used more solar power which I was trying to do without. Had to rig up a pump system to pump the rest over to the bigger tank.

Nice day here today. I don't think it ever got to 100 and right now at 11:07 PM its 79 degrees outside. Should be decent sleeping temperature tonight.

August Post / BUZZED again

I've been asked by family when I'm going to do a post for August and there really hasn't been anything to blog about, but here goes anyway.

My hair had gotten to the length where it was getting real unruly so I broke out the clippers and this is what you get. Guess I better start wearing the hat again when I'm in the sun.

I'd also been asked about how Shelah is doing and as you can see she is in her usual favorite place. (Under the cabin) I sort of wish I hadn't taken this picture because after a closer inspection it shows that several of the tile blocks that were supporting the floor or no longer doing that. Shelah is an excavating machine and has dug pits all under the cabin. In some cases she has dug out beside some of the blocks causing them to shift. It would take a real small person to be able to get under there and fix the damage. I've waited way too long to under skirt the cabin and I sure need to do that to keep her out from under there. I don't know where her next favorite place will be, but she had better start looking!

And lastly a cane that one of my friends (Melinda) gave me. It comes in handy at times when my leg is acting up. She also gave me a walker, but so far I haven't had to use it. I may add a fold down seat to it though and use it when I want to get out and look for artifacts again when the weather cools down. I should be able to do that and have a place to sit and rest my leg when it starts giving out.