GLIMPSES OF AUTUMN

This month marks the eighth year I've been in Tennessee. It seems more like eighty years, but that's beside the point.

October, of course, is my favorite month. Despite the endless inconveniences of rural life, I admittedly savor the peace and beauty of the surrounding forest - especially in autumn's embrace.

During the time that I've been here, the colorful autumn foliage always peaked at the end of October - usually around Halloween. This year nature's glorious exhibition is appearing surprisingly early. 

My most inspiring annual passion are my long autumnal walks through the backyard forest. Unfortunately, this year my walks are annoyingly impeded for two reasons - - 
my physical spinal ailments make walking extremely difficult.
And my property is presently completely over-run with wild weeds, obstinate vines, dangerously sharp thorn bushes, and brush that has grown fifteen feet high due to excessive rain.

There are also many trees that have been toppled due to storms, which rudely block many of my usual walking paths.

Yesterday afternoon was so lovely that I wandered outside with my El Cheapo ancient digital camera and took a few photos. I only stayed very near the house. I plan to venture (with camera) in the forest on another day - before the foliage fades.

I took this photo of Bosco early yesterday morning while I was still in bed.

The front yard

In the back "yard"

A great positive aspect is that I don't have to go far from the house to enjoy nature's beauty.

Pine Cones

Wait a minute - -
let's go into the house and visit the kitchen - -

Have you ever seen a can of evaporated milk this HUGE? It's a whopping 97 ounces - one of my recent online Walmart orders.
Unfortunately I just realized that once the can is opened, the milk spoils in a few days. I'll have to transfer it to some sort of glass container. And I can freeze some.

A tin of Harney & Sons tea (next to my haunted house mug)

This tea is called Hot Cinnamon Sunset and I think it's fantastic. Had some yesterday morning. The first sip was an unexpected wild burst of cinnamon that was a jolt of ecstasy.

This tea was also ordered from Walmart online.
If you want to be pleasantly accosted by aggressive cinnamon, try it.

Cheers, Jon

 

JUST AN ORDINARY DAY IN JULY

 I removed my previous post, Encounter With a Mountain Lion, simply because I thought it was too personal and, partly, too depressing.

Most blog readers want to hear about uplifting things, not gut-wrenching pathos.

I tend to disagree. I much prefer to reveal things about my inner self and stories about my past. I'm an interesting person (a matter of opinion....*smile*) and had a helleva unique and colorful life. Why shouldn't I share it?

Many bloggers hate to share personal things and prefer to write about their blooming begonias. 

I don't give a rat's ass about your blooming begonias. I want to hear about the secret torrid affair you're having with one of your neighbors.

Or the fact that you're considering poisoning your husband.

Confess all and you'll have my heart.

Yesterday, I heroically forced (and I mean FORCED) myself to drive to town. I haven't been shopping in two months, and I desperately needed things that I can't order online.

It was an extremely rare day with NO RAIN, so I took advantage of it.
It is no exaggeration when I say that it rains nearly every day here in Tennessee. If we get two sunny days a month, it's a miracle.

Despite the grim fact that my car is falling apart, and - physically - I'm more than half-dead, I plied myself with homemade wine - -which greatly softened the harsh ordeal.

Despite the outrageous increase in the price of groceries, I got many luxuries that I haven't had in a long time. Milk, orange juice, eggs, bread, hamburger patties, cheese, ice cream, fried chicken, cold cuts for sandwiches. A big chocolate cake that was on sale.

The very worst part is arriving at home and having to carry all the groceries up a rugged hill, through mud and dangerous thorn bushes, to my back porch. It usually takes many trips.

I always bring in the perishables first. I use a lot of eggs, so I bought thirty of them (eighteen in one carton and a dozen in another).
When I got into the kitchen I dropped them on the floor and at least ten of them broke.

And
drumroll here for dramatic effect

as I made my way through the thorn bushes, my shirt got ripped...and one thorn branch hit me in the face and cut my left eyelid. It was dangerously close to getting my eyeball.

I'm getting too old and feeble to endure this Jungle Jim wilderness crap. If I ever revealed all the major problems I have here you would be stunned into oblivion. I think I've already lost half my mind, and I've more than once considered suicide. No lie.

Well, other than all the problems, it's just a typical day in July.

Heck, if I get drunk enough, I might consider reposting my mountain lion story.

Cheers, Jon

Sorry, I don't have any photos or visual enhancements for this post.
But it doesn't matter. I'm fascinating without them.

LIVING DANGEROUSLY?

What if you lived entirely alone in a rural area, on the edge of a forest, with no nearby neighbors, where the nights are darker and more foreboding than the devil's soul?

What if the flimsy house you live in has doors and windows that are very easy to break into? What if the most recent cell phones you purchased were completely worthless, since they can't pick up signals in such a remote area?

Would you be afraid late at night - with nothing to keep you company but two lazy cats.......and the hooting owls and howling coyotes nearby outdoors?

You can only imagine what this place is like during a power outage.

When I moved here five years ago, I was admittedly scared shitless for the first two weeks. My extremely vivid imagination went wild.

Soon, however, I got used to the isolation and solitude - and grew to love it. And came to embrace the imagined dangers.
Ghosts in the woods. Rural monsters afoot. Maniacal serial killers wandering the restless countryside. 

When I first came here, for the first few years, I had no curtains or blinds on any of the windows. I let the intoxicating moonlight stream in.

Lately...finally.... I put blinds on all the windows. But I pull the blinds completely up on my bedroom window, so I can look out at the night while laying in bed.
The window in my bedroom isn't on "ground-level". It's way up high - so there's no chance that Bigfoot could ever look in......
......unless he's twelve feet tall....

I've occasionally slept with the doors unlocked - but lately I'm much more careful.

Am I deliberately courting danger? Do I have a death wish?

Truth to tell, I have always courted danger. In my sordid past, I've done more horrifyingly dangerous things than I'd ever care to tell. 

Yet I'm neither tough, bold, nor courageous. I simply don't scare very easily.
Whenever I hear a creepy sound outside in the middle of the night, I always go out to investigate it.

Incidentally, I have a gun and know how to use it. Firearm opponents be damned.

And what do I do for entertainment in the after-midnight hours here in the wilderness?
I like to read ghost stories and true-crime stories.
I love to watch scary videos on YouTube about unsolved murders and unexplained mysteries.

Am I totally crazy?
Naw, not totally. I now always make sure the doors are locked...and the gun is loaded.
And every once in awhile - just for a change of pace - I'll watch a benign movie with a Disney theme.

Here are some photos that I took within the past few weeks.

The full moon setting behind the nearby mountain, just before dawn.

         The early morning sun appearing in the misty forest

Note: I removed my previous "question and answer" post, simply because I didn't like it.

JOY IN THE WILDERNESS

 

So, how has my life been going lately?

Let's put it this way: the unmitigated   joy of living in the wilderness is so intense that I usually keep the blissful details to myself - in order not to alarm anyone. 

To fully describe my August adventures (so far) would be excruciatingly long, so I'll start with something simple and uncomplicated - - like the gnats.

Every August, for the four long years that I've lived here, there has been a mercilessly unceasing influx of gnats. I'm not talking a few gnats for a few days. I'm talking one of the plagues of Egypt.

The gnats completely and thoroughly infiltrate the house and there's no way to stop them. They descend upon everything - food, trash cans, sinks, tables, countertops - they thrive in the cat's food and litter boxes. 

To make matters worse, they are EXTREMELY aggressive - attacking my face, racing up my nose, trying to get into my mouth.
It's nearly impossible to eat a meal. I have to keep the food covered while I'm trying to take a bite. And I keep a small fan on the table in the feeble hope of blowing them away.

I left a cantaloupe on the kitchen counter overnight and they descended upon it with the unholy enthusiasm of Aesop's feast.
 It was the only analogy I could think of.

They scurry along the pages of books while I'm reading in bed, and if I happen to fall asleep they buzz in my ears - rudely interrupting erotic dreams.

Their unrelenting presence and indefatigable persistence is enough to make a grown man cry. I speak from experience.

As I'm writing this post, they're playing hopscotch on the computer keys and laughing at the table fan that I have on to dissuade them.

A frantic search on the Internet revealed one ploy to fight back: vinegar.
A bowl of vinegar (with a few added drops of dishwashing liquid) attracts them like flies on a cow pie. Or Democrats on a fake collusion. Sorry - I couldn't resist.

I usually place a bowl of vinegar in (nearly) every room. It doesn't completely alleviate the agony of the gnats, but it does decrease the attendance at their Bacchanalia.

 This is a bowl of vinegar (an old sherbet container) that I had out for only an hour, and it attracted scores of gnats.

I'm going to divide this post into two parts because it's getting kinda long.

Brace yourselves, boys and girls.
The gnats are going to look like a ride at Disneyland, compared to the next horrifying tale I'm going to tell you.

You won't believe what happened to me these past few days.
Stay tuned for the dramatic (hair-raising) conclusion. Coming soon!

WATER WOES

Every morning after I wake up and reluctantly extract myself from a warm bed and the blissful escape of Dreamland, I always say (out loud, of course)

Jon, what the hell is going to happen next?

I've been bombarded with one unpleasant thing after another ever since I moved here.
My advice to any naive and inexperienced person who wants to  move to a rural area and have a simple life:

Don't do it unless you're young, healthy, and wealthy. There's no such thing as a "simple life".

Of course, I'm far from being naive or inexperienced.

When I was young I hustled the streets of Hollywood - which quickly knocked every semblance of innocence and inexperience out of me.

Later I lived in the Missouri Ozarks and West Texas - which knocked everything else out of me.
The mega problems I had in Texas were so humongous that they make Tennessee look like an E ticket ride at Disneyland.

Does anybody remember those old E tickets at Disneyland, or am I the only one?

But where was I?
Oh yea - getting out of my Tennessee bed in the morning.

I know that you're all breathlessly (not to mention impatiently) waiting for me to get to the point, but - heck - I'm here to entertain you,
and if I get to my point too quickly  it will greatly diminish the entertainment value.

For the past few months I've been having water pressure problems (in the faucets in my house). The pressure will suddenly drop drastically (usually to a paltry trickle) and stay that way for hours. Then it will (suddenly) be normal again.

I (reluctantly) learned to live with it - and attributed it to yet another delight of living in the wilderness.

Yesterday afternoon there was no water at all. Absolutely none. I was worried (not to mention annoyed) but figured I'd wait it out and see what would happen.
Sure enough, within three hours the water was back on.

I breathed a *sigh* of relief and took a short nap.
Then I got up to prepare a very late dinner. 

I turned on the kitchen sink faucet. No water emerged - but
a VERY THICK brown mud oozed out.
It looked like chocolate pudding, only worse.

I panicked.
Then I called the emergency number for the water company.

After I explained the problem I had to pinpoint exactly where I live, which wasn't easy since I'm about a zillion miles from town.

The guy was extremely nice, but I experienced the same problem that I had with people in West Texas.

I don't want to sound condescending, but

I cannot understand these southern hillbilly accents. I swear to Gawd it's true and I'm not exaggerating.

(I won't mention the fact that my telephone connection isn't exactly perfect - which exasperates indecipherable southern accents)

Anyway -
he explained something about the fact that my property is situated in an odd place (as if I didn't know...) where I am located over (or perhaps under) the creaky and rusted mechanisms of a main water valve that gets clogged and periodically fills with gunk and
what the hell else, I don't know.

Before sending a maintenance team out (which would take a couple hours) he suggested that I run the kitchen tap for five minutes and then call him back.

I ran the tap for five and a half minutes and the water miraculously cleared.
I called him back.

He did his best to appease my apprehension that the water might not be safe to drink.

It'll be safe, he assured me.

Later last night - long after midnight - I made a cup of tea.
I let the water boil a long time.
After drinking the tea I was expecting to get violently ill and eventually croak.

But it's now Sunday morning. And I'm still alive.
I think.



 

HAVING FUN GOING TO TOWN

I had an incredible migraine headache this morning, which was probably the result of all the crap I went through yesterday.

Yesterday I was forced to drive to town, because I was completely out of supplies: no food, no cat food or litter, no toilet paper.

An Aside:
Several of my most delicate readers were shocked when - on a previous blog post - I happened to mention toilet paper.
My response is to lighten up and face reality. We ALL use it. And if you don't, I sure as hell would like to know why not. 

Anyway, I drove to town yesterday.

The first thing I did was to pack an entire month of full trash bags into the car.
There is NO trash pickup in this rural place. You have to haul all your trash by yourself to the Trash Center in town.

It's a helluva traumatic situation for me, since I live a zillion miles (give or take) from town and only go about once a month. I cringe every time I have to stuff huge, smelly trash bags into my car. 

It's even worse now that it's 90 degrees (that's Fahrenheit, for those of you in Zurich). The interior of the car is about 567 degrees and the odious bags of trash start to decompose in about two minutes.

So I'm on the narrow, winding, perilous mountain road - in the proverbial middle of nowhere - surrounded by smelly bags of garbage.....

.........(these dots serve to build up suspense)..........

....when suddenly an emergency light starts blinking on the dashboard - informing me that I'm nearly out of gas!

I'm seldom prone to panic - - but this time I panicked freely.  
Driving on this mountain road terrifies me on a good day when nothing's going wrong. My terror quadrupled knowing that I'm nearly gasless with rotting bags of trash. And there's nowhere on the road to pull over.

All I could do was keep going, coast as much as possible, and pray to a God who's probably laughing at me. 

To make an incredibly long and sweaty story short (which, for me, is an impossibility) I made it to the outskirts of town - but still had to travel on another endlessly long road that leads to the service station.

Out of nowhere, a car pulls in front of me and is moving about 5 mph. I'm almost riding her bumper (yes, it was a woman) and I'm screaming "Go!Go!Go! Gooooooooo!!!!!!!"
I did everything to keep from ramming her car and sending her into a ditch. 

I ran out of gas JUST as I reached the service station and had to push and coast the car to the nearest gas pump. 

After I got gas, I went to the Trash Center to get rid of the festering trash bags.
As fate would have it, they were CLOSED for an unknown reason! The gate was locked, but the workers were there and cars were lined up, waiting to get in.

I wasn't about to wait in line for an hour and run out of gas again. I took off and went shopping at Walmart and the supermarket. 

After I went shopping, I returned to the Trash Center and....... wouldn't you know it.....the gate was STILL locked and a bunch of cars were STILL waiting to get in!!!!!!!!!

I yelled "SHIT!!!!!" and a few other more colorful things, made a screeching U turn, and headed home. 

I still have all the bags of trash, which I hauled out of the car and dumped in the garage. 

And I don't give a royal rat's ass if they stay there forever.

SKUNK

I'm in bed late last night way after midnight (more like 3:00 a.m.) reading. I'm comfortably propped up with four pillows (I like leverage) and I'm (almost) in a state of complete relaxation.

This is extremely rare. Getting me to the point of complete relaxation usually requires generous doses of Prozac, a fifth or two of straight whiskey, and/or electric shock therapy.
But that's beside the point.

Anyway, I have the window wide open so I can hear the nearby owls and see an occasional lightning bug (firefly) drifting by. I'm completely absorbed.

Suddenly-
and I mean suddenly -
the entire room is filled (and I mean  completely filled) with the strong stench of a skunk. I'm not talking drifting aroma. I'm talking complete alarming permeation.

The stench is so strong that I initially think the skunk must be in my bedroom.
This scenario isn't as implausible as it seems. In the past I've already had two 'possums and one racoon in the house. And, no - I am not kidding.

I cautiously check the bedroom and then the entire house. To my relief, I only find the three cats.

I can only assume that the skunk must have been directly under my bedroom window.
I've dealt with skunks before. Hell, I've even been in relationships with a few (but that's another story for another time).
I've never, however, encountered a skunk this incredibly smelly. It wasn't merely a skunk stench. It was a supercalifragilisticexpialidocious skunk stench.

I just threw that in to impress you. The things I've retained from seeing  Mary Poppins in my impressionable youth are astounding.

Anyway, I tried closing the window, but that only trapped the stench in the house. So I eventually opened the window again and endured the stench until long (longlonglong) after dawn.

So that's it, Jon???

Yes. I'll admit it's a crappy story. But I tell it with flair and an uncanny sense of style.

While I'm on the subject of skunks, I'll tell another skunk story.

Once, long ago, my parents were on vacation traveling through Oklahoma late at night (I wasn't with them). It was a dark highway and my father hit a skunk.

They said the stench was so bad that they stopped at the nearest car wash and washed the car several times - but it did nothing to alleviate the smell.

(I'm suddenly thinking of that episode of Seinfeld, when Jerry's car had B.O)

Anyway, when my parents finally got home the car still smelled so bad that they didn't dare put it in the garage. They washed it several more times and used every possible ploy to get rid of the smell but nothing worked.

I can attest to the fact that the car maintained the essence of skunk for several months before it finally wore off.

The End.

NIGHTMARE AFTER MIDNIGHT

 eerie dawn on Sunday

I've done a helluva lot of stupid things in my time - more than I'd ever want to divulge to an innocent and unsuspecting public. Sometimes I've done insanely stupid things. Occasionally I do beyond insanely stupid things.

Tonight (actually last night) I had one of my beyond insane moments. My stupidity even baffled myself.

First of all, rural Tennessee had fantastic weather for the past two days. Thursday and Friday were near perfect: sunny, low humidity, in the 70's (that's Fahrenheit, for those of you in Antwerp). I savored every moment because I knew it wouldn't last. I'd be pressing my luck to the limit if I thought we'd ever get three good days.

Sure enough, the rain began on Friday night and continued all day Saturday without letup. As usual, everything immediately got sopped, soggy, and incredibly muddy.

I was worried about getting my mail.
That's right. My mail.

I think I've already explained (in a previous post) that my mailbox is infuriatingly far away from my house. You need pack mules and hiking gear to get there.

But the hike isn't the problem. The problem is that the latch on my mailbox doesn't work properly, so the door always falls open and all my mail inevitably gets completely drenched. The other day I got some letters that were so soaked I could hardly read them. I tried to salvage them with a hairdryer.

So why don't you fix the latch, Jon?

I tried fixing it, but nothing worked.
I attempted to buy a new one but the latch I found at the hardware store was nearly $30 and didn't look like it would fit.

Hey, for thirty bucks I could eat for three weeks. Or buy a year's supply of clothing at Walmart.

Don't laugh. It ain't funny being poor.

Why don't you buy a new mailbox, Jon?

I will, Kemosabe, as soon as I win the lottery. Now keep your damn suggestions to yourself. You're ruining my good story.


The rain continued after dark. It poured until long after midnight.
Then - - -
for a few blessedly glorious and intensely rare moments the rain let up.
It showered. Then drizzled. Then stopped.

In a hasty and hysterical moment of profoundly irrational judgement I said to myself:

"Holy shit, Jon - if you hurry like hell you might be able to make it to the mailbox before the rain resumes!"

I didn't care if it was after midnight. I was ready to go!
I put on my boots and hat, grabbed a flashlight, and zoomed out the door.

Well, it wasn't exactly a "zoom". I just threw that in for cheap literary effect.

I wasn't about to walk there. This place can scare the jeeters out of you even in the daylight. I had to take the car.

To make a long story short (which at this point is a complete impossibility),
I safely reached the mailbox. Of course, it was wide open. And all my mail was thoroughly drenched.

As I plopped the pasty layers of postal pulp down on the seat next to me, it started pouring rain again.

I could hardly see to drive back, and as I tried to make my way up the steep hill that leads to my house the inevitable happened: I got stuck in the mud.

It's happened to me many times before but I always managed to get out. This time I was really stuck and every maneuver was futile.

 This is the good, safe part of the trail up by my house. I got stuck in the mud way down in the dark part (photo taken with camera flash)

  I remembered hearing (somewhere) that if your car is ever stuck in the mud
1. don't panic
and
2. don't press your foot down on the accelerator.

I panicked. I pressed the living hell out of the accelerator - while the wheels screeched and spun and the car was enshrouded in billowing clouds of smoke and splattered with mud.

In exasperation I opened the door and got out. As I sunk into mud nearly up to my knees, the car started rolling backwards down the hill! I stopped it just in time and frantically turned the steering wheel to steady the roving tires.
I could go in reverse but not forward.

I decided that I only had two alternatives:
1. Leave the car there until it stopped raining and things dried out (which probably wouldn't happen until some time in late August)
or
2. Get some traction.

What could I use? Cat litter?
Naw, the cats need it more than the car.

Then I thought of cardboard. There was plenty of it in the garage.

I slipped and slid my way through the mud back to the house in the torrential rain. Got cardboard from the garage. Trudged back to the car and placed it in front of the tires.

 Remnants of the soaked cardboard afterwards

After a few more frantic moments of muddy immobility I finally achieved SUCCESS!!! 
I was able (with difficulty) to get the car back to the house! Or nearly back to the house.

There's more to this after-midnight nightmare - -
like the large owl that was continually harassing me from a nearby tree while I was stuck in the mud...
.....and how I slipped all the way down an embankment on my way to the garage.....

but I've supplied you with enough information to envision my miserable plight.

The only thing I'll add is that it's now Sunday afternoon as I write this - -
and still pouring rain.

PHONE CARD IN THE FREEZER AND OTHER STUFF

Get a place in the wilderness, Jon. It'll be fun! You'll have a simple and carefree life.

If it wasn't so physically hard to do, I'd be kicking my own ass for suggesting that to myself.  
After three long years existing in the wilderness my life is filled with more problems and complications than a '58 Edsel Corsair, and my nerves are more shredded than the lettuce on a Taco Bell veggie salad.

I couldn't sleep all night from the scratching and scraping of the wild animals trying to nest in my roof and walls. Don't be fooled by all those cutsie wildlife documentaries on PBS and the Disney Bambi crap that we were spoon-fed as kids.
If I had a submachine gun I would have used it gleefully and without regrets.

Did you ever try to sleep on a bad mattress with a bad back and two big cats? Bosco must weigh 50 lbs. and he was dead weight on my legs like a sack of scrap metal.

When I crawled out of bed at the grim and cold crack of dawn, it took me ten minutes to get on my feet and I looked like an accordion on stilts.

Yup, I chose today (Tuesday) to drive into town - despite a warning from my cousin that there was "road work" being done.

Actually, I was fortunate to even find the road - since the weeds and "brush" on my property are now 20 feet high thanks to recent rain.
I won't mention the mud.

Driving to town wouldn't have been too bad, if a pickup truck didn't appear in front of me (seemingly out of nowhere). It was going less than 15 m.p.h.
Picture that on a narrow, winding, no passing mountain road.

Thanks to that SloMo snail, it took three times longer to get to town than usual.
I was biting my fingernails to a bloody pulp.

But luck was with me -
No road repair work was being done!

.....until I got to town.

I thought my cousin meant the mountain road was being repaired.
Instead, I discovered that she meant the roads in town were being repaired.

Every major road in the entire damn place was under "reconstruction", making it less than impossible to get anywhere.

I had to stop at the courthouse, which was located in the very midst of the road construction ( a harrowing maneuver, to say the least). My reason for going there is far too long and tedious to rely here - let's just say it had to do with the registration of some property.

 Here's the courthouse and that's exactly where I parked (I didn't take this photo - I got it from the Internet).

The lady in the clerk's office was so busy, rude, and confused that I finally left in abject frustration (to say the least) without getting anything resolved or done.

Onward to Walmart, where the holiday shoppers were out en mass.
Did I ever mention that I think all holidays should be permanently banned - and those who try to participate in them should be subjected to waterboarding torture?

I desperately needed a BIG bag of Purina Cat Chow Complete, which is the favored cuisine of my three cats. Naturally they were all out of it. So I had to settle for the small (very small) bag - and a big bag of Friskies.

I had to buy a phone card for my cell phone. The  swishy male clerk in the phone department was wearing two gigantic earrings, at least six finger rings - and he was extremely friendly.

Hey, I'm not trying to suggest anything. It's merely an innocent observation. And it's very strange for rural Tennessee. 
I haven't seen a dude look like that since I was in West Hollywood.

I bought two pumpkin pies that were on the "mark down" rack (one of my favorite Walmart haunts). More about the pies later.

The long drive home was beyond the realms of a hellish nightmare:
a huge truck hauling a load of cut lumber was going about 5 m.p.h. There were fourteen cars behind him. I was the fifteenth car.

It was like a funeral procession, only slower. I eventually started gnawing my toenails and saying profanities that would have made Satan blush.

Okay - 
what about the phone card in the freezer??

When I finally got home, I wrapped one of the pumpkin pies in a plastic bag and put it in the freezer.

Eventually I noticed that the phone card I bought was missing. I frantically searched everywhere and finally figured that I must have dropped it somewhere (like in the Walmart parking lot).

Imagine my surprise when I happened to check the pumpkin pie in the freezer. My phone card was in the bag with the pie - frozen solid!

I won't apologize for this post being long, because I condensed it. It would have been a lot longer if I told everything that happened.

Just a typical day in the life of Jon.

 

UNWANTED KISSES, AUDACITY, FRUGAL BURRITOS, UNWANTED WEEDS

 
All right, let's put aside our political differences for a minute and get down to the nitty gritty:
I couldn't imagine anything more devastatingly horrifying than getting a sloppy, unwanted, probing kiss from Al Franken.
(if you haven't been watching the news lately.........you're very fortunate).
 I was trying to be funny. Shoot me.

Change of subject and depressing fact:

My blog posts with piano music are consistently my very least popular posts (see previous post)
My reason for doing them?
1. To show off.
2. To establish the fact that I once had a meaningful life, far removed from the Hillbilly Boonies.

I use Audacity to transfer my old piano tapes to computer-friendly files (Audacity isn't an attitude, it's a software program).

I've noticed that Audacity doesn't always produce a completely accurate transition of my piano recordings. The speed is often slightly faster than my original performance, and very annoying skips and jumps appear for no apparent reason. I've tried using different settings and even tried exporting to different files (like WAVE instead of mp3) but nothing works.

I made potato burritos yesterday.

Whenever I don't have the ingredients to make regular burritos, I make frugal potato burritos. The Mexicans often made them in Texas.
My recipe:
I dice some potatoes (I use four), chop up an onion, and put it in a frying pan -
season it with garlic salt, black pepper, and paprika. Then I fry it with butter until it's golden brown. Or until the house fills with smoke and stinks.

Finally I garnish it with cheese (any kind), wrap it in a large flour tortilla, and eat it with sour cream and/or salsa.
(BTW- this recipe makes more than one burrito).

Who the hell do you think you are, Jon? Martha Stewart?

Settle down, Kemosahbee. I figured if my music doesn't charm them, my cooking will.

Weeds, anyone?
I've been going out early the past few mornings to clear "weeds" from my property. They're not exactly weeds..... more like five foot monsters. 
The work is cumbersome and the results are minimal. I spent half an hour picking stickers and burrs out of my clothes and scraping mud off my boots.

Despite the fact that it's mid-November, some of the foliage is still lovely. Here are some pics taken yesterday:

The sun at noon

I saved the best for last