Woo-hoo, I got polled
Now my opinion on the presidential primary will be counted in some poll that will probably show up somewhere before Tuesday. That slice of the North Carolina pie for Obama? I'm in there.
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Clean. Air.
I learned my air conditioning wasn't working very well (if at all) last week when it got up into the 80s. No big surprise. The unit is at least twenty years old and I haven't done anything with it in the twelve years I've been in this house. I called a repairman and got in the mood to buy a whole new unit, if necessary.
It wasn't necessary. All he needed to do was clean out ages of dirt and pump in three pounds of freon. You think gasoline is expensive? Freon is $50/lb. But on a warm, muggy, sweaty, sleepless Southern summer night I'd gladly pay $150 to make it all go away. In fact, I have. When the power went out for a couple of days last summer, I got a hotel room rather than suffocate at home.
Running out of movies
At one time I had over a hundred films in my Netflix queue. Classics, indies, foreign, fairly recent movies or TV shows I missed... I kept adding more selections and the number hovered around fifty the past few years.
But now my queue is down to only twenty, with another dozen waiting to become available in DVD. The recommendations from Netflix have almost dried up and I seldom select from what they offer. I rarely watch a movie twice, but there are a few in the queue I saw years ago on the big screen. I've ordered wildly popular movies I didn't think I'd like just to see what the fuss was about and see if I was wrong. (I usually wasn't.) I've scrounged through old listings from film festivals looking for obscure gems. If I find a director, writer or actor I like, I'll check out other films by them. I've even dipped down into some films with only a two-and-a-half-star rating.
So, I'll have to find something else to do when the well runs dry. A sabbatical from movies. I guess I'll read. I remember reading. I should probably start with the unfinished books on the floor next to my comfy chair. After that, any recommendations?
The tire rolls on
Remember the Firestone store I wrote about a few days ago? Surprise, surprise (the second one in as many days), the "Coming Soon" sign is gone and there's evidence of actual work being done on the place.
Perhaps my whining into the blogosphere has the magical power to overcome the inertia of delayed projects. Well, some one else's delayed project, anyway.
Sorpresa, señor
I went to my favorite Mexican restaurant today. Surprise, it's no longer La Casa de las Enchiladas. It's La Casa Grande. And they now serve Honduran food as well.
They expanded the space, repainted, changed the layout, brought in additional booths, brought on more staff and printed a new menu—all in less than a week. I'm guessing they brought on a new partner to finance the upgrades, a Honduran. But three of the waitresses and two of the cook-owners are still there.
I'd never had Honduran food before, so I tried some baleadas. Very tasty. They've also added chicken tamales to the menu. I love tamales. Alas, they didn't have any at the moment. But as I was finishing my food, a man and woman brought in a big cooler (or, in this case, a warmer) of freshly made tamales. So I ordered one. I was pleasantly surprised they were the type wrapped in banana leaves rather than corn husks. I like both kinds, but the banana leaf variety remind me of my great trip to Oaxaca.
It might have been a matter of the particular moment I was there, but the clientele seems to have shifted. They look less Indian and more Spanish, less country and more urban. The music on the jukebox was more Latino pop/rock and less conjunto or banda. I'll have to see if the trend holds true.
I'm glad they've managed to come back from the brink of closing down, which looked to be their fate last year.
When it's not deja vu
The grand old city hall of Lincolnton, North Carolina, sits in the middle of Highway 27. Traffic circulates around it. As I rode my motorcycle down Main Street, with the city hall looming ahead, I realized I had been there before. Years ago. I had forgotten.
When I moved to North Carolina in 1995, I'd go for long drives in every direction to see what sort of place I was living in. I remember passing through Lincolnton on a summery evening, just before dusk. Were there fireflies? Could have been. And the sound of locusts. And the sighs of a town wondering where the textile mills had gone and not imagining yet that sprawl, rising property values and revitalization were heading its way.
Jacket Test 1: passed
This is me in my new motorcycle jacket. It's made of perforated leather. The leather (along with shoulder, elbow and back armor) is for protection. The mesh of tiny holes keeps the wearer cooler in hot weather. The wind blows right through. That's what they say.
With an empty desk and a forecast of 80-83 degrees today, it was a perfect time to put the jacket to the test with a three hour ride in the rural areas west of town. The jacket worked just as it was supposed to. At least the cooling part. I have no desire to test the crash protection part. However, it did withstand numerous collisions with bugs.
The satellite has been by again
The last time I checked out my house at Google Maps, it showed my blue Beetle in the driveway. That was years ago. As you can see in the current shot, there are no cars. I must have been away when the satellite flew over. Judging by other changes in the neighborhood, I think the shot was taken early this past winter.
Darwin 101
An agitated man signaled for my attention as I walked in the park. He pointed to a group of teenaged boys on the swoopy roof of the band shell.
"They're going to try skateboarding up there! Someone's going to get himself killed!"
Indeed, a drop from there would probably break something, even a skull.
I guess I didn't get the parental concern gene or I'm becoming even more of a cynical old fart. Instead of being alarmed I shrugged and said, "That's how we cull the stupid ones from the herd."
With all the consumer safety stuff clogging our lives, we have more people without a lick of sense surviving to reproductive age, thus ensuring another generation of nitwits.
However, these boys weren't total idiots, even if they were teenagers. After contemplating the situation, they decided to climb down. There's hope for humanity.
