Little of This, Little of That

 

I've seen a handful of these vehicles from a distance while I've been driving around and not long ago, I saw quite a number of them on the evening news burning, but I've never seen one up close until recently. If you recall, I dug out an old Apple IIe computer from our storage room, cleaned it up and put it up for sale on Marketplace. Despite being clearly stating I would sell it "to the best offer" and tagging the ad with the words "if you are reading this, it is still available", I fielded about 20 people asking if it was free or still available before I finally got one person who seemed interested in it. We worked out a deal and a couple days later, he arrived to pick it up in the above vehicle. It turned out he was also mechanical engineer who graduated from my alma mater so we spent some time chatting about campus from two different perspectives (he was twenty years younger) and about the careers of mechanical engineers these days. (Like many middle class jobs, it has been gutted by our economy and shipped over seas and not as stable as it was back in my day.) He also let me look into the cabin and opened up the retractable bed cover to let me see his ride. He collects old computers and the Apple IIe was missing from his collection. I think it went to a good home. 

I went out to my garden one morning to find the left row of peas nearly gone and a pile of rabbit fur on one end. I'm guessing a hawk got to him. My apologies to TB, but I didn't shed a tear. The rabbit got what was coming. Tonight after some showers pass us by, I am going to mix up a tank of hot sauce and water and spray over the area. The internet assures me this is a valid solution. I've never tried it but will give it a try. I later went back and sowed some more pea seeds in the gaps along with planting some potatoes for the first time and replanting some carrots that never came up. With warmer weather here as I now write this, the garden should hopefully start growing a bit faster now.

For nearly a year now, two of the neighboring houses have been vacant and the remaining one is for sale. I tell everyone I think I must be the problem. Fortunately one of the vacant houses sold earlier this spring and the new neighbors moved in. I dropped off a loaf of homemade sourdough bread to the fellow but he was busy so I didn't stay long. This morning, his wife dropped by to chat, mostly about what went on last night as I slept blissfully unaware. From her perspective, being woken up to a knock on the glass pane of her door and seeing two strangers wandering around in the street was a bit unnerving and I don't blame her. She called the police and they came and spent an hour apparently just down the road from my driveway. After we parted ways, I went to check my camera feed and could see that they were heading into town when their SUV looked like it broke down. After ten minutes or so of trying to get it running without success, they came to knock on my door (didn't use the backlit and functioning doorbell) at 2:30 a.m. and when they didn't get any response, they did some dancing in front of my house and proceeded down to my new neighbor's house where she had a much different perspective. I thought it was all pretty funny. From my perspective, I think they were pretty drunk and probably heading home and not up to anything nefarious. But they picked the wrong neighborhood to break down in because it earned them a ride in the back of one of the three squad cars that arrived on the scene and their SUV was hauled away on a tow truck an hour later.