Cop Car's Beat

Cop Car's Goings On

The nice Lexus in which my Elegant Friend drove us to Kansas City, a few weeks ago is history! EF was broadsided by an inattentive driver, here in Derby. She picked up her new Lexus RX this afternoon. Now maybe we can get back to our normal schedule (it’s taken about 2 weeks to get everything squared away. Especially, we’ve had trouble making our fitness center schedule because she has always been waiting for this that to happen or for someone to call her.

September promises to be a busy month. Hunky Husband is due home from Florida on September 5, his birthday; however, he has agreed to stay an extra week if Hurricane Frances is really bad in Florida. He must come home in time for us to leave on vacation near the end of the month.

Elder Brother and his wife are slated to spend one night here in mid-September as they return to their Loveland CO home from attending her high school 50th year reunion in Kansas City MO. It’s a simple matter to fluff up a couple of pillows for them.

Younger Brother retires in a couple of days and plans to take a “grand tour” back this way. He and his wife will be in town (in a motel as they are rather large people and our beds are both just standard double beds) the last weekend of the month. They will be on their way home to Ridgecrest CA (China Lake) from his high school 45th year reunion in Kansas City MO.

I have been cleaning out my stash of sewing fabrics. Except for most of the quilting stuff that my Mom left, and the leather and fabric upholstery materials that I’ve bought at Cessna surplus sales, everything that is more than 10 years old is going/gone. You wouldn’t believe how much material that is. My problem is that I hate to sew, but love to amass fabric. Fabric and hand tools are my two weaknesses. Otherwise, I hate shopping.

News from Derby

Having already input today’s report, once, and having lost it to the goddess of electrons, perhaps this will read a bit dis-jointedly. More so than usual. This week has had its joys and its sorrows and all-in-all has been a busy one. Monday morning was Nick’s retirement party at which I was fortunate enough to see several friends of many-years’ standing from work. Sadly, I could only stay for the first 30 minutes as the wife of another friend was being buried that morning. The two had been married for more than 50 years. Fortunately, Larry had retired (after 51 years with the company) in time to spend nearly 2 years at home with Betty. There were several more friends of many-years’ standing in attendance.

Monday afternoon, following our workout at the DRC, Elegant Friend (EF) and I discovered that my car had a problem. At first, I thought that I had flooded the engine—I could smell gasoline; but, we sat in the shade for 10-15 minutes (with a carburetor I know how to speed up the process, but I had no idea what to do with fuel injection!) and it still wouldn’t start. A young friend who works at the DRC volunteered to try to start it for me, to no avail, but when he decided to try to push the car out of the parking slot so that he could push us off down-hill (and I was to pop the clutch to start the engine) he noticed a small amount of gasoline on the pavement at the front end. I called my car guy (Clint—at Davis-Moore) who said that I should call Lincoln’s Roadside Service. Roadside Service said that I needed to get a statement from the fire/police department that it was safe to tow the car. OK. I called the non-emergency number for the fire department and was immediately surrounded by 2 pickups, 1 car, 1 ladder truck (that had arrived with lights blazing and siren sounding), and 5-8 volunteer firement—some of whom knew me and most of whom knew EF. After standing around chatting for a few minutes, they assured me that as long as the fuel pump wasn’t “on”, it would be safe to tow the car. About 45 minutes after I, again, called Roadside Service, a flatbed truck arrived and my poor little LS was ignominiously winched onto the truck bed, ass-end forward. How humiliating for it!

Bright and early Tuesday morning, Clint called to tell me that he was sending a taxi to pick me up (Hunky Husband is working the problems left by Hurricane Charley in the Tampa FL area) so that I could take delivery of my car. They had to pull the wheel and fender skirt out and replace the coupling at the fuel filter. No charge. I had thought that the LS was out of warranty (it will be 4 years old in a couple of weeks), but, it isn’t so far. I got the car in plenty of time to meet Darrel and Ron (who both retired 1 ½ years before I did) and Stacy (still working) for lunch. We caught one another up on what’s happening in our lives.

Wednesday, after our workout at DRC, EF and I made like pioneer women: we canned. Salsa. We made two batches—one mild, one hot—and netted 13 pints apiece. Not bad for 4-5 hours’ work!

Pot of Gold

Featuring my first TypePad posting from August 12, 2004

Something so extraordinary happened a few minutes ago that I just must tell everyone about it--I found the end of a rainbow. Walking toward the kitchen from my den (puts me facing southeast), I could see out the sliding glass door into the back yard. I could see no sky as the view was cut off by the door frame at just below line of the trees that bound the creek--approximately 300 feet from the door. What I could see was an extremely fine, light rain coming down, and a portion of a rainbow in our back yard!!!! As I reached the door and looked upward, lo and behold, there was the rest of the rainbow--up in the sky. The rainbow was so brilliant that there were two extra bands on the inner radius and (at some distance) a whole reflected rainbow outside the outer radius. Dorothy learned that happiness is in your own back yard. I learned that the end of the rainbow is in our back yard. (Hunky Husband, just in from golf demands to know what I did with the pot of gold!)

 

W

I didn't expect the photos to be as pretty as the real thing did I? At least, not with my level of photographic skill and available camera!