Then, my treat, and for really the first time since I arrived in this area, we went for Chinese food. The Golden Something, it was California Chinese and we really overdid it. I had honey garlic chicken and his plate was even bigger. Something just clicked when he suggested Chinese as we had planned on just breakfast and we got famished at the thought. I have not had a meal that size in probably well over ten years.Wallace called and he is still out west. He’s going to make a trip I’ve wanted to do my whole life but never had time. On the map it is I-2 but is nicknamed Highway 2, it goes from Everett to Duluth. For no reason, the area west of the Great Lakes has always allured me and I’d like to take a ferry ride across one. I’m assuming there are ferries as who would want to drive around something like Lake Michigan? Wallace is staying with relations and may not arrive here until the 15th.
Speaking of driving, Memorial weekend or not, there was almost no traffic on the roads around here. I made it to JPs in 37 minutes flat. We watched the news and sure enough the lack of traveling stunned a lot of people. If the days of cheap gas are gone forever, I’m all for it. I personally love to see empty parking lots in front of “high class” shopping centers and restaurants because those businesses squeezed out the far better mom and pop operations. Word of mouth only goes so far against a massive national advertising campaign and month long “specials”.
Then we went over to his dad’s place and wound up having to replace a lawn sprinkler in the rain. Yep, you drive past and see these two yahoos with a hoe and a shovel dodging water jets in a downpour and wonder what’s become of our generation. Actually there is a technical explanation but it’s more fun to speculate. Hint, we dug the hole and had to move like crazy to prevent back-siphonage when a passing rainstorm doubled back on us. We also fixed the garage door opener and painted a wall.
To dry out, we rented “No Country For Old Men” and I didn’t care much. The plot is disjointed and strung together, even the ending doesn’t match the rest of the movie. It is the tired old theme of rube stumbles across drug money and becomes chased by killer. There are some novel twists and murder methods and the psycho actor is well type-cast for the role. It may have you wondering just how these base criminals have enough medical knowledge to treat their own gunshot wounds.
By evening Marion phoned. The deal on the house fell through at the last minute. They may have gained however, by getting more house for less money by the delay because they found something just a few miles away. It seems there was a $25,000 difference of opinion on value between the lender and the seller. Banks are getting tough about lending only what they appraise the house for. I think that is mighty two-faced of them.
A blinding rainstorm has been going on for nearly and hour. This has forced Pudding-Tat and I to become friends again. She now lets me pick her up. I’ve decided to keep her inside until Tuesday, then plant her in the new place. The idea is that she will have a new environment to study and hopefully will consider her first venture outdoors over there just part of the deal. That is, I don’t want her to get used to this place since I’ve heard cats can wander back. JP says he’ll drive up here Tuesday to help move. I’ll believe that when I see it.
Marion and I talked about the difficulty of meeting women in Florida, since she is once of the few contemporaries who understands my hesitation to move in with just any woman I meet. Florida is strange in that most men I know here will take any woman they can get in what seems to border on fantastic desperation. But that is their problem I meet a lot of women but it goes as far as until I see the first serious drawback and ask myself, could I put up with this long term? Usually not. I mean, if I didn’t put up with it before, why would I start now, and it is so obvious when you meet single women around here exactly why they are single in each case. I’m hoping of course that I’ll meet another Robynette, which is impossible but then, nobody is one of a kind. Marion says there are lots of women in Colorado. Then again, to women, it always seems that way, which indicates they, too, are surrounded by desperate men.
