Ed Icionsub

One of the small companies in our building has gone out of business and they were moving out this morning. the office manager was directing a lot of the move out activity, directing a flow of furniture and boxes to various trucks and vans at the loading dock. She told me that they were having a fire sale of office furniture and invited our employees to come see if they wanted anything.

I stopped in at lunch time and found an executive office with nice furniture that I could use at home. So I offered her $100 for the chair and desk. She took it! This stuff is worth ten times that. She taped a “sold” sign on the desk and told me to take the chair with me. I have to go back in the morning with my truck to get the desk. It’s a great score for just $100, but it’s sad to see them go. Another victim of the depressed economy and another 40 people out of work this week.

It’s getting plenty hot around here. When the temperatures get up abve 85, I think it is hot. When it gets over 95, it’s damn hot.

The best thing for a summer heat quench is ice cold water. But if you want to have something nice to sip on while you shift gears from work and rush hour traffic to sitting on the porch or deck and kicking back for a bit, try making a smoothie. Add alcohol or not – up to you.

I keep a blender out on the counter all summer and make a smoothie 4-5 times a week. It’s so easy to make – ice cubes and fruit juice, plus 1 cup of lowfat yogurt and a couple handfuls of fresh fruit, especially bananas or strawberries – but you can add just about anything and then hit the blend button for a bout a minute. I think I’ll go fix one right now.

Last night I called it early and hit the sack. It was a crazy week and my brain was more tired than my body, so I went to bed before the late night news and snored through the news cast.

About midnight I woke up and saw blue lights flashing across the ceiling. I don’t remember hearing any noise, but the lights were definitely from one or more police cars. So I grabbed my robe and walked out to the living room to look out the window and see what was going on.

Turns out that my neighbor had a problem and the police were in front of her house. Some drunk guy trying to get home must have swerved or lost control of his car and ended up in Jane’s front yard. He got scared and ditched the car and took off running for the woods on foot. Jane called the cops and they had a little manhunt going on.

I checked all the doors and windows to make sure no one had tried to get into my house and I wen back to bed. I’ll give Jane a call in a bit and make sure she is OK. I’m sure she’ll fill me in on whether the cops ever caught the guy and what happened with all that excitement last night.

Again last night the TV scrolled severe weather updates for areas 200 miles north of us and 200 miles south, with everything in between. The storms have been particularly violent this week, with heavy rains, hails and high winds.

The storms that concern me most are the ones with high winds, because of all the large trees in my backyard. I don’t want to have any problems with the trees or their limbs falling on the house.

This is the big music festival weekend, with both Bonnaroo and the CMA Festival underway. It’s a shame that music fans are risking the rain and even lightning to see the top stars perform. I wouldn’t mind the getting part so much as the risk of getting hit by lightning part.

For some unknown reason, the TV was put on the Animal Planet cable channel and when I turned on the TV this morning I was treated to a variety of shows about African animals. There were shows about lions, leopards, cheetahs, meerkats and elephants. Of course, there was a variety of other animals involved, mostly as food sources for the subject animals. These included antelopes, wildebeasts, crocodiles and other small animals that were already killed and shown being eaten in the shots.