Dead Heads And Other Things From The Past Two Weeks

 This poor critter is a Mongolian Elk that is now hanging on the wall of an office lunchroom in El Centro, CA. There are lots of other dead heads on other walls, but this is the biggest. I actually had to sit through a meeting in this room. It was hard to pay attention to the meeting. The trip where I met the Elk started last Sunday, Aug. 6th and ended on Thursday Aug. 10th.

I had the privilege of flying home on the first day the "no gel, no liquid" rule. Luckily I heard about it while I was still packing. I put everything liquid in the bag I checked. A lot of people had not heard about the new rule so were busy throwing away anything liquid or gel into a big trash can at the security checkpoint. If you didn't fess up there then they searched your bag just before you boarded the flight. People lost yet more liquids and gels. Surprisingly nobody complained.

Yesterday was a platelet donation day. I'm one pint shy of donating 9 gallons of platelets. That pretty much wiped me out for the rest of the day. We barbecued Japanese eggplant on the barbecue along with steak. Yum.

Yesterday I also started my first batch of tomato puree from tomatoes in my garden. This morning I turned the flame on under the pan again to get a little more evaporation going so the flavor would be really strong. Well, I forgot all about it so now have burned on tomato puree. I haven't figured out how I'm going to clean the pan. Any suggestions out there. The stuff is really burned on.

I'm taking it easy today too. I usually need about 24 hours to recover from the platelet donation. Kerry is at an art class, and I'm just taking it easy. The weather here is beautiful today. It's 1:30 and I still haven't turned the AC on. Our electic bill last month when we had the heat wave was $669.

Next week Kerry and I leave on a driving vacation to see his family in Washington. We will also celebrate his 60th birthday while we are there. On drive home we are going to come down the Oregon coast. It's a beautiful part of the world and we have a couple of friends to visit.

I'm going to take a nap. No sense wasting an unmade bed.