Monday Meanderings - May 17

I went to the Apple store the other evening to purchase an expensive cable (that only Apple sells) to use with iPhones and the sound system at church. Been there before to browse and it's a happening place, but actually buying something is quite the experience - almost. When we found the cable, the clerk said I'll check you out, and she whipped out her iPhone, which had been enhanced somewhat, and scanned the bar code with a little laser beam. Then she skimmed my charge card in a slot on the side of the enhanced portion of the phone, asked for my e-mail address to send me the receipt and I was done.

I would have been really impressed if it had worked. What really happened was she tried for about 10 minutes to get her iPhone to CONNECT IN THE APPLE STORE! All the while she kept shaking it between attempts to connect. Maybe they really are just glorified Etch-A-Sketches. Finally she gave up and went and got a manager's phone and tried it in various places in the store. Thought for a minute we were going to go outside to the street to find a connection. Finally she got connected and then did the little scan and skim trick as described above. Sort of takes the edge off how high tech it all was.

This week is Large Brush Collection week by the city. Bring out your limbs! We have been waiting anxiously for this event because I needed to cut back the fig trees on the north side of the house. They had completely overgrown the space between our house and the Nichol's making mowing impossible. During all the really nice weather I had been trimming off a limb at a time and putting that out for collection, but they won't take but 1 container a week in the regular collection so it was a slow process. If we went ahead and trimmed all the limbs then we would have this mess sitting in front of the house killing the grass under it.

So last week, when the temperature was in the 90's and the humidity was in the 70's we got to trim. It took 3 days of working only in the early morning, but with Mom's help it got done. I just hope they pick it up on Monday and not Friday - though we are not alone - there are a lot of brush piles in the neighborhood.

The other outdoor news is that if the furry, caterpillar-looking tassels produced by the Pecan trees is any indication we will have a bumper crop of pecans this year. There are mounds of "caterpillars" everywhere, and when you step in them they cling and we track them in the house. The front flowerbed looks as if we mulched it - with pecan tassels. Mom's bird bath is now serving Pecan tassel tea.

Have harvested three nice tomatoes and there are two more almost ripe. We're already ahead of last year.

"Friday Night Lights:" has resumed, and there's trouble in Dillon, Texas. I was bemoaning that fact and describing all the problems that surfaced in the opening episode and Barb said, "See. You should have quit after the first season like I did - after they won the State Championship and everybody still liked each other." Sigh.