Nuttin' much

Life just keeps heating up around here; the WeatherChannel has us at 111F (43.8C) this evening (20:00).  No matter, we baked French Fries (chips to you Brits) and boiled breaded catfish in oil for dinner.  Can't imagine life without a/c around here.  It is quite dry though so people do use swamp-coolers which are much less expensive to buy or to run.  When it is humid they don't work for f*(k but around here that is a week a year.  It is certainly a tradeoff I would make if I needed to save the money.  When I lived in Army housing in El Paso in the early 1970's, we had a swamp-cooler.  It worked just fine.  Went out for our walk yesterday a.m. at 05:30 - mostly because we were both awake but I 'm just saying!  It's nicer when it is cool. 

Number One Daughter came over to participate in the fish fry; we haven't done that in 25 years or so. Wife and daughter did all the fish frying but there was plenty for me to do getting all the odd stuff done.  Funny how fast the time flies.  We probably haven't a fish fry since we lived in Orlando back in the mid 1980's.   Earlier this week I found some photos I haven't copied to the computer; they are pretty new, only 20 years old!  Did I mention I had to rip them out of the photo album.  What crap, these albums won't even make it 20 years without tearing apart.  Hmmmm, maybe I'm being a bit tough on them.  What do you think?

Number One Daughter works for a company who makes little steel parts that are used in concrete manufacture.  For example, when a concrete wall is pre-molded that is 40' long by 15' high (12.3m x 4.5m and probably 25 cm deep) they mold into the concrete a couple pieces of steel used to lift the wall onto a truck and then into place.  Some of her customers get all out of shape because these little pieces aren't made in the USA.  I find this rather odd since they are complaining about little $5 pieces that are used twice; once to move the piece off the mold and once to put it into place.  I understand that I'd like more manufacturing in the U.S. but I'd rather the bits being made here being the more important ones.  For example, having the truck made here is nice.  I like to think that our standards (maybe not the worlds best but our own, BTW) are being observed.  I'm not saying the Chinese made pieces aren't up to our standards but at least some local folks are being employed making them.  It's a tough question not made any easier by my belief in international trade being a keystone to success in this world. 

Just to end on a humorous note:  our local county council recently debated a rule that if the federal governemt ever enacted a law making ownership of firearms by civilians unlawful then the sheriff of the county was to stop them at the county line and tell them to go away on the basis that it was unconstitutional!  Jeez, are you kidding me???  Let's not even discuss firepower!  It's up to the courts to decide constutionality!  But apparently none of our elected representitives know that.  Happily the city District Attorney was around to point out their rule was beyond stupid.  Thank goodness for small favors!

Hava a gooe one.  Thanks for stopping buy!