"Don't handicap your children by making their lives easy." - Robert A. Heinlein

Yesterday's mess of a post is what happens when you write it throughout the day without going back to see what you wrote four hours earlier. Or do even the most basic proofreading. Sorry.

We got Pam a Samsung Chromebook several years ago and it's worked well for her. She doesn't do any real computing; she mostly just uses the internet. But it has a problem that's steadily gotten worse. The thing seems to have a bad connection between the base and the screen and it has to be at just the right angle or the screen is blank. The range of that angle has narrowed over the last few weeks so it needs to be replaced. Those things are so cheap that replace makes more sense than repair, so I ordered another one through Best Buy. It's got more memory and is $20 cheaper than what we paid for this one. Crazy.

I happened to be watching the Sean Spicer press conference when he called out one of the reporters for what was, by any standard, rude behavior. She asked a question, he was answering it, and she sat their shaking her head from side to side as he spoke in a passive/aggressive gesture that said, "I'm not buying this." He called her out on it: "Stop shaking your head."
His mistake: this particular reporter is Black. So now the media is accusing him of some race-based diss.
Booooogus!

Unlikely good news!
The OR senate has approved a bill that fines slow drivers in the left lane $110. It now goes to the House for their action. Just maybe....
Oregon is the worst state we've ever experienced for left lane slowpokes. The. Worst.

I mentioned last night that some of the fruit trees are ready to burst
forth. Here are pics of one of the two plum trees and the peach tree. Others aren't as far along, with the apple trees showing almost no action. But they bear fruit the latest so I suppose that's to be expected.

I've done some reading about getting bees. That would help with these trees and also with the berries and veggies we grow. Merchants here sell Mason bees so I've been reading up. They don't make honey, are known for being non-aggressive and rarely sting, they don't build hives, and have a body type that makes them very effective pollinators. They're called Mason bees because they make homes out of mud (we've got plenty of that) like a mason uses bricks. So you provide them with hollow tubes they fill up with mud, each tube belonging to one queen who lays her eggs in cells she creates within the tube, each separated from the next by a mud plug. When they hatch he males, always laid last near the end of the tube, emerge first, followed by the females. They visit flowers and plants cross-spreading pollen, and then in the fall mate like sex-crazed teenagers. The males then die while the female starts preparing her tube nest for the next year. They are prolific breeders, so you'll soon have a sizable group of them and a bounty crop of fruit, berries, and vegetables thanks to their work all summer long.

We have an appointment next Wednesday morning with a local Mason bee expert who lives in Eugene and sells & ships Mason bees all over the lower 48 via his website. We'll get the stuff we need (cheap!) to begin raising Mason bees, including tubes with baby bees (??) ready to emerge and do their thang.

Jeff, the owner at Four Corners Transport said I should contact him if I hadn't heard from the truck driver "by 9 or 10 a.m." so I sent him an email at 9:30. Five minutes later the trucker called and said he was in Seattle, had a 12:30 appointment to pick up a car, and would then head here. He'd call me when he was an hour out.

I've made that trip a bunch of times since we moved to OR and it takes me 5 /12 hours if I only stop for gas and drive-through food. And that's if I don't get caught in what can be horrible Seattle traffic. So I wasn't optimistic.

Here it is, 6: 35, and I haven't heard from him. The sun sets at 7:30 and loading a vehicle in the dark is not a good idea. I don't see this happening tonight. Why should it? He wouldn't head to L.A. after it's on his rig; he'll spend the night here. So why not load it first thing in the morning? My guess is he's got a two day drive to L.A. anyway.

So it's been a thoroughly yucky day. It rained all day, so I couldn't work outside. And I couldn't leave lest I miss his call. Sat in my chair almost all day and worked on the section on the Reformation and its aftermath. Good progress, but still yucky for an ADD guy who would much rather be outside doing chores.