FOUR WHEEL LOW

 I'm in four wheel low on this morning as I sip my Joe and try to make my fingers type what my brain is thinking.  It was an ugly late night, headache, couldn't sleep, up every hour with dozens of nightmares.  I hate it when that happens!!

I chalk it all up to those TWO glasses of coke I drank trying to stay awake at the Elks Lodge epic meetings.  

First things first however, yesterday Cooper and I went for a nice cool walk, gearing up for an inside day of heat.  Predictions say 104 today.  Then it was on to planting those three Lilys of the Nile I got at Home Depot.  Truly, that's the worst place possible to buy anything green, except it IS cheaper.  

Just look at how root bound these poor things are.  It wouldn't even pull out of the pot, I had to cut the pot off.  Interestingly enough, those two huge fire ant nests under the old plants were gone.  I'm not sure if it was the disturbance or the granules I spread around.  Thank goodness!!!!

Here's the first one.  I moved the big drip line closer to the plants so instead of adding the long thin drip pieces, I just stuck them directly into the black line under the plants.  Hopefully that helps my problem.  On this one, there was already one there, so I left it.  We shall see how long it survives the chain saw effect.  They never cut the main line, just the small drip lines.

Two more and I was done for the time being.  There's more to be done, but the heat wave coming through determines just how long I can stand to be outside.

I cleaned up around the house a bit since Cyndae will be here again today and I backed up my computer which I always forget to do.  That brought on a frenzy of bill paying and a final big drop into internetland by opting for paperless bills and bank statements.  Now instead of my excuse to the IRS that "my dog ate it", it will be "the internet crashed and lost all my data"!!  Hopefully the end result will be that I don't need to pay the now $400 a year fee for that darn post office box!!!

Let's see ... what else ... my headache is screaming louder than my brain can think.  Oh ... I checked on the Elks Lodge dinner ... thought I would shock Cyndae by treating her to a real meal.  YIKES!!  Even the fried chicken was almost $20.  That would end up being a $50 meal!!  

So I checked out one of the other less expensive places in the next town ... Strings Italian Restaurant.  Shocker!!!  Even their spaghetti was $19.00.  I quickly threw that idea out the window and grabbed a slab of ribs from the freezer.  I'll steal some of Jonathan's Cole slaw for a salad and try those cheese biscuits from Red Lobster.  

I'm not sure I ever posted a picture of the Pig Powder I've been using for smoking absolutely everything.  It's Trim Tabbs Pig Powder.  If I remember right (hard when your head hurts) I think it was $25 for two big bottles.  Pretty pricy in my book, but I don't use near as much and the flavor is WONDERFUL!  I heard about it from a major Barbecue competition.  They won everything, so I figured it was worth a shot.

As to the Elks Lodge meetings, they began at 5:00 at a small Mexican restaurant, then moved on to the Lodge where we hashed out several problems and came up with no solutions.  That's probably where the headache began.  It's all because of the stupid California laws coming around the corner soon about employees and just how much money they should make.  

Believe me, you are going to see more and more businesses go broke and your cost of living is going to go sky high, just like the current inflation, because companies are going to raise prices to cover the cost.  If you think they will keep their prices the same and absorb the high wages, you are sorely mistaken.  

Here we are trying to save money by putting people on salary, but the minimum salary in California is going to be $58,240!  If you cannot afford to pay them that much, you have to put them on an hourly wage and they have to punch a time clock.  You can imagine how that's going to go over!!  

By 2023 the minimum wage will be $15 an hour for us (and more likely $15.50), which is why there is so much self checkout going on.  No business can afford to pay that kind of money.  So now YOU are the checker and bagger for FREE.  It's only going to get worse if people keep voting for the politicians that promote this.  

SO ... I'm off the soap box for now, I'm going to take some aspirin and crash on the couch until it's time to smoke those ribs.  I hope I'm in TWO WHEEL DRIVE by then!!!