mud stomping as part of a non-digital weekend
Posted by Zonie on February 16, 2020 at 20:10:14
It rained Monday night. I had fun walking in it bringing mail to a public mailbox after work. It wasn't terribly cold, but I wore a coat to keep the mail dry. One of the letters was a multiple return, addressed to no one who ever lived at my address. I sometimes wish LeviLovR would come out of retirement and work in our local post office, as there certainly seem to be some local postal people who aren't terribly bright. They don't seem to know what "addressee unknown, return to sender" means.
The official recording station at the airport got 0.30". The nearest automated rain gage to my residence got half an inch, and the rain gages near the areas where I go hiking got about three-quarters of an inch. Naturally I had fun kneeling in the mud and stomping in the puddles pulling weeds in the alley Tuesday morning before work. Of course when it's muddy, a lot of the mud comes up with the weeds, so I have to knock it off by slamming the weeds against my overalls, getting them even muddier.
Friday afternoon just before I left for work I noticed an orange service truck with a bucket in the alley behind the house. I didn't think much of it at the time, but its careless operation would lead me to have a non-digital weekend.
When I got home Friday night, I tried to watch the evening news and found that there was no cable television. Analog television being a thing of the past, that was my only option. I then found that I had no internet service. I assumed it was a temporary outage and figured it would be up in the morning.
In the morning everything was still out, so I telephoned the cable company, and after some routine checks, they said they'd send someone over between 5 PM and 7 PM. That gave me time to get out to Reach 11 and do some mud stomping. Since I had an appointment with the cable technician, I figured I'd better not get plastered and I'd better take my watch.
I found plenty of mud puddles in the torn-up area by the equestrian center and stomped in them with my cowboy boots, splashing mud on my overalls. I then headed west to the construction area and found a mud puddle so deep it flooded my boots, but I managed to breach the side and have it drain into an arroyo. I then had a strategic decision to make. It was about 2:40. I could turn back and have more time to stomp in puddles and get by with my reserve Gatorade bottles, or I could continue to the soccer fields where I would find potable water to refill my canteen but I'd have to hurry back.
I chose to head further west. I got to the soccer fields, refilled my canteen and decided to walk swiftly along the main trail back to Tatum boulevard. Such a brisk pace would at least please my cardiologist and my primary care physician, even if I wouldn't be able to linger at playing in the puddles. I did make sure to splash through all the mud puddles on my way back though. I made it in 75 minutes. I got home at 4:43--17 minutes to spare before the official service window. The joke was on me. I received a telephone message that the service call had been postponed and that the technician would arrive between 8 AM and 10 AM Sunday. I might just as well have lingered and stomped in more mud.
The technician arrived this morning and got things repaired. I had looked outside and noticed that the cable had actually been severed. Probably the bucket of the service truck had run into it Friday afternoon. I'm back into the digital age, but I had a trip back to a 20th Century style weekend in which I watched a DVD, communicated with my mother and brother via telephone, pulled weeds in the alley, read a paper magazine while waiting for the technician, and, of course, had a mud hike.
- Re: mud stomping as part of a non-digital weekend LeviLovR 00:17:52 2/17/2020
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- Re: mud stomping as part of a non-digital weekend Zonie 04:07:20 2/17/2020
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- Re: mud stomping as part of a non-digital weekend Zonie 04:07:20 2/17/2020
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