Less heat and getting ready for visit with Doni

Hi, Jim here again.
It's about 99 degrees on our back porch by our thermometer at the moment. This is cooler than it's been in about a week. It'll probably clear 100 today, but not by much. I'm sure that this is good for Paige and Doni.

Tonight is a "free night" for Yamato staff, Donita tells me, so she gets to come home for the evening. I'm planning to pick her up at 5:30, take her out to the restaurant of her choice (probably BJ's, she said) and bring her home to do laundry, shower, and sleep in her own bed. I imagine she'll check her email and perhaps blog a little. This is all good. Today I'm handling a few things, including getting our powerful "air mover"-type fan working (the switch had asploded) for the Yamato kitchen trailer, re-recording some CDs that turned out too soft (???) for her trip, and clearing the laundry area so she can easily do laundry when she gets here (I need to buy some bleach). It'll really be nice to have Doni around. And I'm sure it'll be nicer for Doni! She's been living a somewhat acetic life, working, napping, working, napping, sleeping in group on the floor, etc. We both think it's a really cool thing she's doing for both herself and Paige, but I'm absolutely sure she'll have had way more than enough of it by the end of the tour.

Stan called me at eight this morning, and said, "could you do me a favor?" to which I foolishly replied, "sure, what?" Never do that. Find out what the favor is to be first. He wanted me to accompany him to the front of the farm and count bugs in a trap, because he feels that Bud's people under-counted. Luckily, Bud called just after we finished his morning meds and convinced Stan that the numbers he has are reasonable. Stan trusts Bud, but doesn't trust Bud's people to do a reasonable job. Doni has warned me repeatedly to not get involved in farm-related tasks, so I'm glad I dodged that one. Bud's coming out to spray for bugs tomorrow. (By "bugs" I suspect Stan means pine-tip moth, but he never used any term but "bug".)

Kyle and Lindsay visited yesterday, and we did a lot of calling around to find a semi-trustworthy mechanic to look at Kyle's car, which probably has a blown head gasket. After numerous phone calls (Kyle's dad even interviewed a couple of mechanics, which I'm really thankful for, because it was a lot on my shoulders; this repair is certain to be upwards of $1000 and Kyle has about a month's worth of savings before he may be forced to get a job as a medical file clerk, which could alter the arc of his life; I sure don't want to do anything to bring that event closer to occurance! However, I think that Kyle's dad will take up a substantial portion if not all of the cost, whew.) Kyle and his dad and I all agreed on a mechanic about 10 miles from here (in MoVal) who seemed to be knowledgeable about such matters as well as being honest. We called the tow truck, and led him out to the shop ("The Honda Shoppe," heh), talked with the mechanic (he seems like an aging hippie type, sharing his business with his son; kinda cool), and then came home. Stan had left a message that he urgently needed to fax some EDD state tax form to his tax guy; I'm pretty sure it could have waited, but I couldn't convince him of that, and he wanted to go with me (to get out of the house and the heat) to fax it. So I took him to Kinko's and battled fax technology there for about a half hour ("don't you have all this at your house?" "No, I don't have faxes from home set up." "Oh, well I do.." ahem... "what do you do when you have to fax something?" "I almost never do, but I use Kinko's". "Oh.") then dropped off Stan, called our mechanic who had been replacing the front brake pads (and rotors; I waited too long to have 'em serviced), so now the van works good again, which helps. Then I got Round Table pizza for Kyle, Lindsay and I and then they left for Kyle's house and I went to bed. Fretful night; I just didn't feel comfortable, so I didn't sleep much. But I'm doing okay today.

Anyway, maybe Doni will post here tonight, and I'll post tomorrow for sure. Ta ta...