Visiting

Yesterday, after cleaning for my Monday lady, Ms. S, i headed down to the Mobile, Alabama area to visit my good friend, DiDreaming.

DiDreaming is the friend who allows me to use power tools.

While i named my GPS "Minnie," because that's what our other friend Eagle named her Garmin and i thought it was a cute name, DiDreaming named hers "Dammit."  "Dammit, I'm not going that way!" she yells at it.

This is a trip i've been wanting to take since Easter break, and one thing and another have prevented it until now.

Her living situation has changed since the last time i visited.  She's in a nice house near woods and cows, renting a room.

The trip down was amazingly uneventful.  With the number of times we've taken the trip to or past Mobile from our area, i was shocked at the light traffic, how fast i got through the tunnel, and how i made such great time.  If all of our trips were this easy, i might not have so many gray hairs.

Well, no, i'd have them, because i get them from my kids, but it's nice to think about.

The family did try to make it harder.  On the way down, i got no fewer than 7 phone calls and 3 texts.

No, i did not read or answer the texts until i got off the interstate.  Dansig is ready for his next bottle of antibiotic, and Sweetie got his errands run, and etc.

And yes, one of the calls was not from family.  It seems i've won a $10 gift card from a local store's monthly raffle.  That's a call i didn't mind receiving.

Anyway, when i arrived we visited for a while, and then went out for Indian food (and to find wifi to post this, the one at their house was toasted by a storm), and today we are tackling making her room a bit tidier, since everything she owns is now in it, or in a small storage area in the back of the house.

It's going to be a good visit, and i'll go find wifi again today, but i probably won't be around much besides that.

Today is:

August Tuesday / Culturama -- St. Kitts and Nevis

Carnival Tuesday -- Antigua and Barbuda (Last Lap Jump Up)

Champagne Day -- internet generated holiday, probably created by someone who wanted an excuse to celebrate

Coast Guard Day -- US (anniversary of founding in 1790)

Constitution Day -- Cook Islands

Fairy Drying-Out Day -- Fairy Calendar (makes sense, as we washed them yesterday. Now it begs the question, how does one dry a fairy?)

Festival of the Dead; Sunset Ceremony -- Ancient Egyptian Calendar (date approximate)

Festival Tuesday -- British Virgin Islands

Fiestas de la Virgen Blanca -- Vitoria-Gasteiz, Alava, Basque Country, Spain; through the 9th

Fiestas Patronales -- El Salvador (through the 6th)

Hot August Nights -- Reno, NV, US (celebrate cars and music of the 50's and 60's at the largest  classic car and nostalgia event in the United States; through Saturday)
 
Matica Slovenska Day -- Slovakia (main Slovak cultural institution, established 1863)

National Lasagna Day

National Night Out -- US (sponsored by National Association of Town Watch, to heighten crime and drug prevention awareness)

Nicole Robin Day -- St. John, USVI(unofficial celebration her safe return, with the crew, to the Virgin Islands after being held by Cubans.)

Single Working Women's Day

St. John Baptist Mary Vianney's Day (Cure of Ars; Patron of confessors, parish priests; Dubuque, Iowa; Kamloops, BC; Kansas City, KS; Saint Paul and Minneapolis, MN)

Vigil of St. Oswald -- Anglo-Saxon holy day, commemorates the day before King Oswald's death in 642

Zuni Corn Dance -- the Zuni Native Americans give thanks to Mother Earth, the Kokos (Nature Spirits), and the Corn Maidens for the maize harvest; through the 7th


Birthdays Today:

Cole and Dylan Sprouse, 1992
Daniel Dae Kim, 1968
Roger Clemens, 1962
Barack H. Obama, 1961
Billy Bob Thornton, 1955
Kristoffer Tabori, 1952
Richard Belzer, 1944
Maurice "Rocket" Richard, 1921
Helen Thomas, 1920
William Howard Schuman, 1910
Glenn Verniss Cunningham, 1909
Louis Armstrong, 1901*
Elizabeth, The Queen Mother, 1900
Louis Vuitton, 1821
Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1792


Debuting/Premiering Today:

The Saturday Evening Post(Magazine, first issue), 1821


Today in History

The destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem by the Romans, 70
A supernova is observed in constellation Cassiopeia, 1181
The first printing of Zohar (Jewish Kabbalah), 1558
A hurricane in the Carribean kills thousands in Guadeloupe, Martinique, and St. Christopher, 1666
Dom Perignon invents champagne (traditional date), 1693
First edition of the Saturday Evening Post, which was published until 1969, 1821
The family of Lizzie Borden is found murdered in their Fall River, Massachusetts home, 1892
The Greenwich foot tunnel under the River Thames opens, 1902
The Supreme Court of Japan is established, 1947
The Billboard Hot 100 is founded, 1958
American civil rights workers Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney are found dead in Mississippi after disappearing on June 21, 1964
The African republic Upper Volta changes its name to Burkina Faso, 1984
Operation Storm begins in Croatia, 1995
Prime Minister Paul Martin announces that Michaëlle Jean will be Canada's 27th Governor General, 2005
California's Proposition 8, the ballot initiative prohibiting same-sex marriage passed by the state's voters in 2008, is overturned by Judge Vaughn Walker in the case Perry v. Schwarzenegger, 2010
Britain has their greatest success in one day at an Olympics since 1908, winning six gold medals and a silver on Day Eight of the 2012 Summer Olympics, 2012
South Africa's Oscar Pistorius becomes the first amputee to compete at the Olympic Games in the 400 meters, 2012
Actor Peter Capaldi, of Scotland, lands the role of the Doctor in the twelfth incarnation of the 'Doctor Who' British science fiction show, 2013


*In several interviews, Satchmo claimed to have been born on July 4, 1900. Historians always disputed that claim, saying it was too neat and tidy, and his baptismal records, found in a church basement, proved otherwise. Some biographies still give the July 4, 1900 date in error.