Saturday Train Dominoes

In the morning, instead of taking my Saturday Zumba class, I did phonebanking for 34th District Democrats. It was handy having the training Zoom session remain open so I could submit questions in chat. It was extra handy using Google Voice instead of my cell phone, because I could copy-and-paste phone numbers instead of keying them.
I don't know how much good I'm getting done, but I suppose I must have faith in the process.
I took Shadow in for her post-dental surgery followup, and she is mostly fine although she somehow got food into the gap where the removed teeth are healing. I'll have to monitor that for problems although I'm not sure how. The soft food diet seems appropriate for her, as she actually gained a little weight since surgery (!).

I've Been to Mt Holyoke College

In the evening I went to play dominoes on Hannah and Julie's back deck outside, with their neighbor. I guess that's conforming to social distancing protocols. They had picked up a set of Mexican Train Dominoes at a yard sale, and was eager to try them out. The one other time I'd played Mexican Train was at the Kinch's, before COVID, and I won handily, so I have the self-image of being good at it. This proved not to be the case. It appears that being able to start your train early is critical for dumping a lot of tiles at the start. The 2nd hand I didn't draw a tile that would let me do that, and rather than dumping one tile at a time as other trains permitted, I dried drawing more in the hope of eventually getting the one I needed. After all, there were 13 in the boneyard. Well, I never did draw them and ended up with 244 points. In the next hands I tried the less risky path, but I still ended up with over 500 points over, which was at least 300 more than anyone else. I thought this was tremendously funny; clearly I have to study the strategy a little more, but I still have fun. It was a chance to practice math adding up scores; which lead to a story about watching teaching math on TV.
As it grew dark, it got noticably cool. Hannah lent me a sweatshirt which reminded me that I had myself been at Mt. Holyoke College many times, mostly while visiting the bookstore across the street. I remember now taking in plays in their summer series often, including the Tom Lehrer program that probably included the New Math song; I'll have to send them the link.

Friday Full

For our morning walk we drove to Arbor Heights and visited a lot of streets I hadn't seen before.
I spent much of the day updating http://4freeCLE.blogspot.com with new listings, encouraged by the positive response from my emailing the September calendar to the Low Bono Section listserve. I observed that some of my radish pods had opened or been opened, but I don't know by what.
In the evening, I went over to Hannah and Julie's to play Bohnanza - I had a hilariously hard time conforming to the play sequence but I suppose that is part of the fun. The chickens clucked in the background as we say out on the deck. There was also a lot of playing with cats.

Apple Rose

Bamboo Flower?

Nice Bench

Arbor Heights Little Free Library

Olympics View

Radish Pods Opened

Radish Pods

Socially Distanced Bench

Thursday

Another Bug On The Walk

I got some thanks from listmembers about the September freeCLE information I sent it; it's always nice to be appreciated!

I dropped in on Storyweavers Toastmasters this evening, which was fun. Afterwords I stayed around for their EC meeting and discussed next steps. The idea came up of having some sort of social event, but what can we do socially distanced? Maybe we can arrange a drive-in party watching the speeches at the world championship? Must talk over.

My Apple Tree Is Ready!

Herb Flower

The Last Of The Peas

Today's Crop

Today's crop (besides the usual greens) was mostly pie apples (on the left), a couple of Honeycrisp (the redder ones), and this season's dried peas. I'd started with about 10 pods, got a whole lot of fresh peas from them, and ended up with these to sow next year. I'll never be a farmer because that's too much like real work, but raising a little food on the land is very satisfying!

I try not to put too much political stuff on my life tracking posts, but I did do a meme. Maybe I should do monthly meme collections again

Wedneday Madness Plants and CLE

In Madness Season 

It Is Helpful To Look For 

 Refreshing Flowers.

This time of year, the nasturtiums are dropping their seeds so it's a fun game to scan the ground for them.

Around noon I attended a CLE "Law as an Instrument of Mass Crimes?"  by the Holocaust Center for Humanity, 

a sobering review of the legal status of Nazi crimes. The need to punish them under law, when the law itself was criminal, raised issue that have reflections even today.