summer commences

 At first I didn't get Old Dog's joke about washing his carbs because I had no idea what those big metal things among the china were.  I knew that carburetors existed, and had something to do with getting air into the engine, and I must've had one on one of my two cars, the Fairlane, but not the Corvair because it had the engine in back and was what was called air-cooled.  Am I sounding a bit like a gearhead?  Probably not because now I am thinking that what the Corvair didn't have was a radiator, likely it still had a carburetor, or maybe not, what do I know?  Clearly not much.  

Anyway I have to say that those carburetors make bang up bookends, look how tightly they enclose those books, and look sharp?  You betcha.

But of course I do know my fibonacci numbers.  Looks like a small head of a sunflower, whose spiral patterns are generated by fibonacci numbers in the first little glass jar, can't make out what is in the second jar.

One pleasant aspect of the annual trip to Champaign is how much better the train ride has become.  On time (actually minutes early) both there and back, and the same on last year's trip.  Nothing like sailing through the cornfields with the horn blasting knowing there will be no dirty old train of dusty boxcars lumbering on the track ahead of you and putting you back for oh, an hour or two.  King of the Road Jack.

Much better than that bus, which I admit generally got me there on time, but there was always that mob of good for nothings and down on their lucks drifting across the floor because Greyhound was never sure, or wanted to tell us, which bus was leaving at which gate.  And then when you got into the bus, it was kind of dirty and things were broken, but the voice of the driver when he began his spiel, and even tossed in a few jokes, was always cheery, and like I said you got where you were going when you expected to get there.

Now they want to move the bus station out of its current location on the southwest edge of downtown because the property has become too valuable to waste on the good for nothings and down on their lucks.  Maybe they will have to spend hours on desolate suburban parking lots in the heat of the summer, the cold of the winter.  Too bad for them.

Some slick Munich based crowd has bought Greyhound and discovered that the properties of the bus stations are worth a pretty penny and are selling them off to developers, excuse me, job creators and so it goes.

Makes me wish I was a commie again.

Got my biannual haircut Friday, this morning I am taking down my show with all the punkins, clearing my decks for the oncoming of the heft of summer.  So far we have been dodging bullets, well except for that smoke thing, but it is certainly better than living in Austin Texas.