“Everybody must get stoned…” — Bob “Dylan” Geldof, 1966
Okay, hopefully that won’t happen to you today, but be warned: the stones are hitting the road today. Not as in going on tour, but like jaggered rocks all over the road. (Fun fact: Did you know that there have been three different “Micks” and a “Dick” in The Rolling Stones? They should have been called, “Rhymes With Sticks” or something!)
It’s wet today, but warm… the lowest temps I saw this morning during my commute were on the high side of 40 degrees… nowhere near freezing. We did get a little bit of graupel this morning (not to be confused with hail… similar, but distinctly different… we’ll cover the finer points of this exciting science on another day) at the house, but it melted very quickly.
Fog is found at higher elevations: 5,000 feet and above. Once you drop through that very defined ceiling as you descend the mountain, it is as clear as a bell, assuming that bells are as clear as crystal, and if crystal is as clear as, well, really clear things. However, even the fog at the 5,000-foot+ areas is only moderate, at the worst… nothing heavy.
However, the aforementioned rocks provide harrows, mostly in The Narrows. (As info for the newbs: “The Narrows” is a colloquial designation for the stretch of Highway 18 that runs from Hortencia’s (colloquially known as “The Cliffhanger”) down to the intersection with Highway 138 (colloquially known as “The Crestline Bridge” and sometimes accidentally but not colloquially called “The Crestline Cutoff,” which it most certainly is NOT, especially given that there is another road called “The Crestline Cutoff,” which is NOT the flyover bridge referenced here.) CalTrans is plowing the rocks out of the way just as fast as they can, but simply cannot be in all places at all times… so ya still gotta watch out for the rocks.
However, Highway 18 in The Wides (Nobody calls the four-lane section that at all… I just figured I’d try it here to see if it sounded colloquial. It doesn’t, so we’ll never call it that again, nor should we speak of this again, ‘cause, wow, it actually sounds pretty lame. It sounded way better in my head.) does not seem as bad, regarding boulder barriers and renegade rocks. Still, use caution, perhaps even favoring the left lane (which gets fewer rocks than the right), and maintain high alert levels, in case any of those things appear in the beams of your headlights.
So, that’s the condition of OUR roads on the mountain… but here’s a word to the wise regarding one of the DTH (down the hill: “DTH” is colloquial!) roads: if you like gambling, but you also like having a clean car, you may need to weigh the pros and cons before your next visit to San Manuel Casino in Highland. Holy smokes… that one-mile-long road that is sort of the main route off of Highland Avenue to the casino is TTFU (Torn The Heck Up). Apparently, they brought in one of those pavement grinding/destroying things, and it worked as planned. Only, right now, the road surface is so rough that even in a Bentley you are going to bounce around like a passenger in a Conestoga wagon with three square wheels and one triangle. And the dust? The other day, it was so heavy that visibility became difficult enough to be considered an actual safety hazard… really. That dust doesn’t just hang in the air, either: it clings to your car! If your car WAS clean before you visited, it won’t be by the time you get there. It is a mess. A dirty, filthy, rough, rugged, bouncy, potholey mess. I recommend either staying home until they get that cleaned up, or at a minimum, use some of the side roads nearby to get closer to the casino before you get on THAT road. Be advised, however, the dust is so heavy and prevalent that it swirls and clouds things for about a quarter of a mile in any directions that cars take out of there. So… no matter which way you go, it’s still a gamble. (Sorry… I try not to pick the low-hanging fruit, but that one came before I even noticed that it was punny. It was a freakin’ accident, that’s how easy that one was. On the other hand… it slot of fun to drop those lil’ gags.)
So, we had to stop eating turkey products because of the salmonella issue. Then, Romaine lettuce was the sinister salad hazard. Oops, now beef products are back on the verboten list again, too! At my house, we got so frustrated over the whole thing, that, just to be safe, now we only eat dog food. It’s really not bad, especially with a little Vitamin D enhanced milk poured over it.
Dang it… this just in: dog food recall!!! This is due to excess amounts of Vitamin D. Seriously… enough to kill a dog, or those weird people who eat dog food. Check the list, check it twice… find out which dog food brands are naughty or nice.
But, there is something to celebrate… today is National Microwave Oven Day! I am not making this up, nor is this just an attempt at some sort of bizarre humor. The device that nukes your food is the thing of the hour… the day, in fact!
Here’s a weird thing about your microwave: if you set the timer at “70,” it will cook your food for 70 seconds. If you set it at “80,” it will cook longer. If you set it at “90,” well, longer yet. But if you punch in the number “100,” well, cook time goes back down… it’ll cook for an even shorter time than the “70”!
Anyhow, I’m not real clear on how we are supposed to celebrate today. One way might be to let it cook an egg… that’s always a blast! I’m just yolking… that actually makes a shell of a mess. It’ll explode with a mighty, “alBUMin!” Whoever has to clean up the mess will be boiling mad… it will not go over easy.
So, instead, just take your microwave oven out to a movie… or go out drinking with it. I don’t know. Or, maybe, dress your microwave oven up with a hat and scarf, and take it ice skating… that would be so sweet, just the two of you, hand-in-hand, pirouetting around the rink like star-crossed lovers.
Screw all that… it actually sounds really silly. Luckily, while not a MAJOR holiday, it IS National Miner’s Day. At first, I thought this was the day of the year when they let kids buy beer (turns out, that is on February 30, every year), but no, apparently, this day celebrates the folks who go down into holes in the ground every day, and harvest coal, silver, or BitCoin.
At work, the other day, we had a leek in the sink. The water backed up, and it almost overflowed. However, once the leafy oniony plant was plucked from the drain, the leeky sink problem was solved. Wait, is “leeky sink” just a colloquial term?