First I had to mow the lawn, then edge it, then weed whack it. It looks a lot better, but there are still some sprinkler heads that need replacing. I am getting tired of replacing sprinkler heads - I might look into brass fittings. I suspect that due to flow rate issues I might have to replace all of the heads on a given line though. Still, it's mostly the fittings along the sidewalk, where they are exposed to pedestrians feet.

Not a bad drive, I finished Book #26, John Quincy Adams; The American Presidents Series. It wasn't up to the standards of '1776' or 'Founding Brothers' but it covers, in part, later portions of history, the 1820's to 1840's, that I know little about. Even less than my revolutionary era knowledge. Adams won the election of 1824 to become the sixth president - he had been secretary of state for the previous administration, a position that was understood to lead to the succeeding terms presidency. But he was involved in a somewhat shady deal with Henry Clay when the election ended up in Congress, resulting in accusations, so familiar to modern ears, of a 'stolen election'. These accusations, his poor administration and poor political skills led to his loss in a vindictive and dirty campaign with Andrew Jackson in 1828.

Highlights - Abigail Adams was a nagging shrewhish mother, whatever her other virtues. Adams was an advocate of the rights of Indians - unusual at the time - but the State goverments, Georgia in particular, ignored the federal treaties and laws. Indeed, they threatened to secede if interfered with, even at that early date. Adams was apparently a good diplomat, he spent time in France, Russia, and other countries. But in negotiating with England the United States was at a huge military, financial and relative population disadvantage. The US usually got the short end of the stick, but it was probably as good a deal as anyone could get.

Their daughter, a first year medical student, was home, and we talked about medical school. It's intense, but she seems to enjoy that. All the students are 'Grey's Anatomy' fans, and were forced to tape the season finale as it aired during finals week! She has a summer job at a Los Angeles hospital, then back to med school in the fall.

Someone loaned me as astronomical imaging camera - if the weather gets a bit better and the clouds disappear I can try it out. It's been warm, muggy, and rather overcast lately - annoying.

Still, my brain retains enough power to FTP, to download in ASCII, to open the document in GVIM, and write.

It all just takes longer. GVIM seems to have some sort of understanding of HTML, there are highlighted sections of text here and there. But, as far as I can tell, no 'preview' or spell checking...

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Picture of the Week

Photo Notes: The USS Bayfield, APA-33, at Normandy.

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