June 17-18

Spent yesterday not doing much at all.  Tried to get out of bed without stretching first.  My back was quick to tell me this was a mistake.  Regressed in my recovery.  No mild exercises or walking as I was doing the previous few days.  Today, I stretched before I got up.  All the difference in the world. Exercised, walked, even rode the bike about 8 miles just to see how it felt.  Felt fine in a the-bike-did't-make-it-feel-worse way.

The fireflies are out.  What looks to us to be magic in the darkness is, as I recall, mating behavior.  Different species have different patterns.  This is how they locate one another.  Except that predators mimic the flashes of specific firefly species and gobble them up.  So we see beauty and wonder when it it is really nature, red in tooth and claw, and genes trying to pass themselves to the next generation.  I think it is this, the facility to see wonder in a violent, selfish world, that helps us survive.  I don't think we could make it on a diet of straight reality.  (There is an old and powerful argument here against the existence of a beneficent, omniscient, omnipotent Being, but we won't go into it.)

And speaking, as we were not, of religion I give you a Biblical Weirdness:

     If two men are fighting and the wife of one of them comes to rescue her husband from his assailant,   

     and she reaches out and seizes him by his genitals, you shall cut off her hand.  Show her no pity.

Deuteronomy 25:11

This is just freaking strange.  I'm betting the guy who got this into the law had his "secrets" (King James version) seized by some guy's wife when he was trying to beat the crap out of him.  I cannot come up with any other plausible explanation.  I'm pretty sure God wasn't personally getting into this level of detail.

Saw another bird to go with my previous list.  The catbird, so called because (a) it is a cat that looks like a bird, (b) it is a bird that looks like a cat, (c) it is a bird that sounds like a cat, or (d) none of the above.  If you answered (c) go buy yourself a scoop of homemade rum raisin ice cream on a waffle cone, which is what I did a few days ago.

Today, Robin, Tad, Carol, Carol's brother and his wife, and I were sitting at the table when I spotted a spotted fawn running toward the house.  Got quite close, then veered off.  We never saw the doe.  Catbirds, fawns, Deuteronomy - what a great place!

Speaking of great-with-child Robin, yesterday she made strawberry jam from freshly picked strawberries.  When I say fresh, I mean picked that day.  Then her back bothered her, and imagine that.  Who could have guessed?  But the main thing is, I scored a jar of this wondrousness and she is mailing it to me.  Did I mention the homemade rum raisin ice cream?  Hmmmm?  And the grilled to perfection boneless ribeye we had tonight?  Eat your gruel, children.  It's good for you.

Oh, Carl, you obnoxious fat bastard.