Road Work

Photo: Mr. Dickie (White Peony in our backyard, May 2009)

... obsessive thinking can be too much to handle. My best hope in battling it is not to begin, because once started, it gains steam and becomes harder to interrupt. (Courage to Change, 20 May)

... stop confusing yourself by trying to coordinate too many opinions. (One Day at a Time in Al-Anon, 21 May)

There are three keys to successful relationships: Never make anyone else responsible for your happiness; trust what your inner self feels, sees and says; and pay close attention to the warning signs. (Iyanla Vanzant, Acts of Faith, 2 June)

• Yesterday I went for an hour walk at Schrom Park. I took along my Oasis player. There were lots of people using the park.
• There's a problem with standing water on the sidewalk at the bottom of our hill. Yesterday I used my shovel to open a small ditch from the sidewalk to the top of the storm drain cover at the curb. Immediately the water began to drain off the sidewalk. Charles and Henry came over to help out. Charles removed dirt and growing grass that was hanging over the sidewalk. Henry brought a straight edged shovel and a trash bag and container. We piled the excess dirt and cut grass that was laying on the sidewalk on top of the storm drain cover. We will get rid of that later after it has time to dry out. It was a stinking mess.
• I asked Charles for some blank CDs to use in testing the Phillips CD dubber I bought at a yard sale this weekend. The CD blanks you use with a computer are different than those used with a dubbing machine. He also loaned me a headset with volume control to try with the device.
• I installed Lotus WordPro and Approach on my laptop. I'm doing this to see if I can recover by book and music catalogs. The next step is to find the backups. It will be a piece of luck if I can pull this off. This problem is the result of one of my many computer disasters.

Mr. Dickie