Friday

It's so late at night, I need to go to bed, but I'm on a roll here, and just couldn't bear to skip a day. So, Friday, in this case Flex Friday, which means that Rocket Boy was home. We all took a walk together this morning and we saw a lot of quail -- we saw Sentry Quail and all his offspring, who are getting very large, and later we saw another pair of quail -- it was a really good quail day. Also we saw numerous rabbits and some very large lizards. I am still waiting to see a chuckwalla, which is a very large lizard that supposedly a person might see around here. I thought they were dangerous, but Wikipedia says no, they are harmless to humans. Hoping that's not one of those mistakes that Wikipedia is so famous for being full of.

After the babies went to daycare, Rocket Boy and I went out to lunch, which is becoming a Flex Friday tradition for us. We decided to go to the Midway Cafe, a little tiny diner-type place which supposedly has been there for many decades. He had been there before but I had not. But as we approached the door I noticed the significant lack of credit card stickers. And then when we walked in I saw a sign that said "No Credit Cards." I asked RB, "do you have any cash?" He said no. I pointed out the sign. Oops. So we left and went to get some cash. Unfortunately our credit union is the only place in town we can get cash without paying a fee, so we had to go there, and it is such a pain to go there and even more of a pain to LEAVE their parking lot, I don't know why they have any members, I really don't. Anyway, long story short, we got the cash, we had a nice lunch (fish & chips, the special, it being Friday).

After lunch we went to do some recycling. Recycling is a HUGE issue in Ridgecrest, which I will not get into overly much here. Suffice it to say that curbside recycling is on its way, because we got in big trouble with the State of California for not having it, and the residents of Ridgecrest (at least those that attend City Council meetings and write Letters to the Editor) are really really pissed about it. Because it's going to be mandatory and they don't want to pay for it. We, on the other hand, are of course delighted about it and can't wait. In the meantime we save all our recyclable materials in bins in the garage, and periodically make trips to the recycling places around town and out of town to get rid of some of it. Today we were taking cardboard and newspaper. The thing is, no one else recycles anything except bottles and cans with California Redemption Value, that they can get money for. We drove to the recycling center and it was packed with people bringing hundreds and thousands of bottles and cans in. Really tacky looking people, who didn't even know you were supposed to take the lids off the bottles and drain the last of the soda from them. I can't write too much about this, it's too horrible. And the looks we got when we said we had cardboard and newspaper. Anyway, we survived.

And now I really must go to bed. We're all sick with one thing or another. We've got houseguests arriving tomorrow night. The house is only partially cleaned. It's going to be a busy day tomorrow. But it will be a nice day, because as we all know, every day is a nice day in Ridgecrest.