The good: the night sky has been fabulous! Do you know that this month you can see, all at the same time, Mercury, Venus, Mars, and Jupiter? I've done it a few times now, just standing on the sidewalk out in front of our house. Supposedly you can also see Saturn, but not until later at night, and so far I haven't remembered to do that, plus by then Mercury wouldn't be visible.
The sky isn't as wonderful at our new house -- now, why is that? It's a narrower street, houses closer together. The night sky is still piercingly black with piercingly white stars, but you can't see as much of it, which makes me sad. Still, all those planets can be seen. Mercury to the west, Mars to the east, Venus and Jupiter above Mercury and somewhat to the south. Just fabulous.
The bad: The city is in terrible financial shape right now, something to do with the loss of RDA money (and don't ask me what that is, I don't understand it). Some residents took out an ad in the paper encouraging people to give money to the city, so it can continue to operate.
I thought maybe I wouldn't do that. It's not that I don't want the city to operate, it's that I completely, 100 percent, do not trust the city to spend my money wisely. And I'm not the sort of person who doesn't trust the government. I trust the federal and state governments to at least try to do the right thing. I trust the city of Boulder. I don't trust the city of Ridgecrest.
There have been the usual issues with local businesses. A while back we were in Denny's and I ordered a dish that had red-skinned potatoes in it. Waitress came back and told me they were out of red-skinned potatoes, so could I order something else? Can you imagine a Denny's running out of potatoes? It was odd. Then a couple of weeks ago I went to a local shop to have three posters laminated. Went to pick them up a few hours later and was given a rolled up cylinder with a rubber band around it. Should have opened it there to look at it, but didn't. Got it home to find that the laminated posters were all on one roll. What did they think, that I was going to put them on one really long wall? Rocket Boy had to take them to work to cut them apart with a paper cutter (scissors too messy).
Our landlord's handyman has been doing some little fixes on the house -- he's very good, but when he says he'll come right back, he never does, and we can usually only get him back by calling him 3 or 4 times. He was here today (after 2 weeks of calling him to remind him to come back) and fixed something. While he was here, he mentioned that he's trying to hire someone to help him with little fix-it stuff like this, but he's having trouble because most people in Ridgecrest who are interested in doing that sort of work have lost their drivers licenses for one reason or another.
Can you imagine living in Ridgecrest and not having a drivers license? You'd be stuck here forever. The mind boggles.
I've been freecycling again, and that's always irritating, but nothing new there. I've started asking my more reliable donatees if they want things, rather than post them on the boards and end up with some weirdo who says he's "coming right over" and then never shows up. Grrr. Anyway, I got rid of a ton of clothes that the kids have outgrown, two huge bags worth, and my old boppy pillow, so now we have room in their closet for new toys...
Then there's the wind, which I guess everyone in the west and southwest is getting right now. Out here, wind means DUST blowing up everywhere. This morning, the kids and I were watching from the front door for a freecycler to arrive. Then I saw the wind pick up a wave of dust from our "yard" and blow it in our direction, and I closed the door quickly.
The ugly: Two nights ago we were burglarized -- that is, our cars were. We don't usually lock our cars when we leave them on the driveway or in front of the house. At our old house there really wasn't any need. It turns out that at the new house, there is a need. We're just down the road from a mobile home park, and I suppose that's the problem. Anyway, they got into both my car and Rocket Boy's, left the doors open (fortunately didn't drain the batteries), and opened all the compartments in the front seat, tossing stuff around. I can't see that they took anything from my car (nothing to take!), but Rocket Boy lost some CDs and more importantly the garage door opener. We have another one, so he had to reprogram the garage door and the other opener (and my car, which has a built-in opener) so that the burglar couldn't come back and break into the house via the garage door. Very annoying. And now we have to lock our car doors, in fact I should go do that now. I suppose next they'll break the car windows (to steal the rest of Rocket Boy's CDs, plus the other garage door opener). Might as well be in Los Angeles.
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