A while back, someone asked me if I ever planned to stop writing and retire, or if I thought I might run out of ideas for books someday and give it up. Not as long as my faculties hold up and I can keep at it. I will never live long enough to write all of the books I have planned, let alone the fact that every week or two, I come up with at least one more idea for another book. Who’s got time to retire? As it is, it seems like there are never enough hours in a day to do all the things I need to get done.
Yesterday was a good example. While I was having a light breakfast of a smoothie made with fresh strawberries and yogurt, along with a slice of Terry’s delicious banana bread, I got a text from La-Z-Boy saying that the repairman was on the way to finish work on my recliner that they started 11 days ago. He arrived right on time and spent an hour or so replacing the motor for the headrest before he realized that wasn’t the problem. So he also replaced the remote control, which seemed to do the trick. Now everything is working correctly, and they have pretty much rebuilt all of the mechanics of the chair.
I spent the next few hours researching American involvement in the Philippines in the early 1930s, then used that information to write two more chapters in my new Tinder Street book. You might wonder how events in the Philippines had anything to do with a story mostly set in Toledo, Ohio and southern Michigan. I guess you’ll just have to read the book to find out. Someone asked me when it was going to be out, and I’m shooting for sometime in mid to late March.
Once it cooled down a little bit, Terry and I went outside to work on our citrus trees, stripping off the dead leaves that had been killed by the frost we had a few weeks ago, then spraying the trees to deal with Citrus scale, which are tiny insects that have recently become a problem. The good news is that even with the cold snap we had and the scale infestation, it looks like the trees are probably going to make it. I sure hope so because we’ve put a lot of effort into them.
I woke up with a very sore throat yesterday, and it was hard to swallow. No, it wasn’t COVID. This also happened a week or two ago, and I remembered several other people in different online groups for CPAP users say it happens to them now and them. They all said it’s due to the humidity setting on the machine, and following their suggestions, I made a change and will see if that helps.
In yesterday’s blog, I posted a couple more pictures of another lifelike sculpture like the one we saw at the Antique Extravaganza in Mount Dora, and someone wrote to tell me they were created by a wonderful artist based out of Wisconsin named Marc Sijan. I did some research on him, and I am just absolutely amazed at his creations. Do yourself a favor and watch this eight-minute video on how he does what he does, and I think you will be, too.
Today will be just as busy for me. I want to try to get another chapter or two done, and then I have to go to the Daytona Beach VA Clinic for an eye exam in the afternoon. Hopefully, I’ll get back home in time to get a little more work done. As I said, there are never enough hours in the day.
And finally, here’s a chuckle to start your day from the collection of funny signs we see in our travels and that our readers share with us.
Thought For The Day – I’m not sure what’s scarier at this point, taking my temperature or weighing myself.
Nick Russell
World-Famous, New York Times Best Selling Author, and All-Around Nice Guy!
I lived on Luzon. About 60 klicks from Manila in the 50s/60s. We were by Bilibago near Baguio City. My father was stationed at Clark. There is a great book on Amazon called ‘The Headhunters of Luzon’. It was free when I got it. It may cost 99 cents now. There were still headhunters when we lived there. There were also pygmies called the negritos who had contests with the base police every year. They’d take the cartridges out of the MP pistol belts, take the plastic from the ends of their bootlaces and draw a circle around the guard in chalk while the guy was standing guard with a german shepard. In WW2 the negritos would sneak into Japanese barracks and cut off every other head. Google search images of them and check their multi-directional barbed arrow heads that did more damage coming out. The Hukbalahap revolution was still on when we were there. My mother, dad was always TDY somewhere, let the maid take me to villages where I was often in their indoctrination sessions at 4 and 5 years old. There’s a lot more to the P.I. than one would ever think.
Morning sir…We need another John Lee Quarrels novel