Well, I didn't have to go too long without hot water. The "non-faulty" thermal coupling I needed arrived bright & early Friday morning via overnight delivery and then the plumber showed up in the early afternoon to install it. I used the time to get the last of my 20 pounds of mulch spread out in the front garden. And also discovered a hearty crop of poison ivy growing where none had grown last year. And, to make the day even more magnificent, this time I discovered the poison ivy before reaching into the fray and yanking out a bunch of weeds! Yay!

Me and poison ivy are usually an unbeatable combo; poison ivy, poison sumac, et al, usually travel great distances just to get really, really close to me. And then the non-stop itching makes me nearly lose my mind.

So perhaps this summer I am going to be spared the stress of that. We shall see.

Sort of a rainy-ish, hazy, muggy day out there today so I didn't take my walk. But yesterday morning's walk was really nice. I don't know why I love looking at people's houses, their gardens, their lawns, their trees. Especially in neighborhoods like this one, because the houses remind me of the neighborhoods I used to live in when I was really little up in Cleveland. And God knows, I am always, always, always striving to live in the past... so this works out well.

Okay. It's getting kind of late here and I need to get to work on the novel. I am still back in 1916, before Valentino enters the novel, and before the great Nazimova moves to Hollywood. Still a LONG way to go...So, see ya, gang! Thanks for visiting!

And I leave you with this image. Alla Nazimova's home on Sunset Boulevard, before she went bankrupt and had to turn it into the Garden of Allah, a hotel. (Allegedly, Joni Mitchell's song Big Yellow Taxi is about when the Garden of Allah was finally demolished to build a pink strip mall with a big parking lot...) Life goes on, alas.