No blogs for a while because I have been very busy expanding my ability in Arabic language. Several years ago I studied Russian for two years and took conversation lessons at a local Russian place, but then Covid hit and everything closed down, so I switched to Arabic. I read Arabic about two hours per day. Today it came to over three hours.

Last night I happened to be at a car filling station. Across the street was a very large apartment complex. Outside the complex several young blacks were loitering doing nothing constructive. I immediately put my gun on the seat by me. I’ve learned from experience to always be ready for spontaneous violence. Several more blacks drove up. They went inside and bought some soda then came out and mixed it with something they had in prepared cups. Lean? Maybe. I don’t know much about lean. They tossed the empty plastic soda bottles on the concrete and drove away.

When I went inside to buy something I found that an armed security guard was standing by the door scrutinizing everyone who entered. I felt much safer when I saw him even tho he was a black guy. He was prepared for anything, even wore a bullet-proof vest. Imagine a situation where even corner stores must hire off duty police with bullet-proof vests to prevent robberies. I probably won’t be visiting that store again. I’ll fill up elsewhere.

A racoon family got into my attic a few days ago and kept my wife awake. Today I was about to go on the roof and fix two holes where I thought they may have entered. A handy man showed up unexpectedly and he went up and fixed the holes quickly for free. Good guy! Hispanic, like most of the actual workers around here. We found a third hole, even larger, however. He will come back and fix that soon. I hope. It’s on the second-story roof, too high for me to risk climbing there. But he is young and vigorous, no problem for him. I set off a bug bomb in the attic but I’m certain that won’t deter the racoon family. They will keep coming back until the hole is fixed, or until the weather turns so hot that the attic becomes unlivable. Even termites can’t stand the summer heat in attics around here.