5th of July

  Well, we have moved ALL of our stuff from the 'old' apartment to the 'new' apartment. This morning is cleaning morning. The 'new' apartment has stuff all over the place. But we have time to straighten that up. 4th of July weekend is a bad time to move, but it was the only time that we could get the place we wanted. I am taking a short break while the bacon cooks and then we'll hit 'er again. We went to the Legion yesterday, came home and moved some stuff and went to Post 7 (Legion downtown) for late afternoon hamburgers,etc.Then Hilda, Abel and I found a good place to watch the fireworks and then we came home. We hope you all had a good Independence Day weekend.

From the Arizona Daily Star (our morning local rag):
    The first city wide monsoon storm of the season added some extra fireworks to Tucson's Independence Day celebrations. Rain doused early-evening barbecues as a large low-pressure system swept through the city, damaging homes and cars, uprooting trees, flooding streets and striking power lines. Lightning lashed out at every corner of town.

   In the Catalina Mountains, it sparked a fire that burned a tenth of an acre and closed the highway to Mount Lemmon from Monday afternoon until this morning. On the west side it zapped a tree, trapping three people inside an apartment. All over the city it attacked telephone poles and transformers, leaving 20,000 customers without power for hours.

 

Measured rain totals varied. Some areas near Vail got almost 2 inches of rain. John Glueck, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Tucson, said "The city got a good dousing, especially the heart of the city." And even as Tucsonans clean up the mess left by blowing dust, wind and rain from Sunday's and Monday's storms, plenty more monsoon action is on the way, with a 30 to 40 percent chance of rain every day this week.

    Temperatures are taking a much-appreciated dip. The entire week's forecast says temperatures will peak in the upper 90s to low 100s with lows in the high 70s to low 80s.

On the 4th of July in 1826, in one of history's notable coincidences, former U.S. Presidents John Adams and Thomas Jefferson both died, 50 years to the day after the Declaration of Independence was adopted.
 

   Birthdays for the 4th of July include:

Author Nathaniel Hawthorne in 1804
Songwriter Stephen Foster ("Oh! Susannah," "Beautiful Dreamer") in 1826
Circus operator James Bailey (Barnum and Bailey) in 1847
Calvin Coolidge, 30th president of the United States, in 1872
Louis B. Mayer, film mogul and co-founder of MGM, in 1885
Ann Landers, advice columnist, in 1918
Abigail Van Buren, advice columnist, (Ann Landers' twin), in 1918 (age 93)
Former hotel executive Leona Helmsley in 1920
Actress Eva Marie Saint in 1924 (age 87) ... I cannot believe she is that old.
Playwright Neil Simon in 1927 (age 84)
Actress Gina Lollobrigida in 1927 (age 84)
Al Davis, Oakland Raiders owner, in 1929 (age 82)
New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner in 1930 (age 81)
TV reporter Geraldo Rivera in 1943 (age 68) ... you know that Geraldo took up skydiving. Unfortunately the parachute worked!

Oddity:  A Tucson waitress gobbled 20 hot dogs Monday, but it wasn't enough to win the annual hot dog-eating contest at Coney Island, New York. Michelle Lesco, a waitress at the Arizona Inn who stands just 5 feet 4 inches tall and weighs 115 pounds, placed 4th in the annual competition.

Michelle Lesco chowing down on burgers at Lindy's on Fourth (in Tucson).

Notes:

     Did you know that sliced bread was introduced by Otto Frederick Rohwedder who invented the bread slicer, which he started working on in 1912. In 1928, he designed a machine 1.52 m long by 0.90 m high that sliced and wrapped the bread in waxed paper to prevent the sliced bread from going stale. On July 7, 1928, the first loaves of sliced bread were made by the near bankrupt baker Frank Bench. So ... what was the best thing 'before' sliced bread?

Proofreading is a dying art ... local headline says "Man Kills Self Before Shooting Wife and Daughter"

Perspective:   A little girl asked her mom, "How did the human race appear? "  The mom answered, "God made Adam and Eve and they had children, and so was all mankind made."  Two days later the girl asked her Dad the same question. The Dad answered, "Many years ago there were monkeys from which the human race evolved." The confused girl returned to her mother and said, "Mom, how is it possible that you told me the human race was created by God, and Dad said they developed from monkeys?" The mother answered, "Well, Dear, it's very simple ... I told you about my side of the family and your father told you about his. "