Only 9 days into September, and cold, wintery weather is upon us. This photo was done on my way to work after getting numerous x-rays of my hips and lower spine. I went to an arthritis doctor this morning, and she decided a lot of my pain is actually bursitis that’s related to the ankylosing spondylitis. One comment she made that was interesting is that she thought the condition I had in my knees when I was 9 years old was probably an early manifestation of the ankylosing spondylitis; however, in 1968, spondylitis was not very well defined so the doctors wouldn’t have known to look for it. She gave me a sheet of exercises and I go back in six weeks to see how I’m doing and get the results of the blood tests and x-rays.

I stopped by the post office at sunset, and the bats were streaming out of the bat house on top of a pole at the edge of the soccer field. By the time I got where I could get a photo, the last two bats were dropping out of the box.

Fall is in the air with cooler nights, warm days and evening thundershowers. The roses and kitties seem to really like this time of the year.

 

 

Our first zipper spider of the season, which means we should start seeing other garden spiders. I love spider season.

I rode my bike past the cemetery this morning and I thought to myself that I should go do photos of it in the afternoon. I liked the photos of the old San Ysidro Church much better.

I’m having a lot of back, hip and joint pain. It kept me up most of the night and has continued to bother me through the day. Riding my bike helped drive away the pain for a couple of hours, and it’s not quite as bad tonight as it was last night, so I’m hoping I will be able to sleep tonight.

I finally got up around 2:00 AM this morning and looked at my email. All the stuff I get from on-line catalogs from over the years all of a sudden started driving me nuts, so I spend about an hour unsubscribing to 99% of the sites that send me ads and specials everyday, sometimes multiple specials in one day. That should cut down on the amount of email I have to trash daily.

After unsubscribing to probably 100 web catalogs that I have bought stuff from over the past 10 years, I revamped http://www.tandlphotos.com. I went back to bed about 5:00, but still couldn’t sleep and finally got up at 7:00 and started cat-herding and other chores.

When I went out to shut down the irrigation this morning the bumblebees, damselflies, bees, wasps and flying ants were all out working the morning glories.

Something worked right for a change. I started receiving temperature warnings from the temperature monitor in the server room this afternoon. I went to the office and discovered the coils on the compressor on the roof were clogged up with lint and feathers, so the airflow was greatly reduced. The problem was that there are two sets of coils in the unit and the lint and feathers were trapped between the coils. Therefore, I had to shut off the air-conditioner and disassemble the unit on the roof so I could separate the coils and clean the gunk out. That got the air moving around the coils again, and the server room has cooled back down. The air-conditioner would have certainly failed tonight or tomorrow and I would have had a bunch overheated servers if we didn’t have the temperature monitor in the server room.

The morning glories are trying to take over everything, so now every time I go out to photograph roses and flowers, I end up pulling morning glories off of the roses and flowers I want to photograph.

A little lizard was skitting around eating ants. It finally stopped to look at me for a moment after it took cover under the clover, and Betty Prior was poking out from under Fragrant Memory nearby.

I saw some interesting things in the blind alley along the side of the building when I was on the roof, so after I finished working on the air-conditioner I checked out the alley and noticed the interesting reserved sign on the wall. The cracked window is on the tailor’s shop along 3rd Street.

I got in 14.5 miles on my bike this morning, and managed to meet one of our neighbors up the road for the first time on my way out. They’ve only been there for three years.

I rode my bike a little over 9 miles tonight. It’s been almost a year since I’ve been on my road bike. I needed to replace the seat post, so I took the seat post to Bike World on Coors, but they didn’t have the right diameter seat post, even though it’s the most common size seat post. I was trying to give a local store some business, but I’m finding more and more that local businesses aren’t carrying what I need.

I went back home and took the seat post out of Laurie’s bike that she hasn’t ridden in over 20 years, and it fit my bike. After a few adjustments, and wriggling into bike clothes, I set off at a little after 6:30 pm.  The temperature was perfect, with a light wind and no traffic on Loma Larga. I didn’t struggle nearly as much as I expected, and felt like I could have ridden much longer.

I’ve had a lot of back and joint pain, plus several other symptoms that are pointing to my ankylosing spondylitis beginning to act up again. In the past, cycling was the best treatment for the ankylosing spondylitis symptoms.

We got a new, custom medicine for Stretch today from the Apothecary Shop that we only have to apply to the inside of his ears every day. It’s supposed to help increase the blood flow in his kidneys. If it works, we’re hoping we can cut down on the water boarding.

I got off pretty late tonight to find myself driving home in a rain storm. The traffic on I-40 was very slow. It’s nice to have rain, but it does play havoc with traffic.

We discovered a genetically modified sunflower in the garden. Those evil honeybees crossed a generic yellow sunflower with one of the hybrids that produce a large seed pod surrounded by small dark red petals. The results are small seed pods surrounded by larger petals that are reddish on the inside and yellow at the tips. The stalk is identical to the generic yellow sunflowers around it.