We have had a coyote family in the scrub area next to our complex this year. Still haven’t been able to get any pictures of them as I am more worried about making sure Brindy doesn’t get involved with them than with pulling out my phone to snap a pic.

Yesterday, though, I was able to get this picture as we walked up the street. If you don’t see it at first, the coyote is mid-picture on the far side of the tee box. A few minutes after this shot, we saw the family of mother and two or three pups trotting down the nearby fairway. Too far away for a phone camera to get a shot unfortunately.

This morning one of the coyotes had just crossed the street in front of us as we started up the hill. Then as we went a few feet further, one on our side of the street stuck its head around the bluff about 20 feet away. We about-faced and decided we didn’t really need to climb the hill today!

At the end of the path in this picture you can spy a bunny who is not terribly concerned about Brindy. The animals around the neighborhood usually have a very fine sense of just how close is safe.

At Trader Joe’s the other day they had peonies. I don’t remember ever having a bouquet of these before. Impressive!

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This little critter decided the flowers were way more important than the people and dog nearby.

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Here in the Las Vegas area, our first day of summer is supposed to be 105°F or around 40°C. That’s a few degrees above the average. Still nice walking weather at 6 a.m., thankfully.

I just started the dishwasher and saw that I did not have a single dinner plate to wash: all bowls and small plates. Not sure what this says about what I am fixing mom and I to eat. Of course, she never eats enough to fill a dinner plate anyway!

As this “shelter at home” situation goes on, I find myself less and less inclined to cook. I made Country Captain last week. Seven chicken thighs, tomatoes, currants, seasonings, broth, etc., over rice. I had at least three meals from that; mom had five; and there was still a little left over that I threw out yesterday.

I could have frozen some, but that would have meant refreezing the chicken thighs and that doesn’t always turn out well. Besides, I still have stuff in my freezer from other dishes I’ve made that we couldn’t begin to finish up.

I really, really miss having people over to dinner: I have so many recipes to try. Cooking for two just isn’t exciting me any more.

I don’t often do trial runs of recipes: I just warn my guests that we may be sending out for pizza if things don’t turn out. I had seen a recipe for a leek terrine that I did want to try before setting it in front of company. I had never made any kind of terrine before and did not want to commit to buying four to five pounds of leeks without knowing how it would turn out.

So I made a small terrine with the three leeks I happened to have on hand. It turned out fairly well, although a bit bland. My terrine was only an inch or so high; I can see the layers would look impressive in a five-inch high serving.

Meantime, the flowers here around our complex our looking very fine.

Hope you all are well.

Still not much going on here. Nevada is slowly opening up, but while it’s nice to be able to go out occasionally, we’re still staying close to home. If it weren’t for doctor’s visits, we would almost never need to get gas!

Have gotten my hair done though. And mom is thrilled that she finally got hers cut.

Meanwhile, here are a few pictures from around our place:

I mentioned in my previous post that I had planned to take mom out on Lake Las Vegas for her mother’s day present, but had to change our plans. What stopped me was the waiver form they wanted me to sign. Here is a copy of the actual waiver part of the form:

Now I get that they are trying to cover all the bases and preclude me from coming after them for damages whatever happens. And I actually didn’t have any problem with signing this part of the form. I did cringe every time I read the third paragraph: the person writing this apparently has never heard of the importance of Parallel Structure:

Rule

Balance parallel ideas in a series

Description

Readers expect items in a series to appear in parallel grammatical form. When one or more of the items violates readers’ expectations, a sentence will be needlessly awkward.

Examples

Not Parallel

Sam is responsible for stocking merchandise, writing orders for delivery, and sales of computers.

Parallel

Sam is responsible for stocking merchandise, writing orders for delivery, and selling computers.

https://iup.edu/writingcenter/writing-resources/grammar/parallel-structure/

I do think it’s odd that in the paragraph 1 they don’t seem to mention electric boats, the very thing I was trying to rent, but perhaps I am just missing something. At any rate, I would gladly have signed this part of the waiver and taken my chances with underwater mines, packs of rabid coyotes, or whatever else man or nature could throw at me while I was on the lake for my two hours. What I couldn’t consent to was this last paragraph on the form:

As far as I can see, as soon as this is signed I have given them the enumerated rights for the rest of my life, anywhere, anytime. Note it does not say anything about only recording while I am using their equipment or while I am on the Lake. To me it just says that from now until eternity I have given them permission to basically do whatever they want, whenever they want, wherever they want with my name, likeness, etc. for any “lawful” purposes.

And what the heck does “biographical material” mean? Name, address, telephone number, height, weight, name of my first dog, social security number? Who knows; the release form certainly doesn’t say.

I have a friend who had to deal with a stalker for years. No way would I expect them to take a chance on having their name much less any other information thrown out into the public for all to see.

And now you know why I won’t be renting any equipment from Vegas Aqua any time soon. Not until they spend as much time assuring me about my privacy issues as they do covering their own a—-, I mean concerns.

I had planned to take mom out in an electric boat yesterday here on Lake Las Vegas. We’ve been here a year now and have still not been on the lake. For reasons I may get into in another post, we went for a drive instead.

We headed up to Valley of Fire State Park which is about an hour north of Las Vegas. It was a very fine day for it. Mom had not been there since sometime in the 1960s; I had been there two years ago with a friend. I like the compact size of the park: it feels like a pocket sized combo of Joshua Tree and Capital Reef.