A Beautiful Day

One of those days, in fact, that I cannot wait to get out of the office. Especially today, as the ceiling collapsed (!!!) in the northeast corner of my office (which is actually the entire front part of the building because we are sort of an open-air place, no cubicles or anything, no privacy whatsoever, etc.), when the roofers and/or air-conditioning techinicians were attempting to remove some ducts.

They had already (successfully) removed ducts above the desk of the woman who sits catty-corner from me. Of course, she’d had to vacate her area while they covered her desk with plastic and proceeded to pound and clank their hammers and lower huge pieces of metal onto the floor.

And funnily enough, just a few minutes before the collapse, at around 10 a.m., when I was in the midst of my daily chaos, attempting to put together the newspaper, the roofers/technicians had positioned themselves near my desk and were contemplating the office and pointing to the portion of ceiling that runs right down the middle of the place, starting with the ceiling just to the right of my desk. I sensed that they were planning to start removing that particular duct, basically right over my head.

“Uhm, I can’t move,” I told them.

One of them looked at me. I could tell he was the “head guy” because earlier, he had told the other two what to do while he went “to run some errands.”

I also could tell he didn’t seem to like what I had just said.

“You don’t have to move,” he said, rather softly.

And then a co-worker explained that “we have to get a paper out!” Which seemed as if it would have been obvious to most people, and yet ... honestly, I could not have cared less because all of the stuff for today’s edition of the newspaper was on my computer, and I had no plans to relocate to another part of the building while something that obviously could be done later in the workday (i.e. after the paper was finished?) took place.

And about 20 minutes later, part of the ceiling collapsed.

Nice.

: (

The rest of the day was nice, actually, as I went from the office to a gathering of old folks and even earned an invite to lunch. Which I had to refuse because I also had to attend Law Day (don’t ask), which actually turned out to take not too long and the site of which allowed me to troddle off (via car) toward the lake.

Ah, the lake!

I took a new route today, a road never traveled, by me, anyway. And I ended up near a coal mine, one of several in this county that have been shut down over the past several years.

From what I can tell, coal mining does strange things to the landscape, creating hills and dunes and pits.



I have never been inside a coal mine; I wanted to take a tour of one, many years ago, but then the claustrophobic side of me kicked in and, after considering all the preparation I would have to do and the safety equipment I would have to wear, I decided I could live without ever going into a mine shaft.

I am kind of fascinated by mines, though. There is/was a huge one right across the lake that a friend of mine, a native of this town, referred to as “spider mine.” At night, you could look over at it, and the lights on the various parts of it (I wish I knew their technical names or whatever, but ... I do not!) looked sort of like giant illuminated spider legs, pattern-wise. Another mine southeast of here, located on a highway that my pal Joe Anne always referred to as “the darkest road ever,” lights up part of the night sky like a thousand white starballs.

During the day, at the particular mine I happened upon this afternoon, I noticed a lot of metal and rust.

It also reminded me of an amusement park.



And then I shot some wildflowers. Which, later, somewhat amazingly, I was able to identify, thanks to this awesome site which lists Kansas wildflowers. And I realize I am most definitely NOT in Kansas anymore — I do know a cool girl from there, though! — but apparently many of the wildflowers in Kansas can also be found in Illinoize.

This is prairie ragwort, which I also saw referred to as prairie groundsel:



Kinda shiny — just like Kansas cornstalks!

: )

This is Phildelphia fleabane ... NOT to be confused with “Philadelphia Freedom,” that bouncy little Elton John tune from the 1970s inspired by the one and only Billie Jean King.



These remind me of daisies.

: )

I saw four propane tanks, those big, oblong, above-ground tanks like the one at Thelma & Alvin’s that we used to climb up on and pretend we were on a submarine ... as opposed to being in a submarine, which would be much safer, it would seem. Anyhoo, I thought about taking a picture of these tanks, slowed my car, and then saw a huge black Lab running toward the car, barking as it ran alongside.

Maybe next time.

I also found some railroad tracks that are no longer in use.



And this is simply a roadside shot.