More from John Stuart Mill:

"Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so."
"All good things which exist are the fruit of originality."
"Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character has abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and moral courage which it contained."

I have no idea where the time has gone. Spent an inordinate amount of time viewing the telly with: the basketball playoffs, "The Pirates of the Caribbean, Curse of the Black Pearl", "Lord of the Rings" ( parts I & II ), "Finding Nemo", various and sundry sci-fi offerings; church on Sunday's, new member/investigator's "class" on Wednesdays,... thrown in with all the "usual stuff" I do... or don't. Still reading scriptures and T.E. Lawrence's "Seven Pillars of Wisdom" when I can. The only things that seem to have suffered is my time on the computer and my poetry (such as it is).

A wee bit ill, on and off... headaches, tiredness, light-headiness, raspy throat... even some blood found congealed in my mouth on awakening from a nap Monday, probably from a sinus vesicle bursting while using the apnia mask... don't know. Feeling a bit better, except for the headaches, since.

Received a kiss from my daughter on Monday evening... as well as a card from the grandkids for Father's Day. Evidently Chrissy, my daughter, had tried to 'present' the before mentioned kiss and card on Sunday evening... but I had been dozing on the couch at the time.

So far, knock on ether, the late spring/early summer has been mild, below average in temperature... mostly mid-80°'s (Fahrenheit) with occasional low 90°:'s. The Sierras still have snow on them. Lately great thunderheads have been visible from our place that apparently are beyond Lake Tahoe on the eastern side of the Sierras. Meanwhile... my brother-in-law in South Dakota has been deluged with record rainfall. I understand the 'jet-stream' is missing us enough to the north to not give us any precipitation... yet close enough to keep the 'delta-breeze' from the San Francisco Bay Area active... cool !!! Guess that means my brothers in the Pacific Northwest are also getting a drop of rain here and there. Lake Havasu City, Arizona, where one of my sister-in-laws lives, had a temp of 128° Fahrenheit the other day... not so cool !!!

Turkey moms with their broods wandering around the property. Deer and quail quite abundant. An odd squirrel, raccoon, opossum found flattened on the roads. I've heard mention of skunks and rabbits about, but haven't seen any. No sign of the bears nor coyotes nor mountain lions yet.

Installed a new toilet seat and cover, green and padded, to replace the old one, unpadded, I managed to fatigue. I really need to lose some weight!

" Ascendant "... A pious offering... again, much more to be said.

" Nightmare2 "... Very few 'tiles' to work with AND the 'tiles' were repeated, again, from 6-11 and 6-12. I didn't look back on the original work(s), but rather decided to give it another go... with similar results.

" Lightning "... a Haiku: 'string of beads' not my affectation... but rather from this encyclopedia entry under the "Cloud-to-Ground Lightning, ..." heading. I found the description to be most poetic. The photo brought me to mind a flat expanse of highway in California leading to perhaps Mt. Diablo, or the Sutter Buttes, at night with lightning discharging from cloud to ground, and/or vice versa, lighting the road and landscape for an instant.