Daphne, AL

Thursday afternoon as I was leaving my office, I realized that I had forgotten something, so went back in to retrieve it. Several agents were in a circle having an animated discussion, and as I walked up one of the agents said, "TMZ is reporting that Michael Jackson has died." It stopped me in my tracks and I forgot what I came back in for - briefly. She continued, "Neither Fox or CNN are confirming it - they are saying that he has been taken to the hospital in a coma, possibly a heart attack."

All the memories of Michael Jackson and the Jackson Five sort of rushed back at me. We are very nearly the same age, and the Ed Sullivan Show was a huge part of my parents' lives, and mine. Michael Jackson was a darling child, and their dancing and their music rated right up there with The Beatles, The Partridge Family and the Osmonds in my heart (What? Yeah, I was a bubble gum pop kind of girl.) I grew up loving the Jackson Five, and danced so many nights away as a teenager to Michael Jackson tunes. My very first "slow dance" was to I'll Be There," on my twelfth birthday.

Over the years as he grew and fell, so did I. From afar, I saw the transformation of Michael to someone hardly recognizable as the Michael Jackson I once adored. I watched with horror as he changed and became this mega monstrous superstar with no boundaries, no brakes, and no real roots.

My adoration faded with time, but he was always there in the news and the tabloids. Sad. With "Man in the Mirror," I think we got a rare glimpse into the spirit of Michael. Now he's gone and I find myself humming and singing my old favorites, and occasionally breaking out into a dance to the "Billie Jean" in my head. I guess this is what they mean when they say, "...but his music will live on forever."

Rest In Peace Michael Jackson.

With the South in the grip of a record-breaking heat way, air-conditioning systems are dropping like flies. HVAC technicians are working from dawn to midnight in my area.

And as I seem to be going through one of those periods where everything starts breaking down (cars, a generator, and even my father's knee-cap), I have been able to "fix" two air-conditioners by simply catching up on routine maintenance by cleaning out the condensation overflow lines.

These lines are designed to remove the condensation created by the air-conditioner squeezing the humidity out of the air.

Your main condensation line should flow to the outside of the house. Algae and other materials can clog it over time and that's when the condensation overflow line takes over. This line usually drips to the outside in an obvious place (over a window or near a door) so you will notice it! When it starts dripping, you need to take action. If it's running a steady stream, trouble may be ahead. (Some units have a float or kill switch that will shut down the unit until you clean out the line; some units may run but not cool properly, or you may have water leak from the interior blower unit).

You need to locate the main line to clean it out and then you can maintain it by flushing it with a cup of bleach once a month during the months you are using your air-conditioning. You flush it through a capped PVC pipe located at the interior blower. If that blower is in your attic and not readily accessible, as one of mine is, then things get a little more complicated.

Here are my experiences. But I warn you: I AM NOT AN AIR-CONDITIONING

TECHNICIAN.

1. In my older personal home, the main line runs out of the attic out the eave, under the deck and some 16 feet to the edge of the patio. The secondary overflow line runs out of the eave ending in a saw-off 4- inch stub. Because of the length of the piping on my main line, my HVAC technician has back-washed it using a garden hose. He's gives it a 10 second blast of water and then repeats until the line flushes clean. We have also used a coat hanger to dislodge silt and other materials. Last week, I knew I had been successful in fixing the problem when water gushed clean and then became a steady stream out of the main line, while the overflow line drip eventually dried up. (Please note that the turtles in this photo who had made this mini-lake their home were very happy too.)

2. My parent's home is newer and both the main and overflow line come out of the slab at ground level with about 6 inches of pipe to work with. On this particular day -- this past Monday -- water was dripping from the interior blower and dampening their carpet.

With such a short length of piping to work with you obviously don't want to shoot water directly into the AC. Using a coat hanger and foot-long bottle brush, I worked from both the inside and the outside to get things flowing, not really knowing which was the main line and which was the overflow. I had to dig out dirt in and around the exterior lines before giving it a good pipe cleaning. Eventually, a chunk of gray gellatinous gunk came out of one of the lines in a gush of water. And the drip below their blower unit stopped.

Saved myself some money and saved the air-conditioning man for someone who really needed it.

As some of you know, I am introducing the feral cat colony we care for at our office and have been trying to get a picture of the kitten that I saw last week. Now I know that there are two kittens, where they live and Christi and I have rigged up a dumb-waiter for kittens to lower food and water to them. The ground below is a good ten or fifteen feet, so we had to be able to lower and retrieve the dishes. Next up, plans to trap and get them to a loving veterinarian. Neither Pinkie, Christi nor I have ever trapped anything, anywhere, so we are out of our element, but determined. We'll keep you all posted. For now, the kittens, with apologies for the bright eyes, because I couldn't get them out of the pictures:

They live in this drainage tunnel.

Sleeping

My heart breaks when people toss their animals away or they are abandoned for some reason or other. Our office is located on a major busy north south corridor in Daphne, Alabama, so it is a bit odd, and mercifully cool, that behind our office is a patch of woods that shades the porch surrounding our building. The back porch is one of my favorite places at the office. Behind that is an apartment complex. I figure these animals that we have adopted and care for, mostly feral now, came from there. But who knows. We feed them and make certain that they have fresh water twice a day. And we watch for them and keep count.

I am documenting them as I can locate them sitting still for a moment. Not easy. But this one, McGillicutty, is the spitting image of a cat I lost two years ago at the grand old age of nineteen. First time I saw him, I stopped dead in my tracks at the resemblance. Thought I was seeing a ghost. He's the one that will most likely be human friendly once more. He no longer runs away, unless you approach and reach within a foot of him. And he's the one waiting every morning at the door like we're a drive through.

This is the other one I was able to capture in an image from a far away distance. He's sleeping, he's a tom cat, and he's a daddy. I've seen the one kitten this year, but no decent picture yet. This one I call Big Daddy.

We have contact information for a feral cat helping hands kind of group, so soon we will be working on safe capture, so that they can be given their health care once overs. I hope they don't hate us for it, and that they won't hold a grudge, but there are raccoons in those woods and they need their vaccines. Sigh.

Christi and I saw this precious little family about a week ago, along Highway 181 at the pond on a farm site. I guess they lost their way home, because, really they should be in Canada, or some other place far north of here this time of year. Enjoy.

Here you can see there are two goslings - and, they are strolling away from me and my camera. I am quite a distance away, and using a zoom, but still...,they aren't comfortable with that. And who can blame them, really.

And off to the pond they go. Mom, dad and their babes.