CRACK! Went the coinciding flash-bang of a thunderbolt this morning. At 6:38 AM it woke both of us up. The lightning didn’t hit our house, but it sure was close. The rain then followed, along with ever diminishing thunder as the storm moved towards the east. We fell back to sleep until later when the rattling of garbage cans by the trash service awoke me again. They were earlier than normal, but not to worry folks, because I had set our cans out on the curb the night before. I decided that enough was enough and got out of bed then. Then the city’s street sweeper came by and had to steer around all of the cans that the trashman had left in the street. Why the street sweeper picked trash day for its monthly cleaning is a mystery to me, but I guess that street sweepers have to work too. Later, the garbage man returned, only this time in his guise of the recycling man and emptied another bucket. Later still, the garbageman returned for a third time to pick up our yard waste. Somewhere in there the letter carrier slipped our mail into the box, to round out the day’s civil services.

Yesterday, actress Angela Lansbury passed away. Although she began acting from an early age, she is best known to me for one of her later roles, in the TV show, Murder, She Wrote. A lifelong murder mystery fan, this has always been one my father’s favorite shows. In the flood of memorials that her death has unleashed, the one that I have found the most interesting involved her then teenage daughter. Lansbury told this story about her daughter falling under the spell of a Hollywood deadbeat. He would pick the girl up from school and get her to steal money and food from her parents for him. Worried, Lansbury moved the entire family to Ireland. The guy was Charles Manson.