Monday

After breakfast, I prepared three fresh chicken breasts with the recipe I like a lot. It's simple in the slow cooker, and includes a rub of paprika, onion powder, garlic powder, oregano, salt, and pepper. Add a half-cup of broth or water, and let them cook for four or five hours, which I did while I was out for lunch. Had some for dinner and it was yum. 

My new friend, Carol Flagg (love the name), picked me up at 11:30. She asked me to suggest where to go for lunch and I chose Two Trees, at Telegraph and Kimball. We had a good time getting to know each other: Carol was born in Hawaii (military family), but moved to Oxnard when she was 10. She's been divorced twice, but is staying with her ex-husband (on a friendly, but not romantic basis) until she finds a house to buy.  She has one daughter and two teenaged grandsons, who live in Ventura. She hasn't spoken to her only sibling, a sister, for  years; I didn't get exactly why. She was amazed at the size of my family, both birth and married, let alone extended. 

Anyway, we had a good time and after, we drove to three manufactured homes (or whatever they're called now) developments, as she wants to buy one. Most are very nice, and those that are more modest aren't as expensive, but they still run three- to four-hundred thou and up, and the kicker is, that you pay a monthly "space rent," too. That ranges from about five hundred on up; there's a complex in Ojai where the space rent is almost two thou and that's after you buy the house. Incredible. However, we also saw Poinsettia Plaza, which is much the nicest I've seen. There, you don't pay space after you buy. So why doesn't Carol buy there?  Because prices are upward of three-quarters of a million, presumably because of no space rent. 

Carol dropped me off at 2:00 and I walked to the post office to mail something to Japan. The P.O. is getting third-world country level: long lines, inadequate staff, and scanty stock. The cost of this very light envelope was more than eighteen buck, so I'm going to think of another way to do this. 

Had a difficult sleep-night: woke  up for the usual about 12:30 and foolishly stayed  up to play my new Internet game-craze, Block Champ. Didn't go back for a half hour or so, up at 5:15, and now I'm groggy. I don't have anything scheduled for today, so will try to nap.