Personal Musings category archive
Facebook Frolics 0
Have you ever had the sneaking suspicion that the Zuckerborg has morphed into a slavering, stumbling, bumbling monster beyond control?
If you have, I can’t imagine how you could have ever thought such a thought.
Then, again, maybe I can.
Natural Selection 0
Methinks Darwin was onto something.
The Climates They Are a-Changing 0
It looks like Cape May and Wildwood, where we used to vacation when I lived in the Philly area, are doomed have a less than propitious future.
In these parts, spring and fall have almost disappeared. From being a matter of months, they have become a matter of weeks.
When I was a young ‘un, growing up not far from where I write this, temperatures would gradually get cooler from September to November, usually with a bit of Indian summer around Thanksgiving. Then the cold weather would set in. Frosts were common from late October on.
No more.
We haven’t had a frost yet, and, last week, I drove the recycling to the recycling center with the top down on my car. And that warm day was not an exception.
This week, we are wrapping ourselves in down, but we still haven’t had a frost.
I fear we are well past the tipping point.
Game Day 0
I was in the ABC store yesterday and a couple of the customers and one of the staff were joshing with each other about Sunday’s football games.
I realized that I had no clue as to what they were joking about.
When I got to the checkout, the young lady at the register said, “This concludes the entertainment portion of your visit.”
I said, “I lost interest in football . . . because of the corruption. In the NFL, it’s the owners. In college, it’s the NCAA. It’s amazing how much more fun I have on Saturdays and Sundays now.”
I realized that I don’t miss football.
Not at all.
Stray Thought 0
As I watch episodes of the old Bob Newhart Show, the opening always takes me back to my road warrior days, when I was on the road one or two weeks a month.
When I worked for the railroad, I had many business trips to Chicago–it’s a railroad hub–and the scenes of Chicago in the intro to that show take me right back to those days.
They show Newhart walking in places where I have walked.
Election Day 0
We will be voting today, as we did not find the early voting options convenient this year.
Remember, voting is not a right. It is a duty.
Facebook Frolics 0
Methinks “metastatic” would have been a more appropriate choice.
Car Talk 0
Not content with spamming my phone, sometimes multiple times a day, the car warranty scammers have resorted to using the mail.
I have received two car warranty scam letters in the past two days.
Aside:
When put down in black and white (or, to be more accurate, in one letter in black and green and in the other black and light red), the hockey puck is even more obvious in print than it is in a phone call.
Plus, I checked with a local Ford dealer in regards to something other. My vehicle is under factory not-about-to-expire warranty for three more years, even though I purchased it used. (I would not get an extended warranty from anyone other than the manufacturer on a bet and probably not even then.)
I must say, though, that this must be a lucrative scam if the scammers are actually willing to pay for postage to perpetuate it . . . .
Vaccine Nation 0
We got our Pfizer COVID boosters today at our local drug store of choice.
We trust science. And scientists. And people who have whaddyacallem “qualifications.”
We don’t trust randos on Facebook.
Stray Thought 0
One of the things I like about my new(er) car is that it has no touch screen! The instrument panel is all computerized, natch, but the controls are all knobs and buttons and levers, as should be.
Automobile touch screens are perhaps the best example that “just because you can” is not in and of itself a sufficient reason to use a technology.
It Was Too Car Gone To Keep 0
I recently purchased a new(er) car. After 18 years and 150k+ miles, including some miles pulling a 2,600 pound boat back in my boating days, my little pick-up truck had had enough. Given that an 18-year old vehicle has minimal (to put it mildly) resale or trade-in value (the new tires I got a year ago were probably worth more than the vehicle that wore them), I decided to donate my truck to my local NPR station. (The process went very smoothly, I must say.)
I found out that the donated vehicles go to auction. The donation center, which is apparently an organization that contracts with the radio stations, passes the information to a local auction house, which in turn arranges for picking up the vehicle.
I signed over the title to the picker-up of my pick-up a couple of days ago.
Kale Fail 0
The traditional Southern way of cooking greens (spinach, turnip greens, collard greens, kale) is to put them in a pot of boiling water with a hunk of fat meat and simmer them until every nutrient has fled for its life.
I read once that the legendary restaurant critic and cookbook author Craig Claiborne*, who grew up in Mississippi, once said that, of all the greens, kale is the only one deserving of such treatment. (Unfortunately, these years later, I cannot track down an attribution.)
Me, I would rather eat dock weed.
I never have figured out a sensible reason for the recent lionization of kale. Neither, for that matter, has Charlotte Markey.
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*I have worn out three copies of his New York Times Cookbook and my copy of his New York Times International Cookbook continues to exist solely because of library tape.
The Silence 2
Perhaps what I remember most about this date 20 years ago is the silence.
Someone heard the news of the bombing in New York and a number of persons watched bits and pieces of the coverage on the lunch room television if their duties allowed. My workplace at the time was in New Jersey across the river from Philadelphia International Airport.
The main runway at Philadelphia International Airport runs generally in a west-south-west/east-north-east orientation. In easterly winds, airliners from the west would commonly fly by Philly to the north, turn right, fly south over New Jersey, then make a sweeping U-turn back across the Delaware river for their final approach to the main runway; otherwise, airliners headed north would take the reverse course, taking off in a generally WSW direction, then swinging back over New Jersey to head north or to take the great circle route to Europe. They didn’t fly right over my work place, but we could hear them and see them in the east, especially if we were outside in the smoking area.
We heard no airliners that day.
Mystery Buff Stuff 0
Now that I’ve read Caroline Graham’s Inspector Barnaby novels, I’m watching the first season of Midsomer Murders, which was based on those novels, one more time. (Later episodes were not based on the novels, but they were true to their spirit.)
I’ll probably watch all the other episodes also, because there is no such thing as too much Midsomer.
As an aside, the novels are excellent and well worth a read, especially if you are a mystery buff like me.
Routine Maintenance 0
I recently had all the water cutoffs in my residence replaced because none of them cut off the water any more. But hey! they were all over 30 years old, and stuff wears out. (I had the primary cutoff replaced about a year ago with a nice ball valve for the same reason.)
This applies to blogs and bloggers, also. I just removed “Margaret and Helen” from my blogroll because there’s not been a new post there for over six months (which, by the way, is a darned shame–it was fun to read).
Bloggers, maintain your blogrolls and remove defunct blogs. I can’t count how many times I’ve clicked on a link in a blogroll only to get a 404 or to find that the latest post was in aught-something or other.
Grumble, grumble, grumble.
Stray Thought 0
Looking at posts on “social” media and videos on Youtube does not constitute in any way “research.”
History Matters 0
Americans seem to have short memory spans.
Joe Biden is not to blame for what’s happening in Afghanistan today, regardless of what you might be hearing on your telly vision.
George W. Bush and Dick Cheney started this folly, and theirs is the responsibility and the blame.
They opened the can.
They own the worms.
Jim Wright has more.
Stray Thought 0
I don’t like this new-fangled algebraic chess notation.
Give me the kind I grew up with, darnit.
Grumble grumble grumble.
(I’m trying to get my chess legs back and enjoying playing with someone on a whole nother continent via PMs at LQ. Fortunately for me, he also favors the old style.)
