One year ago today: February 8, 2017, and it was $30 less.
Five years ago today: February 8, 2013, Brit crossword clues.
Nine years ago today: February 8, 2009, the fascinating story of Angelo.
Random years ago today: February 8, 2003, the monastery.
This is one of the newest “T-1” supertankers. I was at the library a few hours and thought to look up the specs. It’s built like any other tanker, only bigger. One word describes the thing, “behemoth”. This photo was one of the first, I believe it is South Korean. You know, one of those countries that can’t defend itself so there are American soldiers doing it at taxpayer expense. I would like to take a voyage on one of these things before I’m gone. The last time I was on the ocean was in the Philippines over thirty years ago.
I think there was another acting career I missed out on. You know when the secret service saves the president’s life, how they hustle him into a nearby SUV? Or when the cops are in a van about to make a move they’ve practiced for months? Well, I could be the guy inside the vehicle that always starts yelling, “Go! Go! Go!” You know, yell it like the people in the car don’t already know what to do. Yeah, I could have done that for a living. I have the aptitude and the job requires decision-making on a scale the average Floridian can only imagine.
Without further explanation, I spent the morning in the courthouse. Now here is where you get to test your character. Most people don’t go to a courtroom because they want to, so the test is simple. You make an assumption what I was there for. See, that was easy, and if you were my family, you would have made up your mind by the time you’d read the tenth word of this paragraph. If you presumed I was there to answer to charges, well, you probably have the wrong blog as well.
I was in the cafeteria, going over some photocopies I’d made of county ordinances. From the hallway, I could see the entrance to the infamous courtroom D. That’s the one where they arraign the druggies. That, and traffic court, are the only two businesses that are always booming in Polk County. What a joke the system has become. Teenagers and little old ladies hauled in. I learned that besides the usual pleas, the accused can opt for a type of drug rehab probation program. Yeah, I’ll bet that works really well. What was the saddest part of all this was the distance between what all the lawyers were doing and the accused, who generally had no idea how the system works. Those who design and work the system undoubtedly do that on purpose. It’s disgusting.
At one point I thought to go sit in the gallery and watch some of the proceedings, but the courtroom was packed. Not one empty seat and another fifteen people standing in the hallway. There was no room for anybody but the accused. From my vantage point, I saw approximately forty people put through that meatgrinder before I left around 10:30AM.
The Ardennes forest.
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The sound wall is in position, and as usual, it was measured wrong. This time I even took the height with a story pole, marking it 3/8” of an inch lower than the ceiling. And it was still a half-inch too long. That makes the third consecutive time I’ve made a similar mistake. It wasn’t supposed to be a bearing wall. It is now. What’s the solution? To hire somebody to drive over and take the measurement for me? This photo shows the wall in place, gee, those are either crooked studs or the camera has a fish-eye lens. Was that another character test?
Yesterday they came back and this morning they were feeding as a family again. Mr. Red, who has learned that the access to the feeder is custom-made for his size or smaller, props on one of the perches and knocks seeds down to Mrs. Red, who seems happy to scoot around on the ground. There are also an indeterminate number of wrens. They don’t eat at the feeder, rather they grab one seed at a time and flit away. And they’ve lost their wariness of using the other side of the feeder when Mr. Red is present. Ah, Nature.
Last Laugh
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