One year ago today: September 18, 2021, the house in France.
Five years ago today: September 18, 2017,the ‘before’ model.
Nine years ago today: September 18, 2013, I meant Belize!
Random years ago today: September 18, 2020., it’s pseudo-COBOL.
A nice dry overcast day with a breeze, the weather that tricks northerners into moving to Florida. The logic is easy to follow, the 30 odd days of this perfect climate we get per year is in the winter, so that’s a month more than Wisconsan—if you put all the days together. On the stove went biscuits and gravy, and we did not skimp on coffee. By 10:00AM I was heading downtown for some shopping and to be shocked by prices. I was. Chicken has more than doubled, it’s one of my staples. The most expensive item was not food, but bog roll (toilet paper), at $14 for 8 rolls. Of course, that is the best 3-ply Ultra Northern Comfort. There is luxury around here where it counts.
However, the squirrel, the smart one, is too much. I may have to transport him. He’s learned to get on the grain birdfeeder, shown here. Hanging by his hind legs, he munching away at the best food he’ll ever get. He can’t get there from the top or sides, so he is somehow getting high enough to spring up from the ground. I don’t have a camera I can leave for the extended long hours it takes to monitor the yard. I can’t attach much more to the feeder or it becomes unwieldy to fill and clean.
Earlier I crawled under the sink and took out one of the water lines. No more guesswork or measuring. I took the whole piece along and matched things up exactly. It turns out the adapter and whole new lines were only a dollar’s difference in price, so I spent the $17 and got new Sharkbites™, since they are reusable and I know the technology. Suet, for Mrs. Downey, I see that she does not eat the whole brick fast enough for it not to spoil, so, I’m cutting it in half these days. Groceries hit me up $72, around double. I do most of my own basic cooking so I’m probably glad I’m not the fast-food type.
That’s quite an evolution for me, on my own (except traveling) I’m not the restaurant type, where years ago I normally only ate full meals when dining out. At home, it was usually one course of whatever I had on hand. For me that meant a lot of potato and rice dishes. I’m proud to say I’ve since graduated to cooking two items at a time. The Reb made that even more marked for me, as the vegetarian influence is there. It’s my non-meat habits that changed. I now strongly read ingredients where I used to glance. And I don’t shun items just because they have one or two ingredients I don’t recognize. For example, I’m a consumer of sauces and mixes, they are just as good as I make on my own. That includes cakes, muffins, and I’m okay with frozen cookie mixes. Now you know too much.
I see the tipping argument is making the rounds again. My opinion is easy, tipping is not mandatory and generally I only do it when polite, although I will tip in unusual situations. The issue is whether or not tipping should be compulsory and the battle lines are well-drawn. We’ve heard the tales of the frantic but lousy waitress chasing patrons in the parking lot who “forgot” to tip, and the idiot who should not be anywhere near the service industry who thinks it is his right to 20%. What intensifies the matter is places that add the tip onto your bill automatically.
There are a host of tricks. Like calculating the POS tips after taxes are added, or sometime very fine print or even wording the tax as something different. I consider all of that to be trickery. As for places that add the tip without permission, they often have staff with their hands out for more on top of that. I rarely patronize places who would do that, so it’s not a big deal. Whenever I hear of people who thinks tips should be enforced, there is always an ulterior motive. In a related difference of opinion, you will not find me feeling sorry for people shipwrecked on an island once I found out they got their by $250,000 private yacht.
Tommy’s Garage, the TV show. It moves slow enough to do my accounting when it’s on. Today they beat me to a punchline. The fake media reported that the Ukrainians launched an offensive and took back 2,000 square miles. About the size of Polk County, but anyway the joke was about the wisdom of chasing retreating troops deeper into Russia at the beginning of winter.
Claimed monolith on Phobos.
(Moon of Mars, also claimed
to be hollow.)
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No weekend off. There are two leaks on the cold water line that will not seal, but the basic concept is working just fine. Possibly there is some special technique to solder the brass taps to the copper tubing and funny none of the instructions mention it. This will take a little more time and money but the basic concept works fine. Turning on both taps halves the water pressure, but so what, two people won’t really fit in that room unless one is in the shower. I’m of a mind to cut the leaking parts out and replace the entire section. The biggest problem is one of the fittings won’t pull solder up into the heated joint by capillary action like it is supposed to.
The map brought up nearby Puerto Rico, that blister on the foot of America. The island is on welfare and should be abandoned to its own resources. They’ve pumped ten times the emergency aid in there that by now the entire utility system should be in hardened underground conduits and every house built like a bunker. But corruption is so widespread, the local government confiscates any donated emergency supplies and sells them back to companies that volunteer to help after their interminable hurricanes. They replace shacks with shacks and do it all over again.
MSN reports the Webb telescope has found things that baffle scientists. Well, isn’t that precisely what is supposed to happen when you go exploring? Then again, with MSN, a discovery of the century would be between the hotel coupons and below the Amazon ads. The European counterpart of NASA says they will soon launch a re-useable rocket, something America has been doing for twenty or thirty years, depending on how you define rocket. In other space news a Sun flare knocked out radio communication in parts of Africa, tipping us off that that part of the world still uses shortwave. That’s the spectrum that’s like ham radio, except it isn’t for two-way communication.
Space.com reminds us the China still has a functioning rover on the far side of the Moon going on four years. It’s a ho-hum copy of US rovers but contains ground penetrating radar that we had hopes for. It has discovered nothing. A special satellite is required to relay info back from the hidden side. Today in 1977, Voyager 1 snapped the first picture ever of the Earth-Moon system in one frame.
ADDENDUM
Now the Democrats have been caught tinkering with the census. The population count determines the number of seats, so they overcounted Democrats and undercounted Republican states, in every case strongly pro-Trump locations. Biden is claiming the disappearance of the fact-checkers is because he is so honest there is nothing to check.
And in confirmation of what I said decades ago, fraternal twins have different fathers. A DNA test in Brazil confirms finally what I’ve suspected all along. I only wonder why it took so long and why Brazil.
