Well…we’ve continued to do our thing here in the warm southwest of Florida at Seminole Campground. Nothing really much going on and really no Fun Stuff© to write about so I guess I’ll just write about life.

Both of the adults had a filling/crown prep on Wednesday morning…they each had a cavity that needed fixing. Neil’s was underneath an existing crown from 2005 so that needed to come off and get replaced and Connie’s was on a tooth with several fillings already and there wasn’t a way to fix it without a crown. They go back in a couple weeks to get the permanent crowns installed.

Little Red got a flat tire on Tuesday…Neil went out to pick Connie up from Bingo and the low pressure alarm went off as he exited the campground so he turned around, parked, and took Big Red instead. Investigation the next day when it was light revealed a roofing nail stuck in the tread on the right front…he had gotten way over on the road going out to let a dualley pickup go by and must have picked it up there…not surprising as a whole bunch of roofs (and the included nails) got blown off during Irma a month or two back.

We had a nice Thanksgiving day…Neil’s brother Ron texted him early while Connie was off singing with the choir at Mass. Dinner for us was a whole chicken that he brined for about 24 hours in the fridge in a Caribbean jerk flavored brine…then it was spatchcocked…that means you cut the spine out and spread it flat…and grilled. He also made some baked sweet taters and the best corn casserole he’s ever made to go along with it. Don’t know why it was so outstanding…but he did a couple things he normally doesn’t do…duck fat and bacon fat being high on that list along with some corn starch and cream to thicken it, grated cheddar to make it good, cilantro/lime/hot sauce for flavor and some Panko bread crumbs and Parmesana Regianno cheese on the top before being put in the oven to brown the crumbs. The chicken was outstanding…juicy and flavorful…another in the (so far) uninterrupted series of great meals we’ve come up with since our arrival.

Neil’s been biking a lot since we got here…and his legs and cardio are coming along nicely. He hadn’t ridden from our departure in May until September in Coeur d’Alene ID…his first two rides there he was barely able to do 11 miles at about 13 miles an hour at the 2,300 foot elevation. He did a little better in Cedar Key and when we got here to Seminole he started getting out a lot more regularly…5 rides so far. His first here was 12.5 miles and his latest today almost 19 and the speed is back up in the 15-15.5 miles an hour range except for the longer ride today. He’s going to continue and after a few more long ones he’ll be back where he wants to be for the winter.

Neil hasn’t  been down to the eagle nest yet…but will hopefully have time to get down there this week…as of today Harriet and M15 have two eggs incubating that were laid on the 19th and 22nd…a 3 day separation is about normal for a bald eagle and the standard incubation period of 35 days should see hatching on Christmas Eve and Dec 27 assuming all goes well.

Ok…interesting stuff found on the net this week.

Who would have thunk it?

In another who woulda thunk it report…trash in ocean comes from rivers…according to a study discussed at that link…done by the Helmholtz-Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) in Leipzig, Germany reports that most of the trash floating in the ocean…you know, the “trash islands” that the tree huggers like to talk about…comes from rivers. According to the study…10 rivers around the world result in 88%-95% of all the trash floating in the ocean. Now if any of these rivers were located in the USA…Al Gore and the tree hugger crowd would be all over it…but as it turns out 8 of the 10 are in Asia and the other two are in are in Africa…China leads the list with 4 (Hai He, Yellow, Pearl, and Yantze). Russia, India, and Pakistan each have one and the remaining 3…the Mekong in SE Asia and the Nile and Niger in Africa…drain multiple countries. So it’s not the USA that is polluting the oceans as the Blame America First crowd would say but ABTUS (anybody but the US) doing so. Just like the carbon emission problem…it’s China in first place, not the US.

Thanks for pointing that out.

This guy at Wirecutter.com that mapped out his bike ride the day before Thanksgiving clearly has way, way too much free time on his hands…that’s probably only about 7 or 8 miles but he clearly had to carefully plan things out before leaving.

On somewhat of a political note…and what with all the alleged misconduct from either the recent past or 40 years ago we’ve been reading about.

 Seems like the Veep had it right on this one…at least it’s both sides of the political divide that are getting caught up in it.

And on a slightly more political note…actually I guess it’s a “you should read the Constitution” note…a Fox contributor posted this via a tweet yesterday.

And naturally she was immediately attacked over it. ‘Round these parts…we think kneeling for the National Anthem is unpatriotic and should be banned right along with flag burning…but that’s just our opinion. However, the twitterverse is aflame with hatred for this woman and demands by lefties that she be punished for this…apparently liberals only believe in free speech that they support rather than free speech for all. Funny…from my reading of the Constitution it doesn’t really matter what you say…you have a right to say it but if it’s not something that liberals support than it’s not free speech…it’s hate speech, racist speech, or misogynist speech. That ain’t how it works folks…

I don’t know who this dog is…but he looks like a lot of fun.

Things just got serious…

Cyas.