Wow…been a whole month since my last post and I can only blame it on a couple things…life happening, being fairly busy with the aforementioned life happening, and basically no photo opportunities for Neil. So…let’s see what’s been going on.

The biggest life thing is that Connie needs a biopsy. She had annual mammogram and then since she’s got dense boobies they called her back for more imaging…and then they see some sort of calcium things so she’s gotta have a biopsy to see what happens next. No mass visible and she gets one every year so she’s not overly worried yet.

Then there was Neil’s 71st birthday…we went out to Lashley’s Crab House up in Punta Gorda. We had a nice bottle of wine and some Oysters Rockefeller.

We had the annual Elks Conference up in Orlando…Connie had meetings on Friday and Saturday morning so we headed up Thursday afternoon and went to the Hospitality Suites for free dinner and booze both nights. Neil had originally planned on going out to Orlando Wetlands Preserve about an hour east of the Rosen Center in Christmas, Florida but he didn’t feel very good when they woke up so he just stayed in the room instead.

On the home front…we got a nastygram from the HoA complaining that our roof was dirty and needed cleaning. They were right of course and we got that done and also the driveway pavers power washed and sealed and the lanai power washed along with the exterior windows. We had 2 bids…selecting the one that was both a reasonable price and that the vendor seemed professional and reliable. The other one was 2.5 times the price and he and his buddies were obviously amateur good old boys…there’s nothing wrong with being a good old boy of course but overpriced and not professional took them out of the running. Matt and his partner Steph did an excellent job and used their drone to give us some before and after images of the roof. They use a lower pressure spray and some anti mold chemical on everything but the driveway and actually I think they used the chemical on the drive as well in addition to higher pressure. They had a bit of an issue with the sealing…the pavers need to be completely dry with no rain in the forecast for 24 hours and this past week we were in a strange weather pattern with a lot of rain most days on and off instead of the typical summer pattern here of late afternoon showers. They got it done last Friday though…and since you have to not park on it for a couple days while the seal dries and sets we took advantage of our neighbors who are on an Alaska caravan with their RV and not expected back until late August and borrowed their driveway. And as you can see in the before picture the pond out back is pretty low as we’ve not had a lot of rain…and even the post cleaning week of rain only brought the level back up about a foot max.

Before

After

Neil had a checkup with Dr. Warrier…she’s the retina specialist he sees after he needed a little tasering down of a weak spot a few years back. He’s all good to go for another year though.

We’re making progress on the “we have no Elks Lodge” front as well. Turns out that out lodge has some money in the bank but no lodge, another lodge on the north side of the river has no money but a paid for building, and a third lodge south of the river no money but a paid for building as well but declining membership and they’re competing with all of the high end eateries down in Cape Coral. Our lodge management has been looking since last summer but they’ve had a champagne taste and beer budget problem. They lost out on 2 potential places based on cost and too close to a school for an alcohol license and on a third because the plans kept getting rejected. Finally…they admitted to themselves that with all 3 lodges in steady but small or declining membership that merging the 3 lodges made the most sense. This was attempted for 2 of the 3 lodges last summer but both sets of management got into a squabble about which name and number would be kept and it fell apart. So…we’re working on getting a completely new name and number and will become the Central Lee County but until the meetings for approval later this month happen it’s not a done deal yet. So hopefully we’ll have some resolution on that front soon and can move along…Connie will be happy that the Ladies can have Bingo again and I think they’re going to move it to a weekday evening as with our symphony tickets and her chorus Sunday afternoons have been a problem.

On the tech front…Neil’s upgraded all the computers in the house except for his laptop…which just seems wrong because as the computer guy he’s supposed to have the fastest computer in the house and right now his is the slowest. He’s still thinking on what to do…in reality he doesn’t do photo processing on the laptop and has repurposed Connie’s old M1 MacBook Air for the travel computer since it’s the lightest and is more than enough to backup memory cards while on travel. However…since rule number 1 is that the computer guy gets the fastest computer I think he’s gonna end up with a new one anyway and he’ll probably get a loaded one just in case he needs to do some image processing with it. As part of getting the new M4 Max Mac Studio setup for his processing…he’s arranged all the drives so that shifting the Studio Display to a laptop if needed will be a lot easier. 

And on the political front…we predicted months ago…Mr. Trump and Mr. Musk have fallen out with each other. The proximate cause is that Musk trashed the “Big Beautiful Bill” as not actually cutting spending and as actually increasing the debt and deficit. He is completely correct…and the Congress and White House are gaming the system to claim it’s actually doing the opposite of what it does. Musks time as a special government employee was about out anyway…it’s a maximum of 130 days in a calendar year…and his companies have taken a severe economic hit with the DOGE and all the other crap he’s been pulling. And since his now named Ship rocket (which used to be the BFR for Big F***ing Rocket until it was renamed) has now failed 9 out of 9 launches and needs major redesign to beef up the structure which will limit both the completely reusable aspect as well as the payload capacity. I think we can take it to the bank that we’re not going to either Mars or the moon again anytime soon…the former because the BRG is a POS and the latter because while the SLS can get astronauts to lunar orbit there’s no landing or ascent vehicle going to be available anytime soon.

Neil actually got a couple of images for me yesterday…we had a Green Heron earlier in the week but it didn’t stay long enough for a photo. We’ve had a couple of off and on appearances by a pair of female Mallard Ducks but they usually leave before the light gets enough to get a photo. Yesterday we had a couple of Black Bellied Whistling Ducks which we’ve never seen before and there was enough light for him to actually get a few shots. The genders look the same so no idea whether these are male or female…but since they mate for life a male/female pair is the most likely.

Black Bellied Whistling Ducks

If they had been flying you could see the white wing bar on the leading edges of the wings…they’re the only species of whistling duck with the bar. This image is from Wikipedia.

Interesting things found on the net.

Everybody knows that Christopher Columbus “discovered” America even though the Indians already knew it was here and he was lost and looking for the Orient anyway. But back then European ships were pretty small. The smaller model in the image below is of one of Columbus’s ships from 1492 while the larger one is the flagship of the Chinese Admiral Zheng He who lived from 1371-1434. The Chinese had a whole bunch of far larger ships than European navies did at the time.

Over in the Swiss Alps there used to be a village named Blatten south of the capital Bern…emphasis on the used to be. It was famous for the views of the large Birch Glacier on the mountain overlooking the valley. Well…the government figured out that a landslide was likely to happen so they evacuated the entire population…and it was a good thing they did. Here’s a shot of the before and after of the village.

And finally…a little math nerdery. You’ll need a calculator this one so grab your phone and check it out.

Pretty cool, eh?

Cyas.