Some Updates

Posted on 2023/09/19 by Gunther

Well…3 weeks since my last post and while I could tell ya nuttin’ has happened there have been a few things. 

We’ve been on the COVID watch for Connie for the past 7 days as several of her friends at the Ladies of Elks came down with it and she had lunch with them the day before they announced they had it so could have been infected. No symptoms so far and all of them were sick within 5 days of exposure so likely she’s just fine. We’ve both had 2 immunizations and a booster but at this point are passing on the new shot since it is basically untested…and having had it twice each anyway with only mild symptoms…for us COVID is basically just another cold.

We’re hading off to the Florida Ladies of Elks confab for a couple of days…at least unless the tropical storm that’s supposed to form right off the coast where we’ll be in Daytona happens but even if it does we’re most likely go anyway. Neil will do a couple of birding trips in the morning assuming the weather holds though. 

We did spend some bucks though…Neil ordered a new bike as his is 13 years old and needs a lot of maintenance work…and given it’s age and construction (aluminum but the paint is pretty much flaking off at this point but it’s a cosmetic issue more than a strength one) he decided to upgrade. Ordered a Giant Defy Advanced model…and it’s got all the goodies, full carbon frame and fork, disk brakes, electronic shifting, all the brake hydraulic lines and shifting stuff is internal to the bike tubes…although he did pass on the more expensive model with carbon wheel rims since he doesn’t race…but it still wasn’t cheap. But it’s probably the last one he’ll need until he gets old and has to have a recumbent model old people bike. 

And we ordered a new stove…a KitchenAid induction model. He’s always preferred gas for cooking as it’s just quicker to heat up and cool down and when you turn down the gas the heat stops as opposed to electric where it is still hot and continues to do whatever it was doing before. Induction basically uses magnetic induction to heat the pot directly so the stovetop itself stays cool and if you turn the heat down the heat production stops right away…so it’s got the advantages of both gas and electric stoves (the flat glass no drip pan design that electrics have is soooo much easier to keep clean). It cost a lot…but actually less than his new bike.

And since induction only works with magnetic pans…all of our existing cookware which is aluminum Calphalon needs to go but we got a set of All-Clad that are aluminum sides and bottom but with a stainless steel magnetic plate bonded to the bottom so they work inductively. The mostly aluminum construction keeps them light and this set is all non stick so the chief cook and bottlewasher ‘round here (Neil) is happy with them.

We’ve started seeing a few birds and the gators out back the past week or two…the weather is starting to get a little cooler although it’s still hot and humid…

Other than that…not much new. Her choral group started up again last week, we have this season’s tickets to the symphony up in Sarasota, we continue to have date night and get up early on bike days so he’s back before it gets really brutal outside.

She did get a nice rainbow pic with her phone last night at chorus practice.

Rainbow2

Lessee what else is in the news.

Oh yeah, the UAW is on strike against the car companies as I’m sure you are aware…and their demands are ridiculous…they want a 40% raise, a COLA on top of that, a fixed 32 hour work week for 40 hours of pay, more profit sharing, a restoration of the old defined benefit pension plan…and even a new better pension plan for already retired auto workers. To get these demands…they’ve struck one plant at each of the big 3 US makers and will strike at some more plants this Friday. I wonder what they’ll do when the companies shut down a lot of other plants and lock the workers out due to lack of parts? I realize they want more money and it’s hard to gripe about people wanting to get pay raises…but they’re already pretty darn well paid for a mostly low skilled manufacturing job…but the union is essentially pricing US auto plants out of business compared to foreign ones…realistically the quality of the imports is better (we know, we looked at cars for Neil a couple years back) and the price is better. Like many other industries…labor costs are getting out of control and this is why a lot of companies have moved a lot of production elsewhere. We see a bunch of whining from the unions and others about buying imported things…but until John Q Public is ready to pay higher prices for exclusively US made goods the world economy is going to continue to move production to lower cost places.

An the Democrats are all up in arms over the impeachment investigation into the President…the Speaker instigated the investigation (not an actual impeachment yet) to gather facts as he said but really he did it on his own without a vote in the House because he wasn’t sure he had the votes to pass it. Impeachment…although it talks about high crimes and misdemeanors…is really a political act, not a judicial one and while we think this is going nowhere…I don’t think the House will have enough votes to impeach unless some smoking gun is found against the President during the investigation and he’s going to be acquitted in the Senate just like the last 2 impeachments were because his party controls the Senate. The calls on the other side to impeach SCOTUS justices likewise aren’t going anywhere because they’re again…political acts because the other side doesn’t like the decisions made recently. Realistically…although one would not know it from the news…Justice Thomas probably erred in not reporting his various vacation trips…but then justices travel in the higher social circles in DC and they all have rich friends…including the liberal ones…and a realistic, actually non partisan look at all of the justices would reveal embarrassing things about all of their behavior. But as I said impeachment is a political act and both sides are just flapping their gums for votes.

I continue to wish that neither the President or his likely opponent were on the ballot next year…one is senile and doesn’t remember where he is day to day and keeps making statements that are patently untrue (I was at 9/11 ground zero the day after it happened is the latest one) and the other is losing it as well (yesterday he demanded that the Republicans in the House invoke the 25th amendment to remove the President despite them not being the ones who can invoke it and stating that he would not seek reelection in 2028 if he wins next year despite the Constitution clearly prohibiting him from doing so). And the former President will likely be convicted of at least some of the crimes he’s charged with (although to be honest is is actually impossible for him to get a fair trial on the facts as 100% of the people in America have already made up their minds about the man and would vote innocent or guilty sans any facts or evidence)…and the current President (although so far no clear and convincing evidence has been found they White House is doing an awful lot to hide from the House investigation) has a lot of smoke and investigating to see if there’s evidence of a fire seems warranted to me but I wish it could be an impartial one instead of a partisan one but that’s politics today.

And we have a new dress code in the Senate now…they no longer need to wear a suit and tie (men) and equivalent (women)…this was instituted essentially so that Senator Fetterman can wear his trademark shorts and hoodie onto the Senate floor…to which several Republican women said they would wear a bikini to the floor. I’m not sure what I really think about this…there’s certainly some justification in the idea to keep the formality and decorum but then again business casual is a thing so how far should their dress code go? Seems to me that if we’re going to have dress codes for school or what not then having one for government is just as good a thing…but even Neil would draw the line at shorts and a hoodie on the Senate floor…or a bikini…or the jeans, cowboy boots, and a Stetson that one of the Republicans wore yesterday although the latter comes closest to acceptable in his view.

I guess you saw the news about the prisoner swap with Iran yesterday…and while the US citizens were essentially hostages and held illegally…releasing $6 Billion in sanctioned funds to Iran as part of it sounds an awful lot like paying a ransom and negotiating with terrorists to me…and I’m quite sure that if the same thing had happened when the former President was in office the Democrats would have been screaming about it just as loudly as the Republicans are screaming about it today…but as I said…politics.

I guess you also saw about the “‘lost’ F-35 jet on Sunday…and Neil is really curious about what happened. It’s been advertised as a “mishap” by the Pentagon with zippo supporting details…but the pilot put the plane on autopilot and ejected right outside his intended landing airbase in Charleston SC after a training mission…and then the plane flew another 100 miles or so before crashing into a field. Now Neil’s not an aviator…but generally those guys tend to remain with the aircraft and do their best to save it and themselves and only eject as a last resort just before it crashes…and in most cases the news articles have information about an engine failure or whatever that caused the crash and ejection…so just saying “mishap” with no other information seems quite odd to him. If the plane was still in flyable condition which it obviously was until it ran out of gas and crashed…why didn’t he just land at his destination airbase which was about 2 miles or so from where he landed after ejecting? He’s really hoping we’ll find out what actually happened. He’s also shaking his head at the announcement one of the nutcase right wingers (can’t remember if it was Taylor Green or Bobert) who wanted to know how we could possibly not find a stealth aircraft on radar because don’t they have tracking devices on them? Now granted…the F-35 is an overpriced, under performing, not combat worthy pile of junk because of the whole design philosophy of making a single do everything for every service aircraft despite each service needing different things…but ejecting out of what appears to be a perfectly flyable aircraft seems…as I said…odd. The plane was eventually found about 100 miles north of the ejection location after it crashed into a field.

The pols in DC are also flapping their gums about the terrible impact Senator Tuberville’s hold on promotions is causing…and both sides of the debate are pretty much ignoring the facts of (a) what he’s doing, (b) why he’s doing it, and (c) what can be done about it. In case you haven’t been following it the short version is…the Pentagon is providing additional time off with pay and travel expenses for service members to travel for abortion related medical care if the state they’re in has restrictions. The problem with this…at least for Senator Tuberville…is that the Hyde Act outlaws spending federal money on abortion absent a threat to the life of the mother…so arguably this spending is illegal regardless of one’s position pro or con on abortion itself. His response is not blocking promotions…it is merely blocking blanket promote everybody the Pentagon has offered up for promotion at once without a floor vote. There’s nothing…zero…preventing the Senate Majority Leader (Senator Schumer) from calling an individual vote for any or all of the held up promotions…and realistically they’re all senior level generals and admirals. The press (and Democrats of course) are all over the incredibly dangerous reduction in military readiness…despite the fact that all of the generals and admirals who’ve retired from senior positions have been replaced in an acting status by the person who is being held up in the Senate. Those people are…in their acting capacity…making decisions and keeping the ball rolling…and while it is having a slight impact on the families of the affected officers…readiness has not really been affected and impact on families is no more or less than the impact on families from unscheduled deployments or whatever that goes on…all…the…time. But again…politics.

Interesting things found on the net.

Starbucks

This is why we use the grocery pickup thing from WalMart now.

WalMartCheckout

Autocorrect2

FiveMinutes

BanSoberDrivers

And there was a terrible tragedy down here in FL last week…a pack of wild dogs viciously attacked one of our local alligators.

DogPackAttacksAlligator

Salad

And finally…

WalkDownTheAisle

Cyas.

Posted in Homebody, Photography, Reality Based Blogging, Ya Can't Fix Stupid | 2 Comments

Once Again…We Have Survived The Hurricanpocalypse

Posted on 2023/08/30 by Gunther

Yeah…according to the news the past couple of days…FL was in for…”a catastrophic storm”…”a once in a lifetime storm”…”an unprecedented 15 feet of storm surge”…and assorted other hype and click generating headlines.

Tropical storm Idalia which formed down off the coast of Yucatan and turned into a hurricane as it moved due north west of the end of Cuba and Key West…and passed North Fort Myers about 125 miles out in the Gulf…eventually made landfall up northwest of Cedar Key near Fish Creek up in the Big Bend area…it’s southeast of Tallahassee about 40 miles an in a pretty unpopulated area…and while there was some storm surge, winds at cat 3 hurricane level and localized flooding…it doesn’t appear nearly as bad as Ina was last year down in the Naples/Fort Myers area…and in fact here in North Fort Myers it was pretty much a nothing burger…we’ve had regular old summer thunderstorms with more rain, wind, and lightning than we had yesterday. As I type this it’s still overcast and some drizzling off and on but really…despite whatever sensationalized news reports you see about the devastation down in FL…it’s really a non issue…at least where we are, can’t say about up near landfall.

The storm will proceed up through GA and across Savannah and Charleston as a Tropical Storm as of the time I’m typing this then out to sea, veer a bit to the ESE, then back to NE and out into the Atlantic to die…looks like it may pass near Bermuda but only as a storm at that point.

So…don’t panic…and really I wish that the state, county, city, and local news media would quit trying to overhype storms. Yes…sometimes it’s gonna be bad and sometimes people are going to need to really evacuate and there will be damage…but the hype machine has been going on for years at fever pitch intensity and people just eventually tune the warnings out…that’s a big reason why so many people did not leave Fort Myers Beach and the barrier islands last year during Ina which was a much worse storm and hit a pretty heavily populated area.

Let’s see…what else is in the news…unfortunately beyond the normal political hate and discontent not really much going on. We did get a letter today from the Saint Vincent de Paul Society asking us to donate to the relief efforts in the PRC after their flooding…but again…they had a tropical storm less intense than just went past here…and while it did rain…it’s the PRC and as far as we are concerned that whole state sliding into the Pacific can’t come soon enough.

College football starts up this weekend with our fave the Crimson Tide playing at home against Middle Tennessee…they play Texas (who will be in the SEC in 2025) the next week then their SEC schedule starts up. Once again…the Tide and LSU are picked to win the west and Georgia to win the east…and after this year there’s gonna be a whole bunch of changes in the sport. First up is the beginning of the 12 team playoff which will be way better than the 4 we have now…previously there was some argument as to whether #5 might actually be better than #4 and depending on strength of schedule and who you lose to that’s a valid argument…but with the major conference champs and a bunch of at large berths…I’m pretty sure that the top 12 will really have all the best teams…and while there will be similar arguments that #13 is better than #12…the thinking that they’re also better than #1-#4 is pretty unlikely. In addition…with the expansion of the major conferences and the death of the Pac 12…the SEC will no longer have an east and west division…each team will play 8 opponents annually and 2 or 3 of them (can’t remember) will be every year as traditional rivals…for the Tide it will be Auburn and Tennessee…and the remaining games will cycle through the rest of the conference…then the two best teams will meet in the championship game instead of the east and west champs. That will be an improvement because in some years the championship game was a mismatch between an undefeated division champ and a 2 or 3 loss team from the other division.

That’s about it…so I’ll go ahead and post this so ya’ll will know we survived.

One interesting thing from the net though…

WhenIWasTwo

Well…let’s make it two…especially as I’ve got this one of a fierce dog pack attacking a gator down here in the Sunshine State.

DogPackAttacksAlligator

Cyas.

Posted in Homebody, Reality Based Blogging, Ya Can't Fix Stupid | 2 Comments

You Just Can’t Believe A Single Thing You See On The News Any More

Posted on 2023/08/23 by Gunther

At least that’s the way it seems to me.

Used to be…journalists were just that…journalists. They told you the facts which were generally actually the true facts…and dabbled not at all to opinion/viewpoint…except maybe an occasional commentary at the end of the news clearly identified as commentary and not news.

Nope…not any longer…today just about every media outlet has decided to become the news instead of trying to report the news…and it’s getting harder and harder to figure out from the various sources the actual facts and form your own opinion.

Sorry…but some of this is going to sound political…but in reality it’s not…so if you want to close the browser window and wait on the next more normal for this space post that will be just fine and dandy.

First up…the whole situation revolving around both our former President and our current President.

Let me say up front…that we’re not supporters of the former in his reelection attempt and would never vote for him…he’s a complete moron and narcissist and really just needs to go away. However…the current President while running doesn’t deserve to be reelected either…any fool can see from his tripping over things, falling off his bicycle, constant repetition of obviously untrue stories from his past, and his rambling…that he’s declining both mentally and physically…and he needs to step aside as well. The former really needs to step aside too…both of them should recognize that the needs of the country overcome their want to be President. Frankly…the only worst person to consider for the job than those two is the current Vice President who has also clearly demonstrated her lack of ability to do pretty much any job…it’s time for both parties to find new blood…hopefully closer to the center and believing that compromise rather than being a dirty word is the key to getting some of what you want while also giving the other guy something of what he wants and with neither of you getting everything you want.

I took out a bunch of stuff here about the ongoing legal cases…we’ve always thought that there were some issues with the charges and evidence as seen in the media. DAs always say they have ironclad evidence…that’s their job. But like some congressman claiming they have ironclad evidence of Russian collusion…and like some losing politicians saying they have ironclad evidence of election fraud, and like some defense attorneys saying they have ironclad evidence their client is innocent…it ain’t necessarily so.

The classified documents case seems the easiest one to get an actual conviction on. All of the others the defense can make a case for contesting an election’s outcome rather than trying to overturn the election illegally…there’s a lot of difference between “find me 11,000 votes” and “find some fraudulent ballots to get me 11,000 votes”. But the biggest problems are that finding an unbiased jury of his peers will be essentially impossible since just about everybody has already made up their mind one way or the other and that some of the evidence may not be so ironclad once they finally get to a trial. 

Let’s see…what other idiocy do we have in the media today.

I saw an article this week where the questioner asked Mike Pence about the difference between the 2002 ejection from Congress after being convicted on corruption charges of James Traficant and whether or not a convicted FP in any of his trials should also not be allowed to be President. His response was that the voters got to decide that…for which the article roundly condemned him for this double standard. The difference…as noted in the article but not in the headline…was that Mr. Traficant was convicted of corruption charges as a serving Congressman and therefore ejected…and that the FP hasn’t been convicted of anything. Mr. Traficant could have run for election to Congress (assuming he was out of jail) and if elected whether he should have been seated would get a vote…and since ejection is essentially the same outcome as impeachment and impeachment requires something be done while in office I think it unlikely he would have not been seated if he then won reelection. Marion Barry…the former mayor of DC…was reelected and served as mayor despite his conviction and prison sentence in between his terms office on drug charges…in a Democratic stronghold like DC it’s obvious he was not going to be kicked off the ballot or help ineligible to serve because his crimes were not while he was in office…and I think that’s fair. Now to be honest…while the courts as noted above have not specifically said that an impeachment/trial were a judicial proceeding and I have no idea how they would rule on it…as a practical matter impeachment is mostly a political thing at this point and if the House were to turn the other way and the FP became the President againI have no doubt that he would be summarily impeached by the House without any “high crime or misdemeanors” being involved…he would be impeached merely because it says R behind his name and the Speaker of the House would have D behind his/her name. Frankly…I’m surprised that the R house hasn’t voted to impeach the current President…but that’s probably because they realize it’s going nowhere in the Senate just like the last 3 Presidential impeachments did.

You’ve probably seen all the handwringing from the White House and SecDef about Senator Tuberville’s hold on military promotions and how this is causing severe and ongoing problems with national security. I asked Neil about it…and he told me that it’s all a bunch of crap for numerous reasons. First up…the “unconfirmed nominees” to new top leadership in several services and at the Joint Chiefs…have already been serving as a high level deputy to the former leader and are now serving as “acting” heads…so management and leadership of the armed forces is not in question and the top leader of any of our military branches mostly worries about policy and budget and where is the service going rather than day to day management of military actions…that’s just the way the chain of command works. Second…the Senator is *not* holding up *all* promotions…he’s merely placing a hold on approval of whole slates of promotions simultaneously by what’s called “unanimous consent” and that he will *not* hold up any singular nomination that the Democratic leadership in the Senate brings to the floor…they’re free to do that and the nomination would be approved and the current “acting” leader would become the “Senate confirmed leader”…whoopee. Senator Schumer says that it’s the Republican leadership’s job to convince Senator Tuberville to release his hold…and the hold on unanimous consent has been used numerous times in the past by both parties for military promotions and assorted other unanimous consent bills, resolutions, and what have you. Senator McConnell has said…go ahead Mr. Schumer…schedule the votes on the floor. So…despite what you read in the media…this situation is not atypical…and is both another senseless political pissing contest and is not materially affecting military readiness or national security. Senator Sinema is actively trying to persuade both sides to come to some sort of compromise and is being roundly criticized in the media and by the Democrats for doing so…and again…she’s trying to do her job and get the political pissing contest set aside.

There’s an article this morning with the progressive mayor of Los Angeles decrying the sending of busing migrants from Texas to CA as “beyond politics…it’s evil” during the ongoing “unprecedented storm” in the state…that storm would be the tropical depression Hilary which if had come to Florida would have been a nothing burger…down here nothing would have closed, there would be no toilet paper and milk shortages, and there would be no panic. Yes…it’s a tropical storm…and yes that doesn’t happen much in estate…but come on people…it’s a nothing burger. And since both CA and LA (the bad one, not the good one known as Lower Alabama) have declared themselves to be sanctuaries for illegal immigrants…Texas is just trying to help them be a sanctuary. While I don’t completely agree with their decision to move migrants to blue locations…I can certainly see their point since the federal government and Congress seem completely uninterested in stemming the flow of criminal illegal immigrants flooding across the border…and this whole “undocumented persons” relabeling is just more political hogwash.

In the “I really don’t understand this” category…back on August 9 a small plane carrying the pilot and a hunter crashed into a narrow ravine in Denali National Park…there’s a picture of the scene
here. Now I’ll grant you that’s a narrow ravine…but according to the article rangers have repelled down to the aircraft more than once…and have determined that both are dead. However…they’ve also decided that recovery of the bodies is too hard…even though they down by the aircraft it’s flat enough to walk around and verify death…since they would be subject to “falling rocks” while recovering the bodies and it needs to wait until the river flow goes down or winter freezes the river before trying to recover the bodies. They decided it would be too hard to recover the wreckage with the bodies inside at this time…but I really don’t understand how if they’re standing next to the aircraft getting the bodies (or parts of them possibly) out, putting them into body bags, and pulling them to the top the same way the rangers standing next to the plane to verify death got back out…several times.

Apparently the Ukrainians have attacked and destroyed a Russian S-400 surface to air missile system in Crimea (that’s their most advanced one and the same as that which resulted in the Turkish government getting kicked out of the F-35 program)…they even provided a video of the thing blowing up
here…but I’m sure the Russians will announce later on that nothing of the sort happened and it must be one of those fake AI created videos. And some fellow from NATO said over the weekend that Ukraine would have to negotiate soon with the Russians and would have to give up territory to get peace. The Ukrainian president (can’t remember how to spell the name and too lazy to go look it up) said they would gladly swap the Russian city of Belgorod for NATO membership…and that Ukraine and only Ukraine would decide when and if negotiations would take place and that no Ukrainian territory would be ceded to the Russians. The Ukrainians also blew up a Russian Tu-22 strategic bomber (they’re being used in a conventional role to launch missiles against mostly civilian targets). The interesting part is that it was blown up by a short range helicopter like drone 400 miles from the border…so hmmmm…seems the Ukrainians have infiltrated some special forces across the border to give the Russians a taste of their own medicine. Naturally…the Russians have claimed that this is a completely unauthorized an overreaction escalation of the war they started.

Speaking of the former President…how in the world did Melania not file for divorce on Jan 21, 2021? Enquiring minds want to know.


Here’s an article…which claims that the Chinese have increased their antisubmarine warfare capabilities and that the US submarine force will be required to use jammers and noise makers to confuse the Chinese should we ever get into a shooting war with them in the South and East China seas due to their surveillance systems and the “capable low frequency active sonars” on new Chinese corvettes. I asked Neil…and while he’s been out of the submarine biz since the mid 1990s…physics hasn’t really changed and current US submarines are essentially quieter than background noise…and while the shallower waters and smaller overall area compared to say the Pacific Ocean do present somewhat of a more difficult problem…we’re still talking about areas that are hundreds of miles in size and with depths averaging around 1000 feet or 2500 feet depending on whether it’s the East or South China Sea. The cited surveillance systems are really low frequency detection systems…that’s what gives them longer detection capability…and because of that none of them really localize a submarine…they tell you “there’s one that direction and the center of the ellipse it was in 3 hours ago is (for example_ 200 miles away…but the ellipse might be 40 miles wide and 150 miles long so it’s really not much of a help other than where generally to send your ASW forces to look for it. The “low frequency active sonars”…well, they’re better than the older ones but at best they’re a generation behind what US ASW forces have and one of the drawbacks of an active sonar is that the submarine can hear it at least twice the range at which it can possibly detect the submarine…and the relatively shallower water (compared to open ocean) and assorted shoal areas make reverberation a much bigger problem and have a pretty big impact on active sonar performance. Physics hasn’t changed in the past 30ish years…and while software algorithms have improved…physics is always going to win. So…yes, it would be more challenging to fight the Chinese with submarines in those seas than it would be out in the central Pacific…but it’s certainly not the bugaboo the article claims it is…but then the primary purpose of articles like these is to influence Congress to buy more of the newest submarines I guess. As to using noisemakers or jammers…yeah, a submarine would use a jammer to decoy an enemy weapon after it was launched while going the other direction…generally the way submarines keep from getting killed by a torpedo is to use their speed to stay away from it until it runs out of gas. And conceivably one could use a mobile submarine simulator (basically what submarines practice shooting exercise torpedoes against in peacetime) to say have it approach an enemy fleet from the north to attract attention while the submarine itself sneaks in from the southeast…every one of those that a submarine carries decreases the amount of actual weapons it can carry by one…and the relatively short running time of those simulators and the distance it needs to be launched from where the submarine actually wants to approach for a real weapons launch…make it a hard thing for a single submarine to carry out such an attack…and coordinated Wolfpack submarine operations have not generally been something the US forces use and if they had been brought back into vogue one would have seen articles about it in the media or Navy related publications. Frankly…I would think that in the vast majority of situations based on Neil’s admittedly out of date knowledge a US submarine would get to the torpedo or missile launch point undetected and unless there was an ASW asset right in the area would generally either kill the enemy ship or launch the land attack missiles…and then would immediately head away from the launch point…and after an hour or so the circle of probable positions would be hundreds of square miles increasing every hour. Would we lose some submarines in such a shooting war…we probably would but at this point I don’t see how we would still not have the advantage in submarine warfare. Carriers might be a little more susceptible to attack by their ship killer ballistic missiles…but carrier task forces do practice operating without using radio, radar, or other electronic emissions and that does make targeting more difficult…but they’re an easier target to find and localize than a submarine that one can’t see or hear from a satellite.

Finally…there’s this an article this morning about the FedEx driver who was shot at in Mississippi more than 18 months ago. The judge declared a mistrial in the case against the two men who shot at him last week because of prosecutorial/police misconduct…and the case will be re-tried. However…the driver in question has been off work at full salary for in excess of 18 months because of ‘trauma’ and has been receiving FedEx paid for therapy. The therapist pronounced him fit to return to work…his response was that “nobody but me can decide when I can go back to work” and he demanded that FedEx provide him a work from home position at his same salary. FedEx doesn’t have these and said “you can come back to work full time as a driver…or you can take this part time warehouse only position”. He declined to do either so FedEx provided him paperwork saying he was terminated (i.e., quit) because he failed to show up for work. He filed a $5 million suit against them for discrimination…which the judge dismissed…so now he’s filling a $10 million suit. I sympathize with the guy for getting shot at…and think the perps will eventually get convicted and imprisoned…but come on…after 18 months of not working and getting full pay and with a therapist that medically (and hence legally and morally as well in my opinion) clearing him to go back to work…to not show up for the job you have and refuse a job that doesn’t require you to relive the trauma of delivering packages…at this point you’re not a victim, you’re a malingerer looking for a payday.

Interesting things found on the net.

UkeImYourFather

Work

FrightenTheKids

And now you know just *why* Dr. Spock had that weird hand sign.SpockSuperGlue

Irony…

Irony

HowManyWork

PumpGasBehindPlate

And finally…

SisterMaria

Cyas.

Posted in Reality Based Blogging, Ya Can't Fix Stupid | Leave a comment

A Few More From Our Trip To The UK

Posted on 2023/08/18 by Gunther

Neil forgot to go through the photos he had imported from both of their iPhones in the last post and remembered yesterday…so he processed and exported me a few new shots from the UK as well as the first couple of birds we’ve seen out back at the pond in a couple of months.

Weather here has been…well, the 5th level of hell isn’t too bad of a description…it’s been into 90s every day along with high humidity and pretty much no wind with feels like temps in the 103-110 range and the overnight lows get all the way down to 82. So…he’s getting out for his bike ride early between 0730 and 0800 as much as possible so he’s back before it really starts to be terrible.

Not really much new here…he sent his Nikon Z8 off for a couple of recalls…there was an issue with lenses not locking into place and another one with the strap lugs. He wasn’t having the first issue and doesn’t use the strap lugs as he uses a different strap that connects to either the body or the lens foot if he’s got one of his telephoto lenses mounted…but he sent it off anyway and 14 days door to door and it was back. The actual percentage of affected models is pretty small…2% or 3%…but Nikon is preemptively replacing the affected parts on every Z8 that was shipped in the first month or so and that’s a lot of bodies to repair…and the fix has been retrofitted into the manufacturing process so all is well. He also ordered himself a new 180-600 mm telephoto zoom lens…because you can always use a longer focal length for wildlife…the nice thing about this lens is that the zoom mechanism is internal and it’s unlike most zoom lenses in that it doesn’t get longer as you go to a longer focal length. It’s a bit heavier than his other zoom and prime telephotos…but longer reach than either of them so he’ll be happy. 

Other than that…pretty much nothing is going in. Connie’s been really busy with Ladies of Elks stuff this week but next week she’s going to figure out when we can go visit the kids and grandson Alex…probably in September after her meeting up in Daytona.

Anyway…here’s what we got for ya.

Another one of those fine roads we went down.

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We had afternoon tea at this hotel…really fancy place we thought and the price reflected that.

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And they got a shot of themselves out on the patio.

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But then we discovered it was not quite as exclusive a place as we thought.

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Over in Skipton we spotted these canal boats as we walked from our hotel over to the Cock and Bottle where we ate a couple of times.

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Speed limit here…50 miles per hour…nuts we say.

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This is the house that is the home and practice of Doctor Sigfreid Farnham and his fellow vets in her All Creatures Great and Small show from the BBC…we would have walked over and gotten some better shots but there were no parking places. The supposedly next door pub in the show is actually in a completely different village 30 miles away.

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This was posted in the pub we ate at in Oxford…both Neil and Connie appreciate the sentiment of Andre.

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Pano with the iPhone…it’s actually a straight road and hedge but those bushes have to be315 or 16 feet tall plus the height above the road…strangest hedgerow we’ve ever seen. 

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This is one of the major roads between towns in the. Yorkshire Dales area…nice scenery but they really don’t believe in widening or smoothing out the curves in their roads.

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Connie having a nip off her favorite whiskey…pretty much the only one she’ll drink. This is a really, really, really, like the smokiest tasting whiskey you will ever find…it’s Scotch and the barley is roasted over a peat fire after it’s malted and the smoke flavor really carries through into the final product. Neil likes it OK…but when he does drink Scotch he prefers a little less of the smoke flavor. Most Scotch whiskeys have a smoke flavor…and while Irish whisky has the reputation of being smooth…it’s actually only smooth for those distilled in the west part of the country…those from the east side (that is, the side next to Scotland) are smoky and when you order Irish you either order by brand or by smoke/smooth.

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Another one of those really strange showers.

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A pano shot of the orchestra at the Bath Abbey for the first concert she sang.

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Like Alaskans…the British never throw anything away and they made themselves some men’s loo appliances out of old beer kegs.

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This massive church is actually just a chapel inside Windsor Castle named the St. George Chapel…it probably seats 1,000 people or more and is where the late Queen is buried. It is also sinking on the far side and probably in another 200 years they’ll have to move the graves unless they figure out how to stop it from sinking.

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Our first bird of the summer in quite awhile…an Osprey.

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And a male Little Blue Heron in breeding plumage…apparently he got a late start on finding himself a lady friend or they breed both in the spring and at other times.

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Interesting things found on the net.

Dwarf kingfisher…a South Pacific variety that’s smaller than the ones we have here in the US…

DwarfKingfisher

More math nerdery.

FriedmanNumbers

ShakespearePencils

Cavities

BearsLikeOptions

And finally…

FindingWater

Cyas.

Posted in Homebody, Photography, Travel, WIldlife | 2 Comments

Yorkshire Dales

Posted on 2023/08/03 by Gunther

Ok…the last part of our trip we are over in the Yorkshire Dales National Park area and stayed in the town of Skipton…well, to be scrupulously correct we did spend 2 nights in Oxford but (a) we were pretty much down hard with the bronchitis by that point and (b) it poured rain just about the whole time we were there so other than going out to dinner the first night we never left the hotel. We were originally going to do the walking tour and also have a drink at the Morse Bar which is the location where the author of the Inspector Morse novels sat and wrote all of his books…but sick/rain pretty much cancelled everything. After Oxford we drove back to London, dropped the car off at Heathrow Hertz and flew back…landing back in Miami about 1700 and then drove home so it was like 0200 the next morning body time by the time we went to bed.

As I said in my last post…there are a lot of good things about the roads and driving around in the UK…nice standard speed limits and roundabouts instead of traffic lights for the most part. A lot of Americans don’t like roundabouts but that’s mostly because they’re not used to them…but in reality they’re way more efficient than lights until the traffic load gets pretty heavy and at that point some of the roundabouts at major road intersections also have traffic lights installed but mostly they’re absent and we’ve always found roundabouts to be a brilliant idea.

On the other hand…their ability to design a proper shower door is…extremely lacking and the primary one we found is impossible to use without flooding the floor. First off…most of them have a half dozen or more controls and figuring out which ones worth together how without instructions is a bit awkward the first time…and second off no two shower setups have any sort of standard control layout. Second…instead of a door that shuts or a shower curtain that one pulls around…most of them have this half door thing.

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They’re terrible…just terrible.

Anyway…on to photos around the Dales…you’ll notice a lot of gray skies and rain clouds…but hey, it’s England so whaddya expect?

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Connie took this at one of the places we stopped at…the fellow in the food truck there said that in All Creatures Great and Small season III (which hasn’t made it to this side of the pond yet) there were some scenes filmed in this barn…and one of the stars and his lady friend in the series had a picnic just in the green area past these sheep alongside the brook above.

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An old train trestle.

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These striped cows are a breed known in the UK as belties.

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This is Janet Foss…that means waterfall…just a few hundred yards from where the shots above were taken…it’s a bit upstream on the brook with the sheep above.

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Middleham Castle…favorite residence of Richard III…he’s the one whose grave they found a few years ago under a parking lot. Close. Up of some of the construction.

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And yes…it’s got a moat so it’s a real castle.

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And a statue of old Richard himself.

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Another nice waterfall we visited…although the flow is kinda minimal as despite the rain the days we were there the area has been in a drought for a bit.

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And our last castle ruin…although again…no moat so is it *really* actually a castle? Neil thinks not, but it was up on a hill so it’s at least a bit defensible I guess.

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So…over all how did we like our trip? It was pretty decent even though the bronchitis and rain had us skipping some of our planned activities but that’s the way it is I guess. He got used to the wrong side of the road and wrong side of the car a lot quicker than on our trip to Ireland back in the RVing days…and this time on return to the US driving normally did not seem strange for the first day or so like it did that time…by the time we got out of the Marriott where we left the car at CheapAirportParking.com he was back to normal. One thing we did learn though…we ain’t spring chickens any more so if we’re flying back from over there again and lose the 5 hours making it a really long day…and if we fly out of Miami we’ll stay overnight in Miami before driving home…we wuz really wiped out by the time we got home.

After getting home Saturday…we went to the Urgent Care clinic on Monday and got some drugs for the bronchitis that I already talked about and essentially spent the next 2 weeks (Connie) and 3 weeks (Neil) finishing getting over it. As I write this on Aug 3 they’re finally pretty much back to normal…thank goodness for that because they were getting really, really tired of it.

Interesting things found on the net.

BeautyBeholder

HowManyWives

Equal opportunity gender ones here…

HusbandsAreBest

ToiletSeatUp

And finally…

Steak

Cyas.

Posted in Photography, Travel | Leave a comment

Lakes District

Posted on 2023/07/27 by Gunther

Monday morning after the choral tour was over we packed up, checked out of the Novotel London West, and caught the tube out to Heathrow to pick up our rental car which turned out to be a VW Polo…a model we had never seen before, and in contrast to our last rental car over in the UK this one was petrol (gas) instead of diesel powered. Essentially a small 4 door hatchback…they offered us a larger one for the same price (or maybe more, we didn’t ask) but knowing the likely roads we would see we declined since we wanted as small as we could get. Once we got out of the Hertz location at the airport we made a couple of errant turns due to a combination of the GPS app we were using…Navmii…which is adequate but not as good as either our Garmin app that we didn’t have UK maps for or Apple Maps…which required phone signal to work and since we were in cellular of mode…long story there…so we just used Navmii like we did in Ireland some years back. Combined with the less than stellar navigation ability (the app tended to lag behind real time where you actually were and also seemed to have it’s own definition on what was a turn…sometimes there was just a cure in the road where what was obviously a driveway went off and it called it a turn…then later on you would get to what was obviously a road junction and it would not tell you which way to go other than looking at where the purple line in the app went sans any voice or other directions) was Neil getting refamiliarized with (a) being on the wrong side of the road…it only took him 2 or 3 days to get used to that again…and (b) being on the wrong side of the car while driving…again he got used to this and by the middle of the second week with the car it almost seemed normal to him. Anyways…we headed north towards Keswick and the Rickerby Inn B&B which was to be our home for 4 days. This essentially headed us the M1 which is like I-95, the main north/south freeway…it rained most of the way up but then it rained most days while we were there anyway so that was situation normal I guess. 

Cellular woes…we actually tried to have cellular service but both of the attempts that Neil tried failed miserably. First up was this company named GiffGaff which send you a SIM to plug into your phones and then you would activate it with a plan…we were going to activate the 20 GB plan for about 20 bucks and that would have us both a UK phone number so we could text back and forth as well as data so we coulda used Apple Maps for better navigation. We got the  SIMs in the mail and Neil tried to activate them by following their instructions to go to the company website…and it turned out that their website was basically broken. Neil tried 3 different browsers on his laptop, turned off al contact blockers, and also tried the same things on his iPad but once you entered your SIM number and email address (and yes, he tried about 3 different email addresses as well) and clicked Next so they would send you a validation code to enter…the web page just sat there, didn’t go to the “enter the validation code page”, and didn’t send the code anyway. He tried this 3 times over the course of 4 days and finally gave up and went to plan B. Plan B was to get an eSIM from this company name Airalo…they’re based in Singapore and claim to offer eSIMs for 100 countries or something like that. So he buys an eSIM after verifying that his iPhone XS Max was both eSIM capable and unlocked…and got the eSIM in his email. Followed the instructions to install the eSIM and about halfway through the instal got the error message “This iPhone is not eSIM capable”…which is just plain wrong. Tried again and it said “this one has already been installed”…so he gave up there and cancelled the credit card transaction. Under both plan A and plan B…he was gonna forward both of their phone numbers to a google voice number so that any texts or voice mails to either phone would get turned into an email.

With plans A and B both in the toilet…he went to plan C…which was to just put our phones in cellular off mode which meant no text or phone and use wifi in the hotel and pubs as well as turning wifi calling on so that if the phones were on wife calls would go through…and they would just turn their phones cellular on at a cost of $15 per 24 hour period for days when they needed to be able to text each other…which turned out to be 3 days total for a cost of about an an extra $50.

English roads…there are some good things about them…and then there’s some bad things about them. Good is that they have standard speed limits depending on whether it was an M, A, B, or C road…but some of the speed limits, particularly on B and C roads but also on some A ones…were just nuts…I gotta a picture of one of the B roads in a bit to help explain that. When you got into a town or village there were actually speed limit signs…but as you exited you passed the sign that meant “no speed restrictions” which meant it went back to whatever the standard speed was for that road.

Unfortunately…the B, C, and some A roads were definitely not wide enough for 2 vehicles to pass…so just as in Ireland whoever had the easiest way to pull into a slightly wider part or the rare shoulder or a driveway just did it…mostly Neil just pulled over and stopped and let them pass him for the first week as the narrowness caused him stress.

And…although we didn’t get a picture of it…we drove down the narrowest street we have ever been on in a car…it was named High Street and literally had stone walls on both sides covered with shrubbery/ivy…and the vines were rubbing both sides of the car as we drove. We passed some hikers and walkers and they literally had to hop up onto a stone in the wall to let us pass…I don’t know what we would have done if we ran into a car going the other way because for about 3 miles there were literally zero places to either pass a car or pull into a drive due to the stone walls.

So…what’s the Lake District National Park like…except for the narrow roads? The closest I can call it is very similar to the hollers and ridges of rural West Virginia…narrow steep walled valleys with lakes at the bottom of them separated by ridges and mountains maybe 1500 feet or more higher than the valleys.

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Wildlife was pretty slim…in fact Neil turned out to have brought along his 100-400mm zoom lens in vain as it never left the bag. About 90% of his shots were with his walking around 24-120 lens with the remainder from the 14-30 super wide angle. This was about the only wildlife we saw outside of livestock…a bunny in the private garden outside of our room at the Rickerby Inn.

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One of the many castles that aren’t actually a castle that we saw…everybody knows that any real castle has a moat around it…and this one doesn’t look like it would have withstood much of a siege.

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This is a B road…Connie took this out the windshield with her iPhone…and this is actually a road with a speed limit of 50 miles an hour. Definitely wider than the car by about 3 feet total and no way to pass except at selected locations. Take a look at the sky…this was actually one of the better weather days we had in both Lakes and Yorkshire Dales.

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This is the Castlerigg Stone Circle…built about 4,500 years ago…the same general time period as Stonehenge but obviously these folks had less ability to move really big stones around.

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Some flowers we saw at the next castle.

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This ‘castle’…again no moat so obviously not a castle at all…was built as a private residence in the late 1800s…well after the need for any sort of castle protection as England was pretty much settled and pacified by then…but apparently at the time building your own ‘castle’ was in vogue.

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Out back in the gardens of this castle where we got the flowers above there was also this downed tree that had thousands of penny coins embedded in it…there was no explanation that we could find as to why this was a thing.

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By the time we got to Lakes…the bronchitis that we ended up coming home with had taken hold of both Connie and Neil although his was worse…so of the 4 days there we actually only went anyplace 3 of them…after arriving on Monday with the 300ish mile drive up from London he was just wiped and slept most of Tuesday except for eating dinner…and it was pouring rain that day anyway.

Friday we checked out of the Rickerby Inn and after stopping on the way at the last castle above arrived in Skipton on the southern border of Yorkshire Dales National Park where we were to stay until the following Thursday.

We did make it to our scheduled tour and tasting at the Lakes Distillery…they make whiskey and flavored vodka. Neil passed on the tasting as he (a) was driving and not comfortable with the roads yet and (b) feeling pretty lousy…so they gave him what they call a Drivers Dram to have later…we brought that and some salted caramel vodka home as souvenirs.

Interesting things found on the net.

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388801 t193

KimJongUnBarber

TwoWaysToDie

Eggnog

Cyas.

Posted in Photography, Travel, WIldlife | Leave a comment

London III

Posted on 2023/07/24 by Gunther

OK, a post to catch up the remainder of our time in London…Neil’s feeling a little better so I got him to process a few photos for you. Again…sorry but most of these are just snapshots and not really great pictures as they were mostly taken on tours and such…and with both of them feeling lousy with what turned out to be bronchitis they were really both at the barely functioning level.

Once Connie came down with the same thing Neil had on Wednesday morning…she went off to her rehearsal and then was just completely wiped out…so we cancelled the trip over to hear the bike talk and just rested…that turned out to be especially important as her second concert was on Thursday and she needed to conserve energy for that.

We departed the hotel about noon on Thursday with the singers already in their concert dress…long skirts or a tux…and headed over to St. Paul’s church for a long afternoon rehearsal then a short dinner break then the concert. Once the rehearsal was done she was feeling a little peckish as she said so we stopped in a nearby Whitehorse grocery store and found a sandwich that both of them thought they could gag down…by this point neither of them were really hungry but forced themselves to eat because they needed the calories. After that…we looked for a place to sit and rest for awhile…luckily the Berkley Hotel (a really ritzy place) was next door so they popped in there and had a glass of Chardonnay each…that was 45 pounds or about $55…he originally was going to have a bourbon but his normal Elijah Craig brand was 120 pounds so he went with the wine and at that point neither of them really cared what it cost. Looking online the cheapest room in the hotel was 1,265 pounds…but hey, it did include breakfast.

After that it was back to the church for the concert which went well then back to the hotel where they crashed.

Friday was the last real day of the tour…and we had a scheduled tour at St. Paul’s Cathedral…completely different place than St. Paul’s church from the night before. Unfortunately, like most of the other tours that were supposed to be 3 hours…that included the bus ride to and from the location so the actual tour was something under an hour…which frankly was just fine with them by this point since they were feeling crappy.

Shots from the cathedral.

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One of the many organs in the cathedral.

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Horatio Nelson’s tomb down in the basement.

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The central dome.

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This is a memorial to the British and American soldiers that died during WWII…but both Connie and Neil thought it looks like a Star Wars space station more than anything else.

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Friday evening was the farewell dinner for the choral tour…decent food and we ate and chatted with a couple from one of the other choruses from the west coast.

Saturday was departure day for pretty much everybody on the tour except us…most headed out on several buses to the airport to fly home but a dozen or so were headed either to France or Italy or other European countries for a bit more holiday. We all slept late and then decided we felt well enough to at least get out of the hotel for a couple of hours…so we headed off to Regents Park to see Queen Anne’s Rose Garden…this was conveniently located right off of Baker Street and ya know who lived there, right?

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Yep, 221B Baker Street where Sherlock Holmes lived is just around the corner from the tube station at the park…so naturally his statue is outside the station.

Lots of gorgeous roses in the garden, along with a Japanese style garden with bridges, sculptures, and waterfalls.

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This is an Egyptian Goose.

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After a couple of hours in the park for lunch and photos…we were tired so it was back to the hotel. For dinner we wandered a couple blocks up to the Melody Whisky Bar for dinner…they just have had 200 different kinds of whiskey but the food was only so so…it really wasn’t what we expected it to be.

Sunday was to be our last day in London…so we were up early for Mass and decided to rest up and cancel our planned trip over to Trafalgar Square for the afternoon concert by the orchestra at St. Martin in the Fields…so the only thing we did after Mass was wander up the street to a pub we had not visited yet for dinner…and saw this sign on the bar as we ate and drank.

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We asked the bartender why they were celebrating the US Independence Day…he said that the locals called it Treason Day instead but the owners figured it would be something different to draw in the crowds. Food here was actually pretty good and we headed back to the hotel to pack and get ready to head to the airport to pick up our rental car on Monday morning.

Cyas.

Posted in Medical, Photography, Travel | Leave a comment

And The Answer Is…B ronchitis

Posted on 2023/07/21 by Gunther

We headed off to the urgent care clinic on Monday and they put both Connie and Neil in the same room together as they had the same symptoms. They lucked out and only waited 5 minutes or less before going back. Once the doctor cam in and heard the symptoms and listened to their lungs he determined they had bronchitis and prescribed some Prednisone, strong cough syrup, and some antibiotics to potentially take. He said that most bronchitis is viral but gave them the antibiotics to take at their discretion if they aren’t getting any better…and told them that the median bronchitis time is 21-35 days which put them pretty much at the median the day they were there. The Prednisone  helps with the inflammation symptoms and the cough syrup is good stuff that helps a lot with that as well. Neil’s feeling better overall but not back to normal yet…Connie was improving until this morning when she feels a bit worse but it’s one of those couple good days then a bad day thing the doctor said they would have.

They finally finished unpacking, laundry, and putting everything away yesterday…they’ve been working on it a bit at a time since returning last Saturday. He’s still got the camera backpack to unload and the picture to process…but both of them are still pretty tired most of the time and also have some brain fog due to the strong antihistamine in the cough syrup so he’s just not felt like it.

Sorry ‘bout the delay…but it is what it is and both of them are taking a lot of rest periods, eating well, and sucking down drugs to help with the symptoms.The cleaning service is coming this morning and then they need to run down and pick up a grocery order from Walmart but other than cooking dinner that’s all that is on the schedule for today. Both of them are really, really ready for this to get better.

Cyas.

Posted in Homebody, Medical | Leave a comment

We’re Back Home

Posted on 2023/07/16 by Gunther

After a really long day yesterday…we got to bed about 2130 which is 0230 body time so we were really tired. The flight was long and boring, it took an hour to get luggage, then another almost 3 hours home.

I’ve still got lots of things to say about the UK and our travels…but we’re still…going on 3 weeks later…under the weather with whatever we have. Stuffy head, constant coughing, low grade fever…now that we’re back home we’re headed to the urgent care clinic in the AM to see if they can at least give us something for the symptoms.

Neil took the storm shutters down on the lanai door, and the windows in the bedroom and living room…as well as the office. Still have the master bath to do and the spare bedroom…but he ran out of gas.

He’s sous vide’ing a steak for dinner since that’s easy and we’ll have some boxed mashed potatoes and some veggies since our fiber intake has been pretty abysmal the past 3 weeks. And we need to run out and get milk and coffee creamer and a few essentials until we do a grocery run later in the week…but after that we’re just resting and hopefully we’ll be over the jet lab by tomorrow morning.

Cyas.

Posted in Homebody, Medical, Travel | Leave a comment

Quick Report

Posted on 2023/07/06 by Gunther

I’ve still got another 2 days in London to post about as well as the 4 days we’ve spent in the Lakes District…but. Ima waiting on Neil to get the images processed and he and Connie are only working at half capacity at best right now. Two Tuesdays back in London, Neil started feeling poorly…scratch throat, burning eyes, runny nose and told her he was coming down with a cold…so when they got back to the hotel well after midnight from Bath he took some drugs for that and they went to bed. Wednesday morning…she had it as well so both of them obviously caught it at the same time.

They were able to bore on through the remaining concert on Thursday night with the help of cold pills and Advil…then both got worse over the weekend and ever since they’ve pretty much alternated days for who felt worse. 

It was so bad that they actually cancelled some of their planned activities here in the Lakes District and scaled back some others and spent a lot of time just napping and figuring out what the really important activity for the day was and ensuring they had enough energy for it. Today as I post this on Thursday they’re doing a little better but at least for this cold Neil got worse faster and better slower than she did…luck of the draw with whatever this particular virus is.

Anyways…that’s all the news that’s fit to post and I didn’t want ya’ll to think we had been abducted by aliens or tossed into the dungeon or something. We’re going from Keswick here in Lakes about 100 miles south to Skipton on the south side of Yorkshire Dales and are supposed to drive from there to Buxton and back on Saturday for a Saint-Saens Organ Symphony concert…but unless they both feel a lot better than they do today they’re probably going to cancel that since it’s 120 miles down there and coming back after the concert would be another close to midnight getting back to the hotel. If they don’t go to Buxton I’ll nag him…well, I’ll get Connie to nag him since bears don’t nag well…to get at least some of the photos processed and I’l do another post.

We have discovered that northern UK roads are very similar to the roads in Ireland…narrow, twisty, and curvy and with speed limits of 60 (England uses miles instead of kilometers) which is just insane and he’s typically doing 40 instead.

Cyas.

Posted in Medical, Travel | Leave a comment