There's a New Rooster in the Hen House

Deep Water

2026-10-05T09:06:18.896-07:00

I started writing this in January, 2026, a couple months after Cash had died, when my lovely wife and I traveled to Hawaii for a little respite. Deep grief and heart song had already begun.

Deep Water

I’ve traveled tough terrain before, crossed rough and stormy seas,

Been to the top of the mountain, the depths of despair,

I thought peace had come to me.

And then a tragedy unbidden, the worst or so they say,

A child lost before his prime, before he ventured out to play.

I cannot help but think of all the things he’ll miss

A glide across the skating rink, a lover’s tender kiss.

Firsts of everything, yet to touch his world

All the hopes and dreams man has had not yet unfurled.

I’ll never see him marry, or a child to his name

I’ll never feel his joy again, now only feel this pain.

Every single question, all the time, but the answers never come,

His frame of mind, was I unkind?

Like the beating of a drum.

One day those beats will soften, for now there is no end,

Their pounding rhythm driving deep, far past unfathomable bends.

That road now coursing down, deep within the well,

Opening that sacred place where tears and sunshine dwell.

Beyond the walls where pride clings

Into the halls where radiance springs

Where love soars on silver wings

That sacred place where sorrow sings.

I’ll keep walking through this fire, every single day

That’s how much he meant to me, that’s the price I have to pay.

God speed to all who walk this road, I know I am not alone

May our kindred sorrow sooth somehow, the loss we all must own.

Ground Control to Major Tom

2026-10-02T14:01:53.193-07:00

Several days after my eldest grandson's funeral, I took the first of many DMT voyages since his death. What is DMT you may ask?

DMT (N,N-Dimethyltryptamine) is a powerful, naturally occurring psychedelic compound that induces intense, short-lived visual and auditory hallucinations. It exists, pretty much, in all living things.

Quick Onset: When smoked or vaporized, effects begin within seconds, peaking quickly and usually resolving within five to eight minutes, with slight after effects for thirty to forty-five minutes.

Ayahuasca: The classic South American psychedelic brew. Oral ingestion requires combination with a monoamine oxidase inhibitor (MAOI), so a couple of plants are brewed together. This method extends the experience to several hours, but it is not as intense.

Perceptual Changes: Users report profound alterations in space, time, and body identity, frequently describing vivid encounters with autonomous entities or alternate realities.

I had voyaged on DMT a few times prior to this. What I have always preferred with this particular vehicle is the short duration. A twelve hour acid excursion might be a bit much for my constitution anymore. For Pete's sake.

DMT had always been a very pleasant, cerebral and colorful experience for me. Many folks have encountered any number of different kinds of entities, the only thing I had encountered (until recently) was a white serpent. She was not frightening, she was not aggressive. She kept her distance, but she also watched me very closely. Geometric patterns flowed within her.

The incredibly bright colors and amazing geometric patterns you see while on DMT look extremely similar to Huichol Indian art. Pretty sure some of these folks be time traveling...

Keep in mind, all the patterns move in an amazing concentric cosmic dance.

The DMT I had in my hot little hands I had been sitting on for a while. I hadn't voyaged for probably six or seven years. It had the consistency of moist sawdust, with a very pungent earthy smell. And it sat, in a dark vial. Tucked away. For a rainy day. Which unfortunately arrived.

I had no idea what to expect. Several days earlier I had wandered up to the greenhouses, again, spaces where Cash and I had spent an enormous amount of time prior to his death. I had read a poem at his graveside service, four lines of which:

"I will look for you always in the bright autumn leaves,

I will feel your presence within a small breeze

I will seek your spirit in the sky above

I will see you always in the faces I love..."

As I sat on a large boulder, facing the greenhouses and weeping uncontrollably, a soft breeze suddenly came upon me. I looked up and there was a hawk circling above.

It was then Cassius came to me and said, "I am God. So are you."

Totally Cassius. Layers upon layers. And maybe a little humor. Smart ass kid. We had shared many conversations about psychedelics and the spiritual realm, and here he was, actually in the realm, talking to me. To me, that was an invitation to come see and be.

My darling sweet niece Ashley had come up immediately after hearing about his death and pretty much stayed with my daughter for weeks. They are very much sister cousins. And my darling sweet niece Ashley became the lucky psychonaut sacred space sitter for her uncle me.

We chose a very ordinary place out at the farm. There was still family commotion inside the house, so we wandered a bit away and sat on an old desk and office seat. It was not fancy, it was kinda littered. But Ash and I both maintain any place, EVERY place can be sacred. It's all about what's in your heart.

All I knew was that my heart was open and raw. It was from this space that I entered the holy realm, NOT consciously thinking about it. I took three long, deliberate hits, and within seconds I started drifting and was immediately hit by a lightening bolt right through my head and into my heart. The electricity and energy surged through my entire shaking body. I slowly drifted into soft chambers of down, bright blue and purple colors swirled about me. A breeze came and I felt Cash's energy, the pulsation of his heart and spirit.

I lingered as long as allowed, and came back to my sweet niece sitting across from me in the classic lotus pose. Soft blue, green and purple shafts of color still swirled as I re-entered this reality, taking another twenty minutes to assimilate and completely come down.

Several days later I voyaged again. With Ash holding space, I blasted off. This time was similar, a lightening bolt entered through my head, filling my entire body with bright white light. My body trembled and shook as all the light and energy surged throughout my being. It felt like I was being fuel injected with copious amounts of love.

While I definitely believe it is safer and quite possibly more beneficial to voyage with a sitter, nevertheless, primarily because of scheduling conflicts, I felt compelled to venture forth a couple times on my own.

The first time I had the distinct feeling and impression that I was awakening, that I was waking up after a long, long sleep. Like centuries long sleep.

The second time, I was hit again by that damn bright white light, and it completely ripped my heart open. As I sat there, sobbing on my front porch, an ally, friend and healer appeared for the first time. She was a beautiful black and red serpent, and she hovered over me like a very patient and protective mother as I wept. Maybe she was the original white one I saw, but now that she was a part of me her colors had changed.

I knew my dear Ashley would eventually have to go home, so I sort of enlisted the assistance of another close friend of my children's. I approached Michelle with the the thought of voyaging with me, or at least space sitting, and she was at a perfect moment in life for a little spiritual adventure. She said yes.

I usually set sail with eyes closed, but this first time together I was looking at her as we blasted off. As I looked within her eyes , I saw and vibrated with her entire everything (heart, being, spirit, essence) completely. At that point I closed my eyes, and held her hand for the rest of the voyage. During that time I could feel her heart and spirit and I could feel energy coursing through me and into her.

The second time we voyaged together, with Ashley still holding space, we BOTH ended up together in the same amazing sacred space. We wandered, in awe through HUGE, brightly colored rooms. We were in a palace, with endless rooms as large as the Empire State Building. The colors were as bright as you saw above, all moving in incredible concentric, geometric patterns.

It was then our paths diverged. I ended up in a bright golden room with a dozen or more hummingbirds. And she had a visit with a red eagle.

I had no idea what was happening. I knew I had touched the divine, had danced with the divine, and I wanted to share this love and energy with everyone. At that point I had no idea my Kundalini had spontaneously awoke. So what the heck is a Kundalini anyway?

Kundalini is a form of dormant spiritual energy that ancient traditions describe as a coiled snake at the base of the spine. My new girlfriend? When consciously awakening the kundalini through meditation, it usually starts at the base of the spine, or root chakra.

A spontaneous awakening, which can be triggered by trauma, deep emotional grief, psychedelics, or near death experiences, many times starts in the upper chakras.

It was a rather heady experience for me, this spontaneous awakening. I was dancing with the divine and was filled with a gigantic amount of love and energy. I now know the awakening is just the beginning and takes a while to sort out, integrate and embody. But in the moment, I was thinking I could just do drugs and save the world.

With the thought of sharing more energy and love, another friend sat in and held space for Michelle and I. This time I opened my heart to the heavens and was bombarded with light and energy. I became a part of the "crystalline grid, which is the invisible, multidimensional, architectural blueprint that connects consciousness, the physical earth and spiritual realms". I sat there with arms out stretched to the heavens, once again trembling, bathed in pulsating blue and white light. Michelle was with me all the way. And by the way, the grid is not invisible when you're a part of it.

The next time we voyaged together we did it with my skeptical but lovely wife sitting in and witnessing. Cassius's father joined us as well.

The first round was light, but my hands, that I have since named Ying and Yang, had already kinda started their spontaneous kriya dance. What are kriyas you may ask?

Spontaneous kriyas are involuntary physical movements that happen during deep meditation or spiritual practice, when stored stress and life force energy release from the nervous system. Spontaneous kundalini can also awaken kriyas. The hand dance is also a way for the body to release and express all the energy inside.

I was beginning to give the spinners at a Grateful Dead show a run for their money.

My lovely wife commented on how the three of us reacted. My ex son-in-law had been a stone, Michelle her beautiful, effervescent flowing self and then my lovely wife made fun of me and my wildly dancing hands.

The three of us decided to do it again, only more this time. Once we set sail, I made the conscious decision to keep my hands still. I think I sat on them. What happened next was wild. That energy needed to go somewhere, so my heart decided to burst open in an incredible array of color, light and love. It felt like a 4th of July firework finale that lasted forever, emanating from my heart. Michelle was there too. We were both sitting there, giggling, as our hearts exploded in love and light.

Ever since that first voyage I have been bombarded with personal spiritual insights. Synchronicity has been off the hook. Empathy, ridiculous. These are all symptoms of a kundalini awakening, and most of these were happening without any substance ingestion during my day to day.

One of the primary insights I had was how I was dealing. I stopped thinking about everything early on, and let my body and intuition guide me.

It became clear to me that I was not going to ever think or understand my way to heaven. Words only took me so far. Comprehending only took me so far. I'd been trying understand my way to heaven for decades and only got lost in the woods. Every single time. As soon as I started feeling my way I was there, in heaven, through my heart.

I was also not going to think my way out of grieving my grandson. I now know that grief lives in the body, and it is there that it must be met. But at this early stage feeling felt right, so I rolled with it.

There have been several voyages since, but here's where the story shifts. Again. While these voyages were incredibly sacred and I danced with the divine, there was more. I could feel it.

Paddles of Tears

2026-09-18T10:40:08.478-07:00

The following is from "The Smell of Rain on Dust", by Martin Prechtel. If you have recently experienced loss, any kind of loss, or know someone who has, I highly recommend this book. The author presents a convincing argument that most of the world's problems are due to a lack of grieving and actually feeling, really feeling the heart.

Excerpts from the chapter, "Paddles of tears, canoes made out of old songs", beliefs of Central American Indian tribes:

"The old understanding is that when a person dies, that person's spirit needs to begin traveling away from the shores of this beautiful flowering earth across the ocean of time, without ever looking back, to arrive on the concentric shores surrounding and facing this reality we live in called the Beach of Stars, where ideally they are met by their last happy ancestors.

In order for the dead person's traveling soul to reach the opposite shore to be initiated and transformed into a life giving force from a human spirit, all their living friends and relatives must show how deeply they feel the loss of the deceased in a real and honest show of grief.

The distance to the Other Shores cannot be calculated by ordinary human methods, its distance being more akin to something galactic, so the arrival over this ocean of time is not something the deceased's soul can ever accomplish unassisted.

The energy that impulses the dead person's "seed heart" or soul over the ocean of time to the Beach of Stars has to come directly from the grief expressed by the living, by those who have honestly loved the dead person. It is by the presence of their feeling of missing him or her expressed in a collective way that creates "paddles of tears, with canoes made out of old songs," that majestically and assuredly chauffeurs the dead person's disembodied life force right into the arms of the ancestral pool of souls.

If enough friends and relatives give it their all, the soul of the one whose loss they feel so deeply is not only carried safely to the Beach of Stars, but like a baby chick, has enough of a spiritual yolk sac supplied by the spiritual worth of the beauty of the grief and praise expressed to maintain them during the first stages of transformation into an ancestral force."

I read that passage last July to an assembled group of mostly friends of my recently deceased Grandson during a portion of his celebration of life. My daughter put this event together at her farm and mirrored it a bit after a couple of grief retreats she has personally attended since our lives were shattered October 14, 2025. We held two short assemblies underneath the large heritage oak where he left this reality, and it all resonated quite extraordinarily with the forty or so attendees.

Last week I was back at the farm helping with harvest. It has been extremely hard for me to go back into those spaces. The echoes of his footsteps were everywhere, as was the tender, joyous sound of his laughter. But this time I noticed his presence was missing from the large shop area we had worked in together for the last couple years. He wasn't there anymore, where I felt him just a scant month or so ago.

The next day my daughter brought up the "Paddles of tears" passage that I had read, and through the soft, bitter tears I have grown accustomed to she commented that he was almost there, to the Beach of Stars.

I said, "I know."

We both could feel this, that he's almost gone, and through our combined tears we were feeling good-bye, again. He's now in the wind, but forever a part of our hearts.

I see Cassius taking flight near the end of this song and video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZyyrnEDDOw&list=PLDq9PQ39JpU3LKyopuETAVWbGAzkKbrZf&index=2

Is it just that we have grieved so much that our hearts feel a little lighter? Or has he truly reached the Beach of Stars? I think both. Does it all sound a little crazy? Maybe, but I can tell you this with unfortunate clarity, NOTHING, and I mean nothing is insane when you've lost a loved one and start walking into this sacred territory. Nothing.

Cassius's death has completely altered my life's course. Instead of piddling around and watching James Bond and Leave it to Beaver reruns for the duration of my silver years, looks like I am becoming a warrior of the heart, or a grief walker if you will. What are those you may ask? I suppose you could say it is someone that faces the exquisite pain in the heart, actually leans into the exquisite pain in the heart, rather than turn away.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not running around out here pushing myself to grieve, it comes pretty naturally. Still. But when it does come, I don't turn away. I lean into it, going in as hard and deep as I can. And the more this happens, the deeper I go.

I personally have no choice. My Grandson beckoned me from beyond. A parent or grand parent will many times state that they would lay down and die for their offspring. I certainly did. If that's the case, yet he's already gone, then I suppose this could be considered a cake walk.

Of course, the walk is filled with alligators, anacondas and fire. Searing hot, piercing the heart fucking fire. Over and over and over again.

I suppose I could try to ignore that flame. Many do. Push it down. Eat it away. Drink it away. Pretend it never happened. Deny. Deflect. But it will always remain, waiting to be heard.

I had no idea how deeply this body can feel. And grief is a body thing, NOT a mental thing. I stopped thinking about it early on, and have allowed my intuition and body to guide me through these turbulent waters. No one will ever understand their way out of grief, or think their way out. Grief lives in the body, and it is there it has to be met.

My daughter and I have both chosen to face the fire, to be consumed by the flames. The pain is agonizingly intense, how could all that lost love be anything other?

Fortunately the body is wise. It will only let you endure the pain for so long. And then it stops. Until the next time. A sight. A scent. A sound. It doesn't take much to trigger when you're so open and raw.

There has been another element involved in this for me, which I will get into in a following post. Yeah, I guess I'm back. It's been about three years since I've been writing here. Lol. I have three unfinished posts, I guess I ran out motivation and things to say. I just did not want to prattle on, although I can do that very well.

But these truths that are a part of me now MUST be told and shared. And it all boils down to one thing, love.

Choose love. Be love. It is what we are and what we are meant to be.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w99NAM1eMsg&list=RDw99NAM1eMsg&start_radio=1

The Big's Safety Rangers

2023-02-28T11:38:00.002-08:00

I've decided I'm forming a club. If y'all want to join me you're in. There's no membership fees. No dues. There's no silly hazing requirements, like standing on your head and eating a plate of spaghetti. Or drinking a bathtub full of beer.

There's no dress code, so you can wear whatever you want. There's no drug testing either. So fire one up and read on.

The only requirement of membership is your desire to see the roads and highways of America safer. That's it. To that end though I am a bit of a stickler to not necessarily rules but to plain old common sense!

I get to make up the grading system because I have a little bit of experience having pulled a few dead bodies out of cars. Back in another life I was a firefighter for a few years at a couple different locations in California. A state highway ran through both locations, so besides the ever fun loving fully involved structure fires I also got to experience the not so fun aforementioned activities.

BTW, one absolute law of vehicle collisions I have learned is that if it is a big vehicle versus a little vehicle the big one always wins. Always.

This last September my lovely wife and I were on the road, like every single weekend. We had a lot of stuff going on and there was a lot of time whisking by on the highway. But even prior to this I had taken a shine to grading drivers who had pulled over to the side of the road. For whatever reason; engine trouble, flat tire, bathroom break, sex.

The primary grade is given for how far off the highway they have actually gone. And if they could have gone further. Cause the further away from vehicles zipping along at 65 MPH the safer they'll be. Higher grades are given for the further distance, lesser for the closer they are to the highway.

This is not to be taken lightly. There was a Nevada County knucklehead a number of years back that got a flat tire on the driver's side of his van. He immediately pulled over on the state highway during the very busy morning commute.

The problem was, there was a steep up slope on the side of the road and there wasn't really any shoulder at all. The left tires of his vehicle were actually on the right white line of the lane. Which of course would mean that in order to change the tire his body would actually be in the highway.

He didn't last long. I don't think he got a lug nut off.

He of course would get an "F". There was a steep up slope where he stopped so he actually did pull as far over as he could have. There. But if he limped forward about two hundred yards he would have had a turn out about the size of Bolivia to change the tire.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, he might have damaged the tire a bit more had he continued forward. So? He certainly won't have to make that decision again.

I have collected a number of cars on the shoulder photos which I am going to display, grade and then tell you why. OK? (You have to say OK if you want to be in the club. I think this might be the only requirement.)

This car gets a "B". He's about as far off the shoulder he can get there, BUT, it looks like the turn out might fan wider towards where the shot was taken. This car should be back there.

This blonde, while pretty, maybe, deserves to have her legs shorn off by the next vehicle that passes by. She's got a lot more room on the grass. "F"

This cop gets a "C". Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever. Those right two tires should be at least a foot onto the grassy knoll.

This car gets a "B". He could be over another foot.

"F". Puhleese. Look at that football field to his side.

"A". This person is even over the outer boundary line of the turn out.

"C" The door opens onto the highway, but considering the problem she did the best she could. I'd still probably keep that door closed.

The only reason this car should be here is if it doesn't run. And even so he should be over kissing that guard rail. "D".

This cop, while probably trolling for speeders, gets an "A" for position. Any car pulling over here should be right on the edge of that grass just like he is.

"A" Nice placement, slow road.

The white car gets an "A". He's definitely off the highway a good distance, and that brings up another point. Don't pull so far off the highway that it's going to take a tow truck to get you back on. (Cop gets an "F". Hell, he's already been ht!)

This van gets a "B+". He's still got a little room over there.

"F". Geez. Brake lights are on. He probably dropped a roach and his crotch is starting to burn. Even then I think I'd pour a drink (if I had one-which I usually do) or pee my pants rather than stop there. That's an accident or a cop waiting to happen, and either one will certainly harsh whatever mellow had been attained.

This van gets a "B". It's a lousy place to pull over, and that's why he doesn't get an "A". But he's up there kissing the guard rail, doing everything he can.

"B" He's got a little more room.

Look at that row of cars. FFFFFFFFFFFFF. Look at the turn out where the photo was taken. That's where I'm parking.

Folks do that up here in the summer accessing the Yuba River. They all get tickets.

"A" Can't get much further off the road than that. Plus this guy is really prepared.

Anyway, I think you get the idea on the safe pulling over aspect of the club.

Now that I think about it, maybe there's two more rules to be a club member. The Safety Rangers ALWAYS use their turn signals, even if a squirrel in a tree is the only living thing that sees. And we always turn it on in ADVANCE of our turn because it only makes sense. Those individuals that turn on their signal as they are turning are either an asshole or an idiot.

The asshole part is easy to understand. The idiot part maybe not so much because, well, they're idiots. But if they gave it half a thought, anyone following would already KNOW they are turning by the actions of the car. They didn't need to know AFTER the idiot dropped them from 50 to 20 MPH and started their turn, they needed to know BEFORE all that stuff happened.

And Safety Rangers don't tailgate. Unless, of course, the proverbial asshole or idiot pulls out, cuts you off and drops you from 50 to 20 and then only speeds up to 30. Tailgating IS allowed for a mile or so to get your point across, as is any form of vernacular that might erupt from your mouth.

But then we let Zen and safety win.

However, if they giddy-up and go a safety ranger will usually forgive and forget with only a few minor eruptions.

That's it folks. Be safe. Be polite. Welcome to the club.

Snowmageddon

2022-05-19T13:19:00.000-07:00

Winter is usually the time of year around here when I get take a break and rest. Shorter days. Cooler temps. Warm fires. Goodies in the oven.

I'm always running around here like a chicken with my head cut off in the summer. Always trying to put twenty pounds of taters in a five pound sack, kinda because I have to. Long days. Hot as hell. The constant noise of pushing air. And no goodies in the oven.

A big part of that busy summer equation is our own doing. I love to garden and my lovely wife is the cut flower queen.

So we have roses, lots of roses. We also have several 3x8 grow boxes devoted entirely to cut flowers, which, besides my lovely wife, bees and butterflies love too. Then there's two twenty foot long strips along walk ways that get planted with bloomers every year. And a ten foot lily strip along the potting shed. Hundreds of iris bulbs all over the property and flowers in pots kinda everywhere too.

This is a typical kitchen table scene during spring and summer as they await deployment all over the house:

Then there's the rest of the stuff. Vegetables, a dozen fruit trees and assorted landscaping close to and all around the house. Most everything is at least drought tolerant as far as the landscaping goes. But it still needs some attention. Especially during many of those hot hot hot summer days.

I have drip systems everywhere with eight or nine automatic timers. A timed sprinkler system in front. I've done what I can to minimize usage while keeping things alive, but there's still a lot to do.

It wasn't so bad a decade ago, but with the hot as hell summers now I gotta stay on top of things. And I've kind of got a part time gig, which busy season happens to coincide with summer. Summer is hot and busy as hell. I'll take the shorter winter days anytime.

So just to interrupt and screw with my idyllic winter rest this year we had a major storm event here right after Christmas, 2021. We are calling it Snowmageddon. And Snowmageddon begat the Treepocalypse. And the Treepocalypse begat an enormous, time consuming mess.

You see, here in the Sierra Nevada mountains, even in the foothills we get this snow we refer to as Sierra Cement. It is very wet and heavy stuff. Not like the fine powder many folks prefer to ski on. Or put up their nose.

Nah, you could bury corrupt politicians and supreme court justices under this stuff. At least until spring. Then I don't know what you're going to do. Those suckers will surface and start stinking, similar to what they're doing today only from a slightly different perspective.

Put a few inches to feet of Sierra Cement on top of drought stricken trees and you get the Treepocalypse.

That morning, December 27th I awoke to the lovely quiet. It had snowed overnight. It was a winter wonderland. We missed a White Christmas by two days. Dang.

It's what I've always been dreaming of.

We had no power, which was no big deal. It also added to the quiet. It would only take me a few minutes or so to run some extension cords and fire up the generator.

I stoked the wood stove. I had no idea hell was waiting outside until our son called about 7:00 AM.

He said he had about thirty down trees on his ten acres, with at least ten across his drive, which is about three hundred yards long. He said it was very scary outside because big widow maker branches were breaking and falling everywhere.

It was then I got entirely attired for snow and started to wander around our property. I quickly began to understand the magnitude of the situation. This is what I encountered on our driveway after just a few steps:

A little stroll down to the street greeted me with this:

That's our driveway gate up yonder. There's another downed tree across the drive behind it. It was only about four or five inches of snow, but obviously that was enough to create a situation. And I had situations everywhere.

The above situation is what our tree guy Mike, the mess maker (530-575-2251) made when he took down those (there were three total) large, broken branches. Everything landed between the potting shed and house.

Mike's been doing our sensitive tree work for years now. He has never been off an inch from where he's wanted wood to fall. See Tarzan the Tree Man. (That there's a link to another wonderful post by the way. )

I highly recommend him for any locals in Nevada County that would like a mess made on their own front lawn. He's bonded and insured and all that. You can tell him I sent ya. He'll probably charge more.

The only downed oak (above) not affecting ingress, egress or safety. It was a favorite of ours and home every year to an assortment of nesting birds.

Then there was this monster that partially landed on the hen house. Fortunately it took down a smaller pine, slowing it's descent. Only one rafter and a portion of the overhang in the rear were damaged.

The other side. As you can see, I had already been doing some cutting and slicing.

One thing I have learned through much experience is that trees always get bigger when they hit the ground. If it was a small to medium tree, it gets big. If it was big to begin with, well, it gets diabolically huge. Trust me.

We had a total of seven diabolically huge trees come down here on our property, three across the drive. Sigh. I'm getting too old for this stuff.

Once I had assessed the situation and realized I had about eleven thousand things to do, I figured I had better start with the first. Which was get the generator fired up and the appropriate extension cords run.

I also have a transfer switch on the well so that our generator will power it, but unfortunately a pipe broke and I was going to have to fix that prior to getting water to the house. But the generator was on. We had communication and charging capabilities.

As I mentioned, we heat the house with a wood stove, so heat was not an issue. And there was plenty of seasoned wood. We also have lamps, lanterns, candles and enough assorted batteries for a six month siege.

I also always have enough propane on hand to run the generator for sixty-four hours, or four to five days at twelve to sixteen hours per day. We'd be OK til the dust settled. Or the snow melted, in this case.

I don't even want to get into the end of the world pantry. I was a cub scout when I was a kid. I've always taken being prepared to heart. We had food for months. It'd get a little weird after a while, like tuna and peanut butter sandwiches, but we wouldn't be starving.

My celebrated mother-in-law was still here from Christmas, and my lovely wife's tantalizing twin was coming up that night.

She was coming up for an after Christmas couple day visit and then she was going to take Mom back to the Bay Area. After conversing with my lovely wife she decided to rent a 4WD, which I thought was a dandy idea. If our place was this much of a mess the county as a whole couldn't be much better off.

Bolstered with one of my patented edibles, I began what was to become a very long and arduous day for an aging old man. I had a hundred yard drive to shovel and three diabolically huge downed trees to get out of the way. Just to get to the road.

Who knew what lay beyond that?

I forgot to mention in early December, three weeks prior, I cracked a rib. It was the same area I Skewered My Spleen back in 2020.

We had just returned from a live Christmas matinee dance deal loosely based on "The Polar Express" with our grand kids and I was out on the front deck.

I had been nursing a non-covid cough for a couple days. We felt strongly enough about it though that I did get tested prior to the matinee and massive public exposure. I tested negative so we were good to go. Which we did. With our grand kids. To the show.

Hi-ho.

So I was out on the deck and I coughed, real hard apparently, because I heard a loud snap.

Another thing I have learned (unfortunately) through a bit of experience is that whenever you hear some part of your body snap it's usually not a good thing. Generally intense pain is right on the heels of that snap, within milliseconds I reckon. And then your body reacts, and depending on the location of that snap you could end up pernt near anywhere. Doing anything.

Like the Watusi for instance.

I usually end up on my ass. One thing was for certain, I was NOT doing the Watusi. Nor was I contemplating any other dance for that matter.

No. I was down on my knees in a second. Which coincides with both my above time frame reckoning's by the way.

It took my breath away, that snap, and I almost puked. So there I sat, on my knees, which doesn't make sense, for a minute. My lovely wife was napping and the grand kids were watching the real "Polar Express" on TV.

I was gasping. Then I wheezed. Eventually I sighed. After a minute or so I was finally able to get up. I shuffled into the kitchen where I freaking coughed again.

And again I went down. But this time I could not get back up. The pain was too intense, it was beyond mere numbers. But if I had to guess, it was somewhere in the hundreds.

If I didn't move I was OK. But movement in any direction was excruciating. I was down on my side for about five minutes, contemplating my dilemma, gasping and wheezing.

I didn't want to alarm anyone, but I seriously thought we were going to have to call the fire department. I could not move. It was so alarming I started to giggle. Which made it hurt more. I was screwed.

I used to be one of those firefighter type rescue guys. It was a lot more fun on that side of the situation. Plus you weren't the person in the dilemma. Less pain too.

I didn't want to be the dilemma. I didn't want to be in pain. At all. I'm not that kind of guy and I certainly do not need the attention. Quite the contrary.

And that might have been the deciding moment, I did not want to be a dilemma. Cause then there's a whole bunch of hoopla and hoody-hoo and I'd just prefer not. Not for this.

Nah, let's wait until I'm dangling from a cliff, lop off a limb or have a bonafide hangnail before we engage the cavalry.

I excruciatingly maneuvered my torso to a sit up stage, then I was able to stand, gasping, wincing and wheezing all the way. Boy howdy, it was a doozy.

As I reflect on this misery, what I find a little concerning was this injury wasn't incurred doing something really macho, like log splitting. Or playing rugby or Parcheesi.

Nope. I coughed. That's it.

If this is how this body aging thing is going to roll I could be concerned. But then that's one more thing I'd have to pay attention to and I've already got enough to do.

I eat proper. I take supplements. I'm in reasonably decent shape. I get a shit house howdy ton of exercise around here, too much sometimes. Cardio and otherwise. Yes, I could be stretching more, but how do you properly exercise your rib cage?

It's weird being the same age as an old person. And this aging thing is not for sissies. I can't tell ya how many aches and pains I constantly got going on.

Great. Now I sound like a bunch of old folks conversing around the dinner table. In three part harmony. Which is also weird. I don't sing.

My lovely wife took me to the ER the next morning. I mean, I could only sleep in the supine position, and getting there took some yoga like maneuvers, which I don't have. Because I don't stretch.

So I looked (and felt) more like a jerky, uncoordinated, spazzy old robot than a silky smooth, ice skating gymnast when I simply endeavored to lay down. It was a process. And not pretty.

I knew there was nothing they could do at the ER, I'd been down the rib injury road before. But we went just in case, got x-ray'd and officially Covid tested since I was still coughing. (I tested negative again.)

The X-ray was also negative for any fracture, but ribs typically show that way. It didn't matter, the Doc knew straight away my ribs were injured just by the way I was sitting. A rigidly convoluted and unorthodox pose positioned perfectly so as to allow minimum stress to the affected region. Which had to look weird and as uncomfortable as hell to anyone else. It was almost comical.

He gave me the spiel, six weeks heal time, nothing they can do, just like a broken toe, blah, blah, blah.

It had been three weeks by the time Snowmageddon occurred, and although the Doc said it would take six I was doing really good. Let me tell you something though, which should be pretty obvious to any thinking person; shoveling Sierra Cement and running a chain saw are NOT conducive towards positive healing of an injured rib, or of an injured anything for that matter. By the end of that day they should have taken me out back and shot me.

Fortunately our darling daughter called in the early mid-morning. Her and her very capable fiance, along with a not so motivated teenager were coming to the rescue. An extra snow shovel, an extra chain saw, and extra hands. And without them I would have never made it.

They got here mid-morning, and by that time I had cleared one tree from the very bottom of the drive. I had also managed to shovel out two tracks so they could get up the steepest part of the drive and stop on a fairly level landing. It was touchy though, even with 4WD. Our driveway is steep at the road.

They spent a good four hours here and helped clear two more trees and shovel the rest of the way up. Her fiance also had the necessary pvc fittings to fix the well so that I didn't have to go to the hardware store, which wasn't open anyway. I'd been so focused on survival in our little corner of the universe I hadn't really given the outside world much of a thought.

Trees were down EVERYWHERE. At least thirty or forty just on our little six mile country road. And we're not talking small taters either. A couple down the road were Swiss Family Robinson type deals with three foot trunks. Carpet and linoleum too.

My fabulous sister-in-law had to drive around one of them that had at least been cut to facilitate a one lane passage. By a local for sure.

(Local here is referring to anyone living near an area of impact that gets involved with said impact, usually in a positive manner.)

The county was overwhelmed. Hell, half the people that work for them probably couldn't get to work that morning. Many, like me, had hours of work ahead of them just to get to the road.

State Hwy 49 was blocked for half the day. That's the main highway in and out of town. And it was blocked by downed trees for hours!

The county and state had to start with the arteries and work their way down. For the time being, many smaller, blocked public roads were being taken care of by "locals". And neighbors were checking on neighbors, especially in the days that followed.

The city and county were a mess. For days. Power was out everywhere. It was like a bomb went off. Thousands of trees came crashing down on power lines everywhere, splintering many poles in the process.

Over the course of the next couple days city infrastructure and commercial establishments slowly came to life. The first stores to open did so with generator power.

We got our power back after six days, and I feel very fortunate. It took two weeks for our son to get his power back, and some folks were out for almost a full month. Folks with gas generators were spending fifty bucks a day for power. (This was more than a month before the Ukraine War and the recent price spike.)

Once things semi got back to normal, it was clean-up time. I had to turn a whole bunch of this

Into this:

And it had to be done toot sweet because of the fire danger. Fire season seems to be almost ever ending around here anymore.

Twelve burn piles and about one hundred extra hours I never knew I had later I'm almost caught up. For some really inane reason, at a time in my life when I should really be lazing about in a hammock, I'm really, really busy instead.

And that type of work; land clearing, cutting, hauling and burning is the hardest work you can do out here in the country. You definitely utilize every single muscle group in the process, with a lot of extra extra cardio living on a hill.

Who needs a gym when you own a couple acres?

Happy spring y'all.

Where did ya get those shoes?

2022-01-07T10:17:00.000-08:00

If it was me, and I can personally verify that it is, I'd click on that video and start the song before you get going too far. It'll help set the tone.

Maybe.

When I was writing my last post(s) about our resort'n trip to Costa Rica last year, I mentioned the fact I brought two pairs of deck shoes with me. And that got me to thinking, just how many pairs of shoes do I now own?

I used to own just one pair, maybe two. Or three. I remember buying a pair of those heavy duty Vasque hiking boots in my early 20's. They were all the rage, and they really helped get your legs in shape because each boot weighed about ten pounds.

They actually lasted until we moved here, some thirty-five years later. I wore them out working on this here hill, and now I go through two to three pairs of work shoes/boots around here every year.

How many pairs of shoes do I now own? It's almost embarrassing, really. But being married to my lovely wife, who's headstone will read, "She was always appropriately dressed", it's kind of important I keep up appearances. And being appropriately dressed has kinda rubbed off on me too.

If you've been a reader of past posts, you know I have a thing about sandals and cargo shorts being worn at a nice restaurant or an opera. I mean, if you don't own a pair of pants and a pair of shoes why not just go to a deli? And wouldn't you feel more comfortable at a Jimmy Buffet show rather than Bocelli in your shorts and sandals?

Or are you really that much of a rebel buffoon to not really care?

Besides, it's kinda fun getting dressed up every once in a while. Plus you're more likely to get lucky if you're wearing a nice shirt and slacks instead of cargo shorts and sandals.

If you don't believe me, just click on that video.

There was a time, long long ago now that Dear Old Dad and step-mom took a trip to Australia with another couple. The other dude, a real estate guy and really, a lovely gentleman, brought a suitcase full of shoes. I thought that astounding. There was no question his feet were dressed for success.

I know I'm not that bad. I usually travel with two or three pairs, depending on where we're going and what we're doing. And they definitely don't take up enough space to warrant an entire suitcase, unless it's about the size of a toilet kit.

But I do own a few pair, like about twenty, and here they are...

Whoops, I forgot these guys:

They're not really shoes I wear these days. As a matter of fact, as you can see, they now adorn our garage wall. Yes, I hung up my cleats a couple years ago.

I also decided it might be too late in my aging career to play competitively anymore. Not that I couldn't (in my mind anyway). I'm more than a little concerned about simply starting and stopping. I'm certain within the first inning of play that I'd pull or tear something or other and then I'd be limping or have an arm in a sling for a month or more.

Circling back to the main shoe photo, take a good look and memorize what you see. That way if we're ever in a crowded anywhere and you can't see above the shoulders of the people around you, you can look down and still find me. That is, if we're ever traveling together in a crowded space.

Believe it or not, I actually wear all of them. The only ones I haven't strapped on recently are the boots way up yonder in the right corner. They're about a seven year old still sturdy pair of steel toed toughness. Unfortunately they don't offer the space and comfort necessary now for my plantar fasciitis.

We live in the country, so some of the stuff up there is necessary. Snow boots, rain boots, work boots/shoes, hiking boots/shoes and a pair of flip flops or crocs by every exterior door.

Annd whoops. Just forgot.

We generally don't do shoes in the house, again, we live in the country. We try to keep most of the country in the country and not on the floor of the house. And as I sit here writing with the keyboard on my lap and my feet on the desk, I notice that I'm wearing one of two pair of indoor slippers that I also own. So I guess I'm actually at twenty-two.

Or is a slipper not considered a shoe?

Many times you have to run outside quick like when you live in the country, so a pair of something, like crocs or flip-flops, at every door is a MUST!

I also own two pairs of Merrill back strap sandals. One pair is for summer work, the other for summer vacation. Of course, my now famous two pairs of deck shoes are also there, as are two pair (black and brown of course) of casual shoes and two pair of dress shoes.

I think that covers my shoe situation. I also own a decent pair of tennis shoes for golfing, which I can now do once again. (See: Please Pass the Dextrose)

I still only golf a half dozen times a year, but I certainly can't wear dress shoes, baseball cleats or snow boots with cargo shorts on the course in July, can I?

My Old Friend Tom Should Be Dead

2021-11-04T09:40:00.000-07:00

My old friend Tom should be dead. He was diagnosed with Advanced Stage 4 Colo-rectal and Liver Cancer on his 52nd birthday in 2007. Happy birthday buddy.

We were living in Capitola at the time. He called and left a message on our machine. We've known Tom over 35 years, my lovely wife knew something was wrong when she did not hear his usual jovial voice. He came down and spent a couple days with us. He was gonna fight the good fight, but we were basically saying good-bye. The prognosis was not good.

He started the usual Chemo treatment that he was scheduled to take for one year. However, he gave it up after five months due to severe side effects.

My old pal Tom should be dead. All three of his Oncologists have told him so on numerous occasions.

I'm sure you all know someone who has been diagnosed with cancer since 2007 and they are now no longer with us. I've got a handful. My pal Tom is an anomaly. I've told him so on numerous occasions.

"You should be dead," I say, "What the hell did you do that these other folks didn't?"

Trick question, I already know the answer.

Besides engaging in an all important integrative approach as discussed with his Oncologists, Tom also drank some of his new wife's breast milk. You see, besides being diagnosed with cancer at the tender age of 52, he had also become a new father. That new baby boy helped save his life, in more ways than one! Tom claims the reason he's still alive, fourteen years after his dire diagnosis, is because he drank his wife's breast milk from their first, and later second child.

So, what's so special about breast milk? Well, besides all the regular good stuff it contains that helps new lives get off to a healthy start, breast milk also contains Cysteine, a special sort of amino acid.

What's so special about Cysteine? I'll let the New World Encyclopedia kinda scientifically explain:

Besides a number of other things, Cysteine is an important precursor in the production of the antioxidant glutathione, which protects cells from toxins, such as free radicals, in the human body and other organisms. The systemic availability of oral glutathione (GSH) is negligible; the vast majority of it must be manufactured intracellularly. Glutathione is a tripeptide antioxidant made up of the three amino acids cysteine, glycine, and glutamate. Glutamate and glycine are readily available in most North American diets, but the availability of cysteine makes it be the rate-limiting substrate for the synthesis of glutathione within the cell. It is the sulfhydryl (thiol) group (SH) of cysteine that serves as proton-donor and is responsible for the biological activity of glutathione. Sometimes referred to as the “master antioxidant,” glutathione regulates the actions of lesser antioxidants (such as vitamin C and vitamine E), and levels of glutathione in cells are predictive of how long someone will live.-NewWorldEncyclopedia.org

There's a nine cylinder word, GLUTATHIONE.

Over 120,000 published studies have shown that glutathione has a profound effect on a multitude of health challenges. As a powerful free radical scavenger, immune enhancer and detoxifier, glutathione has shown to be effective in the following conditions; autism, cardiovascular disease, autoimmune diseases, asthma,diabetes, lung disease, Parkinson’s disease, gastrointestinal inflammation and Crohn’s disease, hepatitis, chronic fatigue syndrome, neuro-degenerative diseases such as MS (multiple sclerosis), ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease), Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s and degenerative eye conditions such as cataracts and macular degeneration. Total Health Magazine

The importance of glutathione cannot be overstated. It has multiple roles as indicated and, indeed, as one examines each system or organ more closely, the necessity for glutathione becomes increasingly evident. Glutathione values decline with age and higher values in older people are seen to correlate with better health, underscoring the importance of this remarkable substance for maintaining a healthy, well-functioning body.

So now that we have established Glutathione is probably a good thing, especially if we are immuno compromised, what's the best way to get it?

Well, nature provides a certain amount of Glutathione in certain foods. There are supplements as well. But research has shown that the best way to boost your Glutathione level is to increase your Cysteine intake via very biologically active whey. Not necessarily the big can of body building whey you get at GNC, which is processed quite a bit differently, but some magical whey that comes from breast milk of cows, or humans.

If you have access to a lactating human breast, go for it. But don't tell 'em I sent ya, especially if she's a stranger. You could also try Immunocal. That works too and you probably won't get arrested.

My old friend Tom has been taking Immunocal for six years. He introduced me to it a few years ago since he no longer has access to breast milk. His kids are now fifteen and ten. He started Immunocal right after he stopped drinking breast milk from his second child. It’s been fourteen years since his dire diagnosis and he’s still cancer free.

I started taking the product about five years ago. Although not immuno compromised, I did have a renegade appendix go wild on me about that time. Plus I want my Glutathione levels increased. I like what I've been reading. The levels naturally decrease as we get older.

I have definitely noticed I have more energy. And stamina. I'm still writing, see? I can also leap over tall tiddly winks in a single bound and I am also definitely faster than a speeding tortoise.

I went along for the ride not only for health reasons but for the business opportunity as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, it's one of those multi-level marketing companies. All those got a real bad rap years back cause everybody that was trying to sell soap through Amway looked like an EST or Scientology disciple. Plus they were all get rich quick schemes. The product can be anything, just sell the concept.

There's still a ton of MLM companies out there selling everything from soap to shinola. I'm pretty sure it all works. I'm sure it's all innovative, special and unique. I'm sure every one of those products has the potential to enhance your life. But can you live without them?

Probably. I have been and I’m in my late 60’s.

Immunocal is different. There are definitely folks out there whose quality of life can be enhanced by taking it. It could also potentially be life saving. This is what is motivating me. This is why you have to at least know about it. Had I known about this product seven years ago there's a chance a couple of folks I once knew I might still know.

Immunocal is listed in the Physician's Desk Reference and Compendium of Pharmaceuticals and Specialties. It is licensed for sale by Health Canada.

Do your research and then give me a call. 530-277-0411 Wait, I never answer the phone. Shoot me an email at davet19@gmail.com and then maybe I'll call you. If you send me your phone number.

Don’t let the MLM aspect of this product turn you away. I am not asking you to join the ranks serial sellers, I am simply informing you of the benefits of this fantastic product!

If you, like me are over sixty years of age, you should really take a good look at this. If you currently have or have had cancer or any other immune disorder, you should try this without hesitation.

Immunocal has started a very good retail program where you can obtain the product online at up to a 25% discount. You don’t need to buy a banner or go to a convention.

Just go to: https://immunotec.com/DaveTimoney. If you are or have been immuno compromised I would recommend taking Immunocal Platinum, which is better than the basic.

Call, write or go online today! davet19@gmail.com

Immunotec.com/DaveTimoney

The gold standard for clinical evidence for efficacy is a placebo-controlled, double-blind clinical trial. Immunotec's (Immunocal's parent company) present research activities therefore focus on controlled clinical trials in cooperation with various clinical partners in Montreal and other clinical centers in Canada and the U.S.A. The recently published study on the effects of a research formulation of Immunocal on lung cancer patients (Tozer et al. Antioxidants & Redox Signaling, 10:2, 395-402, 2008) is an example. This trial has shown quite impressive results with regard to the health benefits of this Immunocal formulation in the nutrition of seriously ill advanced lung cancer patients. Other clinical studies showing the efficacy of Immunocal have been performed and published by several clinical centers.

Resort'n Done Right

2021-08-16T09:54:00.000-07:00

As we waited for the main event, we were entertained by quite possibly the most talented musician in Central America. Or this hemisphere.

This young man was playing guitar, keyboard, a percussion machine, steel drum and trumpet. He'd start strumming his guitar, lay background tracks of that and before too long, Emmit Rhodes style he was essentially playing all the instruments at once, a jazzy fusion of disco rock.

The main show at this Riu, every night, was a different themed dancing troupe. From Broadway to Disco to Grease to a Mexican Fiesta Extravaganza, there were different flashy costumes, different flashy tunes, and the same very fit flashy dancers.

My lovely wife's favorite was the all male "Angels in Underwear" review. That's her name for it, and the angel's tight attire left little to the imagination. Ala Robert Mapplethorpe.

There's not a lot of decision making that is required of you once you arrive at an all-inclusive resort like a Riu. The hardest decision you'll need to make is whether to go left or right. Sometimes it's really hard to decide what to put on your plate with the multitude of gourmet choices. The easy out for that is to just try everything. Then go back for what really excited your palate.

Oh yeah, you also want to watch out for these guys in Costa Rica. They're everywhere.

Fortunately we didn't see any man eating sized Iguanas, but they're out there. Just ask Richard Burton.

Prior to the trip, my lovely wife purchased some sunscreen. She's highly sensitive and needs SPF 2000. I, on the other hand, am a dark skinned Scandinavian. I use SPF 1.

On our second day there, we meandered over to the nearby shops to find a suitable SPF for me since I was not quite as proactive as she. Here's a tip: whatever SPF you use, buy it before you get to Costa Rica. They were selling a six ounce bottle of Hawaiian Tropic for $38.00!! I found an off brand SPF 15 for $20, but um, had I known (like you do now) I would have bought it here in the states.

Even though the resort is all-inclusive, our experienced Riu buddies recommended we bring a wad of $1.00 bills to tip the staff. A US dollar every two to three drinks is fine. Leave a bill at the table after each meal. Things like that. And if you leave your maid a bill every morning, she may do artistic things with your towels and blankets:

When we booked this trip, we booked it for resort'n. We didn't really even think about the Ecotourism aspect of Costa Rica until we got there. I mean, folks come from all over the world to hike in the rain forests and commune with nature. And sloths. We did not bring our adventurous, ambitious selves on this trip, unless eating and drinking requires ambition.

We did meander out and go shopping at a trendy little nearby town called Coco Beach, or Playas Del Coco. It was about a thirty minute drive through the jungle, although it was just around the point from the beach and cove where the Riu's were situated.

There's no coastal highway, at least along the Guanacaste coast. The steep mountain ridges come right down to the ocean in between all the bays and coves where towns and resorts are. I think that's another reason why it takes so long to get from here to there to anywhere.

Coco Beach is one of the more popular beach towns of Costa Rica. It used to be a small fishing village, but has become quite trendy over the last decade with both locals and tourists. The town sits right on the beach in a lovely bay. went there on the equivalent of Labor Day here, and the town was crowded with folks from all over the country as well as a few out of country tourists. We bought a lot of little trinkets as well as coffee for our family. Costa Rica coffee is quite a thing we discovered.

Another thing we discovered (but did not buy) which we found in pretty much every gift shop in town were these guys...(and no, they're not bananas!)

Brightly painted wooden dildos with Huichol Indian type artwork or just plain. Bottle openers, key rings, and bongs all made with a super large (or medium sometimes) wooden penis. What the bizarre holy hell is up with that? I've been to a few foreign countries and I've never seen one gift shop let alone all of them selling wooden bottle openers shaped like dicks.

My thoughts to inquire were thwarted by the fact that all the shops were staffed by young ladies, and, well, I just thought it best not to talk dildos with pretty young girls, no matter how arty they were. Everybody would get the wrong impression, especially my lovely wife.

Of this I'm certain.

After a little research I found out you cannot sell pornography or sex toys in Costa Rica, even while prostitution is apparently legal. It seems these gift type items could be a subtle form of resistance against the strict laws heavily influenced by Catholicism in that country.

We also took another field trip off the reservation to a beautiful waterfall. It was less than fifty miles away and took about two hours to get there. We thought about a rain forest run, but we would have spent more time in the car than in the forest.

After dipping our toes in the water, we returned through Liberia, where our driver took us to lunch. We actually paid, but he knew where the good food was since he lived there.

All around Liberia there was wrought iron over the windows and barbed wire ringed the roofs. It almost looked like a war zone, but there were no bombed out buildings.

"Just crime," shrugged our driver.

Once we were a few miles out of the city many of the country domiciles didn't have nearly as much wrought iron or barbed wire. Which seemed to mean to me the criminals at large in the city were either too young to drive or too poor to own a car. And too lazy to hoof it out into the country to steal another poor person's trinkets.

The main excitement off the resort we did was a half day zip line adventure tour. As it happened, less than a half mile from our resort sat the Diamante Eco Adventure Park, offering zip lining and more.

I bought the full package, which also included the photos that will follow. We were slated to embark about 10:30 in the morning and an open air shuttle bus picked us up at the resort at 10:00. I love punctuality!

At the appointed time we were ushered over to an area where there was enough gear to conceivably outfit fifty people for an Everest expedition. A half dozen young men showed up on cue to outfit the seven of us that would make up the zip line tour that morning.

They went over a number of safety concerns and then told us not to worry about braking, that was automatically taken care of. Not to worry at all. Really.

There were a total of five dual zip lines in the park and we'd be taking every one. We'd start on a line directly from where we were outfitted down to a platform about five hundred yards away.

From there we'd take that open air shuttle (that picked us up) to another platform where we'd do their Cadillac run, a mile long superman style deal several hundred feet up in the air. If we survived that we would then take three different runs down to the Wildlife Sanctuary, where we could visit some native species, like sloths and toucans.

Here we are, outfitted and raring to go!

And we're off!

As we neared the rapidly approaching platform, I began to wonder about braking, you know, stopping without dying. We were coming in pretty hot, somewhere between twenty and forty miles per hour, which are kinda fast when you're not surrounded by metal.

As we approached the platform, I noticed what looked like a collar a horse would wear if he was plowing a field. A big, oval leather type thing. It was hanging around the zip line. As soon as the metal handlebar hit that, there was a semi-loud pop and we went from forty to zero in about five feet.

I suppose a room full of foam rubber might accomplish the same thing, but this route didn't take up as much room and was probably a heck of a lot more economical.

From that platform we all boarded the open air shuttle truck for a roller coaster ride up to the peak where we would magically become Superman. Even the ride up was a hair raising treat. Ever been on Lombard Street In San Francisco? That's nothing compared with this.

This was steeper and curvier. The first half was dirt and gravel, but once we were half way up, the road turned to concrete, probably because it was turning vertical. Add to that the vehicle we were riding in was a stick shift, and, well, I began to wonder...

"If this guy stalls, we're bailing...right away..."

But somehow we made it to the top, wherein we seven intrepid aero-nuts would soon embark on the zip line ride of our lifetimes.

By the way, the white buildings to the left down yonder on the beach is the Riu Palace. The red roofed beige monolith is the Riu Guanacaste. It may have been bigger, but better cuisine was on the left!

About mid way through the almost sixty mile per hour run I started to think about stopping again. I mean, we were zipping along about twice as fast as the previous run. But then several hundred yards before the landing deck the zip line started to edge upwards, effectively slowing us to the pace where the horse collar would stop us with ease.

After that yahoo run, we zig zag zipped down three other runs and ended up at the wildlife sanctuary, which is right down there to the right of the Riu Guanacaste. When we were done there we just strolled back to our resort.

But before we strolled, we met Bob and Dylan, the sanctuary's two toucans. The roadie assigned to the toucans thought that their names were hilarious. We found it amusing. Here's a picture of Bob. Or Dylan. I can't remember who.

Unfortunately, our covid tests (taken at the Riu at no expense) came back negative so we did have to go home. I was kinda secretly hoping. We will definitely return to a Riu, sometime, some place, because we like resort'n done right.

I do think, however, another European adventure is calling. Whenever they open their gates. But who knows when wanderlust calls and where it may take us.

Please take care everyone. I do hope you've had the good sense to get vaccinated, especially in light of this new variant. You know, not all media is out to get you. Some of it just might be true.

It's Six AM, Where's My Caffeine?

2021-07-16T15:32:00.001-07:00

The flight to Costa Rica kinda sucked. The trip started out great, but once we got to the airport it went downhill fast. Fortunately that was my attitude and NOT the plane.

It started out great because we used our favorite local airport shuttle service operated by Deb Foxen, The Foxen Shuttle. We hadn't seed Deb for a while, because, covid, so it was great to catch up.

As I am sure I have mentioned many times in my travel pages, I hate lugging our big, fat suitcases around. But we've got to take them, because, you know, clothes. And of course we always want to be appropriately dressed.

I also hate long term parking. I really hate airport shuttles. And I really don't like imposing on friends or family. If it was a twenty minute ride, that's one thing. But a two plus hour round trip is imposing in my world.

I also always book a transfer from our arriving airport to our hotel. The last time I didn't do that was our arrival in Amsterdam. We got to lug our big, fat suitcases in and out of trains, up and down bus steps and through crowded sidewalks. So besides having Deb drive us down and pick us up, there was going to be a guy at the Liberia airport with a sign with my name on it to greet us. Completely stress free.

Ah.

Our flight was leaving our local international airport at Sacramento, CA, at 10:30 PM. We'd arrive in Charlotte, NC around 6:00 AM. Then our flight to Liberia, Costa Rica would leave Charlotte around 11:00AM. We'd have a few hours to kill once we got to the East Coast, which is great because I usually don't have a spare ten seconds to kill.

We like to get to the airport a couple hours early for check-in. It's usually stress free. Notice how those two words keep coming up? We like it that way. Especially me. I can be a little OC/AC/DC at times. Especially at an airport.

Strange humans sometimes want to touch me and how do tons of metal fly?

Two hours ahead of time is usually stress free. But not if you're leaving Schipol in the Netherlands on a Sunday. You'd better arrive the day before you plan on leaving stress free. I think we had to get through six football fields of people before we got to the gate. Good thing Amsterdam had the items I required at the time to be chill.

All day long I was envisioning my lovely wife and I having a sandwich and drink at a restaurant at the airport after we got through security. Since dinner's kinda my only meal of the day, I was hungry and really looking forward to a cafe made anything. Guy Fieri surprise me.

Imagine our surprise when every single restaurant and bar at the terminal was closed once we got through security. The only place open was the magazine and snack place. I paid eleven dollars for a three day old wilted lettuce and turkey sandwich. Condiment free.

It reminded me of a condiment free salami on crusty french bread sandwich I had in Madrid one time. With that extra bulky and incredibly firm crust I might as well have been gnawing on a bottle. It felt like the roof of my mouth had hosted a pro football game, with everybody wearing spikes.

Or it could have been a bunch of lumberjacks in high heels doing ballet. Why would lumberjacks be in high heels doing ballet? I have no idea, but when there's time to kill at an airport my mind can kind of wander to some rather inconceivable places.

I got a little sleep on the red-eye to Charlotte and when we arrived at 5:30 AM EST I was ready for a quart of caffeine. Maybe two. But talk about surreal. It was like a ghost terminal.

As I began my caffeine search, which should have been easy anywhere at 5:30 in the morning, I noticed a pattern. And that pattern was nobody was open. There were a total of eight Starbucks in and all around the terminal where we were. None of them were open. Not one of the eight.

Coffee? Morning? Anyone?

"Aargh," I screamed.

Probably to myself. Cause I don't like to cause scenes.

Right next door to one of the Starbucks (and believe me I tried every one, twice even) was a Spanx store. They were open. I could get a pair of Spanx at 6:00 AM if I wanted, but I couldn't get a cup of coffee. Had we landed in an alternate universe?

I finally found a little out of the way cinnamon roll place that served coffee. That held me over until 8:00 when one of the Starbucks finally opened.

I guess the covid shortage of travelers caused many of these places to open late and close early. Or close all together. Except for the apparently 24-hour Spanx store in Charlotte. God knows you don't want the relatives to see how much weight you put on while social distancing in isolation.

The rest of the stay in Charlotte was uneventful, except for all the wild, sometimes spectacular and generally deviant thoughts that ebb and flow while I my mind has the leisure to wander and wonder. while I watch all the silly humans. Fortunately I usually keep my mouth shut, thereby avoiding arrest, assault or institutionalization.

We finally took flight, thankfully, landing at Liberia International Airport, one of four international airports in Costa Rica, three hours later. Liberia is the largest city in the Guanacaste Province in northern Costa Rica. It is about one hundred fifty miles north of the national capital, San Jose.

Once outside after customs, which is sometimes edgy (I always travel with THC) but ever uneventful (except for that time in Cabo) I found the guy with my name on a sign quite easily. We did have to pass a barking horde of cabbies, but pass them by we did without having to negotiate a thing.

Ah.

He grabbed my lovely wife's suitcase and we were off in a nicely air conditioned van, all by ourselves.

One thing I have learned in my travels, tail gating in foreign countries is the norm, especially south of our border. I get ticked off if someone gets within a hundred feet of me here, and that's when I'm going twenty-five. But if you're not five to ten feet behind the guy in front of you while driving in Costa Rica, you're not doing it right. I don't care if you're going twenty-five or sixty, ten feet is the proper distance.

My first word of advice when traveling by car in Costa Rica, by the way, is wear your seat belt! And maybe bring a Nascar approved helmet, portable roll bar and elbow pads.

Costa Rica is not that big. I think you could fit about seven of 'em in California. So as the crow flies, it's really not that far to get from here to there. The problem is, I think, the width of the roads and the quality and quantity of the drivers. A scenic site that may only be one hundred miles away can take half a day to get there.

And then there's the fresh-squeezed orange juice peddlers. When I say they set up a roadside stand, I mean roadside. The two we passed were about an inch off the pavement, passing their fresh squeezed juice right in through the passenger window while the car is still on the pavement. Sometimes moving. Slowly. This, of course, invariably slows other cars and sometimes stops traffic altogether.

We started our journey on a reasonably decent two lane highway from the airport, and then a few turns and towns here and there later we were on a rapidly dwindling down to a one lane road through the jungle. I was beginning to think of Kate Hepburn hacking at the brush in The African Queen, as the leach-laden Bogey towed the boat behind.

"Would I have to get out and hack at the jungle brush in order to proceed?" I began to wonder. "I didn't bring my machete with me...or my flame thrower..."

Fortunately, as we neared the coast, the lane widened and suddenly we were, wallah, at the Riu security gate. We were waved through, drove past the Riu Guanacaste Resort (next door) and a string of shops before finally coming to the large, circular entry to the Riu Palace.

Ah.

My lovely wife and I discovered quite a while back that we are unabashed resort lovers, especially in a lush, tropical locale. We also enjoy active exploration vacations, but when we want R&R, we're resorters. And when it comes to resort'n, a Riu all-inclusive is simply a dandy way to go.

We were allowed to check-in early, got the magic plastic wristband key to the highway and were bell hopped to our room. Fifth floor, ocean view.

Ah.

We unpacked and changed. Ain't nothing worse than resort exploring in your airplane attire. Pants, socks and shoes? Nah, got to get into shorts or a swim suit and flip flops. My lovely wife needed a cocktail and I need a dip in one of the pools. Hell, maybe all of 'em.

Like every Riu we've stayed at, the grounds were impeccably groomed and quite lovely. Here's the view from our room:

Here's the sunset/evening view:

Ah.

After grabbing a couple drinks and long before sunset, we explored the grounds and meandered out to the beach. There we were immediately accosted by local purveyors of ware, from travel guide services to jewelry. To cocaine. WTF? How did we sixty-somethings exude that much cool to invite a want some cocaine inquiry?

We smiled and said no no no no, we don't sniff that no more. We're long ago tired of waking up on the floor. After dipping our toes in the central Pacific Ocean we meandered back to the safety of the resort, where purveyors and cocaine were not to be seen.

The buffet that night was sumptuous, with an endless array of tantalizing options. The only difference from before was a server had to serve you whatever you wanted. Which was kind of a bitch. I couldn't just grab eighteen desserts on the sly, a very polite Costa Rican had to serve me each one. So, you know, I didn't want to be seen as a complete glutton, I had to limit myself to ten. But even then some of them, kind of looked at me funny.

Actually, that's not really true. There's some pretty large people that frequent all-inclusive resorts. I mean, endless food. Endless. And the Riu's spread is a heck of a lot more tantalizing than a traditional smorgasbord. Trust me.

After dinner we strolled the grounds then headed over to the theater, where a fairly decent show was queuing up...

Vaxication Pura Vida Style

2021-06-29T13:00:00.000-07:00

I have come up with a new fad diet; broccoli and cocaine. One day you eat as much broccoli as you want, the next day you do cocaine. And so on.

I road tested this diet back in the 1980's, only I did gin instead of broccoli. And I did gin simultaneously with the cocaine. A lot of both. My dietician would have been appalled. The diet worked, I did lose weight. But I gained it right back when I started to eat, you know, food.

My lovely wife and I were Moderna-sized in March of this year. Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure, sure, sure, whatever. Vaccine this and holy crap that.

We were sugar cube kids back in the 1960's, and hey, look Ma, no polio!

We, um, don't give a lot of credence to dis-informational propaganda, Facebook memes, or internet hyperbole. Holy cow, the ocean of notions being peddled out there is truly staggering. What's even more staggering though is the fact that a fairly large amount of people are actually swimming in it.

We also have medical doctors in the family. We believe in facts and science. It was not a difficult decision for us to make.

We also get the flu shot annually. I was sick with the flu about six years ago and for one day I don't think I moved at all. Not a blink, not a twitch, not a sigh. Not even a down beat disco move. And that scared the hell out of me. Not that I couldn't disco, but that I couldn't blink. I've gotten an annual flu shot ever since and guess what? No flu.

I did have mild flu like symptoms after Moderna shot number one. My lovely wife felt fine. The night after Moderna shot number two we both had chills and muscle aches something fierce. But the morning dawned favorably, and except for a day or two of mild fatigue we were fine after that.

And so it was, near the end of March, fully vaccinated and feeling fine that we decided to book a relaxing, tropical vaxication. Get the heck out of Dodge. The travel industry was still reeling, there were deals out there. So I started to do my normal travel deal searching routine.

I mainly use Hotwire. I sometimes use Priceline. When looking for a tropical locale, I also check out SouthwestVacations and Riu.com.

Whoduwhat is Riu?

Well, they are an all-inclusive resort chain operating all over Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean. My lovely wife and I were first turned on to the chain by some good friends when we went with them to the Riu Palace in Cabo San Lucas back in 2013; Someone Put a Cabo in My Caboodle.

We enjoyed that experience so much we did it again (by ourselves this time) in 2016 when we returned to Puerto Vallarta for the second time. (We honeymooned there in 1975 for our first marriage. Yeah, there's a story there. Elizabeth Taylor's in it too!)

The one thing we learned from that trip is that when booking a Riu, always book a Riu PALACE!

Typically there's a couple Riu's at any one location. One's for party animals that don't care what they eat, the palace is for those with a discerning palate. We discovered this on our Puerto Vallarta trip and will now always book a palace. As it happened on this particular Pura Vida trip, the palace option was only about $15 more per person for the entire week.

We were looking at a return to Cabo, but then my lovely wife decided she wanted to go someplace new. And lo and behold, the Riu Palace on the Guanacaste coast in Costa Rica came into view. They wanted us there so badly they flew us there for around $600 each round trip. And that included seat upgrades.

Nobody seemed to care about the fact we'd been vaccinated. The airlines didn't care, they didn't even require a Covid test. Costa Rica didn't care about those two things either. But there were a couple hurdles we did have to jump over in order to get into the country during these covid times.

The first thing Costa Rica required was a health insurance policy for a minimum of $50,000 (if bought through an American carrier, only $20,000 if bought through a Costa Rican carrier) for hospitalization. It also had to allow for a possible extended stay if quarantine was necessary.

All the US Carriers we looked at were substantially more expensive than the Costa Rican one we chose, Sagicor. That link is in English, and the site is very easy to navigate. I think we paid about $80.00 each.

Then we had to fill out a health questionnaire online within forty-eight hours before arrival in Costa Rica. That was real easy too, here's that link to get you going: Travel Costa Rica. Once completed, their website gave each of us one of them square squiggly things, you know, sorta looks like this:

That little ditty was going to be more important for entry into Costa Rica than our passport! Not that actual one there. That's not going to do anything but verify a sprinkler return to Amazon. In case you were wondering. We photocopied each real one and also took a photo with our phones.

Some of the insurance was moot. The Riu offered us a free ten day extension if either of us got sick. They also Covid tested us for free for our return flight to the US, which was a requirement by our customs.

Once the details were hammered together, it was time to dream about palm trees swaying, roasting flesh in the hot tropical sun and endless dining on wonderful cuisine. Which we would not have to prepare at all!

We also began packing, which is an organizational exercise of the utmost importance for me. Yes, Adrian Monk is one of my guys. I even have his bobble head.

I am an early packer. I have to be. There's a lot going on that has to fit in that small tiny space that is called a suitcase. And I don't want to be caught on the other side of the world without proper under garments.

Gone are the days of tossing a t-shirt, boxers, a pair of socks and some no-sweat into a paper bag before running out the door a couple hours before departure. Hell, I semi-remember a couple out of town weekends where a wallet with cash and cards were all I took. LOL. There's some stories there too..if only I could remember.

These days I'll have my suitcase open a couple weeks before travel, especially international, tossing in things here and there as I think about them.

I also travel with a day pack that always stays with me and carries some very important stuff, like travel docs, reading material and the aunties.

You know, aunt acid, aunt ihistamine and aunt i-diarrhea pills. I have found those three items, as well as aspirin and a couple band aids can cover most non-serious urgent needs. I also carry a small first aid kit that contains enough grit to take care of a few serious situations. Ex-firefighter, what can I say?

Then I have a big old fat suitcase that gets checked. I have noticed many of the advance items getting tossed my suitcase way these days generally have to do with me being in my sixties. And I'm not early sixties anymore. I'm actually getting close to leaving the mid-sixties even. At any rate, my advance items include but aren't limited to things like fiber gummies, vitamins, an ace bandage, orthotics, ankle brace, eye glass cleaner. You know, important old man stuff.

A tropical vacation is much easier to pack for than say, an adventure excursion to Europe. Those require good walking shoes, shorts and pants (depending on the time of year), long and short sleeves, coat, sweater, lederhosen and a Saint Bernard with brandy.

Tropical usually doesn't take a lot of room either. Shorts, button down shirts*, swim suit and a pair of sandals. Oh, and two freaking pairs of deck shoes.

Two pairs of decks shoes! Just who the hell do I think I am? Imelda Marcos? I own more shoes now than I ever have in my life. I used to own like four or five...now I own like five hundred.

Consider this; I have a pair of flip-flops or crocs by all three exterior house doors. Because ya know, ya never know if you might have to go a wanderin.

And then I have two pairs of deck shoes. Hiking boots. Work boots. Rain boots. Snow boots. High heels.

Help! Where does it end?

*In summer time when the heat is on, I always wear button down, short-sleeve cotton shirts. I have found t-shirts and polo shirts too hot and confining. The button down, besides looking a little more stylish, is the absolute coolest shirt one can wear. In more ways than one.

Just ask me.

Now that we are just about packed, let's go to Costa Rica!

Rats! (Eratication)

2021-06-11T11:03:00.000-07:00

For the last couple years I have been dealing with any appalling rat bastard situation up in the chicken coop. What began as some not quite innocent rodent mischief turned into an all out battle for supremacy lasting way too long. And costing hundreds of dollars. And enormous loss of vermin life.

I suppose I have been extremely fortunate up until this onslaught began. Both the hen house and feed storage area(s) have a concrete foundation. The structure is pretty darned sound. You can read about that construction project right here: FantasiaLand. So it's not like I just had bags of feed laying out in the yard inviting the multitudes of nature.

I have had a single rat to deal with two different times over a seven to eight year period. I ended up ferreting the first one out and bonking him on the head with a shovel.

How about that, I ferreted a rat!

The second time I made my ex-son-in-law stomp on him. It was perfect. He's a scientist and city dweller and happened to be on the wrong side of the fence when the battle erupted. I was anticipating the kill and had the shovel, but the rat zigged when he was sposed to zag, and well, fresh city shoes made the hesitant stomp that day.

For six or seven years I just left the feed in the bags on the concrete floor. Nice. Simple. Easy. Then this onslaught began.

I do want to caution, if you are an animal rights or rat advocate or somewhat squeamish, I caution you continuing with this post. It's gonna get right rat nasty.

By the way, these aren't the kind of rats you want in a cage inside your house. They aren't the sort you name Ralph and let run around all over little Jimmy's arms and legs.

"Ohhhh, how adorable."

Nope. These are the bubonic plague sort of rat nasties, the kind you would drop into your pet Anaconda's cage and watch as it's swallowed whole, squealing all the way.

In case you need a few more reasons why you don't want junior playing with these particulars: Seven Rat Facts

It started in winter the normal type way. A hole appeared in the bottom of a feed bag and I noticed some rice-sized rat poop here and there. I went on alert, every morning I was up there I'd make an effort to find the rascal. I had the two times before, why should this time be different?

The hole got bigger, the droppings increased, but I never saw the culprit. Then one day I moved the meal worm box and a freaking family of five or six scattered. I bonked one, but the battle had begun.

I had two different kinds of rat poison on hand, they ignored those. I ultra soaked the feed shack in mint, if the wind was right it smelled like grasshopper pie a mile away. They stayed. I tried one of those ultra sound doohickeys, that didn't work either. I tried one of those electric zappers, baited it with peanut butter. Got one, that's it.

Early on in the campaign I took away their main feed source. I bought two new thirty-two gallon plastic garbage cans to house the feed. But those little delinquents started in immediately, gnawing on the lids, tearing holes all over. I started covering the gnawed parts with foil. It was back and forth and a ludicrous hassle. Finally, after a couple weeks of pure, unadulterated, ridiculous frustration, I switched to metal cans. And that worked.

I am now the owner of two nice, new, red, lidless and purposeless garbage cans. I tried to save twenty bucks and ended up spending forty more. If you have a rat problem do yourself a favor and start with metal. You'll end up there anyway. Those miscreant rodents are relentless.

I really had no idea what I was up against. I didn't know they multiplied like Mormons. I had found and killed maybe five or six of them over a couple months, thinking that had to be close to it, but boy howdy, things picked up quick after a physical therapy session.

While I was having my left hamstring worked over, I was lamenting my rapidly becoming out of control situation. Even though their main feed source was gone, there was still evidence of them everywhere. It was like the wrecking crew gang from "A Clockwork Orange" came out every night and did their "Singing in the Rain" routine.

And then my physical therapist suggested using glue traps. Not the ones for teeny little mice, but the real McCoy, these big guys, 5x10er's. Baby.

I baited them in each back corner behind the feed cans, and boy howdy, did they work. But then the severity of my situation really began to add up. Every morning I would have at least one, sometimes three, in each trap. From two to six per day. It was like Rat Christmas every day!

The confirmed kills started to add up. Twenty. Sixty. Eighty.

And these glue traps, they're awesomely gruesome. The cartoon picture above is cute, the real picture is nasty. I won't go completely Dean Koontz on you but blood, guts and squealing often greeted me every morning.

I also didn't spend a lot of time trying to be humane. I never invited them over. I never asked them to be my friend. I'm pretty sure the chickens didn't either.

I also didn't have time to deal with the little bastards once they were caught, living or dead. The whole trap with rats got picked up with a shovel and tossed into a brown grocery bag. If they were living they didn't last long, especially in the heat.

Yeah, I was merciless by this point. Besides the extra daily work, the war was getting expensive. Each glue trap costs about $2.00. That's close to $4.00 a day. For months.

And boy howdy, smell? Those dead little bastards smell awful. Not as bad as seared human flesh, but pretty darn bad.

How do I know what seared human flesh smells like?

No, I wasn't around for the Donner Party. And don't get me going about those idiots. I actually have a draft going regarding my opinion about that fiasco...we'll see if it makes it to print.

You'd actually have to find one of my old firefighting posts. I'm sure I mentioned it. Our engine was first on the scene for a small plane crash one time and all three aboard the plane had perished upon impact. And then burned beyond recognition after the subsequent explosion and fire.

I was involved with extrication of the remains. It was pretty gnarly. And quite sweet meat pungent. Those folks ate some sugar!

But I digress. There was also confirmed evidence those smelly little maleficents had made a Hopi village of caves within the cliff the chickens had created over time.

That entire concrete block (with brick on top) supporting that middle post used to be underground. The chickens have scratched and clawed, hunted and pecked so that the inside of their coop is now level and not sloped. That action has created about a ten foot long cliff, from one to two feet high. Within that cliff were rat caves, all over the place.

Being the ex-firefighting pyromaniac that I am, I started playing with these smoke bombs and others like them:

Sometimes a disorientated rat would make it out past the smoke, wherein I would bonk him with a shovel. Sometimes they would scurry out a top hole to another, giving away one of their secret locations.

I uncovered a nest one time in the upper echelons of the labyrinth and massacred a family of eight squealing rat babies. I bonked a few but then let a couple squeal until their close-eyed little fur less rat bodies froze in the cold winter air. I was hoping their cries for help would summon their parents, wherein I would shatter their skulls with a shovel. But no, they had apparently fled to save their own vile vermin souls.

Besides, a female rat will produce up to five litters per year under the right rat circumstances. The litter sizes are usually between three and twenty, with an average litter size of seven. It takes only thirty-five days for a rat to reach sexual maturity from birth.

Do you think the parents even cared? They're rat baby making machines. That's apparently all they do. That and raid my chicken house every night.

One time I went ahead and threw little packs of poison into all the caves, shoving them in a few inches and then I concreted up the openings, thinking they couldn't get out and would eventually get hungry enough to eat the poison. I ended up with about a half dozen rats that made it up to the surface (somehow) to die. So a few took the bait.

But the war raged unabated. Every time I thought I made some head way and maybe subdued their morale, they responded like a school full of kindergartners unleashed at Disneyland. New rat holes would appear around and under the concreted ones. And rice sized evidence everywhere every night.

I'd keep bombing, I had to keep up the effort. Each of those packs range from $6.00-$12.00 depending on the brand (and duration of burn time), and I'd burn a pack every week or so. That was adding up too.

There had to be an underground labyrinth that would have made the Viet Cong envious. I rarely if ever got a surface bound escapee. And then very so often I'd find a spent smoke bomb carcass that was magically tossed out of the cave in which it was deployed the day before.

I began to think they were Cheech and Chong acolytes and the smoke bombs were spliffs.

"Heyyyy, thanks Mon," they'd rat mutter, "We've got the munchies now."

And then go raid my chicken coop.

Rat poop everywhere, including in the chicken's feed container, which hangs about a foot off the ground. Did they create a rat ladder up or scurry five feet down a metal cable? I dunno.

Either way was an acroratic feat.

After a while, the glue traps started to lose their luster. The rats were talking to each other.

"Hey, Marvin. Stay away from that sticky stuff. Chloe stepped on that the other night and got stuck. Never came home. No bother, I'm sleeping with her cousin now."

Somehow the bait was being taken, but it would take a few days just to catch one. The catches would either be a youngster that skipped school that day or a fatter one that just couldn't resist the bait. But the leaders of the pack and the rest of the round table were stayed away.

I took to watching U-tube rat catching videos at night before going to sleep. No doubt enhancing my rodent killing skills in my dreams.

I tried a number of their ideas. None of them worked. Or maybe worked once. Rats everywhere else seemed really gullible. Why did I get the ones that went to school?

The glue traps seemed to be the only thing that worked, only now less so. I also kept smoke bombing the holes with limited success. The evidence of their infestation kept up its pace.

Tractor Supply was the only local purveyor of smoke bombs, only they ran out. The bombs even became in short supply at Amazon. Apparently I wasn't the only one with a rat problem. That or there's a lot of pyromaniacs out there playing with smoke bombs.

I was beginning to feel rat impotent. I wasn't putting up any sort of offense. Or defense. I was growing concerned. I didn't want the infestation to continue unabated. I had to keep up the effort.

For a couple weeks I kept after Tractor Supply for smoke bombs, they said they should be restocked any day. But that day never seemed to come. So one day I decided I'd try a box of these:

The blocks are about 4x6 and peanut flavored. I broke one apart, put a couple smaller pieces around the feed house and then put a smaller block (about 2x4) up in the companion cage, close to the upper echelons of the rat cave Hopi village. The chickens are currently locked out of that area, so it was a perfect set-up.

The next morning I discovered the smaller pieces in the feed house had been nibbled on. Then I noticed the 2x4 block in the companion cage was GONE. Devoured.

I was surprised. I had not seen any sort of poison consumption on that level at all since the war began. I put an entire 4x6 block in the companion cage.

The next morning I found two to three dead rats on the ground. I also found the entire 4x6 block had been devoured! Poof. Gone!

Holy cow. Those little bastards were having a heck of a serious feast on the wrong cuisine. Lucky me.

I put another 4x6er in the same place. The next morning, the same thing. Two to three dead rats on the surface, the entire block of poison devoured. I was guardedly optimistic. Had I found the holy grail?

Then we went to Costa Rica, and left the fallout to our ace pet and house sitter, Amber of Pet Plant and Homes.

Amber picked up a total of eight dead rats on the surface during the week we were gone. We bagged all the surface dead ones and threw them in the garbage by the way. I didn't want the potential of any wildlife (or our cats) to ingest a poisoned rat.

In all, maybe twenty to thirty of those vile creatures made it to the surface to die with the last offensive. I think another several hundred died in their underground bunkers. Something devoured almost the entire box of poison and it wasn't just thirty rats.

It's been four weeks now and there has been zero evidence of any those nasty scoundrels. I baited another glue trap two weeks ago, but the bait and trap still sit idle.

I have had several people tell me I'd never get rid of them. And these were informed people, not the the UPS guy. This was a pest control guy and several ranchers.

How many rats did I ultimately kill in this two year battle? One hundred eight-two confirmed. But I'm pretty certain a minimum of that number died underground from the poison. Too much was consumed to only kill thirty.

I would like to say I have done my part to not create more vermin for the world. Your welcome

When that teeming ratopolis emerged around my poultry habitat, it was important for me to not let it get out of hand. Hell, if it got too crowded up there they could have started migrating to the house.

Hopefully with the changes I have made to their potential food sources I can avoid any future infestation. But if they do come, I am substantially wiser for the next go round of rat eratacation.

"Pura Vida, Resort'n Done Right" coming soon.

Please Pass the Dextrose!

2021-05-17T13:20:00.004-07:00

I have tried everything, I think, short of amputation to try and relieve the pain I had been experiencing in both my shoulders over the last couple years. I have tried pain relievers, I have tried acupuncture, I have tried physical therapy, I actually had surgery on my left shoulder in late 2018, all to no avail. Then on my last physical therapy appointment I had a few extra seconds to look at a peer periodical with an article touting PRP, or Platelet Rich Plasma. This is a procedure where they draw some blood from you, spin it in a centrifuge thingy and then inject the plasma into the affected joint. And this made me wonder, since I have been an avid blood donor for a couple decades that blood flow to these extremities might be a concern. It then made me wonder if these injuries might have transpired when I was a pint low, with less blood (and oxygen) reaching the area making them more susceptible to injury. I have been met with mixed reviews from the professionals I have asked about this theory. Some said mostly not, a few said, "Eh, maybe." I did not donate blood at all last year, and I have not suffered any further tendon or ligament injury. But I am a firm believer in donating blood, especially after our wonderful daughter almost died in 2019. Yeah, the morning of our son's wedding I was informed that she had just miscarried. Planned Parenthood also had called stating that it might be an ectopic pregnancy.

I apologise for the previous run-on paragraph from hell which should have been five. The back-end here at blogger has changed it's format a bit, and this post has been in editing mode for months. So somehow a whole bunch of programming gobbligook gets magically inserted here and there and if you fuck with it, run on paragraphs occur. Or possibly worse. I dunno. We'll see.
An ectopic pregnancy occurs when a fertilized egg implants and grows outside the main cavity of the uterus. Pregnancy begins with a fertilized egg. Normally, the fertilized egg attaches to the lining of the uterus. But apparently sometimes it likes to go a wandering.

An ectopic pregnancy most often occurs in a Fallopian Tube, which carries eggs from the ovaries to the uterus. This type of ectopic pregnancy is called a tubal pregnancy. Sometimes, an ectopic pregnancy occurs in other areas of the body, such as the ovary, abdominal cavity or the lower part of the uterus (cervix), which connects to the vagina.

An ectopic pregnancy can't proceed normally. The fertilized egg can't survive, and the growing tissue may cause life-threatening bleeding, if left untreated.

She should have gone to the hospital then, but she and me decided we didn't want to put a shroud over the her brother's wedding. So she was going to stay the course and then go to the hospital first thing in the morning.

The wedding went absolutely fabulously, as did the reception. It was at the after party when she collapsed, her boyfriend and cousin rushing her to the hospital.

Fate was on her side. The visiting ER doc at our little country hospital happened to be a crack OB/GYN from San Diego who had experienced ectopic pregnancy fallout before. Nine units of blood and three units of plasma later my daughter was still alive. A smaller person would not have survived.

So there's that. I donate blood to get my BP checked for free. Plus they're always nice (I think they have to be) and you get free treats. Who knew the exercise would actually save lives?

As I was still shoulder floundering, my lovely wife turned me on to a local doctor who worked non-surgically with connective tissues.

Great guy, but he does not take insurance, at all. So after my first $275.00 visit, I decided to talk with my GP about it all. And he referred me to Mountain View Rehabilitation and Dr. Tracy Hoag 530-477-0893

Can you tell I'm a fan?

On my first visit I was wearing my Gwar t shirt, a group I would hardly go see but whose t shirt I semi-sardonically wear. (I now request t shirts from our daughter when she goes to a show and we baby-sit.) Anyway, Dr. Hoag recognized the group/shirt and we cracked up about it all. If you're not familiar with Gwar, check out the link above.

Anyway, on my first visit (covered entirely by Medicare and the extras part alphabet whatever I now pay extra for) we covered the basics (besides Gwar) and then she did an ultrasound on both shoulders. From looking at the ultrasound screen and from having me do certain movements she surmized I was having trouble with the supraspinatus tendon in both shoulders. Since both long head biceps tendons have ruptured, this would mean there's extra pressure on whatever is left. I guess.

I can semi-understand surmising a diagnosis based on certain movements, but I don't know how anybody can tell anything from an ultrasound screen. To me it looks like you're searching for a sand dab in the middle of the Sahara Desert, or a frog in a swimming pool full of dill pickles.

On my second visit. per our treatment plan, we began a little Prolotherapy, which is a bit different than Platelet Rich Plasma therapy. It is also a heck of a lot cheaper and wahlah, it is also covered by Medicare! Just what is Prolotherapy? Let's have a look see:

Prolotherapy is an alternative therapy that can help repair ligaments. It’s also known as regenerative injection therapy or proliferation therapy.

This treatment is meant for injured joints and connective tissue. It’s also used to treat some people who have conditions like arthritis, whiplash, and degenerative disc disease. Prolotherapy can treat a number of areas of your body, including your back, neck, knees, shoulders, hips, pelvic floor, and hands.

Prolotherapy is considered safe for most people. However, only smallTrusted Source studies have been conducted about its overall effectiveness.

Prolotherapy typically costs between $400–$1,000, depending on the clinic and the part of the body that’s treated.

Prolotherapy involves watery injections to relieve pain from affected joints. These injections typically contain natural substances like dextrose, saline, and sarapin, in addition to a numbing agent like lidocaine. This treatment is unlike platelet-rich plasma injections, which require stem cells from the person undergoing treatment. It’s also unlike steroid and cortisone injections.

Your doctor will make the injection to a very specific, targeted area in the injury site which triggers your body’s healing response. This leads to the growth of new, healthy ligaments or tendon fibers. As a result, you may experience reduced pain and stiffness and improved strength, function, and mobility of the joint.

Multiple treatments can be used to continue to stimulate growth of new tissues.

I was pretty excited about starting this therapy, very hopeful that it would work. But thirty days later my shoulders were the same. When I went in for the second injection, it was decided I would have an MRI done to find out exactly what was going on.

I was also informed that Ibuprofen could inhibit the effectiveness of the dextrose. And since Ibu-800's are one of my go-to's for old man back, I said, "Oh."

So I stopped eating IBU-8's and then a week or two after the second injection I thought I felt maybe I was getting a little more pain free movement within my shoulders. By the time I went in for my third injection I could do circular movements with both arms pretty much PAIN FREE.

I might be able to golf again. Maybe even toss a ball around. It's. Been.i>YEARS!

Oh, and by the way, the MRI listed full-thickness tears in both my supraspinatus tendons, among a couple other less painful items in both shoulders.

Dr. Hoag was dead on with her diagnosis without having the aid of an MRI. She is the real deal.

Apparently there are not a lot of doctors out there offering this kind of therapy and having insurance pay. Most of them are cash only, and with each injection running somewhere between $200-$500 that can add up. I have not paid a dime, except for insurance premiums.

If you are suffering from any kind of joint pain I highly recommend looking into Prolotherapy. If you are local, I highly recommend Mountain View Rehabilitation. Dr. Hoag has unfortunately left, but I am now seeing one of the main dudes, Dr. Joel Richnak. He's a whiz at non-surgical orthopedics. It took him a visit or two to catch up with me. I went in to see him about a trigger finger, but both shoulders, my right ankle, and left thigh/hamstring also needed attention. We're now on track and hopefully, hopefully I can start swinging a golf club again. And I will also be back here at the keyboard a little more often. The crowd-funding for our invention did not go as planned, so we are back peddling a bit and are now looking at simply marketing the patent(s). And then maybe go golfing. Look for Pura Vida-Resort'n Done Right shortly!

Gum Karma

2020-07-23T20:28:00.000-07:00

You know you're Gettin Old when you start getting solicitations from the Trident Society, offering cremation, "the sensible choice", in the mail. During a pandemic no less.

I recollected to my lovely wife the other day a week or so ago that I have not stepped in any gum for quite a while, probably ever since I started practicing good gum karma.

What is good gum karma? Not spitting it out any place where it might easily get stepped on. Parking lots and sidewalks come to mind. Theater floors aren't really good either. Nor is your toilet seat.

The freeway or a highway are good places. I mean, if someone is out there running around in the middle of the freeway gum will be the least of their concerns. Hell, if enough people started tossing out their gum on the highways here in California it might help fill some of the potholes in the asphalt.

So just what is that nifty contraption I mentioned in my last post?

Here's a sneak picture:

Anyone that has some experience with processing cannabis will have an idea of what's going on. Or not. No one's ever seen this thing. Yeah howdy holy shit it's a motorized scissor cleaner!

If you've never trimmed or processed cannabis you won't understand, but if you have, hold on. We hope to be on the market within six months. Yeah, even in the middle of a pandemic.

We figure a couple things are certain. Folks are going to want their diversions while being locked down, and cannabis is a pretty good diversion. To get those pretty manicured flowers it takes a bit of scissor work, and that work typically gums up scissors something awful. Enter the De-resinator, the very first automatic scissor cleaner.

I'm not going to go into the full sales schpiel here, but there's nothing on the market anywhere near this thing and we're pretty confident the demand will be strong. Dirty scissors currently involve a messy and time consuming procedure to clean. Our machine will do it in seconds.

That means the grower and processor can get more weed out to you in a more expeditious manner. Your welcome.

Look Out Joe, We're Getting Exotic

2020-06-09T14:36:00.000-07:00

I hear tell Joe Exotic has a couple large predatory cats prowling around his property. Big deal. So do we. This here is Frank Frankerson.

Don't let his laid back demeanor fool you. He's a natural born killer. Of ants, lizards, mice and things. When he's not lounging of course, which does happen to be most of the time.

And the killer on the left below, Daisy, while she looks quite innocent in her baby pix, has turned into the ferocious beast you see in the second photo.

She routinely brings us birds and voles and other, larger vermin than Frank does. She has also ferociously defended her turf against a couple wanna be visiting cats. Don't let her cute face fool you, she really is a bad ass.

And of course we have a rooster and a number of hens, hence the name of the blog. So we got us a fine little menagerie going on here on our little slice of heaven.

I know, I know. A lot of folks have domestic and barnyard animals. A couple cats, a couple dogs, a couple hundred chickens. Cows. Pigs. Goats. Hamsters..

But we accidentally acquired something here recently that I think will set us apart from being a plain old country menagerie. Something that just about puts us on par with Joe Exotic.

Meet Liberace, Libby, or Mr. Lovely as he is called from time to time.

This is him on our front deck on the morning he arrived.

I took the picture through the screen door because I didn't know if he was an attack peacock or not. We have since discovered he is not.

So who's missing a peacock? What's going on?

My lovely wife got in touch with a neighbor across the street who always has a finger on our neighborhood's pulse. And she said there's a flock of them that live by the creek way back behind her property. You know, Yondersville. But apparently there's been a mountain lion with her cub that have been prowling recently, and that could be why Liberace has migrated our way.

He's been here over two weeks now. He overnight's up on the roof. I can't think of a safer place to overnight if you're trying to stay out of a mountain lion's mouth.

We've fed him a bit of cat food and chicken food, but he's mainly foraging and eating bugs, which I'm totally OK with. And apparently peacocks are really good at killing snakes, so in rattlesnake territory they're probably not a bad idea to have around. If one doesn't adopt you (like Liberace did us) than you could expect to pay $50 to 75 for an India Blue chick.

He hasn't been hard on any of the plants either, like chickens can be. He strolls gracefully through the planted areas, selectively hunting and pecking. Chickens are excavators, they'll scratch and tear up small plants and ground covers to make sure they're getting every last morsel of any given square foot.

Or maybe they just excavate for fun. Here's what they've done to Fantasia Land over the years. The actual surface level of the dirt used to be at the top of the gravel in both pictures. The concrete was poured into an eighteen inch deep trench securing the chicken wire so that no varmints could dig underneath. The chickens have dropped the surface level by twelve to eighteen inches.

I had to shore up the pier there several years ago. They had completely unearthed the original post and concrete. Framed a three bag square piling. It'll hold up the Golden Gate Bridge now.

Liberace does poop on the deck, so I started pretending the house is a boat that has a poop deck.

Just what is a poop deck on a boat, anyway, you might be thinking? Cause, you know, it sounds like it as the potential to be really awful.

I'll save you the trouble, a poop deck is: "the after most and highest deck of a ship, especially in a sailing ship where it typically forms the roof of a cabin in the stern."

Why do they call it a poop deck? The name originates from the French word for stern, la poupe.

I'm thinkin it's just a place to park your pooper..

Peacocks have a reputation for being loud and obnoxious, but Liberace really isn't a big talker. The first time I heard him was when he decided he was going to try and get in the chicken coop. He flapped up to the top of the fence but was immediately shocked by the hot electric wire. He veered off quickly, and then walked around and squawked a bit. I imagine he was swearing in peacock tongue.

And then he's been a little vocal from time to time during the night. He has a couple different squawks, one of them sounds eerily like a large cat. And the other is a "honk" that sounds like a goose. But we're used to roosters crowing at all hours of the day and night, we hardly even hear Liberace.

We have done some reading, and there are mixed reviews about him hanging out with our chickens. There is the potential he could introduce disease, and because of his size he could be a bit of a bully to them. But he has managed to get in the coop four times now and has always been quite docile and polite. The chickens are a little freaked out, but there has not been any sort of a scene.

He's a pretty smart bird. I let him out of the coop twice, and then the other night I happened to see how he is entering. He goes around back, hops up on the hen house roof, hops over the electric wire, then finds a wide enough place between the clothesline hung to keep hawks out and hops right down. I have no idea how he gets out, but he was out this morning.

I do think our flock is one of the reasons he ended up this way, that and high altitude roof safety. He goes up around the coop a couple times a day, and so far had ended up inside the coop the last four days. But now that I know he can also get out I'm not as concerned.

He seems like he's been around humans. We can usually get within a couple feet of him before he gets a little skittish, and he will also seek us out if he hears us outside. And he's got a couple hang out spots, one on the front poop deck and one on the back poop deck.

We have no idea how long he's going to hang around, but we're certainly not going to chase him away. It's kinda fun to look out in the yard and see a peacock wandering around, and he doesn't seem to be upsetting the balance and harmony around here. Who knows, when mating season comes around this fall maybe he'll attract a mate and we'll start a flock of peacocks.

Then we'll really be exotic. And loud, probably.

Skewered Spleen

2020-05-28T15:08:00.001-07:00

I don't really have a bucket list to speak of. I'm pretty much living it. Family and friends, out in the country, breathing the air. I would like to travel a bit more with my lovely wife, but who knows how that's gonna go in this new age. That said, I espied a couple Canadian Geese in flight a month or so ago as I was driving on our lovely two lane country road. I usually stop whatever I'm doing whenever I see or hear them to savor their wit and charm and allow my heart to sing.

I would have really pissed off the guy behind me though if I had stopped, opened the sun roof and began savoring. And singing. Nevertheless I did experience bucket list like bliss for a few scant seconds.

Apologies, apologies and one more apology for not posting sooner, especially in this time where some off the wall humor couldn't hurt. I haven't posted here since my old buddy the Amazing Martin Q passed away last October.

I still think of him quite often, sigh. And so it goes.

Poo tee weet old friend.

Believe it or not I have been incredibly busy, even in this time of isolation. A forthcoming post or two will explain a lot. A big part of my busi-ness has been an invention my son and I have been working on over the last couple years that is related to the cannabis industry. We will ultimately have three patents on it and are just now doing the final prototype road tests before going public.

What is this wang-dang infernal contraption thingamajigger I'm referring to? Next post, within a couple weeks. I promise.

OK, now we're going to venture into territory that will certainly make my style points drop. Why? Because this old man did a really, really stupid thing that injured his poor old aging torso. Again. That's why. So lemme cogitate that for a moment while I listen to some Khruangbin, one of my new favorite flavors.

I had a hundred titles for this blog post, and as the events unfolded they flowed almost as effortlessly as playing ping-pong in a canoe. "Tangerine Spleens and Marmalade Skies" and "Pressed Spleen and Warthog" were a couple of my favorites, besides of course the chosen title.

We don't throw a lot of food scraps out here in the country. What doesn't go to the chickens goes to a spot on the other side of the house for vultures and raccoons.

So one evening a couple months back I was going out in the dark to give the scavengers some chicken skin and bones and a fair amount of warm, yummy, liquid, greasy chicken fat.

And now I am about to give you an insight as to just how my brain works. It's not going to be pretty. Or easy. But just think, you don't have to deal with this all the time. Like I do.

As I began my journey out of the kitchen, I also began ascertaining. That's like cogitating, only sounds better here.

The garage door was already closed for the night. Why initiate power and cause wear and tear on the motor just for a quick trip scrap toss? Even though the scavenger smorgi is on that side of the house, because of the potential fifteen second wear and tear and wasting two and a half cents worth of power I opted for the utility door. Which is on the opposite side of the house from where I was heading.

Anybody got a compass?

Those estimates are for both the open and close operations. I also realize that's not a lot of anything for just a single journey, but what if I did it more than once? Like twice. Or god forbid, more.

Since my brain was all lathered up with notions of wear and tear and potential monetary loss which had the potential to be endless, like my thought process, I walked right past a very important bank of light switches.

As I approached the utility door, I turned on the outside light on that side of the house. Then as I opened the door, I momentarily gazed back at the bank of lights I left in the lathered dust so long before.

That bank contained the switch for the front of the house by the garage door, which would have been really handy. That bank also contained the switch that turns on flood lights on every side of the house, which would have been overkill.

I was, after all, going to take a leak on the journey. You know, kill two birds, get stoned. No need to fire up a spot light for that. Hell, the folks on the other side of the canyon, if they were star gazing with their telescope in my particular direction at that particular moment might get an obscured view of something I am sure they'd rather not see.

Both those switches were then a lengthy twelve feet away, or nine seconds worth of time (there and back).

"Too much time," I must have thought, figuring I've traversed the same route I was going a thousand times. Surely I must know it by now. Piece of cake. Can of corn. Crust of pie. No problemo. I ventured forth, chicken scraps in hand, an intrepid adventurer out on a major moon-less mission.

As I turned the corner heading in front of the garage door, I left the light behind. It was then I discovered it was a lot darker than I might have originally thought. But I carried on, though I did slow my gait a little bit.

I could see the outline of the rose arbor in the faint starry light, knowing I had to move towards that illusion, keeping just a couple feet to the right. That would put me on target for the brick walk, then trail, then scavenger smorgi bonanza.

I was moving slowly, feeling certain I was on track, when suddenly my forward momentum stopped, halted by some sort of barricade at my knees. It tripped me up and I was going down.

Both my hands were involved with the chicken bowl, they were as useless as a feather in a bar room brawl. I spun in slow motion towards the left as I fell, and the contents of the bowl spewed forth, up, onto my head and torso. Chicken fat, skin and bones flew everywhere.

Ever have a chicken fat shampoo?

It's not bad, you certainly don't need any conditioner after. Dogs may have a tendency to chase you tho, so if you do try it I would stay away from the dog park for a couple days.

And definitely don't go for a walk in the woods. There's a hundred different species that like poultry. You could be a target from land, air or sea.

I slowed the fall a little bit by jabbing the underside of my left rib cage on one of the pickets of the picket fence. Then I continued downward until I was completely on my ass, which knocked the wind out of me. As I lay there, staring up at the moonless starry sky, I began to chuckle.

"Thank God no one saw this. I would have lost a shit ton howdy bunch of style points."

So instead I give up the points just to sell a humorous story. Self-aggrandizement at its finest.

It took a couple minutes to take stock and regain my composure. My left thigh hurt as did my left rib cage, which was howling.

I initially thought I had bruised a rib, but as I palpated I discovered the pain was underneath and behind the rib cage. The picket just jammed up and under and in. Yeow.

I thought it might be my spleen, and ended up in the ER in Auburn two days later. We usually go to Sierra Nevada here in Grass Valley, hell, they saved my life a while back when my appendix went south. You can read all about that right here:"Angels On My Barcalounger."

But I had my shoulder surgery at Auburn Faith a couple years ago and their ER wasn't usually as packed as Grass Valley. They did a cat scan, and the spleen was fine. They figured it was diverticulitis. And the cat scan showed something amiss with my pancreas and prostate and something else I think. My entire insides were apparently going south all at once.

I have not been experiencing any kind of negative symptom from any of those things, I was mildly amused. And confused, and still in pain. At least they sent me home with a script for Vicoden.

I finally got in to see my regular doc the following week. He said it was probably (something I can't remember) which is something about tearing the cartilage on the inside of the rib cage, which I guess is like a bruised rib in reverse. A painful injury that can last from two to six weeks, he said.

He wasn't really concerned with the rib injury, but he was concerned about the cat scan findings. He asked a bunch of questions about potential symptoms, all of which were negative. We figured the radiologist was either looking at someone else's scan or drunk. Nevertheless, he scheduled a follow-up scan here in Grass Valley a couple months out.

I just completed that scenario and the results are back. I'm fine. The first radiologist was drunk. Or gave me the report of another man. I do have a copy of the scan now, so next time I see my doc he can view it and try to see how much the radiologist had been drinking.

Breathing was tough for a couple days, but it slowly got better. I was back in my usual decrepit shape after about three weeks.

What was the culprit that so effectively halted my forward progress, kinda like the front line of the Forty-Niners? What was the antagonist that prompted this ridiculous episode of my life?

Why the four foot and a half apparently very stout sticks of the recently pruned "Ketchup and Mustard" rose bush, of course! I was about a foot off where I should have been, and yes, in the future I will spend the nine seconds and two cents and turn on the freaking lights.

I hope you are all doing OK with the current situation. Life hasn't changed much for me. I just go to the grocery store less. And wear a mask. Which is fine with me. The fewer people that know who I am the better. And now I have a valid reason to wear one and don't look like I'm robbing the place everywhere I go.

Here's one of the thousand piece things I've been up to:

Whatever side of the fence you are on, and there are a couple fence sides, I wish you well. Keep in mind the economy has been in trouble for quite a while now, Covid has just been a catalyst to really help it go south.

Here's a link to an article by an economist I've been following for years:
Roubini

Even though it looks like we are semi returning to normalcy, the stock market has no reason to be where it is. It's a dead cat bounce folks. Don't be fooled.

Get some gold and silver if you can. Physical metals and stocks. At least 20% of your assets.

And keep buying an extra can or two of food every time you go to the store. And TP. And plant some extra tomatoes.

Hug your loved ones, keep them close. And buckle up. It's gonna be some kind of ride.

My Left Write Hand Left

2019-10-21T16:06:00.000-07:00

I lost my left write hand the other day, he left me. Actually he left all of us, destined for greater glory in some off-shoot alien dive bar, no doubt. Hanging out with Cliff and Norm, tossing a few back.

My Left Collaborative Hand was known by a number of pen names. Dr. Ruddy Foodmart, Marturo, Rud, the Martiqulous Martin Q, The Amazing Martin Q, Mudnick McFudnick, Augie McDoogle, but mostly, the Amazing Martin Q.

And amazing he was. I cut my writing teeth with Marty, waaay back in the early 1970's, when we were seniors in high school. We'd sit around the table at the end of class in Boy's Chef and work on my assignment for the next class, Creative Writing.

By the way, our inspirations at the time were the Firesign Theater, a radio troupe that recorded such gems as "How Can You Be In Two Places At Once When You're Not Anywhere At All," "I Think We're All Bozos On This Bus" and "Don't Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me The Pliers" among many others. We were also big fans of the National nee Harvard Lampoon. With those derelicts as our guiding light, how could we not be funny?

We penned a few stupid ditty's back then, but then later became quite legendary and renowned among at least a couple hundred people for our party invitations. I'm not quite sure how that all came about, but the first one was for a Christmas party circa December, 1974, called, "Joyeux Noel Fantastique" or "Drunken Christmas."

And then followed the "Let Me Call You Sweetheart Levi Ball" on Valentine's Day, 1975. Many more invitations chock full of obnoxious and tasteless humor followed, mostly for formal Christmas parties my wife and I threw back when.

Marty always said I was the train of thought in our duo, or more to the point I was the straight man. I would generally start out somewhere in left field, because I'm a little bent too. Marty would then chime in, sometimes he'd be on the ball field, but more often than not he'd come in from somewhere in another galaxy, funnier than hell. And then we'd puddle up in laughter for a few minutes and have a heck of a time recalling what just happened. We finally started tape recording our sessions so we wouldn't lose valuable tidbits of lunacy.

Marty also assisted me with a laundry list of life event spoken word necessities for which I needed less sanity. A speech for the firefighter's association I was president of, a speech for my daughter's wedding, a speech for a while. There were a couple of roasts of hapless friends at their bachelor parties as well.

But Marty was not only a writing co-conspirator, we were buddies. We chummed, we bummed. We drank more than a few beers together, smoked a bit of weed together and yes, we might have dropped acid together a few times as well.

In one of my last phone conversations with him he asked if I remembered the "Red Mountain Incident."

How could I not? It is infamous within our own little circle of two. That I now share with you.

I'm pretty sure this happened during our senior year of high school. That year my mom ran away from home. Or more to the point she started her long-awaited relocation to San Diego. Leaving me, a senior, and my older brother by two years in charge of the house.

She paid all the bills and came home for a weekend a month. She was a whiz typist and had landed a job for the guy that invented the soft contact lens. It was her job to type up the multi thousand page submission to the FDA. In a hurry.

So that left my brother and me the opportunity of hosting probably more than one party. And we did. Pretty much all year. We didn't quite hit an "Animal House" stage of affairs, but without knowing it we gave it a pretty decent shot.

There wasn't a dead horse, but a black cat died. And a there was a giant chicken lurking around. Lots and lots and lots of beer. Plenty of weed. A little LSD now and then. The cops came a couple times too.

Actually, looking back, there's a number of pretty hilarious stories that happened that year at 6363 Rainbow Drive, San Jose, California, suburbia USA, and this is one of them.

In preparation for one of the many, Marty and I had just come back from the liquor store after scoring a gallon bottle of Red Mountain Burgundy. At the ridiculous price of $1.99. For a gallon. You can tell not only is this story vintage, but so was not the wine. But it did the job. Especially if there were chicks involved.

We were sneaking in the back door, I'm not sure why. Right next to the screen door was an old toilet, including the tank, that my mother had turned into a planter with dead flowers. But the porcelain was alive, and stone cold intact.

Marty was the designated wine carrier, I was the designated sneaker inner. I still have no idea why were sneaking in. Unless the front door was locked and I didn't have the key.

Which is probably why we used the back door. At any rate,who cares? Irrelevant to the story, except as Marty came in behind me the gallon bottle (still in the bag) was accidentally introduced to Mr. Stone Cold Porcelain Toilet Tank.

There was a loud "clang", and both Marty and I immediately looked at each other in apprehensive horror, fearing the worst. After a couple of seconds (like two) the fear in our face softened to relief and our hearts were filled with unbelievable good luck and fortune.

Which was all dashed at about the fifth second when a resounding "whoosh" erupted from the bottom of the bag and red wine went everywhere. Fortunately it was a linoleum and not carpeted floor, so we only ruined a couple of old towels. And then went off immediately to score some more cheap red wine.

Marty and I went to our first rock show together. We were big fans of Poco, the country rock band of the 1970's. And they were sandwiched in between the opening act of Focus, an English yodeling group, and Yes, the powerhouse space age thunderously melodious progressively psychedelic rock group. We had never heard of Yes, but became enraptured, especially with the blond chick behind the keyboards, until we found out later her name was Rick Wakeman.

I also went to my first and only movie theater matinee on mescaline with Marty, we saw Live and Let Die. I'm pretty sure we felt it was about the most fantastic movie we'd ever seen. And with a theme song by Paul McCartney, how could we go wrong?

Besides music, psychedelics and beer, we shared a love for sports, especially our close to hometown team, the San Francisco Giants. We were at Candlestick Park together when they defeated the Chicago Cubs for the pennant in 1989, right before the Loma Prieta earthquake-fated Bay Bridge World Series.

And before that, back in the 1970's, when my Dear Old Dad had season's tickets along the third base line, three rows up and right behind the opposing teams dugout, we went to a few games. One very memorable one was against the Dodgers.

Somewhere along the line there was a questionable call concerning the Dodgers right fielder, Lee Lacy, that went his way. And that got a couple beer fueled Giants fans more than a little riled up and verbally hostile. My dear pal Marty was relentless (and hilarious) in his hammering of Lacy, so much so he (Lacy) had to be restrained by team mates. He was ready to jump into the stands to take us on.

Which only got my dear pal more riled up.

Marty was quick, very smart, very funny. He probably would have made a good debater, but I think he might have ended up off point and his version of winning would have been to see everyone on the floor dying of laughter.

Besides all that, Marty was also a gifted singer-songwriter and musician. He put out a few CD's, one that has been featured on a radio station in Maui for years. He worked with a number of higher profile Bay Area musicians, and also collaborated with a number of other music people internationally.

I'm a music appreciator, so his exploits into that particular world were without me. Here is a link to a much more concise recollection of his music years: Time Machine Radio Blog.

Not only did we laugh a lot and do a number of things together, we also just hung out. OMG, I just remembered another great story!

Back in our day, when a really huge artist came to town we had to wait in lines in front of a ticket store (like Ticketmaster or ?). Sometimes, if the artist was really big, like, say, George Harrison for instance, one might have to wait in line overnight, kinda like some folks do now for a big screen TV at Walmart on Black Friday.

So when George Harrison at the Cow Palace was announced, it was a no brainer. We brought our sleeping bags and a cooler of beer. I think we were both twenty at the time. We got to the ticket place about 7:00 PM and ended up somewhere in the teens in line. There were at least a hundred people in line by the end of the night.

And somewhere before the end of the night, like about two, when all the bars close and you're not supposed to sell alcohol, we decided we needed more beer. Especially if we were to stay awake the rest of the night.

So off we went (in his car), finding a convenience store not too far from the ticket place. We went in, bought a couple three six-packs from the guy behind the counter and sashayed back to the car. Happy with our good fortune at not being carded, we were putting on our seat belts when there came a "rap rap rap" at both our side windows.

It was the POlice.

"Would you please step out of the car?"

Marty and I looked at each other, "Uh-oh."

So we get out of the car,with our ill-gotten gain and the cops take us back into the store. There they started in on the poor checker guy, who had sold us the alcohol after 2:00 AM. And they started in on the license to sell, called the store owner etc.

They never looked at our ID's. We had to sit in there, talking with the checker guy while the two beat cops conducted their investigation. We learned the checker had just moved to California from New York, where you can sell booze 24 hours a day. He didn't really know about the booze curfew law in California.

"You guys are 21, right?" he nervously asked on the sly.

"Oh yeah, of course," we lied.

In the meantime, the cops did their thing. We kept waiting for the other boot to kick, but it never did. They never asked for our ID's.

Even with Marty constantly tossing out gems like, "Can I wear your hat?" and "Are those bullets real?"

After about twenty minutes they sent us on our way. We asked if we could take the beer. They said no. We were OK with that, we weren't going to jail. We're calling that a win. They must've figured we were of age just because of all the joking and lack of concern we had about the whole affair.

George Harrison was great by the way.

You know, besides all the funny, fun and light-hearted stuff we lived, Marty was a true friend. A couple decades ago, when my life had taken an odd turn to the south, Marty was instrumental in guiding me back in the right direction. He is featured in my recollection of those dark years "Late Night Letters to the Moon", and since all the names have been changed to protect virtually everyone, and since Marty has left this plane, I can safely tell you his name in the book is Miguel. Not that he was Hispanic by any means, he was Lutheran. But we did go to Mexico together with another friend, which you can read about right here, "Baja or Bust."

My final good-bye to my dear Pal, the Amazing Martin Q:

A cavalcade
of endless escapades
cascades across my brow,

The mighty ship Hallucitania has set sail,
with you upon her prow,

No time left for merriment
or share tales of our jovial past

For you are off on another quest

Aaah, fifty years went by so fast.

I thank you for the time we spent,
the adventures far and wide,

The crazy antics that accompanied us,

It was indeed a hallowed ride.

Rest assured old chum the fabled stories will live

long into the star studded night,

When we together rode the range

and laughed so hard we peed.

Amen.

The Golden Bidet

2019-09-13T14:59:00.001-07:00

We just had our master bath remodeled. We were going to do it a year or two after we moved in, leaving that particular room, our own personal bathroom, without baseboard and curling linoleum until we could catch our breath after the major renovation push we endured when we first moved in. You can read all about that adventure, which first aired on September 19, 2012, right here:Refreshing Refurbishment.

Apparently one year turns into nine real easy around here.

My lovely wife had been talking about redoing it for a while now, and then when an erstwhile contractor with reasonable credentials entered our world late last year it was pull the trigger time.

My lovely wife poured through hundreds of thousands of decorating books and magazines to come up with her vision of the perfect, lovely powder room. She discussed them at length with Mr. Erstwhile and a plan developed. Measurements were made. Tile was procured. As were plumbing apparatus, mirrors, and a whole lot of this and that.

As you many of you long time readers know by now, the indoor decorating arena around here is entirely hers. I gave that up early on when it was apparent she wasn't into cowboys, unicorns or velvet nudes. She has uncompromising cat class, impeccable taste and understated elegance within every whim of her design imagination and vision. Why on earth would I want to meddle with that?

Mr. Erstwhile was going to start right after the first of the year. He has been known to not entirely be that punctual, but his work was quality and his rates good. Every couple weeks she'd touch base with him and he'd say he was still on a job and it would be two more weeks. This went on until June.

Then he gave her a real firm start date, which he missed again because he had to fly to Oklahoma for a job interview.

Well, right there we knew we'd lost him. We knew whoever was interviewing him was going to throw gobs of money at him and of course relay how much cheaper the cost of living was. There, in Oklahoma. Which they did. And of course, he bit, hook, line and sinker. The stinker.

Then the asshole actually had the audacity to refer another flake to us. The guy never called, my lovely wife had to call him. Twice. And then he missed the first appointment.

Flakes of a feather...

Through another much more realistic friend referral we landed on another local contractor, Brian Childers, who we would refer to anyone out there for a similar type smaller type job. Brian is our age, you know, older, and prefers jobs that only last four to six weeks.

He ended up doing a fabulous job, but initially I had to deal with a little dodge and stray attempt on his part. After he took the job with relatively strict time perimeters he started hedging with my lovely wife that maybe we should wait and that he might not be able to make the deadline. Something about the plumber...

Now I had pretty much kept myself out of the bathroom loop. I got plenty of stuff to do. Don't need to go there. I like curly linoleum. But my lovely wife asked me to engage. She is just, quite simply, too nice. Whereas I have an innate ability to turn into a perfectly belligerent asshole if necessary.

I'd have given Mr. Erstwhile Homeboy six weeks, not six months. And we wouldn't have been up against such a deadline. Sigh, details.

In a brief phone conversation I stated to Brian that, "our deadline was not flexible, and that when we signed the paperwork in our living room he stated he would have no problem meeting that deadline. That's why we were paying him a few hundred dollars more than the other guy..."

The simple reminder of that conversation was all that was needed.

He jumped on it, figured out the plumber snafu and the project could not have gone smoother. He actually came in a week ahead of schedule, which never happens in the construction world. And the bathroom is perfect, much to my lovely wife's delight.

It's taking me some time to get used to the fancy new room. We used to have a tile shower that would fit two comfortably. And right in front of that was a large, sunken but single tub. The grand kids have been using that tub for almost a decade. That cast iron monolith is now gone.

Brian had to saw it into three pieces so he could get it out of here. Apparently it weighed almost as much as a Volkswagen.

So that entire tub and shower space has now been replaced with a showpiece tile shower with two massive heads. Where two people could have showered before, now an entire men's rugby team can.

Or women's softball team. Your choice.

And then there's the toilet. I'm still scared of it.

A couple years ago we spent a long five day weekend at The Landing Resort and Spa at South Shore Tahoe. You can read all about that right here: Another Lake Tahoe Offensive.

If you do read that post you'll note I made a note about the fancy, heated toilet seat. My lovely wife loved that, especially with the snowy cold in an early Tahoe November. So that became necessary. And since she was going with that option, why not get a few more? And then when Lowe's messed up the order, they upgraded the darn thing.

How do you upgrade a heated seat, bidet squirting, odor hiding talking toilet?

Get one with a remote control.

So you can flush it from the living room I guess.

I had a big chance to give it a try very, very recently. It was that special colonospic time of my life that happens every five or so years once you turn fifty. You know, when you get to start prepping and cleaning the night before to get your back side probed the next morning.

They make you drink this gawd awful stuff that takes about two and a half hours to get rolling. It begins with gas and bloating, but once it gets rolling that damn whoosh train keeps powering down the tracks, if you know what I mean.

Then after your SECOND prep at four in the fucking morning, there's no gas or bloating because there's nothing left inside you. I think my kidneys were even gone. So instead you start squirting crystal clear seltzer water. Out your backside. At four in the morning!

I shoulda used the gosh darn fancy toilet and then I could have had something squirt back at me. Start a little contest, for early morning amusement only, of course. But I didn't. It still scares me.

One of these days I'll get brave and give it a try. Until then I'll continue to wander down the hall to the guest bath. There's an old fashioned toilet in there that doesn't talk to you and doesn't require reading a manual before operating. It's just got a handle that goes up and down, and I can handle that.

From Bocelli to Baseball

2019-06-21T15:12:00.001-07:00

My lovely wife and I have been to a lot of shows over the years. From the Grateful Dead to Glen Campbell, Allman Brothers to Shirley MacLaine, Paul McCartney to Stevie Wonder, Bob Dylan to Cher. From rock to pop to country to jazz, small town venues to sold out arena rock. We could probably fill a suitcase with all the ticket stubs, if we still had them. We've been to a lot of shows.

But one type of live venue had eluded us until now...opera.

I'm not sure I could do a complete opera, you know, where they sing the entire story line. In a foreign language. That would be weird and I probably wouldn't understand. Unless I was on mushrooms.

But in lieu of that happening anytime soon, my lovely wife and I just saw Andrea Bocelli at the Golden One Center in Sacramento. It was a bucket list sort of thing, and came about rather serendipitously as bucket list things seem to do for us.

When we heard he was coming to a town near us, I immediately looked for tickets. At this stage of our game we're not nose bleed section folks anymore. We never really were, but now if we're gonna do a show we want pretty good seats. Which for Bocelli cost a small fortune. So it was, like, well, maybe not.

And about that same time on a Sunday afternoon in January a Bocelli special appeared on our local PBS station. And in-between Bocelli tunes they proceeded to offer a special price for floor seats for the upcoming Sacramento show. Sacr'e Bleu!

Apparently in every city he appears he donates some tickets to the local PBS affiliate. They get to make some money and we got to pay less than we would have. Plus we get to write off a portion of the cost. Whoopee!

I also booked us a room at the Sterling Hotel, a Victorian B&B nine blocks from the venue. At this stage of our game I'm not fond of driving an hour after a show to get home. Plus venue traffic. Plus parking. I'd rather walk. Or shoot myself.

At $200 per night the Sterling was the least expensive nice hotel in the area. There's a Hyatt and Sheraton also very close by, but their rooms were running twice what we paid.

The Sterling did not disappoint, it was old and antique-y. Our room had a nice king bed, a double jacuzzi tub and a bright, effervescent green arm chair that belonged in a St. Patrick's Day parade rather than a Victorian bedroom. My lovely wife thought the decorator might have been decorating like she had spent the entire day celebrating at a St. Patrick's Day parade. Too.

The serve yourself continental breakfast Sunday morning left a bit to be desired, I've seen better at a Comfort Inn. But the location for the price could simply not be beat.

We checked in around 3:00 PM and then went on a recon mission stroll to the Golden One, just in case we had to walk to or from later. We did our stroll, also checking for potential eatery's.

I actually started the dinner hunt the previous Wednesday, but that was apparently too late for this country bumpkin to make a connection ANYWHERE within a few light years of the Golden One. We could eat at 4:30 or 8:00 PM. Everything in-between was booked. Gee, I wonder why?

We found a couple potentials, then proceeded to get an iced coffee and stroll the California state capitol grounds, which were only a couple blocks away. It had been a while since we'd been to downtown Sacramento, we're usually blazing through on our way anywhere but Sacramento.

The expansive grounds wrap the capital building and are several blocks long and wide. They are quite lovely and have an extensive collection of large, heritage trees dotting the lawn. There's also a pretty decent rose garden at the east end, which, of course, we had to stroll. We just made it too, one of about a half dozen weddings happening that afternoon was just amping up as we strolled in.

Our appointed 5:00 dinner time came, and rather than back track about six blocks to the BBQ joint we had been considering, we slipped into the Sheraton and each had a salad. How healthy could we be? Then we went back to our room for a brief rest and then to get dressed.

Now I know some folks won't even get dressed up to die, that's screamingly apparent to me now. I've bitched about this before. You're dining in a formal restaurant and some tool is in there wearing cargo shorts and a Tshirt.

I am fortunate. My lovely wife is always appropriately dressed. It's going to say so on her head stone. And because she is I have also become. And half the time she buys the clothes, which makes it really easy for my. Plus she has really great taste. I don't ever have to worry about wearing something with sequins and pastel unicorns on it.

ZZ Top called it way back when , "Women go crazy about a Sharp Dressed Man." I mean, who's more likely to get lucky-A guy dressed up in a suit or some tool wearing cargo shorts, long socks and orthotics?

Even the cheap seats weren't very cheap for this show, nevertheless there were a number of guys in shorts. Fortunately, most folks got it and the majority were trying their finery. And there were many couples dressed like we were, sport coat and slacks for the gents and dresses, gowns and some bling bling for the ladies.

I mean, the artist and entire orchestra were preforming in tuxedos. It wasn't a summertime Jimmy Buffet show.

We took a Lyft to the show, arriving about 7:30, which was the exact same time that everyone else arrived. It was a complete and utter cluster fuck to say the least to get through the security. Which apparently is the case at the Golden One no matter the event we later discovered. (Make a note of that!)

And there we were, smack dab in the middle of a wild horde of several thousand opera buffs. Everyone attired in all their finery, except for, well, you know, as we patiently and silently clamored to get in the gate. No one can ever say opera buffs aren't civilized. The show started thirty minutes late because of the civilized crush.

After we got in, I ordered a $6.00 bottle of water for me and a $38.00 Ketel One for my lovely wife. Vodka was a hell of a lot cheaper when we used to smuggle it in to concerts inside a watermelon. But once again, this wasn't an outdoor summertime Jimmy Buffet show. The folks at Golden One might have been a bit suspicious if we tried to bring a watermelon in to an opera show.

While not dressed in shorts.

Once drinks were in tow, we ambled down to our floor seats, towards the rear but near the middle of the room. The acoustics were phenomenal.

About five minutes before showtime the orchestra and chorus entered the stage. We were originally thinking Andrea had about a five bus massive entourage, but then we discovered it was the Sacramento Philharmonic and Opera. Some of them probably ride bikes to work.

I'm not tremendously knowledgeable about orchestras and what not, but these guys sure seemed pretty darn good to me. I'd let them back me up anyday. They warmed up with a tune, and then the conductor escorted the blind tenor from the stage stairs to the microphone.

Bocelli sang two tunes, then took a break while a female opera singer, Larisa Martinez took the stage and belted out a tune. Then she escorted him back onstage for a couple of duets. Then he took another one song break and so on. He only sang six tunes the first half of the show, but it was still pretty amazing. Apparently he has to treat his vocal chords very carefully. And considering some of the impossible notes he hits, I understand.

All the songs of his first set were sung in a foreign tongue, probably Italian, because that's the opera language. Or so I'm told. I didn't understand the any of the lyrics because the only Italian words I know are food. Spaghetti. Lasagna. Ravioli. I think he was singing about love, or loss, and probably not dinner.

Never did I hear him utter the word, "Gelato".

I know why venues only serve drinks in plastic for sporting events and rowdy rock shows. It's totally so the besotted or otherwise can't lob weapons of inebriation towards the entertainer or other patrons. Not so with this civilized crowd. No one present, no matter how sloshed, would ever consider something as gauche as tossing a bottle or glass, even if it was going into the garbage. The reason they don't serve refreshments in glass at a Bocelli concert is that they would shatter when he hits those long, impossibly sustained high notes. My goose bumps had goose bumps.

Kevin Costner once said that Whitney Houston was a "still" singer. He said her voice was so powerful that she didn't need to do anything other than just stand there and sing. I've seen that with many of the great guitarists; Clapton, Garcia, Betts, Harrison. They just stood there and played.

Bocelli didn't even move his arms.

He took a thirty minute break, and then the second set had a few more recognizable tunes. One was even in English. He also had a few more guest artists. He brought out a guest fiddler, Caroline Campbell, and wow. Besides being quite a looker, that girl can play some violin.

There was also another blond singer, Pia Toscana, who, besides being another looker had an astounding voice. Apparently she was a finalist on American Idol in 2011. The guy that won that year is some country singer named Scott McCreery. I'll bet he's never going to be asked to sing a duet with Bocelli.

There was also a male and female dance duet, and they spun Flamenco style to a couple tunes. One in particular led many in the audience, at least my lovely wife and I, to believe that the female had to have had a really good recent wax job in her princess region, if you know what I mean. Her very tight fitting, almost not there leotard underneath her flashy dress left little to the imagination.

We have experienced quite a few transcendent moments at shows over the years. You know, when the artist plays that one song you really love and completely nails it. Opens up the heart chakra and the energy just explodes?

One for me that has withstood the test of time was Clapton's screaming guitar solo right after Bobby Whitlock's inspired piano fusillade on "Let it Rain". When Eric hit those notes I think half the audience in the Cow Palace (in San Francisco-circa 1975) was ten feet off the ground. Could have been the acid, but I don't think so.

Bocelli did it again for me the other night. And I know it wasn't acid this time. This is also one of his most well known tunes and he appropriately closed the show with it, "Time To Say Good-Bye".

It was a mess getting out of there for most folks. There were lines twenty deep just to get cars out of any of the many parking garages that were close by. We strolled the nine blocks home.

Good thing I wasn't in shorts and a T-shirt. The delta breeze came in after the sun set and made the outdoor atmosphere rather windy and chilly. My sport coat ended up on my lovely wife's shoulders, right where it should have been. Brrr.

The next day, Father's Day, after a very leisurely morning and cheap continental breakfast, we went to Old Town Sacramento. It had probably been a couple decades (or more) since we last strolled them streets. There's over a hundred shops and eateries there and it's right on the riverfront, a pretty decent tourist destination. So we played tourist for a couple hours.

At noon we drove the quarter mile over the bridge spanning the Sacramento River and met our son and fiancé at Raley's Field for a River Cat AAA baseball game. He bought us some great seats behind home plate, but without the benefit of any breeze whatsoever it was probably over a hundred degrees.

We'd sit for a couple innings, then run up to the concourse where there was a breeze and shade. And food and drink. Then we'd go back down, sit, bake, retreat, repeat. We did that a couple times, then just stayed up in the shade. It was an easy fifteen degrees cooler.

We left at the top of the ninth, behind 1-0. The Alamar Marina Restaurant and Bar on the Sacramento River was calling us for an early dinner and cool down.

It was a weekend that ranks right up there with the all time best. World class entertainment followed by time spent with world class family. Can't get much better that that.

Conquering the Wild Hillsborough

2019-06-05T14:16:00.000-07:00

When we go visit family we don't just sit around and visit. Plus, I mean, we were visiting our favorite European traveling companions, you had to know we were up for some adventure.

And since the last time we were in Florida we never saw an alligator we were becoming suspicious. Sure, we have heard that Florida has gators, but come on. The world is full of picture books that aren't necessarily true.

So just to prove it's true our lovely sister-in-law booked us on an adventure called "Canoe Escapes",
where you can rent a two person canoe and cruise from two to eight hours downstream. Since we're old poops we just went on the first leg of the overall journey, from Sargent Park to Morris Bridge Park.

It's a good thing too. The website states each leg is about two hours, and that the river is from twenty to sixty feet wide. I got news for them. Some canoeable spots we went through were only four feet wide at best. I have a feeling the river was running at low tide. It made for a much longer and no doubt interesting journey.

We embarked from the park headquarters after a brief instructional by one of the guys, who reminded me of Gunga Din. You know, if Gunga looked like a 20 year old single surfer dude living in Florida.

He went over basics; like if you paddle on the left side you go right, paddle right you go left. Up is down and down is up. And then if you do a swift, deft and shallow swat you can splash your partner with water. Which isn't necessarily something you should do if you want to get lucky later.

Just sayin. However, if you're going downstream with an old army buddy then swift swat away. Unless, of course, Brokeback Mountain. Then who knows?

Gunga told us to head out from our launch point a few hundred yards and then head right at about a three o'clock angle when the water opened up. Paddle in another couple hundred yards and it becomes like a nature preserve. When we were satiated with serene, wildlife viewing, we were to paddle back and sort of hit the river at about an eleven o'clock angle so that we would be headed downstream.

If we made a really hard right at about four o'clock we'd be headed up stream, and if we made an acute hard left, say about eight o'clock, at that point we'd return to base. So it was important that we make the correct choice. He said there'd orange flags to light the way and ensure we were heading in the right direction.

"Great," thought I. "Not only do we have to know left from right and right from left and where the hands are on a clock when everything now is digital, but we also need to know geometry. I barely passed high school geometry, and that was almost fifty years ago. Like I'd remember anything from that long ago let alone an isosceles triangle. I can't even pronounce isosceles let alone spell it. All I wanted to do was see a gator. Don't they have a zoo around here?"

"Speaking of gators and the potential of getting lost in a jungle forever," I began to think again, "Maybe we should be bringing along a bazooka and a flugelhorn. Where's my safari hat?"

I know. I have no idea where this stuff come from. I, like you, am just along for the ride most of the time.

Instead of wearing proper safari attire, I embarked in sandals, shorts, shirt, shades and baseball hat and hoped for the best should we actually encounter one of the big guys. Gunga shoved us off and then said he'd be seeing us at the pick up spot at Morris Bridge in a couple hours.

Both us gentlemen took the rear where most of the work was going to be done, and we were off in search of adventure. A few hundred yards out sure enough a right was available at three o'clock and we paddled into a wide open lake-ish affair where wildlife galore was popping. Exotic birds, happy sunning turtles and yes, gators. Plenty of brazen gators!

Them gators, they're crafty buggers. They hang out around logs and trees, blending in really well. Sometimes all you can see is the top of their big round eye lids popping out of the water. Sometimes they're just hanging out in the flora and fauna, waiting for a delicate human hand lightly tickling the water as a canoe passes by...

Where the hell is my bazooka?

After we thoroughly enjoyed our little nature preserve detour we returned to the point of departure, got out our slide rule, geometric calculus and kitchen wall clock and determined the correct juncture to take. At least we hoped we did.

As I mentioned, the river was not quite as wide as portrayed in their literature. Plus, the current was very slight. We began to constantly wonder if we had made the right angle. Or the correct hour.

"Anybody see an orange flag yet?"

As I also mentioned, the river got quite narrow in some spots. Both our canoes hit and got stuck on partially submerged trees. And since left was right and starboard was keel both canoes ended up backwards and in circles a couple times. It turned out to be quite an exercise in tandem synchronization for both canoes. Or lack thereof.

I think we needed one of those guys on the rowing team. The one with the bull horn.

"Left. Right. Left. Right. No, not you. You. Left! You, right! No. What? Left you idiot! Not you! Right. "

And so on.

But wildlife and nature were at every turn, it was a fiesta for our eyes, even if they were looking backwards sometimes. We probably saw about forty-five gators, ranging from one to eight feet in length. Many were out sunning themselves, many were pretending to be logs because they were hungry.

That of course was paramount on my mind when it was our turn to get stuck on a log. I couldn't just pop out of the canoe and sashay it off the timber. No, we had to push, jockey and shove with our paddles til we got free.

"Anybody see an orange flag yet?"

I mean, we were pretty sure we were on the right track. There was a slight, teeny weeny little current, and we were heading down stream, albeit quite slowly. Doubt persisted, yet we pressed on. The thought of turning around and regurgitating submerged logs did not seem too appealing.

So we leisurely pressed on. And then finally, about two hours down river, we espied our first orange flag. Halleluiah brother, we weren't going to have to worry about being gator bait at dusk anymore. Or hiking through the mosquito and snake infested jungle while wailing on the flugelhorn. Or hillbilly redneck rape, neither.

After the first flag, we saw several more until we finally hit our portage spot at Morris Bridge. It's possible we missed a couple flags, I suppose it's possible nature took care of a few. I spose it's also possible some hillbilly moved them to one of the several tributaries that were off the main river...

I hadn't used a few of those upper torso arm muscles for a decade or two and ended up just a bit stiff for a couple weeks thereafter. Might have had something to do with my lack of long bicep tendon in said arms as well. Gettin old is not for sissies.

As all good things do our Florida visit and vacation came to an end. We had a great time (as always)and are buoyed about the fact we'll be rejoining our companions again fairly soon on another European adventure.

Arrivederci. Baby.

I Hate Flying Too

2019-05-13T15:35:00.000-07:00

OK. So I guess there are two things I hate. I hate to wait and I hate to fly.

If God had intended for me to fly he would have given me feathers. And probably wings.

But to get any place far away in any sort of time frame that makes any sort of sense one has to fly. And then besides the fact we are herded onto a heavy metal tomb that somehow gets way up into the air for an extended period of time, I usually have to wait somewhere along the line too. Double hate whammy.

I used to do airport bars, really well as a matter of fact. But since I haven't had a drink in a couple decades I have had to alter my get on an airplane substance subsistence. Now I usually travel with baked goods that are infused with a wonderful little calming ingredient. And my lovely wife always has Xanax as a back up.

And since I hate to be herded (I guess there's three things I hate) and can't yet afford my own private plane, I have added an extra service onto our flight itinerary that limits our exposure a bit to herding and waiting.

Rather than driving down ourselves and parking in long term parking 800 miles from the terminal, and then waiting for the airport's shuttle service where we then get to be herded on board (with our big fat luggage) and drive around the parking lot like a Pac Man chewing up other travelers until we finally get to go in slow motion towards the terminal, we now do "The Foxen Shuttle" right here at our front door step.

It's a little different than "The Foxen Shuffle", which I'm not even sure is a real thing. Though it probably could be.

Deb Foxen drives us down and picks us up. Ninety bucks each way. I figure we're really only out of pocket for one way, depending on the length of our travel because gas and long term parking easily eats up a hundred if we're gone for a week. If gone for longer we're making money by utilizing her service. She drops us off at the curb and picks us up at the curb. With a smile no less.

If you're local and want a great airport shuttle, call Deb Foxen at 530-263-9669. She's licensed and insured and good people too! She's also on time, spot on, which is sort of important when flying.

I'm also a fan of using a transfer service at the other end of a trip, unless you have family or a friend picking you up. If you've read any of my Europe travel blogs, you'll know I'm a HUGE fan of ihatetaxis.com. Besides having very useful information on every airport in the galaxy, you can also safely and securely book a transfer from your destination airport to wherever you want to go.

All that said we just went to Florida to see our favorite Europe travel companion in-laws, with a quick change plane stop over in St. Louis . We saw the fabled arch from the air and saw a few mid-western old men in shorts and white tennis shoes. Going somewhere. Probably Branson. I'm sure there's more to Missouri and St. Louis, but we only had fifty minutes. Not sure we'll be back. We've only got so much travel time left and that state is not high on the bucket list.

Upon landing in Tampa we immediately discovered Florida is a lot more comfortable climate wise in April than it is in June. Just saying. The last time we were there it was ridiculously hot, and moronically humid. And yuck sweaty. This time, in April, the air was sultry and silky smooth, lightly caressing your skin better that any Oil of Olay commercial ever could.

We went to Florida primarily to visit family, but we also threw in a day road trip 180 miles or south to Naples to visit some old friends. It's always great to catch up, even if it was only for a few hours. And we discovered a couple things on this road trip.

One, most Floridians drive fast on the freeways. And if you're in the far left (fast) lane, 80 MPH is the average speed. You have to move over for now and then for a 90. None of this 65 in the fast lane so that cars that want to go faster have to start passing in the center and slow lanes. Nope, they're serious in Florida. If you get in that left lane you better be prepared to giddy-up.

The other thing we discovered is that when it rains there it does not mess around. The skies can bust loose with a deluge sometimes, simply drenching the surroundings. They can get more rain in forty-five seconds than we do in a week.

Since we were visiting our favorite Europe travel companions the subject of another trip had to come up. And it did. We have tentatively set a date for next year, or maybe 2021, to go to Italy with them.
Why Italy? Well, there was some culinary TV show on in the background one afternoon, and they were talking about Florentine Steak. Which of course hails from Florence. Which is in Italy. It is supposedly the best steak in the universe. According to them. Special cows, special sauce.

We figured, "Hey! If there ever was a reason we needed to go to Italy it might as well be to have a Florentine Steak."

There's also probably a few historic artifacts and priceless art we can view too, but if there ever was a reason to get us off our duffs it might as well be food.

Plus, I will get an opportunity to say "Arrivederci" in the actual country where the language is spoken. See: "Bon Jour, Arrivederci, Por Favor, Where the Hell Am I?"

Before we take off for Italy, which (especially for me) will require a shit ton of pre-planning, we decided to go to the Morse Museum in Winter Park, which only took a few minutes to plan.

The Morse Museum? Why what? What's that? Some place filled with dots and dashes?

Actually, it's not full of codes. The Morse Museum houses the largest collection of Tiffany objects in the world. That's why. What.

On the way to Winter Park we passed through Orlando, where, apparently, every amusement park in the world exists. According to Travel Advisor there's forty-five water and amusement parks in and around Orlando, including but certainly not limited to Universal Studios, Sea World, Disney World, Epcot, Magic Kingdom, Hollywood Studios, a Harry Potter Park and the Holy Land Experience.

The Holy who what?

Yes. Someone has apparently turned the bible into an amusement park.

The amount of construction going on is insane. Buildings, roads, hotels, warehouses. And not small jobs either. I counted thirty-two active high rise cranes in and around Orlando.

According to my lovely sister in law a thousand people a day are moving to Florida. I can believe it. Every single commercial building is a hundred percent occupied. Four lane highways are becoming six lane. And the roads are quite lovely by the way, lacking the potholes, cracked pavement and rough surfaces that are everywhere here in California.

And there are vacant commercial properties for rent everywhere here in California, from our small little country town to the state capital and beyond. Maybe all that tax money is moving from here to Florida.

The Morse Museum is a smallish museum has a number of galleries featuring American art, but their primary exhibit is the work of Louis Comfort Tiffany. Every Antiques Roadshow fan will recognize that name.

From expensive, dazzling and classy diamond jewelry to an amazing array of glass work, the Tiffany name is synonymous with style, elegance and excellence. The museum has a small collection of jewelry, but it does have an extensive collection of glasswork, including lamps and stained glass windows. There's also an incredible "chapel interior" mosaic and glass exhibition that was featured at the Chicago World's Fair in 1893.

Intricately and ornately resplendent, there are thousands upon thousands of small bits and pieces of tile and glass that are interwoven in complex patterns and designs I could only hope to imagine with a decent hit of LSD. The scope and scale are almost beyond comprehension.

If you're ever in Winter Park, possibly for a little baseball (Winter Park is spring training home to many east coast MLB Teams) take a break and check out a little culture. You can see the entire museum in a couple hours and just the Tiffany collection in an hour or so, unless you get lost in a flashback at the chapel interior.

If you're prone to such occurrences you might consider bringing a sandwich, because you might be there all day.

GOT

2019-04-18T14:59:00.000-07:00

You know you're getting old when you start doing the math as to how many times you've shampooed your hair. If it's roughly once a day since the ago of 20 then let's see...I've shampooed my hair somewhere over 16,000 times. Sigh.

Well, my lovely wife and I have inadvertently got ourselves all wrapped up in HBO's Game of Thrones. Yeah, we've heard about it, even seen a few episodes at a friend's house here and there over the last few years. But totally wrapped up? No. We don't subscribe to HBO. $14.99 a month for a half dozen movie channels when there's so much great TV out there now almost for free? Not in our budget conscious world.

We were noodling around last month looking for a new series to binge on. We usually go for comedy or murder, and then my lovely wife mentioned (again) what ever happened to "The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency"? We saw the premier episode a few years back (probably when we had a free weekend of HBO) and then kind of forgot about it.

The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency is a charming detective series based in Africa and based upon a series of books written by Alexander McCall Smith. My lovely wife read the books somewhere along the line and wanted to see the series.

We discovered there were seven episodes and only one season, which is unfortunate because it was an enjoyable show. We discovered we could catch them all if we tried HBO for free for seven days. We figured, easy. And then we'd cancel right after. We'd done something like this with Showtime I believe and it went quite successfully. As I recall.

We jammed through the episodes within the allotted seven days, with days to spare. It was my job to cancel HBO, I had done the previous cancellation work with Showtime. I was a pro by this time. I even marked the cancel by date on the calendar.

When I went to my lovely wife's Amazon site, I had a heck of a time trying to find the place to cancel subscriptions. I was pretty darn sure I was there, only I probably wouldn't make a bet on it-especially now-and it totally and completely didn't look like there were any existing HBO subscriptions. At all.

Really.

So I figured, "Hey. Looks like HBO forgot all about us. They had a little slip in the gitch. Hahaha."

Ha. The next decision we had to make was what to do with a month of HBO.

We had heard rave reviews about GOT, and thought, "What the hell, let's give it a shot."

Annnnd away we went.

We started out fairly rapid fire, at a strong, consistent pace. I mean, each episode is at least an hour long, and there are ten episodes a season through Season 6. Then season 7 only has seven episodes, with the last one clocking in at an hour and a half.

We initially did forty 1-hour episodes in fourteen days. Which is a lot, I think, by anybody's standards. Especially us. We've never done anything like this. We're gonna get our $14.99 worth even if it turns us into video zombies!

We did slow a bit, but finished the last twenty-seven episodes in the following two weeks. It helped having two rainy day weekends in there during each assault.

Much to my chagrin, we had to re-up HBO for another month. We ended up half way through season seven when the bell rang. Almost, but not quite. They got us again. Which is fine. The final season started April 14th and we're all in until this thing is over.

We have discovered we have viewed this epic in probably the best way possible. I mean, everyone that's a fan of the show has had to wait EVERY year for months until the next season began. We blasted through 7 seasons in a little over a month and only had to wait about two weeks for the final season to begin.

It's a fabulous story about kings and queens, swords and hammers, honor and deceit. Lots of deceit. There's also three dragons, which is OK if you like dragons. There are no unicorns, which is fine, because unicorns aren't real and their existence would only take away from the story.

Season 1 starts a little slow, but as it all gets rolling a number of intertwining tales develop, all well acted and well paced.

There's a pretty fair amount of gore, and a couple of rather sadistic SOB's. Every appendage known to man, and I mean EVERY appendage, gets lopped off or avulsed somewhere along the line. Endless beheadings and lots of blood. I had to look away several times from the abhorrent gore, but I didn't look away when modest nudity was presented.

What can I say? I'd much rather gaze upon the eternal beauty of the feminine mystique than a headless neck spurting blood. And there's plenty of modest nudity for women as well, there's no naked discrimination. Lot's of butts for everyone!

There are heroes and there are villains. And treachery. Lots of treachery. And incest. Which was apparently semi in vogue back then. At least in make believe worlds.

A lot of characters you root for end up dying, shockingly so. And many of the villains do to. Believe me, you simply can't wait for one of the bad guys to get it, they are that bad. And when they finally do go, most in spectacular fashion, you can't help but to cheer.

We're not gonna go out and buy any GOT merchandise, like a play sword, coffee mug or underwear. But we are going to keep HBO for probably another month or two until we see this journey through.

On an extremely positive note, my lovely wife and I are heading to Florida in a few days to visit family and see the sun. And I will have exciting travel to blog about. Stay tuned!

One of The Most Exciting Things EVER!

2019-02-22T07:46:00.000-08:00

My lovely wife and I have been on this planet for sixty-four years and we have experienced many varied peak moments of excitement. Physical. Emotional. Cerebral.

Enough so that our combined bucket list(s) are short. They could probably fit on a post-it note.

But we have recently experienced something quite unexpectedly, courtesy of our nine-year-old grand daughter, that we had no idea how exciting it could be.

I marveled about it with another spectator at the last event and we both exclaimed, almost simultaneously, "Who knew?"

What could possibly be as exciting as a Le Mans car race? A SF Giants pennant winning game? Paris at Midnight? Conquering Mt. Lassen? The Grateful Dead on acid?

While all of those experiences were quite dandy, this one ranks right up there with 'em all. So what am I raving about? What is so dang exciting? Are you ready for this?

Co-Ed 3rd/4th Grade Youth Basketball.

It is simply one of the wildest and exciting events we have ever witnessed.

Think about it. Most players are under four feet. The basket is the same height it is for the seven foot pros.

The dribbles. The shots. The double dribbles. The shots. Triple dribble. Pass. Travel. Shot. Rebound. Shot. Rebound. Shot. Rebound. Tussle. Shot. Rebound.

Dannng. The other team got the ball. Time for defense.

Whatever that is.

Dribble. Pass. Shot. Rebound. Travel. Shot. Rebound. Shot. Rebound. Tussle.

Yay! We got the ball back.

Rinse. Repeat. When a basket does occur, and they are rare, the entire crowd erupts, from both sides of the aisle. Those baskets are very hard earned in this sport. Most forty minute games end up with scores in the low teens.

What is fantastic about this experience is it is happening all over America as we speak. And it's free! Even if you don't have a vested interest in one of the players you need to check it out.

And if it's not on your bucket list put it on. It's a heck of a lot cheaper than jumping out of an airplane. Safer too.

I just turned in a bucket of change to one of them Coin Star machines. About twenty pounds and four years worth of change. Came out to a bit over $230, even after their 12% fee. But the fee of 12% is well worth it considering the amount of time it would have taken to roll up all them coins.

But the point of all this is the machine kept kicking out a dime. About the fourth time I checked it out. Turns out it was a very bright and shiny 1964 Roosevelt silver dime. Worth about $1.21 at today's silver prices. And the machine kicked it out. The only coin worth a damn and the machine didn't recognize it. Sometimes I get amazed.

Another up scale fee I recently paid was for a lamp switch. One of my lovely wife's antique lamps kept fitzing so I had a look see. All things considered I figured out it was the on/off switch where the wires also connected.

I took it out and went to the local lamp store. When the sole proprietor got up to the counter I took the switch out of my pocket and said, "I need one of these."

He took it to the back room and was back in about forty-three seconds with a $7.00 replacement.

I'm pretty certain I could have found that switch somewhere for around $2.00. But where is somewhere? That could be anywhere. And do you know how long it would take to search anywhere for an older lamp switch when there are probably a thousand different ones out there?

My answer is a long time. And since I won't have a spare ten seconds for another decade I don't have a long time. I will happily pay the guy a few dollar surcharge just so I can mosey in and say, "I need one of these."

Anytime.

Brrrrr. Been a cold winter so far. Colder than the last several. We've been dusted with snow several times now. Though we used to get a couple feet every year when we first moved here in 1979, it's been a couple years since we've just been dusted. Something's going on. Whether it's global warming, climate change OR the magnetic poles shifting...which could be the reason all this big weather is going on.

Apparently The Earths magnetic poles reverse every 200,000 to 300,000 years, and a complete reversal usually takes thousands of years to complete. Although it has been twice that long since the poles have last reversed, scientists now say that the poles are shifting at a rate of forty miles per year.

Google it. It's a thing. And I'm not too sure we humans can do much about it other than go along for the ride. I spose it's better than going along for the ride with a super volcano. That would reduce our species to living like bugs in the earth much quicker.

Cheers!

I Hate to Wait!

2019-02-04T12:07:00.000-08:00

I hate to wait. I mean, I really hate to wait. There is ALWAYS something more important for me to be doing than waiting. Like nothing for instance. I'd much rather be doing nothing anywhere else than waiting wherever I am, though I typically don't engage much in doing nothing. I'm usually always doing something, and sometimes it's even productive.

Check me if I'm wrong Charlie, but don't we only have a limited time on this here planet? And we all have to spend a pretty big chunk of that time waiting. A quick check on this inter web thingy allowed me to discover we spend an average of six months of our lives waiting. And I don't think that includes traffic.

One site said the average person throughout their lifetime waits about five years. FIVE YEARS! What are they, average age centurions???

I mean, some waits are unavoidable. Like the DMV. Or the ER. (Unless something's been traumatically amputated and you're spurting blood everywhere.) Or the bank at 9:00 AM on a Friday. Or the grocery store at 5:00 PM on a Friday. Or the local Starbuck's drive-through. Anytime.

I once walked out of a doctor's office without ever seeing the doc. I got tired of waiting.

My lovely wife and I had recently moved to Monterey, CA and had been looking for a new GP. She found a guy and just raved about him. One of his slogans was a patient never had to wait. I like slogans like that.

I showed up for my appointment on time. (I am quite punctual by the way.) The nurse got me in a room quite expeditiously and took my vitals. She said the doc would be in right away.

An hour later I had to go. Not for any real particular reason except for the fact I had been stewing for fifty minutes (I'll give anybody ten minutes) and had been listening to the doc playing ukulele in the room next door for some old coot for about thirty minutes.

Now don't get me wrong, playing ukuleles, or any other musical instrument for that matter, for anyone, even an old coot, is a wonderful endeavor. But it was on my time.

And I wasn't the old coot.

So I got up and walked out of the exam room where I immediately stumbled upon three female employees of the doc's. They all looked at me quite surprised, wondering what an unescorted patient was doing wandering the hall.

I said, "I gotta go. I don't wait well."

One of them mentioned that I looked a little flushed and flustered. And then they all three looked aghast when they figured out I had been sitting in the little room for an hour. All by myself. Without even a magazine. And before smart phones were invented.

The doc called later that evening, apologizing quite effusively and profusely and even mentioned his slogan that nobody waits. Ever.

He turned out to be a pretty good guy. I'll give anybody a second chance. But we were only in Monterey for a year so that doctor-patient relationship didn't last too long.

I have a great GP now, waits are always minimal. Same with my dentist. Life is good. In those arenas.

Ya mostly can't avoid a line at the grocery store, unless you go at 8:00 AM. Which I usually do. But if I can't go in the morning for whatever reason and there are any lines at all you can be sure I'll pick the slowest one. Almost always. It's ma thing.

Take Raley's early one Sunday afternoon. My lovely wife and I were getting a hand basket of groceries, which turned out to be quite ironic since we ended up in hell before we even had a chance to leave the store.

I have to be careful here, because I have been referred to as an "old timer" and "older gentleman" before, but this old guy has his act together in any check out line 99.99% of the time. Hell, I even bag half the time.

I guess I feel it is my responsibility to move through time as efficiently as possible so as not to inconvenience or slow anybody else down. Boils down to respect. Besides, maybe somebody in line behind me has to poop. You never know.

And probably don't want to.

At any rate, the little old lady in front of us didn't quite have a seeming form of cognizant wherewithal anywhere within her realm. I can't really recall what the issue was. Coupon confusion? Discount dystopia? Trying to count out eighty-eight cents in exact change with no quarters from a forty year old coin purse?

While my lovely wife and I were soaking up way too much of Raley's early afternoon atmosphere, the lady behind us brought up a good point. Perhaps this completely oblivious to her immediate surroundings ding bat was keeping us from being in a horrible automobile accident. Many circumstances that occur are merely seconds away from happening to anyone as we dance through this time machine.

So there's that train of thought. Which was good. I needed that perspective. Cause I was about to shoot somebody.

I had to leave a K-Mart line one time because both the customer and cashier were trying to out stupid each other. Something to do with about two dollars and a coupon. I was next in line, with my three-year-old grandson in tow. You know, a three-year-old, the epitome of patience.

I offered both of them two dollars. Didn't work.

So these two seventh grade drop outs we're trying to un-wit each other for at least five minutes, maybe more. The alcoholic lady in back of me was getting vocal.

She started with not so quiet sighs and harrumphs. Which then led to, "Are you kidding me? Jeeeeeze. Come on. You've got to be kidding me. What are you doing up there? I need a drink. Why don't you idiots call management? Hey managemennnnnnnt!"

And so on.

I finally put my stuff down and left with a rather impatient grandson in tow. Nothing on earth was worth further witness of that circus.

Don't get me wrong. I know stupid exists. I just prefer minimal exposure. To keep me sane.

If there's gonna be a stupid fest, just do it over there. I'm not in two places at once, so generally speaking, when you consider the size of the planet, there's really plenty of room to be stupid and not be anywhere near me.

Even with those odds, oddly enough, I still get caught up in all kinds of it.

I've covered quite a few unavoidable lines and waits, now I'll let you know what I do to avoid those that I can.

Let's start with the dump. I used to go first thing in the morning, just like the grocery store. But somehow, someway, everyone decided that was a good time. I got caught in a major CF about a year ago at 8:00 AM and was close to forty minutes in line. That almost gave me a coronary.

I have since revised my strategy and am once again enjoying relatively wait free dump runs. In lieu of any natural climatological event, I usually go about 1:00PM. It's always been pretty quiet with minimal waits.

But if there are natural climatological events, like rain or excessive heat, it's on. I have found that most dump runners are fair weather players. I will plan a dump run in line with rain, always. Who doesn't mind a little weather now and then? AND THERE IS NOBODY THERE!!!

I mean, like, nobody 'cept the employees.

Another potential wait I always try to avoid is the post office. The downtown Grass Valley post office is always a mess, always. I try and avoid that place like I would a colonoscopy.

There's a local independent grocery store that's close by and has a US Postal outlet. That's where I usually go. And if I'm out and about I'll also swing by the Cedar Ridge post office. It's a couple miles out of the way, but I'd rather spend a few minutes driving through gorgeous terrain than stare at the back of somebody's head.

And I usually go in the morning. Like 8:00AM. It's my magical, mystical time to run all my errands. I have found most folks, it seems, spend their mornings getting things together around the house and then venture out in the late morning/early afternoon.

Case in point: I had a priority box to mail. I was going to my son's house the next day to help fix his broke tailgate handle and the grocery store PO is on the way. Simple. 8:00 AM and off.

But Wednesday afternoon I had an emergency dental appointment, another tooth gone south. Lucky me. So I had to take what they had, a 4:00 PM appointment.

By the way, given the choice and time, I always book my appointments for the morning. Again, less idiots out and about and there's less of a chance one of those idiots didn't foul up my appointment time by being late before me.

Nothing chaps my hide more than me having to wait for my appointment because some inconsiderate asshole that was scheduled before me was late for theirs.

By the way, just thinking about it, and this is sort of scary if you really think about it, I don't think I've ever been late for an appointment. Ever. And I'm sixty-four. I'm also, apparently, somewhat anal when it comes to matters of this nature.

No wonder I hate to wait.

So I was actually running a little ahead of my game, and at 3:00 PM I thought, "Maybe I can drop this by the PO and then head over to Grocery Outlet for a few minutes before my appointment. That way I'll have a few extra minutes tomorrow."

This turned out to be an incredibly ugly thought. One of the worst I've had in a long, long time.

I hope I never have one like that again.

I knew the traffic around the grocery store PO could be heavy, especially in the afternoon. There's a strip mall and a Kmart in the same center, and a block away is another center with Penny's, Raley's, fast food, Starbucks. And a number of other obsequious little concerns. Yeah, it could be a nightmare. But I reasoned I had time to burn. Which is rare in my world. No worries.

Until I got to the glass door of the grocery store and noticed the PO line was at least five deep. That was going to cut into my Grocery Outlet time. I swiftly turned around.

"What the hell," I shrugged, "I'll just swing out to Cedar Ridge, then mosey to Grocery Outlet. It may take more time but at least I won't have to stare at the back of someone's head."

I still had forty minutes and it was sort of on the way. In a very round about sorta way.

As I pulled in to the Cedar Ridge Post Office parking lot about 3:30 PM, I immediately noticed a line of at least five deep.

Apparently everyone goes to the post office in the afternoon. I made a note.

I also left. I would fall back to my original plan and hit the grocery store post office in the morning. But I still had a few minutes to burn. Off to Grocery Outlet I went!

Grocery Outlet was a couple miles, a few pine trees and two traffic lights away. It is also located in one of the most commercial areas in the county. What was I thinking?

As I approached the center, traffic instantaneously became a nightmare. Poof! There were cars and humans and commotion was everywhere. It was as if everyone in Nevada County had descended all at once to the exact spot where I was. I wanted to be sneaky, unfettered and free. I turned out to be a magnet for frenzy.

I did not pull in to the parking lot. There were about fifty cars trying to get out. I feared if I went in I would never get out. And I'd be late for my appointment. And I've never been late for an appointment.

I fled to my dentist's office parking lot a couple blocks away and hid for fifteen minutes. I took the back route too. I left the afternoon world of chaos and confusion behind.

Moments like those only reinforce my preference of running errands in the morning. I hit the grocery store post office the next morning at 8:02 AM. No one was in line. It took about forty-five seconds. And I didn't have to stare at the back of someone's head.

Ever wrangle manzanita? It's kinda like bull riding, or playing rugby with a swarm of bees. Or maybe a rousing tug of war against the entire front line of the Oakland Raiders.

See that stuff up there? It's a whole little forest with trunks from one to four inches in diameter and up to fifteen feet in length. Some grow vertically, but many grow kinda horizontally vertical at about a thirty degree angle.

When thinning, you cut from behind and then pull backwards to remove it from the pack. If they just laid on top of their cousin, sometimes they give fairly easily. But many times the tops have intertangled themselves with their next door buddies and the tug occurs.

Great exercise for the shoulders and back, sometimes hard on the butt and knees when it finally "gives" during a ferocious tug and both you and the branch fly backwards. Sometimes landing hard on previously cut trunks.

Good times.

I'm trying to find a market for this stuff. I have hundreds of feet of it. Prime manzanita.

If you know anyone that has a couple pet Condors, or a herd of other large birds that might need a perch, please give me a holler.

We just had a hell of a time finding fire insurance. Or previous carrier, Merced, went bankrupt after the Camp Fire in Paradise last November. They were taken over by the State of California, and our insurance lapsed on January 2nd.

Our previous broker as well as ourselves probably called every insurance carrier in existence. Twenty? Forty? Trust me, every one you've ever heard of and then some.

We've finally found one through the high hazard arm of AAA. $4,800 a year!

You see, apparently we are in what is called a high risk wildfire area. It doesn't matter that I have done an incredible amount of land clearing as well as adding a lot of fire protection. Water tanks, sprinklers, generators etc. Doesn't matter. Our zip code comes up as a wildfire risk and the insurance companies are running scared.

Besides the increased premium, property values could also take a hit. Of course there are a multitude of factors; like climate change, lazy property owners and PG&E for instance.

I think every property owner needs to take living in the hills a bit more seriously. Yeah, I know,

land clearing and maintaining is the hardest darn work a property owner has to do. But if everyone was a good steward and simply took care of their own ground we wouldn't see the conflagrations like the one that took the town of Paradise.

And folks could save a lot of money on gym fees. Plus get clean, renewable fuel for heat.

Win Win Win.

Happy winter 2019 y'all.

I'm Lactard and I'm Proud

2018-11-27T05:16:00.001-08:00

I was going to close my last post with this little tidbit, and then I was gonna open with it. And then it grew into its very own post.

But I think it's really important because I believe at least one of you, if not more, might be lactose intolerant. And if I can rescue another lactose intolerant individual, then an apparent gastronomic intestinal mission might be fulfilled.

I am a lactard, my darling daughter's affectionate term for my dietary predicament, which is that I am lactose intolerant. Most dairy does not sit well with me, at all. And I think, especially looking at the antacid section in any pharmacy or store, that a lot more people are but they just don't know it.

I was probably lactose intolerant for a good five years before I became lactose aware. I sort of grew into it I guess. I used to always have a pack of Rolaids with me, in addition to the ever present chap stick and pocket knife. And then one day, while working one of the way too many home and garden shows I did for a while, a friend and co-worker mentioned that I should eat some yogurt or something. He said that I shouldn't have to be eating Rolaids all the time and that I needed some good culture in my gut down there.

I certainly couldn't argue with that.

When I got home I bought a couple yogurts. You know, good culture! Half way through the first one my stomach went south, and a light went on up north. And then began a fairly huge diet change which took several months. A lot of trial and error and a lot of label reading.

Just what is lactose intolerance? In simple terms,

It is an inability to digest lactose, a type of sugar in milk.

Very common (More than 3 million cases per year in US)

Diagnosis rarely requires lab test or imaging

Can often be self-treated

Can last several years or be lifelong

It can be caused due to a genetic problem or an underlying condition. Abdominal pain, bloating, flatulence, and diarrhea are the common symptoms. There is no cure except to maintain a lactose-free diet.

I wasn't always a lactard. I was more like a ice cream junkie. So, obviously lactose intolerance can develop over time. In case you were wondering.

How did lactose intolerance present for me? Mostly a burning, acidy stomach, like you just ate a half dozen habaneros. And diarrhea, in many cases.

The burning doesn't make sense, right? It will feel like you just ate Mexican, with a lot of salsa. You'd expect a milkshake would soothingly coat your stomach against the burning fire inside. Not so if lactose intolerant. It's like pouring gas on that fire.

I used to take my coffee loaded, with cream and sugar. Followed by a Rolaids an hour later. My intestines were going south right out of the gate, every dang day.

I have adapted to a mostly non-dairy diet, and it's not really a big deal. I can tolerate butter just fine, which is good because I won't put margarine in my body. And I love me some butter. But cheese is bad. And cream is really bad.

I do pizza without cheese, it's fine. And I've pretty much omitted all the creamy and cheesy dishes that exist, much to the chagrin of my lovely wife.

You learn to adapt. And since I like to cook and bake I have come up with a number of solutions that I will share with you. And a number of commercial providers, like Ben and Jerry's, have gotten on the lactard bandwagon.

Also, a cheesemaker called "Finlandia" makes "naturally lactose free" Gouda, Swiss, Muenster and a couple others. You can find that at Raley's and sometimes Grocery Outlet if you live locally. When I discovered them a year or so ago that brought back grilled ham and cheese sandwiches to my life, which I apparently did miss and had not eaten for about twelve years.

I use lactose free milk exclusively. I'm not a big fan of almond, flax or other vegetable or fruit milks. None of them cook or bake as well as your basic lactose free milk does. And it lasts weeks longer in your fridge than regular milk does. My lovely wife can taste a difference, I can't. Probably because I won't try the real stuff at all anymore.

And I discovered a few years back that you can substitute soft silk tofu equally for whip cream in most cream pie recipes. And they are now making a lactose free cream cheese. The flavor is a bit lacking though, so you need to add a little more sugar if you bake with the cream cheese.
.

There is also an enzyme that can break down lactose, which you can find at any health food store or pharmacy. So if you make a mistake, or just have to have that quesadilla or latté, you're covered.

So one evening a while back I was having dinner with my son. We were eating a great gumbo at the Elks Club, where we both had mutual friends that are members. The gumbo roux was phenomenal, and I was certain there had to be cream in it, because it was so phenomenal. If so, no big deal. I had lactose tablets in the car. (One item I do not travel without. Pretty much anywhere.)

And that got my son and I gut talking. When he described what was going on in his gut, acid and Rolaids, I said it sounded like lactose intolerance. And he didn't believe it. For some reason, how lactose intolerance presents is incongruous with the term dairy. Go figure. He started toying with his diet and sure enough, he is now a confirmed lactard too.

Which means I now have an ally for cheese free lasagna, and maybe eventually Mom's amazing clam chip dip. Actually, because her grandson is now a lactard we rated this Thanksgiving and Mom made two dips. We had our own (smaller) bowl of her famous clam dip, lactose-free . Hadn't had that in fifteen years or so, it was great!

Yeah, I have to admit, there are some things you have to do without. Many times I can't have dessert at a restaurant because they're all cream based. And even though the lactase tablets help, it can still be a bother. Also, the degree of dairy effects vary from lactard to lactard..

So, if you are constantly eating antacid tablets, or that lethal purple pill, or you know someone who does, it's really really easy to verify if dairy is the culprit. Eat some dairy. You'll usually feel the effects within minutes.

Then don't eat diary. See what happens. Pretty simple.

And if you are, it's not a death sentence. But I would get some lactase tablets right away. That way as you adapt your diet you have a bottle of mistake pills.

Good luck.

Oh, and by the way, you'll probably drop an easy ten pounds. That's one of the side benefits of no more mac and cheese.

The old homestead is rolling along. I've got all our winter wood put up, and oh hey, a new wood stove to burn it in! Our old blue enameled Vermont Castings, while a heritage item, was over thirty years old. And double door'd. And I'd had been having trouble getting the doors to seal properly. And I could never get it to dampen down really good so I could get a log to burn all night. And so on. And so forth.

We bought our new stove from A-1 Stoves here locally, and it is entirely more efficient. Plus the black color matches the red, white and black of the brick hearth surrounding. The old royal blue enamel never fit in.

We were going to buy from the highly locally rated Sierra Timberline. But the price went from $3,500 when we talked to the guy at the fair to over $5,100 when we talked to the same guy about the same stove a week later at their store. And that included the fair discount.

So we went to A-1 and spent under three grand for a fabulous Iron Strike wood stove. And the no pressure sales guy also informed us we could probably sell our old stove, which we did for $750.00. So you probably know who we're gonna recommend. Plus follow-up and install were top notch. They've already been five star Yelped!

If you've been watching the Dow, like I have, you may be coming to the conclusion that there's something happening out there. Those that stayed in the market have seen their portfolios drop 10-20% over the last few weeks. And, if you believe like I do that another real estate crash is coming, there are a couple paper plays you can make. But by no means should this ever be considered investment advice, cause I'm not an investment guy. I'm simply sharing a few of the moves that I be making.

These are similar to what the guy did in the movie "The Big Short", only you'll be doing it probably in a lot smaller way. BUT, it does give the little guy a chance to place a bet on the market.

Here they are:

SRS-ProShares UltraShort Real Estate
REK-ProShares Short Real Estate
DRV-Direxion Daily MSCI Real Est Bear 3X ETF

We have an interest in all three.

It is now a little after 5 Am PST. I am going under the arthroscopic knife for my shoulder with my new surgeon in about six hours.

Bon Appetit!

Surgical Madness and Farmer's Market Drivers

2018-11-10T13:33:00.001-08:00

Looking back, I see I left you all hanging, on pins and needles no doubt, with my torn meniscus thing, which I actually injured a year ago in November, 2017.

I did have successful surgery on that in late May of this year, and my knee still appears to be doing well. I did go down on it hard up on the hill a couple weeks after surgery though when I weed whacked over an ancient ant hill and fourteen thousand of them little critters started zooming up my two legs. That got my immediate attention, and I moved quite rapidly, much like anyone would move if being attacked by an army of merciless no doubt killer and zombie ants. I tripped in the process.

But the meniscus is torn or agitated by twisting, and this was a straight down shot, so the meniscus is fine. Now I just have this uncomfortable lump on my shin that should go away in a year or two.

Probably.

So while I was recovering from knee surgery I was taking it easy. Quite properly, as I should. I definitely did not go out and play rugby, go ballroom dancing or take on some form of mixed martial art. Not that I could. The best art I can come up with is yard, and I mostly buy that stuff.

One afternoon I was hanging up clothes, easy enough. Level ground, back lawn. About five feet from the utility room. As I was hanging, with clothes pins of course, a dish cloth dropped. My left arm, the one that wasn't engaged, moved down deftly and rapidly to catch the escapee. In doing so, I felt a major twinge in my left bicep.

"Ooooh," thought I, "that's not good."

The next day I dead lifted a fifty pound bag of chicken feed. As soon as I made the vertical lift up I heard a loud "snap" and I felt immediate and very sharp pain in same said left bicep.

"Wow," thought I. "That's not good either."

The next day I was down in my lovely wife's cut flower garden and noticed one of the drip "t's" needed a little tightening. Obviously not thinking like an injured and civilized human being with half a brain, I twisted the connection. With my left hand of course.

Annd another loud "snap", came my way, emanating from the same said left bicep location.

Here's one thing I have learned. It's never a good thing when you hear body parts snap. Nor does it feel good. It's a good thing I was already on my knees cause I would have ended up there anyway. It was also good thing I had already made an appointment with my orthopedic office the day before during the post op appointment for my knee.

This bit of inconvenience has not been quite as bad as what happened to my right arm nine years ago when I severed my right bicep tendon. I know, I know. Weak tendons apparently run in my family. My Uncle had some issues and so has my brother. It's a genetic thing. There's no other explanation.

Anyway, I was helping a friend's daughter move a sofa downstairs and while maneuvering a corner I felt a pretty decent "twinge" in my right bicep. Not a snap, but a twinge.

About two weeks later I was at the driving range warming up for a round of nine on our favorite back woods cow paddy country almost a golf course. I was swinging an easy seven iron. The first two went nice and smooth. During the third swing I felt my right bicep go "boinnnnng".

I know. Twinge, snap, twinge. Boing. What's this discourse coming to?

My right bicep immediately began to swell, to epic proportions. Then, three days later I was on the road. I reached towards the rear seat to grab my backpack. With my right arm. Cause my left arm was driving. During the lift I felt something bad in an already painful situation, like a stretch gone too far. The pain was so intense I had to pull over. Which I should have done to begin with.

With that last movement my entire right arm was soon black and blue. My entire arm!

But wait, there's more.

That weekend my lovely wife and I were flying to San Diego to see the kids. My arm was in a sling, because I, uh, didn't want to continue injuring it. We were in the security line, just about there. Since my arm was in a sling, I tried to take off my shoes with my feet. You know, the old toe to heel action.

As soon as my left toe hit my right heel, or the other way, I felt a snap in my right hamstring. I went down immediately, like a drunk on ice skates.

So there I was, creating chaos. And there's something you should know about me. I really do not like attracting attention, really. I am a confirmed and bona fide blender. I thrive on passing through public places and life in general completely unnoticed. Yet there I was, on the ground, one arm in a sling, flopping about like a fish. And there were people everywhere.

Barnum and Bailey just brought their greatest show on earth to the security line at Sacramento International Airport and it was me.

The guy behind me was great. He immediately bent down to help as this floppy fish was endeavoring to get back upright.

My lovely wife, on the other hand, hearing the circus, er, commotion, turned around, looked down, and asked, "What are you doing down there?"

I definitely lost style points that day. But, in the process, I gained remarkable relationship currency.

I was able to get through security and took stock. My right hamstring was swelling like a helium balloon and I was limping like a three legged tortoise. But that wasn't getting in the way of a San Diego weekend. Besides, I think it was a special grand kid occasion.

I didn't have health insurance at the time, but I still went to an urgent care outfit with our daughter as soon as we hit the ground. The doctor who saw me tried to ascertain if there was something going on, like, weird connective tissue issues, because all this was happening at once.

"Or," he said, as he shrugged, "it could just be timing and bad luck."

As it turns out, both observations were correct.

I got a twenty per cent discount cause I paid cash. And that paid for the pain pills. My entire right arm and entire right leg were black and blue. Together, for about a week. I think I walked lop-sided for that week since there was an extra ounce of black and blue on one side. And I probably could have started some sort of weird tattoo trend. You know, dye one half your body blue. Au natural.

I finally got an MRI on my shoulder on June 20th. It showed there are some rotator cuff issues as well as a major "impingement" hampering most movement. Which makes sense. That's where the majority of pain is constantly emanating from. The rotator cuff only barks with certain movements.
And then there's the bicep's tendon, which isn't really there anymore. It essentially just disappears.

I saw the doc, Dr. Mario Luna, by the way, on June 25, 2018. He gave me a gave cortisone shot, which did not work at all. During the follow-up appointment a week later, it was decided we would go for surgery. He stated at that time it would be late July or early August, roughly four to five weeks out. Seemed reasonable.

July came rolling around and I heard nothing. Finally, the last week of July I started calling his office. I left two messages without a return call, and then on my third attempt I magically get Melissa, the office manager and surgery scheduler.

Wah-lah! Lucky me thought I. I identified myself and she started looking at the schedule.

And then she said I was on for October 9th.

And I said, "Excuse me?"

And she said, "October 9th."

To which I responded, "But the surgeon said..."

To which she responded, "Well, I do all the scheduling and I should know. The surgeon's always give optimistic time frames."

Somewhat snippy, as a matter of fact. It was a painful August. And September.

But as late September came rolling in things started happening. I had to do some pre-op stuff. Blood work, EKG, chest x-ray. Bam! Boom! Done!

I was done with the pain and limited movement. I was ready to go. The date actually got moved in mid-September, by Melissa again, from the 9th to the 11th. Which was fine. I was totally OK with that. Two days, meh.

I had a pre-op scheduled with the surgeon the morning of the 10th. After that I was going to the local outpatient surgery center at the hospital for their pre-op routine.

Then I was scheduled to arrive for surgery at 7:30 AM on the 11th , ready to get on with my life.

Tuesday afternoon, the 9th, I got a phone call from Melissa. The surgeon's wife had just gone into pre-mature labor that morning and had to have an emergency C-section. Dr. Mario Luna rushed to be at her side.

OK. I get that. I was a little disappointed to be sure, but that's part of the reason he's a doctor. To provide for his family and be there for occasions such as this.

"So when will I be put back on the schedule?" I inquired, assuming I ought to be somewhat close to first on his list. Maybe a week or two.

And she said, "The first week of December."

And I said, "Excuse me?"

I felt like my insides had just been kicked out. And she carried on about paternity leave, knew something like this was going to happen and so on and so forth.

I probably tuned her out, cause, you know, my insides had just been kicked out.

I called her back later that day. I told her to put me on the schedule. First week of December. With Dr. Fuckhead.

I was a victim the rest of that day. Cause my insides had just been kicked out. But I also discovered while I wallowed, I did not like being a victim. So I stopped.

The next day I did some research and found another highly rated orthopedic outfit in Auburn, just down the road. I got the referral from my GP, who was astounded Dr. Fuckhead had put me on hold until December.

I went and got copies of my MRI and other pre-op records. Bam. Boom. An appointment was made and I saw Dr. Greg Lichtman on October 22nd.

He explained in substantially greater detail than Dr. Fuckhead what was going on with my shoulder. He also said I have taken all the appropriate steps before contemplating surgery, eg cortisone and even physical therapy a year ago. Surgery is scheduled for November 27th. Done.

As far as Dr. Fuckhead is concerned? He can go fuck himself. He didn't even make a phone call.

Fool me once shame on you. Fool me twice, fuck you. With a capital K.

I will be proffering up a couple, um, rather scorching reviews for him on Health Grades and Yelp. I mean, how does a physician, in any kind of conscious, leave a patient on hold for five months while the patient is in constant pain? What's that oath? Do no harm?

As long time readers are aware, I've got a problem with most drivers out there. I've been screaming about slow-goes in the left (or passing) lane for years now. And of course my pettest driving peeve has to do with the morons that flip on their turn signal as they are turning.

Like, why bother? If you're already there just don't do it. You're insulting your intelligence.

Back in my youth, when encountering slow drivers that weren't paying attention, my mother would say "They're driving like an old lady in a Cadillac."

OLIC

Then, when I was on the outside sales road in the 1990's into 2000's, the worst drivers on the road happened to be mothers in mini-vans. They got extra points if they were on the phone, which half of them were.

MIVWP

I have a new one. "You're driving like you're going to a Saturday Morning Farmer's Market. In a Subaru."

SMFMIS

We live down the road from a Saturday morning farmer's market by the way.

In case you were wondering.

I also came up with a fabulous torture technique, as if the dark, deep state type guys haven't already thought it up. Play on food allergies. That is, if you're subject has any. Otherwise, just start pulling toe nails.

Take me, for instance. I'm lactose intolerant. If you want to learn something from me, well, first of all, ask. I've got no secrets and I really don't know anything about nothing. Ever. At all.

But if you really want to make me talk, threaten me with some cheddar. Or Mozzarella. Take one of them cans of whipped cream and shake it real good next to my mortified head. I'll talk. I'll give you more than you ever wanted to know.

Speaking of cheese, I have a really funny cheese story. I may have mentioned it before, but it's been a while, so I'm gonna plead poetic insanity.

Back in my senior year of high school, some way too many years ago, I took a boy's chef class. Twice. Not because I didn't pass the first time, but because I had plowed like crazy through all my required courses my first three years and subsequently needed an extra elective each semester of my Senior year. Otherwise I'd have only been in school for three periods.

It was that or sewing, and I have big thumbs.

Boy's chef was first period, and one morning we learned about cheese. One thing I learned was that an instructor should not expose warped teenage male minds to the pungent aroma of Limburger Cheese. Ever smell that, let alone eat it?

A compadre and I, the same compadre I drank a bottle of Annie Green Springs wine with in the same classroom, managed to walk out of class with a couple pieces of Limburger.

We took it to our next class, which we also shared together, Mythology.

See? I told you I had some time to kill.

As we chatted with classmates here and there in the couple minutes before the bell rung, we also tore off little pieces of cheese and mushed them under the desks. Much like you would with gum. We did this under about a dozen desks all over the room.

A couple periods later I walked by the room. The door was open. A number of desks were stacked outside. A dozen I think. Mythology was held out on the soccer field for the rest of that day. Larry and I still laugh about that. Never got caught. Never were suspect.

In closing this latest round of madness, it is with sadness that I announce the last two hens from our original flock of twelve, circa 2012, have moseyed on into that great green open meadow in the sky. They were almost 7 years old.

The average age of backyard hens is 5 to 8 years. Cause I know you were just wondering that thought.

One preceded the other by about a week, and the rest of the younger flock respected them both during their final hours and let them die in peace. Chickens can be quite Darwinian at times, pecking and hacking at injured and dying members of the flock. Survival of the fittest. Watching too many poultry cannibal flicks.

Or, maybe they just like chicken. Everyone else seems to.

Not so in this case. Our last Buff Orpington was down for about a day and a half before she passed. Everyone left her alone. There was respect.

I visited with her several times during the process, and I definitely feel quite melancholy. There's been a lot of feathers lost since those first twelve came to our door. Predators, disease and age. All of which has educated this old man and most of which has been chronicled in previous pages on this website.

I have been able to adapt and deal with both the predators and disease. I haven't quite got the age thing handled yet. If anyone comes up with a solution for that please let me know. You may have a looming fortune on your hands.