Today's Happy Hour Soundtrack

Some o' that Sensitive Seventies Stuff...

But I let her do some of my laundry
And she slipped a few meals in between
And the next thing I remember, she was all moved in
And I was buying her a washing machine

Heh.  One wonders how many relationships began JUST like this...  We won't tell any stories outta school, except to say the tune resonates with me on a number o' levels.

We are older now and somewhat wiser.  I ended my last relationship when the late night conversation came to a screeching halt one evening when LadyFriend dropped this conversational bomb:  "Where is this relationship going?"  The air was thick with stony silence forthwith.  One should NEVER ask a question if one can't stand the answer...

That said... the answer became immediately apparent the following morning when I packed up all my stuff and moved back into ECMdP.   Why IS it that women can't leave well enough alone?

Famous Movie Dialog...

... Treasure of the Sierra Madre Division:

That's pretty danged stoopid, innit?  I can just see me droppin' this in casual conversation at Golden Acres Happy Hour: "I got my Platinum Badge in politics at Google News today!"  Whoop-dee-frickin'-DO.

And yeah:  Golden Acres.  That's the name of my prospective new neighborhood.  I almost did a facepalm when I drove over there yesterday but I was... you know... drivin'.

The Federal Debt Problem... A Visualization

A couple of screen shots from an interesting data visualization:

Those teeny tiny things are individual pallets of one hundred million dollars, each.  It gets worse, much worse.  Go look for yourself.  Is it any wonder sane Americans are upset by this sort of debt?  I think not.

h/t: Eddie Freedom on G+.

Feel Good Stuff

All the way from Traverse City, Michigan...

They wouldn't be makin' this sorta vid in the winter, lemmee tell ya.  But in the summer?  It's beautiful up there... and this makes me wanna go back.

Traverse City is where the Beloved Wings hold their training camp, btw.

h/t:  Leo Laporte on G+.

Broadening Our Horizons XXVII

T'is the season to be jolly... coz the summer seasonal brews are upon us.  Here's the best of which I've sampled this year:

That would be a Somersault summer seasonal ale from my favorite brewery up in Fort Collins, CO about which the consensus opinion at Beer Advocate is a not-often-seen B+.  Me?  I give the brew an "A"... no ifs, ands, or buts.  Yeah, it's THAT good!  And ain't that label clever?

Our cigar today is an Oliva Serie V in the Double Toro size.  And boy-howdy, you'd better have your boots on when you fire one of these puppies up.  The Serie V is a highly rated cigar (94 by Cigar Aficionado) but it's also one of the strongest cigars I've ever had.  I'm thinkin' we'll smoke this in two parts today, based on my previous experience.  We'll do half now and save the other half for After Dinner Whiskey Hour, where the cigar will pair much better with the current single malt than it does with this light, dry, and citrusy beer we're drinkin' at the moment.

Dilemma

DIL Erma stopped by yesterday to drop off what you see at right... which is an application for federally-subsidized senior citizen housing.  Note my emphasis, which is the source of the post title: Dilemma.  

The attractions of this senior citizen housing are strong, many, and varied.  The community comes with a good recommendation, primarily because Erma's Mom lives there and loves it.  The rent, based on a sliding scale according to income, is relatively cheap and all utilities are paid (included in the rent).  Hell, it ain't "relatively" cheap," it's damned cheap... even considering I'd have to pay the highest going rate.  The accommodations feature everything I'm looking for: space, washer/dryer hook-ups, parking, and a controlled community of like individuals.

So what's the problem, you ask?  It's that federally-subsidized thing that bothers me, mainly because it puts me in a "put up or shut up" position.  It would be pretty hypocritical of me to rail against Gub'mint Cheese if the principal part of MY diet consists of said gub'mint-provided cheese, wouldn't it?  It's bad enough that the gub'mint provides three-fourths of my current income by means of Social Security and my USAF retirement, but I can rationalize those things: I paid a LOT into the former and I earned the latter.  It would be much harder to rationalize living in subsidized housing when I can afford to live elsewhere.

So the application is still sitting there, uncompleted.  I honestly don't know if I'll fill it out, or not.  Fucking principles.

Heh

Austerity, my ass.  I have a feeling we... as in the American people... ain't gonna like the way this debt ceiling Kabuki play ends.

Interesting times.

SN1 Is Comin' Up With Good Stuff of Late

Like this, linked on his G+ feed:

Stolen from "Animals Running Into Shit," which is a hoot.

My Part o' the Country

TimeScapes: Rapture from Tom Lowe @ Timescapes on Vimeo.


h/t: SN1 on G+.

Update, 1030 hrs:  OK... just one more and then we'll go.  This time it's the best use of Pink Floyd in a video I've ever seen:

Timescapes Timelapse: Learning to Fly from Tom Lowe @ Timescapes on Vimeo.

"Learning to Fly" just might be my favorite Floyd tune and these images are just perfect.  Watch in full-screen if ya can.

Tonight's ADWH Soundtrack

Hot Tuna, yet again.  It's JA, actually, but the version I heard on Pandora this evening was by Hot Tuna... not available on the Tube o' You, unfortunately.  So this will have to do:

Well now what is gonna happen now is anybody's guess

If I can't spend my time with love I guess I need a rest.

Time is getting late now and the sun is getting low

My body's getting tired of bearing another's load

And sunshine's waiting for me a little further down the road.

This is a re-run.  I originally posted the tune and a couple o' others from Hot Tuna in the near way-back, and it's kinda funny... funny strange, not funny ha-ha... how I keep returning to my roots.  That's a function of Old Age, methinks.  But so be it: I'm comfortable with it.

We sat out long after sunset this evening and were only driven indoors by the approaching storm, which has yet to fully materialize.  We got up and withdrew when the wind picked up significantly and the first spitting rain drops hit us.  But that's all we've had, so far: spitting.  It was very good to sit outside and feel the storm coming on... when the heat of the day is ameliorated by coolish and damp southern winds containing the scent of moisture.  The coolness was wonderful, to say the very least.

We were less than pleased with our newest whiskey acquisition, however.  We took the first round neat, as is our habit, and the whiskey isn't all I thought it would be.  The Quinta Ruban reminds me of The Second Mrs. Pennington in a lot o' ways:  the nose is very pleasant and is something that promises much whereas the actual tasting delivers less.  The initial taste is altogether pleasant and pleases your mouth with complex flavors, with a certain sweetness that overrides all the other sensations.  But like TSMP, it's the finish that bothers... which is to say it's harsh and biting, leaving a stinging sensation in the mouth and on the palate that supersedes any pleasure one initially experienced.  

I don't like my whiskeys to hurt me; this bottle will be a "one and done" and Quinta Ruban will never darken my doorstep again.  As a matter of fact, I'll prolly use it to make a lot o' Rusty Nails as drinking it neat is way too close to masochism for me.  Either that or I'll drink it over lotsa ice, as I did with the second and subsequent rounds this evening.  Water cuts the harshness a lot... kinda like the effect time has on a bad love affair.

But leave us not digress or delve deeper into waters where we don't belong.  Metaphors just ain't my thang.

The Best Laid Plans...

... come to naught.  Sorta.  I woke up waaay too early but decided to catch the Early Bus and run out to Cannon Airplane Patch for the UCR re-supply mission, which is to say beer, whiskey, and food.  Well, two out o' three ain't bad, according to Mr. Loaf (I HATE that fuckin' song.  Just want ya to know.).  

So, back to our story, such as it is.  I pulled into the commissary parking lot at 1000 hrs after finishing my bid'niz at the Class VI store (more about that below) and wondered why there were only four cars in the lot, counting The Green Hornet.  A quick inspection of the commissary front revealed a large sign sayin' sumthin' to the effect of  "New Hours on Thursdays for the month of July!", said new hours bein' the place didn't open until 1100 hrs.

Well, damn.

So.  We... bein' the impatient sort we ARE... hopped back in the car and motored on back to ECMdP, deferring our food shopping for another day.  But we did manage to get the important stuff, part o' which is this:

That's a bottle o' Glenmorangie Quinta Ruban, about which I find this out there on these inter-tubes:

Taste: It was a nice balance of sweetness and nirvana with a little bit of that whack behind the head that makes it Scotch and not wine in my opinion. From the reviews I read I wasn't so sure I was going to like this Scotch but I think I have found my replacement to the Old Port Wood Finish. it is different because it is unchill filtered but it is so smooth and nice and the taste buds it has been one of the easiest Scotch's I have had in a long time.

Finish: The finish was very smooth and subtle so you haven't forgotten what you just drank and it didn't overpower the rest of the dram.

Comments: I have found my replacement to the Old Port Wood Finish, it's amazing.

You Gentle Readers may remember we killed a bottle o' Glenmorangie Lasanta before we went off on that three-bottle run o' Johnnie Walker Gold.  I was gonna buy a fourth bottle o' Gold but the Glenmorangie caught my eye and we're ALL about broadening our horizons, dontchaknow.   I'm also VERY gratified to see the Class VI store has expanded its single-malt offerings by an order of magnitude (only a slight exaggeration).  Up until about a month ago we had a choice between Glenlivet, Glenfiddich, and Balvenie... all ten year olds... and that was IT.  Now we have four different varieties of Glenmorangie alone, including a pretty pricey 16 year old variant.  They've also added Oban and a couple o' different brands I'm not familiar with.

Things are definitely looking up in the whiskey department.

Boxes

One of the things I like about G+ is the "sparks" feature... which allows you to specify interests and then gives you a daily list of articles from around these inner-nets that fall into the category or categories you've defined.  I've defined a few interests, all of them obvious, like cigars, beer, and single-malts.  Here's a few grafs from a lil sumthin' in the Beaumont, Tejas local paper that popped up in the "cigars" category yesterday:

Cigar boxes are no longer a part of childhood. In an office supply store last week I saw a display of plastic boxes for children for use in school, for storing pens and pencils and glue and scissors and all the other easily-misplaced little impedimenta of very young artists.

Once upon a time, children employed wooden cigars boxes for such purposes; if one's father didn't smoke cigars then someone else's did, and so nice little wooden boxes were as common as 1943 steel pennies. I suppose that if now a child were to carry his art supplies to school in a cigar box he would be sent for therapy and his parents filed on with some state agency for Not Thinking Correctly.

The plastic boxes for sale now contain only air, and to a father that's disappointing; wooden cigar boxes came filled with, well, cigars, so everyone was happy. Contemporary boxes are filled with nothing more than the chemical aromas of Shanghai, and no one ever celebrated an accomplishment or a birth by lighting up a victory Chinese air molecule.

In another time-space dimension, the birth of a child was celebrated by the proud father handing out cigars to his pals. Upon retrospect one realizes that the young mother probably needed a cigar more than anyone, but such an image would not make an appropriately-sentimental greeting card. One wonders if somewhere there is at least one mother who smokes cigars while holding her infant, in Newton County, perhaps.

The article goes on at some length and it's quite a good reminiscence.  I do relate to the first few thoughts expressed above... I kept my childhood treasures in Dutch Masters boxes that were handed down from the Ol' Man.  My friends all had cigar boxes, too.  We kept our baseball cards in 'em, our marble collections (yeah, I shot marbles as a kid... do you know ANY kid that does that today?), and, for me, my model airplane paraphernalia... paint brushes, glue, small bottles of Testors paint, not to mention scads and scads of leftover decals.  I had more than a few cigar boxes.

I still have more than a few cigar boxes (see right), even after I've "gifted" ("pawned off" would be more descriptive) more than a few of 'em to grandson Sean and even some friends.  I find it hard to throw away these small objects of beauty, as I struggle to find some sort of use for 'em.  They only take up valuable and limited space right now, even considering the fact a couple o' boxes hold my Small Treasures, even today.

So... we have boxes.  If you have a child you want to indulge with a nostalgic sort of gift, drop me a line.  I've been known to ship, gratis.  And I have a few boxes on hand.

Tonight's ADWH Soundtrack

Stephen Stills:

Black queen, where's your bank roll?
Black queen, where did it go?
Black queen, the truth is hard
Black queen, you're playin' foolish cards, black queen

I searched all over the Tube O' You for the studio version... which is what I heard during After Dinner Whiskey Hour... and all I could find is this muddy live recording with the botched title.  "Queem"... Oh shit, Oh Dear.  Oh, well... better this than nothin'.

This particular tune calls to mind my fall from grace, or rather the first such time I fell.  The place was Boron AFS, California, sometime in 1971 and the time is slightly after midnite on a summer's eve.  I'd just returned home from runnin' one of my buds up the hill to work... he was scheduled to work a mid-shift and his wife was visiting from El-Eh for the weekend.  The lady was stayin' at my place, seein' as how The First Mrs. Pennington and the boys were away visiting with family in Lompoc and I had extra rooms for the weekend.

So... I walked in my front door to find the lady sitting on my couch... casually smokin' a joint and listening to Stills on the stereo.  She looks up, smiles, and sez "come sit next to me."  I was thunderstruck... on all counts... first by the pot (I didn't indulge, at that point) and second by the oh-so-obvious invitation, this bein' 40 years ago and I'd not yet succumbed to the... umm, what to call it?... sorts of ill-conceived and non-thinking acts of self-indulgence that would mark my life for the next five or six years.  But I went and sat next to her.  You can imagine the rest... and so it was I fell.  It didn't take a lot of convincing, to tell the whole truth.  I was too damned easy and so was she.

Stephen Stills was our soundtrack, moanin' on about how "the truth is hard."  Indeed it was.  Just coincidentally, "Love the One You're With" is also on that album, irony of ironies.

It was only much later in life that I came around and recognized just how hard the truth really can be.

Right Up My Alley!

A quiz for (craft) beer lovers... err... geeks:

How to score yerself, if you take the quiz:

I scored 11, which means I'm a "geek in balance."  That's sorta gratifying... I think.  It's a toss-up as to where I drop more of my money where recreational habits are concerned, which is to say beer, single-malts, or cigars.  But I gave the edge to beer, thus increasing my score to 11 from what would have been a nine.  That sounds about right, coz I picture myself as bein' far and away from a "Greenhorn."  So... are you a beer geek?  Enquiring Minds™ wanna know...

When the Perfect Is the Enemy of the Good

I became aware of a new Harris poll by means of a tweet from Iowahawk, to wit:

iowahawkblog

77% of Americans have no idea who Thad McCotter is; 43% would vote for him over Obama bit.ly/ot3skj 

So I went and checked out the poll and its results, which pretty much confirm the thoughts I've had about the Republican field... up to this point.  The Readers Digest version:  I'm not happy with most of the candidates and the ones that please me have the proverbial snowball's chance in The Hot Place of actually winning the election.  That's sorta the point Mr. Burge was making but not really; Burge is more on about how a complete unknown would run a good race against The One.  Point taken, Mr. Burge, but Rep. McCotter would still LOSE... and here's what the Harris people have to say about that:

Against President Obama

Looking ahead to November, it seems there are three possible candidates who could give President Obama a difficult time. President Obama would lose his re-election if Rudy Giuliani (53% to 47%) or Mitt Romney (51% to 49%) was the Republican nominee. Each candidate would receive 50% of the vote if the President was running against Ron Paul. Right now, President Obama would win re-election against the 10 other candidates presented.

So What?

Right now the Republican party needs to figure out who they are and begin the process of coalescing around one candidate. In the study of politics, there is always a debate regarding electability and this election may show that clearly. Should Republicans nominate a candidate who stands for certain values or policies important to a sub-section of the party, even though that candidate may not be electable in the general election? This is a question the Republican party needs to answer if they want to win next November.

It's an old, old tale but it's one that bears repeating and above all, remembering as primary time approaches.  I know some conservatives (can you say "Palinistas?"  Sure you can!) who would rather see Obama in office for another four years than see the GOP nominate a candidate who fails some aspect of their ideological purity test.  This line o' thinking usually features the "I'll stay home if so-and-so gets the nomination" argument and that consistently amazes me.  This line of thinking has to be The Mother of All Facepalms, as the graphic on the right illustrates.  

The other thing that knots up my underwear is the sheer hubris of such a statement... as in who the fuck cares if YOU, as an individual, stay home?  Not me.  The problem is the aggregate effect of that attitude, which is to say thousands of individuals throwing a hissy fit and staying away from the polls on election day.  There's always an exception, of course, and by that I mean if those thousands of individuals happen to be moonbats who think Obama has betrayed them... in which case, yes.  Stay home.  Please.  

But if it's the conservatives that throw the hissy fit?  I mean... WTF?  You'd rather see Barry Fuckin' Obama win another term than see Romney in the White House?  Really?  You need to see a shrink if you REALLY feel that way, coz you're one sick puppy.

Solidarity

Blog-Bud Moogie has this tee on her "want" list:

Me, too.  I want ten of the damned things... just so I can pass a few out to some people I know.

The End o' the World as We Know It

No, not REM... this, as sent by an Occasional Correspondent:

The End Of The World As We Know It:

When the end of the world arrives, how will the media report it?

USA Today: WE'RE DEAD

The Wall Street Journal: DOW JONES PLUMMETS AS WORLD ENDS

National Enquirer: SHEEP MISSING ALL OVER WORLD

Microsoft Systems Journal: APPLE LOSES MARKET SHARE

Sports Illustrated: GAME OVER

Wired: THE LAST NEW THING

Rolling Stone: THE GRATEFUL DEAD REUNION TOUR

Readers Digest: BYE

Discover Magazine: HOW WILL THE EXTINCTION OF ALL LIFE AS WE KNOW IT AFFECT THE WAY WE VIEW THE COSMOS?

TV Guide: DEATH AND DAMNATION: NIELSON RATINGS SOAR!

Lady's Home Journal: LOSE 10 LBS. BY JUDGMENT DAY WITH OUR NEW "ARMAGEDDON" DIET!

America Online: SYSTEM TEMPORARILY DOWN. TRY CALLING BACK IN 100 YEARS

Inc. magazine: TEN WAYS YOU CAN PROFIT FROM THE APOCALYPSE

 Microsoft's Web Site: IF YOU DIDN'T EXPERIENCE THE RAPTURE, DOWNLOAD SOFTWARE PATCH RAPT777.EXE.

IBM: ARMAGEDDON TOLERANT SOFTWARE NOW AVAILABLE!

The New York Times: Proof that Bush policies caused global warming

 Boston Globe: STRONG N.E. WINDS PREDICTED

Cuba Libre: AMERICA BLOWS UP WORLD

Arizona Republic: Temperatures expected to hit 1016 F today.

Heh.  Apropos o' not much... I watched "2012" the other night and it looks like we're in for one hella year next year.  Or not.

135 Missions in Eight Minutes

Some wonderful images in this compilation... and two tragic ones, as well:

Yeah, it's been a Viral Vids kinda day, mainly coz it's just too hot to be outside.  Oh, the humanity humidity!

It's THAT Kinda Day...

Meanin' that I found this quite amusing.  YMMV, Gentle Reader.

"I Thought I Was Cynical..."

That would be Mr. Doctor Krauthammer, on The One's stump speech last evening.  Here, see fer yerself:

Heh.  I didn't watch Barry, I can't watch Barry, I WON'T watch Barry.  The next time I'll watch Obama give a speech will be when he concedes on the evening of November 6, 2012.  I did watch Boehner, though, and I thought he did a good job.  But I guess I would think that, wouldn't I?

Apropos o' not much, FNC canceled Red Eye last evening in favor of another fucking re-run of meaningless bullshit emanating from Washington.  I'm still pissed.

I Got Nuthin'...

... you get a re-run.  This one's over five years old so it will prolly be new to most of you, seein' as how there are only about two of you Gentle Readers who have been with me since 2006.  This lil bit o' nostalgia was prompted by blog-bud Glenn, who posted a lot o' pics of the Edwards AFB air park... one such bein' an F-101 Voodoo.  I had a close encounter of the underwear changing kind with a Voodoo in the way-back...

Saturday, March 18, 2006

Old Computer Tech and a War Story

Lileks has some great old computer advertising promotional photos from the ‘60s and ‘70s here. Browsing through those old photos made me a bit nostalgic for the old USAF Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE) system, the nation’s air defense system from 1963 until 1983. (More on SAGE, including some pretty cool old photos, here. Click on the “SAGE” links in the left hand sidebar.) I enlisted in the AF in 1963 and spent almost half of my life working in the SAGE system, albeit on the sensor (radar) end, not the computing end. Here’s a thumbnail description of SAGE:

By the time the system was fully deployed in 1963, according to MITRE, "the 24 SAGE Direction Centers and three SAGE Combat Centers were spread throughout the U.S. Each was linked by long-distance telephone lines to more than 100 interoperating air defense elements, requiring system integration on a scale previously unimagined. At the heart of each center was a new large-scale digital computer that had evolved from MIT's experimental Whirlwind computer of the 1950's. The largest real-time computer program of that time, it automated information flow, processed and presented data to 100 operator stations, and provided control information to the weapons systems. This processed information, including aircraft tracks and identification, was presented to operators on a cathode ray tube -- one of the first uses of this device to display computer-generated data." Each Center was built around a huge A/N FSQ-7 computer with 60,000 vacuum tubes requiring 3 megawatts of power and running the largest computer program written up to that time, with 500,000 lines of code. This program used an area in system memory called COMPOOL that could be shared by several subroutines. This would become one of the founding concepts for the COBOL computer language. The communications devices from Burroughs allowed each center to communicate with other centers, creating one of the first practical computer networks.

The air defense of the entire United States and Canada was based on a network of 22 “Direction Center” computers, each of which ran mere 500,000 lines of code. Your desktop machine has 40 million lines of code in its operating system, assuming you’re running Windows XP. We’ve come a long way, Baby!  

If you followed that “here” link above, you’ll note the main page has a photo of an F-102 superimposed on a radar tower, with a clickable link called “Bubble Check.” Click that link! The pilot that wrote that piece describes the bubble checks he performed while up in Alaska and maintains that USAF pilots only did that sort of thing at remote sites where the possibility of civilian complaints was low to non-existent.

Hogwash.

I got the living BeJeebus scared out of me while at Lompoc AFS in the mid-60s by an F-101 pilot out of Oxnard AFB pulling an unannounced bubble check. Just to be clear, bubble checks had at least two purposes: one was to impress and entertain the troops at the radar sites, the second was to express displeasure with ground controllers who screwed up intercept vectors, causing the fighter jock to miss an intercept on an in-bound target. When the latter scenario happened, said displeased fighter jock would buzz the ground control intercept site, unannounced, usually lighting off the afterburner(s) in the process, which caused a helluva lot of racket and startled everyone within a couple thousand yards. Point made, and all that.

So, there I was, about 60 feet off the ground at the very top of the antenna of an AN/FPS-6 height finder radar which was situated on the edge of the “hill” the radar site was located on. Or, to put it another way, the radar tower overlooked a valley that was at least a couple of thousand feet wide and several hundred feet deep, the point being one could fly an aircraft through that valley and be beneath the elevation of the radar station.

It was a fairly warm and clear summer’s day and I was inspecting the antenna for cracks, a normal preventive maintenance routine. I caught a flash and a glint out of the corner of my eye, turned and looked over my shoulder and DOWN, right into the cockpit of an F-101 doing about 600 mph, 90 degrees to the ground, a mere 150 feet or less from my poor frail body. The pilot lit off the afterburners just as I caught the flash of the aircraft as it sped by and the entire antenna—including me, holding on for dear life—was rocked by a thunderous KA-BOOM-BOOM! The pilot stood that 101 on its tail as it passed over the search radar tower and shot straight up into the sky, disappearing in a matter of seconds.

As for me, I was left completely shaken, clinging to that antenna with a veritable death-grip. I was damned lucky I didn’t have to go home and change my pants after that event. And it took me about ten minutes or more to gain enough composure to climb down from the antenna. Bubble checks are impressive, indeed. Scary, too. 

I did some minor editing to the above, such as removing dead links and adding the pic of  the Voodoo (which sits on the prem at the AF Armament Museum at Eglin AFB).  We weren't much on graphics back when we started out with this bloggin' thang.

Tonight's ADWH Soundtrack

Just in from ADWH which, truth be told, was After Dinner Whiskey TWO Hours and then some.  We went out sometime around 1900 hrs and watched our skies go from bright blue to pink to sandstone twilight to purple and then to black.  It was one of those nights where we simply didn't want to go back indoors -- finest kind, in other words.

Our soundtrack was excellent, as well (as always and ever), with oh-so-many candidates for the sampling that is our post on this subject.  Lotsa Dylan, lotsa Neil Young, and a smattering of traditional blues... and it's the Trad Blues that wins.  Here's Lightnin' Hopkins doin "Katy Mae Blues:"

You know some folks say she must be a Cadillac,
but I say she must be a T-model Ford
Yeah, you know some folks say she must be a Cadillac,
but I say she must be a T-model Ford
Yeah, you know she got the shape all right, but she can't carry no heavy load 

Heh.  Cuts right to the chase, Ol' Lightnin' does.  Those Cadillac girls beat the Model Ts every time.  There's much to be said for the "built for comfort, not speed" school of thought.

I mentioned Dylan... and there were lots of Dylan tunes to choose from.  I heard "Tangled Up in Blue," one of my absolute faves, and "Shelter From the Storm," yet another fave.  The lyrics, in part:

Suddenly I turned around and she was standin' there
With silver bracelets on her wrists and flowers in her hair.
She walked up to me so gracefully and took my crown of thorns.
"Come in," she said, "I'll give you shelter from the storm."

Now there's a wall between us, somethin' there's been lost
I took too much for granted, got my signals crossed.
Just to think that it all began on a long-forgotten morn.
"Come in," she said, "I'll give you shelter from the storm."

Yeah... it was like that.  More than you'll ever know, Gentle Reader.

But it was old, old Dylan that I heard tonight and those were the tunes I liked the best.  Here's one such... a 1962 recording of "Girl From the North Country:"

Good Lord... were we... and he... ever that young?  Really?

Thinking About Options

I've been givin' some thought lately to changin' my lifestyle or, more specifically, to changin' my residence.  There's a lot to like about livin' in El Casa Móvil de Pennington... it's all mine to begin with (which makes the living rather inexpensive), and there's the undeniable cachet of livin' with all the other Swells here in Beautiful La Hacienda Trailer Park.  Still and even there ARE times when I think more space would be nice, a dishwasher would be nice, a washer and dryer of my own would be nice, and a normal-sized fridge and freezer would be nice.  And closets, plural.  All the stuff I had back in Former Happy Days, the stuff I gave up to go mobile, in other words.

So we received this in Friday's mail:

I seriously entertained goin' over to that event today but decided against it when I found out the place is a 96-unit assisted-living center... not to mention the fact it looks like your standard, run-o'-the-mill apartment building.  Nope... ain't gonna do that.  I want sumthin' more like a condo and I know those things exist.  So, it's back to the drawing board for more research.  I'm not in any hurry.

OTOH, I'm still thinkin' about gettin' a maid, which is the sort of "assisted living" I'm really in need of.  I'm lookin' for a nice, fine, upstanding mature woman who wouldn't mind doin' a lil light cleaning and cooking for a gentleman, among other things.  Someone of the "upstairs maid" persuasion, kinda like this:

Yeah... me and Neil:

I was thinking that maybe I'd get a maid
Find a place nearby for her to stay.
Just someone to keep my house clean,
Fix my meals and go away.

A maid. A man needs a maid.
A maid.

It's hard to make that change
When life and love turns strange.
And old.

Yup: "A man needs a maid..."

Miss Zukiko Update

I got a nice note from My Buddy Lee last week...

Comparing Miss Z to the Duck is high praise, indeed.  I only wish I had had the opportunity to exercise her in the manner she deserves and is currently getting.  Lee also enclosed Miss Z's license plate, which was placed upon the altar, like so:

Cue up Barbra...

What an Asshat

The right-side commentary about Barry's foot-stamping, piss 'n' moan, hissy-fit during his presser last evening was pretty entertaining reading (one such example).  I got the biggest kick out o' readin' all the gnashing and thrashing in the fever swamp blogs, though.  It seems like nobody likes poor Barry these days, even the moonbats who used to worship him.  That breaks my iddy-bitty lil heart.

Not really... Schadenfreude Я Us.  

Aiiieee... I Have No Weather!

Ya don't see this very often:

We have alternatives, though...

Note the wind speed.  The one good thing about this high-pressure dome that's been hovering over the Mid-West for the last ten days or so is that it's kept the wind down.  It's also kept the temps up, but I can live with that.  I wouldn't be so forgiving if our temps were in the 110-degree range, day after day after day.  We'd be bitching MIGHTILY if that were the case.

Pretty Cool

That's the Winnipeg Jets' new logo, otherwise to be known in future as the first North American military air force (ed: see comments) themed hockey club*.  From a Jets press release about the logo:

The design for the new logo, which was developed in partnership with Reebok and the NHL, was inspired by the logo of the Royal Canadian Air Force.

“True North Sports & Entertainment felt it was important for the new Winnipeg Jets to develop a strong new identity,” said Mark Chipman, Chairman & Governor of True North Sports & Entertainment. “We felt it was important to authenticate the name Jets and we believe the new logo does that through its connection to our country’s remarkable Air Force heritage, including the rich history and relationship that our city and province have enjoyed with the Canadian Forces.”

Pretty cool, eh?  A logo ain't nearly enough to get me to change my hockey allegiance but I just might buy a hat.  Then again, I think I said the same thing when San Jose came into the NHL a few years back... so mebbe not.

* The Jets ain't the first hockey team in the world with a military image.  Who could forget those dominant Moscow Central Red Army teams of yesteryear?

h/t:  the usual (hockey) source.

Broadening Our Horizons XXVI, AKA Sometimes We Just Don't Learn

I think I swore off fruity beers back in March after one too many close encounters of the cloying kind.  Well, hope does spring eternal (ask any dumbass who voted for Obama) so here we go again:

That would be a Shiner Ruby Redbird, which supposedly has gen-you-wine Texas Ruby Red grapefruit juice in the bottle, somewhere.  Beer Advocate doesn't come down too hard on the lil ol' brewery in Shiner, Tejas... rating the beer a C+... and I think that's about right.  This particular fruit beer is far from cloyingly sweet; it actually has a rather pleasant tangy taste about it.  I like it.

Our cigar today is a '93' rated La Perla Habana Morado, and please note the linked reviewer is a girl.  We're tryin' to make amends for yesterday's somewhat chauvinistic remarks about coppin' feels on over-dressed wimmens.  Pennance and all that. 

More about which (the cigar):  nice graphics on the band, given you smoke the cigar and not the band.  Still, I appreciate the "art," if'n ya wanna call it that.

So: here's lunch or part of it, anyhoo.  Like Mr. Buffett sang: "it's five o'clock somewhere."  That would be 1700 hrs for us military types.

I'm Just So Danged Proud o' Myself...

... mainly because I got up waaay before the crack o' noon, drank half a pot o' coffee, ran over to The Big(ger) City™ to exchange those wrong readers for the right ones (which were in stock, thank The Deity At Hand), made a beer run, and I'm back home just barely after 1000 hrs.  This kinda reminds me of that ol' Groundpounder commercial: "We do more before 0800 than most people do all day"... which is entirely relative these days, of course.

―:☺:―

And then there's this:

I saw that yesterday and shoulda posted it then.  But better late, yadda, yadda...  Ramirez is right about all that, I suppose, but I have HOPE that The One will be a one-termer.

Along those same lines, here's a lil sumthin' an Occasional Correspondent sent along yesterday:

Some people have the vocabulary to sum up things in a way you can understand them. This quote came from the Czech Republic. Someone over there has it figured out. We have a lot of work to do.
 
"The danger to America is not Barack Obama but a citizenry capable of entrusting a man like him with the Presidency. It will be far easier to limit and undo the follies of an Obama presidency than to restore the necessary common sense and good judgment to a depraved electorate willing to have such a man for their president. The problem is much deeper and far more serious than Mr.Obama, who is a mere symptom of what ails America. Blaming the prince of the fools should not blind anyone to the vast confederacy of fools that made him their prince. The Republic can survive a Barack Obama, who is, after all, merely a fool. It is less likely to survive a multitude of fools such as those who made him their president."  

And there are some people who STILL don't geddit. 

―:☺:―

A couple o' weeks ago I made mention that I'd cruised up to Tucumcari for lunch with DIL Alisa, the grandkids, and the great-grandbabies; I also said I'd post a pic when I received one.  Well, I got a couple o' pics but I've been sitting on 'em for over a week, vacillating back and forth about posting them, or not.  DIL Erma and SN1 think the pics aren't all THAT bad, so... well, OK then.  Here's one (left to right: granddaughters Ava and Angelina, great-grandson Taurean, great-granddaughter Aria):

We prolly shouldn't have stuck that hat pin in great-granddaughter Aria's butt.