Today's Happy Hour Soundtrack

Liz Story...

I dunno why it is but I almost always associate gray winter days with Liz Story's moody piano pieces.  Today is such a day... gray, overcast, cold... and we are trapped indoors.  So we dug a Liz Story cassette out of the archives and put it on the stereo to provide the soundtrack for today's beer and cigar extravaganza.  The music fits and it fits all TOO well, in a number of ways.  The cassette in question was recorded by The Second Mrs. Pennington at some point in the way-back, what with Ms. Story bein' a shared favorite of ours.  I noted with no small twinge TSMP's precise handwriting that recorded the track names on this cassette, "Wedding Rain" bein' one such.  It rained the night of our nuptials... rain that provided a memorable soundtrack to the first night we spent together as one in the eyes of God and man.

The things she left behind continue to haunt me.

Naming Conventions

Our favorite former Nasal Radiator (now flying The Israeli Lawn Dart in his new civilian contractor gig of adversary fighter pilot), on the subject of the USS Gabrielle Giffords:

I have only this to say about that: The Army should start naming tanks, and the Air Force tankers.

Take some of the load off, please.

Heh.  Nice try, Cap'n.  We occasionally name our aircraft... as a matter o' fact I think every single B-2 and C-17 have names painted on their fuselages.  But the suspect naming of naval vessels... like the USS John P. Murtha and the USS Cesar Chavez... is ALL on the Navy.  Or rather, the current Secretary of the Navy.  And some good people are tryin' to fix THAT.

Aiiieee, Part II

I decided not to run errands yesterday as it was too damned cold to be out and about.  Well, "too damned cold" as applied to an ol geezer who has the R-factor of your average tin garden shed; cold weather and skinny people just don't do well together.  That said, I prolly should have done my shopping yesterday, coz here's the current view outta my front door:

And here's the forecast for the rest of today:

Monday looks good though, no?  We're not out o' any o' the important stuff anyhoo... there's plenty of beer in the fridge and the humidor is fat.  I did have to break out the emergency creamer for today's coffee... that powdered krep that is in NO way a substitute for half and half, which we're out of.  Sigh.  I guess we'll just have to suffer.

―:☺:―

It should be an interesting night at The Joe tonight.  Some words about that from NHL.com:

DETROIT -- The purists have already spoken up.

They say that even if the Detroit Red Wings beat the Philadelphia Flyers on Sunday night at Joe Louis Arena for their 20th straight victory on home ice – tying the NHL record shared by the 1929-30 Boston Bruins and 1975-76 Flyers – it should come with an asterisk.

They argue that because neither of those old Bruins and Flyers teams had the advantage of winning games in overtime or shootouts, their home winning streaks are still more impressive and more "legit" than the current run the League-leading Red Wings are riding.

If that logic bothers the Wings, however, it's near-impossible to tell – not because they're so focused on joining the NHL's history book yet again, but because they seem so nonchalant about the whole ordeal.

[...]

Still, what his team is doing on home ice this season really is a big deal in terms of historical perspective.

Even if they lose on Sunday and fall one win short of tying the NHL record, what the Red Wings have accomplished to this point – simply stacking home wins and concentrating on the next one – is nothing short of amazing. Purists are correct that Detroit has had the advantage of winning games in overtime and shootouts, but their opponents have had the same opportunities to end it.

You KNOW I'll be there... front and center... tonight.  Well, front and center of the teevee, anyhoo.  

LGRW!!

―:☺:―

And then there's this... from The Freep:

Red Wings' Tomas Holmstrom receives a Ski-Doo Renegade snowmobile from the team to celebrate his 1000th game in the NHL at the end of practice at Joe Louis Arena on Saturday. / KIMBERLY P. MITCHELL/DFP

Tomas Holmstrom wasn’t sure what was going on at the end of practice today when the doors to the Zamboni entrance opened while the players were still on the ice. 

But suddenly, a loud noise was heard and Henrik Zetterberg rode in on a brand new snowmobile – complete with the number 96 on the side. 

“I couldn’t see what was going on,” Holmstrom said. “Turn around and there’s a snowmobile out there and then I started reading the sign. Nice. It’s mine.”

A sign on the front of the snowmobile let Holmstrom know the gift was for reaching 1,000 career games.

Pretty cool, eh?  Number 96 did all 1,000 of his games with the Wings and did all of 'em the hard way, too.  There ain't another guy in the NHL who's a more formidable presence in front of the net and who takes as much abuse... night after night, game after game... than Homer.  He's one o' my heroes.

Today's Happy Hour Soundtrack

Freddie and the Drillers...

Actually not; Occasional Correspondent and Blog/Biker Buddy Lin sent this along.  I watched this three times thinkin' I might see myself on my old Honda CL-350 (circa 1968) or in a moto on my DT-1 based motocrosser.  Alas...

Aiiieee!

Winter's back...

I HAVE to run some errands today, too.  But I'm thinkin' I won't go out until late this afternoon.

Larger Than Life

Alternate title: more cigar art.  Here are a couple o' few cigar bands from the last three or four days worth o' consumption.

The post title refers to the fact the bands are about twice normal size.  I kept the file purposely large so you can see the detail on the more elaborate bands... which is to say the Ave Maria and the Man O' War.  Some bands are pretty plain, while others are pretty danged elaborate.  All of the bands are made of embossed foil-on-paper with the exception of the La Herencia Cubana, which is plain paper.  The band at the very bottom is a footer... Isla del Sol sticks have two bands.  I think they're all beautiful, as well. 

In Today's Mail

Snail mail, that is.  Ain't these pretty?

That would be two boxes of Drew Estate Isla del Sols, one in the Churchill size and one in the robusto size... 40 cigars, all told.  You may notice these sticks arrived just in time, as our inventory was down to about four cigars.


I post these pics only to illustrate the beauty of the packaging, one of the reasons I so dearly love my cigar hobby.  Or addiction, you choose.  But you KNOW I could quit anytime I want, right?  S'true.


All that said, I dearly love this blend from Drew Estate.  Say what you will about infused (flavored) cigars... purists reject them, newbies love 'em, and some folks are ambivalent... but this particular blend simply cannot be beat as an after-dinner cigar, especially when accompanied by a couple o' fingers o' single malt.  It don't get much better than that.


We shall now adjourn to the verandah where we'll attempt an al fresco Happy Hour.  It's cooler today than it was yesterday by ten degrees but there is NO wind and the sun is shining brightly, which makes ALL the difference in the world.  I think we might could pull this off today.

Blogger...

...is shitting the bed.  Again.  I get this gotdamned error when tryin' to access the comment page on certain Blogger blogs... not ALL of 'em: some work and some don't... and it's drivin' me up the freakin' wall.

Is it just me, or are other people havin' this issue as well?

Thievery

Stolen from Dan... mainly for Grandson Sean.





I've never heard a guitar player master harmonics and include them in a piece as extensively as Mr. Dykes does. That was the first thing about the man's style that caught my ear... the second is his amazing finger-pickin'.  Good Stuff, Maynard!


Thanks, Dan!

With Apologies To The Eagles

"I've got a dreadful, queasy feelin'" about November...  Santorum?  Really?  His own state wouldn't reelect him to the Senate.  There's some "electability" for ya.

Today's Happy Hour Soundtrack

We're just in from a very brief stint on the verandah and it's jes a wee bit too chilly to enjoy ourselves out there.  So it's back to The Great Indoors, where we shall continue as we've begun.  We managed about four songs while we were outside, chief among them this:

Let's get it on, baby
This minute, oh yeah
Let's get it on
Please, let's get it on
C'mon, c'mon, c'mon, c'mon, c'mon, baby
Stop beatin' 'round the bush
Oh, gonna get it on

Heh.  Ol' Marvin just might have single-handedly created a mini Baby Boom with this tune.  I don't think there was a single solitary bachelor who didn't own this song back in 1973... or young married guys, either, coz seduction doesn't end with the wedding... in most cases.  I certainly had a copy of the song, in any event.  And I think I put it to good use, even though some o' my wimmen friends just laughed when Marvin started in... with words to the effect of "Oh, BUCK.  Not that again..."


You can't please all o' the people all o' the time.

Broadening Our Horizons XLI

We liked that Black Butte Porter from Deschutes Brewery so much we decided to try another one of their brews in addition to restocking the fridge with more of their Porter.  So today it's...

The Alström Bros really like the product from Deschutes.  They rated the Porter "World Class" and give the same rating to the Mirror Pond Pale Ale.  An excerpt from the review:

Taste: Smooth with a medium body, semi crisp malt(a bit bready) of sweetness and grain are the forefront. Then quickly comes a flare of fruit and ester that goes hand and hand with the very flavourful cascade slightly pungent hop bitterness and flavour ... the hop flavour has a sweet citric taste. A fair amount of residual sugars are left in the aftertaste and slowly let way for a drying finish of grain and hop oil.

Notes: A great pale a to be had here, any hop head would be pleased and if you love cascade hops this is your ale! This makes for a great lunch time brew.

This beer is pretty hoppy.  I'm not THAT into hops so it ain't really my cuppa.  It is pleasant and it won't last long in our fridge, that's fer shure.  But neither will it be at the top o' my list for future purchase, either.

Today's cigar is a Man O' War Ruination.  The beer and the cigar are damned near a perfect fit.

Two Shades o' Normal

I like the way Mr. Kelley thinks.  From The Usual Source, of course.

―:☺:―

In other news... We're 180 out from where we were yesterday.  I'm amazed at how unstable and erratic my sleeping habits are, i.e., yesterday we went to bed around 0430 hrs in the morning and slept until well after noon.  Today we're up at 0430, which is when we went to bed 24 hours ago.  Well, we actually retired at 2200 hrs last evening and woke up at 0300 this morning (it's 0430 and two cups later as I type).  It's the strangest thang... my eyes popped open at 0300 and I simply could NOT get back to sleep.  So we gave it up and got up at 0330.

Is this normal?  I think not.  But... it is what it is and normal is highly overrated.

An Ad You May Have Missed

I just wish Reason had paid more attention to the Obama footage they included here... he's getting out of a FORD MUSTANG and Ford didn't get a bailout.  I get their point, yet still.

I supported the bailouts, what with being a former Motown resident who still has peeps workin' in the industry.  Today I'm thinkin' I might have been wrong in my support.

―:☺:―

In other news... we've just now poured our first cup and haven't even made our way through the inbox yet.  So there's NO other news, other than it's gonna be one of "those" days.

"I Can't Sing, I Ain't Pretty, and My Legs Are Thin"

So sez Peter Green...

I'm in the same boat.  And you can add the weather's turned cold, my muse has decamped to parts unknown, and I got nuthin'.

Yeah, it's cold.  But it ain't THIS cold:

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Damn Part II, or Worse Than I Thought

I didn't go out yesterday.  There was no need as I was stocked up on all the important stuff and it was just too damned cold out, anyhoo.  But I did order a pizza last evening.   As I was taking delivery I happened to look down, upon which time I scared the livin' Hell out of the pizza guy with my very emphatic and menacing "FUCK!" exclamation.  He stepped back a bit, still clutching the pizza box and looked at me with a wide-eyed "fight or flight" expression, the best I've seen lately.  "It's not YOU," sez I... "it's THAT!"  And this is what I saw:

It looks for all the world like I have a busted water line and it looks pretty bad, don't it?  So, whereas I THOUGHT our freeze-up yesterday morning was my fault for not leaving the tap running, it wasn't.  It was something one whole helluva lot worse.

Andy the RV Doctor will be dropping by for a house call tomorrow, once it warms up and we can see exactly where and how bad the break is.  

Sigh.  It's always SUMTHIN'.

We're coming up on the one-year anniversary of the event (above) that prompted me to move into our current digs and are slightly past the one-year anniversary of my four day sojourn to the HIE to escape four days of sub-zero cold.  So life ain't really all THAT bad.

The Wages o' Sin Might Could Be Death...

... but the wages o' procrastination (and stoopidity!) are only slightly less.  Fifty-plus Yankee Dollars, to be specific, which is near enough to death for a poor ol' geezer livin' on Social Security and such.  We wound up taking Lou's advice on this post about dedicating a pot to the express purpose o' humidification, albeit inadvertently.  Shorter: we ruined our eight-quart stock pot by not cleaning it on a daily basis.  It wasn't because of clove residue in the pot (we managed to find whole cloves, which cut that brand o' residue down to a manageable level), it was due to the incredibly hard water which is our fate because we live in P-Ville.  I spent 45 minutes and two... count 'em: TWO... Brillo pads attempting to remove a week's worth of calcium and other stuff from the pot, all to no avail.  It would take some industrial-strength bead-blasting at the very least to remove all the krep that accumulated in that pot after a week's worth of simmerin' hard water.

The upshot was the Brown Truck O' Happiness put the pot on the right in my hot lil hands today.  Like this:

I notice Farberware changed the design of their eight quart stock pot in the 30+ years or so since I last purchased cookware, what with the new pot bein' slightly taller and narrower in circumference.   One assumes it will still perform the required functions, one of which will NOT be simmering cloves on the stove.

We have a dedicated asset for that chore now.

More Miscellanea

It's that time again... where we're gonna be watching Red Eye exclusively on the DVR so we can fast-forward through those gotdamned hoodie-footie and Vermont teddy bear commercials.  I me some technology, which also tends to keep my blood pressure at a reasonably healthy level.

―:☺:―

Speaking of V-Day...  I got this in the mail today:

The former objects of my affection would have had my head if I bought them sumthin' like a mixer for V-Day.  Unless she specifically asked for one, of course.  There IS that particular exception.  I got curious while looking at the above and wondered what the goin' rate for perfume is these days, so I went, looked, and got confused.  Note:

I understand the difference between cologne and perfume, but both items 1 and 5 above are billed as "Eau de Parfum spray."  Yet the 3.4 ounce bottle is MUCH cheaper than the 1.7 ounce version.  Bad ad copy, perhaps?  Apropos o' not much... Taylor Swift is pretty proud of her smell, ain't she?

―:☺:―

There's nothing new or interesting from the Usual USAF Source this morning, but there IS some news on the USAF home front.  It can now be revealed that SN1 is off for his third tour to the desert (not counting TDYs and Desert Storm) this coming summer, where he'll take command of an aircraft maintenance squadron at Al Dhafra AB in the UAE.  His new assignment makes me pretty happy as a father, seein' as how he won't be subject to mortar or rocket attacks, unlike the places he served in his previous two tours in the AOR.  I should say there's significantly less chance of nastiness, because we remember stuff like the Khobar Towers bombing.  Rumor also has it there's beer to be had in the UAE, too.  That's a Good Thing.

―:☺:―

In other USAF news... I have it on pretty good authority that at least one Air Force general officer has delayed retirement by a couple o' months because they don't want Barack Obama to sign their retirement certificate.  The general officer in question has reportedly contacted the office of President Dubya in Texas, requesting him to sign the retirement certificate rather than the current resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.  A decision should be forthcoming in a month or so, which is the reason for the general's delayed retirement date.  Two thangs here:  (a) I didn't know presidents signed retirement certificates; maybe that's an O vs. E thang or mebbe it's a relatively new development (Reagan would've signed mine, but his sig is conspicuously absent on my certificate) and (b) it's interesting that ANY president can sign.  I learn sumthin' about Not Your Father's Air Force every danged day.  Oh... there's a third thang, too.  GOOD on that general in question!  

An Announcement From The Popular Men's Liberation Front

Call and response from a previous post...

Moogie P said...

Who are you, and what have you done with Sensitive 70s-Kind-of-Guy Buck!

2/04/2012 3:40 PM

Buck said...

We're holding him in an undisclosed location. He's safe... for the moment... but you should send us a case of Abita seasonal product and three dozen fresh and shucked oysters via Next Day Air if you ever want to see him again. You know how to get ahold of us.

We're NOT bluffing.  Do what you think is right.

      -- The PMLF, posting from Buck's account.

Today's Happy Hour Soundtrack

We're continuing on in that Al Green groove...

Today I saw somebody
Who looked just like you
She walked like you do
I thought it was you
As she turned the corner
I called out your name
I felt so ashamed
When it wasn't you
Wasn't you

This actually happened to me.  It happened in the Ramstein AB Exchange and the girl I thought I saw was this woman, my partner in a semi-crime.  Or a lapse in good judgment.  Whatevah.  The woman who was my case o' mistaken identity looked at me with a mixture of confusion, fear, and god-only-knows what else when I touched her sleeve and whispered "Claudine?"  At which point in time I realized I had f*cked up, Big-Time.  I backed away... beet-red of face and stammering apologies... feelin' like the total dork that I WAS.  God only knows (again) what would have happened if it HAD been Claudine.  There was a point in time when I was totally in love with that woman but that was before I met The Second Mrs. Pennington, who I was married to when the Ramstein BX event occurred.  Thangs just might have gotten completely out o' control, given the fact I was TDY to Ramstein at the time and at loose ends for the next week.

BTW... it wasn't unreasonable of me to think Claudine might have been in Ramstein, as it was only a couple o' years previous when she and her husband PCS'ed there.  Yeah, her husband... our 18-month affair was slightly before I got religion in the form of the usual, customary, and reasonable moral standards.

I hadn't thought about that incident in years, but it all came back to me in a flash.  Such is the power and glory (?) o' music, eh?

In other news... We cut our al fresco Happy Hour short, given the fact it's clouded over and rather cool outside.  But we're continuing as we've begun... inside.

A Few Flying Thangs That Aren't Aircraft (As We Know Them)

One wonders if NYC's traffic mishap rate went up during the filming.  Speakin' o' thangs that fly, this is pretty cool:

Even if they sound like mosquitoes from hell.

Both vids from the Guardian's weekly viral videos list, where you can also find a couple o' Sooper-Dooper Bowl ad previews.  Looks like a weak year for Madison Avenue if the previews are any indication.  YMMV, and prolly does.

And now it's time for a cigar and a couple o' beers out on the verandah.  The WX continues to be MOST un-winter-like, and you'll hear nary a complaint about that here.