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Post by DanBintheUnderworld on Jul 4, 2017 12:49:30 GMT -5
Saturday My wife and I are taking a week long trip to Israel. I've never been to the Holy Land and I can't wait to see where Jesus walked. If you run across anyone surnamed Meyers in the Tel Aviv area, there's a decent chance they're related to me via one of my mother's half-brothers. Of course, the odds against that are tremendously high ...
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Post by DanBintheUnderworld on Jun 26, 2017 15:02:56 GMT -5
Well, went to see the surgeon today as a follow up and finally got the wound vac off. Still have about a month with a gauze dressing until the incision wound finally fully scars over, but we're on the last lap of recovery now. I should be back to work sometime mid-to-late July if all works out. Thanks again for all the thoughts and prayers as I traveled the long road of recovery. -M Good deal. As it happens, tomorrow marks two years to the day since my own hernia operation. For me the gauze dressing routine went on for weeks -- considerably longer than I expected -- but of course it was an extremely minor annoyance in the scheme of things. You'll be fine in no time, I have no doubt.
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Post by DanBintheUnderworld on May 31, 2017 11:44:06 GMT -5
Reading a 1992 true-crime paperback right now, Forever & Five Days, by Lowell Cauffiel that incorporates the not-unusual device of using italics on the first reference to someone for whom he uses a fictitious name. All well & good, but I wonder if there's any particular reason why he calls a certain individual (not involved with the criminal acts being portrayed) "Jim Shooter" ...
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Post by DanBintheUnderworld on May 19, 2017 12:19:24 GMT -5
So far so good on the security system. Still no break-in since I had it installed some 2 years ago. Knock wood, of course. Which apparently I neglected to do yesterday after the car repair, because damn if the starter didn't go out after I ate lunch. I'd started it 3 times since the garage visit, with no warning signs whatsoever, but I guess when it rains it's sure to pour. Just lucky, really, that it didn't happen here on base (which it would have if I'd ridden to lunch, as per usual, with a co-worker who happened to be off yesterday as well as today), because getting a tow truck or whatever past the security gate would've been its own special ordeal. Not that I'm a mechanic by any means, but those Chilton Auto Manuals have worked well for me and my brothers in the past. Yeah, I've saved myself a fair amount of money using those manuals over the years. Might've been able to do so again by buying & installing a starter myself, since it's located on top of the engine in '96 Maximas (I'm more used to having to replace starters on the bottom of an engine, as was the case with the '73 Pinto where I performed that task several times back in the '80s), but under the circumstances I simply didn't have the luxury of time to try that out.
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Post by DanBintheUnderworld on May 18, 2017 12:20:48 GMT -5
Ouch. Nothing quite like paying almost 5 percent more for an automotive repair bill than you paid for the car in the first place (granted, it was a heckuva buy ... but still). I can handle some basic repairs myself, but CV axles, brake shoes, rotors & calipers are beyond my (non-)expertise.
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Post by DanBintheUnderworld on May 17, 2017 14:15:43 GMT -5
I fear that with all these "Wins" Trump is accumulating, there might come a time, fast approaching, to divert attention from his "winning" streak and directly confront North Korea. Not a pleasant scenario "Be it thy course to busy giddy minds With foreign quarrels; that action, hence borne out, May waste the memory of the former days...." Advice from Henry IV to Henry V, heeded by more than a few presidents and their advisors. Wilson, Reagan, and Dubya Bush jump immediately to mind. (Veracruz, 1914; Grenada, 1983; Iraq, 2003) About whom I've been reading a fair amount of late, in the form of the recently released books March 1917: On the Brink of War & Revolution, which I finished a few days back, & The World Remade: America in World War I. I'm becoming less & less of a fan (not that his love of racial segregation & hatred of labor & dissent made me admire him a whole lot to begin with) as I read more & more about his actions & policies, but probably that's to be expected. And then there's this passage from March 1917: The members of Wilson's cabinet were equally in the dark as to what the president intended to say April 2 (reference to his address to Congress) . At a cabinet meeting March 30, during which he had started doing calisthenics [emphasis mine], he told them only that he didn't plan to put any emotion into his message -- just the facts.W. T. F.? Was he doing, like, jumping jacks or pushups?
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Post by DanBintheUnderworld on May 15, 2017 14:16:34 GMT -5
I'm guessing you're in the southwest if you're US based. Too hot for me. And RR's Canada is too cold (believe me I considered it last November). And here in Wisconsin we're having overnight freeze warnings. I just want to find somewhere that it's 75 degrees most of the year round and I can afford to live. Is that too much to ask? Yep, I am in Arizona land of the scorching summer desert heat. With air-conditioning you can survive out here but the summer June/July/August and into the 1st part of September can be brutal. The 100+ temperature would be endurable but once the humidity and dew-point goes up then you learn quickly to get up and do your stuff before 10am and then sleep away the rest of the day. Very draining physically and mentally for many. I jokingly refer to work as home during the summer because it is easier to go in early a couple of hours before i start and internet surf while having breakfast and stay an hour or two after work later and enjoy the comfort and coolness the hospital heavy duty A/C provides. I lived in the Phoenix area from 8/81-5/84 while going to grad school (with the summer of '83 spent in Tucson for an internship with the U of A Press), & about the first thing I did as a resident, before classes started, was rack up a case of heatstroke while lying beside the pool on campus. Oops. (And it wasn't as if I'd just blown in from the Arctic. Extreme SW Arkansas in August is pretty damned hot as well.)
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Post by DanBintheUnderworld on May 9, 2017 15:16:05 GMT -5
How the hell did the U.S. mostly ignore The Who up to this point? They already had 5 Top 10 songs in England but those songs hardly made a dent on the charts in the states. "Happy Jack" would be their most successful at this point of time, climbing to # 24. Otherwise, I'm embarrassed over "My Generation". "I Can't Explain", "The Kids Are Alright"-not. Oddly enough, I never heard "My Generation" until about 1983. I remember the period because it came over the radio while I was on my back giving plasma while I was a grad student.
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Post by DanBintheUnderworld on May 9, 2017 9:04:20 GMT -5
Here in Montgomery it's 10 percent combined. Only exemption I can think of is for prescription drugs, though there may be others. Holy fleecing, that's huge. What kind of services are they providing? is it because income or property taxes are low? Here's the sales tax rates for the most populous cities in the S. No one is in double digits linkThe property tax here is insanely low. As a homeowner (well, the mortgage company is the actual owner, at least for the next 14-odd years) I pay less in property tax in a year -- in the low $100s -- than friends elsewhere pay in a month on homes of comparable value. And of course the school systems, libraries, etc. reflect that. One does, after all, get what one pays for.
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Post by DanBintheUnderworld on May 8, 2017 16:53:40 GMT -5
That is indeed a big problem. Up here we had a system I thought fair, several decades ago (and alas abolished since) : sales tax were applicable on certain essentials only after a certain price. That meant if you bought cheap shoes for your kids because you couldn't afford more expensive ones, you also wouldn't pay tax. If you could afford a pair that cost a hundred, you had to pay tax on top of that. Sales tax is left up to the individual states and/or cities. New York City (combined state and city) has one of the highest sales taxes at 8.85% but there is an exclusion for clothing and footwear under $110, no sales tax on food or perscription drugs Here in Montgomery it's 10 percent combined. Only exemption I can think of is for prescription drugs, though there may be others.
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Post by DanBintheUnderworld on May 6, 2017 9:02:48 GMT -5
With all the backlash the GOP is facing over the AHCA, I wonder if we could finally be seeing the end of the two party system. With so many of their constituents turning against them at town halls, the GOP will most likely lose control of the Congress in 2018 after the midterm elections. With the GOP in shambles, what will rise from the ashes? I'm interested in finding out. I remember listening to the returns on the radio for the post-Watergate elections in 1976 & hearing rampant speculation that the GOP had been delivered a death-blow. Similar premature obituaries were written for the Democrats a couple of times over the ensuing decades. And just a few months ago, when it was obvious (if only ...) Trump was going to be crushed, the writing was supposed to be on the wall for, again, the Republicans. *sigh*
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Post by DanBintheUnderworld on May 4, 2017 16:11:29 GMT -5
Fourth Galaxy Reader HL Gold The title is a little misleading, in that most of the stories are near-future types that take place on Earth.. more like Twilight Zone fodder that anything Galactic. The title refers to Galaxy, the SF pulp digest edited by H. L. Gold. The Galaxy Reader was an annual paperback collection reprinting that year's best of.. material Also sister mag (but generally considered, I'm sure, superior) to If.
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Post by DanBintheUnderworld on May 3, 2017 16:30:52 GMT -5
Speaking of (a) corn & (b) Southern cuisine, fried corn on the cob is quite good.
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Post by DanBintheUnderworld on May 3, 2017 14:31:37 GMT -5
Pudding makes me think of dessert, which reminds that the aforementioned restaurant's owner was talking up their new bread pudding to a couple of guys at the table next to ours. In lieu of bread per se, they use Krispy Kreme doughnuts.
Intriguing, to say the least, though probably enough to cause tooth decay at 50 paces.
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Post by DanBintheUnderworld on May 3, 2017 14:29:05 GMT -5
Corn pudding is something you hardly ever see around here, though I suppose it's really about the same as corn casserole, which isn't that unusual.
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