@CHAS said: [image: 2056423066432126976] This cat probably has an Amazon account and its own credit card.

They don't call it a swamp for nothing.

[image: 1779199711274-4e9b6222-c4d0-48cf-b9e9-275b5150fd5a.jpeg]

Andy - you should check out ‘The English and their History’ by Robert Tombs. I finished it recently. Starts about 500AD and ends in 2014.

lol. [image: 1779184188527-img_2496.jpeg]

Wtg Waxwings are winter visitors but I still have to see them. Your gnomes look right at home

@andyd I'll take a good decade over a good one and a bad one. My medical power of attorney is complicated AF. I'm going to make sure it's know that I want DNR and no life support. I've had an interesting life. I have no plans to spend years suffering if there's no real point. As far loss, lifelong friends, since I was 3, since I was in high school, since I was in college, have become estranged over the decades. There's one I'd like to find but haven't had any luck in years. I have no family except a brother who is a narcissist from hell and has decided for the second time that we will be estranged since there's nothing I have that he can get from me. I have a cousin who doesn't understand me. I'll put that diplomatically. I have an aunt in her '80's whom I think the world of, and she's invited me to Seattle, but in will be a year or more before I'll be moved, settled, healed, and in a new rhythm managing my new responsibilities. The grim reaper cut down almost my entire family without giving me much of a break. Such is life. Well, we all know what our greatest poet said-- 'Better to have loved and lost than never have loved at all.' Strangely, I want to be on my own. It's a new adventure.

Yes it is. We get it here occasionally.

Well, it looks like 90° F every day. We had some rain yesterday, we're supposed to have some today, and again tomorrow. This is good news because the State's draught is exceptionally bad.

The irony reeks.

I saw that @big_al! I'm not a fan of blue green and it's too bad because unheated blue green sapphires are a bargain. I trust this is a rare color for diamonds, but what a vault I could put together of jewels, gemstones, and watches if I had $17 million! Thanks for thinking of me.

Yes.

@AdagioM said: @jon-nyc Have you read The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón? Novel set in Barcelona, 1945. Murder, madness, doomed love… My friend said it was a must-read. I enjoyed it, but maybe not as much as she did. I have not, but thanks for the recommendation. I’ll look into it.

The USPS is an independent entity of the executive, not a part of the "Department of Justice" and its magic ability to interpret the Constitution (or ignore it completely). But these are the times we're living in. It will be great PR for the USPS when someone opens their package and accidently blows their brains out. I want to defend the USPS but it's getting increasingly more difficult to do when they won't defend themselves.

The Japanese are the Japanese. Do I get to spin the wheel and win a free washing machine?

Unfortunately, our road trip this year is through the upper Midwest - heading to Mt. Rushmore. Don’t know when we’ll be heading south again. Let us know if you’re coming to Cleveland!

@wtg said: @Big_Al said: I wonder if he was working at the Erdemir plant. I worked with an engineer who was involved with a sinter plant for that company. Here is a snippet from my neighbor Joe Faloon's obit. He died in 2006 at the age of 87, so he was much older than you. Joseph and his wife Virginia both graduated from Carnegie Tech (now Carnegie Mellon University) in 1939. Joseph was an industrial engineer who worked in the steel industry throughout his career, first for U.S. Steel, then Ford Motor Steel, then Kaiser Engineers, managing the creation and expansion of major steel plants, living in Turkey and consulting in Indonesia, Australia, Venezuela and Mexico. You're right, Joe was indeed much older than me. I got my BSEE from Carnegie Tech in 1967. My early career probably paralleled his in many regards. Dravo Engineers and Constructors, my first professional employer, was a competitor of Kaiser Engineers in many markets. Big Al