Wow, 2 posts a month!

Yeah, I'm at a new low in posting I think but I've got an excuse....  Talk about a dull life!  I used to have a dull enough life but recently I've been sitting around taking pain pills that make me sleepy.  Now, if that isn't a recipe for dull I don't know what would be.  

However, recently I've gotten off the pills and I've even tried driving.  The driving isn't going too well though because I'm having trouble turning my head and sometimes you've just got to do that in traffic.  Happily my wife is an excellent driver so our local restaurants haven't missed out on too much of our business.  I have a nap in the morning then we go out to lunch then we come home and I have a nap in the afternoon.  Now that I'm off the pills I'm hoping to go back to a mere 8 hours of sleep every 24.  

Recently I've been reading about people who don't want to be vaccinated for COVID or even wear a mask to prevent the spread and some of the reasons they give.  The big one is always that it is a violation of their rights.  Bah, humbug!  We have laws that you must wear a seatbelt in your car; there's a violation of your right to get thrown clear of the accident.  We have laws that you must have a driver's license; a clear violation of your right to endanger others.  We have laws regarding ownership of property; another clear violation of your right to take what you can.  As Arnold Schwarzenegger pointed out 'with freedom comes rights and responsibilities' including caring about your fellow citizens.  He also pointed out that 'freedom and duty have always gone hand in hand'.  Yea, Arnie!

As some of you may remember, we had solar panels placed on our roof a couple months ago.  It's early still but so far things seem to be working well.  Our electric bill has gone down to the $20 minimum payment that our electric coop requires.  That means we are generating more power than we are using.  We'll see how things are going in six months when it is cold and there are fewer hours of sunlight.  There were a few hiccups along the line with the electronic tracking but they seem to have been worked out.

Anyway, that's all the news from dullsville.  Keep safe and keep washing those hands! 

We had a good time!

 After the fun with our uninvited porch guest we were actually looking forward to some invited guests:  our son and his wife visiting from San Diego.  We often go down there about this time of year to celebrate their birthdays; they are about 2 weeks apart.  Unfortunately, right now you can only go quarantine yourself for 2 weeks if you are on a non-business trip to California.  That just wasn't going to work!  We might stay with them but they live in a two-story house and there was no way our dog could manage the stairs.  So, even though they are busy, they managed to get a few days off to spend with the old folks in Pahrump.

We had a good time.  We ate out quite a bit and they managed to go check out our local casinos.  She likes to gamble so it worked out well.  We could take them to various local sights but actually this area (and the drive to get here) are quite well known to them.  So it was lots of talk and eating.  What's wrong with that?  Our son is an IT guy so he was able to help my wife with her computer which has been slowing down.  That was a good deal!

They left on Sunday then on Tuesday our daughter came to visit.  Well, actually she was in Las Vegas but we managed to get over and have lunch with her.  We just saw her when we visited her in Texas so it hasn't been a long time but it was fun.  She had lived in Las Vegas for something over 12 years so Texas is quite a change.  Of course, Texas in the pandemic is nothing like it will be in normal times so we are hoping she will get to start enjoying her new town and state.  It is funny.  When she lived in Las Vegas we would just go into town to buy a few things and we never thought to stop and see her.  Now that she has moved my wife cannot go into the city without remarking on how strange it feels now that she isn't around any more.   

We got our second COVID vaccination yesterday (the Moderna variety).  Our local Walgreen's was doing us old folks so my wife got us in line.  It was quite easy and painless (in spite of the really long needle they used).  We both have a sore arm today but it really isn't bad so we are just perking along.  We won't be abandoning our masks any time soon but we want everything on our side that we can get!  We've noticed that some restaurant staff have a pretty poor track record with using masks correctly but we have continued to patronize the restaurants.  In our town there isn't much work except hospitality so those folks need customers if they aren't going to be on the poverty rolls.

I came across something amazing the other day.  A nurse in England had been caring for her husband who had Parkinson's Disease.  She noticed he had an odd odor on his body but then she noticed the same odor on another person with the disease.  She got in touch with some university people and talked with them about the possibility of a 'sniff test' for the disease.  And now it looks like that may happen!  Isn't that amazing!  A woman with a really good sense of smell may have discovered something that will help millions of people with a horrible disease.  Now that is good news indeed!  

My mother had dementia for nine years before she died in 2005.  It got to the point where she was unable to move around on her own and was wheelchair bound.  At that point a new doctor was assigned to her and he put her on medication for Parkinson's.  I never learned his reasoning however suddenly she was able to walk again!  It didn't last long, only 5 or 6 months, but it certainly made an improvement in the quality of her life.  It makes me wonder if there might be some similar hint for people with dementia.  Wouldn't that be wonderful.  

Gotta go.  It's my day to cook and I'm doing Shepard's Pie.  It's easy but we both like it so why not?  Have a good one and keep washing those hands and wearing those masks!

Wow! It's been a while!

I'm not sure why it's been so long since I updated this; I guess the general dullness is setting in.  Anyway I don't really have much to report.  It is quiet around here.  Our county has a population of only about 40,000 but we have managed to become a 'yellow' county in terms of the coronavirus.  That meant that the bars all got shut down again.  It is too bad but realistically if they weren't closed they would probably be filled with people from Vegas which is in a 'red' county. 

We still have a few people who are convinced that it is their right to not wear a mask even though the govenor has made it a rule.  It seems simple to me:  wear one and maybe not get sick or skip it and have a much better chance of catching this crap.  It is inconvenient and uncomfortable but I really do not want to catch something nasty like coronavirus.  In fact I heard that mask wearing might very well reduce the number of flu cases this winter since it too is a virus.  Who knows!

My wife and I usually get up and get on our walk before the sun rises; or about 05:50.  It is a pain to get up so early but it is a lot nicer walking when it is 65-70F(18-20C) than 105F (40C).  We also get to see the sun gradually light up the mountains in the west.  They absolutely glow golden starting at the very top and slowly moving down the mountain side.  We also get to see the local balloons if it is calm enough.  Usually they get slowly blown north but once in a while they land near us. 

This guy was landing but he must have been coming down too fast because you can see the flame from his burner slowing his descent. 

We have been getting quite a bit of smoke from the Apple fire over near Los Angeles.  You can kind of see it just above the mountains in the photo of the balloon.  They say it is 30% contained so there are still 20,000 acres burning.  We could have this stuff with us for quite a while yet.  It is only about 150 miles (240km) from here as the crow flies. 

We here in the US have just under 3 months until we get to vote.  I'm hoping that Mr. Biden can manage not to screw this up.  This is Trumpland around here.  We pass at least 8 or 10 Trump banners when we take our morning walk.  Of course there are more whenever we go other places.  I just cannot understand how people can support that idiot.  Of course I keep reading all kinds of things about how if Mr. Biden wins the economy will collapse and we'll all be living in a socialist society.  Bah humbug!  Yes, there might be some movement towards more social programs but I can't see any of them being very revolutionary.  Yes, rich people might have to pay more tax.  They can afford it!  Companies might have to pay more tax; hell, some have been getting away with paying NO tax.  That isn't right either.  Illegal immigration bothers a lot of people and I can understand that.  I think we should make the path to citizenship easier; then compelling people to do it makes more sense. 

Well, I'm going to quit whining.  Thanks for stopping by & keep washing those hands!

Happy 5th of July!

Well, apparently I missed posting on the 4th but, well, it is such an odd year maybe that just fits in properly.  Happy 244th Birthday USA!  I was reading a couple blogs this a.m. and one that I often enjoy is Sightings Over Sixty and yesterday's post was no exception.  The post, entitled "More Stuff I Don't Understand" was about the strange, strange times we are living through.  It's true:  horribly high unemployment but the stock market is fully recovered from the Covid-19 scare; there are more people with the virus but no one seems to care; the President seems totally unaware of the rest of the world; people still think he is doing a good job.  WTF??? 

Another blogger quoted this line:  We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.  So what the hell happened to that idea?  Equal??  Rights??  Liberty??  Why does it seem that black people not included in that sentence?  They seem much more likely to be arrested than white people.  I was checking out a fact sheet from the NAACP web site.  It has some really amazing statistics!  For example, African Americans are incarcerated at more than 5 times the rate of whites.  As of 2015 African American and Hispanic people comprise about 32% of the population but comprise 56% of the prison population. 

I don't pretend to know what is going on there; certainly discrimination by the police is part of the problem but I'm sure that poverty is a much larger factor.  26% of African American families live in poverty compared to 11% of white families.  And that isn't counting single parent families where the rate is much higher.  It is a shame that in this wonderful land that such discrimination exists.  Education, or the lack of it, is certainly a critical factor.  The same article suggests that a family headed by a college graduate makes nearly two times as much as a family headed by someone whose education stopped at high school.

I hope I haven't been too dismal here but these days are not 'our finest hour'.  The government isn't totally to blame but there sure are things that could be done differently.  The way everyday people interact is nothing to do with government but it doesn't make me proud.  Here in Nevada we've been ordered to wear masks while in public areas so, of course, we had a demonstration against wearing masks.  A large number of the people demonstrating were wearing firearms because that is legal here.  Inspections suggest that only about half of businesses are complying.  What the heck, the mask may keep you from getting ill but one's right to not wear one is oh so important.  What a place!  Take care & keep washing those hands.

Life in the 'I don't know' lane

Things are still poking along here in Nevada but darned if I know which direction they are going!  The number of people getting ill from covid-19 is increasing but fairly slowly. Our governor has decided we should be wearing masks when we are in public areas which I suppose is a good thing. At any rate the proportion of people wearing masks has definitely gone up. On the other hand some restaurants are having trouble keeping those tables 6 feet apart. Not being able to serve people because the place can't be over 50% full has to hurt! Especially when you've been almost out of business for a couple months. Still, my wife and I both thought this thing was going to be over long ago.

We are going out to lunch much as we did last year; that is 4 or 5 times a week. We are still going to the same 6 or 8 places; most of them have their entire menu back available. During the height of the closures reduced menus were the order of the day. There are occasional times when one needs to wait for a table but mostly the number of customers has declined somewhat.

Our daughter has moved to Austin, TX and is renovating a house. It is taking MUCH longer than anyone could have expected; even getting cabinets delivered was delayed. We had planned to visit her and help her get set up; now they are talking about closing the Texas border. Who knows if we'll get to visit anytime in the near future much less visit to help her arrange things in her new home. That's not going to make any of us happy.

I found a recipe for 'Keto Meatloaf'. It calls for the use of ground dried pork rinds (chicharrones) rather than bread crumbs but two other things popped out. Ordinarily you might use ground pork in meatloaf; this recipe uses Mexican Chorizo (the moist, loose kind not the smoked sausage Spanish kind) and then is wrapped in bacon and covered in tomato sauce! It was really quite good if you like spicy things. (The chorizo has spice and you are to add a chipotle pepper as well.) Here is what it looked like before cooking.

The recipe specifies that sort of pan; not a loaf pan.  Of course there was quite a lot of fat that collected in the bottom but everything got done; even the bacon. 

Of course we've had a few nice sunsets.  This one was especially nice.

Well, that's all the news from this space in Nevada.  Thanks for stopping by; keep washing those hands!

Boy, isn't this exciting!

We are in a little contest with ourselves here trying to figure out when we will have our first 100F  (37.7777C according to my converter) day.  Yeah, that's the limit of the excitement around here!  So far today we have 99F(37.22C) but since it is 15:30 I don't expect much increase.  Who knows. 

My wife and I have finally restarted our morning walk routine.  We stopped after I got all screwed up flying over to Norway last fall and haven't walked (for exercise) since.  I'm cautiously hopeful that we can turn this into a habit again.  Right now we are only doing a bit over a mile (1.6km) but we have a nice 2.5 mile (4km) loop here in the neighborhood that we were doing last year.  Hopefully we can work our way up to that again.

There are approximately 43,000 people in Nye county with most of them down here in the Pahrump area.  We are supposed to have had 44 covid-19 cases in the county with 18 of them recovered.  There is something to be said to be living out in the boonies! 

The big news is that Nevada is getting ready to re-open some public areas - carefully!  Casino's will have limits on the number of people that can be in the building and how close they may be; likewise restaruants, etc.  I haven't read anything about personal services like hair dressers or barbers. 

Construction workers have just kept going through the whole thing though they were supposed to be observing 'social distancing' sorts of criteria.  We have a wall around the back portion of our property that has had some cracking problems and we have managed to take this time to get it fixed.

You can see where new blocks are in place.  They took the wall down farther than that but apparently re-used some of the blocks.  We don't care, just so they did a good job and we believe that they did.  The contractor was an idiot however.  First they gave us a bid for taking 80 feet of the wall down including the footing and replacing it all.  That was clearly wrong and we complained.  Then they gave us a bid for taking down 120 feet of the wall but not the footing.  Dumb and dumber seem to work there!  Finally they came up with a reasonable sum and we just paid it.  Still, it might be a really long time before we have anything to do with them!

In addition to the wall we had problems with both gates into the back yard.  The first one was done beautifully; the second required TWO additional visits from the guy who did it.  Honestly!  No photos; I was too disgusted.  How these people think they are going to make a living is beyond me.  The first gate proved he could do it so why did he screw up the second?

Well, gotta go do some cooking.  We aren't actually getting tired of home cooking but sure are missing our favorite restaurants!  It's nice to have someone bring you different meals; give you leftovers and clean up the plates.  Maybe in a week or two.  Keep on washing those hands and thanks for stopping by!

More hanging around....

I'm pretty good at staying home but I have to admit that this Coronavirus self-isolation is a bit of a strain.  We are going out every two or three days mostly to visit the grocery store.  That's always a hoot.  We have two major grocery chains represented in town plus Walmart.  What we are finding is that one store will be out of something, like eggs, and the other will have every kind of egg you could desire.  The one universal trait is that meat seems in short supply. 

No, they aren't cleaning the shelves.  No, they don't have a refrigeration problem.  They just don't have product.  I've no idea WHY but there it is. 

Sorry about the blur but that is the papergoods aisle.  They have signs about you can only buy x number but since there aren't any at all, it's kind of a moot point. 

And only a couple weeks ago things were kinda normal.

These folks used to do balloon flights in Las Vegas but the local authorities changed the rules making it more difficult for them to do business.  I mean McCarran International is a very busy airport and Nellis Air Force Base is up in the north part of town so the areas where you could do balloon flying were getting smaller and smaller.  Here we don't have any of that.  There is a small private airport but we are talking 2 private planes a day rather than the over 4,000,000 people who went through McCarran in January of this year. 

Speaking of Las Vegas, this story has some great photos of the city as it is today!

We should get back to normal one of these days.  So just keep on washing your hands and keeping a good distance from others.  Oh, and don't listen to President Trump; listen to Dr. Fauci!

Just hanging around....

It's been pretty quiet around here if you don't pay attention to any news source.  The news is, as always, pretty noisy.  This whole coronavirus mess is interesting.  By the way, I do believe there is such a virus and I do believe it will be growing more dangerous here in the USA.  Listening to our esteemed President about this makes no more sense that listening to him about anything else.

Anyway, our little town has lots of RV'ers who seems to have stopped here and they are making shopping just nasty.  Ok, they are spending their money here but they are also clogging up roads, parking lots and even restaurants!  Go away, people!

Sorry, I had to get that off my chest.  Actually, they aren't doing anything too awful.  They are just stocking up for their next month or two of self-imposed isolation.  A couple days ago there was no hand sanitizer left on the store shelves.  Now, I don't use that crap so I didn't care but that's not where it stopped.  Yesterday we went into Walmart for a couple things (dog food and some blackout curtains if you must know) and decided to look at the meat counter.  There was NO beef!  There were only a couple packages of pork chops left!  The frozen food area was half empty as well.  Really?  I should have taken a picture.  People are just going crazy over this.  Now, granted, the media is carrying coronavirus headlines every day but jeez! 

Ok, I'm over 70 but fairly healthy so EVEN I should have a decent chance of surviving this thing.  So who the hell has stripped Walmart of all their meat?  It is just stupid.  I guess I'm not used to seeing panic in the streets.  We were in a restaurant the other day and the two guys at the next table were talking about buying ammunition - lots of ammunition.  Like it is going to be the end-of-the-world and sick people are going to be attacking them and they needed to shoot them to save their hand sanitizer supply.  What idiots!  And, yes, we are still going out to eat.

Of course having the stock market go nuts is only to be expected.  Those traders are just one step away from nuts most days.  Do we have money in the market?  Yes.  Has our investment gone down?  Yes.  Will we be eating dog food next week?  No.  The dog will but, naw, unless the supermarket doesn't come up with more hamburger we'll stay away from his food. 

In the midst of all this our daughter is still in the process of moving to Austin.  Her house sale did go through and the one she purchased is being spiffed up.  I'd be going crazy if I were her having people doing things to my new house and not being there.  But, if it works for her, great.  Of course we'll have to visit her one of these days but Austin is a lovely town and there are lots of other places to visit between here and there.  It should work out just fine. 

Gotta go.  Thanks for stopping by.