Not bad!

All that traveling last month and I come home to sunsets like this:

 maybe I should just stay here and take my camera out more often!

I read a very interesting post over at another boomer's site that talked about the idea that things are getting worse for the poor in this country.  He quoted someone else who suggested that things had gone downhill during the Obama years and then continued to go down during the Trump years.  That person suggested that it was the fault of "Wall Street".  Hmmm, I'm not sure I go along with that but I certainly agree with the boomer that there is plenty of fault to go around.  I'm not a socialist but I do feel that people ought to be able to support a family without having three jobs.  

I just read where Target is paying a minimum wage of $15 an hour.  That means that a new person is making $600 a week if they are working full time.  In Las Vegas, our closest city, a three bedroom apartment can cost $1,600 a month.  So a guy with a wife and small child can be working for over two weeks to pay for the apartment.  That leaves only $800 for everything else.  He's got to be hoping that his wife will be able to get a job at Target as well but then we are talking about child care expenses.  Not good.  Minimum wage in Nevada is $9.75 which is higher than the Federal  minimum of $7.25 BUT it hasn't been changed since 2008.  I'm thinking prices have risen more than a bit in 12 years.  

LIke I said, I don't know the answers but I sure see the problem.  Maybe the Biden years will be golden.  I sure hope so.  Take care & keep washing those hands.

Happy Veteran's Day!

Established after World War I Veteran's Day (also called Armistice Day or Remembrance Day) it's one of my personal favorite holidays.  Thank you to all vets and certainly to all current active duty service members.  I'm proud of my service and proud of all you do.  I've spoken of the service records of my family and my wife's family.  We think some form of Universal Service should be enacted.  Every person would owe the country two years of service.  You could choose between military service or various civilian services:  hospital work or a free clinic or running a food bank or teaching - anything that helps you grow and helps our society.

Bass Pro Shop in Las Vegas had a nice sale on the Masterbuilt 40" Smoker - I just couldn't say 'no'.  I've been reading the My Old RV blog for a long time and Andy loves his smoker.  It's all his fault that I had to buy this thing.  It is pretty amazing.  Ok, it's electric which some might consider wrong but I just don't have the personality to keep adding wood or charcoal to a fire for 8-10 hours.  Sorry, I've tried it but just don't get it done!  It also has a remote so I can smoke food and fool around on my computer at the same time.  Cool!  We had a chuck roast hanging around so I tried smoking it:  pretty good but I've got to admit the shrinkage astounded me.  I'm climbing a learning curve on this one.  Hopefully I'll even learn to take photos of some of my attempts!  Anyway, here's the new baby.

We've been experiencing some pretty nice weather; much nicer than much of the country.  So we go sit on the patio in the evening and enjoy the sunset.  Or, last week, the moonrise.  I got this photo of the moon just rising over Mt. Charleston while the sun set turning the mountain an amazing color. 

When we look the other way we find a hummingbird just hanging around 'his' feeder.  This guy is pretty territorial and chases most other birds away.

Hope you have a good one.  Thanks for stopping by.

The holiday is still with us!

Well, at least the leftovers!  And Number One Daughter though I imagine she will be leaving in a couple hours.  Per our new tradition, we forgot to put the cranberry sauce on the table AGAIN this year.  Grrrr.  I suppose I should say that I forgot it since I'm the only one who actually likes the stuff but I was not the one who made it.  We do the real stuff with real cranberries as opposed to those cans of whatever.

I decided to try making dressing from scratch.  There are plenty of recipes but I couldn't really find any that called to me so I cobbled together something using about eight 'starting points'.  It turned out fairly well.  I used marbled rye bread and sourdough to start with and those seemed to be good choices.  I added sage sausage, onion & celery and basically called it a day.  I used a cup of chicken broth to moisten things up.  One of the recipes suggested cooking it covered for a while then uncovered so I tried that.  Somehow we ended up with bread that was partially crispy and partially soggy.  Weird.  Guess maybe that covered thing was a mistake.  Some of the 'recipes' didn't even have a cooking time; the ones that did varied between thirty minutes and an hour and a half.  Do you wonder why I ignored them and did my own?

I found a new blog to read The Caretaker Chronicles written by a Canadian who is living in Vienna.  I've always heard it is a lovely city and he is nice enough to post the ocassional photo.  He's also got an irreverant, humorous way of writing.  I'm liking it.

I went all crazy the other day posting photos so I'm pretty low on anything new to share.  I apologize in advance for the quality.  We did have a slightly demented 'centerpiece' on our table.  Here's the photo:

The pine cone turkey is something Number One Daughter made when she was much younger.  The squash I just bought.  My wife is always telling me that an odd number of things is more interesting than even so I got three.  I wanted different shapes and colors but nothing too large so here I got these three.  Then my wife set them out in this manner.  Is it me or does it look like that turkey is getting the goose? 

So much for the excitement of Thanksgiving.  Now on to Christmas crazyness!  Have a good one.

Gardening

I was doing a little gardening yesterday.  Well, it was actually weeding.  Well, one weed anyway.  It was a pretty little thing.

 Unfortunately look at the spikes on that stem!  They were sharp too.

Boy I wish I could get things we want to grow to have protection like that!  You will note that my tool of choice was a pair of pliers, gloves would have been totally useless.

My wife and daughter are planning a short trip to Ensenada, Mexico next month.  They will only be gone a few days so I get to hold down the fort alone.  It's always weird when one of us is gone.  I should be able to stay out of trouble; whether the wife and daughter will is more of a question!  Two years ago they took a cruise on the Mexican Riviera and really liked Ensenada.  This time they will get to see more of the city.  I'm already really happy that I'm not going.  The thought of three days with our manic daughter is enough to drive me to drink.

The folks over at Because We Can are visiting Europe again.  It is making me want to go back; I miss it.  They took a guided tour of Normandy which actually sounded like quite a lot of fun.  We visited on our own  back in 1993.  Good lord, almost 20 years ago! 

I guess Mont Saint-Michel doesn't change that much!  I remember we were walking past a bar and heard the unmistakable scream of a Formula One race car.  We went in and asked the bartender about the race.  Alain Prost wasn't winning so he was bummed out.  The beer was good though.

Have a good one.

Just Do It!

Wandering around other people's blogs is always interesting.  One of my favorites is Because We Can.  I started reading them because they were traveling around Europe; not exactly backpacking but pretty close.  Come to find out that they are full-time rv travelers when they are here in the U.S.  Then they traveled to Alaska which is one of my aspirations so I've just kept reading about their travels. The other day they linked to another site where the guy was exhorting people to 'just do it'.

It's a good philosophy.  Too often I get an idea for a great project then somehow it either never gets started or else it gets abandoned part way through.  For example, I want to redesign the way I store things in the back of our truck when we travel.  I've got half a dozen pencil sketches around but haven't completed the design; haven't bought any wood; haven't done anything.  Grrrr!  This is NOT the way to be a happy camper.  We've been talking about traveling in June; now my wife is suggesting maybe we should go earlier in May.  That is when I was going to be building this contraption; so I'm going to have to get with it soon!

So I'm going to just do it.  Tomorrow!  LOL  Have a good one.