I found a new-to-me blog!

 I saw a new-to-me blog today that really struck a chord.  The url is tinadrakakis.com and it goes by the name Eyerollingmom.  She mostly talks about her experiences raising four children.  She sounds like a very nice person with firm ideas about behavior in our society and bringing up your kids to that behavior.  I liked her a lot.  I was looking for a way to contact her but couldn't find one so I'm hoping she won't mind me tying into her idea.  I like this idea SO much!  It begins with the following meme (for lack of a better term).
        

Control yourself!  Really, Every day we read about someone who is pissed off about their work and goes in with a gun to kill people.  The other day some person with a pickup truck ran into a bunch of Roe-Wade protesters in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.  It just never stops.

Alter your thinking!  That is important if you are a kid and your parent is telling you to do something you don't want to do.  It is also important if you are an adult and are involved in a dispute regarding public policy or something.  Not that you must alter your thinking but you certainly must question it.  All the talk about President Trump and the January 6 attack on the capital:  I don't understand how he really could control the mob but I certainly think he encouraged them in many ways.  I'm not on the TOTALLY GUILTY side and not on the TRUMP FOREVER side but the point is to consider the alternatives.

Delete negativity!  Well, that's tough for some people but I do believe that your thinking leads to your attitude about the future.  If you expect negativity, I suspect you will get it.  Trust me, people who have a positive attitude get into negative situations too but if you start out expecting a negative result I suspect you are more likely to get it.  

Lately I've been having so many negative thoughts that I really appreciate this call to CNTL-ALT-DEL!  I just cannot go on seeing just the negatives in our world.  There are good sides here and there.
1.  I think Mr. Trump is a crooked, racist, right-wing fool but he didn't actually get us in WWIII.
2.  I don't believe Covid is being treated as well as it should be but you can't get everyone to listen.
3.  The inflation we are feeling these days is crazy but it should go back down with the Federal Reserve working at it.
4.  The war in the Ukraine is a horrible attack on a free country but it is waking NATO up to the possibility of a closer attack.

Bottom line is that I need to CNTL+ALT+DEL and I thank Eyerollingmom for the reminder.  So, maybe I should end with a different idea.  Anyone who has traveled far has felt the pain of crossing multiple time zones.

    
Thanks for stopping by.  Keep washing those hands!

Lots of excitement!

Well, no, actually very little excitement.  We did do something a little different though.  Last week we celebrated our 38th anniversary.  

Wow, was that ever a long time ago!  We got married by a co-worker who was legally able to marry people.  It was in our house after work with the kids and a couple friends as witnesses.

We put Gus in a kennel and went in to Las Vegas for a night.  We had a nice time; nothing very crazy but it was nice. In the late morning we parked the car in the Treasure Island parking lot and walked around a bit.   We haven't been in any of the Vegas casinos in years so that was kind of different.  It was early enough that most of the shops weren't open.  Eventually we wandered across a pedestrian bridge and found some restaurants.  We ended up sharing a plate of nachos with chicken tinga.  It was just something different.  My wife's foot is still painful from her surgery and she'd had enough walking so we headed off for the motel.

My wife had found a Best Western hotel WAY off the strip so we went there for a couple hours quiet time before going out to dinner.  It was a fairly nice place.  It certainly was not going for the casino crowd.  We had decided to go to Bonefish Grill for dinner.  It is a chain but it is just totally different from the places we ordinarily go.  We used to go to one back when we lived in Orlando.  As it turns out the food was semi-acceptable and our server was a idiot.  Oh well!  

The next day we came home and retrieved Gus.  He was pretty happy to see us but they said he had been just fine.  We liked hearing that because he needs to have a place he can stay when we want to go somewhere.  

I think that's all the news.  Thanks for stopping by.  Keep washing those hands!

Ok, I voted.

 It is primary election time and in this totally Republican county the winner today has little chance of losing the actual election.  I mean a couple years ago we voted in a dead pimp as a member of the county council!  

Actually my wife and I voted last Friday.  We went in and used the machines.  We actually have candidates who are all in favor of going back to paper ballots.  Jeez!  But I'll bet we will be going back to paper in the future.  The idiots will prevail.  I must say the Republican party in this county has plenty of money to mail ads to the voters; we get 4 or 5 cards every day urging us to vote for X or Y.  And, of course, there are a few that say 'Don't vote for Z!'  I guess it's just regular electioneering but it's exhausting just reading that drivel.  And the number of candidates who think putting a photo of Mr. Trump on their ad is THE key selling point is just astounding.

We've moved into summer even though it's still a week or so away.  We are in the low 100's (37-38C) so it's not officially HOT.  Of course if the a/c stopped working that would be a different story.  Along those lines, our country has some very interesting decisions to make.  Since we are not convinced that Global Warming is true, that will affect a lot of choices.  We are obviously in a severe drought in the West but there doesn't seem to be much we can do about that.  People are moving to Las Vegas in droves but there is a small problem with the amount of water available to keep those folks alive.  Solar power is extremely effective here in the Southwest but it is amazing how little it is used by normal people.  Of course there is the problem of violence in all it's forms:  gun attacks; driving into crowds of people; mob violence.  Hell, it's just depressing.

I did see a cartoon about carrying a firearm that I really liked.

That's all I've got today.  Have a good one and keep washing those hands.

A little trip!

 If you've read much of this blog at all you know my wife and I really love to travel.  But now we have a dog and were unsure about what kind of a traveler he might be.  We wanted to give him a trial so we planned a little trip to Bishop, CA.  We decided to drive west across Death Valley then pick up highway 395 and go up to Bishop.  Oddly Google Maps says it is 223 miles and coming back via a different route is also 223 miles!  Oh well.

So last Tuesday we headed out for a planned 3 day trip.  It turned out really well.  I've never been in that part of the country and it was really quite beautiful and a bit strange.  It's hard to tell from the maps but 395 runs quite close to the mountains on the west and a small river, the Owens River, on the east.  Because of the river it is also quite green with lots of farming.  I took this photo of the mountains when we stopped for moment.

I have to admit that I didn't get any photos of the river.  It was quite small and I just didn't manage to get a good shot of it.  My wife had made room reservations at a motel in Bishop and we found it with no problem.  It was a nice place to have the dog but I really couldn't recommend it otherwise!  They had fake wood floors that had seen much better days and the door had definitely been broken into on several occasions.  However we didn't really want a fancy place in case Gus decided to 'mark his territory'.  It turns out he just did his business on his leash outside just like you would want him to do.  We ended up having a cheese and salami dinner in our room.

Wednesday morning we headed up 395 a bit more to visit Mono Lake.  Mono Lake is a saline soda lake which ends up with really odd salt formations.  It was quite interesting.

Then we moved south again to stop in Mammoth Lakes for lunch.  The Mammoth Ski Area is nearby and we got a real tree fix.  We stopped at Liberty Sports Bar & Grill partially because they had outdoor seating and we could bring Gus.  It turned out to be a great stop.  The food was excellent and the beer was pretty good too!  They even came up with a bowl of water for Gus.  After lunch we drove back to Bishop and just looked around town a bit.  For dinner we found a Mexican restaurant with outdoor seating but unfortunately it wasn't as much of a hit.

Thursday was our day to drive home and we wanted to take highway 168 for a couple reasons.  It is not heavily used AND it leads to the home of the Bristlecone Pine up in the Inyo National Forest.  We decided we'd try the road, it was paved, and if it was ok we might make it up to visit some of the pines.  Well, it was narrow, totally curvy, constantly going up and had no guardrails but there wasn't much traffic so we made it!  We looked around a bit but they recommend that older folk not spend too much time at the altitude.  In fact my wife said her vision was kind of off at first but it cleared up after half an hour or so.  Anyway I took a few photos and we headed back down.

Of course I had to catch a photo of the GPS showing our altitude!

10,027 ft (3,056 m) - a record for the truck anyway!  There were some good views coming down the mountain but we also met 4 or 5 vehicles coming up.  Who knew we were such early risers.  Anyway we were back to 168 going east.  We got to 266 and kept going east.  We went through a town we've heard of, Lida, which turned out to be 4 or 5 houses just off the road.  Finally, about 11:00 we got to US 95.

US 95 is a major north-south highway around here and it was busy!  There were lots of semi trucks and to make it better they are working on the road.  We made it most of the way home before we got stopped for about 15 minutes waiting for one-way traffic coming from the other direction.  In the end we got home about 2:30 pm.  

Really it was quite a good trip.  Gus, the dog, turns out to ride in the back seat quite quietly.  He acted well at the motel and was just fine in the restaurants.  So, now when we want to go visit the kids, we don't have to worry about him.  What a deal!

Thanks for stopping by.  Keep washing those hands!