In last week’s ThrowBack Thursday, I mentioned having problems with my Old Cheap-n-Crappy(TM) camera, resulting in a sorry lack of photos from Mesa Verde National Park. Shortly after I posted that, I realized that I had also taken some photos with my phone’s camera. Sometimes … Continue reading Southern Colorado, part three (Sept 2020)
The North Carolina Lottery (and I suspect other state lotteries, as well) has a game called Lucky For Life, where the top prize is $1,000 dollars a day “for life”. I looked up the details on their web site and found that this top prize is “guaranteed for a minimum of 20 years.” What a spectacular bonus prize! Not only do you get an income of $365,000 a year, you’re also guaranteed to live at least another 20 years! And they aren’t even advertising that part of the deal! You’d think they would be aggressively marketing this game to old people. I bet there are lots of old folks out there who would throw down huge amounts of cash for a chance to extend their lives by 20 years.
On the other hand, young people should probably steer clear of this game. After all, once that guaranteed 20-year period is over, the North Carolina Lottery will have a vested financial interest in seeing you dead! So if you get a winning Lucky For Life ticket for your 20th birthday, you can probably expect to encounter a state-funded hit man on your 40th birthday. Truly, you are gambling with your life.
I think Bear has been inviting friends over while I’m not home. I was patrolling the yard with my Pooper Scooper today, when I came across some dog crap that was too small to be from Bear’s Big Butt. I asked him about it. He … Continue reading Balance Issues
After the Paint Mines, I spent a few days checking out various museums in the Colorado Springs area, and a little time gambling in the town of Cripple Creek. Each of the museums I visited (Miramont Castle, Western Museum of Mining and Industry, and Ghost … Continue reading Southern Colorado, part two (Sept 2020)
I managed to take three trips over the first five months of this year, so it seemed like I was finally getting onto the kind of schedule I had hoped for before I stopped working. But now it’s looking like the next five months will only include one trip. And that one may be dependent on forest fires.
Part of the reason for this lack of travel is that I still haven’t decided whether to maintain my current residence or to move away. House prices in Charlotte have been shooting upwards, so I might be able to make a serious profit if I sell my current home and move to a cheaper area – thus my initial inclination to move. I’d really like to move back to Colorado. Alternatively, I could return to my original homeland on the Great Plains. But I considered moving to these places a couple years ago, and decided against it, for reasons that still apply. Houses in Colorado aren’t cheap enough to allow me to keep the profit from selling this house. Lincoln and Kearney, Nebraska are sounding good; even the Des Moines (Iowa) area might not be so bad. But I would lose all the advantages of living in/near a big city, and there aren’t mountains (or beaches) nearby.
And now I’m hungry, so I’m done writing.
Regular readers (as well as those who suffer from occasional irregularity) have probably noticed that I travel to Colorado with some frequency. (If you wish to know the exact frequency, ask Kenneth.) This is mostly due to the fact that I lived there for 22 … Continue reading Southern Colorado, part one (Sept 2020)
Bear is getting VERY good about staying quiet outdoors at night. Being a Great Pyrenees, he prefers cooler temperatures, and I learned early on that he preferred to sleep outside. But once he reached Barking Age, I found that he would keep everyone in the … Continue reading Bark in the Dark
Last week I warned that today’s post may not be much more than a mass of disjointed architectural photos. I was right about one thing: today’s post is entirely architectural photos. But I’ve actually organized the photos, and prepared myself to write a narrative for … Continue reading Chicago, part two (October 2019)
Sinnareo Plane was seething again. For what seemed like the millionth time, she asked herself, What kind of monster could do such a thing? What sort of heartless beasts would name their daughter Sinnareo?
It’s not that Sinnareo Plane didn’t know who her parents were, or where to find them. They were right there in the family cemetery plot, the same place they’d been since Sinnareo was just three months old. Yep. Dead. She could ask them all the questions she wanted; they couldn’t answer. (And if they did, it would have scared the shit out of her.) So she never got to know Agatha and Octagonal Plane, nor to ask them why they had saddled her with this ridiculous name.
Mind you, she thought her first name was ridiculous; she didn’t even know her middle name. She wasn’t even sure she had one. Her uncle Parallelogram thought she had one, but he couldn’t remember it. Y’see, Parallelogram had been on a year-long bender when Sinnareo was born. In the midst of all that bending, he was far too focused on his back pain to focus on learning a newborn’s middle name. But he was sympathetic. After all, uncle Parallelogram had issues with his own parents’ ideas of child-naming. I mean, Jesus Christ, how could he not?
…to be continued? Ehhhh, probably not.
There comes a time in a man’s life when he must ask himself, “Do ya wanna go to Illinois?” For most people, especially The Happy Schnapps Combo, the answer to that question is “No, I don’t wanna do dat.” But thanks to Open House Chicago, … Continue reading Chicago, part one (October 2019)
Voyages with Parkinson's 