Parrot Linux and Btrfs

[yogi]

The idea behind eating many small meals all day long is related to keeping insulin levels under control. That's why I count carbs instead of calories. At one time the doc thought I had diabetes and I was sent to consult with a nutritionist; Medicare covers that by the way. She was very helpful for the time being but I was very much aware of what the trend diet at that time happened to be, the Zone Diet. It's basically a diet for diabetics given that keeping insulin levels in the zone is the whole point. That's where I learned 300g of carbs a day is what the average adult needs; your mileage may vary depending on your general health. Three main meals and three snacks timed at equal intervals keeps things under control. Your routine sounded fine to me until you got to the Hostess cupcakes and Twinkies part. LOL Might just as well inject lard directly into your bloodstream. I never trust a food with a 13 year shelf life.

I'm not as well tuned today as I was when I was actually counting carbs. But, I did learn a lot about diet. There is a recommended balance of fat, carbohydrates, and protein: 45–65% of your daily calories from carbs, 20–35% from fats and 10–35% from protein. I don't stick to that as closely as I did but I'm not far off either; I'm pretty close to 50% carbs, 35% protein, and 15% fat at the main meals.

I eat full sandwiches because we don't have birds to feed, and I like the crust. Plus, when I have baloney I fry it and add some yellow mustard along with yellow onion slices to the sammich. It's awesome. Thin sliced Black Forest ham with Swiss Lace cheese on rye bread only needs a dill pickle to maximize the experience. And, I have seen those 3' high bags of popcorn at Dierburgs. I never sampled it because that would be about a six month or more supply at the rate I eat it. Jay's O-Ke-Doke is my go to brand. They're located in Chicago.

[Kellemora]

Well, I do only have perhaps one twinkie or cup cake per week, and only on the days when we don't eat until 8:30 pm.

After my first heart attack, I had to monitor my sodium intake very close. Got into the habit of tracking it in a notebook. This is one of the things that helped me from getting an enlarged heart, and perhaps other problems.
Then when I tried to quit smoking and the doc gave me Chantix, that is when I became full blown diabetic in under 30 days. Unfortunately, once the damage is done, it can't be undone. Even so, then I too had to count carbs until I knew what I could and couldn't have. I kept that in a notebook for a couple of years until I knew what I ate each day and kept it where the doc wanted it. The occasional treat was figured in as well, and in most cases only bumps me back up from where I'm too low for that day already. Sometimes overly bumps, but that's OK too when it happens rarely.
What kills me is days when I've had nothing out of my normal routine and one day I'm 210, and the next 83, when I ate the exact same things each day. I no longer hit really high like I used to, but I do use 2 metformin at dinner now.
Without the metformin I was hitting up in the 250 to 350 range, with sometimes a jump up to 450 or higher.

I used to eat the crust on bread, still do sometimes, but it depends on what I'm eating.
I'm not supposed to have much bread to start with, thus the reason for only using a single slice of bread for my sandwich.
At lunch I alternate from bologna, to ham n cheese loaf, to deli ham, and stick with that for the entire package, then rotate again. Sometimes I will get something unusual, like braunschweiger, which is not normally sold down here, they have liver loaf which I hate. In fact I hate most types of braunschweiger, only the deli style can I stand, and then only with like 4 Pringles and Ketchup on the sandwich.
You can laugh, I have what I call a gourmet dinner, which consists of rye bread, ham, cheese, and a can of diced canned tomatoes, with mayo. I normally only do this if I can get the little dried out rye sold as Party Rye.

[yogi]

I have what I call a gourmet dinner, which consists of rye bread, ham, cheese, and a can of diced canned tomatoes, with mayo. I normally only do this if I can get the little dried out rye sold as Party Rye.

I think that's called Bruschetta in Italian restaurants.

I know what you mean when the blood sugar goes all over the place even though you maintain a constant diet. That's what diabetes is all about. The insulin production goes haywire. In my case I was able to keep it under control with diet, but knew what to do if it was out of bounds. Either do a lot of walking to burn off the carbs or drink a glass of OJ for a quick injection boost. That Zone Diet I mentioned was pretty good at keeping the insulin where it belongs, but they say your body can adjust to that and still go off track after a while. That's why they recommend a "free" day when you pig out on anything and everything. This forces the body to compensate and keeps the insulin production on it's toes. I guess that's the equivalent of draining a chargeable battery down to zero once in a while. It needs that to keep functioning normally.

Bread, unfortunately, is a disaster with the carb counts. Bagels are particularly lethal because of the high gluton flour. The blood sugar levels stay high for an extended period of time in that case. I have to be careful when I bake rye bread too for the same reasons. My method of control is the food scale. 2oz of bread in the morning is the limit. When I have pancakes I make an exception.

[Kellemora]

My wife is really surprised when she sees me mix up a pile of things like that on my plate.
I'm one of those who eat each item on my plate, one thing at a time, and forbid anything to touch anything else.
There are exceptions though. Like it's OK to hide the peas in the mashed potatoes, and I love beef stew, and a roast loaded with onions and taters.
So when she sees me scoop out 1/4 can of diced tomatoes, lay out four pieces of mayo covered party rye on top of that, add a couple of slices of ham, a slice of cheese, more tomatoes, four more pieces of party rye and dump the rest of the can of tomatoes over that, she says it looks horrible. Maybe, but it tastes great, hi hi.

Carbs is why I only use 2/3 of a single slice of bread to make a sandwich.
Gotta leave room for something I'm not supposed to have later on in the day.

Debi is on all kinds of Insulin's, where I use my diet and a couple of metformin tablets to keep mine at bay pretty well.

[yogi]

Eating isn't just a necessity. It's an event to be savored and shared with good company. Of course that can't happen at every meal, but there are some items of personal taste that can add to or detract from the pleasure of eating. Appearance and aroma have a lot to contribute to the eating of a meal. My wife laughs at me when I wipe a drop of gravy off the serving platter because it's not where it's suppose to be. It might be funny but it also makes the meat loaf look appetizing even if the ingredients aren't exactly gourmet quality. I can empathize with your separation of foods on your dish. One of my offspring is exactly that way. Doesn't matter that it all ends up as on glob in the belly, it has to look right on the plate. It is indeed a good idea to separate different tasting food; keep the acid and the salt apart for example. The taste buds will appreciate it.


Speaking of food ... I just received the second of two Christmas gifts from #1 daughter. It's a do it yourself Shiitake Mushroom tree. Yep, it's a real limb from a real tree. There are spores injected into the limb and a metal plate attached spelling out what kind of mushrooms and the date of the infusion. The date is important because the spores will bloom in roughly 7 months. It might take as long as 12 months. In order to get there one must soak the limb in a bucket of non-chlorinated water for an entire day. Then the damp log must be shocked with cold air for another 24 hours to simulate winter, or something. They say put it in the fridge, but I'll put mine in the garage because it hardly ever freezes in there. The next step is to put it outside so that it's out of direct sunlight and the temperatures stay between 60 and 80 degrees -- nothing like that around here, but I can also grow them in the basement if I take precautions. I need to keep the log hydrated and in a humid environment such as would happen if I put a plastic tent above it and a tray of water. Every week or so it needs to be sprayed to maintain the moisture in the log. Should the log dry out, then it's time to soak it over night once again. After the appointed amount of time lapses, some fuzzy white stuff should appear. Hopefully it will be at those injection points where they will evolve into Shiitake 'shrooms. Anything else must be zapped and sanitized with alcohol because you never know what kind of poison fungus will grow on a random piece of log in your basement. Repeat the cycle a few more times. Your mileage will vary depending on the atmosphere in your basement.

I have to hand it to the girls. They really put a lot of effort into finding something unique for me. I never would have come up with these things. LOL

[Kellemora]

A co-worker used to take us to a dinner after work on rare occasions. It took him nearly 2 hours to eat all that he ordered, and the rest of us just sat around talking most of the time, just to kill time. That guy could eat, and eat, and eat, hi hi.
I've never eaten a whole lot at any one sitting, so tried to be scarce when he was inviting us to dinner. In this case, I wanted to be left out, hi hi.

NeatO on the Christmas gifts.
My cousin raised mushrooms in his basement. He had a huge A-Frame device filled with trays, covered with black plexiglass.
It had some type of misting system and vents with fans to maintain it at just the right humidity and temp for whatever type of mushroom he was growing. Apparently they must have been a more expensive type since he sold them to a produce deli.

My late wife and my son pitched in to buy me an ALL WOOD rolling ball clock once. Years later a company made a plastic model the looked and worked similar to the all wood unit I had. It was a kit I had to assemble.
The plastic ones had an electric motor to lift the steel balls up to the top. Geared to drop one every minute.
While the wooden one used a series of pulleys and a heavy weight, worked like a coo-coo clock except no chains hanging down, it was all self-contained and sat on a mantle or shelf. In fact it had no chains or metal at all in it, as I said, it was all wood, even the balls were wood. It did not come with the weight, but the instructions told us what type of weight to get for it, and the exact weight we should buy. I bought a flat Scale Weight with a slot in it, because it was much cheaper than the vertical cylinder with the ball head on it. The only thing bad about this clock was you had to left the weight and tray every 12 hours at the exact same time each day, or the clock would get too far off the correct time. It ran about 1 minute slow for the first 6 hours, then about 1 minute fast for the next 6 hours, scaled out of course. And that was only after I got the tray adjusted along its shaft to the right point, which took a while also.

[yogi]

A long time ago in a galaxy far far away I had my first encounter with growing mushrooms. I sent away for a kit. It basically was a pizza box filled with straw and dried manure of some sort and a sprinkling of mushroom spores over the top. All I had to do was sprinkle it with water once in a while and keep the lid on the box. I got a whole bunch of button type mushrooms out of that experiment. This log is different and way more complicated than the pizza box mushrooms. I'm not sure I can maintain the environment it will take to germinate the 'shrooms, but it gives me something to watch for the next 7-12 months.

A wooden ball clock sounds exquisitely pleasing to my senses. I'm certain it would be entertaining for a few weeks, but after that I can see myself getting tired of keeping it calibrated. My Timex is serving me well. It's analog with a plain black and white face. If the bands could be made to last as long as the watch I would be perfectly pleased.

[Kellemora]

One of my neighbors is always asking if they can come into my yard to collect mushrooms from along the back fence, inside the fence. I said let me know first so I can close the doggie door, but now the dogs know them and don't even bark when they come over. I wouldn't know a mushroom from a toadstool, so I don't collect them myself. Must be something about that one area along my fence where they seem to grow all the time, and a lot of them.
I told her husband a couple of years ago, if he wanted to shift my fence over up in that area it would be OK with me. He said heck no, if the fence is moved, they might not grow there anymore. Makes sense I guess.

I let the plastic clock run for about 5 years before I packed it away. Ironically, it kept perfect time.
I didn't have to keep adjusting the clock once I figured out it ran fast for the first 6 hours and slow for the last 6 hours. It started off at the right time when I reset the weight and paddle the weight sat on at 8 am, then by 8 pm it was a minute ahead, and if I left the setting alone and just reset the weight at 8 pm, by 8 am it was correct again.
It was a novelty item for sure! It was much noisier than the plastic one, when one would think it would be just the opposite. Metal on plastic rails vs wood balls on wood rails.
Here is a 1:45 minute video of the plastic model, this particular one runs on batteries instead of electric.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MmlViYNUC0

If you leave the video going this is the next one of one an engineer built for himself, amazing.
I'm adding the link just in case it isn't there!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGigysskxig

Wow, I found one almost identical to mine, except this has an electric motor instead of the geared wood paddle with weight. And mine used wooden balls.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwobZ5U1nD8

I did find one with wooden balls, but it doesn't look as nice as mine did, and this one doesn't show the weight paddle. Perhaps this one runs on electric, I don't know, it is only 18 seconds long video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZWz6457asM

[yogi]

Every one of those clocks is fascinating. The one built by the engineer is particularly interesting but probably a no-brainer project for that kind of guy. I can see how the clock would be even more unique if there were no electric motor powering it. That would be like a variation of a Pachinko game. LOL

A friend of mine many years back went on field trips hunting for Morel Mushrooms. I had all kinds of fungus and mushrooms growing in my back forest, but no Morels. Apparently they are highly prized and only grow under certain conditions. When you mentioned moving the fence in your back yard, that is the kind of thing my friend claimed determines whether or not 'shrooms even grow. I soaked my gift log per instructions and set it out in the garage over night. Supposedly this will trick it into thinking it's been through a winter cycle so that it can begin the process of blooming. I'm not entirely sure how to go about it. They claim the humidity is important and a tray of water under the log would help especially if a plastic tent were made over the log. Then, too, the log cannot be sitting in water. It's going to take some creative thinking for me to come up with a fixture for my mushroom log. Good thing that I have seven months to think about what to do with Shiitake mushrooms once I have them.

[Kellemora]

I don't know how big the log is. But perhaps a large aluminum commercial baking tray, with the grid from an oven laying over it would keep the log out of the water, and form an edge to make an A-frame or arched tent over it like a Quonset hut. PVC pipe would work for that with ease, or just flat plastic slats. And to maintain the water level in the tray, a soda bottle inverted into the tray and lifted up just enough to maintain the desired water level.
This is basically how I kept water in all the trays I used for starting cuttings and it worked great.
If you have to use city water, make sure you leave it out in a bucket for a couple of days for all the chlorine to outgas or the chlorine fumes will kill your spores.

I broke my back as a kid, and to help get my small motor skills back, my dad bought me all kinds of clock kits to assemble. Most of them he had to order from Germany and Switzerland. Each kit he bought me had smaller and smaller parts, until the last one he bought was about the size of a large wristwatch.

However, it wasn't until I married Ruth that I had the urge to build some of the fancy clock kits that were available locally. Most of the were either a swinging ball around a peg, or a rolling ball clock. I still have a couple of the cheap plastic ones with gears around here, one sits on my shelf just for looks. Not designed to keep proper time, hi hi.

I also had a water clock kit, which is just a series of buckets that fill up with water, then dump.
It was made mostly of bamboo pieces, with little copper cups. It only ran for about a year, and was a pain to keep full. It never kept right time, but was neat to watch the water drips and the buckets dump. It looked sorta like a mobile in a way. I just used tap water in it until it got looking bad with calcium streaks everywhere. Then I used a very light oil in it thinking it wouldn't evaporate so fast. Nope, not only does it evaporate, it keeps spreading out, even to the outsides of everything. Once it turned into a royal mess I tossed the whole thing, hi hi.

[yogi]

The log is about a foot in length and 4" in diameter. I can't tell what kind of tree it's from. If I knew more about Shiitake mushrooms I might know where they grow best, but it seems as if it's hard wood as opposed to birch or something like that. They recommend leaving it outside but that can't be done in Missouri winters. Thus the water is indeed a problem. I let the water sit before I soaked the log, but now I have to keep it hydrated and that's the problem. I must thank you for the idea about keeping the tray filled. It sounds dubious to invert the bottle and hope the water doesn't overflow the pan. But, if you have done it before, who am I to question success? I guess I could use distilled water, but letting official O'Fallon tap water sit around a few days before using it sounds acceptable. I'm not sure if this link will work because it's the first time I am trying to share photos this way, but here is a picture of my mushroom infested log from my Google Drive: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GGTdeK ... sp=sharing

[Kellemora]

Interesting. I wonder what the two blue dots are, or is that where they placed the spores?

Are you supposed to mist it, or just keep the humidity high after it has been soaked?

Seems small enough you could use two coat hangers, one at each end of a shallow pan, then a sturdy wire between them at the top to form an A-Frame. Or instead of slipping them under the pan, you could use two more wires at each end of the bottom of the coat hangers. Then cover the whole thing with food service film. It would be lightweight and easy to lift off and on as needed.

I don't suppose you ever hand a chicken waterer, but perhaps a dog water dish maybe.
If you fill a bottle with water, set the end down in the tray, then lift up about 1/4 inch, it will keep the water level at 1/4 inch until the bottle is empty.
This is the method I used to feed ink to the 12 printers, but this was more complicated since I only had 4 ink bottles, had to have a vacuum breaker on each line so if one called for ink, it didn't flood the ones that didn't need ink, hi hi.

You can also use a mason jar with the big opening. Use a piece of cardboard over the top when you invert it, set it under the water and slide the cardboard off the top. You can use three little plastic cubes to lift it up on in the pan. Domino's would work if they did not bleed black. Maybe you have something plastic about that size?

Water won't evaporate very fast if the item is covered with a tent. So a bottle of water should last a good long time.

You can play with a bottle in your kitchen using a baking pan. Put about 1/2 inch of water in the baking pan first. Then put a couple of things in the baking pan to set the upside down bottle on top of that is about 1/2 inch tall. For water to come out of the bottle, it has to be at least two items to rest the edge of the bottle top on. Then fill the bottle and quickly invert it and set it bottom side up on the blocks. Or you can just do it by hand by lifting the bottle up a tad and let more water come out. You will see the water will stop coming out of the bottle when the water makes its own seal with the top of the bottle. Physics 101!

[yogi]

Physics 101 tells me that water seeks it's own level. LOL

I get the idea of what you are describing and I think it's possible. The hardest part would be to find a support for the bottle so that I can leave it unattended. I had thought about using coat hangers for the log, but wire coat hangers are pretty rare in this house. That's all we ever used when I was a kid, but now it's all plastic. Some of the wire hangers that are still around have a cardboard tube instead of a wire at the hanging part. Great for pants, but not so good for water logs. At the moment I have the log suspended over a tub with about an inch of water in it. I just draped a plastic bag over it all for the time being. I like the idea of an A-frame and I think I will try to construct such a thing in the near future. The hardware store must sell some kind of wire that would be suitable. Maybe some old aluminum electrical wire? LOL

Those dots on the log you see in the photo are the mushroom spore that was injecting into the log. They are covered with wax and I was instructed not to remove it. It will fall off on it's own. There are several other spots on that log but not visible in the picture. The instructions are not crystal clear but the big concern seems to be to keep the log itself moist. They say to use an evaporation system and they also say to mist it once in a while to keep the moisture in the log. But, in case it dries out in spite of my best efforts, it should get the over night dunk in a bucket of water treatment again.

Apparently you were able to see the picture and that is good news. I've often wanted to show you something but it has been too much trouble setting up a link on the server or on somebody else's server. I can upload photos directly to the drive from my phone and then grab a link to them that way. I can't hotlink to the photos due to the way Google stores them as files instead of images.

[Kellemora]

As far as the bottle goes, you could hang a bottle upside down using a fishing line or chain.
I had several cup hooks in the floor joists of my basement area with large 2-liter bottles suspended.
I tried hot melt glue but it didn't hold so I reverted back to good old epoxy, hi hi.
To adjust the height to exactly what I wanted, I just had to wind a little of the line around the cup hook.
This held the end of the bottle about 3/8 to 1/2 inch from the bottom of the bakery pans.
When filled they were more like 3/8 of an inch, and when close to empty they were more like a 1/2 inch. Which was OK.
Hanging from a fishing line, it was easy to tilt them up to fill, then put my finger over the opening as I tilted it back down.

I bought a Tinker-Toy set at a flea market for a buck when I needed to make a mini-greenhouse upstairs.
Made a triangle for each end of the tray, covered it with food service film, then added a couple of cross pieces over the top and covered it with food service film. You can shrink food service film with a hair dryer to make it smooth with no wrinkles.

I used to load pictures on my website when I was adding a lot of pictures to places where you couldn't upload pictures. And where they let you use an URL that would display it as an image. But almost everywhere I use now, lets you upload the pictures directly.

[yogi]

Tinker Toys That's brilliant. I've not seen any of those in many years but I suppose if I looked hard enough I could buy a small supply. At Motorola I had a bunch of lab stands that were adjustable and easy to construct into any shape I wanted. Those things were made of metal and very expensive. The wooden (or I imagine by now they are plastic) Tinker Toys would be perfect for what I want to do.

One of the disappointments in this house is the floor joists. They are manufactured from particle board and 2x2 stock to look like an I-beam. My understanding is that they are just as strong as real lumber, but they sure don't look like it. I suppose a few eye hooks would not hurt those joists, but I dunno. If I don't come up with a water bottle scheme that only means I would have to go down there and pour water into the tray manually once in a while. We'll see how ambitious I am.

This website has a feature wherein we could add "attachments" to the posts. I've done that on other websites for text but not images. I'd simply have to make a directory on the server in which to store whatever was uploaded and then enable a few things in the control panel. I never did it in the past because I didn't want to use up a lot of storage on the server, albeit they claim I have unlimited space. For just you and I it might work.

[Kellemora]

Instead of eye hooks, perhaps you can make a simple claw, or heck, just use a large size fishing hook hanging down from the beam, that way no holes.
I remember when those types of joists came out.
I had to replace two in a house that puffed up, they were over the ladies unvented dryer. She had a tube with a nylon stocking she would replace when it got full of lint, hi hi. But the humidity messed up the two joists in that area.
Other than that one incident, they seem to have proven themselves over the test of time.

I wonder if I can describe in words a hanging claw?
You have two J shaped units that form the claw. They are hinged at the bottom. About half way up the J you drill a hole in each one. Here you can place a flat piece also hinged, or tie a stranded wire between the two legs of the J.
When you add weight to the stranded wire it pulls the J pieces closed so they act like a clamp. The heavier the weight on the cross wire, the tighter they grip.
We used hundreds of these all throughout the greenhouses to hang hanging plants from the I-beam framework.

You don't have to do that, it's not really all that much trouble for me to upload an image to my websites and link to them. I've not used the Full Editor feature on here yet to see how to format the URL. I'm not big on pictures anyhow, hi hi.

[yogi]

You did a great job describing the claw hanger. The physics of it is simple and beautiful. I like the automated watering concept, such as it is, but it would not be very difficult for me to keep a sprinkling can of water on the counter and use that to fill the tray as necessary. I favor the KISS principle over eloquent solutions, but I do like quirky things too. That's why I'm going to make an honest effort to get my hands on some Tinker Toys. LOL

I've talked about my neighbors' generosity before, but they keep surprising me. I have to tell SOMEBODY about it, and you are my captive audience. Here it is Christmas Day. The temps dropped down to the single digits over night - and I just told you in another thread how much I love the weather here. It's probably all psychological, but the 8F air this morning just before sunrise didn't feel that bad at all when I took the doggie out for her constitutional walk. About 10 AM and for the rest of the day, my wife of many years walks the dog. I suppose all the neighbors have seen her do it and she has in fact talked to a few who also have dogs.

While we were enjoying our Christmas lox and bagels, a knock on the front door was heard. A young man around the age of 12 was there asking if I wanted him to walk the dog for us in this terribly cold weather. Up in Chicago this kid would have been viewed with suspicion as a dog-napper and I'd slam the door shut in his face. But that's not my first reaction here. I was taken back slightly and thanked him for the offer but also told him walking the dog was about the only exercise we get. So, thank you but not today. He wished me a good day and a Merry Christmas as he left smiling. Back in the house I had time to think about it and thought that I should have asked him how much he would charge. He never mentioned a payment for his help, but then, I really don't know if that's what he had in mind. I'd say no. He was just showing some Christmas spirit here on Christmas Day to that crazy old couple who live down the street from him. And, by the way, this is not one of the other neighbors who have extended an offer of help in the past. This kid is brand new.

I should have asked him to go buy me some lottery tickets, but that probably would be illegal.

[Kellemora]

Maybe you could just buy a clear plastic storage box and use it upside down as a cover. Or right side up with a couple of bricks in it to keep the log out of the pool of water under it? But you will have to add a couple of vents for air exchange. They do need some air to thrive and exchange gasses that could build up.

When I first moved down here, several of Debi's older relatives were still alive, and the younger ones would walk back and forth between each others houses. So Debi would often go out and walk down our street to the next street and down a block to visit her aunt. But after those older ones died, nobody is out walking anymore around here.
There was a couple who walked around the entire block every day around 4 pm. I said hi to them a couple of times and they just waved and kept going. About a year later it was just him making the 4 pm walk. He stopped just long enough to say his wife was in the hospital and not expected to recover. I only saw him walking about 4 more times after that, then nothing.

This is going to sound odd. But when I was living with Barbara, she asked that my son and I would go shovel two of her neighbors driveways. I did the driveway while he did their sidewalks. We went and did it, no charge. My son asked her why only those two drives, because we had stopped and did another driveway that was between them on the way back.
She said when her husband was in the hospital, and for two years after he died, both of those neighbors came to help with the yard a few times, but always came and kept our driveway clear when it snowed.
Both of those people ended up in nursing homes within a year or two after that.
I normally never cleaned my own driveway because the vehicles I had could handle ice and snow with ease.

When I was a kid, grandpa on my dad's side would have me and my cousin walk down the road to Grupp's Tavern and get four buckets of warm Bach Beer and bring it back to him and some co-workers in the field. Not often, but still, back then, the Tavern knew it was for grandpa and the workers and always filled the beer buckets. Today they would end up in jail for doing that, hi hi.

[yogi]

Apparently Target sells Tinker Toys, or so it says when I do a Google search. I can also get real wooden Lincoln Logs if I want to hand over $50 for a box of them. I don't know what they cost when I was a kid, but I am willing to bet my paycheck on therm being less than $5 back then. (no, I don't get a pay check anymore, so it's a safe bet) I've not been down to look at the 'shrooms for a couple days now. It's about time I check to see if they are doing OK. I'll do it after I finish here and eat some left over bagels for lunch.

I scan the news for current events daily. Much of what I see is negative and not very promising for the future. Admittedly it's all reported through the eyes of some third party observer, but when they blow up downtown Nashville it's hard to put a positive spin on it. I often wonder what kind of decrepit mind is behind all the violence and if there are any sane people left in this world. Then, without warning, random acts of kindness occur. I've been the target of several kind gestures since I've lived here and as you know I wonder out loud about those too. A few of the most outgoing offers came from kids. There was the one with a snow shovel. Then the one who helped my wife when she fell down taking a walk. Yesterday a dog walking offer was made by a kid. To me it is amazing to see kids reach out like that. Even if their parents motivated them, these kids were all genuinely offering to be helpful. Oddly enough not one of them has offered to cut my grass yet. LOL I just might take them up on that one.

[Kellemora]

Some of the toys I had as a kid, that can still be found, are always a lot more expensive than they should be for what they are.
Some you can't find at all because they have been outlawed, or too many of the ingredients in them have been, such as the Gilbert Chemistry Sets.
I did find an Erector Set, their second to the top of the line kit, used, and it was priced over 1,000 bucks.

Did you know that AT&T got the contract to do a forensic examination of some Dominion Voting Machines that were suspect of switching votes? Supposedly that was the building they were taken to. What was somebody so afraid of about those machines that they would blow up an entire building to get rid of evidence?