The
road out front of our house got ragged. This
week, and last, we have a new road going in.
This
will be more sophisticated than all the other roads in the park. It’s going to have cement gutters!
And
no potholes. They’re taking the old asphalt
all the way out, re-contouring the dirt below, and repaving.
Today,
we even got a road grader!
We
appear to be about halfway through the project.
Here is my take on what the health insurance industry does. They allocate the cost of a person's healthcare over the expected remaining life of the person. If you project what your health care costs will be for the rest of your life, add in administrative costs and a profit motive for the insurance company, and divide it by your years remaining, that's what your premium will be. The insurance companies don't provide any healthcare. They don't fix any broken bones. They don't cure anything. They just provide a financing arrangement.
Isn't that the kind of thing a government should be able to do; finance your healthcare? That wouldn't be government-run healthcare, that would just be the government performing an administrative task and taking a layer of private profit incentive out of the system!
Somebody help me!
I’m trapped insider this bird feeder and I can’t fit back out the hole I came in!
At the grocery, the store always provided paper bags. Then they started offering paper or plastic. Save a tree; use plastic. Then we started thinking about petrochemicals (plastic) and keeping them out of the environment, so we started recycling. Now we hear that a lot of plastic doesn’t get recycled and ends up in landfills, waterways, and the oceans as a major pollutant. Paper is a renewable resource. Cut down a bunch of trees, produce paper, then plant new trees to replace the ones you just cut down. Then we figured out global warming. It’s all about the carbon sequestered in oil and trees. If we use oil, the carbon is released and contributes to greenhouse gasses. If we cut down trees and use them, the carbon in them is also released back into the atmosphere. Not only that, but trees take in carbon while they’re alive, so every time we cut one down, we remove another carbon-processing plant from the environment. In an effort to combat global warming we need to stop cutting down trees and plant about a trillion new ones.
Paper or plastic, we’re screwed either way! Carry cloth bags.
Wait until evening. Find the right hole in the utility pole to watch. Wait until evening.
Wait
until it’s almost too dark to see. When
the black hole turns gray, snap a shot.
That
means there is a little owl face in that previously empty space.
Elf
owls are tiny little things; the smallest owl in North America; about the size
of a sparrow; weighing little more than an ounce. Here is what they look like in good light.
(Not
my photo.)
They
don’t go very far north in the U.S.
First day of Rehab! Judy is cleared for assisted range of motion. Now she can start moving her affected arm around, but only with assistance from her good arm or some other means of support.
She can use the pulleys, where she uses the strength in her right arm to raise and lower her left arm.
Or do the wall-crawl, using her hand to pull the arm up and down a wall.
Her range of motion is pretty good to start with. She’ll do these exercises and others at the physical therapist’s office three days a week. She’ll do them every day at home.
It’s exciting to get this far; and a great relief for Judy to be able to move her arm around again. No actual strengthening until three months from surgery though.
When we were talking about the car-cooler, did you notice the air deflector on the hood?
Given these were to divert bugs from the windshield, and the fact we don’t see them anymore, I’m guessing they weren’t all that effective. Nice thought though.
Yummies? Yes.
Charro beans? Not quite
Hell if I know? Okay.
Paella? Close.
Gumbo? Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding! Close enough.
Jambalaya? Nailed it!
That
means we get to see birds like hooded warblers.
Nashville
warblers.
Tennessee
warblers.
And
orchard orioles.
