Giant Swallowtail

 

 

 

 

 

 

Just in case you were wondering

 

 

Freddy is fine and happy in his puddle.  He leaves every evening and comes home every morning, except when he doesn’t.  But most days we get to say good morning to him.

 

Good morning, Freddy!

 

I’m still wondering

 

What was it that she and Billie Joe was throwing off the Tallahatchie Bridge?

A quiet day in the yard

 

 

 

Except for the Great Kiskadees.

 

They’re never quiet!

 

 

Investment returns

 

 

Let’s say we have $1,000 invested in the stock market.  The price goes down 50%.  Bummer.  A day later, the price goes back up 50%.  Cool.  We just made our money back.  Right?

 

Nope.  It’s all about the base.  In dollar amounts, we lost $500 by losing 50% of $1,000 on the way down.  But on the way back up, we only got back $250 by gaining 50% of the $500 base the price had fallen to.

 

Over the long term, the stock market has always trended up, in spite of its short-term fluctuations.  When the market is on the way back up after a loss though, we need to see much better percentage gains than the losses we saw on the way down for us to get back even to where we were before.

 

We are going to get back even to where we were before, right?

 

 

Fun fact

 

 

It’s not uncommon for people to not like the way they look in photographs.  They’re fine with how everyone else looks, but they’re just not happy with their own appearance, even when everyone else tells them they look good.

 

Turns out there is a solid reason for this.  How we see other people is not the same as how we see ourselves.  People are not symmetrical.  One side of a face looks different from the other.  We see everybody else as they actually are.  We only see ourselves when we’re looking in a mirror.  We think we look like the mirror image of ourselves and when we see the true picture, it doesn’t resonate.  Amazing but true!

 

Listening devices

 

 

We’ve tried turning the television volume up to “way too loud”, and bought sound bars enhanced for dialog.  It can still be hard to follow all the speech on television though, ranging from “doesn’t matter” like football games, to “impossible” for British programs.  I’m okay with normal programs, but it’s a little harder for Judy.  We have a couple wireless Bose headsets that help a lot, but still not quite enough for Judy when characters are speaking in British.

 

Judy’s latest hearing aids however, have a cool feature.  They can be set to Bluetooth the television sound right into the hearing aids.  That works!  Clear and understandable.  The only drawback is that if the sound is beaming right into Judy’s head, and still audible from the television, there is a slight lag which makes the sound unintelligible for her again.  If she is watching television by herself, no problem.  If I’m in the room too, I don’t hear anything.  Except, we still have the Bose headsets.  Turning down the sound in the room for the television doesn’t affect the sound in the headset, so Judy tunes the sound to her hearing aids (controlling them with an app on her smartphone), we turn off the sound in the room from the television, and I put on the headset.  Now we get to watch our new favorite British crime program, New Tricks, and understand every word. 

 

(If you were going to ask, our British discovery is a lot like the old series of “The Closer”, or “Major Crimes” solving crimes.  Nice ensemble.  A collection of characters we always enjoy dropping in on, and bonus, it goes on for 12 seasons!)