Sticky, maybe it's a fetish, but I cannot stand having sticky hands or fingers, and just looking at the brown bottle of Steen's 100% Pure Cane Syrup is making my fingers sticky. Fortunately, there's still hot coffee in my magic coffee mug, and I can dip my fingertips in there and dry them with a tissue.  Fifty years ago, at one of the places I worked during Navy years, we had an employee, a wary, skittish woman, who got up from her desk every few minutes to go to the washroom and wash her hands, there's a name for that phobia, but I don't have it, I just have to deal with sticky syrup now and then. Today, for example. Linda baked cornbread yesterday before the Kelly family came over for noon dinner, so my Tuesday breakfast is two squares of cornbread, each covered with grated cheese and heated in the microwave. On top of my first square, Tabasco. On top of my second square, Steen's cane syrup. Hot & black with.  Okay, I'll wander a bit (so, what else is ...

Early this morning, Louisville, Kentucky, snow in Joe's driveway. BTDT, don't need any snow but pictures the rest of my life! Memories, personal and family memories are stirring this Monday because of my most excellent breakfast of leftovers: wild rice topped with chopped up bits of lamb shank, and olive oil poured over. Mindful that this is my blog not yours, it doesn't bother me that I tell stories over and over again, and just so this morning.  This memory starts with the end of summer 1952, fall semester beginning my senior year at Bay High, and the annual fall resumption of our Sunday evening youth meetings at St Andrew's Episcopal Church. I was president that year, after having served a year as vice president with Tom Sale as president, Tom was off to W&L University in Virginia.  Linda's boyfriend, my best friend Philip, had a new girlfriend, and my girlfriend lived hundreds of miles away. So Linda and I sort of drifted together, for the dancing at church ...

Okay, this is the South, where college football is king and it's Roll Tide, Go Noles, War Eagle, Go Gators, and Them Dawgs. Coach DeBoer is not "coming" to Alabama, he's already in place as Alabama Head Football Coach, and bringing Washington staff with him, we'll see how he does. DeBoer's got an impossible act to follow in Saban https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Saban whose house, if the Sabans stay in Tuscaloosa, will become a shrine to drive by just as Bobby Bowden's house was in Tallahassee, and in Time he'll find himself coaching in Saban Stadium. What do I remember about Alabama football? that when I was at Florida, the early 1950s, at Linda's house one evening, her father, an Alabama alum married to a Tuscaloosa native, Linda's mother, asked me what I thought about the Crimson Tide's chances that season, I replied, "Alabama couldn't BUY a football game," and he laughed. That was just a few years before Bear Bryant arri...

Saturday, it becomes a diary entry, doesn't it, not a blogpost and surely not a journal entry, which should (?) be something serious, deeply personal and private, even spiritual. A diary entry, then. Kristen's birthday is today, we celebrated with her yesterday after school. When eating out we usually go across the street to Alice's or Captain's Table, but she got to choose the venue for birthday dinner, noontime after school or later, and she had been wanting to try Saltwater Grill on Middle Beach Road at PCB. They open at 4:00 PM and, as we no longer drive "across the bridge", she picked us up at HV and drove us there and back, getting back home after dark. The dinner was fine, at a new restaurant I like to try various things, and, whereas normally I would always choose prime rib rare, which was on the menu, I had a small bowl of their lobster bisque, some of the appetizers, one of which, the seafood medley, was sufficient for a meal unto itself, a fried sof...

Bad weather leaves us traumatized, how bad and how long depends on how severe it was: it's fading, but we're still traumatized from Category 5 Hurricane Michael over five years ago; this week's tornadic weather and local damage has us traumatized about what's coming later today, and our tv weather team stirred that up more,  but this morning's Weather Radar makes it look insignificant for PC and Tallahassee, though threatening for Joe in Louisville, KY. Did you ever notice that Louisville is almost directly north of Panama City?  No? Well, you would have noticed if your son lived there. ++++++++++ What's bothering my little mind?  > that the Russian president knows damn well that Americans are so obsessed with current events that we quickly grow bored with whatever HAS happened, and all he had to do was wait us out on Ukraine; which is what is happening, and Ukraine will soon collapse and return to Russian domination, UkrainianSSR style. > that the war for...

"It's not about you" or assuring self, "It's not about me" is or was a popular remark for awhile, actually before I got to say it, so I'm saying it this morning: it's not about me, except that while I'm living this life inside this body it IS about me, at least for the moment: rest for one week after 48 hours remove the bandage wash the surgery site once a day with bacterial soap (I'm using DIAL, is that ok?) and dry using a paper towel mix 1 tablespoon vinegar with 1 cup water soak surgery site 10 minutes a day, using vinegar-soaked cotton ball buy a new jar of Vaseline and use q-tip to apply Vaseline to surgery site twice daily Yeah, it's about me alright. But at this age the scar doesn't matter, it'll go real nice with the electrodes that're to be installed under my ears when I go back next week. ++++++++ Maybe DIAL soap is not okay, but I remember the chief hospital corpsman who lectured us in OCS class, summer 1957, discu...

  40°F and clear outside, Wind NW 5 mph and 70% humidity makes Feels Like 37° at this 6:30 AM Wednesday morning. Too much reading poisons the mind and the attitude? Israeli soldiers shoot three unthreatening people in the West Bank, killing the 17 year old. Not surprising, with hopped up hatred, they are acting like German Waffen SS troops cruelly and senselessly killing harmless, innocent, helpless people for the fun and satisfaction of it. Who doesn't see it wake alphabet up. Circularly, a group who are hated violently, hate violently back without end, and in Time the fact arises of having abandoned one's own humanity in the quest for survival, which is where Israel now is. Remember MAD? When only Mutually Assured Destruction restrains foes from massively killing each other, there's a moral issue to be faced about how highly one values oneself. And in the end it comes down to the irrefutable fact that all government is always, all ways, all bad, which is the justification...