oblong

The old "I hate blacks... except for my friend Carl..." Except they didn't say "blacks".

"Today I'm going to power wash this old laundry clothes pole that isn't used anymore. Then when finished I'm going to make sure my chain saw works and is all oiled up. Don't need it right now but you never know"

RIP Bubba. A true legend and pro.

Money. I don't understand it because I don't have that gene in me. At some point enough is enough, right? Is there a difference when you are 40 years old between 30 million and 120 million? Yes, if you offered to triple my wealth right now I'd have a decision to make but that's a decision between, generally speaking, 6 and 7 figures and being able to retire now vs 10-12 years from now. But at some point that decision becomes easier to deny the more you have. I wouldn't even broach the subject of abandoning principals if I have a few million that I'm sitting on. I do feel bad for the tour guys. They're not all wealthy. Yes they might have sponsor deals and all that but they're independent contractors and that's costly by itself. They had no say in this. The big guys will be alright. The trunk slammers are in a tough spot.

I love my neighbors so this isn't a criticism but more in the spirit of a peeve..... they're always outside doing something in the yard! They're snowbirds so the first weekend back they clear everything out, clean up all the winter stuff, etc. Then each day it's some kind of project involving noise. No, I don't want them to stop. It's great to be active. But a part of me does hate the over reliance on watering/fertilizing/etc. Your lawn and yard doesn't need to look like a golf course or the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island. Let nature do it's thing. Dandelions are good. Weeds are good. Critters are good. Not every stick/twig or other errant thing needs to be picked up.

I think about that a lot... how many movies or story lines wouldn't exist if they had a cell phone or GPS or social media? On the flip side so many stories today make use of the texting/calling function today as a narrative device.

Seems like that would be a common situation to deal with at hotels for them to be able to handle it.

This pizza holds up well as leftovers. That’s the big difference I find with chains. I like Hungry Howies well enough but the next day it’s ****.

We would get it every Wednesday due to the fact it was easy for the kids, my wife and I always had to be somewhere right after work. But I was dropping $40 because I got a lot of it, good for leftovers the next day and two teenagers. So now we get it every other Wednesday, the other one I will throw some chicken in the crockpot and it's shredded chicken of some kind or I'll add some carrots and shawarma seasoning and it's kind of a soup concoction.

In Aruba I saw a guy walking by in a Tigers hat. I said something and he clarifies, the D is for David, his name. He's a Phillies fan. So hopefully he's thinking about me this week.

They have made a comeback among the kids.

That's my go to place on Wednesday. All I do is call and they hear my voice and say "15 minutes". that's it. Better than mobile ordering. They load it up with pepperoni. You see 2 or 3 on top of each other.

They are not fanny packs, they are lap belts. Very convenient to hold the phone when running in the warmer climates since I lost other options from the winter. But they are called lap belts. 🙂

Hmm.... not familiar with that. On Monroe in Dearborn we have today a Little Ceasar's, Howies, Joe & Reno's (our place). There used to be a Dino's. Further into downtown there was a place on Michign Ave called Angelo's. Wonder where it was.

He does. They love him there. One year about 15 years ago we had the free preview of whatever the precursor to MLB Extra Innings. I had a random game on while cooking and thought to myself "This broadcaster is good...". It was Rizzs. I didn't know it was Seattle or him. Rathbun lived in a gated community in Dearborn where a lot of other young TIgers, and Sparky, lived. I delivered pizza to him. Nice guy.

and to "own" him in a figurative sense. Not that they would get anything from him but just the optics and knowledge he's only speaker because of the democrats. That wouldn't make him feel good.

Man, talk about having to explain tech to young people. "You see... we had 36 chances to take pictures on vacation. You didn't know if it worked. You just pushed the button and hoped for the best. Then when you get home you take this thing out of your camera, very carefully so that you don't ruin it, and give it to the guy at this kiosk in the parking lot. In a few days you go back and finally you can see your vacation pictures. Yeah he can see them too. I guess he could make copies... why?" In a sense there was something cool about being able to 'relive' your vacation or special moments after the fact by finally seeing the pictures. I'd also argue that there's a skill in brevity, meaning you only had the limits of the film to get it right so you tried harder. I just got back from vacation and often have 3 or 4 shots of the same thing, just in case. That leads to laziness. Then there's my pictures and my wife's pictures...

This. Especially with this team. The best we can realistically hope for is stretches of 4-6, followed by 6-4, then a 5-5… pray for an 8-2 at some point and no 1-9 and end up with 84-85 wins, at best. The very best teams will lose 1/3 of the games. Sometimes on twitter I think some people get way too negative. It’s a marathon.

I’ve seen that a lot but never knew it was Wilcox pitching.

on paper it's a good bet... he looks good, governor of an important state, has the military background... but once he starts talking? Forget it. And Trump and his fans hate him. He won't pull moderates. He won't pull Trump supporters. His **** may work in Florida but people everywhere else won't fall for it. I can't imagine people in Iowa or New Hampshire or Wisconsin care about fights with Disney.

I wasn't sure on the pitch clock initially but I've forgotten about it already so I guess it's fine.

That's one thing I miss being in the office. I could just blurt out "Hey Terry, why did you send it to everyone when you thought it was my **** up but then just reply to me when it was yours?"

I was a little worried about Aruba that it would be... too nice, if that makes sense. I wanted to feel "Somewhere else". We looked at other locations but places like the Bahamas didn't appeal to me, it's basically Florida and I expected it to be overrun with families and that's not what we wanted. I also didn't want to go to a place like the Dominican where I'd be afraid to go anywhere off the resort. Already went to Jamaica. Mexico is not interesting to me. But Aruba was perfect. It didn't feel like it was a dirt poor place but also didn't feel like I was in Beverly Hills or even Clearwater or Orange Beach. It does have it's million dollar homes on the north end, which we drove through, but overall in our travels it looked like just normal people in small houses taking care of their property. You definitely felt like you were in a foreign country. We picked an adults only resort. The only negative thing we encountered was they let some people smoke cigars in the pool area and that bothered my wife. Didn't bother me. Everyone was very nice. The restaurants at the resort service just enough food that filled you up but didn't make you full to your stomach. We eat too much in the US. The portions were perfect. We made up for at the buffets though.

Random Thoughts/observations from my 6 days in Aruba: What's the deal with Cologne being such a thing in Duty Free shops? In Aruba there are no traffic signals. Just roundabouts. It worked fine. It's not a big island and traffic wasn't bad anyway. No real big cities there. Customs going down was interesting and easy. You fill out a form online, get emailed a QR code. A lady asks us to scan our passport into a machine, it does its thing, then the gate lets you through, one by one. We picked up our luggage, make our way through some doors, walked past two guys in uniform sitting at and on a desk talking to each other, not really interested in us, we went through some doors expecting more lines.... and we're outside. That was it. Coming back was different. You check your bags with your airline, go through Aruba clearance and customs again, then enter a US thing where they check your boarding pass again, you pick up your luggage that you already gave the airline, then go through US Customs Process (They have a thing there which is great), put your luggage back on the proper conveyor for your airline, go through another TSA check, then you are free to board. I liked being able to clear US customs in Aruba because then landing in the US is like a domestic flight. We had a connection so otherwise we'd have had to get our luggage and clear customs, then check it again. I wonder how many other countries are like that, where the US has a CBP presence at the airport you depart from. Aruba's temps are consistently high 90 and low 75 but there's a constant 15-20 MPH wind which makes it awesome. Didn't feel hot at all. I would go back in a heart beat. We met a couple that's on their 26th consecutive annual trip there, outside of 2020. The resort we were at was their favorite so that was a comfort. We loved our place. Had 5 restaurants of different varieties and buffets for lunch and dinner options.