Hear Hear

 

I am not profoundly deaf, but my hearing has deteriorated significantly over the years.  

A couple of years before I retired, I bought some very expensive hearing aids.  I never got used to them - my ears were sore by the end of the day - and once I retired, I quit trying.  This has been a point of contention at home, so once a year or so I break them out and try again, but I have never been able to wear them more than a few hours at a time.

Then, something happened.

About five o'clock yesterday morning, I woke up hearing noises outside.  It sounded like a flock of blackbirds had landed in our back yard.  I knew it was still a couple hours until daybreak and the chances of noisy blackbirds outside my window was next to none, so I ignored it and went back to sleep.

Once I got up, I was hearing things I hadn't heard in years. I discussed it with Honey, and she confirms that the things I'm hearing aren't imaginary - she hears them, too.

I have no idea what happened, or how long it will last, but for the last two days my hearing is as good or better than it has ever been.

Thought Police

 

Many of my left-leaning friends have posted on Facebook over the past few weeks expressing their delight that Donald Trump had his Twitter and YouTube accounts frozen or cancelled.  Since they have all posted stuff over the past few years making it clear that they thought he was an abomination, I suppose their glee is understandable, but it comes with a price.  

Right wing commentators and news outlets have been warning that such actions would come back to bite them in the butt, and it seems that it is already happening.  At least three of the folks on the left fringe of my social circle have fallen prey to the "Thought Police" and spent time in "Facebook Jail" in the last couple of weeks - banned for comments that were really pretty benign.  One of them was banned for a post that simply said that a woman could not be equipped with a penis!

The latest Facebook victim was the co-administrator of my Addicted to Limericks group.  As the groups admin, I was informed that one of her posts had been removed for violating public decency standards, and that any such violations by an administrator could lead to cancellation of the entire group.  This is the same administrator who, when I posted a warning to a member saying Risqué was Ok but Obscenity would not be tolerated, removed the post and banned the writer. 

Just what did she do to generate Facebook's ire?  In response to a post that mentioned nudity, she posted a picture of a group of African men sitting in front of their hut.  You could tell that they weren't wearing much, but that's about it.  It was the sort of picture that used to be common in National Geographic. It would take a seriously disturbed mind to label the picture as obscene.

TKF Mushrooms

 Our across-the-street neighbor has started a new business, and Honey and I went over yesterday to take the grand tour.  

Derek McLean is now a mushroom farmer, growing a variety of high-end gourmet mushrooms.  The big shop that was once going to house his forge and other tools for his knife making business is now almost entirely dedicated to mushroom production, and he has registered the mushroom business with the state as TKF Mushrooms LLC.

As a lab tech, Honey was particularly interested in the fact that Derek is doing everything from inoculation to harvest under sterile conditions.  He pasteurizes the wood chips the mushrooms grow in, the plastic bags that hold them  and is even making his own Agar plates to start new cultures. In addition to growing mushrooms to eat, he is also growing some strains for medical applications.

These are Lion's Mane mushrooms Derek grew, and I can't wait to try them.  Derek says they have the taste and consistency of crab.

Wistful

Something I posted to my Limerick group five years ago. It is not a Limerick, but I like it.  I call it Wisteria

Wisteria blossoms covered the bower

Where you and I would spend an hour

Or two on a lazy summer afternoon

We’d talk about Elvis and outer space

How much we longed to leave that place

How graduation couldn’t come too soon

Too many years it seems have passed

They just rolled by us much too fast

And I wish I could return to that place

I wonder if you remember when

We spent those hours together then

In our fumbling, innocent state of grace

The purple blossoms falling down

Cover the bench, they cover the ground

And oh, how I long to see your face

Geeked

 

I haven't posted anything for a while because I haven't been on line for days.  My computer developed a really strange problem, and it took almost a week to correct.

To begin with, everything was OK except that I suddenly could not print anything but jpeg files, anything else just produced a blank page.  After working with it for a while, I was able to print pdf files but nothing from Microsoft Office - no Word or Excel, nothing from Outlook.  I finally tried a System Restore, but the computer froze up midway through.

At that point I hauled it in to Best Buy.  Three days and two trips later, I had a computer that printed like it should, the latest version of Windows 10 and the latest version of Outlook.  When I got it home and I discovered that my email would send, but not receive.  That's when I contacted Geek Squad on line.

Over the next two days, I chatted with a half dozen of their techs, and allowed four of them remote access to my computer.  I finally got connected to a guy named Mark who quit trying to connect my email via POP/SMTP and switched to IMAP.  That worked like a charm.

IMAP4 was just coming into use when I retired,  and although I had set up dozens of POP/SMTP accounts over the years, I had never tried IMAP.  Even if it had occurred to me to try it, I'm not sure I would have been able to set it up.

Outlook had always worked before using POP/SMTP - still not sure why it wouldn't connect now.

Appointments

 After trying everything we could think of for days, Honey and I actually got appointment confirmations yesterday to get the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine.  We had registered by phone with the Harris County Health Department, and on line on a State of Texas site.

I got an email yesterday morning from Memorial Hermann with a link to sign up, so I did.  A few minutes later, I got a second email, identical to the first, and tried to sign Honey up but it would not let me change the name.

At that point, Honey is getting aggravated.  She retired from Memorial Hermann, but can get no information from them on the phone, and she is convinced that since I used our generic, family email address for both of us instead of her personal email address that she will never be notified - and it is all my fault.

After learning that the shots were only being offered to recent patients, we finally realized that our recent colonoscopies were done at a Memorial Hermann facility, and my invitation had nothing to do with anything we had done via the county or state.

All of this had taken several hours and multiple phone calls.  Then I got another email invitation and it was addressed to Honey.

I had set my appointment for Friday at 10:00 a.m. Amazingly, although several hours had elapsed since I had registered, we were able to set Honey's appointment for 10:01.

I'll See Your Fog and Raise You...

 I really like David Paul on Channel 11. A local boy, born and raised in Houston, he likes cold weather more than he should, but otherwise he's a pretty darn good weatherman.

Last night he was all excited about the possibility of ice fog here this morning - a phenomenon where fog is made up not of tiny water droplets but tiny crystals of ice.  As he described it, it is not quite as rare as the second coming but about on par with seeing the aurora borealis in Puerto Vallarta.

Well, morning came and our temperature was below freezing, there was frost and some fog - not much, visibility was probably a couple miles.  I suppose it was ice fog, but I wasn't impressed.  Paul's description had made it sound a lot more interesting.

Then I noticed something truly unique.   Frost had formed on both the top and the underside of our porch roof and about ten o'clock it began to melt.

Skies were blue, the sun was out, and it was raining only on the inside of our back porch!  

Blizzard of 2021

 

OK - that's a tiny bit tongue-in-cheek, but local weather folks went a little nuts over the possibility that there might be snow in Southeast Texas yesterday.  All the local stations sent newsfolk North and West until they could send back  video of people making snowmen (snowpersons?) and having snowball fights.

There was significant snow in Central Texas, and it came as close as Northwest Harris County, but here at the Boggy Thicket we had rain - cold, drizzly, windy, miserable rain.  

It is possible that there were a few snowflakes mixed in about eight o'clock - we did have about a half inch of white slushy stuff on the gas grill.  Whether that was snow or sleet or frozen rain is anybody's guess - I sure wasn't going out there to check - not in the cold, drizzly, windy, miserable rain.

If You Can't Say Anything Nice

 

I haven't posted anything in the past several days.  Mostly because I (almost never at a loss for words) couldn't think of anything I wanted to say.

Our country is in turmoil and it may get worse before it gets better.  

I still cling to the hope that we can and will survive, but nobody is listening to the calmer voices among us. Only the most outrageous on the fringes of both parties seem to be able to get their opinions heard.

I wish there was some adult out there who could tell them all to shut the Hell up.

Covid Unmasked

 

We've all had several months of experience wearing masks now.  

I say all, but every time I go to the store, I see at least one family wandering around with their faces uncovered.  Almost as bad is the large number of folks who wear their masks over their mouths but leave their noses uncovered.

I know masks can be hot, and they do restrict your air intake.  Don't ask me how I know, but they also let you know when you need to brush your teeth or at least pop a breath mint!

Wearing a mask is a pain, but taking one off can be downright hazardous. Even with the limited social contact I've had, I know of two women who have lost earrings while removing a mask and at least two men who have yanked hearing aids out of their ears. 

Fair Warning

 

For those of you breathing a sigh of relief because we finally made it to the end of 

2020, 

just remember that next year will be 

2022!

Sixty Sixtieth

 First off, Happy New Year!!

My high school graduating class - Alvin, Texas, class of 1960 - held its 60th reunion yesterday. 

There had been plans for an in-person get together last spring, but Covid killed that idea.  Yesterday was the last possible day to do a 60th, so we got together via Zoom. I tried to save a screen shot, but it came out like this ---

Probably just as well.  Who, other than the participants, would want to see a screen full of old people?