I Did That!

 Went to the Murphy's station at my local Wal-Mart today and saw this...

Little portraits of Joe Biden pointing to the price window on every pump.  Almost as good as "Let's go, Brandon!"

Mystery Birds II

 

Still having to refill our bird feeder about once a day, and we're hosting a wide variety of birds.  Maybe the most unusual is a woodpecker that I have been trying to photograph for the last two weeks.  It shows up several times a day, but never when I have a camera or even my phone.

He (actually, I think it's a She) doesn't land on the little perch like all the other birds, it hangs underneath and like a little avian contortionist, it reaches over to get seeds. I read that their tongues reach about two inches past their beaks and have little barbs that let them snag their food.

What I don't understand is the name - It known as is a Red-Bellied Woodpecker - and I wonder what sort of head trauma was suffered by whoever named it. Its belly is white as new fallen snow and the only red on its entire body is a splash of red on its forehead - more on males, less on females. I assume that Red-Headed was already taken, and White-Bellied lacks pizazz, but why name the poor critter something that it obviously is not?

Mystery Birds

 This past weekend's freeze brought in a flock of little birds I had never seen before.  There were a couple dozen of them, and they emptied the feeder in less than a day.

Today, there was only one of them left, and this was the best picture I could get.  They are brown with a beige breast with distinctive black and white bands or stripes on their wings.  I looked online but couldn't find an exact match.  The closest was a Pine Warbler, but they are mostly yellow.

FEMA, Constipation and Polio

 Haven't posted in over a week - not because I had nothing to report, but because there was a whole lot of stuff happening.

Good news and not so good news about Ripley:

• First, he graduated Puppy School with flying colors.  No cap and gown, but he did get a diploma.
• Second, he suffered a severe case of constipation last weekend - mostly due to the fact that he loves to eat sticks and twigs.  He's OK now but with the large number of trees in our yard, I don't know how we will ever break him of eating wood.

Cheryl's pet goat got POLIO!  

Not the sort of polio that kept us out of public pools as children, this was Polioencephalomalacia, which is a severe Thiamine deficiency, potentially just as deadly as Poliomyelitis.  When they got her to the Vet, he didn't think she would survive, but she's back home and doing well. Polio, by the way is a prefix that refers to gray matter, and both diseases attack the brain.

You might remember that we had filed a protest with FEMA about the payout on our home repairs from Imelda.  Two years after we filed the protest, we finally got an answer.  FEMA had upheld our objection.  That was a couple months ago, and we still haven't received a check.  That should change as I just signed (electronically) the final estimate that will generate the check from the insurance company.  

We will not be receiving nearly as much as I thought we had coming, but since we went over two years not expecting anything.....

Rheemed

 

Not as long as you might think.  They don't make 'em like they used to.

The first water heater in our home lasted almost 50 years.  The one that replaced it is barely two years old, and it is down for the second time.  We are waiting for FedEx to deliver a new control valve to get it back up and running.

The symptom is no pilot light. Typically, this would be caused by a defective thermocouple, but in our case the Rheem customer service rep admits that there was a design flaw in the valve itself, and the valve had to be redesigned.

Thermocouples have been around since the 1940s - the patent was applied for in 1941 - and they have been used in water heaters almost as long.  Why they felt the need to redesign something that has worked that well for that long in beyond my comprehension.

It brings to mind the old adage "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

Just A Thought

 

Photo I D

 

You ought to have to have a photo I D to vote.  There are those who disagree, but they are misguided at best. 

Yesterday's unsuccessful attempt by Senate Democrats to pass a national voting rights bill reminded me of something that happened in November of 2011.  The terrorist attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon had just happened a couple months previously and airport security was disorganized but intense.  Larry Baker and I had been to a Ricoh trainers' conference in Florida and were boarding a flight in Ft Lauderdale on our way home.  Larry had won a mini-Leatherman at the conference and had it confiscated at the gate - that two-inch blade was obviously a weapon.

I thought I was home free.  Then, as we prepared to board the plane, I was pulled aside and taken to another room.  My boarding pass read COUCH ROBERTA and they didn't believe that was my name.  It took two armed guards and a supervisor to finally decide that yes, my middle name was Allen, my middle initial was A and the boarding pass printer probably should have added a space after the T.  I was the last person on the plane, getting on just as the flight attendant was closing the door. 

My first act when I got to the office on Monday was to call American Express and have them drop my middle name from my profile.