Gonna be one o' those. . .

I clicked on a video on another blog. . .

(yeah that's the screen shot)

So I can't leave you with nothin'

So I stole this from the Daily Timewaster

A little more about that trip.

I managed to squeeze in some time to visit family while in Michigan.
Then again maybe I squeezed in some Lions stuff while visiting family.
I flew to Detroit, rented a car, drove to the brother in law's, had dinner, and stayed the night before traveling to Grand Rapids.
Then, after the forum, I drove back to that brother in law's place and visited for another day.
Before leaving, I visited the other Michigan brother in law.
Because my flight wasn't until 3:40 in the afternoon, we were able to have lunch.

Most of the return flight(s) were in daylight.
I had to change planes at Las Vegas.
The approach to McCarran International Airport is just north of the Grand Canyon and takes the plane over Lake Mead, which has had more water in it.

Looking closely a traveler can also see Hoover Dam.
Below the dam (in the upper half of this picture) is the Colorado River with the recently constructed bridge.

I said maybe one more picture.
I lied.

It was really good to get home.
There are no immediate plans for more travel in the near future.

 at least not very far or for very long

Monday update

I've been home for almost a week now and I am finally catching the blog up with what I did back then. . .    maybe!
I may have one more picture to post after today.

NOTE: Maybe I should mention that clicking on the images will enlarge them?

What was Uncle Skip doing in Grand Rapids, anyway?
Every year Lions Clubs International hosts, for a nominal fee, what they call the USA/Canada Leadership Forum.
It is a three day gathering loaded with seminars covering numerous subjects of interest to Lions Club members, from fund raising to service activities.
It is all geared to show how those in attendance can go back to their clubs and districts and be better leaders.
There is also ample time to meet with old friends and gain new friends.
Then there are four meals for about 2000 people with inspirational speakers and entertainment.
If one chooses to escape for awhile, there are also usually some local attractions in the hosting city.
Saturday I hinted at one.

Inside the museum there are displays of memorabilia and historical events throughout President Ford's lifetime.
All of it is impressive  . . .and takes a lot of time to see.

I ran out of time, but saw what I wanted to see [and bought a really nice refrigerator magnet].

Here's a picture of one of those dinners with entertainment.

Those are only some of the folks at that particular meal (about a third).

Some of those old friends I mentioned are in this picture.

The two presenters for this particular seminar and the man directly in front of the camera are friends.

My hotel was several block from the convention facilities, but Grand Rapids has a Skywalk that makes it possible to walk between the two locations without ever going outside or even getting down on ground level until actually inside the convention facilities.

There were even some interesting displays.

It's created with spoons.
There were some other displays, but it never occurred to me to take their picture.

. . .and some more photos of the fireworks at the finale of the forum.

I already made reservations for next year in Omaha.

Sunday thought

"damn, Sam, that's well put"

the in quotes links

Yay!

It's the weekend.
Wait. . .   what difference does it make?
I don't do anything much different on Saturday than the rest of the week.
Well. . .   except for one thing.

Of course, this weekend there's a Lions District meeting in Lakehead (named for the community at the head of Lake Shasta - about 40 mile up the freeway).
So I shall attend to see if I can learn something from my fellow Lions Club members and to see some folks I haven't seen since April.

But that's not what this post is about.
I finally got around to moving the photos from my recent trip east from the phone to the PC.
I was pleasantly surprised by the quality, if not the content.

One of the first things I did was take a selfie so everyone could see I was really there.

No, I was not alone. . .

. . .and there were a lot more folks than in this picture.

The first day there was a

You can, maybe, see some of those walking on the river promenade.

Here are some walkers on the bridge.

I don't know why she's hauling a suitcase

Everyone who participated* got a t-shirt, a bag lunch. . .
. . .and a lapel pin

Later, instead of going to seminars, I sneaked [snuck?] across the Grand River to see. . .

There's more and I will post it later  . . .along with a brief explanation of what the event I was attending is about.
The museum was just a side trip I'f missed the last time I was in Grand Rapids.
#3 in this link explains the irony of the city's name.

more later

*there was an entry fee
the profits went to diabetes education and research

Some of what I did last week

I visited with a lot of folks I know from around the country, made some new friends, and concluded the events with this.



It was preceded by 2000 people waving glow sticks after dinner.


Next year the event will be at Peyton Manning's favorite place. . .



I'll probably go just to see what he's so excited about.

There are some pictures I took with my phone, too.
I will post them soon  . . .maybe even tomorrow and Sunday. 

not sure my camera could've done any better with those videos

This morning

I was distracted from my normal usual posting procedure by this.

It appears there's a slight change in the weather pattern brewing.

then the cat had to be fed

Early this morning. . .

. . .was the start of Fall
Yeah, that's a link.

because it's busy here

Did ya miss me?

I got back home just before 11:00pm last night.
It's good to sleep in my own bed.
Now it's time to finish preparing dinner for 30 people tonight.
(It's a Lions Club thing
The District Governor is visiting and two other clubs will also be in attendance)
Tomorrow will be soon enough to finish unpacking and do the laundry.

Then, maybe, I will get around to writing about the forum I attended in Grand Rapids. . .

. . .or, maybe, I will just post pictures.

I had good visits with my brothers in law (GS's brothers).
Maybe I can say something about that, too?

like that word. . .

. . .maybe

Not Detroit

The weather here at the Kishfest Amphitheater is Sunny and warm.
Driving to Grand Rapids.
I really appreciate having family taking me under their wing when I'm in town.

I wish I could take some credit for this

Someone posted this to another site.
Had I the imagination of that person I probably could've written the following:

How to Simulate Being A Sailor
1. Buy a dumpster, paint it gray inside and out, and live in it for six months.
2. Run all the pipes and wires in your house exposed on the walls.
3. Repaint your entire house every month.
4. Renovate your bathroom. Build a wall across the middle of the bathtub and move the shower head to chest level. When you take showers, make sure you turn off the water while you soap down.
5. Put lube oil in your humidifier and set it on high.
6. Once a week, blow air up your chimney, with a leaf blower and let the wind carry the soot onto your neighbor's house. Ignore his complaints.
7. Once a month, take all major appliances apart and reassemble them.
8. Raise the thresholds and lower the headers of your front and back doors so that you either trip or bang your head every time you pass through them.
9. Disassemble and inspect your lawnmower every week.
10. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, turn your water heater temperature up to 200 degrees. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, turn the water
heater off. On Saturdays and Sundays tell your family they use too much water, so no bathing will be allowed.
11. Raise your bed to within 6 inches of the ceiling, so you can't turn over without getting out and then getting back in.
12. Sleep on the shelf in your closet. Replace the closet door with a curtain.Have your spouse whip open the curtain about 3 hours after you go to sleep, shine a flashlight in your eyes, and say "Sorry, wrong rack."
13. Make your family qualify to operate each appliance in your house - dishwasher operator, blender technician, etc. Re-qualify every 6 months.
14. Have your neighbor come over each day at 0500, blow a whistle so loud Helen Keller could hear it, and shout "Reveille, reveille, all hands heave out and trice up."
15. Have your mother-in-law write down everything she's going to do the following day, then have her make you stand in your back yard at 0600 while she reads it to you.
16. Submit a request chit to your father-in-law requesting permission to leave your house before 1500.
17. Empty all the garbage bins in your house and sweep the driveway three times a day, whether it needs it or not. “Now sweepers, sweepers, man your brooms, give the ship a clean sweep down fore and aft, empty all sh**cans and butt kits!”)
18. Have your neighbor collect all your mail for a month, read your
magazines, and randomly lose every 5th item before delivering the rest.
19. Watch no TV except for movies played in the middle of the night. Have your family vote on which movie to watch, then show a different one-- the same one every night.
20. When your children are in bed, run into their room with a megaphone shouting “Now general quarters, general quarters! All hands man your battle stations!)
21. Make your family’s menu a week ahead of time without consulting the pantry or refrigerator.
22. Post a menu on the kitchen door informing your family that they are having steak for dinner. Then make them wait in line for an hour. When they finally get to the kitchen, tell them you are out of steak, but they can have dried ham or hot dogs. Repeat daily until they ignore the menu and just ask for hot dogs.
23. Bake a cake. Prop up one side of the pan so the cake bakes
unevenly. Spread icing real thick to level it off.
24. Get up every night around midnight and have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on stale bread. (Midrats)
25. Set your alarm clock to go off at random during the night. At the alarm, jump up and dress as fast as you can, making sure to button your top shirt button and tuck your pants into your socks. Run out into the backyard and uncoil the garden hose.
26. Every week or so, throw your cat or dog into the pool and shout "Man overboard, port side!" Rate your family members on how fast they respond.
27. Put the headphones from your stereo on your head, but don't plug them in. Hang a paper cup around your neck on a string. Stand in front of the stove, and speak into the paper cup, "Stove manned and ready."
After an hour or so, speak into the cup again "Stove secured." Roll up the headphones and paper cup and stow them in a shoe-box.
28. Make your family turn out all the lights and go to bed at 10 p.m.“Now taps, taps! Lights out! Maintain silence throughout the ship!”Then immediately have an 18-wheeler crash into your house. (For aircraft carrier sailors.)
29. Build a fire in a trash can in your garage. Loudly announce to your family, “This is a drill, this is a drill! Fire in hangar bay one!”
30. Place a podium at the end of your driveway. Have your family stand in front of the podium for 4-hour intervals. Best done when the weather is worst. January is a good time.
31. Next time there’s a bad thunderstorm in your area, find the biggest horse you can, put a two-inch mattress on his back, strap yourself to it and turn him loose in a barn for six hours. Then get up and go to work.
32. For former engineers: bring your lawn mower into the living room, and run it all day long.
33. Make coffee using eighteen scoops of budget priced coffee grounds per pot, and let the pot simmer for 5 hours before drinking.
34. Have someone under the age of ten give you a haircut with sheep-shears.
35. Sew the back pockets of your jeans onto the front.
36. Add 1/3 cup of Diesel fuel to the laundry.
37. Take hourly readings on your electric and water meters.
38. Every couple of weeks, dress up in your best clothes and go to the scummiest part of town. Find the most run down, trashiest bar, and drink beer until you are hammered. Then walk all the way home.
39. Lock yourself and your family in the house for six weeks. Tell them that at the end of the 6th week you’ll take them to Disney World for liberty. At the end of the 6th week, inform them the trip to Disney World has been canceled because they need to get ready for an inspection, and it will be another week before they can leave the house.

blind post

Normal Monday

PHG arrived back at SFO yesterday.
We finally got home at 1:10am this morning.
Her connecting flight from Las Vegas was delayed two hours.
The valley from here all the way to the Bay Area was full of smoke from the fires in Lake County and Butte County.

I get to drive to Sac at 2:30am tomorrow for a flight 5:55am.


There is a trace of rain this morning. . .

not enough to drive a cat indoors

It's been kinda like this around here.

It may get a little sparse around here.
I'm off to pick up PHG tomorrow.
Then, Tuesday, I'm away for six days.
It seems like I've a million things to do.
It also seems like there's little time to do them.
Blogging will probably suffer.

or everything else

*From the usual source

*Buck's words, not mine

won't forget him, either

Stop . . .for just a brief moment

Please send your thoughts
. . .and if you pray, please do
. . .for the Old Air Force Sarge and his family.

thanks

Sure Happy It's Thursday

The best of two (or more) worlds

willcookforsmiles.com with permission

Bacon Onion Rings with Bacon Ranch Dipping Sauce.

might substitute bleu cheese

I think I mentioned . . .

I was driving Miss Daisy the PHG to the airport at San Francisco.
Anyone familiar with the Bay Area knows the airport is actually in San Bruno and kinda spill over into South San Francisco and Milbrae.
But I digress.

Actually we drove down on Sunday afternoon after attending to the needs of the folks at the monthly fundraising breakfast in the Frontier Senior Center.

That's really only one building with false fronts.

So we didn't get away until a little after 2pm.
I won't go into details but part of the delay had to do with what was going in the suitcase (IYKWIM).
Traffic was not what I expected.
There were fewer vehicles than usual, but still more than I imagined.
Then we arrived at I-80 (from Vacaville to SF).
It was like a "normal commute."
(That's when about 95% of the vehicles kinda observe the rules of the road, because they know they're sharing with thousands of others, and the other 5% pretend they're the only vehicle in the known Universe, thus driving like a wild person and passing even when there's no room)
Once on the Bay Bridge Approach, things sorted out and there was less traffic.

The weather was typical for late summer.
No fog, temperatures in the high 70s to mid 80s.

We arrived at out overnight accommodations, checked in, freshened up. and found dinner (#2 at In-n-Out).
Neither of us was very hungry.
. . .and we were tired because it had already been a long day.
We were in our beds by nine.
. . .and awake at four-thirty, which saved us the trouble of setting an alarm.
It also gave plenty of time to get to the airport after indulging in the spread provided by the hotel.

It took all of ten minutes to drive to the air terminal from which PHG's plane was leaving.
Then the security person was really, really, really nice.
She actually allowed me to leave the car in the loading area, at the curb, and help PHG with her suitcase and the check-in process.
SAY WHAT!!!
Every other airport I have been drivers are threatened with execution if the are out of sight from their vehicles.

Anyway, after hugs and words of endearment. . .  like, "Don't do anything I wouldn't do."
I went back to the car and took another ten minutes just getting out of the airport.

The first time I ever flew from SFO the terminal was a single two-story (maybe three) about a mile north of the current location.

I have flown to and from that airport so many times I've lost count.

This is the terminal that replaced the one above.

This is still a part of the airport

It has grown to a point that I don't about trying to find my way around inside.

I can vouch for the fact that just the part that United Airlines uses is bigger than a lot of other "major" airports.

The drive home was uneventful.
I was almost back to I-5 by the time her plane left SFO.
I was home by 10:30.

Sebastian was happy to see me.

No, really, he was happy to see me.

I get to go down there again next weekend..
Don't ask me why.

and don't ask me what I'm doing next Tuesday

Hmmmph!

David Feherty does a stand up show that is quite spectacular.  It's all about his life in golf, the drinking and lots of stories about life on the tour.
Here's one of his stories:

It was back in the '70s and a very prominent golfer of the time was playing at Augusta for his first Masters . . . back then the players could not bring their own caddies but had to use one of the locals.  

This particular golfer told the caddie-master he wanted a big fellow who could handle his bag but who also would keep quiet.  No advice needed. 

He was assigned Floyd who said; "Hello Mr. ......"   

The golfer said; "Hello!" and "That's the last I want to hear." 

Everything went well until the 10th hole when the golfer pushed his drive into the right trees on the par 4.  After surveying the scene he said out loud,
"I'm going to hit a low fade out through that opening to carry and land mid green and roll over the crest down near the hole..." 

Surprisingly he pulled it off exactly and turned to his caddie and said; "How's that?" 

The caddie spoke for the first time and said; "That wasn't your ball."

Monday and what's new.

Nothin'!
I'm not gonna tell ya what a zoo the terminal at JFK was like.
By the time my plane reached New York everyone had been overfed such that I wasn't even tempted to get any food there, even though it was a couple of hour layover..

It's been a month since the start of the adventure.
Friday afternoon I had an email telling me the airline was giving up the search for my suitcase and sending me a check for the amount of my claim.

I replied, thanking them and asking, "what about the money I had to spend for replacements?"
I haven't heard back yet.

Then Saturday morning I received a phone call from the airline's agent in Spokane, Washington.
"I have your suitcase," he said.
"Do you want me to send it to you?"
I about responded along the lines of, "Does a bear $#|+ in the woods?" But kept it family friendly.

Now my conscience is telling me that if a check arrives I should send it back.
My other self is telling me to hold it for ransom until I'm fully reimbursed for what I bought.

I'm really happy I didn't claim stuff that wasn't in the bag.
Besides I would never be able to explain why I was taking a sable coat to Ireland in the summer.

PHG is off this morning to visit family and friends in Michigan.
In fact I'm not even here because I'm driving her to San Francisco's airport.
Then I plan to take a little side trip.
I'll let you know how that turns out.

Finished

It took us a month to do ten days in Ireland.
We covered some ground twice.
Today we're covering new ground. . .  the last part of the last day.
I won't go so far as to say we saved the best for last.
But it wasn't bad.

Again, I didn't have the camera, just the smartphone.
(It's an experiment, okay?)
There 30 pictures. . .  mostly duplicates of those posted.
I will be deleting some.

Yep, it was gonna have something to do with the ocean (more precisely the Muir Éireann).

But first it was necessary to get on another train.

not this one, but one just like it on the same track

 We were headed this way. . .

. . .ultimately for dinner, to Bray.
The pointy hill on the right is the same one as in the photo here.

The railroad runs along the shore for quite a distance.

Unfortunately there were fences at time that interfered with the view.

the building in the upper left caught my attention

Then we reached our destination..
I was sure I had more pictures, probably in my imagination, of other parts of the town.

This is the beach at Bray

We walked along the promenade after having a fine meal at the Martello Hotel on Strand Road.

Then we caught the train back to Dublin, finished packing and arranged transportation to the airport for the next morning, where I caught this plane to take me back to the U.S.

If you squint, you may see what airline it is.

BTW - rumor has it the the saga of the lost luggage may be over soon.

if it isn't already

Normal Friday

Friday, August 14 we went to jail.
Because it was too far to walk we grabbed a taxi at the hotel around the corner from the flat. . .

screen capture from Googlemaps

. . .and rode to Kilmainham Gaol.
 
On the drive over, the driver queried us about where we were from, what we'd seen and done, how long we were staying, and if we'd indulged in the adult beverages, particularly Guiness.
Cuz and Mrs. Cuz responded in the affirmative and said they truly like Guiness.
I, of course, announced that I no longer drink.
The driver responded, "Why'd ya bother to come, then?"

We'd arrived at the jail and queued up. . .
. . .when I realized I was without my camera.
I only had my phone, which as it turns out sometimes takes better pictures than the camera.

(Once again, clicking will enlarge most of the pictures)

It is another place where one arrives early or delays can be horrendous [so we're told]. . .

. . .probably not as horrendous as being incarcerated in this facility.

There were two different schools of thought regarding the treatment of the prisoners:

 No mollycoddling there.

Not much in the way of style either.

Some of the prisoners left messages



For all intents and purposes it was solitary confinement.

Except in the new wing

The cross at the end of the yard is where the chair that James Connolly was placed for his execution.
It began to rain while we were standing there [which seemed almost appropriate].

Connolly was wounded in the leg during the 1916 Easter Rising.
The wound became infected and gangrene set in.
When the time for his execution, the last of 15, came around, he was too ill too stand and had to be carried in a chair to which he'd been tied in order for the firing squad to carry out the order.

Below is the last letter of James Fisher to his mother, before his execution in 1922.

I was kinda happy to get away from the prison.

Then we were off on another adventure.

ending our stay in Ireland