Daynotes On A Budget, V6.0

I suppose it would be helpful if I put, here, why the six weekends between mid-August and late September are my favorite part of the year, assuming I am mentally and physically capable to walk a mile or so a day. Back forty years ago now, I was a dorky high school kid who enjoyed Dungeons and Dragons, regretted that I was living in a time where swords, armor, and dragons weren't around, not realizing that my slowness of foot and relatively poor build would positively assure at least one half-competent dragon a morsel.  Assuming, of course, he or she was looking for one.  Because, you know, in High School, there are incredibly important decisions and actions to take.  First of all, you need to decide you're going to continue to survive even though the world does not seem to realize you are as special as you think you are, and you need to deal with a real exposure to what the rest of your life may well be like, unless you grab the power to change it. And for me, well, I was...

 I have said it before, but as I said it last week to the pharmacist who was giving me the annual flu shot and the first of my three Hepatitis B vaccine, "if you say vaccine, I'll roll up my sleeve." That's not a blind stupidity.  That's from living for 46 years in close proximity to a man who acquired Polio at the age of 3, and yet survived.  He lost two brothers to other things - one was to what they now think was SIDS, while the other passed from Leukemia, now a treatable and often curable cancer.  It's also because I have had enough family members involved in health care who do the work and research, and know, good and well, how desperately these vaccines are often needed.   So if you see someone walking with a limp these days, it's most likely due to an injury, and not because they suffered a now-preventable illness that destroyed their muscle tone.   And probably the best analogy I've seen lately is this:  We're all on a boat together....

 It has been one of those weeks...   After last week's replacement of our exterior air conditioner unit, as the previous one was just flat out too old to be repaired, this week saw two more major appliances heading into the ... well, grey area. Long about Tuesday night, my wife turned on the oven.  Or that is, she tried to turn the oven on.  She smelled gas, but did not hear the typical "whoosh" that accompanies the oven lighting itself to warm up.  We have had some problems with the burners on the top of the stove also failing to light, though the igniter keeps clicking happily - and uselessly - away - but that is easily corrected with a lighter.  Which we keep handy.  But this was just flat out "oven no whoosh" - and so my wife entered a repair request on our landlord's "repair portal".  And she also texted the handyman fellow who keeps getting tasked with the first-call triage.   That wee problem was set for solution Friday - tha...

 In the age of COVID, it's probably a very good thing that I do not travel much. The news over this past week has been fairly... depressing. On the first hand, we have the mess that was Afghanistan.  I continue to be ... disappointed in the extreme when the people who think they are the ones who should be in charge overlook the painfully obvious. I am not an historian.  My father was a good one, interested by all history, and something of an expert on local history.  So with his example before me, I try to be something of an omnivore when it comes to history.  I am no expert on anything.  I am well-read in some history, while in other areas, I suppose the nicest way to put it is "dabble".  I read, I think, I move on. And when we return to the subject of Afghanistan, I think that we really need to take a moment and look at Italy and Germany.  Italy, until the 1800s, was a collection of what were known as "city-states" - that is, much like the Unite...

 Don't worry.  I'm not going to go through every top news story. I mean, yes, I am horrified and disgusted that yet another hurricane is hitting Louisiana.  I can state, with absolute honesty, that while I am certain that New Orleans is a beautiful city with remarkable history, I shall never set foot in that state, or in New Orleans.  Why not?  I am generally opposed to humidity, I've seen the Mississippi where I care to see it, and I've come to know and love it's upper reaches.  You know, the part that's considered non-navigable.   And as to the news from Afghanistan, horrible, yes.  Unexpected?  Not really.  The Afghans are a people that are apparently too apathetic to rule themselves.  Anyone with a particular collective, view, and the ability to attract and mobilize idiots can certainly run that country.  Which is unfortunate.  But clearly, nearly a generation of occupation managed to accomplish absolutely nothing...

So today was my first visit this year to the Minnesota Renaissance Festival.  Like an old friend, it was waiting for me.  Like a bit of a dork, I needed to get there to reset a number of items personally.  I mean, the Renfest Grounds are big .  If you take a look at that image, it contains more than a few changes, in addition to the entire grounds. For starters, the entrance has moved south on 169. If you pull that image up in another window, right below where it says "Bryan Rock Products Shakopee/Hwy 169" you see a grey line that stops short of the line representing 169 South. That horizontal line is the old entrance. For some reason, they decided to move the entrance down the road to what is identified on this image as W 150th St. If you zoom in a little further , you'll see where what is Red Rock Road meets with 145th St. W, also known, at least to me and a few other folks, as the old entrance. And you'll note that Red Rock Road parallels another vertical sor...

Tomorrow, after 17 months of working from home, I go into my office. I pick up my personal things, and come back home. Because effective Wednesday, my office - a building which was undergoing renovation 17 months ago and was boasting a number of newly painted walls and a newly built receptionist desk - will no longer be ours. I expect that there's been a heck of a lot done to remove the servers and other proprietary equipment we had in the building to do the job we do.  And while I am pleased at being able to continue to work from home for a further amount of time, the tension is still there.  There was a statement made during the announcement of this change that there may be a new office being placed in another suburb.   Now, I will freely admit I may be just a little bit spoiled after the last few years.  I mean, let's be honest.  My job prior to this one had literally a ten minute commute if I hit every single stoplight.  But to be fair, it was a...