I'm Not Sure I Know Where This Balloon Lands

There are so many things up in the air right now. School Openings, Corona Virus, Economy, Health Care, and Government Handouts that found the lawmakers leaving Washington with plenty on the table while they take their August leave. I made a T-shirt that reads: My hobby is watching Congress. There are  little eyes in some letters. It really does seem that congress does take advantage of the American people by not really doing their job.

Doing as much research as I can while the summer heat and no car has me pretty much landlocked in the house while the Corona has its way with the world. There is some good to that.  I have discovered why my Walgreens runs out of meds more often and seems to have some problems with certain merchandise that never was a problem before.

When I started ordering on line it was between me and my retail store. When I switched to  online ordering with free shipping, I found out that I was talking to Boots Alliance. Boots Alliance is the Holding Company. Now, by reason of common sense, it must be another pharmacy in the picture some where. Well, as it would end up, yes, there is one.

Boots is the largest pharmacy in Great Britian. To make a long story shorter, The leverage buyout private equity firm known as KKR or Kohlberg Kravis and Roberts, love to acquire businesses and toss the enormous debt onto one of the companies. In this case, it was Boots. Such is the case with Boots when KKR structured the deal between Boots and Walgreens with Rite Aid in the mix. Rite Aid bought out all the Lane Drugs in the Great Lakes.  I don't even want to know any more about how Rite Aid got there but it was through a buyout somewhere else. Not to mention the Eckerds (a subsidiary of J.C. Penny's ) buy out of their 1269 stores in Florida, Louisiana and Texas by CVS. Eckerds was the 4th largest pharmacy in the US at the time of the deal which also included Eckerds 1.3 Billion mail order business. The original company was worth $4.3Billion.

Yes, Rite Aid worked out a deal with Walgreens as a alternative to a merger by allowing Walgreens to purchase their 1900 stores except 8 states for a cool $4.4 billion that included 3 distribution centers.

Now, enter Amazon and Albertsons. Because of a government break up, Amazon bought on-line Pill Pak giving Rite Aid to grow its left over pickings it still owns. Albertsons is working with Amazon.com in the deal, it seems. This is, of course, old new...very old news, like two years ago.

What is even more surprising is that Blackstone and Carlyle and Bain Capital and Silver Lake Partners are all like KKR now. I can remember when KKR took Owens-Illinois, the glass maker, private and wrecked the company that was Headquartered in Toledo, Ohio. A lot of the employees have less to live on today as a result. But, as they say in mid-town New York, "You'll have that from time-to-time".  Yes, you will, I guess. Yes, you will.

Some still call this American capitalization. I call it pure greed and greed never wins in the end.

What Kids Really Think T-Shirt
by sam6372

Where Its Gonna Land Is Still Up In The Air!!!

Men's Large T-shirt
by sam6372

A Strange Light In The Sky

This is the White Rock Creek Trail that passes under Skillman Road at Park Lane on it's way to White Rock Lake a couple of miles below this point. That would be to your right as the end of the bridge goes.

Trail Mile Markers (GPS) are great. If you need help on the trail or you are lost, they will locate you for rescue. If you are stranded by high water, yep, the high water rescue crew can still find you! Just hold onto that marker!

My love of Walgreens goes back 66 years. My grandmother would take me to the lunch counter at our Walgreens and we would have a tuna fish sandwich and a coke. Now, Starbucks and Panera Bread and a host of others have taken the fun out of lunch counters and the swirling on the red top stools.

Even the duck was perplexed as to what to do. It tried walking down the side to a stump and all the while giving the indication that, "I don't want to swim in this mess" so he stayed on the top perch. Funny, actually, while watching him negotiate his mind.

Yesterday, following my post, Walgreen's called to tell me that there most terrible inventory system actually had worked and I could pick up my meds that they could not fill because of their inventory system a few days back.  When I opened the door, I was meet with this strange light that had suddenly appeared. It was---sunshine! It had been twelve solid days without seeing that old friend and our natural source of vitamin D. The total rainfall at Love Field reported yesterday, had grown by 0.93 inches bringing the total to 8.36 inches with the 17:53 hour (5:53p.m.) reporting cycle of 6 hours, There is now a 60% chance of rain on both Tuesday and Wednesday this coming week. AARGH!! Also, I did forget to mention that just outside of Dallas, we have already had our first tornado of the season. It was on the grown for less than 2 miles but did serious damage.

After leaving the drugstore, it was on to complete two new errands since the list has grown again. While out, I crisscross the White Rock Creek Trail  several times and the visible flooding was well pointed out with such out-of-place things like water! I pulled into a shopping center, parked and walked down the sidewalk to a bridge that crossed the creek. Dallas has plenty of bridges; some 5,000 at last count by TexDOT. There, I could see the where the tail was by the bridge on the trail and the mile markers.

It was rather hard to get the shots that I wanted. One, I didn't bring my canoe with me. Two, my glass is only a 150mm and trees blocked the view from the service road behind the shopping center. But, you will be able to get the view of what I mean from one ones that I did get.