I Must Be Pushing 6 or 7 of My Nine Lives.

Well,---boy is that a misnomer!--- It's been another 20-day stay in the hospital again. This one was not a pretty site either. Surprisingly, I had a pretty restful night back in my own bed last night and halfway felt human this morning. That might be stretching it a bit, but hey! I'm walking, talking, and even had a little breakfast. It seems that the anesthesiology works well but is a bit of a demon as it leaves your body.

I've have a lot of chances to observe this process since the Monday before Thanksgiving last. Each time, it reveals a few more details about it's devilish departure from my system. Generally, a weeks time is about normal for me, but of course, I've had way to many overlapping episodes (i.e. another new pacemaker plus an Ablation procedure on top of that). Heck yes, I'm sore!!.

The kicker in all of this is that the surgery the Monday before Thanksgiving that was finished on the part one side is still  not finished thanks to the worse Governor the State of Texas has had in years. He was a terrible Attorney General, and is following that lead as a terrible Governor. Generally, I don't get political, but I'm Scottish and I speak my mind. Lets go back a step. I'm Gaelic in the full Scottish tradition!!! That's pretty entrenched, friends.

A Thistle along a railroad track 

One of my last adventures

I've missed a lot of the springtime blooms

Got A Peak At The New Rangers Organ Yesterday.

And now,  for the young first responder that will be playing it, "don't be discouraged. I learned on a church's Hammond." There are places for it, I suppose. I'm not an electronic organ guy.By my second year, my teacher said to my dad," Next week, we are going to the Big Baptist Church so he can move on to the real King of Instruments".Of course, I hadn't formed any opinions at that point What did I know? I just followed my dad's  lead Life just got exciting! The new organ was a three manual pipe with 42 ranks.

Now, I will say in the defense  of the Rangers.Purchasing a three manual was not a mistake. Over time, as the young man becomes  familiar and more familiar with what it can do from pre set stops and draw bars. He will be as happy a as bee in a working bee hive.

Now, there are some arena's that have fantastic pipe organs. I was hoping that the Rangers would go the extra mile.Maybe in time, they might still revisit that thought. I am sill just happy that three manual sits in the crow's nest.It must be that Rangers didn't get to enough Hockey Games. Hockey loved the sound of pipe organs over ice!

Take Me Out To The Ball Game....

Spring Wild Flowers

Earth Day Turns 50 and the Cuyahoga River Is Not Even On Fire!

That little photo from the crew of Apollo 17 that is called the "Blue Marble" was a shocker for the humans down below (it could also be up above) on that blue marble. It still is, for that matter. But somehow, we have made some progress. Everyone is talking about seeing things that have not been visible in years and yet, the scientist are telling us, it's not those kinds of emissions that is turning the blue marble warmer and warmer. Now, that's the big shocker! My mother would always tell us boys that you need to be looking in the opposite direction when you see astonishing headlines. She was more right than she was wrong.

It has come out now (Mother, are you looking down on us for this?) that the bigger wealth guys of Silicon Valley are in multi-million dollar luxury bunkers 11-feet below grown in New Zealand. Some made it there just in time before New Zealand closed its borders to foreigners (fresh off their private jet). As it turns out further, it appears that Bill Gates has been stashing food in his basement for a pandemic for years. Now, somehow, this all must be some kind of new "insider trading" (of information, that is). It seems kind of weird, but applying mom's old adage, diversion technique tactics are still at play here. Give $100 million to help the pandemic and stash another 20 thou of green beans and corn and fruit cocktail, peaches and pears. The old boys in Silicon Valley were dealing in real estate before the contractor with a privacy seal on his list of names that had been ordering up these bunkers. The numbers were a bit higher than what you can count on both hands (and feet). There also appeared to be a rather long waiting list,too.


Here, it's the time to also mention again ( been doing this quite a bit lately) what the TxDot guy said to me while we talked on the I-635 project job site  when he said, "The People in Dallas are asleep at the wheel".) The point being:it isn't just Dallas, it's the whole dang country. The rest of the world has been running up to speed for years it seems.



In the 1969 edition of the Cuyahoga River burn, I'm old enough to remember that. At the time it was rather funny. The fires have been put out where it burned. The Flats have turned into brewing companies attached to restaurants and the mouth of the river still meets Lake Erie is free of debit and oil without a fire. The steel mills have long gone away, especially J&L then Bethlehem. It was the time when the Mini--Mills were appearing. They produced only one product and ran the mill on  270 workers vs, U.S. Steel or the other two big integrated mills that produced many products and many sizes of those products, employed 2,000 workers or more and ran around the clock on three full shifts. Times have certainly changed but human greed continues in our wealthy brothers and sisters.

So,  as we celebrate the 50th anniversary/birthday of Earth Day, April 22, 1970-2020 around the world, Life is sweet, but it's not going to be unless we all awake and start pitching in to save the world that has a shelf life of about another 4 Billion years for us to find out how we can take a world population with us to that exoplanet don't you see.

Ansel Adams and my mother would have been good friends because he and John Muir would have enjoyed her biscuits around those camp fires. I miss her biscuits.

This 747-200 (heavily modified, I might add.)

I've Learned From Nature Over The Years.

Talk to a math Ph.D, a physicist, or a modern day John Muir and all three will tell you the same thing: the universe is made of a math equation and from the smallest molecule we know, to the largest expanse of the universe fits together like a puzzle of numbers. We put the puzzle pieces together only to find out that it all is the first piece of a larger puzzle etc.,etc. It's endless!

I have been home-bound for the last two weeks except for one quick trip to the grocer. Today, I was hoping to be able to pick up a Rx at the drugstore today before the storms tomorrow, but it was back ordered so I ventured farther out and decided to make a circle of the lake that opened back up yesterday. I run into a photographer that I chat with at the lake now and then. He once ask me about my route that I'm ruled by when it comes to photography.

Part of capturing a specific shot is knowing what tree a hawk comes to each day. They are more creatures of habit than we are, just barely. In other words, you have to think like the bird. And, I know some are going to laugh, but over time you learn that plants think too. They are much more complicated that just a green leaf on a twig on a tree. I had said to my photographer guy that you have to keep up on what is going on around you and that means every thing from a yellow or orange flag and paint in grass along a street to new construction to what's happening with the city's capital improvement projects. It's like that darn puzzle thing---it just keeps fitting together and gets bigger and bigger. It's rather errie how it works in reality but it does and you got to be in step with it to get the shot.

It allows what it wants to allow, it consumes what it wants to consume and it spits out what it doesn't like. In all fairness, watching it grow is the same as watching a child grow up. Or, that birds habit in motion. If you ever noticed the Wright's Tree Service truck crew trimming branches through out the country, then you know it's like the city getting a manicure. Just like the humans that do. In fact, when I lived in the Great Lakes, Wright's Tree Service was one of the city's biggest contractors. Today, before going out, I went on the Lake Tahoe Web Cam and what's sitting in the parking lot of the Food Shop in downtown Truckee on Donner Pass Road but a Wright's truck crew taking their first break of the day, I suppose. Truckee is two hours behind us in time. Then, when I got to the lake, what did I run into again but a Wright's Tree Service work crew of several trucks.

Peonies Poppy Flower

Lost the seed that I saved from last year.

The new water tower is finished and the old is being disassembled by cutting torches. There are two men in the cage suspended from the crane and one man on the catwalk below.

When I got to the stop sign to go down under the Santa Fe Trail trail head, when I came up on the Filtration Building Guard Shack, the discovery that I made there last year was twice as big, twice a beautiful, twice as large blooms as before, that I gasp in excitement. The whole area was planted in peonies-poppy flowers standing  three feet tall.Two weeks ago I was there looking to see if any had sprouted and were coming up for last year or to see that there was some evidence that the service landscaper had been there and planted for this year to no avail. It is one of those lessons I learned a very long time ago. You have to make a route and stick to it to see the heart beat of what is in that area you have blocked out that fits your Mission Statement ( it's printed in the head banner of this blog).

This was the first blooming when they were just totally radiant! With severe storms tomorrow with hail, damaging winds and heavy rain, they, most likely will be beat down like pulp. They may come back but not like I was able to capture them today. It was a gift to be able to see that beauty in this time when every one seems to be depressed. It seems that people today are more interested in how their body looks, the cloths they wear or the car they drive than the "simple" beauty of such a flower.

When I go to bed tonight, I'll make a prayer for those poor souls and thank God for His Grace that He gives me each day to see the beauty of the earth. 

De Rigueue Face Mask

It seems that some are already beginning to wrap their brains around the fact that we, as humans, most likely will be wearing face mask for a much longer period than some think. The loaded catch phrase is: "until we have a vaccine". That is also reported to be about 18-months away.

Face Mask for Corona-19

by Glendine's Fashion  Design Works

A Little Bird Paid Me A Visit Today.

There comes a time in each day when I reflect back on the day. Mine started with a call from one of the assistant managers at a Walmart where I shop. Yesterday was my necessity run to the grocer. Almost immediately, I have the day started to go south but I wasn't going to let that happen. The store had the max number of people allowed with the new guidelines. That, however, didn't mean much as those that were in the store were still grabbing everything that they could cram into their carts. While reaching for a pack of bacon, and still keep my distance in the bacon isle, I reached in from the side to get a couple of packs from the middle since the woman that didn't seen to care about the 6-foot rule, just declared the whole of the cool unit as her own. Any way, as I pulled the bacon out it caught on a inch-high bar on the bottom of the unit and I lifted my hand up to free the bacon from the bar. As I did, the back of my hand caught the underside of the shelving and there it was---that feel of cut skin and then came the blood. With that, I ask at the deli counter if they had a first aid kit. "No", came the reply. "Go to customer service". So, I headed from the back of the store to the front of the store.I kind of thought that the extra exercise of walking that lap wasn't that bad of a deal. Shortly, came the store manager who I kid with most of the time, if only a one-liner jab. Then came the assistant manager with the iPad to take an incident report.

The phone rang this morning while I was still in bed. It was the assistant manager checking on how I was doing. Laughingly, I said to her that, "I'm alive!". She ask me a question and I said, "no, I'm fine" and we parted ways. That was nice to check in on me, I though. It's wasn't that "The Legal Beagle Made Me Call", attitude. That's the difference between the young managers an that seasoned manager of 30 years. I noticed her pin yesterday as she was talking the info on her i-Pad. She was a 3 decader!

I face the northwest so the strong winds that come from the NW are the only time I feel the chill inside. Even my heat came on and I had the thermostat set much lower than normal. Still, I could feel the difference in what it was doing outside. When I got up to go pull the drapes over the door, there was a baby sparrow that had just fledged from the area below the downspout where sparrows have built nest for as long a I can remember. He had managed to fly--or glide--down onto my porch. I think he might have been aiming for one of my towering trees, but he didn't make it. He was cherping for mom. The sun had just begun to come onto my porch at the gate and it was hitting just about a half foot from the baby bird. I knew that if he got into the sun he would warm up and he would be wanting to try out those wings from the grown up. In about a half hour he was stretching each wing and then he would do it again.  The next time I looked, he was gone. I saw mom sitting on the gutter and had been calling to him. I haven't been able to get to the birds  at the lake so I guess, something in the world of Karma had the bird come to me. Thank goodness I didn't get mad yesterday at Walmart. Seeing the baby bird on the porch was a good token come my way.

Sunshine Is A Mood Lifter at any age. The shade of a couple of leaves from the trees can be seen.

Not much movement, but the head is responding when my lens clicked the glass in the door.

Cars,Planes and Trains and the winner is Ezra Dyer.

A Two-Seater Fighter Jet at Love Field.

Allow me to be blunt and to the cause of it all. Since the stay-at-home orders went into place, watching a lot of web cams has been better than what is on television. All the episodes of the comedy and drama shows have been watched. Boredom isn't the problem. The problem is, all those webcam cameras are, "always moving away from the action." Truckee Airport has a great camera that pans up and down the runways, around the terminal building , down the row of extensive hangers and back around to the front tarmac where all the charters, general aviation, CHIP helicopters, and corporate jets park. The pan is always the same, counterclockwise from the facing runway. The view of the mountains with snow caps, the clouds coming over the Sierra Nevada Range near Carson City is most beautiful all year long.

Imagine 8 of these pulling a train 100 to a 110 cars long up a mountain.

But having a cam at an airport is pretty cut in stone that people who watch it are aviation buffs.  Pulling away from a plane just starting his roll down the runway to take off is what we all want to see.

So, you close out that came and go two miles into downtown Truckee where a cam is set up on the side of the The Truckee Hotel  at Bridge Street and Donna Pass Road. There, massive Union Pacific trains pull 100 to 110 car trains over mountain passes where east bound climbs are gradual and the westbound  climbs are steep. It takes a lot of horsepower to pull and push 100 or more cars up the mountains. Sometimes snow  slides comes down the side of the mountain onto the track. There are snow sheds along the way.Usually there are 5 engines leading, two in the middle of the train and one on the end,being the little engine that could as it pushes forward on the cars ahead. 

What I'm getting at is that the airport cam, the downtown cam is always moving away from the action. Watching the DFW Airport cam is the same way. The camera will move away from a big 747 coming across the "A" bridge and pan over the tops of green trees from Airfield Drive all the way to Arlington and  park there for what seems like a lifetime. By the time it pans back to the "A" bridge, that 747 is no where in sight. I tell you this because it resembles life in more ways than one. It reminded me that when I was growing up, we had magazines with writers that kept your mind moving and thinking and guessing and all we had to do is turn the page as we read. It even kept you anticipating what was coming next. You could not wait for the next article from you favorite writer. Then they would leave the magazine as it took you a bit to find them at their new mag.

Yesterday, I came across an article--on the web no less-- written by one of the young upstarts that I had followed for several years. Almost instantly, I was laughing as I read and the farther I got into the article the more I was laughing. It got to the point that I had tears running down my cheeks and still laughing to the point that I had to wait until I could stop laughing so that I  could finish the article. The guy. The writer. Ezra Dyer! He is working for a car magazine. Actually he has written for sev- eral car magazines. It made no difference if he was writing for an ant breeder, he is that good of a writer.

His story was about a French engineer that had worked for the French fighter jet maker who was retiring and his company hooked him up with a ride in the back seat of their fighter jet. Any other time it would have taken a lot of strings to get set up with a ride like that, but no one ask the guy if he wanted to go on such a ride. They just went ahead with the planning---LOL-- that's where the story gets really wild and to make a long story shorter and sill save the laughs, the whole retirement gift went south--really south-- after it went north on a rocket that malfunctioned. I'm still laughing about that story today and can't wait until I can read Ezra's next story again. I even sent a copy of the story to my brother. He's getting ready in  a few more miles down the road to retirement. 


 

Do You Know a Rodentologist?

A Ramp Rat at Love Field. Ramp Rats are a good thing at SWA. Without them, you could never get a plane off the ground, in and out of terminal gates, baggage loaded and unloaded an a whole lot of others things. So, see, SWA learned from a bunch of rats about human nature.

That's the person to call when the invasion of rats are searching for food because all the restaurants that we all so love have pulled the plug and no food on the ground is available. Rat colonies are territorial. As long as they  have food they are happy. When they run out of food, look out!

The far-reaching different worlds that have come into play with the coronavirus-19 have gone more far-reaching than even a lot of the experts had anticipated. Unfortunately, good 'ole human nature can account for a lot more of that than expected, also.

So, what's the take-away from this? It's simple. When faced with trying to understand people, don't call your Psychologist, call your Rodentologist for two reasons. One, you will learn a lot about human nature from the study of rats. Two, the bill from the Rodentologist is going to be a lots cheaper than the one you get from the Psychologist but the results is far better from the rat man! ( My friend JM doesn't send me a bill, period! So drop one of them attorneys or judges from your friends list and add a good psychologist as a friend...then, ask him those off the wall questions.) LOL.

From Patty to Pot

The title today came from one of those out of the blue places where things like that originate. More about that in a jiff.

As my old friend, the shrink, Jim M. once said to me when asking him a question at church one Sunday, years ago..."When you try to think of something and you can't seem to recall it, then sometimes an hour later or ever a few days later, you can be doing the dumbest of things and the answer comes to you like a lightening bolt just struck," he said, "that's called a Eureka Point."  I've been having a lot of those of late. Nothing like not being able to find your car keys or worse yet, finding them in the refrigerator. Thank goodness.  This evening, it came to me that I had not set the code keys on my camera for picture ids. When I checked, it was no surprise to find them still set for January. I had reset them after getting out of the hospital after a brief return following my 5 and a half weeks stay over the holidays beginning with Thanksgiving, then Christmas, then New Years. The total images shot from that point to now has been less than 25. For some comparison, it is usually more like 6 to 10 thousand shots a month.

So, I've been going back and looking at past images. That's legally called checking assets. Yet, it's been a good experience for a couple of reasons. One, I have actually found some images that were missed and resubmitted them. They were approved for publishing and my stock assets have actually increased. The second reason, reminded me of an old Red Skelton comedy routine. The one that I am thinking of is that crazy hat that looks like the brim is airplane wings with that "V" sticking up at the back of the hat.

Gertrude or is it Heathcliffe that's in the middle with its wings tucked  away. I wonder where Red Skelton actually saw a seagull due that or was it really a pelican?

 Skelton imitates two seagulls named Gertrude and Heathcliffe  by putting his hands
under his arms. Several other things were discovered, like the bobcat on the island next to the Mockingbird bridge stalking a pelican then an egret. I also found along the treeline going between the stone tables and Dreyfuss Club at the lake, a mother cayote with four pups. Totally missed those details.

Now, about that title name. From Patty to Pot is about any and everything that happens to rice between,you know it, the patty to pot! It's in an old cookbook of my mothers that talks---rather---explains why you should rinse your rice. It's not really unhealthy, but by doing so, you end up with great fluffy rice. In short, it explains all the accidents from start to finish with a happy ending! I can live with that.

American Coots with the green air inflated feet. It enables them to actually walk on water as they take off.

American Really Is Parking Planes At DFW And Not At Gates!

Qutar Landing at DFW and headed to Terminal D

American 787 Landing at DFW.

American Home Base is DFW and has a physical presence at most terminals.

With the temps hitting a record 97F yesterday (It's only the first week of April, folks) I stayed inside. It did come to switching the AC to run for the first time since October. Speaking of October, it will be that later on in the week after Easter. So, the heat will be on a bit, I'm sure with temps in the 30/40 range for several days. (Out TXU!! Out!)!  And therefore, watching video cams was a way to pass some time during the corona ordeal. Seldom, do I get bored, but it got pretty close yesterday.

There is so much construction going on at DFW right now. From run ways being replaced, to new runway and taxiway markers to Terminal "E" finally taking shape as a real terminal. It has given me a chance to really observe rather than just watch a webcam. If you look at the layout of DFW, there are three runways on the 17/35s and  two on the 18/36 with a cross wind on the 17s and one on the 18s numbered 13L,13R. The future #8 runway is layed out as one of  the 18's taxiway, but the threshold as a future runway is in place already.

With the terminal construction and the replacement of the 17's runway (after all, they are 40 years old already) truck load after truck load of dirt, of which some is coming from the deep trenches being dug on the 18L side of the terminal taxiways and tarmac. I saw 5 long trailer dump trucks being escorted to the end of 18R where it is being dumped. There are so many theories that can be made from that move, such as expanding one of DFW's long runways to something longer for one; moving ahead with the 6th parallel runways at KDFW (lets use the official airport code here), and many, many more.

But, the one thing that stands out from the infield cam is the parking of 18 American Airlines planes in two different holding areas, of which 11 are lined up on the angle in the dreaded, "lineup and wait" area for the north flow when the winds are coming from the north/northwest, which is less that the normal flow for operations.

The past week, the traffic at terminal D (international terminal) which has 40 gates, is empty except for the 4 most northern gates assigned to American and one gate a bit farther down is for JAL. Even Quantas' big A380 double deck, is now clearly absent as is Qutar and Lufthansa, Air France,Korean, and all the Gulf-Carabbian hot spots airlines. British Airways has been switching off between a 747 and a 777 daily but instead of parking at a gate, it's being parked where the charters park and the ball teams park their planes.

What I'm saying is this: The airport (really a city within itself) is hurting. Airport hotels reservations are down. Not only in planes coming in and landing fees and fuel sales collected, but the business services and restaurants and curio shops loss of revenue right down  to rental cars to parking garage fees. Sure, it's a good time to get the construction out of the way when plane traffic on taxiways and tarmac movements is down. But with less services due to the non-essential rules and others, employees are without paychecks, many which support whole family units not just the single college kid or young men and women in the job market. It one area that gets overlooked,generally.



13 April 2020.Update. As of this writing there are now26 planes parked in the areas used for equipment storage (planes) charters etc.; in the line up and wait area. Most, are in the line up and wait area for the south flow. The total had been as high as 28 but two have been  moved elsewhere, or put back in service.
14 April 2020. Update. As of this writing there are now 32 American Airlines planes parked at DFW.

20 April 2020. Update. As of this writing, there are now 31 American Airlines planes parked at DFW on the west runways line up and wait area and the equipment hold for charters between the terminal tarmac and the "A" bridge. The construction on Runway 18/36 nearing the threshold of 36 continues. The boys are working their tails off to get this done. The new runway signs and lighting is amazing at night. It's a very noticeable change.