Dave's Journal, Dec 2019
I complain that the architecture in the US is trashy - steel, glass, concrete blocks - compared what they have preserved in Europe. But, although many many beautiful classic structures have been demolished since the late 1800's, there are still some wonderful examples of old world structure here in the US.
This is a postcard from 1902, showing the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. It still stands today, and looks just as great. The orginal building was finished early 1877 and was quickly enlarged as shown in this 1902 postcard.
Breakfast today.... fried egg with parsely, pepper (no salt !! ) and grated cheese on multigrain "treebark" toast, with a shot of espresso.
I'm cutting back on caffeine, so max is 2 espressos / day and no wine whatsoever. Tough times demand tough choices.
I am experimenting with "cold" brew coffee (you can blame Catherine for this). I didn't buy any proper equipment, but hell all it is is soaking fresh-ground coffee in room temperature water for a day, then filtering out the grinds.
Well, as promised it is smoother than hot-brewed coffee. They say it eliminates the acids (but keeps the caffeine), and I believe it. This dark French Roast was robust and very pleasant.
(And many thanks to Mike and Charlee for hauling away our old 160# tube set).
Loretta, Rachel and Jake came up from Virginia for a 3 day visit before Christmas. Mostly we sat by the fireplace and watched Loretta crochet things and told stories and argued about the moon landing and the new Star Wars movie (which we rate a 4/10). Here we are lunching at Mill#3 with Chris and Mike.
During a speech to the conservative student group Turning Point USA, Mr. X told attendees that he "never understood" the allure of wind power plants, according to a report from Mediaite.
"I never understood wind", Mr. X said, according to Mediaite. "I know windmills very much, I have studied it better than anybody. I know it is very expensive. They are made in China and Germany mostly, very few made here, almost none, but they are manufactured, tremendous if you are into this tremendous fumes and gases are spewing into the atmosphere. You know we have a world, right?"
"So the world is tiny compared to the universe. So tremendous, tremendous amount of fumes and everything. You talk about the carbon footprint, fumes are spewing into the air, right spewing, whether it is China or Germany, is going into the air", the Mr. X added.
(1957?)
Jim and I go back to 1987 at GE. He is still at GE (Lynn, aircraft engines) and doing great there. Loves his work, so retirement is not soon (plus, he's just a kid).
Audree is one of Nordstrom's favorite customers and she took us to lunch there yesterday (Nordstrom picked up the tab) !!)
That's Rory, one of their cats, who is extremely visitor friendly.
Great day.
Cousin Lucia sent me an amazing picture (from 1956). It shows them cleaning out the canals in Venice. I am stunned how shallow the water level is in the canal !! I don't know how often they do this - if it's regular cleaning or a special project they were working on.
An extremely interesting video on the engineering of the Venetian building foundations. Much more complicated than just driving poles into a swamp:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxpGWcACW6k&t=3s
It's freezing sleet outside. I cancelled my hearing appointment and am explaining to the internet crowds how to make the world better, save the whales and rainforests, and I'm cooking macaroni and listening to jazz CDs .
PS: Catherine showed me how to get free audiobooks downloaded from the local library onto my cell phone. (The app is "hoopla".)
I then "bluetooth" the reading directly into my implant electronics. Way too cool. (Listening to "The picture of Dorian Gray", as a test shot ).
That's Luca over there getting chin scritches.
Well .... the joke's on me. I don't usually record videos and here I left the audio track on and can't kill it. So if you have your speakers turned on, you will hear Deb counting to six (as I asked) before hitting the "stop" button !!!
