Dave's Journal, June2024
(Can you imagine renting a bathing suit ??)
Summer car shows have begun.
Pics from last week at Kimball's dairy farm store.....
Next up is Larz Anderson's German car show in 2 weeks and British cars the week after.
Went for a walk at the wildlife sanctuary. Tested some advice I got on Youtube about photo exposure in bright, overhead sunlight. It kind of worked out okay, depends on how you want the pictures to feel.
Took this same scene years ago (hanging in my parlor!). The water level (up to the platform) and plants today are much higher than I ever saw them.
Very peaceful walk and I needed it !
Kimballs is starting a "Wednesday Bike Night" thing. Not much is happening yet - maybe 10 relatively new bikes was all that showed up this week. But anyway.... here is an Indian that is not yet "vintage" ....
A moment of art appreciation .... nice painting ..... all I know is that J.J. Weerts (??) painted it. Love the colors.
Tidy porch, waiting for Angela and Gabe to visit. Over there on the right is "white chocolate" stout beer that is making my day nicer.
Sounds like a big year for Jim - after 44 years at GE, he is retiring in December. Been working on their house forever, and it's in supreme condition, and lovely.
The cat's, Violet and Dandelion, are very visitor friendly. Violet likes the camera, Dandelion not so much.
I have driven past this scene a buzillion times, always promising myself to make a picture of it some day. Well . . . today was the day. Not great (direct overhead light and whimpy clouds everywhere), but here it is.
I thought it had been a fort back when, but a little "research" and I learned it was a church.
The Old Stone Church was built in the early 1890s to replace the Baptist church which had been lost in a fire. Hardly 10 years later, it had to be abandoned for the reservoir. Because it was built of stone and was clearly going to be a scenic attraction, the commonwealth was persuaded by townsfolk to let it remain. It stands alone on a point of land by the side of the water as a reminder of what was lost to the reservoir.
(West Boylston Historical Society)
But the Youtube videos (often correctly labeled "ASMR") mesmerize me to sleep.
Reiki is a pseudoscientific form of energy healing, a type of alternative medicine originating in Japan. Reiki practitioners use a technique called palm healing or hands-on healing through which, according to practitioners, a "universal energy" is transferred through the palms of the practitioner to the client, to encourage emotional or physical healing.
An autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) is a tingling sensation that usually begins on the scalp and moves down the back of the neck and upper spine. A pleasant form of paresthesia . . . . ASMR is a subjective experience of "low-grade euphoria" characterized by "a combination of positive feelings and a distinct static-like tingling sensation on the skin". It is most commonly triggered by specific auditory or visual stimuli, and less commonly by intentional attention control.
Sarah, Jake and Loretta at Jake's new apartment in Disneyworld (he starts work there this week !! .... and Rachel is also working there !!)
Rachel, Rachel, Rachel
Long overdue, I opened a page for Rachel pictures! Starting with pics I shamelessly swiped off her Instagram page, I plan to add more as time goes by.
Link to Rachel
Officially opened last night. It's raining today, so attendance this morning was sparse. The show goes on until September.
Not as crowded with artworks as it usually is, but the quality of stuff is supreme this year. As always, not every piece drives me wild, but the craftsmanship is always evident. Here are some pieces that I liked.
I went for groceries today - MarketBasket then PetSmart.
Bought 5 bags of people food for $114 .
Bought a small box (24 3oz cans) of catfood for $43.
On the left is the canned chicken (people food): 12.5oz / $3.00 per can = 24¢ / oz
On the right is the canned catfood : 3oz / $1.79 per can = 60¢ / oz
Something is wrong with this world.
BOSTON - A four-alarm fire decimated the former Jacob Wirth Restaurant building Monday night - derailing plans to reopen one of Boston's most historic bars.
Back in the 1970's, GE let a few of us young engineers go off as full time Northeastern students (with full pay !) for a whole semester to finish up our MS degrees (GE paid the tuition bill too! ).
Well ..... boys will be boys and one of us (an MIT grad) knew the best watering holes in Boston. And .... before classes, we would meet at Jake Wirth's tavern and drink. Not milk. I was drinking bourbon manhattans in those days and would have two before class .... you can imagine.
We'd sit in back of the class smiling, never taking notes, as things were wobbly, and never asking questions, as we had no clue what the professor was saying. But we would crash study for tests and were getting very good scores.
The GE rep once asked the prof "how are the GE guy's doing?" The prof said something like "They are amazing. Never bother to ask questions, and don't even take notes. Apparently they just remember everything I say."
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Those were the days, my friend
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We thought they'd never end
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The 1970s : I was 30, engineer at General Electric, married, two young kids (three by 1978), working at night toward my second MS degree ..... trying to meet the world's expectations of me .... insane .
Annual checkup:
Blood pressure = 120/76
Cholesterol = 134
All other numbers good.