Snow... All Day

It has been snowing all day. When we got up this morning it was snowing and it hasn't stopped at all for any amount of time. That should be a lot of snow for a December 20th but... maybe we got an inch over the last twelve hours or so today. Nothing has accumulated. It just comes down and melts away. It's all very slushy but nothing is sticking.

I went out to shovel the snow a little and it was kind of a joke. It had been snowing all day and I wanted to clear off the steps which were covered but not much. I thought I would get rid of the little bit of snow there was on the sidewalk so that it wouldn't freeze later. It took all of about two minutes.

It's supposed to keep on snowing into the night but still not expecting much to accumulate. Very odd for this time of year.

Those Burgers

We love the burgers from Dash's and especially on some nice brioche rolls. Instead of her usual home fried potatoes she cooked up some of those sweet potato yams that she had brought home for Thanksgiving but didn't use. We've been eating a lot of them lately and they are great. Nice salad too.

New Stove Time?

Our kitchen stove is old. We bought it as a replacement for the crappy stove that was in the house when we moved here in 1997. We got this stove several years later probably around 2001 or 2002. I know our current stove is over 20 years old. So why is it probably time for a new stove? First of all we have started smelling a faint trace of gas when the oven is lit. The smell only last a minute or so but it is enough to cause concern and means that maybe when we light the stove there is a puff a gas released before it is lit. The oven does light right away and stays lit. 

One of the burners has needed to be lit by hand for several years now. We have a lighter handy in the adjacent drawer to fire up that one burner. The others work fine. There are some rust spots on various parts of the stove. It is time to get a new stove.

We also have been wanting to replace the hood over the stove for some time. The light doesn't work and the fan is erratic. We have had to set up a desk lamp next to the stove to provide enough light to see what's cooking on the stove. So when we replace the stove we will also replace the hood light and fan.

Another School Shooting

Another school mass shooting happened this week. This time it was a young girl shooting her classmates. Apparently only 3% of mass shooters in America are female. But here again there was a troubled teenager with access to guns. 

This shooting was at a Christian school. Makes the thoughts and prayers mantra sound particularly sick. The shooter also shot herself in the head following the attack on the other students in the school.

There have been 488 mass shooting cases in the United States in 2024 according to the database of the anti-gun violence group Gun Violence America (GVA). 

Shots have been fired in schools This was the 323rd school shooting this year according to the national K-12 School Shooting Database. This is our sick American society. Nowhere in the world is there another country with the gun violence of America. Gun violence is the leading cause of death of children in the USA. 

Dinner at Romeo & Juliet's

We had another wonderful dinner tonight at one of our favorite nearby restaurants... Romeo & Juliet's Cafe on Hertel. Started off with some nice Italian wine and then we shared a Picasso Panini which they describe as an artwork of prosciutto crudo, soppressata, capicolla, salami and mozzarella. We also shared an oven baked Margherita pizza. Delicious as always and a nice way to spend some quality time enjoying ourselves after a busy day getting ready for the holidays.

Rebop Kwaku Baah

The other night Becky and I were watching some music concert clips on YouTube and one of them I put on was Traffic performing The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys from a concert in 1972. She asked about the African percussionist playing with them and did know who he was or when he played with them. I always remembered Rebop as he was known from the early 70's until the band broke up in 1974. The African percussion was an important part of their second band sound. He was not with them in their earlier 1967 to 1969 period.

I saw Traffic in concert in Norfolk in early 1973 and Rebop was playing with them at that time. I had also seen them in 1969 but of course that was a somewhat different band at the time with Steve Winwood, Dave Mason, Chris Wood and Jim Capaldi. 

So today I looked up Traffic and their history because I was interested in the backstory of Rebop. I saw that he was Ghanian from the Ivory Coast. He played on five Traffic albums and also on Eric Clapton's Rainbow Concert album which has always been one of my favorite live records. After Traffic broke up he joined the band Can and played with them until they broke up in 1979.

Sadly I read of his death in January 1983 from a ruptured brain aneurysm that occurred on stage while performing on a tour with Jimmy Cliff. Another brain aneurysm connection that kind of freaked me out. 

Chicken and Sweet Potatos

I should say chicken cutlets and big sweet potatoes. Really big sweet potatoes. Or should we call them yams. Whatever we call them they were delicious for dinner tonight along with a nice salad. Those sweet potatoes were amazing just cut in half with salt and butter.

Becky had brought home a large number of sweet potatoes from the market to prepare a side dish for Thanksgiving dinner at Dave and Donna's house. Then she got a call from Dave asking her to bring something other than sweet potatoes because they were trying out some new recipe. So Becky put the very big yams/sweet potatoes in the freezer for later use and made something else.

Today was a day of later use. She put two of the yams in the microwave to thaw out and then to bake. It took quite a long time to soften up and then to heat up properly. Meanwhile the chicken cutlets were getting ready.

Everything turned out great and we had a very nice Monday night dinner.

Bills Score 48 Pts.

Tonight was another entertaining Bills game and they scored 48 points. They also gave up 42 points to the Detroit Lions. That's two weeks in a row they scored over 40 points and gave up over 40 points. In the two weeks they scored 90 points and were 1 - 1. Last week I wrote about that entertaining loss. It's going to be an interesting playoff time. The game set the record for most points scored in a game this season and beat the record set last week when the Rams beat the Bills 44-42. 

Josh Allen was amazing once again but there were a lot of injuries to the Bills defense.

Those Drones

There has been a lot of stories in the news recently about the numbers of drones people are seeing flying above their homes. This has been especially reported in New Jersey and other areas of the Northeast. Nobody seems to know where they are coming from and who is operating them. Some airports have even had to close for a while because of these drones. The state governments are starting to make some waves like they are going to do something about the issue because nothing has been done by the Federal government including releasing any information about the drones.

Of course some people claim they are UFOs and others say they are foreign country's spy drones. Some of these drones are very large too. It seems like every day there is a new story every day on the news channels.

This morning I woke up very early around 5:30 am and walked over to the window and looked out at the sky. I saw a drone flying. It was a clear night sky and I could definitely see the drone flying back and forth with blinking lights. Some were white and some were red. It was off to the west which to me meant that it was probably a traffic drone flying over the expressways where the 198 comes together with the interstate 190. That intersection is about 4 miles away and I had no doubt that I was seeing a drone but it was probably an official one that was monitoring traffic. I later saw that there was an accident on the highway in that area but it was weird to experience a drone this morning.

I looked again later when I got up but I could not see any more of them.

PM with Dave

Dave and I went down to the PM tonight. We walked over together after meeting at the corner of Crescent and Russell as usual. This is our fourth time going down there together for a couple of beers and a lot of talk. 

It was another crazy crowded Friday night even at 6:45 pm. The bar was full and most of the dining room tables were full too. We parked ourselves at the waitress station after asking the staff. That station is a high top table with a couple of stools where we sat for awhile. A little later a couple of seats opened up at the bar and we moved over.

As usual we talked with a few other folks at the bar and I ran into several people I knew including a couple of neighbors on our block... just like last time but different neighbors. Dave and I talked a lot and we also talked with the neighbors. We ended up having three beers because those neighbors bought us a round when they were leaving. We had one IPA and a couple of lagers for the night.

We walked home. It was cold and there was a lot of ice on the sidewalks but we were careful. I had a flashlight too. We were home a little before 9 pm. Also didn't realize it was Friday the 13th. I had an NA beer when I got home.