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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Everything turned out great and we had a very nice Monday night dinner.
Josh Allen was amazing once again but there were a lot of injuries to the Bills defense.
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.
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.
We talked with a lot of people at the wake. I was especially glad to talk with John who I haven't seen in a while. He and Patrick were part of our Men's Club group that met regularly over the years but not recently. It's a little weird that I had just run into Bob, another member of our group, at physical therapy where he has been recovering from a stroke. I thought I might have seen him at the wake too but we were there for about 45 minutes during a three hour wake.
It was a slim novel and it took me just under a week to read it. There were times when I wasn't sure if I wanted to continue. There were many interesting aspects to the story but it didn't really grab me overall in the way I was expecting. Something was missing or just so different and I'm still not sure what it was. The story was rather dystopian and in a way it was a social media horror tale or a good reason to never pick up a cell phone again. It was really scary.
It takes place in a near future city overcome with climate change and full of intelligent robots called "hums". It really was a very serious critique of our current technology and what could happen in the very near future it we're not careful. It felt like that dystopian society was actually really happening today and even more so under the current threat of the magat control of the government. A very chilling world of capitalism run amok. This novel would also be an example of a story exploring the new world of "brain rot" caused by excessive social media use that some in the medical field have been warning about. Reading this made me fear for my grandchildren and the influence of their devices.
Josh Allen was amazing and scored 6 touchdowns making NFL history. He threw 3 touchdowns and ran for 3 more but what the hell happened to their defense to let the opposition score 44 points. Apparently the Rams wanted the game more because if they had lost they would have been out of the playoff hunt. The Bills have already clinched their playoff spot as the conference winner.
The way the season has been going Bills fans will be satisfied with nothing less than a trip to the Super Bowl. For me I just want entertaining games.
A lot of the neighbors have their lights up especially directly across the street so now we've joined in. The kids will be happy.
Blue again.
Update 12/16/24: I added a string of blinking mixed color lights on the bush to the right. Becky accidently bought them for our tree as a backup but we don't want blinking lights in the house.
Too bad about that Bills game.
First we parked over on Bidwell and walked down to Talking Leaves book store where we bought some books for our grandkids. It is so nice to browse around in that book store. Then we took the bag of books and walked down another block to the restaurant. It was cold but not snowing although there was a lot of ice and snow on the ground so we had to be careful walking.
Our reservation was for 5:45 and we got there right on time. There were no reservations available after 6 pm. It wasn't very crowded when we arrived but there was soon a steady flow of people getting tables.
We decided to once again split a dinner of pasta and pizza. This time we got a Sicilian White pizza with sliced tomatoes, fontinella, oregano, romano and some amazingly delicious onions. I really loved the Rigatoni Bolognese we had the last time and I wanted it again. I was curious to see if they were consistent with that wonderful flavor and texture. We got it again and it was just as good this second time... maybe even better because this time I had some of their homemade Italian bread with it. Becky had some olive loaf bread.
With that Bolognese I really needed a glass of Tuscan Blend Antinori Italian wine. Becky had a glass of Pinot Grigio. I ordered another glass of wine and this time I got a Malbec. When the waitress came back with the wine she had a large quartino instead of the regular glass. She said the bartender poured the larger container but we would be charged for the regular glass as I ordered. It was like having another glass and a half. I remarked that it must be my "birthday special". She got a kick out of that it was my birthday dinner. A little later she offered us the desert menu. We had some cake waiting for us at home but I really liked that they had a gelato desert which I saw at another table. So I ordered it for us to share since it was my birthday. The gelato desert had three scoops along with a chocolate biscotti... like in the photo.
She brought out the gelato with a sparkling candle and exclaimed a happy birthday. The restaurant was very crowded and everyone saw the large display of sparkles coming from our table. We had seen this display at another table the last time we were here and it was impressive. I was surprised and somewhat embarrassed about all the clapping of other folks at their tables. I should have got a photo of that candle.
We had a very efficient and entertaining waitress. We had a good time talking with her and joking around about various things. The entire staff was good and the service was outstanding.
At one point we saw a guy walking down the street by himself and then entered the restaurant. We'll refer to him as The Silver Fox. He was tall, thin and a shock of white hair combed back into a high pompadour and wearing a Bills jacket. He was obviously looking for action as he came in and went straight for the bar which was very crowded. He squeezed himself into a solo seat. Last time we were there on a Saturday evening and there was a lot of action at the bar that included a significant number of blonde women drinking cocktails. So we weren't surprised to see the Silver Fox. Then our food came and we were busy. It was a while later when we looked up at the bar and noticed the Silver Fox sitting there with a blonde woman. He was still with her an hour or so later when we left the restaurant.
Overall we had a very good entertaining time at JT's.
It was also very tasty with some nice hot sauce added and dipping into with some of our favorite bread from the co-op.
They are calling for more snow tonight and into tomorrow but not saying how much accumulation because of course they don't know because of the lake effect snows and changing winds coming off the lake.
I took this second picture early this morning when I first woke up.
The concert was spectacular and we enjoyed it very much. Most of the five pieces they performed with 20th century romantic and two by American women composers.
The only problem I had with it was that the length of the first "half" of the concert went much longer than usual. I had PT this morning and had trouble sitting through the entire first set without a little squirming in my sight and having the need to stretch my leg. The break did not happen until around 9 pm. We got out of the concert a little before 10.
The members of the Trio are all Russian instrumentalists based in the US and have been playing together since 2011. They have released a lot of albums that I should check out in Spotify.
Another PT session. This is the fourth one and I'm feeling better. Matt is adding more exercises that are helping me stretch my spinal column where that protruding disc is causing problems.
I've been parking a couple of blocks away from the center. It helps for me to walk a little before the sessions and then afterwards. I could park closer but this does make me feel better.
I ran into Bob again and this time he was talking nonstop. He explained more about his stroke and what he needed to do to recover. The stroke caused a lot of problems with his sensory capabilities including visual and hearing. I noticed he was wearing hearing aids now. He showed me the scar where he had the brain surgery. I will need to get over to see him at home and give him some support. Next week I'll get his phone number again. It would be nice to see Desty too.
And then there was another conversation with my new Philly friend. I thought I'd bring up something that only Philly people liked to talk about and that was the Mummer's Parade. I mentioned that as a kid I played sax in a string band. Well, that got him excited because it turns out he is a Mummer too and marches in a Fancy Division group. His father and grandfather are also Mummers who were in the Quaker City String Band. One of them, I'm not sure which, is in the Mummer's Hall of Fame. Matt was wondering what we were talking about.
The magats are all in an uproar over this pardon but they loudly cheered when trump pardoned the many traitors, criminals and family members. And now how many more scumbags will trump pardon in the coming term as president including the insurrectionist currently in prison for their traitorous activities. Makes me sick.
