The early, unexpected, but welcome retirement

My vehicle recently developed a horrible shimmy that had my hair turning gray.  The thought of bringing it in to a mechanic, only to find out I needed to shell out something like $1200 was horrible.  The first thing I did was take off the tires, one by one to make sure there was no damage to the wheels & to clean the insides off.  I scraped a great deal of mud off of the rear tires, and hoped that this was the cause.  Past experience with dirty wheels has shown me that this may cause a horrible imbalance and making the car wobble a bit.  Seeing there was no damage, I raced off in hopes that clean wheels would solve the problem.  It didn't.

Not sure what to do, I tried to ignore the problem for a while.  I had bigger fish to fry, so the shimmy would have to wait.  Each time I slammed my driver door and took off, the shimmy only got worse.  Hard to ignore.  But first, I had to go buy some vegetables to go with dinner.  On my way back to my vehicle, I noticed that the left rear tire looked horribly bulged out in one spot.  A closer look showed that it was in fact bulged out. 

When I got home, I immediately changed that tire and sped off to see if my problem was fixed.  It was!  I have to wonder why the tire failed like so.  There were no visible signs of damage to the exterior of the tire.  Something on the inside gave way, I suppose.  But what, and why?  The tire was not old at all.  It still had years of use left in it, if not for this failure.  The possibilities on why it failed are endless. 

My guess is that a defect in the rubber on one spot of the tire waited for the sunshine to hit it, while driving 45 mph.  While at the same time, the tread near that defective spot hit a golf ball sized rock, and then on the next revolution- a little puddle of water was the last straw, because it caused a chemical reaction making the rubber stretch a little.  Just lucky I found out what it was, before a blow out occurred. 

Sir- that'll be an arm and a leg, plus your soul.

Tank of gas in Dillingham:
 Arm and a leg


Tank of gas, and a quart of motor oil in Dillingham: 
Arm, a leg, plus a soul

Assorted goodies going stealth through our local airlines

I was sitting in the Pen Air terminal in Anchorage on my last trip home.  I noticed that some people were reading, some fooling around on phones & other techie gadgets, some snoozing.  I chose to occasionally stare out the window at all of the planes coming and going.  Then at the wall, or the floor.  What makes this staring special for me is that there is non-stop thinking going on.  I'll pull up a memory from upstairs, think about it for a while & this sets off a chain reaction of memories popping up.  At each memory popping up, I'll sift through all of the fine details.  Then I'll start working it through different what-if scenarios.  Sometimes, I find answers & solutions to my old questions & problems years later.   

With a quick glance around the room now & then, I notice a carry-on here & there.  My carry-on always contains my beloved laptop computer.  Camera.  (Picture above was taken after whipping my camera out on a flight)  Not much else in my carry-on.  The thought of checking my laptop in at the counter in other baggage is horrifying.  The possibility of it getting treated like a pinball, or beanbag no doubt is there.  So I'll pass on checking it.

I have my reasons for having a carry-on.  I wonder what all of those other carry-ons contain.  Has to be precious, otherwise it would just be checked it in, right?  Possibly just traveling light, though.  So you just walk up to the counter and check in, then declare that you have a carry-on.  Bam-bam.  Then you jump on the airplane.  Bam.

When you fly on a bigger plane to a far away destination, you'll be going through security.  Take your jacket and shoes off.  Belt, wristwatch- you name it.  They get scanned, as well as your carry-on.  Why is there no security screening for these smaller flights?  Smaller planes?  Less people?  Cost too much?  Convenience?  This simple walk up & jump on a plane pretty much allows anything to travel from point A to point B.  I'll bet that this is the preferred transport method for getting weed, pills, and whatever else is around here into the area.  Wouldn't a simple security screening prevent most of this drug smuggling from happening?  Does checked baggage get a screening of some sort?  I guess screening is just to prevent weapons on to the plane?  Don't get me wrong, now- I enjoy the least amount of roadblocks on the path home.  Does anyone know why security screening is only used on the bigger flights, and not the little ones? 

You're considered an adult when you're 11 years old

In Pennsylvania, that is.  Is this to set an example for all 11 year olds?  Read this. Kids should know better than to go around shooting people with shotguns, but what purpose will trying them as adults serve?  13, 14, 15- maybe (teenagers).  But 11?  Seems whacky to me.  I can't imagine the kid being convicted with anything more than involuntary manslaughter.   Of course they argue that he is unlikely to be rehabbed in juvie, but I'm still saying that 11 is a tad bit young for being tried as an adult.

My thoughts on Sarah Palin

The only thoughts that I'll share today on Sarah Palin are the ones involving all of the people that seem to hate her.  Back when she announced that she was resigning as Governor, I was watching Channel 2 News with a couple other people.  We all seemed to wonder why she would do such a thing.  Everyone pointing fingers at her seemed like a good answer.

Today, anything to do with Sarah Palin in the news draws in bucket loads of comments in the Anchorage Daily News.  Most of them are negative comments- hate comments.  No matter what she does, people have something bad to say about it.

Which brings me to her book.  I think that she had this all planned out way back before she resigned, knowing a book would have the moola rolling in (all she had to do was something that drew a lot of attention- quitting).  Now she has an eight episode show planned for The Discovery Channel which commands one million dollars per episode.  I am really thinking about what her cut is on this million dollars per episode.  Maybe she had this planned out, too. 

I'm not saying that I like or dis-like Sarah Palin.  What I'm going to say is that she is probably laughing all the way to the bank at all of her haters.  I'll bet that all of the haters are the first to buy her books, and will be the first to watch her shows.

Anyway, that's all.

Get well soon, Goldie.

Goldie is the family goldfish.  He is an inexpensive common goldfish.  His first days in his new home were somewhat miserable, because I didn't fully research the needs of a goldfish.  He lived in a very cramped little bowl and seemed to be not happy.  I learned him being plunged into new surroundings may have been part of his unhappiness.  More importantly, though- he wasn't getting the oxygen he needed in such a small bowl.  Living in his own pollution.  He didn't seem to care for food and always looked scared.

Not long after coming to live with us, he enjoyed moving to a much larger home- complete with a non-stop supply of air bubbles to keep his water full of oxygen, and enjoys regular (weekly) 30% water changes.  One day after moving into his new, larger home- he showed a very healthy appetite.  He was fed on a schedule of once in the morning, and once at night.

Goldie is about four months old.  About three weeks ago, he stopped eating food.  He was introduced to different types of food, in case he was just sick of eating the same-old-same-old.  No matter what he's fed, he doesn't eat.  At the bottom of his tank are popcorn sized (popped-up popcorn) ceramic rocks.  My fear is that somehow one of these rocks broke into smaller pieces and he gobbled one of them up, but can't spit it out or pass it.

If Goldie was your beloved family member, and you were faced with just two choices- which would it be:

1. Let him tough it out & maybe things will get better.  (Even though he might be suffering now)
2. Flush him down the toilet and pray that he experiences a very quick, painless death. 

Look at that! / Is he looking?

I'll start this one off by simply saying that this information is straight out of the Anchorage Daily News about five years ago, when they had a little sidebar in the comics section that was always loaded with little known and interesting facts.  I won't get into what made this thought pop into my head.

I'll mention again that this is from a well read newspaper, not something that I made up.  It said that when a man and a woman are crossing paths (walking down the store aisle, sidewalk, etc.),  the first feature on the woman that the man looks at is her breasts.  The first feature on the man that the woman looks at are his eyes.  This is so she can make sure his eyes are trained on her breasts (an approval thing).

Who can prove this wrong?

Best breakfast on the face of the earth

One medium potato, cut into little cubes and fried
Two slices of Jimmy Dean pork sausage, fried
Two large chicken eggs, prepared over-easy
Two slices of whole wheat bread, toasted & buttered with real butter

Optional:
Strong cup of joe
About 1/2 cup whole milk to wash everything down in one gulp

Those damn random thoughts bouncing around in my head

My memory banks seem to be doing an excellent job of storing information upstairs.  The process that my memory banks use to store information is a complete mystery to me.  I have found out that some of the information stored upstairs is not always readily available.  This not-readily-available information is usually unimportant.  Old memories.  The important stuff is usually easily accessible.

Sometimes, I ask myself what brings out this not-readily-available information.  This is another complete mystery to me.  Today, I thought about it and am convinced that something must 'trigger' these thoughts to surface.  Something that I see or hear 'triggers' a complex information retrieval system that targets anything upstairs that resembles my 'trigger.'  No matter how old the information is, apparently.

Todays random thought bouncing around in my head brings me to Burger King, where I saw one lady that had five children with her in the 'play' area.  Ranging in age from crawling to about 5 years old.  She was feeding two of them, while a couple more were playing in the play area, barefoot.  The crawler was nowhere near her, crawling around by the garbage bin near the door.  Everyone seemed to be staring at him, wondering who his parents were.  Someone finally picked him up and the mother came over to grab him.  Busy mom, I guess.  This, I can pass off as excusable.  What I can't pass off as excusable is when someone came in while she was getting her kids ready to leave and she said 'this floor is disgusting, just look at it.'  I had to really force myself to keep the words 'are you kidding, lady?- your baby was just crawling all the way over by the garbage on this disgusting floor.  what are you talking about?' from coming out.

Anyway, that's all.

Penny Pincher

Cheap = Me mashing a little sliver of a bar of soap onto a new bar of soap.