Keys

I was going to a university in Richmond, VA, in 1966 when we had a big snowfall. On one Tuesday it snowed about 13 inches. I don't know if "official" observations recorded this amount, but I was there and I shoveled snow for two or three hours to free my '55 Chevy from the snow, so I remember how deep it was. Then two days later, on a Thursday, it snowed again, about 12 inches, and my Chevy was buried again. So once more I had to spend two or three hours digging it out. You don't forget experiences like that. No, they're not major life changing events, but they're unusual enough, and pain-in-the-ass enough, that they stay in your conscious memory bank.

That same Chevy has another small story. One night I drove home and parked in front of my house. I got out and shut the door of the Chevy. Only then did I realize that I had just locked my car key inside my car. I had no spare key. So I went inside the house and told my dad what I had just done. He pulled his Buick key out of his pocket and handed it to me. "Try this key," he told me. Chevy and Buick were both made by General Motors, so he had the idea his key might fit the lock on the Chevy. 

And it did. I unlocked the Chevy and retrieved my key and all was good again.

A week or two later I was at my college campus in Richmond when I overheard someone complaining that he had locked his key inside his car. "What kind of car is it?" I asked. He told me. I don't recall the particular make of car, but it was a GM brand. "Take me to your car," I told him.

We walked a couple blocks and he stopped beside his car. I took out my Chevy key and inserted it into his door lock and turned it. The lock popped up and the vehicle was unlocked. All was good again.

I guess that trick with the key is probably in the past. But you never know, so if the situation is dire, you might try it. What do you have to lose?

Golden Gate Bridge

It has been fifty years since I drove across the Golden Gate Bridge, so a couple days ago I did it again. I mainly wanted to see if the toll booths had been taken down. I had heard that they weren't collecting tolls on the bridge any longer.

I had forgotten how tall the bridge's supporting towers are. They are impressive. The roadway seemed different. A little more narrow, perhaps. Did they take part of the roadway to create a sidewalk? 

I entered the bridge from the northern end. The last time I drove across the bridge, the toll booths were at the southern end of the bridge. I thought perhaps they would be gone, but the toll booths are still there. But now, they are devoid of employees. There is no one manning the booths. Signs read "Do Not Stop". The toll is still collected, but it is collected by an electronic mechanism rather than human tolltakers. Virginia uses those automated toll collectors, too. I guess the technology spreads fast. 

Crossing the Bridge, you can pay with FasTrak, License Plate account and one-time payment, or toll invoice. If you have two axles (a car) the toll is $8.75, License Plate and One-Time tolls are $9, and a Toll Invoice is $9.75. But if your vehicle has three or more axles, they sock it to you. A License Plate account or a One-Time payment are $27 for 3 axles, $36 for 4 axles, and so on.

I used to think that "Golden Gate" was the name of the bridge. But I learned long ago that "Golden Gate" is the name of the strait that connects San Francisco Bay with the Pacific Ocean.

Full disclosure: I didn't travel to the West Coast. I visited the bridge electronically. I've driven from Virginia to California (and back) and I've traveled to California on business trips when I was younger, But this time I made the trip the easy way: I used Google Maps. You can go there, too, the same way.

Shower Chair

Because of my age and condition, my partner Nuria decided that I might fall down in the shower and therefore I needed a shower chair. In case you don't know this, you can buy a shower chair and sit in it while you bathe. So she bought a shower chair at Walmart. It came in pieces in a box.

We opened the box and took out bag after bag of parts. There were instructions on how to assemble the chair, but assembly required as much guesswork as reading the instructions. It took 30 minutes but we got it assembled. We took it to the bathroom and tried to fit it into the bathtub, but it wouldn't fit. It would fit sideways, but who takes a shower with the water coming at them from one side? Nobody.

We took the chair to the living room and disassembled it. Taking it apart took only half the time that putting it together required. We put the parts back into the plastic bags, but we had bags left over. We stuffed those into the box and taped it shut.

A day or two later, Nuria brought home another chair. This was just an outdoor folding chair that you might use to seat your friends around a BBQ pit and enjoy the warmth of the flames and the smell and taste of pit-cooked BBQ. We opened up the chair and put it in the bathtub facing the shower head. It fit perfectly. 

Now it remained to try it out. I had doubts, but I turned on the shower and adjusted the water temperature and then sat down in the chair.

The warm water sprayed over me. I washed my hair and face, my chest and stomach, and my arms and legs. Nuria washed my back. It was like a massage combined with a warm shower. It was better than I could have ever guessed it would be. I've had a massage done by a professional masseuse and this felt better (though not nearly as long). I'm a believer now. 

What happened to the first shower chair? Walmart said they'd refund our purchase price but they didn't want the chair returned to them. It makes sense. They'd have to open the box, remove all the parts, make sure all the parts were present, repack the parts, and put them back into a new cardboard box. The cost of the labor for doing that was more than the profit they'd make on the chair. 

All in all, it was an interesting experience.

Alcohol

I've never been much of a drinker of alcohol. I used to hang out at an Applebee's bar, and sometimes I would have a beer, but usually it was just iced tea. 

However, in the past year, I've put the pedal to the metal and my consumption of vodka went through the roof. I'm an artist (writing is an art) and everyone knows artists are flawed -- especially the great ones. Look at van Gogh -- he cut off an ear. Artists are famous for drinking themselves to death. Hank Williams. John Bonham. Amy Winehouse. It's a long list, my friends.

My father was an alcoholic. His brother (my uncle) was an alcoholic. His brother's son (my nephew) was an alcoholic. I've no doubt that my family tree, especially on my father's side, is littered with alcoholics.

So I've been trying to cut back. I think I will have to stop completely. I'm okay with doing that. My father was a heavy drinker for many years, and then he stopped completely. But if he went to a party where alcohol was available, and if he was offered a drink, he would accept it. It's a social politeness, But he would never drink more than one or two drinks and he never resumed buying bourbon. But he did have an incentive to quit drinking: his doctor told him on several visits that if he (my dad) didn't quit drinking then he (my dad) would die soon. 

continued a day later... 

I too have an incentive. I've been drinking to get to sleep. My doctor refused to prescribe sleeping pills or even mild tranquilizers for me. So I turned to alcohol. However, I have to drink a lot more than I should in order to get to sleep.

Early Monday morning I got up to drink another shot so I could go back to sleep. But something went wrong and I fell down and hit my head on the floor. I think it knocked me out. Nuria found me but I was too heavy for her to get back into bed, so she called 911 and asked them what she should do. Fairly quickly the street in front of my house looked like a parking lot for emergency vehicles. There were two police cars, two fire trucks, and the paramedics in an ambulance. She said there were eight men in my bedroom trying to talk with me, but I was not responsive. So they took me to a hospital. I "woke up" in an ER room next to a nurse's station. I was there for about six hours before they released me.

I told Nuria that I wasn't going to drink any more alcohol and I meant it. Alcohol is not good for me. 

I had some debate about whether I should publish this blog. I felt like I shouldn't. Nuria encouraged me to publish it. She said there were millions of people like me and some of them may find my blog and benefit from reading about my experience. If you are one of them, you know that what happened to me can happen to you. Don't let it.

VPN

Do you value your privacy? Me too. That's why I use a VPN when I'm on the Internet.

What's a VPN? It stands for Virtual Private Network. One end of the VPN is at my PC and the other end is at the VPN provider. The VPN scrambles my communications so that no one who intercepts my web-surfing or email can know what I'm doing. My data is flowing through a "tunnel" which encrypts the data and obscures my IP address. The other end of my VPN is in Washington D.C., although there are many cities around the world that I could connect with. When I connect with the other end of the VPN, it unscrambles my communications but it continues to use a fake IP addrss. No one out there who may intercept my communications knows my identity. 

There are many VPNs from which to choose. I use PrivadoVPN. Due to a special deal I have with EasyNews, I don't pay for PrivadoVPN. However, if I did have to pay for it. it would cost $1.99/month for 24 months Their website gives a lot more information. If you want to sign up, go to https://privadovpn.com/

Biden Drops Out

Joe Biden has dropped out of the 2024 presidential race. I almost breathed a sigh of relief. Although I liked Biden's record during his first four years, I had come to believe that I could not support him for another term in office. He is just too old. Worse, he stumbles through his thoughts and speech. He doesn't look like a man ready for four more years in a high stress job.

At the same time, I knew I couldn't support Trump. He is a convicted felon and an admitted woman molester. Remember the "hot mic" moment on the Access Hollywood clip in which Trump bragged about being able to molest women and get away with it? Except, one woman sued him and won a judgement against Trump. I can't support a molester (and possible rapist) for president. Our country deserves better than that.

So who is going to take Biden's place? My bet is on Kamala Harris. If elected, she would be the country's first female president (it's about time!) and the first Black president. Her father was born in Jamaica and her mother was born in India. That would make her the first president of South Asian descent.

Compared to Harris, Trump is the pasty, old, rich White billionaire. It's not a good look.

Name Tag

This happened a couple of days ago.

My partner Nuria wears a Macy's name tag. It's a white tag with black letters that spell her name, "NURIA". A magnet inside her blouse holds the name tab in place.

A few days ago, Nuria was leaving for work. She put her name tag on, and left the house. When she got to her car, she noticed that her name tag was missing. She looked in her car and under the seats, but no name tag. She left the car and retraced her steps to the front door, but no name tag. I joined the search, walking up and down the front sidewalk, looking in her car, searching under the seats, but it clearly was not there, nor was it on or beside the front sidewalk. It was gone; it had vanished. We continued looking, even taking her car to the back yard so we could search it more thoroughly in safety. I retraced her steps over and over, as did she, but the name tag was gone. In the twenty feet between our front porch and the street, her name tag had utterly vanished. She found the magnet inside her blouse, but the name tag it had held in place had vanished during her short walk down the front sidewalk.

How? 

Procyon

Sixty years ago I enjoyed reading and writing science fiction short stories. I never had any of them published but, all these years later, I have the frst page of one of my stories on my PC. The name of the story is/was "Procyon". I am posting that page below:

A thousand miles from the planet Earth a starship blinked into existence, bringing with it a smaller ship. In the smaller ship a man named Rymer turned his face toward the round viewport beside him and watched the starship dwindle as the engine of his ship placed distance between the two vessels. As he gazed upon it the starship snapped back into nothingness, like a burst soap bubble, and he was alone.

In the warm darkness of his cramped cabin Rymer continued to stare at the space where the starship had been, while his mind braced against the isolation that was already beginning to wash over him. If he could remain alive for the next seventy-two hours he would again see that starship and would move toward it, watching it loom larger and closer until the thin metal shell that was his ship gingerly touched the other silvery hull; then the stars would disappear and he would be on his way home.

He extended a gloved hand toward a switch and the stars began to rain past the viewport. He let the ship roll slowly until he saw the burning spark called Procyon, and then his mind flashed toward a world spinning about that distant sun. His friends were there, as was his life - not here, he thought, on this strange muddy ball called Earth. The starship would reach that distant world in a few days, but his vessel was not a starship and could never make the journey. He was stranded here until the starship returned and nudged against his tiny craft and gripped it in the field of its generators and tore it out of space to hurtle back with it toward that star eleven light years away.

He touched another switch and Earth rose in the viewport, then stopped huge and motionless to fill all space outside the aperture. Rymer stared with cold dislike at the bright planet, for it had caused him to be here and to chance losing his life in hostile space far from his native world. He stared and frowned, while the bright planet gleamed its warm radiance into his face and onto the cabin wall beyond, and at last he rolled the ship away so that he could no longer see the golden world outside.

His eyes skipped among the dials and gauges glowing reassuringly around him before resting upon a screen that held an image of the world outside. As the ship's flight computer executed maneuvers necessary to wrestle the ship into an earth orbit, Rymer adjusted a grid over the image and turned on his reconnaissance equipment. He consulted charts and aimed his instruments at selected points on the planet below, while a machine tabulated radio emission spectra, infrared sources, atmospheric spectrograms, and a dozen other factors. At the completion of his survey Rymer noted with considerable surprise that he had discovered a radio beacon on the planet's surface. Further investigation was required, and as he programmed a computer landing, Rymer wondered if he was about to step into a trap.

A rocket flared silent flame and the ship banked into the first thin stratum of Earth's atmosphere, slowly steepening its angle of descent until the craft began pushing before it a thundering shock wave that streamed back and away from the ship, carrying off the searing heat generated by ramming through miles of atmosphere. Rymer sat inside his small metal world and looked without thinking at the fiery death beyond the viewport.

Happy 4th

Happy 4th of July and, like the man said, try not to destroy the neighborhood when you're celebrating...

[Play Video]

The 2024 Election

In about 4 months, on November 5, 2024, Americans will vote for their next president. I support Joe Biden and I'll be glad to explain why.

Compare Donald Trump with Joe Biden:

Donald Trump:

• signed a new tax bill into law that gave permanent tax cuts to the ultra-wealthy, but then applied deferred (for 10 years) tax increases to lower and middle income taxpayers.
• downplayed the severity of Covid, which led to more deaths in the US than anywhere else on earth.
• abandoned our allies and coddled the world's dictators. (I remember when Trump met with Putin; only three people were in the meeting: Putin, Putin's translator, and Trump. Trump had his own translator but did not allow him to be in the meeting with Putin. Why?)
• enacted a policy of separating migrant children from their families at the border.
• emboldened neo-Nazis and white supremacists to the point where they were marching in the streets (remember Charlottesville?)
• Trump's final act in office was to prevent a peaceful transfer of power for the first time in this nation's history.
• Trump is an aspiring dictator and has said so.

Joe Biden:

• led the US to the fastest economic recovery in the entire world.
• secured record climate spending.
• got the government to finally negotiate lower drug prices for Americans along with capping out of pocket healthcare costs for seniors, and lowered the cost of insulin and inhalers.
• passed the inflation reduction act.
• increased veteran health care benefits with the PACT act.
• upgraded our nation's infrastructure with the Infrastructure act.
• created a clean energy boom with the CHIPS act.
• made kids safer with the gun safety law.
• added 800,000 manufacturing jobs.
• added 300,000 clean energy jobs.
• added 15 million total jobs.
• presided over a record stock market, a record economic recovery, sinking inflation, higher wages, and the strongest economy in the entire world.