Chicane

Happy Saturday – I might as well admit that after watching Shaun, I am still snorting in my coffee.

For years I’ve had a thing for Shaun-the-Sheep animation videos – LOVE them! Once again, I just had to watch Shaun as he spotted an opportunity to do an Irish Dance. It was St. Patrick’s Day after all. Here is a snippet:

Chicane – In reality, my week was one strong (i.e. uneventful) straight line. Marcia, physically, is getting stronger. We’ve had daily walks around the building, and we’ve also started heading towards the nearby side street. Having said that, I felt that I had to get started on adding a curve or two onto that ‘straight’ line.

Add, that our pantry was getting low on food stuff, and that as yet I can’t leave Marcia to her own wiles. It was Adrianne who came up with the idea. Marcia loves Aldi’s as her go to grocery place. Soooo, yesterday I quickly set up an Aldi account. She and I worked on a list of grocery items. I placed the order and selected a two hour out pick-up time window.

With a little cajoling I managed to talk Marcia to join and take a grocery pick-up drive with me. The drive magically included a few twists and turns through a couple of nearby neighborhoods and then ended up at the local Aldi. Minutes later they loaded the groceries in the car and home we went.

By 7:00pm last night she was in bed. The ‘adventure’ tired her out and that was a good thing.

Afroman – This week in the rural county adjacent to ours, Adams County, a trial was settled. Settled in favor of free speech and the right to mock. The whole business blew across the ‘media-sphere’. From CNN to NPR, from the NY Times to the LA Times, it was all wild times. Our radio was filled with an Afroman rap called; “Moma’s Pound Cake” featuring a leering Deputy in on the Police raid on Afroman’s home eyeing the glass covered Moma’s Pound Cake that was sitting on the kitchen table, all while carrying an AK style rifle.

Rapper Afroman said this after winning the Police Deputies’ lawsuit; “I got the right to kick a can in my backyard, use my freedom of speech, turn my bad times into a good time yes, I do, and I think I’m a sport for doing so, because I don’t go to their house, kick down their doors, flip them off on their surveillance cameras, then try to play the victim and sue them.”

Fun times. A massive ‘thank-you-very-much’ for Free Speech!

Racing – I’ve mentioned that my week was quite linear and that I needed a chicane to break up the time.

So, instead of only watching a long line of British vintage, sports, and touring car races, and Paris to Nice bicycle races, which I did, I watched some races held at the Goodwood Festival in West Sussex, England.

Among the races held at Goodwood was one comprised of over thirty early MG-B sports cars. Many years ago, I owned one. My MG-B I never fully restored but got running well enough to drive back and forth the 100 miles to Louisville and back a few times when I was working on my degree.

Aah, for the memories, memories of throwing that little shifter and punching the accelerator, cleaning the spoke wheels, messing with the dual Stromberg carburetors, even pulling the clutch successfully. The electric fuel pump though was a piece of misery.

Quotation on Time – “Time is what happens when nothing else happens” Richard Feynman (1918 – 1988) American theoretical physicist known for pioneering work in quantum electrodynamics.

But, there had to be more than just watching vintage car races. With that in mind I started on some of the thinking of one Dr. Jim Al-Khalili (Sep 20, 1962) Iraqi-British theoretical physicist on the subject of Time. It’s not that I am some sort of a nerd that I came across his thinking. It’s just that Al-Khalili is frequently seen as a broadcaster in the UK on a subject I find interesting.

Also, he’s got a number of YouTubes and an uncanny ability to make the difficult sensible to a ‘bloke’ such as me. I’ve attached an interview I thought you might find interesting (be prepared, it’s a solid hour plus long).

Irish goodbye – Mid week it was the day where most everyone became Irish for the day. Is it just me or am I correct in that we in the USA have the uncanny ability to take any type of event, historical, religious, or one the English and Canadians refer to as “Bank Holiday” and turn it into a major money grab. Anyway, hope you had a fine St. Patrick’s Day.

Life is AMAZING!

Dirk

BONUS POINTS:

The Secret Service has a fascination with the use of code names when referring to the president, vice president, their family members. The following names are the code names of several first ladies. All are correct except for one. Which name was never used as a Secret Service code name for a first lady.

1. Muse
2. Dancer
3. Rover
4. Sunnyside
5. Auntie
6. Lace

Last week answer – #5