Things to do when you're Retired ...

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Being retired gives me time to seek out and find interesting stuff on the internet. Then spend hours watching things like the offerings from the German YouTube channel PARALIGHTWORX.

I've watched a number of their World War II short films, which are generally very well done using accurate equipment and uniforms. Hollywood should hire these guys! Here's an example of one of their WWII films - 

(Note, turn on CC for subtitles in English.)

It's not just WWII, here's an excellent vignette for a small party of Romans cut off somewhere in the Teutoburger forest¹ -

(Warning, this one is rather bloody.)

If you want more, you should visit their channel's home page here.

They've even done some Napoleonic stuff, I'm just starting to scratch the surface here. If you have an interest in military history, you should check them out.

As I find things like this, I'll share. For now, enjoy!

¹ The Teutoburger forest was the scene of a battle in 9 AD where Germanic tribes under the leadership of Arminius (known as Hermann in German) destroyed three Roman legions. And by destroyed I mean not one Roman survived. Yes, the battle is a big deal in German history.

Remembering ...

Sasha (2016)
OAFS Photo

So that photo above popped up in my Facebook memories today, which triggered a massive wave of memories and emotions. Because Sasha has been gone for over four years now, her sister Anya for over two. We don't have cats anymore for a number of reasons which I won't go into, suffice to say, I miss those days.

Sasha used to "help" with the Christmas cards, pretty near every year of her long (but not long enough) life, from 2003 to 2020. That's a lot of cards.

My Helper
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She was an excellent cat, as was her sister. Man, I miss them both, a lot.

I mentioned to The Nuke the other day that an old high school friend of mine had passed away, shortly after Thanksgiving. She mentioned that she's starting to see old friends in the obituaries. I suppose it comes with the territory as you get older. Don't like it but hey, circle of life and all that.

I like this song, love it as a matter of fact. You don't have to listen to it but it sums up my life pretty well now. (Other than the "Got no money coming in" line, I do have a very nice pension. Couple of 'em as a matter of fact.)

Enjoy or not, as always, this is America, your choice.

Inside

Ian Anderson

All the places I've been make it hard to begin

To enjoy life again on the inside, but I mean to

Take a walk around the block

And be glad that I've got

Me some time to be in from the outside

And inside you

I'm sitting in the corner feeling glad

Got no money coming in but I can't be sad

That was the best cup of coffee I ever had

And I won't worry about a thing because we've got it made

Here on the inside, outside so far away

And we'll laugh and we'll sing

Get someone to bring

Our friends here for tea in the evening

Old Jeffrey makes three...

Take a walk in the park

Does the wind in the dark

Sound like music to you?

Well I'm thinking it does to me

Can you cook, can you sew?

Well, I don't want to know

That is not what you need on the inside

To make the time go

Counting lambs, counting sheep

We will fall into sleep

And awake to a new day of living

And loving you so

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Another day ...

Another day of living, another day of loving ...

Nice work if you can get it.

Winter hat Begonnen¹

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Our first measurable snowfall here in Little Rhody occurred Sunday morning, the 14th of December. Now I know that the first day of "official" winter is Sunday the 21st of December, which means that at some point in that day the sun will be perceived to be directly over the Tropic of Capricorn, winter really starts earlier, meteorologically-speaking.

When the cold starts moving in, and staying, that's winter. It's been down in the low-20s and even the low teens over the past week or so. So it felt like winter, just didn't look like winter here in the northeastern United States. Now it looks like it and feels like it. Which, as I get older, gets wearisome. Especially when you have to heat the house and pay for that luxury. Which up here is actually a necessity.

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Now I know it isn't a lot of snow and I like that. It makes things prettier than being all brown, and it doesn't impede driving and it isn't much to shovel. As Chez Sarge faces south, and the driveway slopes to the south, clearing the driveway, even when it's bitter cold out, isn't really necessary if the sun is out. Anything less than three inches will pretty much melt on its own. We (I) still have to clean the automotive conveyances off, but that doesn't require any lifting.

This isn't the first snow I've seen this year. If you remember my post from a week ago (here), we saw snow the day we left Maryland, after our Thanksgiving trip to see the lads, Roberto and Finnegan, and their sister (for whom I have yet to pick a nom du blog). It wasn't as much and it wasn't as cold, though lately Maryland has been matching Little Rhody degree for degree as regards coldness. Something I hadn't anticipated but am getting used to.

In fact over the last couple of years, they've seen more snow (and deeper to boot) than I have up here in Little Rhody. That big old ocean just out there from Chez Sarge really keeps the temperatures moderated as compared to inland. While they're within a stone's throw of Chesapeake Bay, less than ten miles, they're nearly a hundred miles from the Atlantic Ocean. If you look at a map you'll see that Chesapeake Bay is much bigger than Narragansett Bay.

Speaking of which, we're less than a mile from Narragansett Bay and we're less than 15 miles from the Atlantic Ocean. So we definitely have a maritime climate in these parts whereas in Maryland The Nuke and her tribe are further inland.

So winter, as I mentioned above, doesn't officially start until the 21st this year. But by my reckoning, winter begins at the end of November, beginning of December. Sarge-officially, I consider December, January, and February to be winter. Fall is September, October, and November, spring is March, April, and May, and summer is June, July, and August.

While May can feel like summer, as can September, I consider those transitional months containing elements of the two seasons either side of them. Same goes for March, while I consider that to be in spring, it is also a transitional month from winter to spring.

Where I grew up, Vermont, we saw elements of winter (i.e. snow) well into April. Saw the same sort of weather in Colorado as well. I once drove from San Antonio (TX) to Fort Collins (CO) starting the 1st of April, which was a bright sunny warm day in Texas, right through into the 2nd of April, where it was snowing like crazy all the way from New Mexico to Canada. I was lucky enough to follow a snow plow over the Raton Pass!

As an aside, a very dear friend of mine was born on the day I went over the Raton Pass. She asked me how I could possibly remember what I was doing as she was being born, I just looked at her and said, "Driving from southern Texas to northern Colorado in a snowstorm isn't something you forget!" (And yes, I have some young friends, besides which, she was the best boss I ever had.)

So enough about the weather, as Not Your Uncle Skip says, "when you've got nothing to really post about, there's always the weather."

Some of you are no doubt wondering when the next installment in my World War One tale is going to come out. I wish I knew. Ever since the Muse and I shared an Italian coffee Friday last, she's been missing in action. Probably on a bender again, she's been working hard and keeps complaining, "I thought we were retired!" Which we are, but ...

It's the holiday season, Christmas for some and Hannukah for others, and truth be told, I just don't feel like writing much. The news is effing depressing, politicians who control society mostly (nearly all?) suck, and I'm just waiting to go see the grandkids at Christmas. Not going to see my breakfast buddies again until January and I'm in a holding pattern of sorts. I'm kinda the electronic device sitting in the charger until I'm needed again, the tanker flying the racetrack waiting until someone needs gas. My morale is shaky and I'm playing too many games on the computer. (How many is too many? YMMV)

I've given serious thought to quitting this blogging thing, I realize that it's become too much a part of who I am to do so, but I can ease off on the throttle a bit. Being a writer is not something you can just walk away from, it's addictive in many ways. You don't even have to be good at it to be addicted to it!

So that's where we're at.

By the way, juvat's Monday post, wasn't that strange as can be, but surprisingly it worked. At least for those who've been following the "juvat saga" as I call it. Vehicle mishaps, moving to another town after years of living in the same place, getting old, and yes, I'm paying attention. That sort of thing might happen for Your Humble Scribe. Not the vehicular mishap part, but the moving somewhere else? I just don't know. Once my mother is gone, that might happen, but our roots are awfully deep in these parts.

But the damned winters, they get to me at times. (Once the summer starts then I'll bitch about how hot it is!) But you never know, man proposes, God disposes. We shall see.

Personally I'd hate to leave New England, my roots are incredibly deep here. There are many folks here that I love deeply and I would hate to not see them again. My ancestors, at least those I knew personally and those in the generation before them, are buried here.

Geez, I'm such a geezer.

OAFS Photo

I snapped the photo above on Tuesday, firstly to show that the snow which fell Sunday, as little as it was, is still here, showing just how cold it's been. But if you look closely, you might notice the little tracks all over the backyard. (See the detailed photo below.)

OAFS Photo

Rabbits, we have quite a few. They drive The Missus Herself crazy as they love to eat all of her plants. A couple of years ago they wreaked havoc on the vegetable garden so two years ago we installed a chicken wire fence around it. So now we get to eat those vegetables rather than feeding the rabbits.

We have a lot of wildlife around here, rabbits, deer, turkeys, foxes, coyotes, and the neighborhood has a resident hawk. The hawk does more to keep the rabbit population under control than the coyotes, I know this as I found a partially eaten carcass in the backyard last summer while mowing the lawn. I knew it was a bird which had done the deed due to the way the carcass had been pecked at.

Nature, red in tooth and claw, if you pay attention, you can see it in town as well as in the country.

Anyhoo, that's enough for now. Expect days with nothing and days with just a little over the rest of the month.

I might even go "on sabbatical" in January. I'm still up in the air on that.

Stay tuned.

¹ Winter has begun. While the title didn't have to be in German, I like German, so there.

Restaurant Raconteur

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Sarge gave me some inspiration with his post the other day about going out to eat, so I thought I would document the resulting thoughts.  However, I might be a little overly confident with that title. I will tell a little story here, but I can't be sure it will be with any skill or wit per Webster's definition.  Raconteur is a word I've heard before, but doubt I've ever used it here.  I saw it twice very recently and liked how it sounds.  It was in a book called Calico Joe by John Grisham.  Known mostly for his legal thrillers, this one is about a baseball player in the '70s. Another sports related story that I absolutely love of his, one of my favorite books, is Playing for Pizza.  It's about a disgraced quarterback who runs away to Italy to play in the Italian League.  While there and dining in the owners restaurant, he discovers that while he has a paid contract, most of the players on his team are paid in food, hence playing for pizza.  Highly recommended, mostly due to his descriptions of the food that will either get you salivating, or looking for flights to Italy, but probably both.  I read years before our trip to Rome, and it cemented my interest in going.

As for Sarge's post, Marchetti's does sound delicious. I've had my recent fill of Italian as my command Christmas party was at a Italian restaurant in the Little Italy neighborhood of San Diego, Nonna's.  I hadn't seen that word before seeing it on a Netflix movie title about the cooking from a bunch of Italian grandmothers. I had the chicken pesto gnocchi which was excellent.  Last night we attended a benefit catered by a gentleman we know who owns The French Gourmet restaurant here in San Diego. 

I saw an article that said the restaurant was closing on January 4th.  I'm saddened by news of restaurants or businesses shutting down, sometimes because they lose their lease as the owner wants to sell to a developer to build more apartments.  You know the saying, "you can't stop progress," and that's definitely true here in San Diego.  However, it's the way this progress is progressing that I really dislike.  In an attempt to accelerate new housing growth, the city has changed all sorts of zoning laws and fast-tracked development.  The builders can now put up apartment buildings in single family zoned neighborhoods, buying up lots for far more money than buyers can afford (driving up housing costs), using money they don't have to spend on lots in more costly multi-family zoned areas.  But even worse is that these dwellings are without parking.  They let developers build without any space for vehicles if they are within a half mile of a bus route which is pretty much anywhere.  But few in California take public transit.  Those apartment dwellers will just take up all the local area city street parking that is already congested.  That leads to angry residents, cars being keyed, no room for resident trash cans, or cans being moved to driveways and thereby ignored by the trash trucks, etc.  I don't think the city actually cares about it residents, or even about the need for more housing.  I think they're just after all the developer fees to help close a $3.3B pension deficit, but that's different pithy political post for another day.

Anyhoo, after reading a few lines of the article, I quickly got online and made a reservation to support him in his final days of culinary amazement.  His restaurant is a quaint and stylish little place, looking like some cottage in the French countryside.  It has a French bakery in the front and a small seating area off to the side.  We've been many times for special occasions, and even Easter and regular brunch.  And he's catered many of the benefits we've attended over the years.  However, after I finished making the reservation I finished the article.  It turns out he is not getting pushed out by a landlord, he is the landlord.  He himself has decided to retire at 71 years old and he has accepted an offer from a developer, one that has been after him for 10 years.  He stated that it wasn't yet time and the offers were never serious enough to make him consider it.  However, they significantly increased it recently as well as buying an adjacent lot, offering him $7 million for the loss of the business, the sale of the building, and the lot it sits on.  While I don't necessarily want to see another congested apartment complex without parking, you can't stop progress and I cannot blame him for accepting that figure.  

Either way, we will enjoy our dinner, it just won't be with sadness for him.  At the benefit last night there was a silent auction and I noticed his name on many of the items.  Seeing how he's flush with cash he was feeling generous.  Not sure how many items he took away, but he has plenty of time and money to continue that type of philanthropy and I wish him well.

I hope your Advent season is going well.  Besides the Christmas party and the benefit on Friday night, our weekend social calendar wasn't finished.  I put on a nice red suit as part of the local VFW's "Santa at the Ship" event which gives out toys to junior military families whose father or mother are either on deployment or recently returned.  My Mustang Club purchases the toys and donates funds for the bikes.  I wasn't supposed to be Santa this year as a 92yo VFW member asked to play the role,  and they wanted to indulge him, seeing how you never know if he'll be able to do it in the future.  However, he got quite fatigued lifting children onto his lap so he had to leave about halfway through the day.  I was in the Alert-5 position though and quickly transformed into St. Nick.  

Mrs. Claus always makes Santa happy.

Other than that, we plan to have some neighbors over next weekend for a Christmas Open House, but that will be the end of us being socialites for the season.  The rest of the year should be rather quiet and low-key.  I plan taking just a few days of leave, bracketing Jesus's birthday and New Years.  Work is already quiet as the active-duty folks are allowed to phone muster for much of the Holiday stand down.  I roll my eyes at that, but it keeps the gate traffic down!  I'm not sure I'll write again this year, so I'll wish you all a Merry Christmas and a joyous New Year.

Phase 1 complete

I Love Sports, I Loathe the Media

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Before we get to the rant portion of this post, Army got to sing first on Saturday.

Singing first means you lost the game. (For those who didn't know that.)

It was hard fought, though to be honest, I thought Army was going to walk away with this one. Navy scored first to make it 7 - 0. Then Army scored sixteen unanswered points to make it 16 - 7.

Navy eventually woke up and played like they had in the first quarter, pulling off a 17 - 16 win.

I missed the end of the game. Why?

While watching the game, the local news media interrupted the broadcast to announce that Brown University, in Providence, some 11 miles as the crow flies from Chez Sarge, was under lockdown/shelter in place for an active shooter.

Were there any announcements of what areas to avoid near Brown? Vague indications which only made sense to someone who actually lives in Providence. But to much of Rhode Island would be as meaningful as "places to avoid in downtown Tashkent."

The media in Providence thinks that Providence is the only inhabited place in Rhode Island. I stopped watching them years ago for precisely that reason.

For instance - I'm stuck in traffic trying to get off "The Island" (which is what the people in Newport County call Aquidneck Island, where I used to work), and am wondering "what the Hell is going on?" So I turn on the radio.

"Watch out for traffic near Thurbers Avenue as blah blah blah ..." Doesn't help me, I'm not in Providence, I'm in Portsmouth, why is our traffic backed up. Listen to Providence media, and you get the feeling that where you live doesn't exist.

Anyhoo ...

So they interrupt the game to bring us what is indeed important news. But of course, being talking heads, they have to blather on for fifteen minutes telling us that "it's an evolving situation, we'll update you as we hear the facts, blah blah blah ..."

Finally we get back to the game and I've missed some key plays. Of course, the local channel is running a banner across the bottom of the screen telling us that they still don't know shit but damn it, we're going to keep bombarding you with the information that we don't have, hope to get, and we'll keep you updated.

We don't loathe the media enough. It's run by idiots, the on air "personalities" don't know how to gather news, they just read stuff off of their laptops, stumbling over words at times.

So now another huge announcement, there's going to be a press conference. They have to come on live to tell us that. So officially we'll be briefed that no one knows f**king anything but now we'll get it from the governor and the chief of police. Ah, "experts."

Bottom line, once Navy kicked the extra point to go ahead of Army that was it. I missed the remainder of the game, the two teams singing, the whole atmosphere which makes the Army-Navy game so special.

No doubt we'll get to the point where they'll identify the shooter, name the victims, and call for more gun control, after all, this is a blue state. They think by making new laws you can prevent certain behaviors.

I mean I get it, my heart goes out to those who were killed, two as I write, and those who were injured, nine at last count. But come on media dopes, bring us news, not speculation, not who has responded. Tell us it's ongoing and where to avoid going. Anything other than that and you're being inefficient and annoying.

News is news, if there's an update, tell us. That there will be an update to the story is NOT EFFING NEWS. I mean isn't that effing obvious?

So I feel kinda bad ranting about this when people have died, but seriously, give us news we can use you media types, don't be on air just for the sake of being on air.

I don't hate the media, I loathe them.

/rant

Sarge, out.

A Quickie (No, Not That Kind ...)

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Okay, sorry, no war today. Went out to eat with friends Friday night, returned home too stuffed to think. I mean, it was an Italian restaurant, a good Italian restaurant. Bear in mind, I've eaten in Rome, Florence, and Venice, so I have a pretty good idea what Italian food is supposed to taste like. Marchetti's is really good.

So if you're ever in Cranston, Rhode Island, check them out. (Their website is where I got the lead-in photo if you're interested.)

I had one of the specials, pasta rusticante, which was penne in a pink sauce with chicken, prosciutto, and shrimp. Covered in mozzarella and baked in the oven, it was very tasty, enough for two meals! (Yes, I'm not a complete glutton, I took some home with me.)

At the end of the meal while the ladies were sipping their second Moscato, the guys decided they wanted coffee. The server asked what sort of coffee I'd like and I asked if it was weird to order an Irish coffee in an Italian place.

"Not at all, but have you ever tried our Italian coffee?"

"Ah, to me, that's espresso, but I'm a Yank, what do I know?"

"Well, here we make it with amaretto. Irish coffee has Bailey's and whisky, right?"

"Yeah, that's right, I think. Yeah, I'll try your Italian coffee."

Oh dear, it was really, really good. Who says you can't teach an old dog new tricks?

So the company was excellent and the food was sublime.

Here's how much I like Marchetti's, I drove there during Providence rush hour. Okay, not as bad as Boston or New York, or any of a hundred other cities, but still, an hour for a 30 minute drive? I abhor traffic, I will avoid it by any means necessary.

But dangle good Italian food in my face?

Stand back folks, here I come at a blazing ten miles an hour!

Seriously, I enjoyed it.

So yeah, no fiction post today.

Oh yeah, one more thing ...