Day 51-SIP-Potpourri

Posted on 08/05/2020 by Grumpa Joe

My plan for today was to spend an hour in the garden, wear myself out and then migrate to the desk to write. Nature changed my plan. The temperature this morning is in the low forties, and it is way too cold for me to suffer in the dirt. So, I moved on to writing. As usual I don’t have a theme to talk about so I watched some videos on how to make household disinfectant. It seems to be a popular product these days as all the stores are sold out.

The formula for making it is simple. There are three ingredients isopropyl alcohol, (99%), water, and essential oil. The end result is a solution of 70% alcohol that smells nice.

I watched another video sent by a friend which is an interview with a 30 year veteran emergency room doctor who explains the mechanism of the COVID-19 disease process. Its too complicated to write about so I’ve linked it for you to watch. His bottom line is that he believes we are doing the wrong thing by telling people to wait until they have shortness of breath or trouble breathing to go to the hospital. Evidently, by that time the pneumonia is advanced and harder to treat.

While I read my emails I opened a few interesting tid-bits of fun which I will also share with you.

How to Get To Heaven
A true Story from an Irish Sunday School Teacher. 

I was testing children in my Dublin Sunday school class to see if they understood the concept of getting to heaven. I asked them, ‘ If I sold my house and my car, had a big garage sale and gave all my money to the church, would that get me into heaven?’ NO!’ the children answered. If I cleaned the church every day, mowed the garden, and kept everything tidy, would that get me into heaven?’ Again, the answer was ‘NO!’ If I gave sweets to all the children, and loved my husband, would that get me into heaven?’ Again, they all answered ‘NO!’ I was just bursting with pride for them. I continued, ‘Then how can I get into heaven?’ A little boy shouted out: ‘YUV GOTTA BE FOOKN’ DEAD.’ It’s a curious race, the Irish.   Brings a tear to the eye, doesn’t it?

Old Guys Rule!

My last item is a story of something that happened to me this week. I read a daily email from a friend Tim Fox. He spends considerable time doing what I do that is waste time in front of the computer reading things about government fails. He sent me his usual package which is a string of videos from five different sites, a commentary, followed by a set of memes which are usually hilarious. He calls this newsletter Conservative News.

Two days ago, I opened one of the videos about a scientist who deals with viruses. I had a few minutes to watch it and then had to leave it for later. Yesterday, I opened it again to watch the remainder, and it was gone, You Tube removed this video from its website a number of times, citing its Community Guidelines. The video featured an interview with a lady PhD scientist who worked on viruses at the NIAID. Her boss was Dr. Tony Fauci. Does that name ring a bell? To make this story shorter, the woman landed in jail, and was gagged from telling her story for five years. I want to learn more. It smacks of a great conspiracy within the bureaucratic bowels of our government.

I wrote to Tim Fox and asked for her name so I could follow up. He sent me her name and a link to Amazon which is selling her book. She is Dr. Judy Mikrovits PhD and her book is Plague of Corruption.

Filed under: Conservative, family, Gardening, health care, Science | Tagged: , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Day 41-Quarantine-Phenomenon

Posted on 27/04/2020 by Grumpa Joe

Yesterday the weather turned out to be the exact opposite of the day before. The sun shone, the temperature was warm, and everyone’s disposition was bright. People were out walking again, although practicing social distancing. It strikes me as funny when walking and I spot someone coming toward me but still several houses away one of us will head for the street so we don’t pass each other too closely. Yes, we take the rules seriously.

The warmth brought out the bicycles. I have to admit that bikers don’t give hoot about social distancing when on the bike path. They zoom past you without the usual vocal warning. Sometimes I felt a wave of warmth flush over me as they speed along. Evidently one doesn’t need to be spaced apart when you pass each by with great speed. I’ll have to research whether the virus can jump that quickly from one person to the next.

Last night I came across a movie titled Phenomenon with John Travolta. I’m not a huge fan of Travolta when he plays the villain, but when he plays ordinary people I love him. In this film he was an ordinary guy struggling to make living and to get a date with a girl. He lives in a small California town which never gets named in the film where everyone knows everyone else. He celebrates his fortieth birthday at the local pub with a huge sign proclaiming that the first drink is on him. He leaves the pub for a breath of fresh air and looks up into the night sky to see a phenomenon in the form of a bright ball of light that is rapidly coming toward him, and it blasts him to the ground. He Awakens a new and different man. He become s voracious reader reading as many as four books a day. The reading brings him knowledge which stuns the people of the town, because up to this point George was just an ordinary guy who barely made it through high school. The more he knows the more he wants to know and his reading evolves into experiments in his gardening his shop.

George’s buddy is a ham radio hobbist, and once while visiting him he overhears a message in morse code and deciphers it. He learned Morse code from one of his books. George asks his buddy to key a return answer to the message. A few days later the FBI shows up and take him and his buddy in custody. He intercepted a secret government encrypted message. The Feds were not appreciative that their code was broken, so they assume George must be a spy because only spies can do that kind of stuff. The story has a love theme, wrapped in a science fiction mystery theme. It has a beautiful, happy, but sad ending. I wanted to story to keep going.

What has this movie to do with COVID-19? Well, if I weren’t practicing social distancing at home alone on a Sunday night I would have been out with friends instead of watching a movie by myself. The character of George in this story was one smart feller who just might have been able to develop a vaccine for killing the virus.

Filed under: family, Gardening, Science, Technology | Tagged: , , | Leave a comment »

Day 21-Quarantine-Dependency

Posted on 07/04/2020 by Grumpa Joe

Five ways to beat the Corona Virus

Twenty-one days since I enter this life of near solitary confinement. I say near because I still get out and walk and when I do I see people. I rarely speak to them, but I do speak to friends on the phone. My biggest adventure was to break out the car yesterday for a quick trip to the drug store. I used the drive through for the very first tie in ten years. My prescription met the minimum requirements and I didn’t even have to pay this keeping my hands away form the tube. Once at home, I washed my hands according to the protocol.

My day was somewhat strange because I was extremely tired and decided the cure was to nap, I did. The nap didn’t really work well, but I forced myself to prepare a supper and after some wine I felt great. Could it be that I am hung-over most of the day? Could it be that my system requires a bit of alcohol to tune me up? Dependency would kill me for sure. The idea of needing something so badly that my body sends messages is scary.

While fighting the blahs I also forced myself to the shop to glue some pieces together and to begin the second of three main elements in my new creation. Oh my God! the last phrase of my sentence jumped to the paragraph above. Have this ever occurred to you? I am typing on a laptop with a touch pad, and if I touch or drag a finger over the pad while typing the text suddenly skips to another part of the page. Annoying to say the least.  Sometimes I will go on for entire sentence before I discover the I am typing in the middle of the first paragraph.

After I complete this post I will leave the confines of the house to the confines of my garden. I have one more area that needs a spring clean up. If I wait longer the new foliage will pop up through all the dead leaves and last year’s detritus. It doesn’t make for a pretty garden. Gardeners are funny that way, besides like colorful flowers and unusual horticultural matter planted in artistic beds they love neat and clean beds. That means not old rotting foliage, neatly tilled soil surrounding flowers, and healthy corona free plant matter. I wonder if the corona virus can attach itself to living plants the same as it does to humans? Wouldn’t that be a trip?

Later this evening I am attending my first ever Zoom board meeting. It is the first Tuesday of the month and that is the scheduled day for the Lions Club board of directors to meet. Zoom is an app and service that we download to our computers and then register for a meeting with a Zoom generated code. It allows those who register to conduct a conference call with the added pleasure of seeing the attendees by way of their cameras. It is a giant face time phone call. Anyway, this service will allow us to discuss how on earth we will serve the needs of our community while remaining socially distant.

The garden beckons me. It is 64 degrees F out, the warmest it has been this spring. I can’t waste the opportunity to feel some warmth after a long winter.

Filed under: Aging, family, Gardening, health care, Motivation | Tagged: , , | Leave a comment »

Day 13-Self Imposed Quarantine-On the Seventh Day God Rested

Posted on 29/03/2020 by Grumpa Joe

Today is Sunday. I have to remind myself of that. Last week I lost a day and celebrated Friday on Thursday. That means I didn’t eat meat at any meal before I realized my mistake, and then had to abstain again the next day. Not that fish is bad for me it is because I don’t have a stock pile of it my freezer. I have peanut butter, but my KETO diet keeps me from eating bread, and I love peanut butter sandwiches. Does that make sense?

After posting my rant about the stupidity of car companies offering to make medical devices I finally got underway filling the day with more productive activities. By then I developed enough courage to go outside and attack another flower bed clean up. I must have slept through some heavy rain because the leaves were soaking and the soil muddy. I wound up cleaning mud off my heavy shoes several times. I completed another one hour baby step toward a burgeoning upcoming floral season. I photographed the first blooms of spring to make my heart leap with joy. The next project was to strip naked in front of the washing machine to wash my muddy clothes.

After a quick shower and clean clothes I proceeded to cook a batch of KETO stroganoff. Actually, it is the same as regular stroganoff but without any flour as gravy thickener. When it was finished I thought the gravy a mite too runny, so I added some Xanthan gum to thicken it, and it worked. I didn’t have a zucchini to make zucchini noodles, so I decided KETO go to hell for this meal, and cooked up some wide egg noodles. I am not sorry I did that because the stroganoff was great! Today, I’ll have left overs, except I’ll substitute leftover cauliflower mash for the noodles and be totally KETO compliant.

After supper, I went to the TV and found a stupid movie called “Thirteen Going On Thirty”.  It starred Jennifer Garner and Mark Ruffallo, since they were in it I thought it would be good. I endured it to the end. I’d give it about a half star. The plot grants a thirteen year old girl’s wish to be thirty. The overnight transition from a thirteen year old to a thirty year old was too much to believe.

There was still an hour and a half before my usual bedtime so I turned to watch episodes of my latest series “Homeland.”  Three episodes later and long after my bedtime I shut the TV off and forced myself to sleep. There is so much action in this series that my mind continues processing throughout the night. The sleep is not restful and I find  myself dragging in the morning. My dreams are all wild with people from the series running and shooting and plotting.  The Homeland series is several years old and there are over ninety episodes, and I have watched only thirteen. Either I slow down, watch in the daytime, or ration my watching to one episode per week. As tired as I was from the yard work, which usually makes me sleep like a baby, I woke up with my blanket bunched up and twisted in a roll. I was rockin’ and rollin’ all night long.

Filed under: Aging, family, Gardening, Islam | Tagged: , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Terrorists Strike a Frankfort Home

Posted on 11/06/2016 by Grumpa Joe

Late last evening Akkmed Wabbit and his young son Osama bin Wabbit were seen high tailing it out of the garden. This morning Grumpa Joe discovered the attack  while he strolled the Monet Vision with his coffee in hand. “The little bastards just took out sixty dollars worth of petunias. I hope they get indigestion,” he said out loud. He then went inside to plot his revenge.

He should have known better than to plant Petunias, but Joe felt secure after not having seen a Wabbit for several months. Last year the marigolds kept them out. He started to research methods for eliminating Wabbits from gardens. Here is the list of ways he is considering:

  1. DeCon, poison

2  Live trap

3. Rat traps

4. Shotgun

5. Import a coyote

6. Hire a Hawk

7. Plant Marigolds

8. Fence off the flower beds

9. Hire a 24 hour armed guard to chase them away

10. Buy a Beagle and let him patrol the garden.

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Monet Vision-Patriot’s Dream on June 3, 2016

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Monet Vision-Patriot’s Dream eaten by Wabbits, June 11, 2016

A surprise retaliation awaits you little bastards.

 

 

 

Filed under: Biography, family, Garden, Gardening, Wabbit Wars | Tagged: , , | Leave a comment »

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