Family Room - General Fellowship Thread

June 22nd 2020
big game hunting yesterday! Finally got that trophy mouse! He was Sooo big, he was carrying an BMLM sign!

Sad / funny in front of Walmart today! I stopped a guy worker outside the store as he was walking by for a question...he saw I had my mask in my hand he backpeddled 25 feet away into the street with a fearful face! Guess people still freeking out for little reason!!! Especially OUTSIDE !!! so I walked toward him and he backpeedled some more!!! Couldn't help myself!!!

finally bought a small hair trimmer to give myself a trim..a bit easier than using s___s! Doing it in the mirror is akward, but at least I wont be mistaken for a mop!!!

On the church front, had an awful time with homeless trashing the back of the church... finally got the blue fuzzies to chase them away long enough for me to pick up most of the mess...

Balboa Park now reopened as are the beaches- kinda sorta-- Downtown SD no longer looks like during a "50s zombie movie rerun !!!

come on people, this threads for EVERYONE!

Btw, for those of us who have a hard time getting down to hand scrub the floor, try "Foot scrubbing""
yes, I'm "different" but it works!!!
Basically, if a mop wont get it all, or if you don't want to mess up your mop;;; and then have to clean your mop
do this:
Drop hot water on floor spot to be scrubbed...
sprinkle scouring powder on floor...
fold up paper towels or rag...
scrub the floor with your shoe...
works great every time!!!
really saves my knees!!!

I was encouraged to write something for a veterans newsletter:
There is a picture and history of the CGC Evergreen at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USCGC_Evergreen_(WLB-295)

The Escanaba, a flower class corvette, can be seen at

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USCGC_Escanaba_(WHEC-64)

The 1^st Escanaba was lost in WW2... This is the 2^nd, scrapped in about “75... The 3^rd Escanaba serves today




Well, by now its ancient history, being born 40 years BC

I grew up in the village of Monument Beach on Buzzards bay, Cape Cod within sight of the SouthEast enterance to the Cape Cod canal...Still a beautiful place...My stepmother wanted me Gone as soon as I graduated high school. There was a war going on in Vietnam, so I saw a Coast Guard recruiter in New Bedford Ma... A week after graduating High School june 1966, I was on a bus headed to Cape May New Jersey for boot camp.

As it says in a great novel, That year was the best of times and the worst of times... Maybe three of you will know which novel … I managed to get too many demerits and got in the punishment company for a week... sent to another company, managed to finish that except I could not pass the swim test... Another month, Finally did that, and was sent to the 180 foot CGC Evergreen in Boston. Built in 1943 as a buoy tender, cargo and ice breaker... The extra iron plating on her bottom would later- and just barely- save all our lives!! Some bright officer had thought she would be perfect for service as an oceanographic vessel. So they painted her white, sent her out into the North Atlantic... Her name may have been Evergreen, but she soon was renamed the Evergone (out to sea) …

A couple oceanographers from Woods Hole were exiled onto her for the usually soggy wet duty of doing oceanographic work... Along with a couple not to enthusiastic boson mates! In the minds of some long suffering seaman, they deserved it...

Anyway, several times a day, the ship would be stopped, headed into the wing, and kept in place while a string of Nansen bottles would be lowered half a mile straight down into the sea, annoying the fish. A weight would be sent sliding down the line, “tripping” the bottles, so they would fill with water samples. Then the line would e pulled back in, and each water sample would be saved labeled time location depth, for study back at Woods hole Oceanographic on Cape Cod... Also once a day they would lower an instrument package a mile down to make a recording of the salinity, temperature and depth to also be sent to Woods Hole...

Endlessly over and over... One fine day they made buoys out of Bamboo poles, floats with radar reflectors, put sea anchors at different lengths, then tracked them on radar... they all went in different directions!

… Finally, we were doing all this in nasty weather January of 1967 somewhere at least 100 miles South and East of Newfoundland... The wind had been gale force for two weeks from the South West... The seas got bigger and bigger. Finally, they were well over 40 feet all one height from one horizon to horizon... Then, on my watch on the bridge, something huge appeared coming at us, over three times their size/ As our bow was buried in the bottom before it we were looking up from the bridge more than 45 degrees to the top of that wave... It picket up our ship like it was a toy, throwing it back. The ship somehow getting over it we saw another monster just behind it... getting over that, a third wave... then finally back to the “normal” waves... Half an hour later we saw another wave at least 80 foot a solid verticle wall of water. We hit it and it broached and threw our ship over on her side at least 68 degrees according to the seaman grabbing onto the inclinenometer to keep his footing... All I know was the Starboard bridge wing was full of water. I was hanging to the port hole dogs at the front of the bridge to keep my footing...Somehow, she fell down the back side of this wave, righted herself, and we got her straightened out barely enough the face the next almost 100 foot wave following that one... Every half an hour we would see another set of huge waves coming at us... All this lasted for several hours... before finally stopping... The storn lasted another week...

… Finally we made it back to Boston... Then it was time to do the seasonal International Ice patrol South and East of Newfoundland tracking the Spring iceburgs drifting down from the Greenland coast out into the North Atlantic... We had great “fun” playing “blind mans bluff” with them... The most exciting thing though, was dodging “bergy Bitts” in the fog. Pieces of ice burgs about the size of a two storey house and almost invisible at night and in the fog... So I and the others would put on three pairs of clothes, heavy coat, (terribly cold) be sent up on the bow with a flashlight to illuminate the bergy bits we saw so the ship could go around them... We would be relieved ever half hour by which time we would be chilled to the bone... The other exciting thing was to stand lookout watch at night on the top of the wheelhouse in the bitter cold with the ship rolling her guts out, knowing that if you lost your grip you could easily slide off the deck into the ink black stormy sea and they would never find you...Later, we broke through the ice several miles to get into St John's Newfoundland for refueling... A few days later, back at it again

I had an interest in celestial navigation, taught myself... By July, I was called to the XO's office told me I was going to Quartermaster / Signalmen school in Newport Conn.. Quite a surprise... and so the world turned...

This is getting a bit long... however, I spent the next 2 ½ years doing Ocean Station duty on the CGC Escanaba before leaving the Guard in June 70.... It had all been quite a tour...””Oh Lord, thy sea is so great and my ship is so small””

Lewis Brackett.. read my historical novellas / stories www.lewishb.TV

Sunday April 12
I walked the block down to the mall for my daily exersise... about maybe a third as many people as usual there for a Sunday... only small lines or no lines to get into the stores... the streets traffic as busy as usual... got my weekly ( or weakly) money from the ATM at the bank (using my nuckel to press the buttons!!) , and went home... no church for me tonite though the small group IS meeting!!! guess I will wait until the end of the month and see what happens...
saw Bro Jeremiah on TV this morning...a previous Resurrection Sunday rerun... ((no Easter around here!!))
Lets hope Bro JD is his usual self tonite... now for some Bush's baked beans with onion bits and (to fess up) an eency weancie tiny bit of pig squeezings mixed in....pray for me

[Andy]

That's a real shock, Lewis. While our grocery stores/Walmart Super Centers are open hardly much of anything else is so there are very few people and cars around.

My 14 mile treck to/from work usually takes 40 minutes or so with daily traffic. I'm now scaling that in 17 minutes with zero slow-downs. The main street closest to us is usually jammed with cars, even when I left for work at 7:20am before. I turn left onto this main street from a side-street and it's a daily thing to sit and wait...and wait. Now? It's not unusual to have no wait at all and sometimes I don't even see any cars either way. Truly bizarre and I sure would think California would be even more strict.

April 3rd---how normal is your normal?
here in South Bay San Diego, you would hardly know that a pandemic is going on!!! the same number of people on the streets as usual, cars on the road... hardly ever see a cop, guess thats cause the local donut shop is closed!!! Now, the beaches parks are closed, but the local plaza with Vons market, Walmart, Home Depot, and the Big 5 sporting goods are all open..the sports store only allowing 10 people in the store at a time... home Depot now only has one way in & one way out...all "Social distanceing with x's on the floor 6 foot apart!!!
this whole thing reminds me of a cross between a Peter Sellers movie and a 1950's Alien invasion movie!!!
weird
I go out walking for an hour every day putting tracts on some cars..and my back yard is nice to sit in;; my fruit trees wave at me & my humming birds hummmmm by, and yes, I have my million dollar view patio on top of my tool shed where I can sit and see all the way down San Diego Bay to the Bay Bridge and downtown...and South to Point Loma!! !15 miles away as the rddb eating vultures fly !!!

I started eating the tangelos off my tree 2 weeks before Christmass, two each morning in my cereal...only 7 more to eat!!! then i"ll have to wait until next December... My peaches should be good by June!!
no chicken at Walmart today so, i'm going to have to force myself to fry up some Alaska wild caught salmon breaded with Cajin batter and with cheese crackers... I am suffering so much on the SD mission field these days!!!. Sigh... but someone has gotta do it...
Oh, and my small group house church is only meeting Sunday evenings for now...

Star spangled German empire???

2/12
and just noticed my peach tree is flowering... always so pretty... I cat it way back the 2nd year in a row , last fall, so will actually be able to reach the fruit now... lots of new shoots have come up around the tree... not likely to fruit this year, but encourageing... for now, I'm not letting it grow over 10 feet tall...

-3 C this morning ! Maybe 27 F ??? unreal for San Diego !!! The local mountains trout / fishing lakes might even have ice !!!
Some years my peach tree has budded already! but not this year my Roses have one nice huge dark red bloom, and my HiBiscus have several...

CalPocoLypse 2nd week now 10/25
yes, thankfully so far no hurricane force winds with the Santa Annas, so the fires here in SoCal have been quickly contained...
Back brush country, over 100 degrees, down to %3 humidity in some areas...

for some strange weather reason the atmospheric high pressure in the desert goes over a waterfall type thing sends hot wind to the West
often with wind of over 60MPH fanning any fires into an unstoppable inferno

Pacific G&E unprepared & clueless, poor infrastructure needing to shut off all power for several days in some cases...
Down South SDG&E much improved with 18000 new concrete utility poles in the back country since 2007 fires... 2003 was horribly bad, could have burned all the way to the beach in laJolla... and further South burned West to lake Otay less than 20 miles from the coast near the border where I live...

[Andy]

WeLLLLLLLLLL online computer buying can be an adventure!!!
got what turned out to be a lenove thinkcenter M92p
2.6-2.9 ghz and 32Mb cash...hope thats enough for u-tube??? is was a gaming type business PC... but its so tiny !!!
what does the wedg mad max team think ???

Very nice, Lewis. The Lenovo ThinkCenter is a business-class machine (it's not classified as a Gamer but why would you need a Gaming machine??). This means it's a workhorse - designed to be run and run hard.
The M92p specifically is an excellent machine. We had about 60 of the M92p Tower (you have the "Tiny Desktop" model) for our office then moved over to the M93p. Those are now 5 years old, many of them run almost 24x7x365 and still they run AND I just upgraded them all to Windows10 and now they run faster than they ever have.

I do have 2 of the M93p Tiny Desktop and they're a great little machine (especially upgraded to Win10, now). I think you'll enjoy that fella.

WeLLLLLLLLLL online computer buying can be an adventure!!!
got what turned out to be a lenove thinkcenter M92p
2.6-2.9 ghz and 32Mb cash...hope thats enough for u-tube??? is was a gaming type business PC... but its so tiny !!!
what does the wedg mad max team think ???

[Andy]

Ahh, yes! Texas, my Texas. Nice and warm!

What's the old saying, Andy? "Everything's bigger in Texas."?

Yes, including mosquitoes. When one starts to head toward you, might as well set up landing lights for her!

Ahh, yes! Texas, my Texas. Nice and warm!

What's the old saying, Andy? "Everything's bigger in Texas."?

My previous pastor insisted that all the unsaved dead go to West Texas !!!