[Wednesday 8/26: 3.2 miles; Saturday 8/29: 5 miles (mostly walking); today’s run: 3.2 mostly walking]
Last Monday was the periodic blood drive at the Brooksville Mennonite School and I went down and did my bit. They have had new leadership the last year or two. The old regime had cinnamon rolls and this new regime has been searching around for good pep-up treat for the bleeders. This time they had a selection of 5 or 6 pies. I had a piece of apple pie and it was delicious. I think they have hit their stride!
When I came in they were very friendly and said they wondered if I would be coming. That was kind of nice. And they are always very generous with the treats.
I had been in there last quarter but the poker person went for my right arm and couldn’t find what she wanted, so I ended up as a dud. (I went to another blood drive location a few days later and got it done.)
I’ve been making plans to spend a week in Iowa in mid-August. I may make it just in time for the last day of the State Fair… or not. And I hope to drive up to Dubuque and visit with my co-workers in person.
We spent the weekend just past working on refurbishing the Duck Palace (the used chicken coop which will now house ducks). I put 1/2 inch hardware cloth over all of the places that had chicken wire. Our experience with chicken wire is that raccoons can reach right through it. Not to mention snakes of course. Also there were some rotten boards to be replaced. I am hoping we can get the ducks moved out of the jaccusi into the Duck Palace before the end of the week.
It has been hot. Not abnormally hot, just normal Mississippi sultry summer hot. The last few days we were in the middle 90’s for temp and the dew point never got below 70, even at night.
I am a champion sweater. I don’t glow. I don’t perspire. I am a fountain of liquid. Working on the Duck Palace I would do a bit then stop for awhile then do a bit more. I got soaking wet multiple times, as if I had been swimming. Squishy socks kind of sweating.
On Saturday I took two baths and a shower. If I’m going to be wet I would rather do it comfortably.
Recently we’ve been going to a few estate sales. My wife is into buying tea cups. She gets the pretty ones. A week or two ago we were at a place where the former owner had a collection and we brought home a box full including a King Edward coronation cup from the 1930’s which marked an event that never happened since Edward bailed out to go with a woman named Wallis who was divorced.
The guy who was recently crowned King married a divorced woman named Camilla. I guess that’s progress!
I bought a couple of books, one of which I have finished reading.
And I have to apologize. My blog no longer informs me when comments come in. It had been a week since I logged in to do a new blog post so I had comments waiting to be approved.
I had forgotten that two of my siblings also did RAGBRAI rides soon after I did. And my mother did it three times. Our cousin did it again this year for the I-don’t-know-how-many-th time. I’m from an intrepid family.
I was running this morning (mostly walking actually) and listening to a newsy podcast and they mentioned the congressional hearing on UFOs and what the federal government knows about them.
It is an interesting subject I think. It brings into sharp relief the bifurcation of facts that is part of our cultural landscape. We have Science and we have Mysticism (a branch of which is Religion) and the venn diagram of Truth in both of those realms barely overlaps.
But one place that they uncomfortably overlap is in the area of extra terrestrial life.
Luke 2:13-14 : 13 And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying,14 Glory to God in the highest, and on Earth peace, good will toward men.
But people think that wookies are scientific while angels are mystical. Or something. It is an interesting question.
Me, of course I think there are higher intelligences, creatures who travel across the universe in “other dimensions” or whatever you want to say. This goes down relatively smoothly until you get into the bad higher beings as well as the good ones. After all, Star Trek tells us that we (us and any non-human life forms) are all just trying to get along, in our way. And Star Wars tells us that the bad guys are just misunderstood. And that can’t be anything like Gabriel and Lucifer.
On the Science side they seem to waffle between the idea that there are so many planets out there, some of them must also be populated -and- that the planets are so far apart that maybe we won’t ever hear from anybody. (which would be solved by either “warp drive” or time travel technology. I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again. If time travel is ever invented it will almost instantly become known by everyone in all of the historical timeline that it always existed. Since we don’t already know about it then it hasn’t been/won’t ever be invented.)
It’s an interesting topic.
Speaking of inventions, the Oppenheimer movie is out. I haven’t seen it. But I was amusing my self recently by remembering that the US invented the atomic bomb, and used it, to avoid larger casualties in a war. The Soviet Union spied, acquired stolen technology and built a bomb just because the US had one. And the communists and communist sympathizers at the time and since point to the USA as the bad guy in this situation. There is this something that shouldn’t exist and the way they solved that problem was to steal the tech and make another. Something is kind of messed up about that picture.
And the historical context was that the Soviet Union didn’t have to get into much fighting with Japan because the bomb finished the war before they got ramped up. So it saved a lot of USSR soldiers and material.