Nothing from yesterday to report.
I’ve started my day poorly by missing the first two Duolingo sentences for today, so I’ve gotten angry and have had to put my phone down for awhile. I started the day with four out of possible five lives. Today is one of the days I wish I had committed to Duolingo at the start of the year and purchased their subscription when it was 60% off its normal price. Oh well, if I don’t get back to it today all that will happen is I will lose one of my freezes to keep my 198 day streak alive.
At some time today I want to go out into WLF to see how much rain was dumped on it overnight, and what effects that has caused.
Wordle: five, my starter was DAILY
Connections: perfect, Purple > Yellow > Green > Blue
So much rain and still raining. I should put up another rain gauge. But the squirrels always seem to break them.
Wordle in 4 starting with STYLE. Connections perfect: Yellow, Purple, Green, Blue.
Huh, for whatever reason the rain gauge is one of the few things in WLF the critters have never touched.
Good job. For my fourth guess I had to play a Wordle wildcard, what I call a word which has little to no relation to the information that I already possess, in order to save my bacon.
The time has come when I have to delete apps in order to do an iOS update, therefore it’s time to consider getting a new iPhone.
Yesterdays trip to charm was quite interesting. I had never been down that way before that I could recall. It was a fairly quick and easy process and I’m only 40 bucks lighter for the two video screens. I did ask them about taking my old cable from work, and they said that you would have to register as a business which makes perfect sense.
4 inches of rain in the rain gauge and it seems to have stopped for the moment.
Good news yesterday from the cycling world. I have been waiting on my national assignments, and I picked up two of the NCL races as well as Tour of the Gila.
Heading out to breakfast with my lovely bride to celebrate our mutual day off.
-FP
$20/screen, interesting. Still seems like a lot of money to me, but I will recycle my screens responsibly when that time comes.
Wordle in 3 starting with TRACE. Should have been 2 but I zigged when I should have zagged.
One mistake in connections but dammit, there is a windsock at an airport! (sorry for the spoiler)
Swapped the wheels on the road bike and attempted to re-align the brake calipers. Massive fail and I was just about tool throwing mad! Off to the professionals to figure it out.
Hopefully tennis tonight if the courts dry out enough. So much rain last night and now we have flood warnings. I’m sure the greenway is under water right now.
Good on ya, and you were snared by a red herring!
If you all got the rain I did, and I’m pretty certain you did, the greenway is under a lot of water today.
Thank you for giving away the easiest category! 🙂
Wait- new bike, swap wheels? It’s not like you don’t know the 2nd best bike mechanic in the Grove family! Phone a friend.
Yeah my thought was gravel wheels and road wheels so swapping would be easier than changing tires. Turns out I was wrong.
And yes, Allan is the best mechanic in ATL but he is 40 minutes away and Atlanta Cycling is 4. I’m bringing the bike with me to Florida on Friday and don’t have a free evening.
My rain gauge also caught 4”. I did a peek around, well perhaps less than that, and the worse things that seems to have happened were the overflowing of some of my water catchers, and a small branch fallen into the yard.
The rain was so heavy, and one of my rain pipes clogged enough, that one of my end covers was blown off by the water. No harm done, just a first.
I love falling asleep to the sound of rain. It’s so soothing!
Tonight I’m going to the Hawks game with my friend Sarah. I read an article about the best food at Phillips Arena (I can’t remember the new name), and it said the best wings were JR Crickets. I’ve never had them because there’s always a line, but I’m going to try them tonight!
You all are going to kill me for this, but there is a new NYT word game that they are beta testing right now called Strands. It’s wicked frustrating but I love it!
https://www.nytimes.com/games/strands
Interesting that the Times is trying to reinvent Word Search.
Everything old is new again?
I suppose. A couple of years ago I started writing a Word Search app. It wasn’t as detailed as this, it followed a more “traditional” up-down-left-right-diagonal recognition of words.
Failed badly!
I went down in flames the first time I did it. It took some getting used to!
Wordle in 3 using my usual start word STEAL.
Connections perfect (Bob, I would have gotten it right anyway): yellow > purple > green > blue.
Well done.
In Strands I only tried one incorrect word so I never got to the hint (you have to try three wrong words before they will give you a hint).
I got them all, I think with one error due to an errant swipe.
I expected all of the words to be names of dips, and not what it turned out to be.
Tasty China was tasty last night – we sat upstairs – just to do it – downstairs has plenty of empty booths. Kat commented on how the music was all punk, it was a nice change for background music at a restaurant.
They had pan fried soup dumplings as a special – so of course we had to try them.
Fun visit with Kat last night – she likes NC, but really misses ATL.
Besides that – all I can say is my new grapefruit spoon is way better than my old one (Allan thought he lost 1 at the fire station, so bought us 2 new ones & then promptly found the lost one)
New grapefruit spoons? Aren’t you two living high on the hog!?!?
Glad to hear it was a good visit. I nearly invited myself, but was in no mood to deal with Atlanta traffic yesterday.
traffic was horrible – she did comment on not missing ATL traffic.
you could have joined us of course.
And – the spoon – its the little things in life.
I am totally with you on the little things in life. Small comforts really make life easier!
I would be all over pan-fried soup dumplings.
yellow – purple – green – blue –
I don’t think I’d ever have gotten the blue category
The blue category baffled me as well. I am glad you don’t have to supply the association to get the answers.
Turned on today’s stage of Paris-Nice on Peacock. With the loss of GCN I am not going tobe able to follow cycling as well this year.
I’m pretty sure Kevin is working that race – Allan said he was doing a bunch of the spring classics
That’s cool.
Because I am not having a great day I thought that I could improve my mood, but probably not my health, by baking a loaf of an Irish soda bread. I remember the process of making and forming the dough being easy, such was not the case today. It’s in the oven now, I will know how well I did in a little while.
Allan is making some chex mix to improve his mood.
(and the boxes on the counter are I’m sure driving him nuts – so making them go away will improve his mood for sure.
Irish Soda Bread is out of the oven. I will impatiently wait for it to cool completely before I cut a slice to test it.
Patience ran out. It was nearly completely cool as I hacked off a chunk and slathered that with butter. I’m glad to say that the loaf turned out well.
I should make my own chex mix. The chex mix you buy doesn’t have enough flavor for my taste. I hunt around for the pieces that have more spices on them.
its not too tough, just need to make a big huge pan of it – or you will have cereal boxes, etc all over the place.
Greetings from LA. Historically that has meant Lower Alabama for me, because my almost former in-laws base out of there, but I’m in the big city. Twentynine Palms was an outstanding place to base out of. I breezed into Joshua Tree several times by way of the north entrance. Most people take the west entrance, there was a long line of cars trying to get in on Sunday when I came out that way.
This has been an epic trip for me, and I can’t write too much about it all today becaus I have to get my game face on for my real reason for being out here (teaching an Excel class, yes, it is definitely nice work when I can get it).
The northern part of Joshua Tree National Park is a weird mash-up of the Flintstones and Dr. Seuss. There’s lots of of Flintstones-like boulders (which I’m sure inspired the cartoon). The Joshua trees (which are actually succulents) look like trees drawn by Dr. Seuss. The northern part is in the Mojave Desert, while the southern part is in the Colorado Desert. Two very different climates.
I will say that I spent the entire day Monday driving and hiking alone in the Mojave Desert. The Amboy Crater is an hour north of Twentynine Palms. It’s an extinct volcano known as a cinder cone. Gloves would have been helpful, and there were points walking around the rim where I wondered what the hell I had gotten myself into. I then headed another hour and a half north. I took Route 66 east for a while to get to the Kelso Sand Dunes. Route 66 is such a better way to traverse the desert versus the interstate, which was also part of my route. Maybe because I would have the entire road to myself for long stretches? I climbed to the top of a 600 foot sand dune. It is totally choose your adventure, as there is no trail, apart from other people’s footprints. There are many game time decisions as to whether the people went before took the path of least resistance, so about halfway up I went my own way. Amazingly I had cell phone service at the top of the dune, and was able to Facetime my kids and a couple of friends. It was definitely the craziest place that I’ve been. When you park, people at the top of the dunes look like little dots. I couldn’t see my car from the top and got confused as to which direction I should take back, but I quickly figured it out. My hiking boots immediately filled with sand on the way down so I took them off and walked back barefoot, which was absolutely lovely. The prospect of scorpions never entered my mind until my brother mentioned it later on a phone call. I was on the lookout for rattlesnakes. At one point a lizard flitted in front of me and about made my heart jump out of my chest.
Monday was truly a life-changing day for me, because I realized not that long ago I would have been FAR TOO FEARFUL to even consider an expedition like that, especially all alone. It was truly one of the best days of my life. I drove back to LA yesterday by way of the road that goes to the bottom of Joshua Tree. I had aspirations of doing something fun in LA, but once I got to the parking deck, I decided I’m not moving the car. Once I got to the hotel bed, I decided I’m not leaving this room. There’s a bit of a sensory overload being here after spending a couple of days in the desert. I did sleep 11 hours, which is unheard of for me (exhaustion has its privleges) and wasn’t even fazed by the apparently newbie garbage truck driver who spent 30 minutes banging dumpsters around at 4:00 AM. My decade of therapy has paid off handsomely.
There’s more to tell. I’m on the red-eye back to Atlanta tonight, I figured I’ll leverage my insomnia instead of burning up tomorrow as a travel day.
That’s quite the recap! Hope you have a good return trip.
Thanks, Paulie! There’s more to tell, including an incredible restaurant that Betsy turned me on to.
sounds incredible.
It truly was. One of my absolute best trips ever.
Glad you had such an epic trip! Safe travels home.
Thank you, Sal! I am damn glad that I rethought Yosemite! The desert is where I was supposed to be. I’m not even mad at AirBnB any more, I wouldn’t have had these experiences if the Malibu trip had worked out. It would have been nice, but not life changing.
Amazing! What an experience.
Yes! Everything flowed amazingly well.
I have never been inspired to go somewhere like that- until now. Thank yo.
Wow! That is high praise! Thank you! I absolutely recommend it. This was a seat of my pants trip, apart from choosing where to stay, I left my calendar blank and took things one day at a time. None of the hikes at Joshua Tree grabbed me when I read about the trails, so I started looking farther afield. The sand dunes were so incredible that I almost did it again yesterday, but I’m happy with what I chose, which was to explore more of Joshua Tree.
sounds like our trip to Carmel-By-The Sea. We had no real plans, just played it by ear & it turned out to be a incredible trip.