21st Century Hardships, Part the Fourth

The baseboards are in. The wall unit and Murphy bed go back in this afternoon, and with that we’re done with contractors. We did the painting but they did the heavy work. Because the walls and carpet had been damaged by an air conditioner leak, our homeowners insurance covered a lot of the work. The […]

Streetcar to Disaster

Last night we joined our friends Darrell and Mary Anne at the Mercado San Augustin, a hipsterish collective of shops and eating places in a Mexican-style enclosed patio a few blocks from downtown Tucson. The Mercado sits at the southwestern end of Tucson’s streetcar tracks, and after dinner we hopped on for a ride. It was […]

Air-Minded: Soesterberg Photoblog, April 1961

My friend Peter van ____, who was the 32nd Tactical Fighter Squadron’s Dutch military liaison officer when I flew F-15s at Soesterberg Air Base from 1978-1982, just sent me a batch of NATO archival photos taken there on 5 & 6 April 1961. The occasion was either a NATO exercise or possibly the production of […]

Wednesday Bag o’ Sit

Or Shack o’ Sit, if you prefer. Cleverly vulgar signs and business names are funny the first time you see them, but the humor wears out fast. Used to be, I’d see photos like this on Facebook and instantly share them with all my friends. These days I try to exercise restraint … and yet here I am leading […]

Attack the Enemy When He Is Unprepared

Wasps love our pool. They light on the water, float on surface tension for a few minutes, then fly off to their nests. They’re drinking, as anyone would in this heat, and I suspect storing a little extra water somewhere to deliver to the nest. It’s normally live & let live at Woodford Manor, but […]

Air-Minded: PASM Photoblog VII

Is it time for another batch of photos from Pima Air & Space Museum? Let me check. Yes, my overflowing Flickr account says it is! First up, our newest exhibit, a Supermarine Spitfire Mk XIVe recently acquired from the RAF Museum in Hendon, London. The Mk XIV is a late-WWII model of the original Spitfire, […]

Sunday Bag o’ Tools

Friday morning Donna said she needed a magnetized bowl to keep sewing machine screws and needles in. You get those at Harbor Freight, and since I love tools I went along. I came home with a breaker bar and 19mm socket to carry in one of the Goldwing’s saddlebags, in case I ever have to change a rear […]