::Leader Board:: Ahnko Honu Takes The Lead Chapter 23!

What a beautiful day it is! I think I'll walk over and get our mail, then come back and get my bike and ride to pickleball.

This is exactly why we've come to Florida....
 
We really enjoy the wildlife here, although some of it is much different than we're used to.

There are alligators in the lagoons, and we like seeing them. We have not heard of any problems with them here, even speaking to residents that have been here for decades.

We often walk along the sidewalks that follow the lagoons' edge, and sometimes get closer looks at the gators. The sidewalks are anywhere from six to twelve feet (approximately) from the water's edge.

The other day I got taken by surprise, a bit, when I walked up next to a gator that I hadn't noticed, at a point where the distance was only six feet, or so. This particular gator was as large as we've seen in our lagoons. I'd estimate its length at 12 to 13 feet.

It just laid there in the sun and didn't move. I just kept on walking and didn't mess my pants. Job well done, all around....:eek:
 
We really enjoy the wildlife here, although some of it is much different than we're used to.

There are alligators in the lagoons, and we like seeing them. We have not heard of any problems with them here, even speaking to residents that have been here for decades.

We often walk along the sidewalks that follow the lagoons' edge, and sometimes get closer looks at the gators. The sidewalks are anywhere from six to twelve feet (approximately) from the water's edge.

The other day I got taken by surprise, a bit, when I walked up next to a gator that I hadn't noticed, at a point where the distance was only six feet, or so. This particular gator was as large as we've seen in our lagoons. I'd estimate its length at 12 to 13 feet.

It just laid there in the sun and didn't move. I just kept on walking and didn't mess my pants. Job well done, all around....:eek:

Breakfast for another day.

I did that with a rattle snake once. I was golfing and hit my ball into the brush. I reached in, grabbed my ball and when I stood up I saw something move. It was a baby/small rattlesnake about six inches from where my ball was. Luckily it was a cold morning and that thing wasn't moving too fast. Almost soiled myself though.

Glad you didn't become dinner Don.
 
Hi all! I'm back home from a whirlwind trip to Denver.

I left Monday night and stayed near the Portland airport - snow was threatening and getting around this city if there's a single flake in the air is a nightmare. Nobody here knows how to drive in the snow and the entire city freaks out. It was a good decision - there was snow on the ground Tuesday morning and the roads were actually pretty slippery. I only had to drive about a mile on a straight road to get to the airport.

Because of the snow and ice our plane was delayed; the crew was stuck on a hotel shuttle that crept to the airport. Once they finally arrived we had to wait for the deicing trucks to do their work. We left Portland an hour late. When I got to Denver the rental agency was way low on cars - my choice was a minivan. I went in and complained. They upgraded me to an Infiniti. NICE car - but I still like my 2005 RAV4 better. With the late flight and the haggling over cars I got to school 2 minutes late for class. Usually I get there with about 90 minutes to spare.

I checked into my hotel room after class and ordered room service. I was exhausted; I decided to watch a movie (Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade - my favorite Indiana Jones movie!), eat dinner, and go to bed. At about 7:30 (about 1/2 hour into the movie and just after I finished eating dinner) my ceiling started raining. Hard. In multiple places. Fortunately I'd only unpacked my computer, so I packed it up and went down and got a new room. I went from a gorgeous view of the Rockies to a view of the strip club and marijuana store across the street. Oh well.

Denver was supposed to get snow yesterday evening - no problem. I'd be at the airport by 6, snow was predicted for 8. I was going to visit the Wings Over the Rockies air and space museum yesterday afternoon. When I got up at 6:30 a.m. it was snowing lightly. By the time class was out (noon) the streets were getting a coating. I decided to skip the museum and head straight for the airport. Good decision. By the time I got there cars were starting to slip and slide on the road and the snow was coming down pretty hard.

I went to the Southwest desk to see if they could get me on an earlier flight (my scheduled plane wasn't due to leave until 9:30). They did! 3:30, but instead of a nonstop it was a connecting flight with a stop (but not deplane) in between connecting cities. No problem - I was happy to leave early. Problem is...with weather and deicing we left Denver nearly an hour late, eating up almost all my connection time.

Oh wow, I'm really rambling. At any rate, I waved HI to Sally as we flew by Huntington Beach on the way to LAX, and I waved HI to Gary when we landed in San Jose. I made my connection (barely - thankfully it was 15 minutes late) and landed in Portland an hour and a half before I would have if I had stuck with my original departure time. Happy to be home!
 
Someplace. It will eventually emerge from the upset.

I hope that chili recipe shows up and you share it! We have a recipe that was my dad's. It's very good, but there's just something missing and I've never been able to put my finger on it. Dad did something to it that he never wrote down, because ours isn't quite the same. I'm always up for a new chili, but I don't want to just start going through recipes.
 
... I've never understood the draw of Baked Alaskas.

It's about the wow factor, I think. Kind of like fried ice cream in a Mexican restaurant. "You COOKED ice cream? And it's still frozen???"

I don't care for either.
 
I asked her why she never corrected me. She said that I was pronouncing it correctly but ever since her third grad teacher mispronounced her name as "Sonia" people have been calling her that and she just kind of adopted it.

That is hilarious!

We have always called our girls Emma and Annie. Their "formal" or "real" names are Emily and Marianne.

NEITHER girl corrected her teacher in the first days of school when the teacher called them by their formal names. And now both girls are known by those names at school - teachers and friends alike.
 
Parents giving their kids weird spellings of their names is really inconsiderate to the kid. It doesn't make your kid any more special, you are just dooming them to a life of having to spell or pronounce their names every time they have an sort of official interaction. Kind of a pet peeve of mine.



We broke two of Hank's rules: Name your child what you will call them and avoid the most popular names of that year (Emily was in the top 10 when Emma was born).
 
My children are, John Allen and Angela Dawn. Angela's are Alexis Olivia and Clayton Riley.
My brother in law is Daniel. When he was born they were too poor for a middle name.
My mothers family just gave the girls first names. When they married they kept their maiden sir name for a middle name.
My daughter kept her three names and added her husbands for the last.

My paternal grandparents were Delbert Oliver and Effie. Grandma didn't have a middle name. Grandpa had a sister named Mignonette (Nettie) and a brother named Oland. He also had a brother John and a sister Susan. Go figure.
 
As someone with an uncommon (yet still not made-up) name, I went through a few phases of liking and not liking it.
In elementary school I just wanted a "normal" name like all my friends. I could never find any of those personalized items at the store like a cup or those little license plates with your name on it for your bike.
I get annoyed having to correct people sometimes.
Starbucks is fun.
Anyhow by the time I was 15 or 16 I kind of liked having a different name.
I also think once Matt Damon became famous at least most people have heard the name and now can even spell it correctly. So that helps.
I have met only five people with my name, one of them is female, and one also spells his differently (Daemon).
So I think a unique or interesting name is overall a good thing, but not a weird or made-up name just to be weird or made-up.
Some of those names with accent marks that do not affect pronunciation are probably my biggest pet peeves.

Parents being clever can end up just being cruel though.

Sometimes they do well though.
For example, I like the name Aldrine. :D
I don't know how many of you know the story behind it.
His parents wanted to give him an American name. They named him after Buzz Aldrin. But they added the "e" at the end to make it "more American."
I think that's a great story too!

I've been Jon all my life. Correcting the spelling (No H!) is just a fact of life. Of course, I only correct it if it will matter (going into lasting documentation).

When I was 14 we discovered that my "formal" first name was spelled Jonathon instead of Jonathan, which is a much more common spelling. We didn't know until we ordered a copy of my birth certificate so I could get a passport. I blamed the records clerk at the hospital, but my mom said, "Well...I signed the form."
 
I hope that chili recipe shows up and you share it! We have a recipe that was my dad's. It's very good, but there's just something missing and I've never been able to put my finger on it. Dad did something to it that he never wrote down, because ours isn't quite the same. I'm always up for a new chili, but I don't want to just start going through recipes.

I love Nanilei's chili.
It is basic, but really good.
No recipe.
She just whips it up.
 
Bunker-scope shows a sunny, blue sky day out there.

Monday night and yesterday we had all sorts of precipitation falling: rain, sleet, graupel (it's a real thing), snow, and some other stuff. Wind. Snow squalls causing white-out conditions. Lots of fun!

Today is calm and bright.
 
Bunker-scope shows a sunny, blue sky day out there.

Monday night and yesterday we had all sorts of precipitation falling: rain, sleet, graupel (it's a real thing), snow, and some other stuff. Wind. Snow squalls causing white-out conditions. Lots of fun!

Today is calm and bright.

Graupel. I always called it snow pellets. Never knew it had a real name!

lead_720_405.png
 
Graupel. I always called it snow pellets. Never knew it had a real name!

Snow is fascinating stuff.

[Nerd Alert On]

There are a few places in Bend and Sisters that offer avalanche training classes, and rescue classes. One the things you learn in the avalanche training class is how to dig snow pits and ananlyze the various snow layers to determine which layers are weak, which ones are cohesive, etc.

Having a layer of graupel sandwiched between two dense layers of snow is like putting ball bearings between two sheets of plywood.

[Nerd Alert Off]
 
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