Friday Check In

When you come to Ireland let me know we will meet up and cry like 12 year school girls watching a Harry Stiles concert. I can show you around the off the beaten track Ireland.

Route 66 on bikes is also a must. That's a great trip. I sure hope it's still like I remember it from years ago on both Indian motorcycles and vintage cars.

Boss, you can count on it if/when it happens. The Route 66 trip is looking more and more like it'll be done in a rented convertible. But anything could still happen at this point.

Friday again... I'm starting to think that there are only six days in a week.

Got through another week of suffering with NOTCovid of a more typical change-of-season cold.

Finished up the Netflix Pieces of Her (stick with it and stop asking who's that or what happened... all is revealed as it moves along). It was quite good. Just started BritBox offering of Season 3 The Bay and it's as engrossing as the first two seasons. They posted all 6 episodes... hooray! Their other series Traces has been posted an episode at a time, so we can finally start watching it on our 2-episode-a-night basis on Sunday because the concluding episode 6 will be posted on Tuesday evening.

Baseball is back -- Spring Training games are on. I don't know anybody other than the cameo appearances that the regular players make in the early days. But this ST is difference since they lost time during the contract negotiations, so we'll see the regular players for more innings soon.

If you tried streaming PlutoTV and found it unsatisfying, it's reorganized and a lot better. It has channels devoted to entire series (and its spinoffs if it had any). For a goof we put the Love Boat channel on. We had forgotten how bizarre the program was, with tissue-thin plots, most all scenes shot indoors, and offering nothing equivalent to an actual cruise experience. The ships now hold 4x more passengers when full and no one gets to know any of the staff in the way that the show makes one think is possible -- and no one knew them back in the LB broadcast days either. But it was a vehicle for many actors to remind everyone they were still alive and still working and perhaps worth someone casting them again. Or perhaps get them different roles on other programs and avoid typecasting. The casting is strangely funny and often curious. The show is sometimes better-than-awful. But in just a 5-minute peek can you see Dick Gautier when he's not playing Hymie on Get Smart. Yesterday, I saw Fernando Lamas, Dan Rowan, Desi Arnaz Jr, Juliet Mills, Larry Storch, Adrienne Barbeau, Michelle Lee, Karen Valentine and Stephanie Zimbalist all on the same show. It's like a casting director put every over-the hill and new-to-the-business name in a hat and let Lancelot Link make the picks. I didn't stay long enough to even know what the plot was about. Perhaps there's wasn't a plot except having a misunderstanding and then walking off the ship happy so the next group of "gee, they're still in the business?" guests get on board. They stretched it out for a few seasons. How? No clue.

Oh how we miss cruising -- we had hoped to do one a year. The last was the 2019 Radio Spirits cruise (it has been announced there will be no more but they did not know it was to be the last). Prior to that we had a spectacular Thanksgiving cruise in 2018. The multi-generation cruises are so happy and enthusiastic. It will take years before we get back on a ship, unfortunately.

In the meantime, there are reels to run...

Another weekend, which doesn't really matter in my world, except for other people's schedules. And more little projects to complete. This week, we're finally addressing the "farm" aspect of the property. We'll be shopping tomorrow for chicks and coop building materials. Nothing large. We'd just like to have a rooster and maybe half a dozen hens. We're not looking for meat birds, just eggs. I'm also in the market for a miniature donkey for a pet. Gonna name him Happy. Visions of a sign on the gate reading "Feel Free to Stop By and Kiss My Happy A**". It'll never happen. But just imagining it makes me giggle. We plan to eventually put two or three cattle in the back pasture. I plan for those to be meat cattle. But I suspect they'll end up the wife's "Babies" and I'll still have to depend on a favorite meat market for grilled medium rare goodness.

Ain't it funny, how grand dreams tend to be trampled by reality?

Be safe, be well and be happy. And continued prayers for Tom and Carolyn,
Space

GB, I love those old shows. I regularly watch, Mannix. Rockford files, Simon and Simon, Charlie's Angels, Kojak, Golden Girls, Maude, A Team, Crazy Like a Fox, Streets of San Francisco, MacMillan and Wife, Chips, KnightRider, AirWolfe, Buck Rogers. And many more. Lucky we have a few channels that only play old stuff.

Space having your own land is the best, get a greenhouse in and grow all your own veg. I am sure you got fruit trees planned.

Ton more vinyl came this week. Man, I got a serious problem. But it's all good. It's a beautiful sunny day today warm and all the flowers are in full bloom. I am listening to music as I type this so a good day all around.

Stay safe my friends. Sending loads of love to Tom and Carolyn

Mannix -- the Emelda Marcos of sport jackets!

Rockford -- thin script? stick a car chase in there!

Kojak -- lollipops are just asking for cavities -- haircuts? who needs 'em, baby?

Love shows from that period...

Another 6-day week, it seems, and here we are, Friday again.

The Theater Five work becomes more curious as one of the authors embeds a Bible narrative as the storyline and turns it biographical as he explains he's not be pursuing his famous father's footsteps. It's been fascinating tracking all of the names and events in the story down. Then there's a story of an air traffic controller being blackmailed by a loanshark to prevent the loanshark himself from being murdered by some tough guys back East to whom he owes big money... he wants the controller to send the mob guys private plane on a flight path to certain death... but there's a great twist to the story. That episode includes a 24-year old Yaphet Kotto! nickp57 and I are getting good at finding inside-jokes in the scripts, too. Amazing how listening to the programs actually works! Sometimes we collect shows just like baseball cards to say we have them. Once you dig deeper you really get an appreciation of the efforts and your awe of the productions grows so much.

Had to bake a reel of miscellaneous shows for THREE DAYS before I could get it to play, but I was able to grab the programs needed from it as it played with the moistening of a damp rag in the tape path. It's also funny getting reels to transfer that started with some disc dubs I made in 1977, oh so long ago. It's a reel of Green Hornet shows from wartime discs that I remember quite well because the base was some composition of paper because steel was needed for the war effort. Anxious to see how the recordings survived since I don't have my originals.

We have four collections we're working on and we need more tape dubbers in the group... and more cloud space. It's hard to believe that the OTRR Purchasing Group went from having trouble finding things to buy to two years later being overwhelmed with so many raw recordings that it can't get them all out.

A few weeks ago I saw the traffic data that OTRR has on YouTube over five years. They're fascinating:

   Subscribers: 16,102
   Viewer gender: 25.6% female, 74.4% male
   Viewer age:
       13-17 - 0.1%
       18-24 - 1.7%
       25-34 - 5.3%
       35-44 - 8.9%
       45-54 - 18.8%
       55-64 - 31.9%
       65+ - 33.2%
   Total views: 8,674,465
   Total impressions: 105,834,333 (how many time video thumbnails were shown to viewers on YouTube, since January 1, 2018)
   Total watch time (hours): 2,536,344
   73.4% of watch time comes from people not subscribed to the channel
   Most viewed video: "X Minus One - No Contact", 42,833 (five of the top ten are X Minus One; second is the "Yours Truly Johnny Dollar" Dick Powell audition)
   58.6% of watch time comes from mobile phones

YouTube... this is YouTube? There's nothing to watch when these play, so it's being used for convenience because there's no equivalent to YouTube for audio files. Sci-fi seems to be a great hook for getting folks into OTR there...

Found this curious streaming site: oldtime.radio -- nice interface -- grabs files from Internet Archive and also allows for easy downloading of individual files. Not sure who worked on the site -- but really easy to use. On my Roku I often run Stay Tuned America, Antioch OTR, and Conyers OTR, all run by folks deeply involved in reel transfers and supporting the historical aspects of the programs. Had the Hehn Collection not come up, I'd never have known these folks. This hobby's so great in creating relationships.

One more week of teaching classes. It's been fun dealing with the kids who want to be there and the kids who don't but whose parents want them to be there. But it seems everyone's gotten better at something. Including me, which is part of the idea of teaching. You never really know a kata until you have to teach it to someone else.

Baseball is less than two weeks away. Looking forward to our minor league tour these next months and getting back to enjoying  retirement again

How's everybody doing?  My shoulder is finally getting better, still don't have full range of motion, but at least it doesn't hurt constantly anymore.  

About those old shows:  I too like most of the same shows listed there.  In fact I'm watching a Knight Rider episode right now.  It's so cheesy, but I love it anyway.  I also like watching "The Fugitive."  I think I've identified the reason I like these old shows.  Apart from the familiarity, these old shows were complete stories.  They had a beginning, a climax, and a conclusion.  Tons of new shows are basically soap operas; just open ended continuations that never really conclude.  

Another thing...I got that coral pink stratocaster I made, playing like a dream.  I bought some pickups from Tone Hatch, they're really good sounding pickups at a nice price!

Send some rain our way, and take care everyone!

It's been a busy week. A plethora of minor renovations. Mostly sanding and painting. But we also did an order for three new doors. A main entry door, a storm door over that and a new door leading down to my underground lair (That would be the finished basement). We also picked up a new foster dog, which will almost definitely end up a permanent addition to the family. He's an 8 month old yellow lab mix, who is super mellow but has a funny personality.

GB, I've also been known to queue up OTR on my phone on Youtube for listening in the car. This can be convenient for long drives, if I've forgotten to reload the USB stick I keep plugged in to my sound system.

Chad, I'm happy to hear you're feeling better. I've also lost a lot of flexibility. But that's mostly due to my own idiotic habits and hobbies.

Speaking of idiotic hobbies and habits. My wife has offered me a compromise. If I'm willing to give up skydiving, she won't argue if I get an ultralight aircraft to fly in and out of the property. She seems to feel that an ultralight is much safer than being a freefall junkie. Apparently she doesn't know me as well as she thinks she does. I got really excited when she first brought it up. But then I started thinking about trying to take off and land on the property, with hundred foot trees all over and around the property. This is going to require a lot of thought before I can even think of shopping for an ultimate toy. Plus, this would pretty much eliminate plans for the new trike. But these considerations and more have proven once again... RETIREMENT CAN BE AWESOME!!!

Be well, Be safe and Be Happy,
Space

GB, enjoyed all that info. Great you are enjoying teaching your classes.

Chad, great to hear you are on the mend have your strat dialed in. I have managed to religiously practice every day 7 days a week. Short bursts every day. Fun only. Really helps mentally.

Space have you thought of an autogyro you can get off the ground quick and land just about anywhere. And I know by ultralight you mean a retired fighter jet.

It's been absolutely gorgeous here weather wise doggo and I are on the beach every morning. Thank the dogs we only live 2 mins from beach. Blue skies, aqua marine sea. Life is good.

Work is busy but super interesting because I made it that way by taking on a ridiculous AI project that has turned out in ways we did not anticipate and no we are not creating Skynet. Fun times this my last kick at the cat. After this project ends I am done. Hanging up my spurs. I will run my own companies in very light mode. But not taking anymore jobs. I know I said this before but I am building a home studio and gonna get into that lark producing indy artists.

Never gonna stop work I am just going to work differently.

Tons of Love and hugs going out to Tom and Carolyn.

Stay safe my friends

This is getting suspicious... it seems the six-day calendar week has been implemented, yet no one will admit to it. The story seems to have no coverage in the press or the broadcast networks. Monitoring this carefully...

Hard to believe it's almost three decades since Sports Illustrated ran one of the more famous baseball April Fools Day stories on their cover date April 1, 1985 about pitcher Sidd Finch
https://www.si.com/mlb/2014/10/15/curious-case-sidd-finch
What's the first letter of each of these words from the article header spell?
He's a pitcher, part yogi and part recluse. Impressively liberated from our opulent life-style, Sidd's deciding about yoga—and his future in baseball.

Got a reel of Tennessee Jed that refuses to play cleanly. The recordings are great. It's spent parts of 5 days in the dehydrator trying to get the squeals to stop... even moistening the tape as it plays. It could be hopeless.

Couldn't get the Whistler upgrades organized, so I'll be starting to post Suspense again. So far behind on so many things. Having a great time in the process.

Survived the month teaching the students. And Sensei said I was a success because no one cancelled their classes  Got a new gi -- forgot how heavy the cloth is when you get them. Best was I can describe it is soft burlap without the itchiness. Funny when you wash them the first time they have a blue cast to them that is almost startling. A couple of uses with washings after and they should shrink to "just right" and I can get the alterations I need all done. One year we had an old gi collection and sent them all to a dojo in South Africa where they would be put to good use. Not sure if there's anything like that going on now.

OTRR newsletter will have a long Theater Five article in it soon. This continues to be great fun. Fred Foy is the announcer, but he pops up at interesting times as an airport public address announcer, and in another flight-related episode, he can be heard in the control tower background murmuring and at another time as a pilot checking in with the tower. It's fun listening for all these things, and the group of us take great delight in telling the others.

Yesterday was 35 years since my dissertation defense. Sent a note to my doctoral advisor, who is 87 now and seasonally shuttles between New Jersey and Florida. I did not trust him because of various internal political crap at NYU that was going on with the program I was in, so we had a summit meeting sometime in 1984: pastrami sandwiches at the legendary Second Avenue Deli. All problems were solved. We became great friends. The cole slaw and the pickles played an important role in the process. He had gone to NYU out of high school and stayed there for his Masters and PhD and worked his way up in the organization through to his late retirement -- over 50 years there. He knew where all the bodies were buried and where the holes we being dug for new ones, and who was doing what to whom and if not who wanted to do what to whom and why. (I'm talking about budgets and tenure -- what did you think I was talking about?) I never saw anyone work a bureaucracy like he did. It was incredible. The strangest move was to put a cantankerous irascible faculty member on my review committee. I was worried. My advisor said not to because he would not read my work, but would defend it nonetheless at the defense as if he knew every speck of it, and no one would challenge him on anything because no one wanted to "get him started." His gruff nasty personality was legendary. Came in handy that day!

It feels so strange how now being retired none of those things that were so important then matter anymore. What a relief.

Last Spring Training weekend games... the real stuff starts soon... hooray!

GB, I beg to differ. My world seems to have converted to a calendar with varying numbers of days per week. The most common is a one day week which is always the same day. But the weather is warming and it looks like the trees will be mostly green in another week or two. So, soon I should be back into a more "weekly" cycle. I've already done all of the Spring maintenance on the mower and power tools. Can you tell that I'm eager?

Speaking of maintenance, I got my annual checkup a few days ago. Royally ticked off the wife, that every stat came back firmly in the green. Mostly because I'm 8 years older than her and have led a much crazier?/stupider?/more adventurous? (Yeah, I'll go with that one!) lifestyle than she has. And she has to take more meds on a daily basis than most geriatric clinics prescribe on an average day. Her favorite line is, "You just wait. You're time's coming". And at 63, she's probably right. But I'm gonna gloat for as long as I can.

Boss, I've considered an auto-gyro. And it's still a long shot possibility. But starting at $80,000 for anything I'd feel good about flying, it's a VERY long shot. But if the sky were the limit...
https://autogyrousa.com/cavalon/

Be safe, be well and be happy,
Space

GB, enjoyed the return to academic days post. I remember working in the Genetics lab for my PhD program and sleeping under my desk in back as I waited for results. All the politics and people hiding research to protect their nobel prize chances. What utter nonsense. But I remember those days fondly as it was insulated from the real world. Everything was theoretical.

Lads I somedays think should I be worried that I can never seem to remember what day it is. I wake up and have to look at my watch as most days i have no idea.

Duly noted Space. I am now heavily invested in researching VTOL solutions for you. I am of course assuming you are going to want full supersonic capabilities and all weather instrumentation and ability to carry "payloads"... gotcha ;-) I understand the assignment.

So much vinyl arrived this week that I am worried I am sleep ordering is this a possible answer? We had a lovely week weather wise now its gone to hell in a handbasket.

Stay safe my friends.... Loads of love to you and Carolyn Tom.

Is it 6-day weeks where we can't get all we want done, or is it one continuous Saturday filled with errands and hobbies and such. It's so hard to decide. The answer is probably "yes" for both. We have one foot firmly planted in each camp.

Baseball has started, for real, and now the planning of the minor league park trips begins. So looking forward to this, little by little, and also a car trip to the northeast for family and such. Hope it all comes true.

My month of teaching karate classes went well: no one quit. No parent complained. I guess that's the lowest common denominator. May 21 is my test day. Almost done learning my sai kata and cleaning up all the very many others.

Started posting Suspense again and it's great to get back into the research and the newspaper clips and the backstories once more. Theater Five -- wow -- all I can say is that nickp57 has done a heroic job writing plotline summaries. He's got 192 of the 260 done! We haven't missed a day posting a daily episode, either. Episode 54 is today. I queue them up 5 at a time and upload the audio files to archive.org.

Worked on a reel of Tennessee Jed this week. I must have baked it to stop squealing the better part of 6 days. Then when I ran it, I fast forwarded it onto the take up reel, and then rewound it holding a wet reg against the tape. Then when it played, it had a moist rag on the tape as it entered the path to the tape heads. It finally worked! The shows are at https://archive.org/details/TennesseeJedJHMC and are the ones from 1945 and 1946. It felt good to finally toss that reel into the garbage. If this was the Twilight Zone, it would keep appearing in my office every time I threw it away. I started seeing that reel box in my sleep...

Catching up on Silent Witness lately. Just started season 21...

Hope everyone is well otherwise!

GB ah you bring back the good old days of Sai, Bo, Jo kata and many saturday Kendo classes. My misspent youth was spent inside a dojo like Han says "forging myself in the fire of my own will" was a great way to spend my days.

Stormy week here weather wise. Still nice and spring like. More books and some DVD's and I bought a top of the line vintage CD player with a tube preamp. What glorious nonsense. Life is good. Managed to keep up my 7 days a week guitar playing. I am also starting a studio engineering course in May for fun. Building a studio.

Stay safe my friends.... Love to Tom and Carolyn...

Thought I would check in since I actually did a little OTR this week to talk about.

Was cleaning up my desk and had an old drive I haven't fired up for a long time that had my OTR archive on it and decided I probably should move the archive to a new drive and combine it a little OTR that I have downloaded since we moved. Turns out the drive was at least one generation back and I only had one case that would run it. This was back when a 500GB drive was considered huge. Took me awhile to find a cable that worked and get everything running again, took hours to copy. Now I have about 170GB of OTR tucked in the corner of my 8TB drive. Left it backup to my nightly backup 10TB drive and now feel comfortable that if the old drive never spins up again I have everything where I can find it. I do have most of it backed up to a huge pile of CDs but really would hate to have to retrieve anything from those.

Still mostly listening to new OTR Decoder Theater and Everything Icebox. Throwing some podcasts on assorted topics, Stuff You Should Know can be habit forming. Now that I have my archives on line I will add a series or two to my listening rotation.

Wife and I met some friends at our favorite pizza place last night. They serve RC cola on tap, all they need is a fireplace and a moose head on the wall to make it perfect. Maybe I'll make the suggestion to the owner.

Take care all.

Ah, CDs and hard drives. It's amazing to think about the storage space available to us these days, compared to days of yore. I built my first PC from a Heathkit kit in the late 70's. It cost me over $3000 and had 4k of ram and no hard storage. Software was either input by hand or use a crossover cable to load from a cassette. The amount of storage we have available for cheap today kinda scares me. Having lost an un backed up hard drive loaded with pictures, I'd hate to think about how much more I could have lost on a much larger drive.

I currently have a box under my desk with hundreds of CD-R and DVD-R disks in it. Those disks are loaded with OTR, Serials, Newsreels and classic movies. All of the media will be transferred to two separate hard drives and the disks will go back into storage.

It's been a very laid back week for me this week. No major projects up to this point. But tomorrow I'll be assembling a chicken coop in the back yard. Our first actual farm animals are finally coming to The Funny Farm. Our next two big projects will be raised gardening beds and then the greenhouse.

Be safe, be well and be happy,
Space

Hi all.  TGIF.  My real job this week went pretty well.  I feel like I'm finally getting back into the swing of things.  I work in I.T., but most of my time is spend documenting compliance rather than actual nuts and bolts IT.  I face annual audits and exams, the last several years were very chaotic, with lots of changes in personnel and COVID, etc.  My last exam went well and I think I'm getting my ducks back in a row...feels less stressful.

My wife and I worked our goats last weekend.  Several are showing signs of dust pneumonia.  It is so dry here, the ground is like talcum powder!  And dust devils that or more like mini tornadoes streak around a couple of times a week.  

OTR-wise, I found a show I was unfamiliar with before.  It's called "The Chase" from the early 50's.  It has a lot of the elements I like in a show, or at least the one episode I heard did.  Looks like about 50 or so episodes are available.  I'm going listen to some more of 'em.    

Seamus, the recording studio thing sounds fun. I experimented with open source Ubuntu Studio several years ago, but it seemed to have a steep learning curve in those days (8 years ago?). It might be more streamlined these days, I don't know. https://ubuntustudio.org/ 

Take care all.

Jeez, get stuck with life's little diversions and return to The Cobalt to find encyclopedic happenings from everyone! I feel I've tried to get a sip of water from a fire hose.

I'll add to the festivities by offering nanobits of nothing. . . Space's comment on DVDs and DVRs reminded me how I've slowly been making my way through the fierce burning of discs over the past few weeks: A forest fire of TV shows and movies while sampling them along the way.

We LOVE *Ted Lasso* (Mrs. Ghemrats and I), while I have taken to a solitary enjoyment of the *Spartacus* shows, having just finished the first season last night. Aside from the torrential floods of blood and the boggling hedonism, the sumptuous production values, drama and acting are fabulous to me. Add Sam Raimi and Robert Tapert's guiding hands on the project and you have one happy camper (and it surely doesn't hurt that Tapert's wife Lucy Lawless is in the mix as well. We loved *My Life Is Murder* with Lucy and breathlessly await the returning third season later this year).

*Tell Me A Story* from the CW was an oddity that I enjoyed, liking the second season more than the first, and another couple BBC offerings--*Marley's Ghosts* and *Yonderland*--are lovely shows as well. We've ploughed through *Ghostbusters Afterlife*, *Hawkeye*, *The Adam Project*, *Red Notice* and more with equal fervor. We now both are Cyclops, having one huge eye each, widescreen, with ears that hear only Dolby decibels.

And we finished our taxes.

I've indulged my Tom Waits fever by rooting out live performances, including a nearly two-hour retrospective of all his appearances on Letterman. And--wonder of wonder, miracle of miracles--I've actually persuaded She Who Must Be Obeyed to sit through a vintage 1978 Jethro Tull concert (Long one of my favorite bands teetering on genius, though a Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame slight has been vexing to me for oh so long). My son and I saw Tull in concert during the *Passion Play* tour and still smile everytime we reflect on it.

So, while you fine folk are doing something productive like building greenhouses and re-populating the donkey lineage and hand crafting gyrocosmicrelativators while strumming vintage guitars, I have been burrowing like a reclusive mole into media. Anything to avoid weeping of the horrors of human rights violations and pinheaded narcissists in resurgence campaigns to feed their egos.

I've been away too long, dear friends, so your Friday notes do offer comfort that many good people still life in Cobaltia. Prayers of support and good humor to ye all; be good to yourselves, and remember Tom and Carolyn in your thanks.
Peace and be blessed.
Jeff

Another Friday, another check-in. Things are getting active on The Funny Farm. We currently have a half dozen chicks almost ready to go into the coop, which means I have to assemble the mail order coop today. I have a couple pieces of fence to repair after tree limbs decided to fall on it the last few days. Yes, it got pretty windy with that last front that passed through. But all is well, other than a little mess in the yard.

I think I'm gonna take a photography course. Primarily, because the camera settings on my drone are a total mystery to me. My drone is a DJI Mini 2. It's not a great drone, but it is a good drone. And the camera on it is amazing. But I'm tired of running that camera in auto mode and want to learn how to use it more effectively. And I want to have that ability before we start the western trips. I learned my lesson while flying the drone in Hawaii. More camera knowledge is definitely needed.

Be well, be safe and be happy,
Space

Jeff, great to see you posting again. I have watched everything on your list. I just got in a whole bunch of Sci-Fi I am watching Sapphire and Steel. One of my fave Sci-Fi shows. Very dark. But well done with David McCallum and Joanne Lumely. If you can find it have a watch. I have Stingray, Joe 90, Capt. Scarlet and the Tomorrow People all UK sci-fi. Very enjoyable to watch all the silliness.

Space, ah your adventures with Drones. This could and should be a TV  show. Chores never end.

GB waiting on your update and great to see Jim and Chad posting.

Going to try and have a restful Easter weekend here. I have been working too much lately. Going to watch more Tomorrow People this weekend.

Very excited about the new Trek show Strange New Worlds with Capt. Pike and the first Enterprise crew that looks Boffo Box Office. Anson Mount is a brilliant Pike and Rebecca Romjin is going to be fab and Number 1 and Ethan Peck as Spock that will be a stellar trio. To me this looks like the Trek we have all been asking for.

Stay safe my friends and good to see Tom back posting love and prayers Tom and Carolyn.

Boss, any show about my drone adventures should be titled "A Comedy of Expensive Errors". I've had to climb trees twice to retrieve it. Then there was the time I flew it into the side of the house. So far I've only had to replace one propeller. But there's a good reason behind why I paid for the three year replacement warranty.

I got a lot done this week and I mostly only had to write checks and hand out cash. Got our front porch rebuilt after waiting almost a year for the contractor to get to our job on his list. Got lawn mowed for the first time this season. Some of my neighbors have mowed 3 times already but I don't want to spoil it. Oh and last week I had 11 trees removed that were dead or starting to die. All hauled away and the stumps ground out. I did re-groom my 1200' drive, after a big rain storm added some new ditches across it, with the help of my 1949 Ford 8N. I also cleaned out the ditch that plugged up and caused the problem, hopefully I remember to keep it cleaned out.

I started listening to Seeing Ear Theater which I guess is really new OTR, pretty good so far.

Off to a bluegrass concert tomorrow night to hear Blue Highway.

Greetings from Savannah GA where we are spending the Easter weekend with Greybelt the Younger and the newly announced Mrs GtY-to be. Savannah is "mutually inconvenient" for us, which is why we picked it, about the same driving time for both. The food is good here... walked by lots of placed we'd like to try. One of the places we're going tomorrow is the American Prohibition Museum -- sounds like a hoot! https://www.americanprohibitionmuseum.com/

Back posting on Monday!

Easter in Melville is a felicitous time with all the folks getting in the spirit of the coming Spring. Ma Findley is busy prepping her famous Down Home Big A$$ Ham as always, while Hey Barbara Rebop has been decorating the Jump Jivin' Whale Room with crepe.

Unfortunately, it's not as festive as she had hoped since she entrusted that task to Bobby and Nina DeBebo, who misunderstood her instructions and stapled strawberry crepes to the ceiling. Their drippings left oddly shaped stains on the dance floor which made a weird schmock schmock sound when people walked across. Not very conducive to dancing.

And even though the weather is chilly with winds gusting to a formidable forty-two mph, the children's spirits are not lagging. Today's Ninety-Third Annual Easter Egg Roll has them gamboling across Pammaquame Park, giggling and chasing the gaily colored eggs before the winds pick up the kids and carry them a few feet in a competitive edge. Luckily Craig Bimley has graciously donated plenty of rope to keep the kids from spiraling away.

So here's wishing everybody in Cobaltia a happy Resurrection with continued good health, good food and blessings galore. And if you're close by tomorrow, be sure to indulge yourself with Ma Findley's gastronomic gifts, which include her special Easter bread which is so light it pays tribute to the Day by rising again.
Cheers and joy,
Jeff