church street station

This picture was taken down in the old Church Street section of downtown Orlando. We had gone downtown to visit the Orlando History Center and decided to walk over to this area. When we went, there was very little open. I think that all of the major attractions there were closed. Although the sign on the door says that a pizza parlor is coming, we never did return to see if it had actually opened.

This is the Cheyenne Club which was closed. It looked to be like a real fancy old-time western bar. We peeked in through the windows and I could see that it was extremely fancy inside. I bet that it was probably expensive. I would have liked to have gone there when it was open just for the experience.

Isn’t this a wonderfully restored steam locomotive. It was nice to see up close. I like the cow pusher with the bars on the front of the train which was used in the days of the old west to push the cattle off of the track. The amazing thing is that there wasn’t anyone around. We could have climbed all over the train if we had wanted to but we didn’t. It is easy to imagine the street and buildings just packed with people on Saturday nights with loud country-western music playing.
Today we had beef and cheese chimichangas for lunch with tortilla chips and dip on the side. Mary likes the salsa dip and I like French onion dip. I also had some scallions and some red seedless grapes as an appetizer. The grapes were dead ripe and therefore very sweet. We went grocery shopping at Wal-Mart in the morning and now the afternoon is hot. Very hot and so we are doing our usual afternoon activities which is Mary painting and me either studying or watching some kind of documentary on television. Have a nice cool day. Lew

blue camera

This is the new camera that I got. It is nice and easy to use. I especially like the blue color. It has a lithium-ion battery that lasts for quite a while and can be recharged right in the camera. My old cameras used AA batteries and I literally have a drawer full of used batteries. On Friday night for supper I had fish stick style fish filets and Mary had salmon. I prefer fish sticks over salmon. We also had some pasta seashells with a ranch dressing and bacon bits dressing. It was good. Did I mention seashells? How does that old saying go”? If seaside sold seashells by the seashore, how many seashells could seaside sell. LOL Apple pie from Publix was for dessert. The pies from Publix are really good and much bigger in diameter than the ones at Wal-Mart. The afternoon heat is starting to bother me lately so I try to do my outdoor activities in the morning and then I try to do stuff in the house in the afternoon. Hopefully I can get some good pictures with my camera. Lew

What a magnificent dawn. The sun which is still below the horizon is lighting the clouds and giving them a reddish glow. There is always something about the dawn and the start of a new day. A fresh start. What is the expression, “Today is the first day of the rest of your life.” The dawn is a time to reflect on the previous days accomplishments and mistakes and to learn from the mistakes and try and not make the m again. Learning from one’s mistakes helps to improve the individual. I feel that it is important to try and improve myself as a human being. I think that my purpose here in this life is to learn, to learn to be a better person. Chuck with his degree in philosophy would probably be better able to express this. But enough of the heavy philosophical stuff. Today is Saturday and that means “big breakfast” day. Mary told me last night that she is planning on having a fancy omelet with green peppers mixed in and with maple cured sausage also as the main entrée which she did. This was complimented with English muffins with butter and raspberry jam. Of course, today I have a list of things that I want to do around the house ranging from cutting some limbs on the camphor tree to sanding down the door of the shed. (When will the limb cutting ever end?) We try not to go out too much on the weekends because that is when the working people are out doing things and every where it is crowded. Hopefully we may might get to go to the flea market in Webster which is northwest of Orlando, way out beyond Clermont so it is a bit of a drive. But the flea market is held only on Mondays and it is not real crowded because most people are working on Monday. Plus there is a cozy little restaurant at the flea market with a lot of rustic ambiance called The Speckled Bean Café. They have a buffet and the food is real good and inexpensive. But the best part is the drive up there and back because on the last 20 mile stretch of road to Webster there is a carpet of wildflowers on both side of the road. The wildflowers are really thick and using the word “carpet” is the best way to describe them. They flourish in great abundance. It really is quite a sight to see and appreciate. And those weeds in your front yard? If they have a flower then they are no longer considered weeds but wildflowers. And try to imagine your front yard not having an occasional wildflower here and there but a thick pretty carpet of either blue, yellow or red wildflowers. When I was young, our yard had lots of dandelions which I liked because they were such a bright yellow and when they went to seed I got great pleasure blowing on the flower seeds and watching them float away on the wind. I have a wild dandelion in the backyard but it is not like the dandelions up north. It doesn’t grow low to the ground and has a much smaller flower. But we do have lots of a very pretty blue wildflower in the yard. In some spots they grow in bunches with lots of blue flowers all together in a bunch. It makes me want to pick them and put them into a bud vase. The blue color is very intense. Plus the leaves look like grass which is good. Have a good day and don’t pick the wildflowers but capture them in pictures instead. Gotta go. I am way over on my word count. Lew

Wine and Roses

This is Mary's latest painting. She titled it Wine and Roses. The use of the various shades of violet make for a colorful picture. She has it hanging in the dining room with most of the other paintings. She is currently working on a reverse glass painting which is very difficult. This style of painting gave her lots of grief in the past trying to get the picture perfect. She enjoys painting and spends hours doing it. I don't have the patience for all of the little details in a painting. She may have three ot four colors in a single leaf and each color naturally has to be painted on seaparately. But she enjoys and that is good. Click on the picture to see it in its larger mode. Have a fun day. Lew

the rock bird

Can you see the rock bird in the picture?

Well, it was just another work day in Miami at my job collecting environmental samples. These tasks would take me down various dirt roads to remote locations around the nuclear power plant. As I drove down the dirt road I spotted a small wounded bird in the road. I knew that it was wounded because it was holding one wing fanned out at a strange angle to the body, like a bird with a broken wing. I stopped my van and got out to see if I could help the poor bird. As I walked towards the bird it fluttered and wobbled away from me. I walked a bit more towards it and the bird did the same thing with its pitiful fluttering and wobbling and squawking. It just had to be in terrible pain. I immediately went to the biology department of the plant that was responsible for the wildlife of the plant to tell them of the wounded bird. I related to them in impassioned detail about the wounded bird. They told me that it was only a rock bird. These birds like to make their nests on the ground among small rocks or pebbles. Since they are on the ground they use the broken wing scenario as a ruse to lead predators away from the nest. They said that the eggs look exactly like rocks and are very difficult to spot. They were right as I saw these birds at various locations doing the same broken-wing maneuver. The birds also blend into the ground pretty well but I managed to get a picture of one sitting on her nest. Can you spot the bird in the picture above? She is sitting on her nest. Here is a little help below.

The wildlife was the best part of the job. And I learned a lot from the biologists and especially their foreman Glen. I miss my adventures in the wilds because I have a tendency to remember only the good things and not the bite of the mosquitoes, the intense heat, the high humidity, the bright sun, sinking in the mud, the crocodiles, and a whole bunch of more unpleasantries (is the spelling or word usage correct?). But the good definitely outweighed the bad and overall it was a really neat job. The best that I have ever had. Have a nice day. Lew

It was just another work day in Seminole county. I was in construction inspection and had to go down this particular dirt road to get to a large house that was being built by two sisters. I was just awe struck by the beauty of the road. It was something from Gone with the Wind as if this road was going to lead to the plantation house Tara. Some people don’t like Spanish moss but I think that it is pretty and gives a softening effect to a scene. What a neat it is job to have to drive down roads like these.
Mary and I went to see the movie Star Trek today. We only had to pay five dollars each. And we got a free small popcorn which turns out to be plenty of popcorn for the two of us. But the soda. A medium soda was $ 4.25. Can you just imagine that? I could get six 2-liter bottles of soda for that price at Wal-Mart. But the movie was great. Although the movie was two hours long, the time seemed to pass quickly and before I knew it the movie was over. I thought that the characters pretty much resembled the original actors as to what they might have looked in their youth. I thought the young Spock had a really strong resemblance. And of course it was a nice touch to have Leonard Nimoy appear as the original Mr. Spock. I really enjoyed the movie and I was glad that I saw it on the big screen at the movie theater where I can just lose myself in the movie. After the movie, on the way home we stopped off at Little Caesar’s pizza and picked up a hamburger pizza for supper. The pizza was good and we have plenty left over for another meal. You just can’t go wrong with pizza. It is a fun food that you eat with your fingers. I had some corn chips with it. I thought that I read somewhere that we are suppose to be restricted to 500 words per blog. Has anyone else read or heard that? It was nice to hear from Lillian and I hope that she is doing well in Delaware. Hopefully she has a blog site and is posting her daily adventures there for everyone to share in her experiences. She should be a guest on the Food channel on television and do an episode on making different types of cupcakes. She was the cupcake queen. I always tried to get her to make what is called a “break-away” cake which is a whole bunch of cupcakes next to each other and then frosting is applied over the whole thing. People just grab a cupcake and break it away from the mass of cupcakes all stuck together by the icing. But, alas, I was never successful in getting her to make one. Maybe she and Aaron can host a party and there in the center of the table will be a “break-away” cake. Wouldn’t that be a pleasant surprise for her party guests? Everyone have a great day and anyone wanting to use a solar dryer will probably have to use it in the morning because the season of the afternoon rains is upon us. Viva Gaia. Lew

Tammy the Cat

This is Tammy looking out the front window. When she isn’t outside running around she will sit in the window and look out. She doesn’t seem to like the heat and will come back into the house and look out the window in air conditioned comfort. I have heard the term domesticated cat and I guess that she has really become quite domesticated in wanting the air conditioned comfort. Also, she has become a picky eater; sometimes she wants Nine Lives and sometimes she doesn’t and wants Friskies and won’t eat the Nine Lives. Or sometimes she will just eat some of the chichuahua’s fried hamburger. Well, I really wouldn’t call it hamburger. It is from a Spanish market and is labeled as picadillo which is ground up something. Basically it looks like hamburger with a lot of white stuff in it. I don’t even want to think what it is but the dog likes it and so does the cat.

So Tammy the cat leads “the good life” getting everything she could possibly want and then some. I like the little Chihuahua who is my little buddy and follows me everywhere. Sometimes I feel bad when he follows me because I realize that he must take 20 steps for every one step of mine. He is a nice dog but is becoming grouchy with old age.

Today is Tuesday and we all know what that means, Senior Tuesday at AMC theaters at West Oaks mall. We are going to see the new Star Trek movie. My daughter collected all four of the Star Trek glasses that are being given out at Burger King and sent them to me for Father’s day. She mailed them to me. The glasses are made out of real glass and not plastic. It is hard for her to go shopping because their only mode of transportation is this huge semi tractor trailer rig and so parking and tight city traffic is a bit of a problem. Truck stops are good because there is plenty of room for parking. Her and her husband are just traveling all of the country. My daughter has seen the movie and told me that it was good. I will find out today. Plus we have another coupon for a free bag of popcorn which is good since I always have popcorn and a soda out of tradition. AMC sends Mary a coupon for a free bag of popcorn via email every week. I guess the coupon is a lure to get us to return to the movies again and again. Have a grand day. Lew

Newman club

The Newman club. A great organization. I was a member of the Newman club while I attended the University of Miami. I still have my pin which bears a portion of the coat of arms of Cardinal Newman.

And the small pin which is an N is a backup safety in case the main pin became unattached the small pin with the chain would keep me from losing the main pin. Of course the N stood for Newman. The picture below is the members of the Newman club. Can you spot Lew in the picture? Look closely.

Here is a close-up which will be of a little help.

The picture is from the University of Miami yearbook. It was taken on a large patio of the university library. It was a very large library with floor after floor of books. The Newman club is a Catholic youth organization on campus. We were based at the St. Thomas Aquinas Center which had a large church as well as a large social hall, a lounge with super soft and super plush chairs which were so comfortable to sit in and sometimes fall asleep in. But my favorite place was the library. The library was a small one as compared to the university library. You might get at most about 15 people in the library at one time. The library had two large long tables which filled the room and the book cases were along the walls. The students use to sit at the tables and study. The primary purpose of the library was a place for the students to study. Although there were a number of students in the library, it was always quiet. It also had the advantage of being across the street from the athletic field where the Air Force and Army ROTC units would practice their marching drills once a week. The tennis courts were there also. It was just in a very convenient location. The church of the St. Thomas Aquinas Center had a very high ceiling but was otherwise of modern design and not of the gothic architecture of Notre Dame which I like so much in a church. There was a young man who worked full time for the Center. He was a sort of handyman, custodian, a little bit of everything. He was about the same age as the students and so we got along real well with him. One day he came to me with a worried look on his face. He asked if I could do him a favor. I asked him what favor he wanted. He told me that one of the light bulbs had burned out in the high ceiling of the church (and I do mean high). He had a very tall step ladder that reached to the ceiling but being so tall it would move a lot as anyone climbed it. He said that he had an absolute terrible fear of heights and if I would change the light bulb for him. I agreed and climbed the ladder and as I did I knew why he was afraid to climb it. The shakiness of the ladder was quite unnerving. But I changed the light bulb and he was grateful and thanked me. After that he was always really friendly with me, probably in case another light bulb should burn out in the ceiling. The University of Miami were my glory days and I had a wonderful time there. Let us all have a wonderful day today. Lew

Land of the Sun

So here we are in a section of the California desert called Tierra del Sol which I believe means Land of the Sun. It is an appropriate name since it was hot and as you could see there wasn’t any shade to be had. Tierra del Sol was located about 50 miles east of San Diego and only a few miles north of the Mexican border. The astronomy club that I belonged to had a generous benefactor who purchased and donated 10 acres of this desert land for observing the stars far away from the city lights of San Diego. The club decided to go first class and construct a modern restroom. When we went to get the building permit from the county we were told that the restroom would have to have at least one toilet and sink for the handicapped. We told them that there was only going to be one toilet and sink but they were insistent on the handicapped facilities. So the one toilet and sink was for the handicapped. After construction, the county inspector came out for final approval and he said where is the ramp? We asked why we needed a ramp since the slab for the foundation was only going to be a few inches above the ground level when grading was completed.

He said that if you have a handicap restroom and the slab is elevated slightly from the ground (so the rainwater doesn’t come in), then you need a ramp for wheelchairs. So we put in a ramp. You can see it in the picture sloping to the left. After this picture was taken the inspector returned and asked where the railing was. Once again we said why do we need a railing since the height was so small. He said that if you have a ramp of any kind then you have to have safety railings. After this picture was taken, iron railings were installed which made the inspector happy and we got final approval. All’s well that ends well as they say. Or is it? We forgot about a higher authority that we had to answer to. To flush the toilet and wash your hands you need water from the electric pump sitting in water at the bottom of a well. Yep, a wonderful giant lightning rod well grounded deep in the earth in water. Tierra del Sol was a flat desert and the highest thing for miles around was the top of the electric pole at the site with nice copper wires running down the well to guide the lightning bolts to the copper wire in the electric motor of the pump. On two separate occasions lightning struck the electric wire resulting in a melted pump motor at the bottom of the well which had to be removed and replaced. When I moved from San Diego, this problem with the Hammer of Thor (lightning) had not been solved. But the purpose of this blog was to describe the frustrations you can run into when trying to build something yourself and not knowing all of the regulations beforehand. Our club members built the restroom themselves. It was a club project and I was out there also with shovel in hand helping with the construction. Maybe we should have contracted to have it done and avoided all of the frustration but we were trying to save a few bucks. But it may have been “penny wise, pound foolish” as they say. But it got finished and the observing site was enjoyed by the club members as well as the general public and no one had to run behind a bush to answer “the call of nature” but could use a modern restroom provided lightning hadn’t knocked out the well pump again. Have a nice day. Lew

Here is our Chihuahua named Duke. He has this little plush toy tiger that he likes to play with. He also uses it as a pillow. He will move it close to his head and then rest his chin on it like in the picture. Mary named him Duke after the Duke of Earl golden oldies song. But I prefer to think of his name as The Duke after John Wayne of tough guy fame. We got an email discount coupon from Captain D’s fast food seafood restaurant. It is a pretty good savings and so we will go there for supper tonight for a fish dinner seeing how it is Friday and for traditionalist Catholics they eat fish on Fridays. It is very early morning as I type this and the dawn skies have changed their color from gray to blue so after having been essentially housebound for the past few days because of all of the rain it looks as though we are finally going to be able to get out and about today. Actually, yesterday afternoon there was very little rain but the afternoon heat made me want to stay indoors. Mary put up a handrail in the bathroom shower/tub yesterday as well as some gripping appliqués on the bottom of the tub to help prevent slipping from the soapy water. I ended up doing an on-line chat with Kodak and they guided me through the process of changing the language on the LCD display on my new camera from German to English. Somehow when I first turned the camera on for the first time and was given a language choice I clicked on English but my finger must have hit another button as well and German came up as the language. Since I don’t speak German, I was in a quandary as to how to change it to English. Kodak helped me and now the camera is fine. Try to keep dry if you happen to live in Florida where sometimes it is partly sunny. We prefer to say partly sunny instead of partly cloudy so as not to scare the tourists away. Plus it is more optimistic to say partly sunny whereas partly cloudy is pessimistic. So I will look forward to the sunny part of the partly sunny weather that we will be having today. Viva Gaia! Lew

hibiscus vs hollyhock

The hibiscus is such a pretty flower which comes in such a variety of colors.

Almost seems like an orchid flower, the kind that people put on top of their ear in Hawaii. But most of all they remind of a northern flower called a hollyhock (is that spelling correct?). When I was very young there was a field across the street from the house. The field was planted with some type of grass or hay. It would grow to a 3 or 4 foot height. I am not sure how accurate I am in the height estimate because when you are young and small, everything looks bigger to you. A farmer would come in during the summer with a tractor with a cutter bar attached and harvest it away and then all that would be left would be stubble. But before it was cut, it was an adventurous place to play hide and seek. But alongside this field was a group of these hollyhock plants with their large pink hibiscus type flowers. They were a delight to see because of their size and shape. Most flowers were like zinnias and daisy shaped. The hollyhock plant had a really fuzzy stem and a milk sticky sap. They must have been perennials because they returned every year. It was one of the things that I looked forward to seeing when I returned to my hometown for a visit for a trip down memory lane a couple years ago. But alas, the field has a house built on it and there were very large hedges along the edge of the field where the hollyhock plants had been. But now I have the hibiscus in Florida which reminds me of the hollyhock flowers. A good trade-off because it is better living in Florida where it doesn’t snow. This morning I looked out the back window and through the gray light of the early dawn I saw a beautiful intensely red cardinal hopping around in the backyard. He was hopping like a sparrow does instead of walking like the crows do. I am sure with all the rain that we have had that there is probably lots of insects crawling for him to dine on. Today Mary and I go to Arby’s for our free treat from Arby’s. This Wednesday it is a chocolate swirl vanilla milk shake. That should be good. I have never had one. Yesterday, Mary and I went to see that movie Angels and Demons starring Tom Hanks. It takes place in Vatican City and is an action packed adventure very similar to the National Treasure movies starring Nicholas Cage. The movie was directed by Ron Howard. It is hard to imagine that he is Opie from the Andy Griffith Show all grown up. The movie was so packed with action that there wasn’t a dull moment in it. I like action-adventure movies. They seem to hold my attention better than the dull slow-moving dramas or mysteries. We had a coupon and so the back of popcorn was free but the outrageously priced diet-coke wasn’t free. It was senior Tuesday discount day and yes, there were a lot of seniors in there. I enjoyed talking with them. No, I didn’t know them but we talked anyway. I find that most of the seniors like to talk just as much as I do. My word count is high. Take care. Lew

Gremlins

Mary and I were visiting St. Augustine and we were going through the old historical downtown section when we saw these two dogs. The dogs reminded me of the character “Stripe” in the movie Gremlins. Stripe was the leader of the bad Gremlins and had a stripe of white hair down his head. We talked to the owner and she told us the name of the breed which I don’t remember. She said that they were hairless except for the white stripe on the top of the head and the tail. The dogs were friendly and we got to pet them briefly. The dogs drew attention from everybody. This old historical section of St Augustine which is near the Spanish fort has a lot of tourist shopping. It is nice just to casually stroll down the street which has no vehicular traffic on it. There is just so much to see in St. Augustine. I could probably spend a week there and probably not see everything. A fun city to visit and a very relaxing city to visit also.

Of course my favorite sight to visit is the old Spanish fort. I try to imagine what it must have been like with the Spanish conquistador soldiers in their colorful outfits. And the firing of the cannons with all of the smoke and noise. Like something out of a movie. Have a drip-dry day. Lew

Lilly

Here is a group of a large number of lilies that Mary has growing alongside the house. They must be perennials because they keep growing back each spring. Each winter they freeze off and I wonder if they will be back come spring, but they always do come back. They are zero maintenance because we don’t have to do anything to them. They just grow and come back each spring on their own. Finally something that grows well. Lillies remind me of Lillian because once she told me that her mother calls her Lilly which is a pretty nickname and a nice one.

I know that the sign on the roof is not the same way that Lillian spells her maiden name but it always reminded me of her each time I went to Downtown Disney and passed by it. And surprisingly, I have never tried one of the pretzels. I always find Downtown Disney such a pleasure and relaxing to casually stroll around. It is a fantasy world and a wonderful escape from the real world. Got problems? Go to Downtown Disney and the problems will gradually melt away. Of course, the moment that you drive out of the parking lot, you are back into the real world and your problems are back. But at a temporary reprise has been had for a little while at least. Have a magical day and enjoy life to the fullest. Lew

Mercury

This is a class picture from a radiation emergency response course that I went to at the Atomic Test Site in Mercury, Nevada. This is where they use to set off the atomic bombs. It was summer and it was hot. The training lasted for 10 days. We spent the first week in a classroom in a hotel in downtown Las Vegas. That was a lot of fun because we could go to the casinos after class. On the weekend, one of the students rented a car and a bunch of us went to see Hoover Dam. The second week we stayed at the atomic test site in Quonset huts. A Quonset hut is a term for a building made out of very large pieces of curved corrugated iron. It is the same as the living quarters for the Marine Corps recruits in basic training in the television series Gomer Pyle, USMC. We got to tour the atomic test site while we were there and actually got to stand at ground zero of where an atomic bomb had gone off. It was neat because to thing that the very spot where I was standing was at one time inside of an atomic fireball. The movie Nightbreaker starring Charlie Sheen, Emilio Estevez, and Lea Thompson was pretty realistic of the test site and the atomic testing. It is a good movie to watch. We all had a good time except for when the instructors had us play a game of baseball with full face masks and air tanks strapped to our back. The purpose of the scenario was to show us how restricted a persons movements are when they have a lot of equipment strapped on them. They also had us jog with the air tanks on our back and the full face breathing masks to get us to use up the air supply quickly so we could hear the alarm go off when the air supply was near exhaustion. We were already hot and all of this activity in the hot sun just made us even hotter.
But the best part was the food. Not the taste but the price. They had a very large cafeteria and the prices were super low. We were told that the prices were artificially low to keep the civilian workers at the site happy. One of the many perks of working and living at the atomic test site. What sticks in my memory most is breakfast. Everything was 10 cents. One fried egg was 10 cents; two eggs would be 20 cents. Toast was ten cents, hash browns was 10 cents, oatmeal, yep, 10 cents. Even corned beef on toast was 10 cents. A glass of orange juice, 10 cents. But the bacon
was special. It was 10 cents a strip unless you got three pieces and then they gave you a price break costing only 25 cents. You saved a nickel. For a single dollar, my tray would be loaded down with all the food I could carry. And the movie theater showing first run movies, 25 cents. A giant bag of popcorn, 10 cents. A jumbo glass of coke, 10 cents. At the test site for housing in the Quonset hut we all had individual rooms which included a single bed, desk, chair and dresser. All very plain and simple as well as Spartan but more than adequate. But it was a nice experience and I enjoyed it. Can you spot Lew in the picture? The answer is below. As Paul Harvey would say, “Have a good day”. Lew

fly on the wall

A snail. Just a snail crawling up the wall of the house. So simple. What possible meaning could it have. Sometimes it amazes me what will trigger a flood of memories. It is the act of crawling up the wall. Memories of when I was around 6 or 7 years old came back to me. I was at my great-grandfathers house. It was winter and it was cold outside. He had an absolutely huge cast-iron wood-burning kitchen stove. To get the top of that large of a cast iron stove up to cooking temperature you had to have a pretty good size fire inside which gave off lots of heat. And so on a cold winters day everyone congregated in the kitchen because that was the warmest room in the house. My great-grandfather was sitting near the stove and motioned for me to come over to him. I did and he sat me on his lap and started singing a lullaby to me. He didn’t tell me the name of it but just sang the lyrics to me over and over in a soft melodic voice.

“baby bye, there’s a fly
we will catch him you and I
There he goes up the wall
just as if he’d never fall
If you and I had six legs
I bet you we could walk on eggs”

That is all that I remember of the lyrics but his soft demeanor and repetition made it very relaxing. When he sang the lullaby, he would point to the wall as if there were a fly there and I would look to see the fly but of course there wasn’t one there. It was cozy and warm near the stove and I felt secure sitting in his lap and slumped back against his chest. I remember his house vividly and the warmth of the interior. Everything in the house was very old which added to the warmth. He wanted to be surrounded by those things that were around when he was young and so his household furnishings were all antiques and was like a museum of sorts. He was very happy there and lived into his late 80’s. He was my great grandfather but with the birth of my brothers first son he became a great great grandfather. And yes, he did get to see his great great grandchild before he passed on. I remember him fondly and the abundance of marigolds in his garden which were his favorite flower and because of him, it is also my favorite flower. He lived in a town in New York called Philmont where life was quite slow back then. People would gather in the small park in the square to listen to a local volunteer band play songs in the bandstand (a large gazebo, essentially) in the summer time. The streets were actually cobblestone. Not brick, but real cobblestones. Quite a novelty to see. And Oliver North, yep, he grew up in Philmont also. Isn’t it just amazing, all these memories from a snail crawling up a wall reminding me of the lullaby about a fly walking up a wall. I had a good life and so I have a lot of good memories. Although I can’t express the memories adequately to impart the emotions, I try the best that I can. I think that we all have memories and each of us could probably write a book about our experiences. And the question that I pose to all who read this is “If you could go back in time and change just one thing in your past, what would it be. Remember, you can choose only one thing. Tough decision. What would it be? Something to ponder. Lew

muffin donuts

These are the doughnuts Mary made from a muffin mix. They are strawberry cream cheese donuts (muffins). I find them to be guilt-free donuts. She made them to go with our breakfast which was fried eggs placed on top of Armor corned beef hash which had been cooked in the broiler to give it some crispness. It was all very good and there weren’t any leftovers. That’s how good everything was. Yummy.

Last night Mary made a cake in a swirl patterned bundt pan. You can’t see the swirl pattern because they are hidden by the chocolate frosting. The cake was a dark chocolate cake that was very moist. It reminded me of the chocolate mayonnaise cakes that my mom would make for my brother for his birthday because it was his favorite. Mary added maraschino cherries to the batter as well as crushed peanuts. After the baking and icing, she sprinkled multi-colored sugar confetti onto the cake to give it a razzle-dazzle appearance. She let it stay in the refrigerator overnight and we had a piece after our lunch and it was very good. We went to a number of electronic stores and looked at digital cameras and web cams but we didn’t buy any because I wanted to look at the camera specifications on the internet. I found 10 megapixel cameras with lithium ion batteries in the price range that I wanted but it came down to two cameras and I want to see the ISO speed of each. Tonight we are roasting a whole chicken via “set it and forget it”. Yep, Ron Popeil’s showtime rotisserie. I don’t get to use it as often as I like because it is quite a job to clean it up. But the chicken is always quite tasty and a lot of the grease does drip out of the chicken down onto the drip tray.
Word count. I thought that I read somewhere that I am limited to 500 words on each blog. That is pretty hard for a talker like me. So I type up my blog in a word document first and then use the word count function under tools to see how many words I have and I also run a spell check for typo errors. A few days ago I was typing a long blog directly into the blog site and the computer came up with an error message and I lost the entire blog. All of that work down the drain. I was discouraged and didn’t have a blog that day. Well, my word count is past 425 and so it is time for me to sign off. Have a happy day. Lew

Saddam

So here I am driving up US-27 here in Florida near the center of the state when I see from afar something that looks like either a missile or a military bomb sticking out of the roof of a car alongside the road.

When I finally reached the car I pulled over and got these pictures.

These pictures were taken quite a number of years ago when Saddam Hussein was the ruler of Iran. I take it that whoever put this alongside the road was not too thrilled with Saddam Hussein because they sure went through a lot of effort.
It is dawn and the sky has gone from gray to blue and any moment the sun will peek over the horizon. Where I sit each morning in the house faces due east with a window so each morning I get to see the sunrise. The cat is happy, she has been let outside for her playtime and she is already in a tree and has climbed all the way to the top. Fortunately, she is not one of these cats who climbs a tree and can’t get down. She seems to get down with ease jumping from one branch to another as she descends. Being young (less than one year old) she is very agile. Our Chihuahua on the other hand is getting old and stiff and a little bit grumpy. He walks stiffly and has difficulty jumping up onto the couch and chairs. He uses a sewing hassock that is half as high as the seat cushion to jump on as a go-between step in getting on the couch. With the hassock he can get onto the couch with ease. In the dining room there is a small cardboard box that serves the same purpose. Mary paints at one end of the dining room table and I study or use my laptop at the other end and the Chihuahua likes to lay on the dining room chair between us. The dog is a people dog in that he always likes to be with us. If he accidentally gets left behind in a room such as the computer room and the door gets shut he lets us know with an “alert” type barking. The same type of bark as Lassie would do on the television show to let Timmy’s mother know that Timmy has fallen down the well or some other malady. It was unique how they always knew specifically what the bark meant and would follow Lassie to save the day. Villager made a very articulate response to one of my blogs recently which shows that she has a penchant for writing and should write more. Especially setting her memoirs to pen. Seaside seems to have inherited the writing ability and is able to hold my interest in her blogs. I especially like the pictures. And speaking of pictures, today is camera day when we look for a new camera for me. I want to be able to get pictures with the detail that seaside gets which means more megapixels than I currently have which is 2.1 megapixels which is really low. I went to the Wal-Mart, Best Buy, and Office Depot websites and looked at their jillions of cameras. I saw one just like seaside’s and it was very fast in exposures. The ISO was 3200 which is very fast. But I am looking for something more compact with a lithium ion battery and around 10 or 12 megapixels. Mary’s camera is 12 megapixels and I notice that when I take pictures with her camera I can enlarge them without any loss of detail or crispness. Gotta go, my word count is high. Lew

duck and cover

Remember this? The old Civil Defense logo? Times of the past when we had the cold war and the Russkies might attack us with missiles armed with nuclear warheads. And yes, my class and I had to participate in the “duck and cover” drills. We were told to get under our desks. We were told that the desk would help protect us from the cement ceiling falling in. Then we had to put our face to the floor, our hands along the sides of our face, and close our eyes. This was to help protect us from the bright flash of the atom bomb going off thanks to the Russkies. The hands by the side of our face not only helped to shield our eyes from the blinding flash but also from flying glass from the windows. This was all pretty scarry to a young boy in grade school and I was very concerned about having an atomic bomb dropped on me until I got older and realized that I lived in a very small rural hamlet whose main industry was growing McIntosh apples for apples juice and concord grapes for Welch’s grape juice and jam. I mean, we weren’t even big enough to qualify as a town and were officially classified as a hamlet. Why would the Russians want to bomb our little town (oops, I mean hamlet)? It just didn’t make sense and with this my fears eased. I actually got this old Civil Defense sticker/decal from a souvenir shop on an Indian reservation in Grants New Mexico west of Albuquerque while on vacation. Grants, New Mexico is famous for all of the uranium mines. They just seem to abound everywhere in the area. Fortunately the cold war has passed and along with it the threat of nuclear war with Russia. Now we have to worry about terrorists. So what do we do when we see the bright flash from the suitcase nuclear bomb? That’s right, duck and cover. See how well I remember my childhood training? As Dave Garroway use to say at the end of the Today show on early morning television, “peace”. Villager, was it the Today show that Dave was on? If you don’t remember then you will have to get your broom handle and do half an hour of exercise with Jack LaLane. Nostalgia, how sweet it is. Wait a minute, didn’t Jackie Gleason use to say that? Lew

my truck

This is the Chevy pick-up truck that I owned when I lived out west. It was one of two vehicles (both pick-up trucks) in my life brand new right off the show-room floor. It served me well taking me on numerous back-roads up into the mountains and out into the desert as in this picture. This picture was taken in Tierra del Sol which I believe means “land of the sun”. That may be appropriate because it could get pretty hot there. The Mexican border was only about three miles to the left of the truck. Tierra del Sol was located about 50 miles east of San Diego. It was an observing site for members of our astronomy club to set up their telescopes. Being 50 miles from the lights of San Diego, the skies were dark there which made for good astronomical viewing. The site consisted of 10 acres of land which was generously paid for and donated to our club by a very generous benefactor. The land was developed for the club members by having electric lines brought to the site, a water well drilled on the property, large cement pads poured for setting up telescopes on, and a modern restroom. Some of the club members actually built their own observatory buildings on the site. It became quite elaborate. The club held monthly star parties at the site which is when the public is invited to come and look through the members telescopes. Some of the members have large expensive telescopes and the views are quite spectacular. I always preferred short focus telescopes because of their rich-field view which gives a nice crisp black background to the image. I was very active in amateur astronomy in San Diego and was on the board of directors for the club. The club met monthly at the Reuben H. Fleet science center in Balboa Park in San Diego. The club also made telescope mirrors in the basement of the museum every Saturday morning and along with others I made my own telescope mirror which I still have by hand grinding and polishing the glass. It was a lot of tedious work and was definitely not cost-effective. It would have been much easier to have just bought a telescope mirror but I did it just for the experience of doing it and the pride in being able to do it. However, I must admit that I did have a turned-down edge on the mirror which is a minor problem and a common problem when grinding and polishing a telescope mirror for the first time. San Diego is a great place to live because of its cool dry Mediterranean type of climate. Remember the song “It never rains in Southern California”? Well, it is true. Just lots of perfect days with clear blue skies. Have a good day. Lew

Mother's day

This is a neat little Catholic religious bookstore in Orlando south of Colonial drive and just off from Bumby. I like the Friar Tuck monk drawing on the side of the building. The store is not operated by nuns nor affiliated with the Catholic church but it is very nice inside none-the-less. This is where I got Mary her gold scapular medal. Yes, it is solid gold. She likes it and wears it most of the time. The scapular medal is a good one to wear. Nothing like a little “insurance” for the life after. Yesterday was mother’s day and we went to her daughter’s house. She got to see all three of her children today and they all bore gifts which was nice. She got more jewelry, gift cards and a large white rose with the bud opened just right. Mary has it in water to help it last. We stopped at Denny’s for lunch which was crowded because of mother’s day. We both got meat loaf with mashed potatoes which wasn’t very good which surprised the both of us. We usually have really good luck with the food at Denny’s. In hindsight, we probably should have gone to The Cracker Barrel. Their meat loaf is super good. Except for the meal at Denny’s it was a really good day and a good time was had by all. Have a good day and if you don’t have a scapular medal then go to a Catholic bookstore and get one and try to wear it all times. Be kind to someone today. Lew

yucky

This is what a drain field for a septic tank looks like. This is a new installation so no one has flushed the toilets yet. LOL. Well, what did you think goes into the drain field? Actually, the yucky stuff goes into the septic tank and the water goes into the drain field. The fellow in the dark blue levis is Peter and he is training the guy in the light blue pants on the procedures for doing a drain inspection.

But who is that guy in the light blue pants? Let’s take a closer look to be sure.

Yep, it sure is. It is Lew. Being a brand new drain field it is clean. This job as a drainfield inspector only lasted six months. I was very good at inspecting radiation in my former job but lousy at being a septic tank/drain field inspector. I guess that my heart just wasn’t in it, but my feet were (pardon the pun). It was interesting and I learned a lot but I was glad when it was over. The good thing about a job like this is that whatever the next job is, it is going to be better. Do you notice how sandy the soil is? I was always afraid of it suddenly collapsing in on me. It never happened but I was nervous about it never-the-less. Those long black plastic tunnels are called infiltrators and store the water until it can soak into the ground. This job gave a whole new meaning to the expression “some days you step in it, and some days you don’t”. I learned real quick about the “some days you step in it” part.
I am looking forward to seeing the launch of the shuttle today. Now that there is only a limited number of them left I figure that I had better watch some of them. Plus there is a certain excitement to it all as I hold my breath to see if some unexpected “hold” on the launch will pop up at the last minute. I will be glued to the television set while some people I know who are lucky enough to live on the coast can sit in lawn chairs and watch it from their front yard. Lucky, lucky, lucky. Some people just have it made. But then I have Disney and Universal plus some pretty good inexpensive Chinese restaurants. So I guess that there is a bright side to everything.
Have a good day and keep looking up. Lew

jail escape

Just a little humor from when I worked in Sanford. Today is the day, 94 degrees, in the shade no less. Sure wish that I could take a dip in that nice cool ocean water, smell the salt air, feel the breeze on my face, be gently rocked by the ocean swells as I lay on my back on a float raft. But alas poor Yorick, I am in Orlando and all I can do is imagine what it would be like and look at Seasides pictures. Today is library day, some yard work, some inexpensive milk from Walgreens (seems like they are always having it on sale), pick-up prescriptions at WalMart, and of course don't forget the free Mothers Day lunch for Mary at Captain D's. We don't normally eat out that much but it just seems that everyone is giving free food away so we have to take advantage of it. And these are full-size meals, not like the little tiny samples that they give you in the food court at the mall. Isn't it amazing how a day just fill up with things to do. Have a pleasant day dreaming of snow and pretending that you are in an igloo and there is howling blizzard outside. That should help emotionally with the high heat for those of us in central Florida who don't get that cool ocean breeze and a cooling barfoot stroll in the ocean waves as they lap up onto shore. Must be nice (not that I am envious. Well, maybe just a little envious.) Take care. Lew

Lew & friend

This is a picture of Lew and friend. This is the skeleton that I used when teaching x-ray at the Hi-Tech Institute. The facilities were new and beautiful. They had everything in equipment and teaching aids that an instructor could think of. I enjoyed working there because my fellow teachers were so pleasant. It was nice to be passing on my knowledge of x-ray to the students. The best person was John Hill who was very kind and gracious. He made teaching look so easy and was a natural at it. I tried to learn as much as I could about teaching from him and emulate him as much as possible which was a daunting task because he was so good at what he did. When I was in high school there was a room in the school just for the teachers. There was a sign above the door that said “faculty lounge” and a sign on the door that said “teachers only”. The glass window in the door was heavily frosted and no one could see in. Whenever a teacher entered or left the room I would try to look into the room to see what it was like, but all I saw was a room full of cigarette smoke to the point that I couldn’t see. I was just curious what it was like in the teachers lounge but graduated having never found out what was behind the door. Then I took a teaching position at Hi-Tech Institute and when the program manager John Hill said that he was going to show me the teachers lounge, I could literally feel the excitement within me because know I was finally going to find out just exactly what a teachers lounge is like. There were table, chairs, a full service kitchen, lockers, candy/snack machine, soda machine, and a really neat cappuccino machine that made regular coffee, cappuccino’s, hot chocolate, and latte. And the best part was that the coffee was free. I was really quite happy at finally getting into the teachers lounge which I and all other students had been banned from in high school. It was a nice area to rest and relax, have a free cappuccino and talk with the other instructors. I had a good time at Hi-Tech Institute. We are still having lunch at KFC today and a trip to the library afterwords to get some books and DVD's. They have a very good selection of movies at the library that are available for checkout. And to top everything off, just when I thought that it could not get any hotter in May, the weatherman is predicting 94 degrees for Friday and Saturday here in Orlando. So bring on the ice cold lemonade. Have a cooler day than me (ocean breeze, remember) and enjoy. Did you get your ashes yesterday (Ash Wednesday)? Lew

I saw this black grasshopper on my sunflower plant in the backyard. I am use to seeing green grasshoppers and so this black one was quite a curio. So out comes the camera to snap a picture for the blog site to see if anyone else has seen this kind of grasshopper. I used Mary’s camera with the 12 megapixel picture size which is why the resolution is so good. I told Mary once again that I wanted a new camera with higher resolution for my birthday. Today for lunch we went to Arby’s and got free fruit flavored iced tea. I had the blackberry flavored iced tea and Mary had the peach flavored iced tea. Both tea’s were sugar free and sweetened with Splenda which is probably the best artificial sweetener on the market. The peach flavored iced tea was so much better than the blackberry iced tea. We both had a roast beef sandwich and split a medium curly fries. And yes, I drowned my curly fries in ketchup which is the way that I like them. Mary says that she has never seen anyone who likes ketchup as much I do. All thanks to my childhood friend Virgil Ronk and the ketchup sandwich that he shared with me once. After lunch we returned home and Mary did some painting and I watched some documentary footage on television about the war in the Pacific. I am also reviewing some archived files on CD’s that I have. Since each CD only holds about 700 megabytes, there are quite a few of them. I now have an external hard drive that I use for archiving and storage. It is 120 gigabytes and I have half of it used up already. Tonight we are going to have the last of barbeque pulled pork for supper with potato salad and garlic toast made from the thick sliced Texas bread. Tomorrow it will be off to Kentucky Fried Chicken for lunch for our free meals thanks to Seaside. By the way every Wednesday Arby’s has a different free item so we plan on going to Arby’s each Wednesday for the free stuff. After all, the price is right. Have a good day value shopping and let me know if you find any good deals. Bon apetit (Voyager, did I spell apetit correctly?). Lew

Arizona snow

Believe it or not this picture was taken in the desert in Arizona just north of Phoenix. Yes, it is winter but it very rarely snows in the Arizona desert. The jeep in the picture was mine. It was a 1956 Willys jeep. I paid $ 700 for it. Very old which I was told was a good thing. Why a good thing? Because the first time that a tree limb drags along the side of the jeep scratching the paint or possible even making a small dent, you don’t feel as bad with an old jeep as you would if it were a brand new jeep right off the showroom floor. So with an older jeep you will have more fun and go off road more because you won’t be so concerned with scratching it. The jeep in the desert is a lot of fun because you can just leave the road and cut out across the desert. A lot of freedom to go anywhere you want, much like a bird soaring through the air. The man on the left is Fred and the person on the left is Jim. Notice the gun on the right side of Fred. It was common to carry guns in Arizona much like in the old west. They were carried for protection from animals like rattlesnakes, rabid coyotes, etc. I always carried one in the desert also. Sometimes when we returned to the city we would stop at a convenience store and go inside to get a soda and forget to take our guns off. They never frantically pushed the emergency police button. One time I apologized to the clerk behind the counter of a convenience store for leaving the gun on. The clerk laughed and said that he knew that we were just hunters. He said that people who are going to rob him don’t wear the guns out in the open but hide them. I guess that he was a good judge of people and their intentions. By the way, this very same spot in the August summer heat would be like the planet Vulcan on Star Trek. Hot. Very hot! 118 degree hot!! My jeep didn’t have air conditioning so to cool myself I would roll the windows down. Now that was a big help. My body is trying to maintain a normal body temperature of 98.6 degrees and I am letting the hot 118 degree air blow on it. The air was like a heater blowing on me. It would only make matters worse. My solution was to wet myself down with water periodically and to stop at convenience stores and get icee’s and slushes. Even so, there was many a time in the summer that I turned around and went back home because of the intense heat. I didn’t have true air conditioning at home either. I had something called an evaporative cooler (affectionately called swamp coolers). These were large cubic louvered metal boxes on the roof with a large squirrel cage fan sucking in air across wet excelsior pads and blowing the air down into the house. It would lower the air temperature by about 20 degrees. This meant that when the air was 118 degrees, it would lower the temperature down to 98 degrees. So I would sit in front of breeze box fans drinking ice water. Just like being on the planet Vulcan. Gotta go. Have a good day fellow trekkers. “Live long and prosper”. Lew

trash day

It is early morning and I have had my cup of coffee to start my day. The sky is slowly changing from the gray of dawn to blue and the roosters are crowing next door. They don’t crow just once or twice but seem to keep going on and on, I would think that their throats would get sore. Today is trash day and I both wonder and hope that the garbage people here in Orlando burn the trash to produce electricity like other municipalities do. It seems such a waste to bury it. I have been to one of these garbage-to-electricity facilities in Miami. They don’t immediately separate metal from paper, that comes later. First they burn the garbage in an incinerator. The ash from the burning of the paper products is sold to be used in the cement-making process. The metal residue is separated magnetically into iron and non-iron metals and sold as scrap metal to be recycled. Everything in the garbage gets used which is as it should be.

By the way the man in the picture was my coworker Sam. We were looking for an unknown radioactive object in the garbage. The garbage got dumped on the cement floor and then we had the unenviable job of picking through it with our Geiger counters. This building is the receiving building for the garbage where it is fed into the incinerators. Prior to burning the garbage for electricity, the garbage use to be sent to a landfill. At the landfill the garbage was piled up and became an absolutely gigantic pile which grew to mountainous size and was affectionately called Mt. Trashmore (a spin-off on Mt. Rushmore). It can be seen from many miles away, that is how high it is. Sort of like the pyramids of Egypt only made out of garbage instead of stone. This is a landfill in Dade County. In the first picture it looks as though we are at ground level, but not so. It is just the flat top of the garbage pile, much like a mesa out west. The elevation is actually quite high. Perhaps with the use of alternative energy sources and recycling we can preserve our resources. After all there is just so much iron and copper in the ground as well as oil and coal. I am confident that the future holds much promise as there will be inventions that currently I am unable to conceive of. Now that you have learned a lot more about garbage than you probably care to know, have a good day. After reading this blog the rest of the day has got to be better.
Lew

attack of the moles

These are some pretty deep blue or bluish-purple flowers that grow alongside the house. They are doing quite well and there are lots of these plants. Isn’t it strange how some plants can thrive in sugar sand and others can’t. I don’t know the names of these but they are quite tall. Mary is having success with some gladiolus bulbs that she planted, perhaps I should try some bulb type plants also. Our orange tree in the back yard has some oranges forming on it. I told Mary that if the orange tree didn’t produce oranges this year that I was going to go to the arts and crafts store and get some fake plastic oranges and tie them to the branches and take a picture. I was watering one of our flower beds and I saw the sand forming a funnel shape in the ground like a sinkhole and it was getting bigger. It got to be several inches across and about two inches deep. I thought that this was strange. I had the hose on the ground in the flower bed about two feet from the funnel shaped depression with water coming out of the hose and the water was going straight down into the sandy ground. This was even stranger. I decided to dig into the funnel with a shovel because I figured that it was a mole tunnel that was collapsing. I was right. I took a shovel full of dirt out and there was a tunnel about an inch or two in diameter in the side of the hole with water pouring out of it into the hole. It was water from the hose about two feet away. The water from the house was going down into the tunnel system. I used the handle of the shovel to pound on the surface of the ground to collapse the tunnel leading over to the hose and the water from the hose stopped going straight down into the ground. I am worried that the moles will eat the gladiolus bulbs. Do they eat plant roots? I will have to check on that. Everyone have a nice day. Lew

they want me back

It’s nice to know that an old employer wants you back. I use to work at Disney but then I was involved in an auto accident and ended up with a broken hip and so that was the end of my working at Disney. I miss working there a great deal because I had a fun job in Animal Kingdom which made me look forward to going to work each day. Every day early in the morning before any of the guests were admitted to the park and I had the same thought each time as I walked across the Animal Kingdom to my assigned work area and the thought was “I can’t believe their paying me to work here”. I always felt that way because the job was so enjoyable. It was so nice early in the morning because usually I couldn’t see anyone else and it seemed like I had the whole park to myself. Folks, it just doesn’t get better than that. Lew

Castro

This is a picture of me in my office in Miami. Jose passed by my door with a new Polaroid camera one day and decided to test the camera by taking a picture of me. At the last moment I decided to hold up a tabloid that I had. “Castro Dead of Heart Attack”, the emblazoned headlines declare. Wow, what news. But wait, take a look at the date on the picture of when it was taken that I wrote on the bottom of the photograph. Well, so much for the reliability of the tabloid headlines. And to think that I actually paid hard earned money for this tabloid. But I must admit that sometimes I will read some of the tabloids as I stand in line at the grocery store. If not the tabloids then those small pocket sized recipe books with the mouth-watering pictures of food on the covers. I had a beautiful office with a window that went from floor to ceiling and from wall to wall which looked out onto the Miami arena. I could watch the seaplanes come in for a landing in Miami Bay. It was a nice office with a lot of equally nice coworkers. I had a good time and that is probably why I stayed for twenty four years. The time just seemed to go so fast. Now I am in Orlando where there is Disney, Universal, Sea World, and a jillion other things to do and once again the time seems to pass so fast. I have finished my toast and coffee and it is still dark outside. I always like the dawn because with it comes the optimism and newness of the beginning of a new day. Yesterdays problems are behind me and I am determined to have a good day. After all, there is Disney, Universal, Sea World, etc. The weather here in Orlando is still nice but it is getting warm and actually bordering on hot. I do what I have to do in the cool morning and stay inside in air conditioned comfort in the hot afternoon. Sort of like the “afternoon siesta” philosophy in Mexico. It is dry right now with clear skies with a bright sun burning down but soon the rains will come when it rains every afternoon. Not nice cooling rains, but rains that just raise the humidity up to 100%. What is a person to do when the humidity gets to 100%? Yep, you guessed it, go inside and enjoy the air conditioning. I like my AC. I guess that I just don’t have the pioneering spirit or stamina when folks would walk across the country beside their covered wagons in the summer heat. Life was tough then but life is good now and I like “the good life”. Everyone in the south have a nice cool day today and those folks who are lucky enough to live near the ocean can enjoy the cool ocean breeze, smell the salt air, and listen to the sounds of the pounding surf. People like me here in Orlando will just have to settle for “Disney, Universal, Sea World, and a jillion other things”. Enjoy and peace be with you. Lew

Is that a tank?

Aren’t these pictures just amazing? A tank from world war I. This is located at Hollywood Disney at Disneyworld at the Indian Jones attraction. Where on earth would someone find an old tank from world war I for sale? And can you just imagine the logistics involved in getting it from probably Europe to Orlando? It is just amazing what they do at Disney and nothing seems impossible to them. They have more antiques on display at the Indiana Jones attraction in addition to the tank. Usually people are in a hurry to get from one thrill ride to another and don’t take time to “smell the flowers” as they say and look at the accessory items. The little details that Disney puts into its attractions are worth enjoying also. I try to slow myself down to see these closely rather than just a passing glance as I pass by. But the temptation to hurry is so strong because there is just so much to see and we want to see everything in one day and to beat the lines (impossible) at the next thrill ride. Yeah, I am a big fan of Disney and I really miss working there. As we use to say at Disney “Have a magical day”. Lew