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Showing posts from January, 2020

Back to the "Deep South" in Duluth GA

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I get a kick out of hearing the term "Deep South" in 2026. It is a crazy incredibly outdated label. I think maybe I should start saying the "Deep Northeast". I am a Yankee. My family came over on the Mayflower and moved to Upstate NY via Connecticut. Terms used in the revolutionary and Civil war days are generally inappropriate. My family is all but totally out of NY State now. I find the term "deep south" to be of the same thinking that the movie "Heidi" is what contemporary Europe is like. Watching the fireworks in Rochester, NY from the back yard of a house in the city made it look like a real war zone. It is a long drive between Berkshire, NY and Duluth, GA. Most of the 35K miles on the truck were spent in between. I drove the truck about 3k miles in 2-1/2 weeks. It was great to spend time on the farm. It was good to make some progress on needed repairs and improvements. I also felt good about making some new friends up there. I will be...
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This past week we obtained a second cat. It was a long search (years) with previous disappointments. But, we have our dream cat Jewel at home now. She is getting to know Gracie. It is a change for all four of us. Jewel is a Turkish Angora kitten with the very rare condition of Heterochromia Iridum (different color or odd eyed). The cat pic is not photoshopped. She has one blue and eye and one yellow eye. Often cats with this rare condition are deaf in at least one ear, not Jewel. She's a beauty and she is extraordinary sweet. Jewel Gracie
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A couple of videos for our last vacation. This is a video taken aboard a river boat to the caves on the Mekong river. We embarked in Luang Prabang Laos --Dec 24, 2019 We stopped for a Milk Tea in a cafe and waited for the rain to stop. Great people watching at a normal intersection in Hanoi with no traffic control devices-- none. Dec 26, 2019
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I haven't blogged in awhile. I guess I am still decompressing from our most excellent, but crazy vacation in SE Asia. Things really went as planned. We first started considering the trip and these counties over a year ago and bought the transpacific flights 6 months prior. We were making reservations up to the day before we left. We had 10 flight segments in 14 days. For clarification, we made no tight connections. We did have one long connection in Seoul (12 Hours). We didn't need a hotel since we landed at 5:00 AM and left at 6:00 PM. We had breakfast/brunch in the 4-seasons hotel downtown. I used their business center for some personal business. Never stayed in the hotel. Although the Royal Brunei ticket was to/from Brunei, it was not a layover, but still a a single ticket. Also, we had no morning flights. All flights were in the evening, so we could sleep, albeit in economy. Early morning flights were invented by the devil to totally "F" you up. The money you sav...