Tag: food

Thursday’s Theme Music

Newport, Oregon — Thursday, May 21, 2026.

Fog struck. The wind’s been strong the entire visit. Today, it felt like it shifted into a higher gear, cutting through our clothing with an icy edge. 52 F in the morning, the day’s high would be 58 F, but the wind would make it feel much colder.

We checked out early, heading north just a few miles, to Newport. Here we’ll stay two more nights. A new hotel, a new view, but it’s the same ocean and Oregon coast.

Meanwhile, we stopped at our favorite coastal eatery, The Green Salmon. It’s all vegan there. After a satisfying breakfast — “Only Murders in the Building” omelet for me — we fought the wind walking on the 804 trail for ten minutes. Retreating from nature, we went north to Depoe Bay to see if any whales were hanging around. Short answer: no.

Retracing our steps, we went back down Highway 101 to Nye Beach. A bookstore popular with us, Nye Beach Book House, was no longer a business. We stopped at a bakery and shared a large frosted cinnamon roll, hot out of the oven. Then, on to our Newport hotel, Hallmark and checked in. Once we were settled in, my wife napped. I went for a walk on the beach, one mile in each direction, battered by the wind in both directions. As long as I didn’t look at the buildings overlooking the beach, I could pretend that I was an exploring, the first to walk on this stretch of land. As it was entirely empty, it was entirely believable.

Is it any wonder that The Neurons are playing “Against the Wind” in the morning mental music stream? Well, it started in the morning but it played all day. The 1980 song was a hit for Bob Seger, who wrote and performed it. It’s about looking back and thinking about the choices made. Besides the wind, being alone on that beach made this song a good companion piece because of that connection about reflecting on life.

As far as the news goes, we went without knowing anything until about an hour ago. We’re just starting to reconnect with the world again. I see that Trump’s war has now been going 82 days — longer than the four to five weeks that he once claimed.

I see that the Epstein files still aren’t released and the price of gas here is still high, as it does across the nation.

It seems like Trump is counting on his ballroom to distract us as part of Operation Epic LOOK — SQUIRREL! Trump is now babbling about the ballroom’s roof as a drone base and snipers’ nests. Not sure why he thinks either are needed as part of Washington D.C. Maybe he’s planning to stay there, hunker down after he’s removed from the Oval Office.

I hope your day was as satisfying for you as my day was for me.

Cheers

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

Florence, Oregon — Wednesday, May 20, 2026.

To clarify, we’re actually staying at Heceta Beach, 3 miles north of Florence. Heard from the catsitter. Papi has adjusted to her presence and her feeding him, and is basically acting just as if we’re there.

It’s 60 F now, on its way to 63 F. Here’s this morning beach photo.

We’ve had wonderful, fresh, tasty food everywhere we’ve eaten, and have only met nice folks. Hope to hell I’m not jinxing this by mentioning it.

Yesterday was a bad day for Mom and my sister Gina, Mom’s defacto caregiver. Mom had another UTI, was complaining of dizziness and headaches. Gina took her to urgent care. They said Mom’s UTI isn’t responding to antibiotics and needs something stronger and had Gina take her to a hospital, UPMC East. Well, that was an eight hour ordeal for them, with miscommunication between the two care facilities.

Mom was back into her room around midnight. Gina was shocked at its state; disorganized and messy. Very un-Mom. Mom denies her dizziness is a problem but Gina said she complained about it multiple times. XRays and CT Scans showed nothing.

Gina is also frustrating because the other sisters are ‘too busy’ to help with Mom. She ended up transferring Mom from car to wheelchair to bed, and back, etc, eighteen times yesterday.

Poor Mom. Poor Gina.

This is life.

Haven’t looked at the news this morning. Don’t want to disrupt the vacay vibe by doing that before I’ve had my daily wine and beer. I mean, coffee. Yeah, that’s what I meant.

I did see that Trump’s Iran War is not over. The price of gas is shocking here. Diesel prices are almost at $7 a gallon.

Trump mocked that as ‘peanuts’. He insists he’s a man on a mission to stop Iran from having nuclear weapons, no matter how much pain it cause US citizens and the world. Sure; we believe that. It’s all just part of Operation Epic LOOK — SQUIRREL!

Today’s song is “Boys of Summer”. Written by Mike Campbell, a guitarist who played and wrote with Tom Petty, Petty turned the song down. Don Henley took it and had a hit in 1984.

The Neurons put it in the morning mental music stream because several times, I looked out at the beach and saw, “Nobody on the beach.” Recognizing the line from the song, I suppose Les Neurons thought I was trying to remember it.

I hope your day progresses in a satisfying way. I find that coffee helps, along with staying well hydrated with other fluids.

Off to begin Operation Epic Eat Breakfast.

Cheers

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At the Goodwill

My wife and I are on the Oregon coast. We ate a wonderful fresh breakfast at the Fresh Harvest Cafe. Then we hit the local Goodwill.

My wife enjoys visiting Goodwill stores. She likes bargains and she likes re-using things. She did say today, “I’m not buying anything new. I’m death cleaning so whenever I see something I want, I just tell myself, ‘You’ll just have to throw it out.'” Books are the exceptions. We bought four, two for each of us.

Killing time, I wander the store and write a short story in my head. It’s about a future Goodwill. Dystopian situation. A guy ransacks an unused house. There’s a lot of them. Finding a cache of shot glasses, he brings them to the Goodwill. They give him a small bag of peanuts for them. He sits outside in the sunshine, savoring every nut as he eats them.

My sister texted me about her grandson’s birthday. He’s already fifteen, thoroughly discombobulating my brain, which still thinks of him as much younger. His mother is still a teenager in my thoughts. To see that he’s now a teenager is too much. I do the slow math; I was fifty-five when he was born. Time, you know?

Sis tells me that her grandson went to an Escape Room for his birthday. Muses gather in my head to conceptualize fiction about Escape Rooms.

Sis interrupts with a text abut Mom. She’s taken Mom to Urgent Care for another suspected UTI. Mom complains about dizziness as she Mom gets in and out of her wheelchair and the car.

Browsing Goodwill shelves, I see things which might be in my home. I go through an aisle of tools and imagine my tools in there.

I believe I have seen the future.

Leaving the building, I breath in fresh air and smile at the sunshine on my face.

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SoCS – Sweet

This week, Linda Hill’s prompt was sweet for the Saturday Stream of Consciousness. Here we go.

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Sweet, I thought, go to the coast, get away, enjoy the weather and eat something different and just be someone different somewhere doing something different watching waves, breathing the air, smelling it –

Hope it all goes well. Why shouldn’t it? Well…yeah. Life.

Maybe I should eat something. Cookie? Scone would be nice. Blueberry. Lemon.

Time to go home.

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Tires & Food

We bought new tires for one of our vehicles yesterday.

I took a memory train back to the first time I bought new tires after I was married.

That would be 1975. The car was a 1968 Camaro. Sweet, small, fast car. RS, 327 V8, automatic. I bought it for $1100 after I arrived at my first permanent duty station in my Air Force career, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, in Ohio. Paid cash.

I married later that year. My wife and I have wonderful memories of being together in that car.

Buying new tires for it was a major financial decision. Recaps were cheap, $20-$25 each, installed. But recaps? I distrusted their safety and reliability.

That meant new tires: $40 each.

$160.

Ouch.

We didn’t have credit cards, so we’d need to buy the tires with cash. I had that in savings but that would severely reduce the balance.

I remarked about this to my wife at dinner last night.

She remembered, adding, “Yes, the things we couldn’t afford then that we needed, and the things we buy now, that we really don’t need.”

I paid for the dinner with my credit card. Leaving, I thought, I could have bought two new tires for the price of that dinner.

Of course, I could have bought the Camaro for the price of the new tires I put on the car.

It’s all part of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity.

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Dominoes

Trump’s broken promises have consequences.

The dominoes are falling over…

With Trump in the Oval Office and his policies in place:

  • Food insecurity is a rising problem under Trump’s leadership.
    • Food banks across the nation are seeing rising demand and costs. New data and analyses confirm grocery prices for American households have begun rising due to the ongoing war with Iran.
    • Further increases are projected throughout 2026, thanks to higher fuel, fertilizer, and shipping costs. Food banks and food pantries are seeing 20% to 30% increases in traffic in the Phoenix (AZ), Midwest, North Carolina, and Southwest.
    • The Oregon Food Bank reports a 51% increase in the past two years.
  • Measles are a rising threat. The states most affected by measles outbreaks in 2026 are all led by Republicans: South Carolina, Utah, Texas, Florida. The United States has seen 1,842 cases and 25 new outbreaks since the start of 2026.
  • Gas prices continue to create new records. My friends paid $6.79 per gallon for gas in California this last weekend.
  • Donnie “No new wars” Trump’s war with Iran has been going for two months and eleven days. Some estimates put the war’s financial cost for the US at $50,000,000,000 to date.
  • If you’re waiting on your Trump phone, there’s an update from Android Authority: ‘The update states that a preorder deposit “provides only a conditional opportunity if Trump Mobile later elects, in its sole discretion, to offer the Device for sale.” It also adds that a preorder deposit is “not a purchase.”’ The Trump phone was originally offered in June, 2025. It was supposed to be made in the USA.
  • The Epstein files still aren’t released.

We also have these gems:

  • The ballroom, which wasn’t going to cost US citizens anything, will cost $1,000,000,000 or more.
  • The $1.8 million dollars to ‘paint’ the Lincoln Memory Reflecting Pool cost $11,300,000.
  • More of Trump’s tariffs have been declared illegal. The problem with the tariffs and rulings is that companies pay the tariffs by passing them on to the consumer. Yet, there’s little sign that as tariffs are refunded to tariffs that consumers will receive refunds.

Operation Epic LOOK — SQUIRREL! is falling short of its goals of distracting voters from Trump’s failures and our losses.

Trump’s pattern is clear now.

Unfortunately, not all voters have caught on to Trump and his scams.

The midterms are coming soon.

Trump is panicking. Disapproval is rising. Failures are stacking up.

Get ready for some audacious Operation Epic LOOK — SQUIRREL!

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Tuesday’s Theme Music — Enduring

Ashland, Oregon — Tuesday, April 28, 2026.

Spring endures in Ashland. 48, blue skies, clouds, sunshine, high in the mid-sixties expected.

Mom endures in her assisted living facility. My sister couldn’t do the things she enumerated yesterday. Mom remains in the assisted living facility and seems agreeable to selling her house. However, she’s trying to manipulate us in other ways, according to my sister. She said Mom wrote a long text that she wanted sis to share with all of us. My sister refused. Life.

My plumbing endures. Mixed results with the plumber yesterday. Both shutoff valves replaced at the toilets, but the plumber felt only one had a leaking wax seal. When he pulled it, lo, the wood under it was soaked. So, wax ring replaced, toilet put back, but now we need to send someone under the house to examine that area. I’ve been under the house; not fun. We have a low, low crawlspace. But I don’t have the expertise needed for this kind of assessment. Thought about using different cameras to see what it looks like. Still noodling that.

Trump endures, too. It is remarkable but many speculate that Trump staged the attempt on him. While Trump blames ‘the left’, he continues to incite hatred and violence toward others while asking that we be nicer to him.

Part of this is that Trump is a documented liar and cheat. He wants to be feared, liked, respected, admired. As part of his ‘weave’, he’ll say anything but that’s shredded his credibility. We know now he makes grandiose promises and bizarre accusations and declarations; it’s all just air.

Doesn’t help, neither, that within hours of the attempt, Trump was calling to build his White House ballroom because, “Security!” But the WHCD was not in the White House. Even if the ballroom had been done, it wouldn’t have affected what happened at the WHCD.

I will also say that even if Cole Tomas Allen left behind a ‘manifesto’ and seems to have a life, Hollywood has convinced me that creating a legend like that is very possible. While I don’t particularly believe the Trump administration is sanguine enough to get it done, there are some high-tech security firms in his corner who could do it. If I believe Hollywood, so could the CIA.

Why not? It’s the age of deep fakes and AI.

With Trump not being held accountable for his lies and behavior, it’ll probably because worse as others attempt to emulate and duplicate his success as a con artist. More troubling is how his actions undermine our trust and belief in authority.

Meanwhile, the squeeze is on U.S. farmers. They’re in a bad situation: diesel is up, fertilizer is up, interest rates are up, available migrant labor is down, and droughts are in the forecast.

Perhaps they will reconsider who they vote for in November.

Your Trump quote of the day:

“Data from the USDA show that soybean exports to China, as of March 19, are about half the amount they were last year.” 

Reminder: we’re into the eighth week of the Trump Iran War. He has no exit plan.

Reminder: the Epstein files have not been completely released.

Reminder: Trump’s popularity is declining and prices are rising.

Expect some new Operation Epic LOOK — SQUIRREL! breaking news soon.

“Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)” ended up in my morning mental music stream. So many bricks being put into place between what we were, what we could become. Trump builds walls to divide and separate, keep the poor in misery and empower the wealthy, along with walls against equality, freedom, science, and education.

Hope you end up in the best possible place when this day is finished. Onward.

Cheers

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One-Liner Wednesday: Decisions

My decision to decide later crumpled against a more urgent decision to get up and eat, which led me to a pause in front of the bathroom mirror where I decided, not today, and maybe not tomorrow.

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