Good thing I mowed the front yard yesterday

It's been three years since my John Deere LA125 lawn tractor/mower has gone in for service and it's showing some wear.

The guy from Greenway Equipment picked it up this morning and said it will probably come back around the middle of next week.

Happy Birthday, Lisa!

Our gorgeous, brilliant granddaughter Lisa is celebrating her 13th birthday today!

Steve is teaching her to play the bass guitar. If memory serves, this is about the age when Steve took up the bass after playing trumpet for a few years in the Orchard Country Day School orchestra in Indianapolis. Lisa says she has already gotten a couple of blisters on her fingers from practicing.

Here's the uncropped version of the photo with Steve looking very proud and smug.

WTF, Facebook

I woke up this morning to find that I've been suspended from posting on Facebook for 24 hours because of some photos of my Third Reich flag collection that I posted on a WWII collectors' site more than a year ago.

And, of course, the photos - most of them - were deleted.

Seems kinda arbitrary since that's what the site is for.

I guess we know who the real Nazis of today are.

36 years later, these BMWs still excite me

This is the double-truck (two-page, for those who don't speak Printer) ad for BMW's R100CS and R100RS motorcycles in the May 1981 issue of Rider magazine.

This is when I found myself lusting for a BMW motorcycle for the first time - something I never got over. It was also around this time that I bought my first BMW - a 1971 R50/5 that was originally sold by Roman Cycle Shop in Youngstown, Ohio. The guy I bought it from was an engineer for Allison's who lived in Brownsburg. Since then, I've owned a 1981 R100RS like the one pictured here only graphite gray, a 1991 K100RS, a 1994 K75S and a 2003 K1200GT. I still have the last two and wish I could still have all of them.

My Generation

Pete Townshend of The Who is 72 years old today. He was born nine weeks before me, so I feel a special My Generation kinship.

Happy Birthday, Pete!

Prophetic

My old Indianapolis News compadre Gary Varvel drew this prophetic cartoon in January. Today he notes that the Democrats have reached Stage 6.

We cut the cord

We cut the cord on our cable TV several weeks ago as a money-saving measure.

We had been paying $184.65 a month for basic cable and the highest speed internet connection that our cable provider offers.

I returned the set-top DVRs to the cable office in March and told them to shut off our cable TV. The result is a monthly bill of $91.96, which is still too much to pay for high-speed internet, but they're the only ISP in our neighborhood.

Do we miss TV? Not really. I certainly don't miss yelling at my TV over fake news. Our aging Blu-Ray player offers several streaming options, like Netflix, Amazon Video, and Hulu that make it possible to keep up with some favorite shows and watch content of our choosing.

Not mine

I don't think Maria wants me messing with her radio preset buttons in the Subaru.

Or else she's channeling her inner seagull.

Airport cop scooter

I drove down to the Memphis Airport yesterday afternoon to collect a young couple and, while I was waiting, noticed this scooter in the livery of the Memphis Police Department.

Looks kinda like a Segway on steroids. It's called a T3 and it has a top speed of about 23 mph. A three-hour charge yields eight hours of riding.

New look for our front door

We pulled the hinge pins on our dull gray front door and laid it on a couple of sawhorses yesterday where Maria gave it three coats of Sherwin Williams Moscow Midnight dark blue paint.

We think it looks spectacular.

Google recon

I've been using Google Maps street view to revisit familiar places. The Google team has yet to travel down the two Delphi streets where I grew up. Ditto for the Thorntown street where our house is.

College Avenue in Indianapolis is a different story and I was interested to note that, as of last October, the house where my sons were raised, has been pained a gray-blue. But the most significant observation is that the present occupants apparently haven't kept the central air conditioning working because they have a window air conditioner in the master bedroom.

Also, the tulip poplar tree in the front yard has grown to enormous proportions in the 16 years I've been gone.

Thanks!

I have an app that makes a record of where readers are from and I'm pleased to see I have a loyal cadre who have continued to check in even though I've neglected this blog terribly.

Thanks for sticking with me. I promise to do better.

Here's the new ceiling fan I installed on the back porch last Sunday - just in time to help the dogs through hot weather.

A mystery and shaving

I have neglected this blog for the past few months because we are engaged in a life-changing project that requires a measure of secrecy. I will reveal all when the time is right.

In the meantime, here's a tidbit.

I've used a shaving mug, soap and a brush since the early 1980s when I bought a mug and brush from a downtown Indianapolis gift shop called Kittle's Other Side - across Pennsylvania Street from Kittle's furniture store.

I say "use" advisedly since I've worn a beard for much of those 30+ years, but when I do choose to go clean-shaven, I lather up with a brush. This is not the original mug - it's one I found on Ebay that has my Alpha Tau Omega coat of arms and was a party favor from some unknown ATO chapter around the time I was an active member at Indiana State University. The brush, however, is the original.

These days, the mug just holds the brush because my shaving soap of choice has its own lidded container. It's Proraso shaving soap from Italy and it's the best I've found. I gifted some to my son Steve and my father-in-law and it was well-received in both cases. I discovered it when it was offered to me in the Amazon Vine Program.