This article about a chef in the UK fighting a terrorist with narwhal tusk was inspirational to me. Of course, he would have been much more efficient if he was in America and had access to a gun, but you go what you can with what you have. After I wrote about the article, I mysteriously started receiving narwhal paraphernalia in the mail. And I am grateful for it. The last one showed up yesterday. It was a book titled “I’m a Narwhal.” I have been getting all these anti-terrorist tools and now the sent me the manual!
After high tea at the Savoy Hotel, the only logical way to up your game gastronomically is to go to McDonald’s. I am seriously worried about Kelly though–she actually said, “the ketchup is better here.” A couple of questions are begged at this point. 1) Who goes to London for food? and 2) Who judges a McDonald’s by the quality of its ketchup. Still, there is no down side to a happy meal. Still I am happy for Lorena. As an avid McDonald’s fan and ex-multi-year employee, it was important for her to check out the McDonald’s in England. She has visited a McDonald’s in every country in North America, so now she wants to do Europe.
Lorena and Kelly made it to London last night. They had a great flight, saw the Aurora Borealis as they flew past Iceland, landed at Heathrow Airport late morning and made it to their Bed and Breakfast by 1:30 PM London time. That got a little rest, went out and got some dinner, took this photo of a lamppost by a picturesque church and then made their way back to the BnB to make an early night of it having spent the entire previous night on the plane. When they were looking for something to eat, the found a restaurant named Wahaca (Oaxaca) that is part of a chain in England. Even if that was done by Mexicans trying to spell the name phonetically so that Englishmen can pronounce it right, it is just wrong! 🙂 I am never again going to make fun of the way English is spelled improperly on their signs. Never. I do hope they get to try it out though.
We live in interesting times. The most notable non-presidential election of my lifetime is scheduled to take place this coming Tuesday. I am not wildly involved in any of this, but like to know what is going on. I do not trust any of the traditional news sources–we have not subscribed to a paper and ink newspaper for a couple of decades now and we do not have a television. That leaves the internet and, to a much lesser extent, the radio. Fortunately, I think it is possible figure out what is going on better than any time in my lifetime. I will continue to depend on non-traditional news sources and continue to vet my current sources at the same time I look for new ones.
Yesterday was my 63rd birthday. It is a strange and interesting time in life and the world. The New Year whether counted from one’s birthday, January 1, or some other important annual even like the start of school or a church convention is a time for reflection. For some reason, this year more than many in the past, I feel a need to reassess what we (Lorena and I) do. We have a few short term goals we want to accomplish like Lorena’s degree and some remodel projects, but in the whole scheme of things, they are not so consequential.
I have flown in and out of Portland International Airport more than any other airport for my entire professional life. Honestly, PDX had lost its luster over the years as the Portland culture seemed to coarsen in lockstep with the aging of the quite famous PDX carpet. While the city of Portland and the State of Oregon maintain their unparalleled beauty, (well, that is true for the City of Portland, only if you do not look too close) the coarsening of the culture has not abated. That can not be said about PDX anymore. Most of my travel was pre-remodel and now they have the new carpet installed. It is a joy to fly in and out of here now. It is not really up to the level of our beloved RDU airport, but that is really just a regional airport so might not be a fair comparison and PDX is almost that good anyway.
I started a new job last week. I flew to Boston to get started with the new company. I had a good number of firsts while I was there–at at 
Kelly has gone to a new schedule where she works only four days every other week. That is a fine thing because she can take trips on her bi-weekly three day weekends. This week she flew to see her friend Sally in Washington D.C. She has sent a few pictures out–not nearly enough–that reminded me that there are some great things to celebrate that brings a tear to the eye for some of us in fly over country. This one is at the Lincoln Memorial. One that I especially appreciated was the Vietnam Memorial–not the wall so much even though I did appreciate it and found a name of a person whose brother I knew who had died, but the one of the soldiers with their combat gear.
We are enjoying Tempe a lot. Lorena went with Christian to buy new tires for his car and to do some other shopping. The thing we notice is how “alive” this place is–maybe it is the time of year and the amazing weather (not too hot), but we are glad to be here right now. Christian is taking us to a new taco place he just found that is authentic in the way we measure Mexican authenticity. He said he had the “street tacos.” What else would you order in a truly authentic Mexican restaurant–especially for the first visit–so you can have a common metric against which to compare other “authentic” Mexican restaurants. Can hardly wait.
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I have been about 40 lbs. down from my high for over a month now since Jon W. and I first started our weight loss plan a little after Thanksgiving last year. It is good I am down and not going back up, but it is not so good I have been stuck for so long. I would like to say that I am on this plateau just because my metabolism has adjusted, but that would not be entirely true.
I really did not have a lot of bandwidth today to be reflecting on life, but due to and serendipitous juxtaposition of events it came to my mind that we live in peculiar times. Overnight, new things turn into institutions and just as quickly, fall into oblivion–Facebook, Barack Obama, Kombucha, and on and on. Everything is not like that. Degrees that have hard math in them will still get you a way better job than degrees with minimal math, Washington still grows the best apples, and Jesus is still the same and always will be. Still, it feels like stuff is moving really, really fast politically, morally, economically, and every other way I can imagine. Some of it is for the better (Obama is gone and Hillary is not president), some of it is for the worse (California in general), and some of is hard to tell (Trump).