Arf! Arf!

It's good to be back online but it hasn't been without a few snags.  This new connection is so crazy fast that my tired old laptop is having WiFi gateway issues, whatever that means.  I'll sort it out later, maybe, and truth be told, I didn't miss the internet all that much.  Except for the musings of the Institute, of course.

Even then I didn't miss that much, really.  Too much rambling about things I don't care much about but I'm not going to rain on your parade.  But I find myself agreeing with Mr. Beagles more and more frequently.  The "speed of time" for instance, but not quite in the same way you guys were discussing.  Perception of time is subjective, it seems to me, and I'll leave it at that.  Ten minutes in a dentist's chair can be an eternity but ten minutes in an amorous embrace can be a blink of an eye.

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I find it easier to ignore politics, too.  Just recently I read or heard, don't remember which, this cogent phrase: "Left wing, right wing, it's the same bird."  I've got to give Mr. Beagles credit; he seems to give a lot of thought to different ideologies without following in lockstep to the traditional parties.  Yes, I think Joe Biden may be a nice guy but he is a political hack going back decades.  But that is just more crap I don't care about so I'll let it go and move on.

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Last Saturday as I was catching up with my old pal, Larry the bartender at the Ten Cat, I happened to see the new watercolors by Uncle Ken.  Definitely his best work in many years; there were even a couple that I liked.

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As I gaze across the green treetops my thoughts return to Beaglesonia and a statement Mr. Beagles made about being the "steward" of the trees, or something like that.  How's that going?  I read something about the return of the American Chestnut, or a close variant, and maybe Mr. Beagles knows the inside scoop.  I won't call myself a cockeyed optimist but I have a couple of maple seeds I'm trying to germinate.

This summer has been an eye-opener to me in many ways, mainly that I've become an old fart.  The move out of my old apartment did not go as smoothly as the move into it eleven years ago and my sore back is still recovering.  But I'm taking more time to think about many things and realized that, despite a few minor political differences, I'm drifting towards  Mr. Beagles' camp.  I even went and got the Illinois combination fishing/hunting license, just in case I get real hungry, y'know?  And I'll have to upload a pic of the little paring knife I made out of a broken steak knife, wood shims, and epoxy.  In the prison yard they call this type of thing a "shank," quite an effective tool for less than an hour's work.