Yay Me!

I rode my bike this morning all bah mahself!  I know what you're thinking---big deal. But it's the first time in years that I've ridden alone because of the time I fell and broke my wrist.

I always ride with my husband so that he can call 911 when I fall. He is in SC today, so I rode with my trusty "Help I've fallen and I can't get up watch," and the phone it calls 911 from. So in that regard, I was prepared and ready to go.

However at about the 3/4 point of my ride, I had to stop and walk the bike over some curbs between neighborhoods, and I discovered that my kickstand was down.  Ooops.

It's a good thing I hadn't needed to make any sharp left turns, although, when I told my husband what I had done, he said that the kickstand would have gone up if it had hit anything.  I'm just glad I didn't have to learn that firsthand.


In other totally unrelated news, I am making this wrap out of exactly this yarn in exactly this color.  

Cowboys and Angels by Isabell Kraemer

It appears that I will do anything to avoid starting work on the Throwback fair isle sweater.

What I Believe

 We can always learn something new if we just pay attention.

I've just finished reading Trinity by Leon Uris, about the history of Ireland from the 1840s (the famine years) through 1916 (the Easter uprising).  It's a horrible history, full of violence. I am still almost as confused by all of the various factions as I was before I read the book, and I learned that apparently people in Ireland believe, "In Ireland there is no future, only the past happening over and over."

Currently Ireland seems to be a happy, prosperous country, but the undercurrent of grievances still exists:

A sign in the lot we parked in outside the wall around Londonderry.  

Vandals from Republic of Ireland paint over the "London" portion of road signs.

Who knows what Brexit will bring, but I'm going back in the fall and I hope the British don't have a hard Brexit with hard borders.


Now for something completely different.

I listened to a podcast about auctioneering. One school for auctioneering takes twelve weeks, and students learn how to speak really, really quickly, how to make their tongue bounce off the roof of their mouth, how to say "got a bid" and "need a bid" so fast that the audience probably can't understand it. They learn how to read the audience so the auctioneer knows who among those signaling a bid is the most likely to make a higher bid. They are taught to somehow make a humming sound that runs through their whole routine, sort of mesmerizing the audience to continue to listen.  

Who knew?  Now you do.



And now something else completely different.

Jeff Bezos, the RICHEST MAN IN THE WORLD, owner of Amazon and the Washington Post, was recently the victim of an attempted blackmail plot. Dick pics, no less.  No one wants to see those pics, thank you very much.

News stories say either his mistresses' brother or the Saudis hacked his phone to get the photos.  

Whatever.  But the stories also say that he and his traumatized girlfriend/mistress/future wife are now consulting with a psychic in Las Vegas to help them cope. A friend says that the psychic is very well known as a very good psychic and that she is quite expensive (so that proves she's good.)

Again, he is THE RICHEST MAN IN THE WORLD and he's going to a psychic.