Thursday December 21, 2017

Thursday December 21, 2017

Blog time 1130 at Panera

Happy Winter Solstice:  today is the shortest day of the year.  We have only nine hours of daylight in GR.  This is a happy day for me because tomorrow the days get longer meaning Spring can not be far away.

Temperature was 29 when I first went out this morning.  Cloudy but no snow predicted, another bike riding day.  

Sunrise was 0810 this morning so I took my time doing my at home routine.  I don’t like riding in the dark.  Nancy is not going to MVP this morning.  She did some stretching exercises at home.

Changed my winter route to the Y.  The short bike route I took yesterday is only 2.5 miles.  Today’s route was 3.5 miles.  The Y was not very crowded this morning.  The Y has been advertising a lot lately for new members.  Are they hurting for members?

Big announcement today that iphone batteries slow with age.  Why should that surprise anyone.  All batteries lose power with age.  In fact even human lose power with age as I can attest.

This evening Nancy and I are going out to dinner with our neighbor Sonya.  We are going to Bonefish Grill.  Great seafood menu.  Stay tuned.

The life expectancy in the USA dropped slightly to 78.6.  The life expectancy for men born in 1938, year of my birth, was 61.9.

The GOP is taking a victory lap after passage of the tax bill.  Only time will tell if it is successful.  The USA received a serious rebuke when the UN General Assembly passed a resolution criticizing our moving of the Israeli embassy to Jerusalem.  

WWW the shoe company located in Rockford, Mi is under fire for dumping sludge from their sewage facility that contained a substance called PFAS.  PFAS is labeled toxic by health authorities.  The sludge was disposed of in dumps and gravel pits near their facility.  No solid waste laws existed at the time of the disposal in the 60s.  Now homes near the dump sites have been tested for PFAS.  WWW has provided filters and bottled water to the homes.  The best solution is to run municipal water to these homes.  

PFAS has dominated the news in west MI.  The lawyers are having a field day.  

A lot of finger pointing and folks saying why did they not know.  In fact it wasn’t until the 60s that we started getting serious about environmental problems.  Engineers and scientists just did not know the impact of their actions.  The long term effects of new chemicals or treatment practices just were not known.  Our learning curve was just getting started.  It is unfortunate but if you ask an engineer about his actions he probably would say “it seemed like a good idea at the time”.  

After a quick lunch I got in the Escape and finished my Christmas shopping.  Also took time to get the car washed.

As mentioned earlier we had dinner at the Bonefish Grill.  Thursday night and not an empty table in the place.  The wait time was 90 minutes.  We were lucky that Sonya had made reservations.  Great food, we all had shrimp and scallops.  We gave Bonefish an A.

At home we watched an episode of The Crown before turning in.  Snow predicted for tonight.