Senior Olympian Sprinter

 After what seems like months of counting, the Presidential race has been decided.   Biden is the new man, unless you are Donald Trump and his minions.   They think the race has been won by them and with some shady lawyering, they will get to stay in the White House--no chance.  They are operating like they live in a dictatorship and their wish is everyone's command and that is just not the case.   Bully away all you want, you lost a clean fight.  It was basically a knock out and the smelling salts are not going to save you for another round.   What happens next??   Thousands of people will get sick and die from Covid as the lame duck Donald plays golf, yells at his lawyers and staff, fires more staffers and hires the yes people he so loves.   It will be a useless parade of the soon to be fired, getting their 5 minutes of glory in DC.  And the entire time, the states will certify their vote count and the Electoral College will seal the deal.  Law suits are just water on a ducks bac

 I have been voting in Presidential elections since I first cast a vote for Jimmy Carter.  In that election cycle, the country was trying to get the Nixon residue off and Carter was something different and hopefully better.   He was and still is a wonderful human being, but his Presidency did not go well.   Oil shortages, inflation and huge unemployment figures and he was a one termer.  He was not able to make any headway against a very stiff headwind.       I am at the point of this election cycle I cannot wait  to cast a vote against the worst President of all time..  The first Tuesday in November cannot get here soon enough.     I do not think we will ever elect anything as bad as this again.  We will not survive a country if we do.    Is Joe Biden the candidate of my choice--probably not.  Is a mafia Don like we have in place now?? NO!  Does Joe have some seasoning as a leader?  Sure does!   Will Joe appoint a bunch of lackies and ass kissers to important government posts?  Probabl

Post race along the Potomac Our daughter and grand daughter came for a visit last week and we finally got to do some visiting during the covid pandemic mess we have been experiencing.  The  grand daughter time was a lot of fun and the high light of the visit was a trip to the National Zoo in DC.   The pandas were inside and we missed them, but there was plenty of other animals to watch.  Everyone was masked up and it was not too crowded and this is way life is going to be for a while.   A lot of strollers and babies were in the zoo that day.   Betty and I had planned a 5K event that we could run while she was in town.  She does 5K's on a regular basis in the Milwaukee area and I do one a year.  The Steelers were doing a virtual 5K to support their charities and I thought it would be something to do in terms of racing.  My last race was in October of 2019 and it was a qualifier in Tennessee and the 2020 time sheet was still blank!!!   Aside from being injured, this was my lightest r

I have been wearing an Oura ring for several weeks.  It is basically a small computer/body sensor on your finger and it uses blue tooth to connect this data to your phone. I wear it all the time and it needs charged about every 5 to 6 days.   Oura comes from Europe and they cost $300 currently.  Originally, I purchased the ring to study my sleep habits and see if I was sleeping well.    Oura is designed to measure your heart rate, body movements, and temperature and with that data it will develop a graph   to log your sleep and body recovery.     After a few days I started to realize how the data is designed to function and the program will start giving feed back on your sleep quality and let you know if you actually recovered from the previous days activities.    If I do two really hard days of climbing in a row, my sleep patterns will so different from days without a heavy work load.  The program will suggest a day off the recover.  The data really helps your recovery by telling you

T    Great question, but I know for sure this is the longest tunnel I have ever been trying to get through.  2020 is a year we will all remember and at the same time, want to forget.  It reminds me of something that went horribly wrong in the past  and someone ALWAYS brings up the incident when you see them--particularly family members.   It is just too strange and painful to keep buried.  My racing season has gone up in smoke and may not return until next summer.   I have been struggling to get any real training done and the only outlet has been some hiking in the area.  Harpers Ferry had been referred to prior to the Civil War as "The Hole". Not a nice moniker, but it is really accurate.  The river beds in HF are around 220 foot of elevation and we live at 500 feet on top of the hill in town.  If you cross either river, you have a mountain to scale.    The Maryland side has a 1442 foot peak and the Virginia side has a 1138 foot peak within an hour hike of our house. I have

The song writer John Prine died recently of Covid complications.   He had written hundreds of songs about life, fun, folly and pain and was a true blessing to the music world.  He will be missed, but his music lives on in our heads and in our hearts.   Linda was big fan and one of his records was her very first purchase after her college age brother exposed her to John's music while she was in junior high school.   What a great way to start your music collection?   Linda has been to a lot of his shows over the last 25 years and I have enjoyed several as well.  His shows were well produced, everyone in the band wore a  suit on and you really got to hear the music and enjoy the crowd singing along to his lyrics.   They were really good shows.   There will be a big hole in Americana music for a while, no one is going to take his place, he was too big of a talent.    Rest in Peace John Prine.  I have been writing this blog for several years and as I review older material, I comment t

The last really bad pandemic was around the time of the First World War.   Since then we have had some minor events as well as polio stalking everyone until the 1960's.   That being said, there are not many left that can relate personally to what we are going through currently.   We are really dependent on doctors and learned health care people for our future well being, with the real overall control in the hands of elected officials.   It appears that many elected officials are taking their roles seriously-- Kentucky and NY Governors are really leading the way.  There are other leaders that believe Trump and support his strategy ( fend for yourself) that is getting a lot more people exposed and dead than is necessary.   This makes for a really crazy world--who can manage this mess the best???  An interesting story that came out last night.  The Federal government is basically stealing the PPE that the states have found and sourced.  They have the FBI listening in and monitoring

That question is going to answered  in the year 2020.   Can you overcome the uncertainty and chaos associated with a global pandemic, Presidential election, mass unemployment and a melt down in the stock market?   I hope we can.  Oil is cheap if that is any consolation. Timing is incredibly important in life, and so is luck.   Now luck can be good or bad and examples are plentiful for each direction.    For example, in April,  2019 I was laid off from my job at Kadant as a Tissue Process Specialist.   Linda and I survived as I worked on getting another job.   Unemployment would be $275 a week in Tennessee and I did not apply for compensation because I would have been forced to take work I was not interested and I would need to get a vehicle.   Neither scenario was very interesting and I needed a lot of time to work on getting back into the paper making field.  To make ends meet, I used 401K money and also the sold all stocks that I had been buying and selling the last few years.    W

Subject:    What sanitary products are safe to flush in your toilet? In the last few weeks,   chaos has been the norm in the world of toilet paper and the supply of the product that everyone in the USA takes for granted.    But in some cases, family and friends may be out of stock and you have had to get them some of your personal reserve.     And in some extreme situations, people use   other sanitary products in the bath room and this can in many cases lead to problems.    Toilet paper is designed to easily break up when flushed.     The bath tissue we produce at Mercury Paper breaks up very easily in a normal flush cycle.    If you use our bath tissue, your septic system stays happy.    When you run out and use paper towel, napkins, facial tissue or wet wipes—things get more risky in terms of plumbing and septic function.      A simple test for the ability of tissue to break up or flush is shown   in the following pictures.    It is simple to perform and makes a great way

Things are just a little crazy with the chaos associated with the coronavirus and the global reaction.   Talking with my wife and brother, as well as the rest of the world that will still chat with you, nobody can remember anything quite like this situation.   The crash into the Twin Towers on 9-11 had some elements of the situation, but the total shutdown of sporting events, meetings, global travel and the run on water, sanitizer and toilet paper is just totally new to us.  The Master Indoors meet was cancelled this week, I was not planning on going this year.   I am in the middle of relocation from Nashville to Harper Ferry , West Virginia.  On March 31 we will close on the Brentwood house and close on the new place on April 2.   Getting this into place has been a real battle, but it is going to happen.    We are on our third contract for the Brentwood house and after trying to sell it for 9 or 10 months it will close this time.    Linda and I had been actively searching in Harpers

I have not been blogging lately and it was due to the fact that I had been struggling with darkness in my life and my blogs when I have some depressed feelings are too dark to read.  Very simple, I did not share the pain, you did nothing to deserve any of that stuff.  But, this week I am in Northern Virginia starting a new job in a converting plant that takes giant rolls of tissue and towel and cuts them to size and packages them for distribution in your local stores.   I will be a Base Paper Engineer and be involved with product development, manufacturing trouble shooting and most importantly, interfacing with the roll producers to get the best product into the plant.  So my career path now veers back into manufacturing after a 26 year stroll through the supplier forest.  All the technical information that I have gathered over the decades will come to play in the new role and also people skills will definitely be challenged.  Converting is stressful and not everybody is on the same