Random Things

Another Merle Oberon photo. Beautiful woman, beautiful photograph. It's going to have to cool off some before I attempt any "studio" work. I've got the lights set up and ready to go in the top of the new barn but yesterday it hit 97 and tied the record with similar temps being forecast for today. Needless to say, a bit warm to be working in the top of the barn with photofloods. I did get out on the bicycle and put some miles in, however. 16 yesterday and 20 this morning. I got in about 9:00 today and it was already pretty hot in the sun. I watered all the plants before I came in and got cleaned up and that might be the last I set foot outside today. Good day to sit around in the AC in my boxer shorts and catch up on my reading.

I did get the sidecar wheel painted the other day. It came out looking pretty sexy in gold. I found a tire on e-Bay for a decent price but I think I'll take the wheel to the local bike shop. Last time I bought one from them they installed it for free. Probably worth a couple extra bucks to have them do it and then it'll be balanced as well.

From a former student on Facebook the other day:

I havent welded aluminum in 14 years
I havent welded in flip flops since Mr M. threatened to revoke my scholarship if I didn't quote "put some damn shoes on before you have a flipper where your toes used to be"

And here I am walking like a idiot at work all day because of burns between my toes from welding aluminum in flip flops last night

It's nice to see they remember what you told them, even if they don't always do it. He'll probably be more careful next time, though.

And last, but certainly not least, this quote from General Eisenhower found here:

 

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. Is this, I repeat, the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking? This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron. Is there no other way the world may live?"

“When people speak to you about a preventive war, you tell them to go and fight it. I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity. After my experience, I have come to hate war. War settles nothing.”