Good Weather in Tucson

Mellow Greetings Fellow Earthlings.  How are things where you are?  Today was warm and sunny, and so we decided to go test our marriage and assemble our bicycles.  As you no doubt recall from my December rant about how much I do not like the new through axle technology on the bikes, today they confirmed my blind hatred of the tech, and raised it by a exponential factor.  Getting the back wheels on was just horrific.  We could do this back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, I could do it by myself with quick release skewers.  It took both of us to get them lined up in the correct slot, along with 3 pairs of nitrile gloves per wheel.  Eventually we prevailed on the wheels, and discovered that ALL of the brake calipers were dragging on the brake rotors.  We had planned to learn how to fix this ourselves, but the thought of getting those wheels off and on again was more than we could bear.  So we dropped them off at our favorite bike store (at the loading dock) and we'll get them back mid-week.  This is further encouraging us to rent a cargo trailer for the trip home, so bike wheels stay on.  At some point, I'm going to pay a bike shop's hourly rate and get them to teach me how to do all of this so I am not dependent on other people.  Youtube is just not getting it done for me.

So, we came home and had chicken noodle soup.  Mirabile dictu Jim could taste it.  We're pretty excited about this, his sense of smell is also recovering.  I would really like all of the people who are convinced the pandemic is over to lose taste and smell for a week, and then contemplate what the rest of their life could be like - it does happen that neither sense ever comes back.

Here is my new chair.  I spent the entire day in it yesterday.  All of it.

This is how the sick amuse themselves.  Our new oven mitt is keeping Jim's cup of coffee warm.

In the past, I have mocked the idea of buying frozen rice.  However, there is no rice making capability in this condo, so it has come to this.  I will let you know how it goes.

Angus, who now lives in Scotland, put this on his blog yesterday.  It was appropriate.

One of the Manhattanites makes the caustic comment that Anglos-Saxons used to sneer at the Italian parliament with its ever changing governments and interminable procedural votes. It now seems that the Brits and Americans have not only adopted the Italian model but are taking it to new levels of unruliness. 

I would offer up this photo as evidence.

That's it!  That's all I've got.