Day: May 31, 2022

Five Happy Purchases

Fandango12 Comments

For her 5 Things prompt this week, Dr. Tanya pointed out that “after the pandemic and during the current geopolitical situation, inflation is on an upward spiral.” So she’s asking us to list five things we’re glad we bought.

I am glad I bought…

1. An electric car — Last August my wife and I decided to trade in our gasoline-powered car for an EV (electric vehicle). It’s not a plug-in hybrid, but a fully electric car. With the price of a gallon of gas approaching $7.00 where we live in Northern California, I couldn’t be happier about that decision.

2. A Level 2 electric car home charging station — Charging an electric car using a standard 120 volt, 20 amp household outlet is excruciatingly slow. It would take 65 hours to fully charge my electric vehicle. But using a 240 volt, 40 amp outlet takes only five hours to fully charge the car. No brainer, right? If you’re interested, you can read about my Level 2 charger here.

3. ebikes — We live in a very hilly area in the East Bay suburbs of San Francisco. As senior citizens, my wife and I didn’t get in a whole lot of bicycle riding because of that hilly terrain. Our Trek bikes were essentially collecting dust in our garage. So we decided to sell our traditional bicycles and replace them with ebikes. Now we can use the electric pedal assist feature and, when needed for an extra boost, the throttle, so that we can easily manage the steepest of hills, yet still get some great exercise and a good workout.

4. Hearing aids — I was a little reluctant about getting hearing aids. First, I heard a lot of people express dissatisfaction or frustration with them. Second, needing to wear hearing aids made me feel old. (I am old, but I don’t feel old). But as I wrote here, in early April I took the plunge. And it was a good decision. It’s been almost two months and I can hear a whole lot better now than I could two months ago.

5. A whole house natural gas generator — Here in Northern California we are experiencing a severe drought, and with our long, hot, dry summers, our area is prone to wildfires and to rolling electrical blackouts and/or unplanned power outages. So we decided to install a whole-house natural gas generator. In the two years since we installed it, it has automatically engaged each time the electricity went out, which has occurred around a half a dozen times. As a result, the food in our refrigerator didn’t spoil, the lights in our house at night stayed on, and on those 100°+ days, our air conditioning kept running.

Truthful Tuesday — Guns, Guns, and More Guns

Fandango15 Comments

Melanie, of Sparks from a Combustible Mind, is still filling in for Frank, aka PCGuy, who is taking a temporary hiatus from his Truthful Tuesday prompt. This week Melanie wants to know about a very hot topic.

Guns? Gun laws and how they could be improved. Pros and cons. A brief synopsis of why you feel as you do about them in which ever country you live.

I decided, rather than to repeat here in this post my thoughts about guns, gun laws, and how I feel about them, I’d just put in a link to a post, Second Amendment Thoughts Revisited, that I published this past Friday. Here’s the link to that post, and, for those of you who just want to know my bottom line on guns, below are the final two paragraphs from that post.

I believe any reasonably thinking human being, even those who support the right of citizens to keep and bear arms, can’t possibly justify the availability and use of such assault weapons by other than members of the military — the professional military.

We need to stop the insanity. Enough is enough. It’s time for Congress to put public health above special interests and politics. Otherwise I’m afraid for the future of our society.

East Versus West

Fandango8 Comments

Ever since we relocated from the Boston area to San Francisco more than a dozen years ago, I have been dreaming of a Word Series showdown between my old and new hometown baseball teams, the Boston Red Sox and the San Francisco Giants. But that has not come to pass.

It almost happened last year, when both the Red Sox and the Giants made the playoffs. But neither team made it to the World Series.

I also wished that the AFC’s New England Patriots might face-off against the NFC’s San Francisco 49ers is the NFL Super Bowl. But that hasn’t happened either.

And then there is basketball. Wouldn’t it be great if the Boston Celtics could play the Golden State Warriors in the NBA Finals Championship Series?

Well guess what? For the first time since 2010, the Celtics are in the NBA Finals after winning their series against the Miami Heat. And the Warriors are returning to the Finals for the time since 2019 after beating the Dallas Mavericks. Yay!

So who am I going to be rooting for to win the 2022 NBA Championship? Well, if it were baseball, I’d be pulling for the Red Sox. If it were football, probably the Pats. Or maybe the 49ers. Kind of a toss-up. But between the Celtics and the Warriors, I’ve got to tip my hat to the Warriors.

Fandango’s Story Starter #48

Fandango8 Comments

It’s time for my weekly Story Starter prompt. Here’s how it works. Every Tuesday morning (my time), I’m going to give you an incomplete “teaser” sentence and your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to build a story (prose or poetry) around that partial sentence. It doesn’t have to be the first sentence in your story, and you don’t even have to use it in your post at all if you don’t want to. The purpose of the teaser is simply to spark your imagination and to get your storytelling juices flowing.

This week’s Story Starter teaser is:

When the taxi driver suddenly turned in the wrong direction, I asked him what he was doing. He turned around, had a nasty grin on his face, and told me that he…

If you care to write and post a story built from this teaser, be sure to link back to this post and to tag your post with #FSS. I would also encourage you to read and enjoy what your fellow bloggers do with their stories.

And most of all, have fun.