Wednesday, January 24, 2018

Get Your Kicks...

...on Route 66...that's an actual photograph of yours truly in my 1956 Corvette taking a quick Marlboro Man style break on my cross country tour of "The Mother Road".

Ok, so I'm lying and that's not me...and I don't own a corvette...or smoke cigarettes...and I've never traveled (as an adult) on Route 66...

...but you have to admit, it is a pretty cool poster...great view...and a very nice ride.  I'm 50 shades of green with envy.

Some more Route 66 nostalgia...
...don't forget the sunblock and water.

I did travel on Route 66 as a kid...in the back seat of the family station wagon on vacations...but never this far west.

Giving equal time to another favorite mode of transportation...
...the golden age of train travel...beautiful.

And of course, have to give a tip o' the hat to my favorite airplane...
...the beloved Ford TriMotor.

Pretty wild about this one, too...
...a real workhorse that greatly advanced the commercial aviation industry.  Plus, it was a tail dragger, as all the best planes in the world always are...a classic from back in the day when air travel was enjoyable and exciting.

Post 9/11 it's just a pain in the hind end and has all the elegance and ambiance of herding livestock into cattle cars...mooooo...git along little dogie...

Shifting gears, here's a very cool pic of my granddaughter Tionna:
She's a member of the Navy Ceremonial Guard, seen here shaking hands after one of their events with some of the brass.

She has another one coming up at the White House very soon.  Say hello to The Donald for me.

Very proud of you, young lady!

In the continuing saga of our home restoration, we had to tear down part of the ceiling in our guest room this past week...
Had a nasty leak that pretty much trashed that part of the interior ceiling...much to our surprise, there was no insulation at all overhead!

This room used to be a carport at one time, and somewhere along the way they enclosed it...when they did I guess they decided to keep it as a three season room and didn't worry about R-factor.

Many thanks to Micah, Marcellus and Isaiah for their hard work doing most of the heavy lifting and cleaning up the mess after!  Now we have to get it dried out, put some insulation up there, and patch the enormous hole...always something...

On the plus side, we had the finishing touches in the form of floating shelves installed in our kitchen this week:


Still need to paint them of course, but you get the idea.  Pretty excited to see this project finally drawing to a close.

Just overheard my 19 year old stepdaughter Sarah talking with Karen about a couple of co-workers...

Karen: "How old are they?"
Sarah: "They're old..."
K: "How old?"
S: "I don't know...really old...like 40 maybe...?"

And on that instructive note...

later, mcm fans...


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Wednesday, January 10, 2018

MCM TV...

...heaven...that's my 1959 GE Slimline (formerly) black and white TV, retrofitted with a Philips color tube by Justin Rubsam...
...shown here in his workshop putting the finishing touches on my set.

Justin owns Stellar TV out of Sacramento, CA.  Check out his site, as he gets involved in some very interesting projects.

A recent endeavor found him providing 11 TV sets for David Copperfield's private museum of magic.
Mr. C is highlighting the influential magicians from his youth in separate displays on period correct television sets; enter Justin and his expertise.

In the "considerably less exotic" department, my set is being shipped back and should arrive in my friendly confines sometime next week...pretty excited about that.

A view of the innards...
Justin had to deal with the electronics as well as the design / carpentry aspect of the case to get all this to fit / work...plus he upgraded it with an HDMI connector so it will easily hook up to our DirecTV system.

Should be perfect for our living room near the fireplace...tune in for time travel back to I Love Lucy and The Jackie Gleason shows (neither of which I ever watched)...probably more likely to watch some old movies on cold winter nights by the warm fireplace.

Hatari, anyone?
"DANGER!" in Swahili...
Pursuant to all our furniture rearranging, Karen has populated our art deco display case with part of her Cameo Rose china collection:
...really looks spectacular...I know her mom would love it if she could see it now.

Other than that, nothing much new to report...stuck here at the north pole, though we are experiencing the famous January thaw at the moment...
...wishing the thaw could be followed by Spring but sadly we're a couple of months away from that.

There were a couple of years, several years back, when we were fortunate enough to enjoy a winter getaway to someplace warm...but in recent years work has conspired to make that an impossibility...too many "crisis projects" that make being gone for a week in December / January / February impractical...but I miss Palm Springs...
...and the Desert Riviera Hotel...75 degrees and sunny in January...oh yeah...the owners, Rick and Martha, are fabulous folks who make you feel right at home...
I miss them and luxuriating at their lovely hotel...have to make a point of getting back there soon.

But for now, it's a Wednesday night in the not so frozen north, 1/3rd of the way through January, so...

later, mcm fans...

* Crass Commercialism Corner *

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Monday, January 1, 2018

Welcome 2018...

...and who could have guessed?  It's snowing again...how unusual...come on Lake Michigan, freeze already!  It's been cold enough...single digits, even below zero at times...hoping less open water will help shut down the lake effect snow machine that so far has operated continuously for the last 10 days or so.

So another year has come and gone, and last night we welcomed 2018 in our usual manner...we watched When Harry Met Sally...
...saw the ball drop...
...then shared a kiss and some champagne at midnight.

Today is officially "de-decorate" day...
...won't all happen in one day...didn't get put up in one day...but by nightfall most of Christmas will have been vanquished, boxed and stored away for another year...so sad...

Now begins the longest stretch of the year...we've just finished two and a half months of "the holidays"...Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's...decorating / celebrating is over and it's time to plow through the next three months of hard winter.

Thankfully in our home we have Karen's birthday and Valentine's Day to brighten up these winter blues...

...and work promises to be crazy since we have a major deadline looming in mid-February.

Hopefully I'll blink a couple of times and it will be spring again...

later, mcm fans...

* Crass Commercialism Corner *

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Thank you!