Smarties Bar & Grill #76

I just gave an update about her on the post right above yours but she's doing okay. She's healing up each day nicely. I just drove down to fort Myers to see her yesterday.... A long day driving.

When she gets out of the hospital that should be in the next several days or so, should be going to a rehab facility for 1 to 2 weeks so they can teach her everything she needs to know about living with this operation .

So everything considered, she is progressing swimmingly.


As for the squirrel, back in late August I came home my dog was barking up a tree and here's this little squirrel right above me and I put my finger out and said don't bite me and it came down and sniffed my finger and I started petting it and then I just picked it up.

It was rather young like probably 8 to 10 weeks from what I can gather. And I looked around and saw no mother or nest and it was going to storm so I took it in that night and I went back out in the morning to search for Mom and even played a recording of a baby squirrel crying and that same day my neighbor cut down half the tree I found it in.

So I said I guess I have a new pet. It may very well scan for back off up a tree one day and that'll be that. I bottle fed it a little bit of puppy milk replacement formula for the first week but it was evident that it was almost weaned and now I give it solid food such as apples and peanuts and corn on the cob and sweet potato slices and grapes.

It has never tried to bite me but it does nibble sometimes but never breaks the skin. I think it likes the salt on my skin when I've been sweating.

Which for Southwest Florida is like anytime you go outside move around at all.

 

So she has this little board thingy with a stylus to write upon. It's pretty cool because it's small and lightweight and it has a button as soon as you press it what you have previously written upon it, disappears.

Having visited her I'm already learning to pick up more nonverbal cues and who knows maybe I'll even learn some sign language.

Just because she cannot speak though, does not mean she cannot hear just fine.

My friends are already making jokes about how instead of getting nagged at I will get angrily scribbled at on the board with a stylus!

I still have some time before I should make any of those jokes to her though!

She might not be able to speak but she can still pick up something and hit me!

 

I'm thinking you'll be wildly gesticulated at now Fatty! Y'all gonna have to learn to sign now, I wonder if they have a southern USA version.

Wifey got herself bitten by black ants, their bite is far worse than scorpions! They were extremely aggressive little devils.. I gave them some yummy Amrol to take to their queen,, I'll see if any of them are still alive at noon.
They are too small for these guys to watch.

 

We have the scourge of fire ants here. When it rains a lot and it begins to flood, they come out of the ground and form Giant floating rafts of their own bodies.

If you ever have to wade through flood water and you don't know about them you will soon find out.

Remember she might not be able to talk...
But she can still pick up something and go upside my head!

She will have that device that allows you to talk to a degree though. The little robot box voice that you have to put up to your stoma.

 

Riding my bike up into Hardee county. Some pictures of the day. Pretty country up here and fairly remote. This dirt road runs about 8 Miles.

 

Just got home and did 50 miles. Easily within 3 hours and that was stopping several times. More pictures.

 

I like back country roads in virtually any place. In the 'cultivated' places, you only see what they let you see. Back roads tells you what is really going on.

I's be cautious as to who is living in those waters.....

 

I'm more worried about going down the wrong road and meeting the wrong two-legged animals!

I laugh when people tell me that there's a beef shortage around here..... I must have easily just passed several thousand head

 

When we first moved here 22+ years ago, I took me a toodle around the lake on a Seadoo, into the little coves and back 'roads' that only exist when the lake is full up. I swear I heard banjo music in one.... and high tailed it out of there!! You never know who has copper tubing running from a barrel around here.

 

What a fantastic attitude and ability! My grandfather was one of Tom Edison's techs. From what I understand, he thought like that too.

 

Family get together yesterday for mum's 82nd birthday so I asked my royal family loving sister if she'd been to London for the recent fuss.
Turns out the queue was to long for her but she has been really busy on E-Bay.
During the Jubilee she had ordered a print of the now world famous picture of HM, Paddington and a corgi.
£15 for the print and she bought 2 tea-towels with the same image at the same time also about £15 each.
She sold the print for £410 (bought by a person in Australia) and the 2 tea towels for £155 and £178.

 

Somewhere around here I have pictures of recumbent bikes and trikes of different sorts that I have fabricated over the years.

Using mainly galvanized EMT conduit and a tubing bender and my welder and some other simple tools. Also using some parts of existing steel bike frames such as the rear triangle.

My one recumbent bike, has a one-piece leather bucket seat with about 81 in holes in the leather that I punched out on an oak stump with a piece of 1 inch tubing and a 4 lb hammer. A world war II veteran told me it reminded him of some of the seats from the aircraft during that time. I thought that was pretty neat. The effect is somewhat like a leather cargo net.

I haven't fabricated any bikes in a long time though because I work and sleep too much. I would like to think I could make a living doing that but no one wants to pay you what your time is worth.

It takes me about 3 days to build a bike and probably $200 in materials. And people think $1,000 is too much.

 

I have lots of shards of drywall here left from when I tried to put some up. When I finished it looked like Frankenstein's face... just a bunch of patches. When I went to change the oil on my first new car years ago... I drained the transmission fluid and added four quarts of oil. My handyman skills leave a lot to be desired.

 

Out for a stroll this afternoon in a swamp buggy. At least two foot of water on this road. My leg, I'm sitting on the upper deck. This particular machine is ancient and crawls along like a tank on big tractor tires. It won't win any races but it can literally go anywhere. The undertaker is driving it..... No really, he's an undertaker or mortician.

 

Hopefully one of those hurricanes out there doesn't hit right now or there will be six more foot of water on that road at least.

 

After so many years in the Army I have no interest in such outings. I have awakened in the crook of a tree in Panama where I slept to avoid the roiling waters below, opened my eyes to find myself under to feet of snow on the deck of a tank in Germany, belly-crawled under a sandstorm in Iraq, and dangled precariously from a mountain in Dahlonega. All things considered, I think nature sucks.

A Marriott with poolside service is as close to nature as I want these days.

 

You have one on the way looks like.

 

Rio Grande is still in flood stage, lakes in Mexico are releasing their excess.. hope they don't get another deluge or the excess may release it's self in one huge surge.

 

Certainly looks that way. We shall see where it ultimately goes. One of my friends that lives in the river floodplain where we were on that swamp buggy would have his house flood again if that happened but it wouldn't be the first time.

The majority of houses down there are built far enough up on stilts that they will be okay.

I'll be okay because my house sits about 30 ft above sea level.

 

If you've never seen a swamp buggy before they are something to behold.

And "swamp buggy" is a fairly generic term.... It can mean anything from a rickety backyard fabricated machine with a school bus transmission in it and a big motor all the way up to something that might cost you $80,000.

But one thing they all have in common is a high deck where the passengers sit and tires that are typically 3 ft at the least and the ability to go through at least 3 ft of water and muddy swamps. Of course they are not street legal so you either have them on your property or you put them on a flatbed trailer to tow around.

Typical tires are large tractor tires. It's something you could drive around in the Everglades with

 

Hey people, what do ya'all drink around here?

 

Champaign and it's your round.

 

OK! Champaign for everyone on me! After I squeegee off you can have it.

 

Looks like a potentially major hurricane is going to make landfall directly West of my county and I'm only 50 miles from the coast.

I'm not terribly worried about it because I'll be at work no doubt. Our store never closes. In fact we were the only ones in town with gas today.

I'm in my early 40s and the last time this store ever closed I wasn't even born yet. We will be the only place in town open during a hurricane.


Since I live in a mobile home I would rather be at work during the storm anyways because this building is very Stout. I suppose I shall pack all of my valuables into my van and drive it to work and hope for the best. Of course my motorcycle will be inside of it.