That was THE worst trade and contract in the history of the league.

Sadly, I'm not at his funeral today. I've got a pretty good cold, so I decided not to pass it on. But my wife is playing for the funeral, torn up shoulder and all. Some notes... They got his obit wrong, listing only one combat tour. The man writing up the funeral went to school with Caboose and he knew better. Tried to get the family to change it, but they said they weren't sure. Come to find out, he did do two. Even volunteered to go back again, but the Corps declined to send him. Understandable, though. Even though Caboose was in the Corps and in the USMCR for forty years, and I've known him for 48 years, I've never heard him say a single word about Vietnam. Not one. He was supposed to have a Marine set of pallbearers, but a couple of them came down with COVID. Therefore, family will be pallbearers and a mixed service detail will fire the salute. They couldn't get everybody into the funeral home (that's a four estate room funeral home with at least a 200 seat chapel. Funeral is finishing up about now...The sheriff's department is lining up on the highway in full dress uniform. The sheriff will also furnish the procession escort. Caboose will be buried in a Marine blue casket, as referenced above. My wife said it's beautiful. Because he liked to cook (mostly smoking, roasting or barbeque) and he probably made thousands of pounds of smoked sausage per year, there will be a lot of pork at the meal after interment. I know of one guy smoking 100 pounds of pork. I'm sure there'll be a lot more. Other than that, this is a big family, a lot of friends and it's going to be an old-time country potluck from people who can cook. Sure wish I could have been there...

Kidnap seals? That's incredibly badass. I mean, they were the ones that killed Bin Laden...

@Klaus said in So You Want To Be a Concert Pianist: @Axtremus said in So You Want To Be a Concert Pianist: Popular something usually generates more commercial interests than classical something. Is that even a surprise? One of the disadvantages of the downfall of aristocracy. That statement reminds me something Herman Hesse or Thomas Mann would have written or lamented.

It loosely rhymes with Baloney Plans...

Kinda what I thought ...

I’ve been running about 25% S&P Index Funds, 25% Small Cap Funds, 15% Euro/Pacific Stocks, 20% in moderate growth, and 15% in relatively stable bonds and such. It’s a pretty aggressive portfolio, but I might be willing to shift a bit of the moderate growth into some small cap funds.

No clue. It's another name for Paper Scissors Rock.

The Eagles and Chicago could lay it down live, for certain.

He tried to detox just a while back and I don't think it was overly successful. Apparently he drinks pretty heavily, as much as two bottles of wine in a night.

Are they Zuckolds?

Thanks Cathy. As I mull it over, my best guess is that the biopsy was a false negative. Or if it was a true negative, then he happened to have other cancers anyway. When the surgeon removed his spleen, he was going to euthanize if he found cancers on other organs. He did find small bumps on the liver, but they were small enough that he just cut them off. I don't know how much real hope there ever was. I suspect the 30% chance of being cancer-free was wishful.

@Jolly said in USPS: I can see where EVs make sense for city delivery. Agree. Something like that (and school buses and garbage trucks) seem to be perfect. They are not in operation all the time. They have a large downtime for recharging. They do a lot of starts and stops, etc. In Taiwan, most of the mail is delivered on motorcycles. Easy to maneuver, etc. [image: img120160803082748815.jpg]

@Jolly Interesting. I did not know that. A friend was looking at putting it in at the used house they bought. The company told him that if it were a new house, it would be worth looking at, but for a revamp, not worth it.

Evolutionn is amazing.

Our choices reflect our ages (and where we grew up) more than the quality or quantity of humor in movies.

If you want to dive into the numbers, here they are: https://bjs.ojp.gov/document/cv23.pdf[image: 1729430944111-screenshot-2024-10-20-at-8.27.39-am-resized.png] [image: 1729430948674-screenshot-2024-10-20-at-8.28.02-am.png] [image: 1729430952466-screenshot-2024-10-20-at-8.28.11-am.png] [image: 1729430957051-screenshot-2024-10-20-at-8.28.21-am.png] [image: 1729430961674-screenshot-2024-10-20-at-8.28.39-am.png]

I have been intubated one time. Woke up restrained and still intubated. One nurse tried to hold my hand and calm me down while another put me under again. God Bless her, I almost broke her hand. Literally. She showed my wife her hand and I had clamped down hard enough to bruise most of her hand and some of her fingers.

Thanks, cathy. It was a real blow, for sure.