Tank birthday, 47+ years

[Paul B]

As I said, our Daughter took me to Grand Bahama Island on a private Jet. It was my birthday on Christmas. I was totally surprised and I offered to split the cost.........

Of the Champaign. :unsure:

I won't go into how we got this jet but my family were the only ones on it going and coming. It's a really exciting way to travel but most mortals, including me couldn't even afford the air in the tires of the thing.

It was a Gulf Stream 5. This one.


It is a small airport that only houses these types of planes. WE park right next to the"terminal" about 20' from the front door.

You go into this beautiful lounge where they treat you to Champaign, muffins, granola bars, coffee, etc.

The plane waits for you and you make the schedule so if you are late, the plane will stay there for you.

We walk to the plane that was right next to the back door and get in where the Stewardess, Hostess, cabin attendant asks us to sit anywhere we want. (or whatever is PC to call them but they were stewardesses when I first used to fly)

There is a bedroom, kitchen, couches and lounge area so no regular cabin seats.



The Captain comes back to chat a while and we take off. I have been on quite a few small planes but never small jets. They do shake more than commercial planes in turbulence but not much. Once you get above the New York, lousy weather it was motionless even at 550 MPH.

We land in Grand Bahama Island where someone greets us and takes us to this house.

On the way I noticed that much of the Island was devastated. I found out they had a number of hurricanes and the last one much of the Island was under 20' of seawater. That was horrible for everyone on the Island and there were huge hotels, brand new on the beach totally empty with no windows as they were all blown out. The wind speeds approached 200mph.

Everything in it's path was destroyed.
And this was "salt water" as opposed to Noahs flood which was fresh water. Or at least I think it was because it was assumed to be from rain.

It's hard to tell because Noah used a swing arm hydrometer which was arguably not very accurate. I understand he got it from his Great, Great, Great Grand Father Adam who gave it to him because he didn't have a pocket to put it in because it is hard to fashion a pocket into a fig leaf and Eve got tired of holding it. In those days the swing arm hydrometers weren't accurate because the arm was made out of acacia wood that was left over from the Ark of the Covenant. It was in the shape of a snake with an apple in it's mouth and the gold gilding on it caused it to sink.

Of course they didn't have plastic so the thing was made out of stone and you could only use it once. To read it, you filled it with water then gingerly laid it on it's side and smashed it with a coconut so you can read where the arm rested.

On a side note that not many people know about, Noah had a son named Strauss. He wasn't happy with the choice in clothes in those days as they only had a fig "leaf" to wear. He looked at it and figured if he could rivet a pocket into it he would be the first clothing designer which is how we got Levi Strauss Jeans. (Google it, it's in the Old Testament )

Anyway, we go into this beautiful house and check it out. It was beautiful but dated from the 80s or so and no one lived there for the last 10 years. The beach, pool and Jacuzzi was gorgeous.

There was also a huge Koi pond which had two huge tutles in it.

I will finish this later.

 

[Daniel@R2R]

As I said, our Daughter took me to Grand Bahama Island on a private Jet. It was my birthday on Christmas. I was totally surprised and I offered to split the cost.........

Of the Champaign. :unsure:

I won't go into how we got this jet but my family were the only ones on it going and coming. It's a really exciting way to travel but most mortals, including me couldn't even afford the air in the tires of the thing.

It was a Gulf Stream 5. This one.


It is a small airport that only houses these types of planes. WE park right next to the"terminal" about 20' from the front door.

You go into this beautiful lounge where they treat you to Champaign, muffins, granola bars, coffee, etc.

The plane waits for you and you make the schedule so if you are late, the plane will stay there for you.

We walk to the plane that was right next to the back door and get in where the Stewardess, Hostess, cabin attendant asks us to sit anywhere we want. (or whatever is PC to call them but they were stewardesses when I first used to fly)

There is a bedroom, kitchen, couches and lounge area so no regular cabin seats.



The Captain comes back to chat a while and we take off. I have been on quite a few small planes but never small jets. They do shake more than commercial planes in turbulence but not much. Once you get above the New York, lousy weather it was motionless even at 550 MPH.

We land in Grand Bahama Island where someone greets us and takes us to this house.

On the way I noticed that much of the Island was devastated. I found out they had a number of hurricanes and the last one much of the Island was under 20' of seawater. That was horrible for everyone on the Island and there were huge hotels, brand new on the beach totally empty with no windows as they were all blown out. The wind speeds approached 200mph.

Everything in it's path was destroyed.
And this was "salt water" as opposed to Noahs flood which was fresh water. Or at least I think it was because it was assumed to be from rain.

It's hard to tell because Noah used a swing arm hydrometer which was arguably not very accurate. I understand he got it from his Great, Great, Great Grand Father Adam who gave it to him because he didn't have a pocket to put it in because it is hard to fashion a pocket into a fig leaf and Eve got tired of holding it. In those days the swing arm hydrometers weren't accurate because the arm was made out of acacia wood that was left over from the Ark of the Covenant. It was in the shape of a snake with an apple in it's mouth and the gold gilding on it caused it to sink.

Of course they didn't have plastic so the thing was made out of stone and you could only use it once. To read it, you filled it with water then gingerly laid it on it's side and smashed it with a coconut so you can read where the arm rested.

On a side note that not many people know about, Noah had a son named Strauss. He wasn't happy with the choice in clothes in those days as they only had a fig "leaf" to wear. He looked at it and figured if he could rivet a pocket into it he would be the first clothing designer which is how we got Levi Strauss Jeans. (Google it, it's in the Old Testament )

Anyway, we go into this beautiful house and check it out. It was beautiful but dated from the 80s or so and no one lived there for the last 10 years. The beach, pool and Jacuzzi was gorgeous.

There was also a huge Koi pond which had two huge tutles in it.

I will finish this later.

This is awesome, Paul! Happy belated birthday to you!

 

[Paul B]

Thank you. In the Bahamas it poured every minute until the morning we left.

 

[Paul B]

Current tank video.

 

[atoll]

Happy New Year Paul and all.

 

[Paul B]

Thanks Atoll. Happy New Year to you also. We had company for dinner last night. I made Linguine and clams. We stayed up to watch the ball drop in Times Square. Something we haven't done in years.

New Yorkers know enough to keep away from there on New Years Eve so it is all tourists.

But it's always a fun time.

 

[snorklr]

Thank you. In the Bahamas it poured every minute until the morning we left.

happy new year...one of our friends went to Iceland a couple weeks ago to see the northern lights...cloudy every day till the morning she left...

 

[Paul B]

I would have taken cloudy. We had monsoons.

 

[Kmst80]

Happy New Year to ya all.
I woke up on the first to this little surprise.

 

[Paul B]

Very cool. That is always exciting to see that.

My Daughter had a huge New Years Eve party and it was a dress up party. The theme was party like an animal so everyone had to come as an animal. She was an anemone with clownfish

 

[ReefGrammie]

Very cool. That is always exciting to see that.

My Daughter had a huge New Years Eve party and it was a dress up party. The theme was party like an animal so everyone had to come as an animal. She was an anemone with clownfish

I love your daughter's costume idea!

 

[Paul B]

Thank you ReefGrammie My Son N Law was a sting ray.

(Notice my Steam Punk piece on the right)


This Friday I will go in for my 31st surgery. This one is a tiny surgery and I am not sure why they are even calling it surgery. I have this "freckle" on my lower eyelid and being my wife makes me go for a skin check every year the guy found this tiny spot about a quarter the size of what a bite would look like from an anorexic toddler mosquito who still has his baby teeth.

So it's supposed to be skin cancer and of course they must remove it. I am 74 years old and it would take 60 years for this thing to kill me so I just don't get it.

Yesterday they made me go for a pre- op check up and a covid test which I feel is way over kill.

After the "eyelid specialist surgeon" (who knew there even was such a thing) finishes removing the thing in 4 hours. (yes, this is supposed to take 4 hours for some reason. Maybe he has to glue back my eyelashes one at a time) then I go to the "eyelid plastic surgeon" in a different building miles away who will attempt to make me look like I have Betty Davis eyes.

This will take all day and I will probably have a patch on my eye so I can change my name to Paulie Pirate. My wife will have to drive me and I am not crazy about that because she drives with a left foot gas pedal because her right leg doesn't work any more. I won't let her drive on the highway but we have to for this as I don't want to drive with one eye. (And most of my friends ran to Florida to escape the cold)

On another note, yesterday as I was looking for the doctor for the pre op and I asked my 12 year old " I Phone 4" to tell me how to get to this place. My phone just "said" that I am not connected to the internet and it can't tell me anything. I am not that good with I Phones but it never had to be connected to the internet for that and it even worked in Hawaii, Tahiti and Brooklyn so I wasn't sure why it didn't work all of a sudden.

I took it to a phone fixing place and he told me the phone was to old and Apple stopped using G3 so they shut it off and I needed a new phone. They didn't sell phones there so I don't think he was lying just to sell me a phone.

I don't want a new phone because this one is simple and all I do with it is take some pictures and call people. I don't watch epic movies like
"The Ten Commandments, Avitar" or "Gone With the Wind" on it and I don't play games. I never use it for E Mail because I really don't even know how so I don't need a two thousand dollar "I Phone 27" with 43 Gigabytes. (I don't even know what a gigabyte is)

So this morning I went to the Verizon store to get a new one. First I researched (on my computer) the best phone for my needs. I found this Apple 13 Mini is supposed to be the best in the size I wanted.

I got to the store at ten to ten because they open at 10. I pulled up to the door and noticed there was a girl waiting to get in.
She was a tall blonde, thin, nice looking carrying a tablet and wearing red sneakers and smoking a Marlboro cigarette but I really didn't pay much attention to her.

I said, you were here first so you go in first. She said she works there. She asked me why I was going there. I said "my phone croaked and Seri doesn't talk to me any more".

She asked if she could see it so I handed it to her. She asked me my password and pushed two buttons and handed it back to me.
It's fixed......She said the Data function was turned off.......... Like Duh.

I said, I probably should give you the seven hundred dollars you just saved me.

She said my I Phone 4 is good but it is much slower than a new phone. I said to her, if I am traveling on the highway going 60 MPG, isn't my I Phone 4 going as fast as an I phone 14?

 

[atoll]

I never buy the latest phone always one that was superseded a model or 2 ago and brand new.i often get a deal around half the price of when it first came out. I have a Samsung note 20 for about a year does everything and more I want it to do including make toast. Still looking at how to make it put butter on the toast mind.

 

[Kmst80]

She said my I Phone 4 is good but it is much slower than a new phone. I said to her, if I am traveling on the highway going 60 MPG, isn't my I Phone 4 going as fast as an I phone 14?

Thats gold. You're a cracker Paul.
While i was reading the first that came to my mind was "Do you have Data turned on" .Can't believe the Dude in the first Store didn't check that. Hopeless.

 

[Paul B]

I never buy the latest phone always one that was superseded a model or 2 ago

Atoll, How many phones have you bought? This is probably my second Cell phone since they invented cell phones as they last me about 10 years.

Anyway, the next day, my phone died again so I figured it was trying to tell me something but it didn't want to bother SIRI to tell me.

I had to get a new phone. You just can't walk into a phone store, not in New York anyway and the place is huge like Home Depot. It's like going into a doctors office which by the way I have to go to today for two surgeries.

You have to make an appointment and you have to do it on your phone. If I could make an appointment on my phone, I wouldn't have to go there and get a new phone now would I?

So I go to this huge mall 45 minutes away and this girl about as old as my Grand Daughter greets me like her Grand Father and sits me down. (I hate malls because like all men, I get that mall look) She asks me if I am comfortable and perhaps need a blanket, put my feet up or a cup of tea.

Then she asks what she can do for me and I give her my 12 year old IPhone 4. This totally amazes her and she calls over all the other employees who were younger then my phone.

They were amazed and never saw an IPhone 4. They are all playing with it and using functions that I had no idea were on the thing. They thought I kept it in my flannel pajamas for 12 years because it doesn't have a scratch on it and looks like it came out of the Henry Ford factory yesterday.

So she comes out with this "IPhone 13 mini" which I searched and figured I needed. It is supposed to have the best camera and the pictures of you actually look better than you really do.

It actually has two cameras and I think it is the same phone Steven Spielberg used to film Avatar. Or was that that other guy? I don't know.

She shows me some of the functions and tells me that when I get home to my nursing home the thing will know it's connected to wifi and automatically transfer the old data and pictures from my old phone into this one. Like really! I doubt it.

She said due to the antiquity of my old 3G phone she couldn't just transfer the data (which is mostly fish pictures) to the new phone because my old phone would get all nervous and blow up or go on fire.

So I leave the store with this new phone which doesn't do anything yet and go home. I called my wife on my way to see if the thing worked and what do you know, it did.

I get the thing home and lay it on my counter to get my wife. When I come back, it reads "Hello Paul".

What a nice phone. It does all sorts of things and now I am in my kitchen waiting for it to make me breakfast.

 

[atoll]

My last but one phones motherboard died (I was too busy to attend the funeral) and I lost all my photos on it. I was told the phone was now junk. So I got a deal on a new obsolete Samsung note 8. I wasnt going to change that but a deal came up on the note 20 which worked out around the same as my old 8 so it made sense to change. I have kept my note 8 in case this one dies one day.

I keep my phones for a good few years and the one I have now is sim only. I don't expect to change it for some years as development in phones has slowed with just slightly better this and that and I have more than enough of this and that.

I will have to take a visit to one of those phones shops with nice young ladies to see if she can show me how to programme it to put butter on the toast it makes. You would think there would be an option for after all who eats toast dry.

 

[atoll]

Popped onto a LFS today, first time since Christmas. Wasn't intending to buy anything and certainly not a fish but came out with another flameback angel.
That makes 5 now, well you can't have equal numbers of a species can you and I love these little fellas, never had an issue with them.

 

[Paul B]

I had two surgeries yesterday. They took a small cancer thing off my lower eyelid which I probably was born with.

Anyway the first surgery at 9:30 am they called me the night before to tell me to have a big breakfast and stay hydrated by drinking water.

OK but right after that, the second doctor who was an eyelid plastic surgeon called me to tell me not to eat or drink anything from the night before. It's a good thing they called because I would have eaten 7 pancakes with eggs.

The second surgery happened about 5:00pm even though my appointment was for 11:30 am. So we sat there, kind of hungry for 5 1/2 hours before they took me in to the "little room" where they put you to "get ready".

The nurse comes in and tells me to take off all my clothes. I told her the last time a woman asked me that, I got married.

So I am naked with the paper gown and the anesthesiologist, doctor, nurse and the guy who sweeps the floor come in to ask questions.

The eye lid, plastic surgeon asks me which eye it is?
Now I just came from the surgeon who removed the thing from my left eyelid and didn't close the wound because this guy is supposed to do that and it is all bloody and swollen.

I asked him to "Look closer". OK I see it is your left eye. Now I am thinking maybe this guy is a podiatrist or audiologist.

I jokingly said to him, can you make me look like Brad Pitt. He said, no problem, but just that one lower eyelid.

The anesthesiologist asks me if I have ever been under general anesthesia before and this is after I just said to him that this will be my 31st surgery.

So as we are talking they say ok all done. I said: "Whats done"?. The surgery is over and you did great.

If you have ever had surgery, the stuff they put you out with is so good that you don't even know you were out for an hour. This happened for my last three surgeries. You don't even realize you had an operation until you get up off the gurney and notice you are naked and the cold is going to parts on you that never get cold.

Now I am home and except for looking like I got hit in the face with a baseball bat, all is well except my left lower eyelid looks like Brad Pitts eyelid.

 

[Kmst80]

I had two surgeries yesterday. They took a small cancer thing off my lower eyelid which I probably was born with.

Anyway the first surgery at 9:30 am they called me the night before to tell me to have a big breakfast and stay hydrated by drinking water.

OK but right after that, the second doctor who was an eyelid plastic surgeon called me to tell me not to eat or drink anything from the night before. It's a good thing they called because I would have eaten 7 pancakes with eggs.

The second surgery happened about 5:00pm even though my appointment was for 11:30 am. So we sat there, kind of hungry for 5 1/2 hours before they took me in to the "little room" where they put you to "get ready".

The nurse comes in and tells me to take off all my clothes. I told her the last time a woman asked me that, I got married.

So I am naked with the paper gown and the anesthesiologist, doctor, nurse and the guy who sweeps the floor come in to ask questions.

The eye lid, plastic surgeon asks me which eye it is?
Now I just came from the surgeon who removed the thing from my left eyelid and didn't close the wound because this guy is supposed to do that and it is all bloody and swollen.

I asked him to "Look closer". OK I see it is your left eye. Now I am thinking maybe this guy is a podiatrist or audiologist.

I jokingly said to him, can you make me look like Brad Pitt. He said, no problem, but just that one lower eyelid.

The anesthesiologist asks me if I have ever been under general anesthesia before and this is after I just said to him that this will be my 31st surgery.

So as we are talking they say ok all done. I said: "Whats done"?. The surgery is over and you did great.

If you have ever had surgery, the stuff they put you out with is so good that you don't even know you were out for an hour. This happened for my last three surgeries. You don't even realize you had an operation until you get up off the gurney and notice you are naked and the cold is going to parts on you that never get cold.

Now I am home and except for looking like I got hit in the face with a baseball bat, all is well except my left lower eyelid looks like Brad Pitts eyelid.

Just need to wink with your left eyelid at Jennifer Aniston now

 

[Turbo's Aquatics]

@Paul B check this out