trinacriabob

I like her spirited and sassy manner. Sicilians are sassy, so she'll gel with that. WTF with those Atlanta rent costs? Where in the ATL does she live? Weird that she picked a town in the hills and on the Palermo side. I don't like that side of the island. Her income is high relative to the average Sicilian. She doesn't need to be "sharing." I'd say that, of the Southern European nations that are popular, Portugal is the most resentful. Combine their economic EU position with a more difficult language (pronunciation) and slightly more reserved people. Smiley wealthy Americans and douchebag surfers? And not bothering to learn the local language? Who'd want that? I love the place and can conversationally bullshit with the regular locals, and they're nice to me; however, they're not asking me to stay. On the other hand, some Sicilians are asking me, "Why don't you stay?" and telling me what cities and areas to consider (since I can name 10 to 20 cities and towns on the eastern side of the island where I have or had relatives, including where my parents were born).

So, a 232 in-line 6, a 258 in-line 6, and a 304 V8. I believe the 258 was their most ordered. This is one glassy car. Great for enjoying the view outside. Challenging for heat gain. Expensive to replace some of the glass if need be. Appealing and spacious interior. Missing a console, which some had. No temperature gauge (could very easily be added prior to computerized emissions, but tacky looking). This car would have been a blast for a short- to medium-length road trip with college friends where you'd divide costs. When all else fails, "brougham" it up a little. Look at those painted hubcaps. This was called the DL model. A few less enlightened people used to say "Bro-ham" (yet, that could be a flight from Brownsville, TX to Hamburg, Germany ... funny)! Cars were goofier and more fun back in the day.

The AMC Pacer was a fright. However, I'd say people who drove them must have had a quirky kind of moxie. They looked like they could have been stable, and even quiet ... I believe they ran with a 232 in-line 6, without looking it up.

It is a very weird feeling when you get off a plane and leave the airport in L.A., or Houston, for example ... or somewhere in Italy, and they both feel "normal." This definitely was NOT the case 10 to 20 years ago. My mornings these days are looking like this: the old and the "new." Here's a major town church and a public school (wide angle view) in Sicily.

I thought I was dreaming. I looked at Google Maps and it does say Gulf of America. Half of the coastline is American and half of it is Mexican. Why even do this? It's capricious, like behavior from a silver spooned teenager. No, I don't think Musk is a happy person ... just an eccentric weirdo.

I just remain loyal to my hometown professional teams, with the exception of football. So, it would be the Lakers (NBA) and the Dodgers (MLB). The absence of professional football in Los Angeles, coinciding with my absence, led me to abandon any childhood/teen loyalties, so I now consider myself a Seattle Seahawks fan. In a Super Bowl like the recent one, where I have no opinion on the teams, I don't care who wins. The same would have been true with Chicago and Indianapolis in 2007. Who gives a rat's ass? I was on the hillsides of the Golden Gate Bridge with thousands of others watching the QM2 sail under the bridge with a slim margin and into the bay for the first and only time thus far. Most Super Bowl memories blend together over the years. San Francisco on February 4, 2007 doesn't fade. As far as college football goes, I don't like UCLA, USC, or Cal Berkeley. I would have not liked going to any of these schools. The same would hold true for Notre Dame. That would have been like pulling teeth. When it comes to Pac 10/12, I am a Huskies fan, for obvious reasons. That has led me to dislike Oregon. I have no loyalties from a past (tense) "Big 10" "experience," which was even more of a teeth puller. If you've moved a time or two, you'll run into locals who have never moved. They may know nothing outside of a 125 mile radius. You might encounter such a local who acts like the late Marge Schott or a Bubba (possibly under the umbrella of the "basket of deplorables") who asks you, out of the side of their mouth, of course, "How about dem (insert name of local team)?" It doesn't go over well that you don't give a shit because you have deep roots somewhere else and your loyalties won't be changing. You should see the completely disoriented looks on their faces.

Not a joke with a punchline, but a saying (even seen on a t-shirt) that I'm very fond of: Heaven is where ... ... the police are British, the cooks are French, the mechanics are German, the lovers are Italian, and it's all organized by the Swiss Hell is where ... ... the cooks are British, the mechanics are French, the police are German, the lovers are Swiss, and it's all organized by the Italians

Q: What is the difference between a Tesla and a porcupine? A: A Tesla has its pricks on the inside.

@A Horse With No Name Here you go. Anytime one sees her, she is gesticulating like this. How is she not exhausted from this? I have to flip the channel. Yet two men have married her and she has a couple of kids. She came to mind because, before crossing the pond, I was last in Houston. I drove up and down I-45, adjacent to UH, and tried to imagine her being a "peaches and cream" undergrad there. She is a UH grad in speech pathology and audiology. She went to law school later. For having gone to Rutgers (the State University of New Jersey), she has had teaching stints at Penn and Harvard. New Jersey obviously changed her! Her affect is Massachusetts all the way, yet she is an Oklahoman. She grew up lower middle class. She was at first a Republican. I dislike most politicians. Many politicians score highly on indices for narcissism. Some would score very highly.

The incomparable Bob Marley ... Instrumental transitions that really hold their own ... Freeway frisky ... Perfect for driving along the string of less commercial and more understated beach towns of the Algarve in 1996 ... https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=qeWioz-30-w&feature=share Life was good ...

On a very random level: Am I at liberty to say that Elizabeth Warren is an intense and annoying wench?

Wow, one can get Lime* Disease or Orange Disease * (Lyme, of course)

I find that at least 2/3 of the chat features on customer service pages of company websites are sort of worthless.

Thank you. You learn something new every day! I guess it depends on the Spanish speaking country. I see this works as well and probably more Latin American. I've always known them to be "billetes aereos" and even "billetes de avion."

This was the ride across the pond. I took a funkier combo of flights on a miles redemption to get onto this A340-600, actually the longest commercial aircraft in existence for at least a decade. I figured as much just looking at it. Here it is pulling up to the gate in Boston. Only took about 6:30 across, which went fast. It's obviously a stretched A340-300 with bigger engines. This thing barreled down the runway and it was "wheels up" in no time at all. I like the 2-4-2 seating in economy. There is not much of an economy cabin in terms of length. A lot of the interior space was surprisingly first and business class. With the fog and clouds, the view over Boston, which could have been spectacular, was nonexistent. I love quadjets. They look so regal, for lack of a better word. I miss them as there are fewer of them.

I'm "constantly craving" for videos like these. Thanks! I am in the lobby of my hotel doing some admin. stuff and having some snacks, and the k.d. lang-alike cocktail bar waitress has been real nice to me, which is rarely the case. But, then, I'm in a different country. My personal opinion about LGBT folks who like Trump is that it, if blue collar, it "butches them up" and, if white collar, it's "look at me, I'm mainstream." This is but the tip of the iceberg. A lot of the blame goes to "poor white trash" (I hate to use this term, but the shoe fits) who can be spoon fed or think that they can live vicariously through his wealth and "Camelot" life ... like that wedding at Mar-a-Lago. Add to that minorities who have no business voting like that. The Rio Grande Valley counties of Texas near Harlingen, McAllen, and such, have historically been blue, but have become more red. Translation: at least 85% of the population is Mexican or Mexican-American. However, Elon launches his rockets from the South Texas coast and has created "some" jobs. I was down there on S.P.I. for a couple of weeks, oblivious that there were launches from there. I happened to see the mid-January launch from the causeway, along with many others. (This is the one that failed over the Caribbean, which also sent air traffic controllers for commercial aircraft scrambling to divert planes.) You know that those Mexican folks in attendance with SpaceX baseball caps have gone red. The Cubans embarked on this a long time ago. It's thinly veiled cultural appropriation to be more "white," I'm sad to say. So, Agent Orange has not only divided the citizenry. He has fragmented religiosity. A lot of people who don't want to go to their long-time church because it's a PAC clique have switched congregations or have quit going. This is one very ugly chapter that could have been avoided. I am not blaming affluent and conservative GOP folks. They aren't that big in terms of numbers. I blame the "basket of deplorables." I hope we'll get through this.

Greetings from Houston!

I didn't know I had this on my computer. I thought I'd share it. They're all models of the retired QE2. The order is actually bottom up instead of top down: 1. As inaugurated, with an open passenger space or sun deck up top behind the mast. 2. Still wearing its wartime gray, given that the ship was dispatched to the Falklands for the short-lived 1982 war between the UK and Argentina over the islands; also, the open passenger space or sun deck became the first block of 2-story penthouse suites, right behind the bridge. 3. Returned to its true Cunard scheme, with the black hull, but now additional 2-story penthouse suites have been placed behind the initial ones and practically extending to the funnel; also, the funnel is a lot thicker since the ship was converted to run on diesel-electric power during a major overhaul. This ship didn't get older ... it got better, and it hardly looked like a 39 year-old vessel at the end of its service life. They didn't have to max out the cabins for sharp pencils in that day, so this is 963 feet (longer than 3 football fields) of ocean liner with sleek yacht-like looks. This ship was born beautiful. If life ever takes me to Dubai, I will stay in the harborside hotel into which this ship was converted.

Very cool that Pizza Bank continues. When the Seattle Link train finally crosses the lake, I may visit, ride on it, and might check their pizza, which was top notch, as was Pegasus's on the waterfront in Alki. - - - - - I am thoroughly disgusted. Google Maps plans to relabel the Gulf of Mexico. Much like Chicago's Sears Tower is still the Sears Tower to me and like Houston's Transco Tower is still the Transco Tower to me, the Gulf of Mexico will continue to be the Gulf of Mexico to me since this is about elitism and imperialism. A certain individual cannot contain his hatred for that country. Mexico may not be on my bucket list, but why take away this name, as if they gain that much from it to begin with? I believe it was once the Gulf of New Spain, which would be okay since it's the gulf for many Spains, in a way.

Q: What is a Bellevue housewife's favorite position? A: Facing Bellevue Square - - - - - Dick's in Wallingford, hardly a vegetarian hot spot, is sitting in a neighborhood that is chock full of Subaru wagons, driven by homely ladies with short gray hair who put "keep your laws off my body" bumper stickers on them and who seemed to work in admin. positions at UW. Not a stereotype ... a reality ... one that I repeatedly saw on the campus and when I would cross I-5 into adjacent Wallingford. I once took an out-of-town guest around the city and we even drove around a few streets in Wallingford so I could point out the ridiculously disproportionate number of Subaru wagons parked on driveways and next to the curbs. All in good fun. I never ate at Dick's because I rarely eat hamburgers, but I loved Pizza Bank in Kirkland and Orexi Greek in Bellevue.

In looking at the houses, it could have been. Any idea on which neighborhoods? (That scene looks like L.A., with the vegetation suggestive of a drier climate.) The car? That grille and stacked headlamps! I very much miss seeing those cars on the road.

Happy Sunday. Greetings from (a) Malibu. Hilarious ... that we had cars like that!

I wrote the above because, based on Musk's behaviors, such as saluting as if a fascist and other right-wing postures, there is some movement for folks to get rid of their Teslas and this wave is called "Tesla shame." I don't like the long list of "(insert word) shame," but I do like this one!

Just say no ... . . . ... to TESLA