What did you do today?

[havasu]

Wow, what a coincidence. That was my mental image of you all along, only without the long curly hair.

BTW Sammy Hagar looks kind of like if Val Kilmer had had a rougher life:
View attachment 30884

Roasting your own beans is hardcore coffee snob stuff! I say go for it, Eddie (and you can always take stuff out of the air fryer and turn it periodically), but then you'll have to do a pourover for sure.

You can make a coffee-like drink out of dandelion roots, which you have to chop up and roast yourself. Apparently the Confederate soldiers used to make it because their supply chains were always going down. I might try it sometime.

That surely does not look like Val Kilmer these days. Poor guy has been thru hell and back, and looks like it.

 

[Flyover]

True, these days Val Kilmer looks rather like a woman who's had too much plastic surgery (according to the image search I did to create that mashup). I don't know what he's been through other than acting, but I don't follow the news much less celebrity gossip.

 

[Spicoli43]

I have only seen Kilmer in Top Gun, but don't watch Hollyweird movies anymore... He went through Chemo, which drains the life out of everyone, it's just weird to see someone still alive after it because it usually takes people quickly.

 

[zannej]

Val Kilmer had throat cancer and had a tracheotomy. He has to use some sort of device to be able to talk and they had to use some sort of AI tech to sample old clips of his voice and have his son read lines and then put the voice samplings over that to re-create his voice for the show Willow.


So, in the last Top Gun movie they didn't fake him not being able to talk normally. They had him use his real speaking for it to talk to Tom Cruise's character.
On the upside, his 2 kids are devoted to him & he's become closer with them. He had a reputation of being a jerk on sets. Many directors would never work with him again and nearly dying changed his perspective on it so he's a lot nicer to people now. A pity he won't be getting many acting gigs.

I was bummed to hear they canceled Willow and won't be doing a 2nd season. I was enjoying that program. Mostly because of Warwick Davis. He's a fantastic actor.

I'm waiting for Mom to get out of the bathroom so we can go to DMV and get her license renewed and get the registration on the truck renewed.

 

[Flyover]

OK I got curious and Wikipedia'ed it. Says they used some of that AI tech to make his speech more intelligible in the new Top Gun movie, but yeah it was a good call to have his character be dying of throat cancer.

Back when I worked in the film industry I knew a woman who was a line producer, and the last time I interacted with her she was in the midst of working on a movie with Val Kilmer. She did not have good things to say about that experience.

I don't have any strong personal opinions of the man but I liked a few of his movies. Back when I used to watch movies...

 

[Eddie_T]

I dunno who Val Kilmer is and he's prolly not worth the time to Google.

As for the air fryer roasting coffee beans the tray is small enough that I can pull it out and shake it up at will. In fact there are several recipes that recommend that including the coffee bean one. I'm not going to try it though even though my Bonavita does the immersion bloom thingie.

 

[Spicoli43]

Yeah, Eddie... You can shake it all you want and and see the chaff go flying, creating a horrible mess at best and a safety hazard at worst. I would contact the Mfg. of your Air fryer to see if it's okay to try that.

 

[Eddie_T]

This flowering weed is invading western NC. Some claim it isn't invasive but I see it growing along roadsides and now in my lawn. I tried google and got multiple hits regarding its identity, some say native, some not. It looks good along the roadsides but not so good in my lawn. Both it and a yellow blooming sedum are giving me a fit. The sedum is easily pulled up with its shallow roots but miss one succulent leaf and it lives on.

 

[Flyover]

Remember how the coolest part of PRK surgery was getting to smell/inhale my eyeballs? Today I got to smell/inhale my teeth as they gave me a filling.

Apparently some sealant in one of my molars from long ago became chipped after years of use, allowing a small cavity to form under one edge. Today that was corrected. For another hour or so I can see what I look like smiling on just one side of my face. I'm trying very hard not to accidentally bite through my lip, because I can't feel it.

 

[Snoonyb]

Shades of BELLS PALSEY.

 

[Flyover]

Shades of BELLS PALSEY.

I wondered about that as I drove home. With Bells Palsy, is it merely that the muscles on one side of the face are relaxed/disabled, or do you also lose sensation?

The numbing agent they gave me produced effects that have extended as far back as my tonsils and as far forward (and up) as my lower eyelid.

I'm extremely hungry but still too scared to eat, lest I accidentally bite a chunk out of my cheek.

 

[Spicoli43]

I wondered about that as I drove home. With Bells Palsy, is it merely that the muscles on one side of the face are relaxed/disabled, or do you also lose sensation?

The numbing agent they gave me produced effects that have extended as far back as my tonsils and as far forward (and up) as my lower eyelid.

I'm extremely hungry but still too scared to eat, lest I accidentally bite a chunk out of my cheek.

I highly doubt you get Bell's from Novocain, but if your Dentist nicked the nerve...

You're not extremely hungry though, you are from where they invented fasting, Danielson...

https://www.earthclinic.com/cures/bells_palsy.html

 

[Flyover]

I highly doubt you get Bell's from Novocain, but if your Dentist nicked the nerve...

You're not extremely hungry though, you are from where they invented fasting, Danielson...

https://www.earthclinic.com/cures/bells_palsy.html

Oh, I don't think I contracted Bell's Palsy myself, I was just idly wondering if this was what it is like.

We are all from where they invented fasting, because I'm pretty sure food scarcity was a normal part of life for our ancestors. When I picked up the toddler she had a little bag of popcorn from daycare and she let me have some. I ate it very carefully and didn't taste blood, so now I'm emboldened to try to eat something else.

 

[Eddie_T]

Your toddler sharing her popcorn somehow sparked a memory of a trip to Russia. We took candy to an orphanage and a little boy insisted on sharing his candy with me. His selflessness left an impression in my memory.

 

[Spicoli43]

I decided to try my Homemade Dog Cookies to see if they taste good, and it turns out they taste like nothing. It tasted like I was chewing air.

I figured with Egg, Turmeric, Cinnamon and Peanut Butter, it would taste good, but he loses his mind over them, so I'll keep making them. I think I'll add in Coconut Oil and Blackstrap Molasses next time, then taste them.

 

[Snoonyb]

I wondered about that as I drove home. With Bells Palsy, is it merely that the muscles on one side of the face are relaxed/disabled, or do you also lose sensation?

The numbing agent they gave me produced effects that have extended as far back as my tonsils and as far forward (and up) as my lower eyelid.

I'm extremely hungry but still too scared to eat, lest I accidentally bite a chunk out of my cheek.

I picked it up as a virus, thought it was dental. Treated with an antibiotic. Kids took great delete in asking that I write instruction and making me laugh.

Tomato soup with dollops of butter, thru a straw. MUM-MUM-GOOD

 

[zannej]

Val Kilmer was in movies like Real Genius and Willow-- both movies I enjoyed. He also played Batman in one of the movies.

I need to see the dentist. Got some breaks/chips on my teeth that are snagging stuff.

Snoonyb, Ugh. That doesn't sound good. An elderly friend of mine used to get bouts of Bell's Palsy. He would have to wear an eye patch and his face would sag. I never asked him how it felt though. Wish I had.

Took mom to DMV. Then to Walmart but she got mad because they didn't have any available riding carts so she came back out while I was parking and yelled at me to unlock the truck. I hadn't even locked it yet. Dropped her off at home and headed up to Pineville to get some stuff at Lowes that wasn't available at the closer one. Ended up having to order something for pickup there while I was in the store because it wasn't on the shelf. But while I was standing there an employee came by and I asked him about it. He went and found some in the back and I took the ones I bought up to pickup area and asked them to just put it in as having been pulled already. At self-checkout I was trying to keep stuff from falling. I couldn't find a cart for my stuff so the employee for that area came over to help me by holding things while I scanned them. But man, was the aisle where I was looking a total mess. Nothing was in the right place. I did find a nice trim piece to cover the gap from the floor to tub where there is an ugly piece of wood underneath.

Tomorrow I will pick up more primer and then prime and paint some of the trim pieces I got.

I was going to try to mess with the template thing today but not right now. I'm under a pile of cats.

 

[Ron Van]

I was just watching a show about a staircase that was built with no nails or screws, just pegs. There is a church that was built in New Mexico that, before it was finished, the builder died. There was no way to get up to a loft that was built for the choir. The Nuns hired a dude to finish a staircase and all he had was a donkey and a few basic tools. . .no wood or materials. His only stipulation was that everybody had to leave while he worked.

To this day, they can't figure how he built it because it has no center support, just a double helix design. The wood didn't come from a local source and he for sure didn't have it with him when he arrived.




Loretto Chapel

From an article:

One of the puzzling parts of the story is that the materials he used for the staircase were not local. In fact, they were quite unusual, and were sourced from somewhere they couldn’t identify, outside of Santa Fe. These days that wouldn’t be a big deal, but back then it sure was. Especially considering the man had only a donkey.

Further, the staircase was built with a double helix shape, which included two 360 degree turns. This is both rare and extremely difficult.

To top it off, the miracle staircase has no visible supports. There was no centre pole to support the stairs, which means that the entire weight of the structure rested on the bottom step. The staircase is held together with wod pegs. No nails were used at all.

And the last puzzling and inspiring element: there are 33 stairs leading up to the choir loft; notably the age of Jesus when he was crucified.

Today, master carpenters who’ve been consulted on the staircase consider it a work of art. Even using modern tools, building this structure would still be an incredible accomplishment.

Today, master carpenters who’ve been consulted on the staircase consider it a work of art. Even using modern tools, building this structure would still be an incredible accomplishment.

To think that this mystery man built it with rudimentary tools, no electricity, and no one to help him is hard to fathom or understand.

 

[Spicoli43]

Yeah, saw that a long time ago. He wasn't Human.

 

[Flyover]

It's actually a quadruple helix, if you consider the railings as well as the edges of the steps.