Here’s a fun little thing. NASA has put up a website that will show you what the Hubble Telescope saw on YOUR birthday (or really, any day/month you submit) and describe what it saw for you. Obviously, if your birthdate was before May 20, 1990 when the very first image from Hubble was taken, there won’t be an image to show. That’s why you don’t enter a year, only a month and day
I put in the month and day of my birthday and here is what the Hubble Telescope saw on that date in 2011.
On July 2 in 2011
Necklace Nebula
The Necklace Nebula contains the glowing remains of an ordinary, Sun-like star shedding material at the end of its life. The nebula consists of a bright ring, measuring 12 trillion miles across, dotted with dense, bright knots of gas that resemble diamonds in a necklace.
It was the last Sunday of March 1997, an Easter Sunday though that meant little to us beyond that the following week was Spring Break from my classes so we could go on a honeymoon to Key West. March 30, 1997 was the start of a wonderful journey that proved the lyrics “When you love a woman, you see your world inside her eyes” to be true and that we each finally found someone. And it means today marks a Happy 28th Wedding Anniversary To Us!
I wrote about our wedding 10 years ago on our 18th anniversary in this post. I don’t have a lot more to add to that, except to look back on an additional decade of love with the most wonderful woman in the world.
Believe me, I know that not everyone gets as lucky as I did at this, and I am thankful beyond words that I was as fortunate as I have been. Building and living a life together with someone who loves you and understands you is a feeling that stays with you. It steadies you, warms you and makes you grateful that whatever fates there may be have seen fit to smile on you.
And I know, I know, it’s not always smooth sailing. There are and can be differences. No two people are going to be in agreement on everything. What’s the old saying?
“If two people agree all the time, one of them is unnecessary.”
We have each learned from the other. And over the past 28 years what sharp edge sticks out from one of us is found to fit into a soft curve of the other. My faults fit into her acceptance and understanding. As do hers into mine.
When I look back on the past almost three decades, it is like viewing a beautiful mosaic of multi-colored and different shaped pieces that form one beautiful whole. Things that may not have seemed to make sense at the time have been found to be some of the most colorful parts. Rough patches add to the smoothness, creating a picture of two lives joined into one.
Cindy, I love you so deeply. You make our lives the wonderful experience that we get to enjoy every day.
Cindy and I love pizza. At least at every other stop along our travels, we try to find a place to get some Italian Pie. And usually that is at Domino’s because they are so ubiquitious. So why No Mo’ Domino’s?
Here’s where we’re at when it comes to pizza chains. This does not apply to standalone pizza restaurants which are usually of a much higher quality, but also much higher price.
Neither of us like Papa John’s. It’s always tasted like cardboard with tasteless sauce and cheese. Your mileage may vary.
Little Caesar’s is “eh”, in that we’ll eat it if there’s nothing else available, but there usually is. Again, they may be your favorite.
Pizza Hut is good. We like it, although for some reason we prefer to eat it at their sit-down restaurants as opposed to taking it home from their carry-out locations.
Then there is a first place tie between Domino’s and Marco’s. I discovered Marco’s while deployed to Puerto Rico and then was glad to discover it is also on the mainland. But they don’t have always have locations where we’re stopped at.
So, it’s usually been Domino’s. It tastes (tasted) good, is usually a good value and is practically everywhere we travel (they have 5,469 locations in the U.S.). The taste and quality are almost always consistent, kinda like getting a burger at Culver’s.
But several months ago we started noticing something. When we would place our order online, there would be different sauce choices. Which is fine. I enjoy the Alfredo sauce on a feta and spinach pizza, but really have no desire to have Honey BBQ, Ranch or Garlic Parmesan sauces. For the most part we prefer good old-fashioned Hearty Marinara tomato-based pizza sauce with a flavor that doesn’t overwhelm the toppings or cheese taste. They also had a ROBUST Inspired Tomato Sauce.
Then a few months ago, we found that if we wanted Hearty Marinara pizza sauce, it would add a $1 to our cost for each pie. There was no extra cost if you ordered the ROBUST Inspired Tomato Sauce. That seemed a bit strange. We’re all about economy of existence, so we tried the ROBUST Inspired Tomato Sauce.
Way too spicy for our palettes! We tried it a couple of times to be sure it wasn’t a “one-off experience” but nope, it was too much. It overpowered the rest of the ingredients. So we started paying the $1 extra per pie. But then one of the locations only offered the ROBUST Inspired Tomato Sauce version, so we got our pies from Pizza Hut. The next place did offer the regular sauce with the upcharge, then the next several locations did not have it on the menu.
We haven’t been able to find a location that offers the Hearty Marinara sauce at all in the past couple of months. I know I have a “baby mouth” when it comes to spices but Cindy doesn’t. Yet we have both found that our mouths and tongues burn with the spicy overload of the ROBUST Inspired Tomato Sauce.
So we’ve finally had to say “No Mo’ Domino’s.” Again, you may love the ROBUST Inspired Tomato Sauce, but we have found it is not for us.
Our last few pizza stops have been at Marco’s when we can find one, and Pizza Hut, though usually at their carry-out locations.
I don’t know what led to the sauce change/exclusion at Domino’s, but for these two customers it has led us to their competitors in the chain pizza market.
So, until they return the Hearty Marinara sauce, it’ll be No Mo’ Domino’s for us.
I met Rep. Grijalva 5 years ago when I was handling a Congressional Visit he and other congressmen made to Puerto Rico to tour the damage caused by Hurricane Maria and see the recovery efforts being handled by FEMA. He was kind and gracious during the two-day visit.
A few weeks after his tour I received a letter from him expressing his appreciation and commendation for the efforts that were made to be sure the Congressional Visit was informative and made the best use of the time we had to show how and where recovery was being made in Puerto Rico. That letter meant a lot to me at the time.
Today, after taking back all my information from them, I deleted my Facebook, Messenger, Instagram and Threads accounts. I am Meta-Free!
I’ve been almost out the door of Facebook, Instagram, Threads and Messenger for the past few months. I’ve only participated enough to mostly wish friends a Happy Birthday, share our Wandering Wetheringtons blog posts or “like” my wife’s posts. But now that Zuckerberg and Meta are not only encouraging hate speech (allowing gay and trans people to be referred to as being mentally ill or referring to immigrants as trash) on Facebook without any official refuting, fact-checking or removal, as well as opening the platforms to Neo_Nazis so as to promote their version of toxic masculinity, I feel I must leave all Meta products.
I just cannot support that level of evil any longer by actively participating or even being counted as among its members. I left Twitter (before it became X) when Musk took over and began opening the doors to the same type of crap and can see no reason why I should react any differently to Zuck’s/Meta’s actions (or lack of them).
These billionaire tech bro oligarchs are just not my kind of people and I have no desire to keep giving them my data for their marketing to make more money.
So, today I deleted my Facebook, Messenger, Instagram and Threads accounts. I am Meta-Free!
It was not a fast or easy decision. It is one I have struggled with over the past few months. Over the years, Facebook has made it easy to stay in touch with far-flung family, friends and former co-workers and I will miss that ability.
But moving forward I feel like I will confine my “social media” participation to the blogs I own:
The interesting photo below popped up today in my memories on an app I’ve been using for more than a decade. It reminded me that ten years ago today, on a Sunday evening, I attended a concert by Celtic Thunder with Cindy at Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida.
It actually started the weekend before, on Friday, January 24th. Out of nowhere, my left knee suddenly became very painful and slightly swollen. I didn’t have any injury or make any movement that might cause trauma to it, but there it was deciding to cause me pain when I bent it to sit down or unbent it to stand up.
It kept getting worse over the weekend. Pain levels went way up and so did the swelling. My knee looked like a balloon being blown up from the inside. Cindy kept urging me to go to a doctor but I thought (and hoped) it would just go away.
But it didn’t.
By Monday morning I was in a bad way. I hadn’t been able to sleep much Saturday or Sunday nights because I kept being awakened by pain if I moved my left leg into any position other than stretched straight out. I tried Extra Strength Tylenol, Salon Pas roll-on pain reliever, CBD oil (my knee got SO high, lol) and even Aleve, which I’m not supposed to take due to kidney issues. Nothing was relieving the pain.
And I’m sure I was becoming even more of a pain to live with than I normally am.
So I finally relented Monday morning and agreed to visit a nearby “Urgent Care” (such false advertising) clinic. Cindy took care of getting me registered online and an appointment set for 11:30 am. Then it kept getting set back via text messages until finally they settled on 12:30 pm. The very first thing they did when I arrived was get my money, of course. Then we waited another two hours in the waiting area before I was finally called back to an “intake” room. While sitting in the waiting room I noticed my left knee felt very hot to the touch. Not just warm, but actually hot.
Keep in mind that when I arrived at 12:30 I was number three in line according to their app. By the time I reached number one in line it was 1:30 pm and we watched five other people be called back during the hour from 1:30 to 2:30 when I was “Number One” in line. What a joke.
And yes, I get that people with more “urgent” needs can and will be moved ahead of the line. But not one of those 5 people appeared to be in physically worse condition or more pain than I was. No eyeballs hanging out of sockets, no arms dangling by a thread of muscle, no gurneys, wheelchairs or crutches. They were obviously people that were probably also told they were “Number One” in line, just like me, as the clinic tried to clear out their backlog.
The intake nurse, after we exchanged words about how they kept me waiting 2 hours past my appointment time, asked me “On a scale of one to ten, how would you rate your pain level?” I told her a seven. Cindy raised her eyebrow at me but said nothing.
Once I got in the exam room things moved quickly. My “physician” was actually a Nurse Practitioner. I don’t have a problem with that. Most nurses, in my opinion, seem more in touch with folks than physicians do and usually know as much as a physician. And Nurse Practitioners are qualified to deal with patients on their own He quickly explained I had fluid build-up on my knee, possibly from arthritis, and that it was infected. Thus the swelling and the heat. I was prescribed 4 different medicines and, after Cindy asked for one, a knee brace. One of the medicines was a steroid, so he warned me my blood sugar levels would shoot up higher than usual during the 5 days I would be taking that one.
At 2:45 we were out the door and headed to the pharmacist. Three hours of waiting, two of those in the waiting room, and it was all over in 15 minutes.
Afterward, as we drove back to Nomad, Cindy said to me, “Why did you say seven? You’ve been in a lot of pain. I would have thought you would say ten.”
Here’s my feeling on pain levels. To me, on a scale of one to ten, ten would be I’ve passed out from the pain. Just completely unable to handle it. Nine would be me curled into a fetal position in absolute agony. Too exhausted by the pain to even do more than groan or whimper. Eight would be me screaming in excruciating misery. Hurting so bad that I would have to release it in shouts of torment. Seven would be (and was at the moment) me in constant torture and ready to lose whatever small amount of cool I may have had. Thus me verbally biting off the head of the intake nurse.
So, on a scale of one to ten, seven was my level at the time.
I was still in pain on Tuesday and Wednesday, though I could feel it was decreasing. As was the swelling and the heat in my knee. Spent a lot of time with my leg elevated and off of it. Cindy was waiting on me hand and foot. I messed up on Tuesday by feeling like I was good enough to walk in sand on the beach. Big mistake. So Tuesday afternoon and night I paid for that mistake with incredible soreness and pain. By Thursday, after staying off my leg completely, I was much, much better and by Friday I was only feeling small, occasional twinges of pain if I kept the knee bent too long.
And, of course, the moral of the story is; listen to your wife when she urges you to get medical treatment, lol!
A few days ago my lovely daughter AnnMarie handed me one of the most wonderful Fathers Day/Birthday gifts ever in the form of Superman: The Definitive History in hardcover.
It wasn’t supposed to be a gift from anyone but myself to me, but it didn’t work out that way.
I keep two wishlists for myself; one for family and friends to see what I would like and one private for me to remind me of something I’d like to get myself. I meant to put this item on my private list because of the price (it’s a large amount that I would not expect anyone else to spend on me) but I mistakenly put it on my public list in early June.
A few days after doing so, my Princess messaged me that she had ordered it for me as a combination Fathers Day/Birthday gift and I realized my error. I tried to talk her out of if, but she would have none of it. However, the publication date kept getting pushed back so it wasn’t ready anywhere near either of those events.
It was finally released on December 10th and shipped to her. She handed it to me last week when I stopped by.
What a monster this book is!
Its dimensions are 15 x 11 x 2.9 inches and, as you can see from the photo, it would make a great coffee table book. It has 486 color pages on glossy paper and weighs a tad over 15 pounds!
Here’s a portion of the book description; “Behold the most comprehensive book about Superman ever produced! From Krypton and Smallville to Metropolis and beyond, explore over eighty-five years of Superman’s history in radio, TV, film, animation, computer games, PSAs, advertising, merchandise and, of course, comics. This ultimate official book features a wealth of unpublished artwork, exclusive interviews, unique bonus inserts, and little-known facts detailing the long and extraordinary history of the world’s first, and greatest, costumed superhero.”
I met one of the authors, Edward Gross, 18 months ago at the 2023 Superman Celebration in Metropolis, Illinois and Cindy bought me his latest book (at the time), Voices From Krypton, which I thoroughly enjoyed! Now, teaming up with Robert Greenberger, author of The Essential Superman Encyclopedia (among others) they have produced this definitive history of The Man of Steel.
As of yet, I haven’t had the opportunity to even crack open this book yet. The holiday season is hectic and I want some quiet time to sit for a while and enjoy what I am sure will be an awesome book. But I’m sure that when I have finished I’ll be writing up a review for my other site, The Word of Jeff.
For now (though I have already done so in person), I give a “Super” thank you to my daughter for this magnificent gift!
JMWetheringtonSr Blog is an Amazon Associate. I earn a small commission from qualifying Amazon purchases at no additional cost to you when you use the Amazon links on this site. Thank you!
A few days after doing so, my Princess messaged me that she had ordered it for me as a combination Fathers Day/Birthday gift and I realized my error. I tried to talk her out of if, but she would have none of it. However, the publication date kept getting pushed back so it wasn’t ready anywhere near either of those events.
