Eunoia

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About
Stu Savory ;-) School report for Stu Savory
Eunoia, who is a grumpy, overeducated, facetious, multilingual ex-pat Scot, blatantly opinionated, old (1944-vintage), amateur cryptologist, computer consultant, atheist, flying instructor, bulldog-lover, Beetle-driver, textbook-writer, long-distance biker, geocacher and blogger living in the foothills south of the northern German plains. Not too shy to reveal his true name or even whereabouts, he blogs his opinions, and humour and rants irregularly. Stubbornly he clings to his beliefs, e.g. that Faith does not give answers, it only prevents you doing any goddamn questioning. You are as atheist as he is. When you understand why you don't believe in all the other gods, you will know why he does not believe in yours.

Oh, and after the death of his old dog, Kosmo, he also has a new bulldog puppy, Clara, since September 2018 :-)


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Thursday, July 30, 2020

First Encounters

Dogs have a short life of around a decade, so we take ours out on "adventures" so that she gets a wide variety of interesting things to see and thus avoids boredom. Last week we took her to the Parrot Farm, about 40 miles east : another exciting First Encounter for her.

The collective noun for parrots is a pandemonium. A pandemonium. A pandemonium of parrots.
Never has a word been more aptly chosen ;-)

The parrot farm has about 100 or so parrots, screeching, squawking, flying about and buzzing your scalp, Pandemonium indeed. Parrots can "talk", if you mean by "talk" that they can reproduce sounds they've heard. Even reproducing sounds they've heard in the correct context. But it's not a conversation. So when we walked with our dog up to the pair (Adam and Eve) shown below, they saw the dog and pronounced - contextually correct - the german equivalent of "Sit! Sit! Good dog!"

And our good dog sat! Then looked thoroughly confused as to where the order to sit had come from ;-) Then we had to listen to their self-praise "I'm a pretty parrot! Give me a peanut!" etc etc.

Over in another corner sat Curiosity, appropriately named for all the questions it asked. Instead of Curiosity killed the cat, turns out it was so named because Curiosity bent his beak being curious.

Walking further around the parrot farm we came across a creep of giant tortoises, another first encounter for our by now increasingly curious dog. The collective noun for tortoises is a creep. A creep of tortoises, presumably named so because they move so slowly. In Galapagos, HMS Eagle (Darwin's ship) captured several giant tortoises and took them in nets on board as provisions for their return sea journey. On the way they also fished for sea-turtles; The collective noun for such netted sea-turtles and giant tortoises (being kept for eating) is a bale. A bale of turtles. But don't ask me why a bale.

When I was a child, we were taught such collective nouns; nowadays I have to look them up in e.g. Wikipedia. In German we only have about 20 collective nouns. In English there are about 70, I seem to (not) remember. How much easier would it be if we all just used one collective noun, e.g. group!

The next First Encounter was to be ride on a riverboat (on the river Weser) from Bad Karlshafen. But there were so many tourists queueing - not all wearing anti-corona masks - that social distancing would have been a problem on board. So we gave that one a miss. Maybe at the end of the season?

Comments (3)
Joe Spr wrote " Collective nouns. Yes, English has a bunch, but not many. When studying a language like Mandarin Chinese, these things are called "measure words." And there is a measure word for every noun, even one of something. Many are shared, and there is a catch-all measure word, but every noun has its correct measure word. They are grouped by some kind of attribute. For example tiao is used for thin things like a watch or many watches, and a whole fish (but not a slice of fish). (Why a whole fish is considered thin is another story.) A quick web search finds a site with a list of "115 Frequently Used Chinese Measure Words." " Sounds even more difficult, Joe! Glad I don't have to know Mandarin; but one of my nephews married a chinese girl and they now live and work in China, so he's had to learn it.
Moira (UK) asks "What's the difference then between turtles and tortoises?" Turtles live in water, often returning to the same beach to lay their eggs. Tortoises are land based and cannot swim, afaik. Both are genus Chelonia: "De Chelonian Mobile!" (Discworld reference to Galileo) ;-)
Moira replied "My favourite collective noun is : an ingratitude of children ;-)" Nice one, appropriate!


Sunday, July 26, 2020

SWMBO's green thumb

Couldn't think of any story to write about today, so I just walked through the garden and photographed the flowers. Doubtless the gardeners amongst you will enjoy them and be able to identify each kind. I can't, I'm no botanist, these are all SWMBO's work :-)

Comments (4)
Cop Car wrote " SWMBO has some beauties there - especially, the second rose in tints of orange. Being able to name plants and animals is not a necessity - only a nicety. Thanks for sharing and please tell SWMBO "Well done!" " Will do :-)
Brian (UK) asks "Who or what is a SWMBO?" It's an acronym for She Who Must Be Obeyed, i.e. the wife :-) First used in Henry Rider Haggards 1886 novel SHE, afaik.
Jenny (Ibiza) opined "I really like that last orchid!" Me too!
John (USA) wrote " Please pass my congratulations to your wife for the spectacular flowers. The roses and the white daisies (?) really get my votes." Will do :-)


Wednesday, July 22, 2020

PI approximation day

Back on March 14th the USA celebrated PI day. Here in Yurp, we celebrate PI approximation day today because we write our dates in the format DD/MM/YYYY. So 22/7 is our approximation to PI, actually a slightly better approximation than the american 3.14 :-) Of course, we would better use 355/113, but cannot fit that into either date format.

The photo below shows me at the PI wall in the Mathematikum museum in Giessen, in 2014. You start at the centre of the spiral. I've ringed two places : the lower ring shows where the first zero crops up in the decimal expansion. The upper ring shows six nines in succession; both places are a good place to stop trying to memorise the digits of PI ;-)

Of course 22/7 is not just PI approximation day. 22/7/1099 AD was the date of the first crusade. In 1210, Joan of England, Queen of Scotland was born. On 22/7/1499 the Swiss decisively defeated the army of Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor. Nowadays the Swiss Guard is the Pope's private army :-( In 1598 William Shakespeare’s play, The Merchant of Venice, was registered for publication. In 1784, Friedrich Bessel, a German mathematician and astronomer was born. In 1864 the Confederates lost the Battle of Atlanta. In 1918, Indra Lal Roy DFC, the first Indian fighter pilot, was shot down and killed by Jasta 29. In 1969, Judy Garland died. And in 2013, Prince George of Cambridge(UK) was born. So there was lots going on today, 22/7, for the non-mathematicians amongst my readership :-)


Monday, July 20, 2020

Happily, an unused device

This is the actual Eagle fire-extinguisher that went to the moon, today back in 1969.
I took the photo when it was on loan to the HNF museum a couple of years ago.

No, I don't know why it was painted grey rather than the ISO standard red. Suggestions?

Aside: America used to have a capability of going to the moon when it had a Democrat as President. Now it has Trump as pResident and most recently a Gestapo (c.f. Portland & Chicago). We here know what happens when you get a Gestapo. Anybody got a really BIG fire extinguisher?

Comments (1)
Doug (Canada) wrote " Re Trump: See these two articles in the Atlantic and in Newsweek. Add in the new American Gestapo and Trumps saying he's going to deploy them to cities run by Democrats, then add in that a former Trump appointed DHS CISO has now moved over to be CISO at ES&S the voting machine company favoured by all Republican states/counties etc. and is the company that bought Diebold. Their voting machines and scanners are highly suspect due to many security flaws (connected to the internet in some models, others contain a "maintenance" back door, people report voting for (a) and seeing their votes come up as (b) on the screen no matter how many times they try - the list goes on and on. The GOP are trying to get volunteers to monitor the polls and challenge voters right to vote - you can guess who they will be challenging. At this point it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if Biden loses, and if he does it won't be fairly." The Newsweek article is really scary as it gives Trump a recipe on how to cheat (his speciality). Mega-corrupt!!! :-(


Thursday, July 16, 2020

The Dambuster Museum at Lake Eder

Monday's motorcycle outing took me 50 miles SE to lake Eder, one of the three whose dams were attacked during WW2 by the Dambusters as part of operation Chastise. The other dams were Mohnesee (also breached) and Sorpe (not breached). There is an expanatory 13 minute B&W video on YouTube here, after the inevitable ads, or you could stay here and read this shorter version ;-)

There is a small single-storey building on the dam's west side, built and staffed by enthusiasts, which serves as a museum (mostly just photos). Out front is a 1:1 mockup of the 4 ton bouncing-bomb, here a movie prop; judge the size by me holding on to it.

A poster, for sale in the museum, gives a glorified - but misleading - visual impression of the Lancaster bombers attacking and breaching the Eder dam, actually done at night.

The Brits originally planned to attack using torpedos but their experiments in the UK showed that a torpedo would be too weak to damage the dams. Besides, their spies had discovered that the Germans had mounted anti-torpedo nets (see photo below, left) just upstream of the dams. High-altitude bombing at the time was not accurate enough to guarantee hitting the dams. So what to do? UK boffin Barnes Wallis came up with the idea of the Bouncing Bomb which would skip over the surface (and thus also over the anti-torpedo nets) then sink down when reaching the dam wall, exploding via a depth fuse. It took almost a year of experiments in the UK to get the parameters for approach-speed, height, bomb's back-spin rate, bounce-count and release point right so that the idea would work. Finally the attacks were mounted on the night of 17th August 1943, led by Guy Gibson (see photo on the right below). Of the 25 Lancaster bombers used only 17 returned. Some shot down, some hit electricity pylons crossing Belgium at low level, etc.

This photo (below) of a Lancaster was taken at the reenactment over Derwent Water (UK) a few years ago. Below the tree line, 60 feet up, 232 mph, but of course without a Bouncing Bomb mounted in its bomb bay and by daylight. Derwent Water was chosen for practice runs by the Dambusters (617 squadron) in WW2 because it had a dam with two towers similar to the German dams so they could practice using the Y-shaped sight to judge the distance from the dropping point. Altitude judged by intersecting searchlight beams reflecting off the water, a barometric altimeter was not accurate enough. The bomb was spun up on the run in, to avoid gyroscopic problems, afaik.

The photo below - on display at the museum - was taken by a reconnaisance plane on the following day (18th). The Eder dam and the Möhne dam were both breached, but the Sorpe dam (with a much more difficult approach run) was not.

The Dambuster attacks were much glorified in the Brit WW2 propaganda, but didn't wreck the German power supply nor their economy as much as had been hoped. In fact, the dams were up and running again after a few month's POW & slave labour.

An interesting museum, open afternoons. Six Euros entry, closed on tuesdays.

Comments (6)
Cop Car wrote " I've always been impressed by the amount and precision of the planning and training that went into the project. BTW: You are a better judge than am I of how accurate the Wikipedia entry might be. Pass the URL/link along if you care to." I've embedded your CHASTISE link in the article. Thankyou, CC.
Liz wrote " I've probably told you before that my great-uncle was a ground engineer for the Dambusters planes. I didn't find out until he was dead. His wife said he never liked talking about the war, but he was brilliant with engines and called up for duty there from wherever he'd been previously." Then he may have built the semi-external rigs to spin up the bouncing bombs to their 500 rpm.
Schorsch (D) asks "Does the museum have before and after pics of the Eder dam?" Yes, see below.

Ibrahim (UK) says "Political Correctness has gone mad here in the UK!" Indeed :-(
Elephant's Child wrote " Of course it was glorified in the British progaganda. One thing at least was working - first time, every time. And I had never, ever heard that the damns were repaired. Which is propaganda at work again." I'm mildly surprised that the USA had heard of it at all. Actually it took 5 bouncing bombs until the Eder dam succumbed.
Joe (USA) wrote " I know about this event because a few years ago there was a late night documentary about it on local public television (USA). The story goes, as I recall, that after the fact the designer of the operation (not sure which one) decided that the price in lost flyers and airplanes was too high to try another operation of this kind." True, the loss rate was very high.


Sunday, July 12, 2020

30th wedding anniversary :-)

The photo above shows SWMBO and I with 30 years of wedded bliss under our belts :-) We've actually been together for 41 years, but the first 11 years were only "practising" , to use the euphemism usual around here;-)

We got married on 12th July 1990, a thursday, because the superstitious registry office refused to reserve friday 13th for anyone :-(

The photo below shows you what we looked like 41 years ago, thinner and fitter both, and just starting our life together :-) About when I bought our PA28, a four-seater, as opposed to the red Pitts, a single-seater cloud dancer :-)

No children, just serial owners of multiple bulldogs over the years :-)

Comments (4)
Doug (Canada) wrote " Congratulations - I wish Diane and I had that long but alas we only made it to 13 before she passed." Sad to hear that, Doug.
Cop Car congratulated " Making it to 30 years in bliss is a real accomplishment. Good work on the part of SWMBO. You? How did you get to be so lucky? Let's hope that you make it to 50 total years, then 50 years of wedded bliss. It must be interesting around your house with two really bright people populating it. Carry on!" Thanks :-)
Elephant's Child wrote " . . . Congratulations on your wedding anniversary. My partner and I have been together for 42 or 43 years now - and are still in 'practising mode'." Thanks, Sue.
Liz wrote " Congratulations to you and SWMBO. Hope you managed to celebrate." at one of the country's top 30 restaurants :-) Those are 360° photos, btw.


Tuesday, July 7, 2020

They were framed!

This is a wake-up call for nearby (Braunschweig +/- 200 kms) biker friends who may read this blog. The rest of you can go back to sleep ;-) No, wait. John, Pergolater, and Ed (all USA), Vic, NinjaGirl, and Morag (all UK), with Muskovite Iwan and any other Nighthawks (all RU) may want to continue reading here; or at least follow the links for great photos.

Starting on this friday July 10th and going on until the end of August there will be an exhibition of reframed classic superbikes in the museum of Classic Superbikes in Braunscheig, about 180kms from where I live. The address of the museum is Waller See 11, 38179 Schwülper (that's directly off the Autobahn Junction A2 Braunschweig Hafen), it's easy to find. Owner Horst Edler will personally be there on friday July 10th and saturday 11th, he tells us.

Back in the late sixties and the seventies Japan was producing their first superbikes with 3 and 4 cylinders. But in the race for ever more power they neglected the stiffness of their frames. Indeed, the never-to-be-forgotten famous motorcycle journalist Klacks [RIP] summed it up thus "...but the frames bent like liquorice sticks...". Thus the need arose for stiffer frames to improve the bikes' handling, so specialist companies like Bimota, Egli, Harris, Magni, Rau and Rickman (Metisse) etc jumped in to fill the need.

Such bikes handled much better. I've ridden a Kawasaki Mach 3 in the original frame which weaved so much you'd get seasick and an Egli-framed Honda of the same period just to compare it to my 1970 Honda 750 K1 which I'd restored as a Cafe´Racer. No comparison, the Egli steered as if on rails, like a Norton!

The frame-specials on display will include : Bimota Ducati DB1, Bimota Kawasaki KB1, Bimota Yamaha YB11 Superleggera, Egli Ducati, Egli MRD1 Turbo, Harris Suzuki Magnum 4, Magni Honda MH1, Moto Martin Suzuki GSX 1100, Moko Suzuki GSX 1100, Moko Suzuki GSX/R 1100, Rau Honda CB 750, Rickman RGM Metisse BSA Rocket III (very rare!), Rickman Honda CR 750, the Segoni MV 900 (the only one existing worldwide), Vyrus Ducati, and a Wasp RGB 1000.

The BSA-Metisse belongs to journalist Winni Scheibe, who lives in nearby Arolsen, so I've seen (and heard :-) it a couple of times. Metisse built only 30 of these frames for the UK's Formula 750 races. Most had the Triumph T150 triple engine, a few had the BSA triple implanted, making the BSA-Metisse a very rare beast indeed. Winni won the 1990 Sachsenring F750 race on this street-legal one.

So biker friends, take a mask with you (coronavirus precaution), and go take a (long, drooling, envious) look! Weather permitting, I shall too.

Comments (1)
John (USA) wrote " Hope you take many photos this weekend at the museum. Enjoyed the links in English and drooled at the ones for sale. Enjoy!" Sorry, I hadn't noticed that I'd included some links to German pages, that happens when you're multilingual :-(


Friday, July 3, 2020

Just another jab?

When researchers are able to produce an effective vaccine against Coronavirus, probably not until well into 2021, I wonder if it will be widely available or whether the USA will selfishly buy up all produced doses, as they have done with Remdesivir? If made available, I wonder if it will be made compulsory? I certainly hope so.

Here in Germany, for example, a measles inoculation has been made compulsory since March 2020. Children are not allowed to start school, or even kindergarten, unless they have been officially inoculated against measles. Are anti-vaxxers soon to be jailed?

So I went online to www.impfen.de to see what jabs are recommended and which are compulsory; and indeed to see if I (at 76) should have refreshed any? Also what is needed for various travels?

The responsible government authority here is called STIKO (jab a joke in there somewhere ;-) They recommend a basic immunisation for children, covering rotaviruses, tetanus, diptheria, whooping cough, hib, hepatitis B, polio, pneumococca, meningitis, measles, mumps, rubella, and chickenpox. At school ages there are various refresher jabs and one against HPV. Refreshers for adults every 10 years include tetanus, diptheria and (often forgotten) whooping cough.

The jabs one needs when going abroad depend of course on your destination. Consult the government website. I for one, want a corona jab before visiting the USA again ! The EU is now even proposing a ban on visitors from the USA until they (USA) get coronavirus under control. Good idea! Until then...

Comments (8)
Doug (Canada) wrote " I'm glad to see STIKO recommends kids get the Chicken Pox vaccine. Wasn't available when we were young so of course nearly all of us got it. The result is some 90% of adults over 50 today are susceptible to getting Shingles attacks. I'm in my 3rd month of Shingles and it sucks big time. As soon as the symptoms go away I will be getting the Shingrix vaccine as I never want to go through this again." I can believe that; never had it myself though.
Cop Car wrote " Here in the States, immunizations for entry into school (starting with Kindergarten) varies by state. In Kansas: five doses of Diphtheria, Tetanus, Pertussis (DTaP/Tdap) with a sixth dose at entry to 7th grade, two doses of Hepatitis A (HepA), three doses of Hepatitis B (HepB), two doses of Measles, Mumps, and Rubella (MMR), four doses of Poliomyelitis (IPV/OPV) - or three doses if last dose is after age 4, and two doses of Varicella (Chickenpox) -or, certification by licensed physician that child has already had chickenpox. In addition, two doses of Meningococcal-Serogroup A,C,W,Y (MenACWY) are required starting at entry to 7th grade. Immunizations may be waived for health or religious reasons. Smallpox was the only disease for which immunization was available when I was a child. Now, our great-grandsons are of an age to receive HPV; but, it is not required AFAIK. For me (82 years old/female/non-traveler/immune system not compromised), the CDC recommends seasonal flu shots, pneumonia immunization, Tdap, and shingles immunization - with which recommendations I am in compliance. Sadly, I think it only sane for every other country to ban travelers from the USA. " I do the seasonal flu shots too, but of course they are only set up to counteract the flu from the previous season. Wish there was a jab granting rejuvenation :-) We once got "Immunoglobin" jabs before an overseas trip : wow, you feel like superman for a couple of days :-) Sadly, Maggie, an artist friend of ours in Washington State, died from Hepatitis C, 'cos she worked in the fish factory :-(
Brian (UK) reminded me that "... it's not ALL jabs. For polio we were given as kids the vaccine on a sugar lump to suck then swallow." Now that you reminded me, I remember that. Pleasant surprise at the time.
Cop Car added "And in conclusion..."


Schorsch (D) wrote "The major mistake was telling Americans that the masks were there to help other people. Know your audience!" Funny but evil.
This where we are now : The blue line is Germany, red line is the USA


Cop Car disagrees with Schorsch : " I disagree with Schorsch's evaluation of the mask divide in the States. IMO it is strictly political. In my years and years and years of experience, nearly all people of whatever stripe actually want to help others - including strangers. Anytime I have needed help, someone has extended a hand - and I have, in turn, extended a hand where needed. However, IMO many of our right-wing believers place "religion" over science/people and Donald Trump is their messiah. Had Trump come out in favor of mask wearing (around to which point of view he seems to be turning), mask wearing would not have been a divisive issue. Strange it is to see protestors against abortion rights, now with signs, "My body, my choice!" on the subject of masks."
David (USA) notes that "Americans are now banned from Mexico, Canada, and Europe. Trump managed to build a wall of virus!" :-(
Gerald (D) points out that the acronym is STIKO not STIKA; I've changed it.


Wednesday, July 1, 2020

No more single-use plastics after mid-2021

Finally, finally, politicians here are doing something to clean up the environment! Starting next year, July 3rd 2021 to be exact, single-use plastics will be banned in the EU :-)

Let me give you some numbers about plastics pollution. Cleanup efforts on the North Sea beaches in 2019 averaged 390 pieces trash (mostly plastic) per meter (sic!) of beach; even on the Baltic coast (which does not abut so directly on the Atlantic ocean), it averaged 70 pieces of trash, mostly plastic. Extrapolated to 2050, there would be more plastic trash in the sea than fish! And micro-plastic enters the food chain. So something needed to be done. Banning single use plastics is the first step.

The photo above shows some average roadside verge trash in our village, seen during the annual cleanup all our villagers do in spring. About 4-5 pieces per meter as shown :-( Ten to twenty percent of roadside trash and trash in public garbage cans is single-use plastic stuff. That includes used condoms ;-)

So what's being banned? Plastic-stick cotton swabs, plastic cutlery (knives, forks, spoons), plastic plates and cups, styropore cups and plates, plastic drinking-straws, mixing-sticks, balloon-holder sticks. Also forbidden will be plastics which oxidise and thus make microplastics.

Alternatives are available : e.g. wooden forks and spoons at take-aways or for your garden parties. Wooden spoons for ice cream (see photo right ;-) ) Reusable straws made from glass or stainless steel. Stable multi-use plastic plates etc that can go through a dishwasher. You can already buy cotton swabs with rolled-paper sticks.

We separate our domestic garbage by type here, with the intention of recycling it where possible. The blue wheelie-bin is for paper and cardboard, 120 liters, emptied monthly. The yellow wheelie-bin is for metals and plastics, 120 liters, emptied monthly. The 80 liter gray wheelie-bin is for other stuff, emptied fortnightly, 80% of which gets recycled by the experts at the recycling plant. The other 20% gets burnt or goes to the landfill. Toxic stuff (e.g. paint, fillers, etc) is collected monthly by special request. Glass we bring to the glass recycling containers. We don't use the green bio-degradable-stuff bin, as we have two compost heaps in the garden; a shorter recycling loop :-)

SWMBO and I make a special effort to avoid goods which comes in plastic packaging, avoiding plastic usage as much as possible. How about you?

Comments (1)
Cop Car wrote " Plastic items are such hard things to think about and judge. Personally, I've not purchased single-use plates (paper or plastic), ever. However, whenever during the past 30 years I've had food "to go" from a restaurant, most of it has been packaged in a plastic foam "clam-shell" container. (I get funny looks when I ask that the uneaten half of a sandwich be given to me wrapped in aluminum foil rather than in a plastic container.) I check ingredient labels on toothpaste and such products to avoid buying those that incorporate micro-beads of plastic. Preferentially, I buy foods in metal cans, cardboard boxes, or glass jars rather than those packaged in plastics. I used to take my own containers and totes to the grocery store; but, that's no longer allowed because of COVID-19. Our city has authorized only one trash hauling company to service its residents in preference to the three or four companies that used to have trucks plying our streets. This makes a large difference as to noise and exhaust pollution and excess truck traffic/wear-and-tear on our streets. We have a choice among three sizes of wheeled carts for trash, of which Hunky Husband and I use the middle size because the fee is the same as for the small size. In addition, we subscribe to the company's single-stream recycling service for which we have no choice but to use their large sized wheeled cart. Although trash is picked up weekly, and re-cyclables are picked up every second week, we usually put out trash every second week and re-cyclables every fourth week. As my contribution to cleaning up the neighborhood, when I go for a morning walk, I pick up trash in the streets and public areas along my route - with the exception of bio-degradables and smoking debris. Yes, over the years I've even picked up a couple of condoms so that children won't, unknowingly, pick them up. " There are also 240 liter garbage wheelie-bins here as a more expensive option; for young families, and incontinent oldsters, there is also a used-nappy pickup service weekly. But the new law is aimed at reducing plastic usage.


Link to the previous month's blog.
Recent Writings
First Encounters
SWMBO's green thumb
PI approximation day
An unused device
Dambuster Museum
30th wedding anniversary
They were framed!
Just another jab?
Single-use plastics
Segway shuts down
Summer solstice
John Bolton, Grifter :-(
Hammerhead Worms
Beers for John
On turning 76
No strawberry moon
Beekeeper's flowerpot
Homeschooling Maths
Told you so!
Fathers' Day Edition
Reopening too soon!!!
Out of the blue...
Good Golly, Miss Molly

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