Much love to you and yours, David.

The hug Emmett gave me at JZ's gathering felt like it added three years to my life. He's a remarkable man. I am so very glad that he and Matilda have each other.

David, you have really added great humans to this world.

Emmett is such a wonderful big brother and I’m so glad Matilda has him.

My brother tries to help and usually makes stuff worse. We're just not on the same page. Glad to know that somebody gets that whole...Sibling thing (reminds self to send E. thank you note for extending Karl's life--If this were a movie, I'd send it too. Probably not in real life, though. Got enough kids online thinking I'm mental, probably. But the thought is with me right now.)ETA: insent, Hec.

Watching the news reports from Israel. The level of anger, grief, outrage, and excruciating frustration has come to a boiling point.

Timelies all!

So we have a hamster. The first few days Mr. S kept taking it out of the cage. Today he's letting the critter stay in the cage. We'll see how this goes.

I have today and tomorrow off--I had a dentist appointment tomorrow (which I forgot to cancel today) and was going to go up to Brevard today and spend the night (I still use the dentist in Brevard); however I realized I really need to let my shoulder heal and try 2 days of the full muscle relaxers as prescribed. So next Mon/Tues we will go to Brevard after the appointment in Ashevile.

I have basically slept or dozed all day thanks to the muscle relaxers but my shoulder does feel better. I moved it around some and it doesn't feel tight or sore but I also haven't used it that much.

Work this week will be interesting. Our interim Store manager is on vacation, my team lead is on vacation and the injured Academy trainer who has been out may or may not be able to return to work. And they are supposed to announce the new store manager. My Team Lead said in his 17 years working for Wal Mart he's never seen a store manager replaced so quickly or without a candidate doing a store walk through with higher management. We had one candidate who came in and introduced himself one day and walked around (and managed to ruffle feathers) . I feel like it was done that way because they had either already decided on him or already decided on the guy who is currently the Manager for the Remodel and so it was only a token thing.

anyway next week is going to be weird at work.

I have fallen down the Wikipedia Rabbit hole yesterday and today over Arctic and Antarctic Explorations. It started yesterday in the wee hours when I woke up and couldn't sleep and was scrolling online and read something that led me to reading about The Franklin Expedition and The Northwest Passage (I can't remember but it wasn't Due South Fanfic). That led me to reading wikipedia about Mysterious Disappearances at Sea---and then complaining at lunch that most of them were not mysterious at all. The entries are things like "the ship was last seen sailing into bad weather" and then describing how no trace was ever found. That isn't mysterious. The ship ran into bad weather and sank with all hands or the crew got on life boats and then all died. Or the accounts of the flying aces who were shot over the Channel and whose bodies were never recorded. Again that is not mysterious. They were shot down and their bodies were never recovered. We know what happened.

That led me to read about the Dole Air Race because 2 of the competitors were listed as "mysterious disappearances"--meaning the planes went down over the ocean and weren't recovered. This is the entry of it [link] and this is the most ill conceived race. James Dole (the pineapple dude) sponsored an air race from Oakland, CA to Honolulu, HI with first prize being $25,000 and 2nd prize $10,000. He hoped Lindbergh would participate and this was supposed to be the first time anyone had been able to do it. The race was set for August 1927 but a couple of people ended up making the journey in July but the race went on. I don't know why Lindberg didn't participate but he was smart to stay far, far away.

There were supposed to be 15 planes competing but it got whittled down to 9 after there were 3 crashed and 3 deaths in 3 days just before the race and then several crashes and disqualifications. Nine started the race :Oklahoma that was forced to return after 30 mins, El Encanto wrecked on take off, Pablo Pacific Flyer managed to crash twice on take off attempts, Golden Eagle which was lost at sea, Miss Doran which had to turn back after take off due to engine trouble and then managed to take off again but was lost at sea, Aloha finished 2nd, Woolarc finished 2nd with 1.5 pints of fuel left, and Dallas Spirit which was forced to abandon the race with engine trouble. Then the pilot of Dallas Spirit decided to help with the search for the missing 2 planes and was--- lost at sea.

You would think after 3 planes crash and 4 people die they would have called off the race but they did things differently back in 1927.

Then I got back on track with Franklin and ended up reading about him and then Shackleton and Robert Scott and then a bunch of other expeditions and ....there were a lot of bad decisions made by those men as well. Although sometimes the decisions were forced on them by Royal Societies, the Royal Navy, or sponsors. (although pride and stubbornness also seemed to play a big role in why there were a lot of dead explorers) but also things like sending someone with no experience with horses to buy ponies that were needed for an expedition.

But pride and hurt feelings cost a lot of lives ...Shackleton made some really bad choices because he got his pride hurt and he was feuding with Scott and his support party, the Ross Sea Party, really paid the price for that.

Now I'm reading an e book from the library about Franklin and having to remind myself I'm reading about the Northwest Passage and not the Antarctic because I've spent so much of the day reading about various South Pole explorers.

Sheryl I hope the hamster does well and Mr S is able to enjoy his pet.