Alpo

I know my ears have gone bad. That second one sounded like he was saying Lean-gun berry But the first one sounded like Ling-mun berry And I just could not figure where the hell he was getting the M at.

First tooth I recall losing. I was four. Eating a caramel, and it pulled the tooth out. And little 4-year-old me thought there was a rock in my candy, and spit it out. A little later I discovered the missing tooth and went looking for it, but was unable to find it. Explained the problem to my father. Fortunately one of my other teeth was loose, so he put a thread around it and pulled it. I now had two missing teeth, but at least I had something to put out for the tooth fairy.

I laughed

That would be nice. Back in the late 80s there was a television show called Alien Nation. A spaceship crashed in the Mojave desert. It had, as they phrased it, "250,000 souls aboard". These aliens were eventually dubbed "newcomers", and they pretty much all stayed in the Los Angeles area. Wouldn't it be nice if we only had 250,000 illegal aliens, and they all stayed in the Los Angeles area.

Was wondering that myself. The colors in every letter are red green and blue. Front license plates I have seen on a lot of black people's cars say something about Africa and the colors red green and blue. So I figured it had something to do with Africa.

Only thing I'm absolutely sure about is it is less than 10,000. Because at 10,000 the bell rings.

Normally I wouldn't care what she did. But I just happened to see the headline. She and her group blocked a road in the Netherlands. And the cops arrested her along with a few other protesters. Then they let her go. And she rejoined the road blockage. And they arrested her again. https://amp.dw.com/en/climate-activist-greta-thunberg-arrested-in-the-netherlands/a-68757799

There is a series of girls' books. The lady wrote the series for at least 30 years. The series takes place in a British boarding school for girls. The Chalet School. This particular book is called A CHALET GIRL FROM KENYA. Published in 1955. When I saw the title, I thought they were going to have a black girl in the school. Bring a black girl into a lily-white English boarding school. That might be interesting. But that's not what was going on. A British girl's family lived in British East Africa, and with the Mau Mau uprising, thought it would be best to get their daughter out of the country, so they sent her to the boarding school. They had a similar confusion on a Disney movie. It was called The Color of Friendship. A black family in (if memory serves) Washington DC is going to host an exchange student from Africa. They naturally think they're going to get a black kid. And they get this pretty little white girl from South Africa.

I first heard of this berry a few years ago. I read of it, and then they spoke of it offhandedly on a Castle episode. Castle pronounced it with a hard G - like gun. Then the other day I heard someone on a YouTube video mention it, and he pronounced it with a soft G - like gym. The all-knowing internet tells me all about it. Everything I could ever want to know about the lingenberry. Except how it is pronounced. Is it an EE-ther/EYE-ther situation - both pronunciations are correct? And if only one of them is correct, which one?

In a roundabout way, smoking has something to do with it. You remember the movie Kelly's heroes? Kelly had been a lieutenant and did something, and got busted down to private. And I was sitting here wondering if they could do that. If they could reduce you and rankIN RANK from commissioned to enlisted. Now I have heard of when they're doing a rif, discharging the officer, and allowing him to enlist as like a sergeant or something. And I've heard of a high ranking officer being busted down to a low ranking officer. And I've heard of enlisted men being busted to a lower rank. That dredged up a memory. I know a Marine Lance corporal that was found to be growing marijuana in his apartment. See how smoking has something to do with this? As part of his punishment he lost at least one month's pay, might have been more, and he was busted from lance down to PFC. Thinking about this Lance corporal got me thinking about how Army does not have a lance corporal, so, does an army corporal rank the same as the Marine corporal or does the Marine corporal outrank him? Just because the ranks have the same name doesn't mean they're the same rightRANK. A Navy Lieutenant outranks an Army lieutenant. A Navy Captain outranks the hell out of an army captain.

This is what happens when you change the way you count. From the time I was in kindergarten, when counting on my fingers I counted one to five and then I would start over again with six with the first finger. So the third finger - the ring finger - was either three or eight or 13 or 18. But in the last couple of years I've started counting with one hand, using my thumb as the pointer. But apparently I have not been doing this long enough for it to be hardwired into my brain. So when I made that statement about O8, I first started counting. Lieutenant Lieutenant Captain major - I had used all my fingers by then and had to start over again on my index finger lightbird bird brigadier. Brigadier was on the ring finger. And since a hand was five, the ring finger had to be eight. If I had been thinking what I did that I would have come up with seven but I wasn't thinking I was going on training. I generally refer to that as a brain fart. Now if I am reading that correctly, the Army private who has graduated from basic training is a higher rank than the private who is in basic training, while the Marine boot in boot camp is the same rank as the guy that graduated boot camp? Army recruit is E1, slick sleeve private is E2, PFC is E3. While a marine boot and a slick sleeve Marine that has graduated boot camp are both an E1? This sounds like an Army PFC would outrank a Marine PFC. The Army being an E3 while the Marine only being an E2?

I was thinking of the relative rates of the ranks in different services. For example, an Air Force brigadier has one star. An army brigadier has one star. And a marine brigadier has one star. All of them are the officer rank of O8, and therefore none of them should outrank the other. Except by date of rank but that's not part of the question. Enlisted, on the other hand. An army PFC should be an E3 by my count - recruit, private, PFC. And a marine PFC should be an E3 - boot, private, PFC. Next rank up in the Army is corporal, so corporal should be an E4, right? But the next rank up in the Marines is a lance corporal. Logically a lance corporal is an E4, so corporal is an E5. Does that mean that a Marine Corps corporal outranks an Army corporal? My original ponder on this was about Buck sergeant - three chevrons no rockers. But because there is a lance corporal, a buck Sergeant in the Marines should be an E6 while a buck Sergeant in the army is only an E5. Yes/no?

My water heater has been in use for 7 years. It now produces about 1 gallon of hot water. When my daughter's family was here over Thanksgiving we hook the hose up to it and drained it out the back door. I had the hose end, and stuck my hand in the flow. Felt like it was full of sand. I have come to the reluctant conclusion that I need a new water heater, which is why I was contemplating the on-demand. I did notice, while I was looking at them on home depot's website, that it was going to take a whole bunch more electricity than the 40 amp 220 breaker my water heater uses now.

I'm thinking of replacing my wore out water heater with an on-demand unit. Researching them, there seems to be two types. The whole house type, which would replace my current water heater, and smaller ones that would be put in the bathroom and another one in the kitchen I see having one underneath the kitchen sink would mean I wouldn't have to wait for hot water, but it just seems like that would be more expensive, since I would need one in the kitchen for washing dishes and two more - one for each of the bathrooms - and then the fourth one for the utility room for the washer. If you were putting it on demand heater in your house, which way would you go? Whole house, or individual units?