Heat – Fuel – Oxygen

The 55+ community we live in has a nice little clubhouse where there are all kinds of interesting events planned for each month, from every Friday’s coffee and doughnuts to weekly Bingo to pot luck dinners for the big holidays.

Donna and I usually try to make the Friday coffee and doughnuts at least every other week, but have missed the last few because of the bathroom remodel, so we decided to head on over and attend a Fire Safety presentation given by the local Fire Department. There probably wouldn’t be any doughnuts, but they always have snacks of some sort available at these events.

Their prepared demonstration was mainly about kitchen fire safety because that is the place where far and away the most home fires start. Someone brought along their 6-year old granddaughter and she was what you would call very precocious. While most of us old folk sat and stared at the two Assistant Fire Marshalls that were giving the talk, she was peppering them with on-point questions.

At the end there was a little 5 question survey on how they did (not bad) and a giveaway of these papercraft tetrahedrons. On the bottom of the image above was the fourth thing needed for a fire, REACTION.

So wouldn’t you know it, tonight while making our dinner we actually violated one of the kitchen rules they preached, keep all flammable items away from the stove. We laid a couple of wooden trivets on the glass stovetop to place the cookie tray of Tater Tots from the oven on top to divvy them up on our plates. One of us had left a burner on medium that was used to cook the fish. Smoke started to waft from under tray. Luckily the thing didn’t actually ignite into flames.

Sport, Off-Road, Touring

Erin Go Green Edition of SORT
As of Monday, March 18, 2024 at 9:00 PM pacific time:

Sport Off-Road Touring
1958 MG
MGA 1500 Roadster		 2024 Porsche
911 Dakar		 1977 Alfa Romeo
Alfetta GTV 5-Speed
Family lore has it that I’m 1/8 Irish and I did have a distinct reddish hue to my hair back in the day. Maybe one day I’ll do a DNA test and see if there is anything to the story.

Here is what last week’s cars sold for, or bid to (if the reserve was not met):
Sport: 2023 BMW M3 Sold for $90,000 on 3/14/24
Off-Road: 2020 Rezvani Hercules Bid to $190,000 on 3/14/24
Touring:1971 Citroen DS20 Sold for $26,250 on 3/15/24

Fire in the Hole

In the early seasons of Justified this was Boyd Crowder’s favorite saying. It comes from an Elmore Leonard short story that served as the genesis for FX’s series Justified. I have watched all 6 seasons of the show a few times now and I also recently watched the new Justified: City Primeval. But this post really isn’t about that, it is more about the last couple of days where I have been sucked into an Elmore Leonard movie hole.

While stumbling around looking for something to watch on Peacock I saw the movie Out of Sight from 1998 and thought, “Ooh, I remember that. Might be fun.” How is i that Jennifer Lopez does look and any older after a quarter of a century, but George Clooney does?

I wondered if I could find some other of Mr. Leonard’s work. Nice, Get Shorty from 1995 is available on Max. This is a masterpiece of casting, all the actors totally inhabit their characters and the comedy tamps down the violence just the right amount.

There was a sequel of sorts 10 years later called Be Cool that had John Travolta’s character, Chilli Palmer breaking int the music business like he did the movie business in Get Shorty. I seem to recall that I did start to watch it on DVD back when it came out, but quit part way in because it was disappointing compared to the first flick. Hey, it is available on Max too, maybe I should try it again. Maybe.

I found the much newer Life of Crime on Frevee and once again I’ve seen it before, but is worth a watch again, if just for the big switch at the end. And Switch is the title of Elmore Leonard book that the movie is based on.

Another late 90s gem of an Elmore Leonard movie is Jackie Brown. A somewhat restrained Quentin Tarantino directed it, but it is only on Netflix and that is one of the streaming service I don’t subscribe to, so I can’t rewatch it.

Doing this research I discovered that Elmore is also responsible for 3:10 to Yuma. Wow, I have a digital copy of the 2007 version with Russel Crowe and Christian Bale. I have also seen the 5 decade older version with Glenn Ford and Van elfin. I’d rewatch the 1957 version if I didn’t have to pay $4 to rent it on Amazon.

No Snow…Tires

I put the snow tires on the car back in early November and never really had a chance to use them for their intended purpose. There was one snow “storm” in January that dropped an inch on the ground and then we got lots of ice so we just never went anywhere until the ice was gone.

A warm sunny spring started yesterday afternoon, it continued today and will supposedly continue for the next couple days before typical Portland weather returns. The sunny low 70s will run until Tuesday and then the normal cloudy/rainy upper 50s return. This afternoon I took the snow tires off the Mini and put the regular touring all-seasons back on.

And The Oscar Goes To…

We didn’t watch the Oscars on Sunday night. Haven’t in a long time either, they used to be a required viewing so that we could see if any of the movies we went to had won any of those shiny gender indistinct statuettes. But we haven’t actually been to the theater to see a movie in quite some time, 2012 is my last mention of that on this blog. And I bet that visit to an actual cineplex was a one off. I know we stopped going out for movies around the beginning of this century because I’ve got an old spreadsheet that lists the discs we rented on Netflix starting in late 1999.

Instead of watching the Oscars on Sunday we watched one of the ten movies nominated for Best Picture, The Holdovers, on Peacock. This was a near perfect movie for us, a quiet character driven movie that is set in and shot in the style of the 70’s. No explosions, no car chases, no bullet ridden bodies or computer generated space battles with hundreds of ships or soldiers.

I have also seen one of the other films of the ten that were nominated, the winner itself, Oppenheimer. It is also available on Peacock, but I didn’t think I could could get Donna to sit still for 3 hours for that. There is one other of the nominees that I could watch, Poor Things which is streaming on Hulu right now, but after watching the trailer, I’m not so sure I could get through the whole thing.

On a side note: Robert Downey Jr. won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in Oppenheimer. I don’t remember seeing him in the movie at all and I don’t know who he played, but I did recognize non-winner Emily Blunt though. This was probably just a testament to Mr. Downey’s acting ability and a case of my secret crush on Ms. Blunt.

Sport, Off-Road, Touring

A Face Only A Mother Could Love Edition of SORT
As of Monday, March 11, 2024 at 6:00 PM pacific time:

Sport Off-Road Touring
2023 BMW M3 2020 Rezvani Hercules 1971 Citroen DS20
Not only are the faces not that great, but the rest of the vehicles are not that pretty either. And believe it or not, I left the ugliest car available this week off the list because it didn’t have a straight on photo I could use, feast your eyes on the 2000 Qvale Mangusta

Here is what last week’s cars sold for, or bid to (if the reserve was not met):
Sport: 1966 Iso Rivolta A3/C Sanction II Continuation Bid to $401,000 on 3/8/24
Off-Road: 2021 Quadro Sherp Pro XT Bid to $69,000 on 3/7/24
Touring:1962 Cadillac Coupe DeVille Bid to $12,253 on 3/7/24

Oh You Amazonian Temptress

When we lived in Klamath Falls we took advantage of the Amazon Prime free delivery. Someone once told use Klamath Falls was nicknamed Katalog Falls because of the limited shopping opportunities of that rural small city had. It was always fun to see where the stuff was coming from. Most of the common items came from one or two places, either Reno, Nevada whish is about 250 miles away or Troutdale, Oregon which is nearer to 300 miles away. Both places were an easy 2-day delivery away.

You would think that now that we live in a suburb of Portland, the largest city in the state of Oregon with a population of nearly three quarters of a million (over 3 million in the Metropolitan Statistical Area) we might not have to rely so much on ordering things from Amazon. But that is not the case.

There are several reasons why it is still so tempting to order from Jeff Bezos’ minions. The first is because we are now so used to doing it. Secondly, because we are in the “big city” physically going shopping anywhere is a hassle because of all these people and their traffic. The third reason is probably the coolest. Remember those two towns with big Amazon distribution centers from above, well the Troutdale one is literally a mile away. On the way to Friday morning grocery shopping, invariably when we will get the traffic light down the street, we will see a line of those funky looking Rivian electric delivery trucks lined up across from us.

When the printer ran out of ink last week at 8 o’clock at night I ordered some from Amazon and the package was waiting on the front porch when I got up at 6:30 the next morning. Two days, HA! Certain items we get same day or overnight.