Good morning, good people! Hope you are all in fine fettle this Saturday morning!

A bit rainy here, but it is needed. Errands have been run, and we can stay out of it.

Grocery prices are holding steady and shelves are still well stocked. Nevertheless, we did prep some and got 3 days of beer, as recommended. You just never know.

Friday morning, I was to meet an elderly couple at the courthouse to get the info for their wills.

While waiting, I visited with my old friend/client, the country maintenance manager. Seems one of his best county employee pals was also a county deputy, who came up to join us. We talked about the food stocking warnings, the implement of the draft starting in December. Then, it got super interesting.

The deputy is Ukrainian, has lived here 7 1/2 yrs, spoke of being in the Ukie Army, raised in the Soviet Union, and so on. When I talked about how the Russian military taught patriotism vs. ours, which is making money for the MIC and bankers, his eyes widened. When I told him I had visited Russia and 5 or 6 former Soviet countries, that I fully understood Russia won WII, and we just jumped in at the last moment to be the hegemon thereafter, he gave me a hug, said he had never heard that said in this country before. He said we needed at least 4 hours to chat over some Irish whiskey and a cigar, and I told him one day, we will just do that.

My maintenance guy will try to set it up.

Woohoo!

I wish we could get a few folks together with him and learn some damn truths about the world.

And then, there was a tremendous Vinnie Vulture drama this week.

First of all, Vinnie is a black vulture.

JtC and I were driving to town Tuesday, and saw at least 30 turkey vultures circling in the sky a mile from the house. Not good.

On Wednesday, there were a few nibbling on road kill in the ditch down the road. On Thursday morning, a dozen or so were scoping out Vinnie and his empty pans of food and water in the back pasture. Not good.

They flew off and then we gave Vinnie his food, but before he was finished, several of the turkey vultures flew in and ran him off and finished his meal. Not good.

JtC yelled loudly and chased them away 2 or 3 times, I chased them away once. Vinnie ran off too in the confusion and was traumatized. Not good.

Frightened, Vinnie left the back pasture, ran to the front yard and perched on a limb, but when JtC went to check on him, he jumped to the ground and scampered out the front gate, crossed the highway, and disappeared in the neighbor's pasture. Really not good.

That night we sort of paced the floor for several hours, wondering if we had scared him off for good. The only positive thing about this was that limb he perched on is about 8 ft. high. He had to fly to get on it. Something good.

Friday morning during coffee talk, we were wondering if he would ever come back and if he could live on his own having run off into the woods across the road the way he did. We also wondered if we did more harm than good by yelling at the turkey vultures and scaring him as well. And then, much to our surprise, he comes walking through the front gate, down to the back pasture, stares at his food pan like, wtf, man? Really, really good.

We can only hope the turkey vultures, in the future, forget about the free food and go elsewhere to hunt for it.

Well, this is an open thread, so drop in any info on any subject you wish to share with your friends here. Every one of us learned something this week. We did. Every one of us latched on to something positive and maybe hopeful. We also got mud in our face, lied to, and fought back.

Let 'er rip!