mike carey

In my trips to these forum gatherings (and the other travels I've had in conjunction with them) the men I've met have been 20 or more years younger than me, and none of them has shown the slightest hesitation in meeting me. Others I've simply chatted with at the gatherings have engaged with me on twitter. That said, I never assume anyone is open to a meeting, and ask. For most, ageism doesn't come into it. As I've said before, if it's safe, I'll be there again.

Fenugreek is one of the classic spices used in Indian cooking. Perhaps I need to break out my Indian recipes and start making them again. (Lately I've favoured Thai curries.)

It's nothing official, but today is widely known in Australia as 'Gravy Day' It comes from a 1990s song by Paul Kelly. The words of the song set it on 21 December. The song is a letter a prisoner is writing to his family about missing them for Christmas, and talks of quirks of their normal family Christmas gatherings, and lamenting the separation. A couple of days ago the Economist published an article noting that the sentiments in the song resonate with the sorts of separations that families will be facing this year. In a quirk, the federal government today announced the appointment of a new Chief Health Officer. His name? Professor Paul Kelly. Anyway, happy gravy day.

If I'm not mistaken, the vaccine achieves a 90% success rate across the population, not 90% protection for each individual.

Possibly several times!

'Safe' isn't a binary and like safer sex, it's not a matter of it being 'safe' or 'unsafe', but rather safer or less safe. I think it's safe to assume that there would be some protection from a first injection but that it would develop slowly so may not be measurable before the time the second jab is due. One or two jabs, protection will not be immediate and it won't be a silver bullet. I can't see either the advice on mask, distancing, hand washing and cough etiquette, or the willingness of many people to be less cautious about those measures changing for some time after the vaccinations are rolled out, if ever.

It took me a while, but eventually the penny dropped.

WUT?? It's not pizza without olives (and anchovies as was mentioned in another thread).

When it comes to the men on here, some of us can only dream, at least for the moment! Well, we can do more than dream, we can create a 'to do' list!

This is an interesting map showing the population centres of each state in 1900 (blue) and 2010 (red). Most of them are surprisingly similar after 110 years, but three stand out, California, Nevada and Florida, with the centre of gravity shifting from SF to LA, Las Vegas growing from almost nothing and the growth of population in south Florida. The relative growth of the DC suburbs compared to the rest of Virginia also shows up clearly. It's one of heaps of maps a geographer/demographer in Melbourne tweets. You can see more of his stuff at

Not just a pretty face!

I haven't done it for years, although I had 30 years of my life when it was a regular occurrence, spit polished black leather uniform shoes and (at times) boots. Our combat boots went from black leather to a light tan with a suede-like finish late in my time. I still have a couple of pairs of leather shoes but I rarely wear them preferring sneakers. Shoe shine stands are not as much a thing here as they are in the US, so using them is not something that I've ever done (either here or when I've been in the US). The one time I remember having my shoes (boots to be precise) shined was by a kid who 'hassled' the guests in the hotel where I was staying in Cusco.

Vin Marco posted this on twitter, I can't say I'm affected by either dimension.

I'm due for a trip to Sydney but not before Christmas.

No, or at least not yet, noticed him a while back but haven't followed through. Now that I've read some of his reviews ......

There was a woman interviewed on the ABC this morning whose view was that the Christmas free pass should go ahead because people had planned for it and already bought food, so it would be 'unfair' to cancel it. FFS.

If you go to the 'contact me' tab in his ad, the 'call me now' option tells callers to ask for Jordan.

I think the sheriff meant to say a large boulder the size of a small car, but it didn't quite come out that way ...

I'd love to meet him whenever I can go to London next. No time soon, though.

As it says in the tweet, wait for it ... https://twitter.com/akkitwts/status/1337940595675807744?s=20

Raf Epstein is the Drive announcer on ABC Radio Melbourne, the local station that is talk, some music, news commentary and general life about town in its programming. Like ABC local radio around the country it has open phone lines, a text line and twitter account for the public to join it. What goes to air from the public contributions is managed so that it discusses the issues the stations are looking at, not any random thing that people want to say. Here's an article that Raf wrote for the ABC web site reflecting on the second wave of COVID-19 in Melbourne. https://www.abc.net.au/news/about/backstory/2020-12-13/abc-radio-melbourne-broadcaster-raf-epstein-on-coronavirus-covid/12976532 Melbourne endured about 120 days of tight restrictions, but there have been no community cases for about 45 days now and restrictions are minimal. There have been a few cases among travellers returned from overseas who are in supervised hotel quarantine. Overseas flights to Melbourne have only resumed in the last week or so after being stopped for several months.

Here's the link to submit a review - https://www.daddysreviews.com/submit And to the site home page - https://www.daddysreviews.com/news

And your enjoyment is obvious.

I think you proved the point you were contesting.. 'Outdoor dining' is not in the same category as 'everyday life' outdoors, it's far more like indoor dining. It breaches the natural social distancing, gathering density, circulation and size of gatherings that characterise other outdoor activities. As Josh noted, many 'outdoor' dining settings are tented in such a way that they eliminate air circulation and mimic indoor settings. Perhaps restrictions should be couched more in terms of numbers of people in a given area, spacing between patrons, length of time they are there, and the like rather than blanket approval/disapproval of whole classes of activities.

I restate my previous comments on my preferred images of Dallas. And no Gucci in sight.