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[razgueado]

Todays's Over/Under is 6
Raz Over/Under is 8

Thirteen, including Tony.

[A Friend of Charlie]

Potato soup in the crockpot for dinner, starting to smell all kinds of delicious here.

That does sound good. Is it a recipe you'd share?

[A Friend of Charlie]

And just like that, I'd already forgotten. Happy birthday, Mayor!

Thank you. Woke up on the right side of the dirt so all is well. Now I'm trying to figure out what's for lunch. Purposely didn't pack one today.

Went with a Vietnamese seafood pho.

Edit: it was amazing.

[LuvTooGolf]

Potato soup in the crockpot for dinner, starting to smell all kinds of delicious here.

That does sound good. Is it a recipe you'd share?

Nothing spectacular. A bag of cubed potatoes, 32 ounce chicken broth, some chopped onions and a can of cream of chicken soup. Then about an hour before it's done, add an 8 ounce bar of softened cream cheese, cut up into pieces. Mix and serve. And we have scallions, shredded cheese and bacon pieces to top it with.

[LuvTooGolf]

Looks like the potential neutral site Bills/Chiefs game will be played in Hotlanta.

[A Friend of Charlie]

Potato soup in the crockpot for dinner, starting to smell all kinds of delicious here.

That does sound good. Is it a recipe you'd share?

Nothing spectacular. A bag of cubed potatoes, 32 ounce chicken broth, some chopped onions and a can of cream of chicken soup. Then about an hour before it's done, add an 8 ounce bar of softened cream cheese, cut up into pieces. Mix and serve. And we have scallions, shredded cheese and bacon pieces to top it with.

Interesting and worth a try.

[LuvTooGolf]

Potato soup in the crockpot for dinner, starting to smell all kinds of delicious here.

That does sound good. Is it a recipe you'd share?

Nothing spectacular. A bag of cubed potatoes, 32 ounce chicken broth, some chopped onions and a can of cream of chicken soup. Then about an hour before it's done, add an 8 ounce bar of softened cream cheese, cut up into pieces. Mix and serve. And we have scallions, shredded cheese and bacon pieces to top it with.

Interesting and worth a try.

It's quite good, I was pleasantly surprised the first time we had it. Even the middle kid wanted seconds, and she spent most of the week dreading that dinner. Lol

[LuvTooGolf]

Potato soup in the crockpot for dinner, starting to smell all kinds of delicious here.

That does sound good. Is it a recipe you'd share?

Nothing spectacular. A bag of cubed potatoes, 32 ounce chicken broth, some chopped onions and a can of cream of chicken soup. Then about an hour before it's done, add an 8 ounce bar of softened cream cheese, cut up into pieces. Mix and serve. And we have scallions, shredded cheese and bacon pieces to top it with.

Interesting and worth a try.

It's quite good, I was pleasantly surprised the first time we had it. Even the middle kid wanted seconds, and she spent most of the week dreading that dinner. Lol

Plus, it's hard to argue with the cooking method of throw a bunch of stuff in a pot and then several hours later, dinner is ready.

[razgueado]

I started reading a really fascinating book last night, "The Second World Wars: How the First Global War was Fought and Won" by Victor Davis Hanson. He sets out to deconstruct the mythos of the monolithic "Second World War" into its various components - regional conflicts in the eyes of the Axis powers that interconnected in the eyes of the Allies into a global effort that the Axis powers completely misunderstood and for which they were hopelessly ill-prepared.

It's really a different view on WWII, and I'm enjoying it immensely.

What he seems to be laying out is that leaders in the US and Great Britain saw the various battlegrounds in global terms while the Axis powers, and Russia, approached it as Theater Warfare, and simply lacked the historical perspective to think of it globally. Britain being an imperial power, and the US being a former colony and by then a colonial power in its own right, both had the necessary perspective. The Axis, lacking that perspective, therefore couldn't see that their intentions were ultimately futile.  So they stumbled blindly into the first global war lacking the necessary means to win it, because they couldn't think holistically.

Really, really fascinating, and I'm not even a third of the way into it.

[Travellin Dave]

Raz is not going to be happy this morning.  Jeff Beck is dead at 78.

I posted it on the banter last night. Spent the evening blasting "Truth," "Blow By Blow", and "Emotion and Commotion."

I am NOT happy. This one hurts more than others. All my guitarist friends express the same sentiment, and we don't really know why it hurts more.

Maybe it's because after an uneven career and a deserved reputation as a perfectionist dick in the first half of his career, he'd settled down and found focus and humor in the second half.

Maybe it's just that we aren't inundated with the weight of catalog like we are with Page or Clapton.

Maybe it's because despite being the earliest of the British guitar heroes, he never achieved the fame that the others did, and that speaks to devoted plodders like me.

Or maybe it's this: among devoted students of the electric guitar, there's a suspicion, even a cognitive dissonance around the idea that Jeff Beck might be the best. Better than Hendrix, better than Van Halen. Hendrix, Page, Clapton, Townshend, and Van Halen all established a certain sound and style and then pretty much stuck to that thing.

But with each album, Beck was different. He kept evolving, building on what he was discovering, until by the early 90s he had developed this utterly unique voice on the guitar that was all in his empty hands. It was unmistakable, and to really get the majesty of it, you have to be a guitarist. Non-players don't get the complexity of the mechanical and cognitive process of playing like Beck. There are millions of hacks who can play like EVH, but the very most expert guitarists will tell you that imitating Beck is nearly impossible to do.

And no one is doing anything remotely compareable. It isn't about speed, or two-handed tapping, or expert wielding of a slide. It's about texture, how the notes emerge from the speaker. With Beck, each note had its own texture, and he did that with just this hands. No pick, no big pedalboard, no fancy effects processors, just his hands, especially his right hand, simultaneously plucking the notes, controlling the volume knob, and working the vibrato bar. It's a miraculous display of dexterity and brains. And Beck made the guitar sound like it was human.

Maybe it is the loss of this that hurts so much.

Luckily we live in an age where that catalog is captured for eternity for those like you to continue to enjoy and for others to newly discover.

[razgueado]

A quote from the book:

"Most wars since antiquity can be defined as the result of such flawed prewar assessments of relative military and economic strength as well as strategic objectives. Prewar Nazi Germany had no accurate idea of how powerful were Great Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union; and the latter had no inkling of the full scope of Hitler’s military ambitions. It took a world war to educate them all."

[Travellin Dave]

Potato soup in the crockpot for dinner, starting to smell all kinds of delicious here.

That does sound good. Is it a recipe you'd share?

Nothing spectacular. A bag of cubed potatoes, 32 ounce chicken broth, some chopped onions and a can of cream of chicken soup. Then about an hour before it's done, add an 8 ounce bar of softened cream cheese, cut up into pieces. Mix and serve. And we have scallions, shredded cheese and bacon pieces to top it with.

Bacon is a must!

[Travellin Dave]

I started reading a really fascinating book last night, "The Second World Wars: How the First Global War was Fought and Won" by Victor Davis Hanson. He sets out to deconstruct the mythos of the monolithic "Second World War" into its various components - regional conflicts in the eyes of the Axis powers that interconnected in the eyes of the Allies into a global effort that the Axis powers completely misunderstood and for which they were hopelessly ill-prepared.

It's really a different view on WWII, and I'm enjoying it immensely.

What he seems to be laying out is that leaders in the US and Great Britain saw the various battlegrounds in global terms while the Axis powers, and Russia, approached it as Theater Warfare, and simply lacked the historical perspective to think of it globally. Britain being an imperial power, and the US being a former colony and by then a colonial power in its own right, both had the necessary perspective. The Axis, lacking that perspective, therefore couldn't see that their intentions were ultimately futile.  So they stumbled blindly into the first global war lacking the necessary means to win it, because they couldn't think holistically.

Really, really fascinating, and I'm not even a third of the way into it.

I'm a little confused...is it about the first, second or both World Wars?

[Travellin Dave]

61 degrees on a little Friday afternoon.  Really like this cigar!

[Travellin Dave]

Smoking allowed in the House again:

https://halfwheel.com/smoking-now-allowed-in-house-side-of-congress/417944/?fbclid=IwAR3yP7V49FNzdmn6LfvlGeEmOC_eltLueQCyknx15LkiD6oQnO_Lcrv_YLM

And apparently so is carrying firearms as metal detectors have been removed.
Now all we need is an open bar and the House can be REALLY interesting.