Bill's Bottom Feeder: Breakin' er, Catchin' up is hard to do!

Well, after another sad trip to STL to celebrate her life and remember a dear friend who passed due to her cancer, we are back home again, and the Feeder can pick up the pieces (or as Neil could have said... "Catchin" up... etc.).

I’ll get the darn trip to the Midwest before your eyes if it takes forever!! There are some neat things to see and hear about, so you won’t escape. But first! There are a few items worth your attention from the more recent pass we can knock out of the way before jumping back in the MOMSTER for Kansas City, Holland, and East Lansing, Michigan.

Just……?

Way back in the day before we “settled” into the present digs, we rented an over the garage apartment on the Calvert side of things, on the (Pax) river near the mouth of St. Leonard Creek. We became quite good friends with the homeowners, and if you’re really good, you might recall for my 60^th birthday they gave us (and another similarly aged friend) a week in their home on St. Bart’s. You know, cheeseburger in paradise country. Anyway, one of the traditions they had was (as schedules permitted) enjoy Sunday breakfast with another couple at the Frying Pan in Lusby. It was always good, and I suppose I blogged about it at the time. So when the “Just Right” team (sans one member) was looking for another candidate, we decided we would revisit. So when schedules finally meshed we met for lunch. Exterior was pretty much unchanged

So we parked and went inside. The moment we entered, I sensed something was different. Same furniture, same petition separating the dining area and the bar…. Wait a minute… there were no “ Bud Light” type neon signs in the windows nor bar, and when asked about drinks my request was met with “Oh, we don’t serve alcohol anymore” a guarded conversation that followed revealed that it was only relatively recently. I’m sure there is a story there… a place like the (original) Frying Pan lives on its bar. I did see the original owner, so didn’t think it sold. As another aside, way way back in the day I spent many a hazy night at the Tiki Bar with him. Fortunately, no spark of recognition occurred. Anyway, settling for water, we turned to the food. Menu continued a “Just Right” form, laminated plastic

With usual selections of sandwiches, salads, and heartier fare (platters, baskets, etc.) which fell in line. I debated between a (fresh) Rockfish or Oyster Po’ Boy sandwich finally taking the former and added a ($2) basket of onion rings, and the other half got a hot turkey sandwich.

So we sipped our water, and waited, and waited…….and waited, overhearing another table inquire of the server with outstretched hands “Lunch….?” I might add that only a few tables were occupied.

Eventually theirs and ours arrived

Is that Kale?????

Well, you can draw your own impressions, but a closer look at my “Rockfish Filet”

gave me pause for thought. I’ve seen a few rockfish before, and rarely are they uniformly tear drop shaped and all the same size. A vision of “Mrs. Paul’s” dashed through my mind, but I would hate to accuse them of that. The onion rings were barely coated such that with one bite, most of the “breading” fell off leaving you with a soggy ring (of at least real onion). My other half of the team said his turkey was tasty, albeit a bit off-putting visually. All in all, a rough meal.

So I am not sure that I would re-add the Frying Pan to the Just Right list. Certainly not up to the standards of the “old days”. Hopefully they can recover from whatever occurred, but I’ll wait a while before checking..

Okay, we’ll pick up the pace a little here, I suspect your patience in running thin…

We’ll eclipse that story and go on to ….. THE ECLIPSE

I suppose you’ve been following (scarcely can avoid it) the mania over the first total solar eclipse in 3,467,298,403 years to have its path across our country. Rooms being sold out (at unconscionable prices), spaces being rented for hundreds of dollars all leading up to yesterday’s event. The Weather Channel had a reporter nearly every mile along the way, countdowns at the bottom of your screen, all that stuff… Somehow I didn’t get all that worked up over it, and we decided to observe the phenomenon from our own driveway. We didn’t run out and buy glasses or anything. I was somewhat nervous about looking directly at the sun with any sort of device between it and my aging retinas. Fortunately I have 40 some odd years of experience and a couple of degrees in Engineering so I drew up some plans, carefully selected some materials, and fashioned a highly technical viewing device.

2808

(toothpick showing location of pin hole)

I also devised a backup system, JIC

So as the magic hour drew nearer, we retreated from the air conditioning and The Weather Channel and really some wonderful shots of the event to our driveway, and MFO set up the local observatory

We were supposed to have peak (82%) coverage, but if you didn’t know something was up, I don’t really think you’d notice any difference. Maybe briefly a bit cooler and the light had a softer quality, but nothing more. I really expected a bit more noticeable effect.

As to the complicated equipment, it worked pretty well, although tough to get a good photo