News

T3 Folks –

Greetings TS Folks –

9 June 2022

First things first – grab he calendar and mark next Monday the 13th of June and if you are close enough mark it as our next DMS informal dinner. Even month – evening dinner around 1830. Our new grub joint is quickly becoming the usual place. Hibachi Grill and Supreme Buffett in Woodbridge at 1965 Daniel Stuart Square. Very easy to find and its right at the Opitz Blvd and Route 1 intersection in Woodbridge.   How was last time??

Last time was a Rodney Dangerfield type of meeting – what a crowd!   We were nine – The Voyzey’s (Lori and Keith), The Cavenders (Russ and Tonya), Len Good, Barney Free, Ron Hess, Virgil Tarry and myself. Nine!! A post COVID restriction era record!! Nine!! Enough to field a baseball team. If only we had an opponent we would know who to forfeit to. Baseball would be strenuous but considering it is a Chinese restaurant we could field three games of Chinese checkers with three folks in each but unfortunately some years back I lost all my marbles.

Two weeks ago I went to our local courthouse to try and get my personal property bill squared away and a gent behind me was wearing a baseball cap indicating he was a veteran of the Army. As usual I had to speak and try and learn his background. I was surprised to hear 81C and he was surprised to know I knew what it was. A cartographer! Sadly that MOS has gone away much like blacksmith and iceman. He attended 81C school at a place called DMS in 1983. He searched his memory and the only name I recognized was Chief Bitters (Hi Barry!!). This guys name was Owen Johnson. Anyone remember him?? Small world!

In the it happens to Batt category this happened during the last twenty four hours. Late last week we bought a new living room set for both our living room and basement den. No big thing – being cat owners it happens too often but not as often as you would think. When we moved into our home just 42 years ago we had to bring in our sofa bed into the basement by going through the back outside door and then through an opening in a wall where the previous owner had a large wall aquarium. The sofa bed was too large to make it through the narrow door at the bottom of the stairs leading into the basement. Hard to describe but hopefully you get the picture. Over the years we closed in that wall basically eliminating that avenue of escape for large furniture. Another thing we did was get replacement windows throughout the house. The old windows were single pane sliding units and not conducive to entering and exiting anything other than air. The new ones were removable hence a means of bringing furniture in or out but at first I didn’t think of that. When it came time to replacing the sofa bed my bird brain figured I would do it the easy way. (??) I removed the frame of the sofa bed using some of my appropriate VW tools. Then for the main part I used my trusty chainsaw. What the heck…..so I thought. When the chain hit the stuffing of the sofa it turned into the likes of a major snow storm. It worked but it was a super mess. The new sofa came in via the window successfully. That was perhaps twenty years ago. Fast forward to the aforementioned twenty four hours ago period. Time to remove and replace the den set of furniture via the now removeable window. All went well except for a small part in the channel of the lower portion of window rendering itself unserviceable. Unserviceable – the military term for kaput. The window still functioned – up, down, tilt, lock etc although that small part which is about the size of a pair of normal dice, not the size of the ones that used to dangle from the rear view mirror of a 1966 Ford Galaxy, did not move. So in the age of the internet I tried to search for a replacement part. The window functioned without it but if it was cheap I’d get it replaced and fixed. I found a local web site. I filled out the who I am, what I need, where I am form emphasizing if it was expensive I would not replace it. Mistake. I got more phone calls and emails than you could imagine. I explained to one caller that all I wanted to do was replace that little part that I could close up in a fist and only if it was inexpensive. “Oh no Sir, we don’t repair it, we replace the entire window”. I’m sure he buys a new car when his oil needs changing or a new refrigerator when the milk had expired. No thanks , good bye, Click.

Sorry about that last paragraph.   Thank goodness the furniture is comfortable. And for those that read and remember my last email I lost out on the VW bug I was trying to get. I lost out by only a thousand bucks. Shame. I’ll keep looking.

Jack