Theme: THROW (63. Light bed cover ... and a verb
that goes with the first parts of this puzzle's four longest answers) -
What you can do to the first word of each theme answer.
17A. Performance featuring Gene Simmons: KISS CONCERT. Throw a kiss.
55A. Speaker of the House, e.g.: PARTY LEADER. Throw a party.
11D. Meet one's needs: FIT THE BILL. Throw a fit.
28D. Enforcer of hunting laws: GAME WARDEN. Throw a game.
Boomer Here. Happy to see a work by Mr. Fred Piscop. Hope you are doing fine.
I never throw anything away. Something I learned from my dear Mom. As a result, I seem to have thousands of baseball cards from the 80s through 2019. Years ago I had a complete set of 1952 baseball cards that all looked like they just came out of a pack. I made a little money on the deal, but if I had saved the Mickey Mantle for a while, my Santa Fe might be a Cadillac.
Across:
1. Dutch-speaking Caribbean island: ARUBA.
6. Sharp conflict: CLASH. Can you believe that Vikings QB Kirk Cousins refuses to get vaccinated?
11. Butcher's trimmings: FAT. I trimmed mine with diabetes.
14. More ticked off: SORER.
15. Video's partner: AUDIO. I always leave the AUDIO off when I play Pac-Man.
16. Wedding promise: I DO.
19. Shipping weight: TON.
20. Deck chair piece: SLAT.
21. Meat ending for "sir": LOIN. Sirloin. Or when you trim down with diabetes.
22. Don't disturb: LET BE. "LET it BE." The Beatles.
24. Outdoor chimes player: WIND.
25. Went for stripers, say: FISHED. I never heard this word in Minnesota. Most folks go fishing.
26. Wins back: REGAINS. I don't hear this word much in Las Vegas.
30. Hora or hula: DANCE.
31. Dead-on: EXACT.
32. Convertible sofa: HIDE A BED. We had one of these on the porch when I was a kid. Very Handy.
35. Stop on a __: DIME.
36. Queeg's ship: CAINE. The senator from Virginia, who ran for Vice President in 2016, is KAINE.
38. Old King Cole's smoke: PIPE. He was a Merry Old Soul.
39. Broad-brimmed hats: STETSONS. You just don't see many goofy hats around anymore. Only baseball caps. Mine have a TC on them.
41. __ of Troy: HELEN.
42. Astronaut Schirra: WALLY. Beaver's older Brother, Tony Dow.
43. Graceland surname: PRESLEY. "The Mississippi Delta was shining like a National Guitar". Paul Simon.
45. Expressed in words: STATED.
47. Word after Joe or low: BLOW. Looks like a clue from "America Says" with John Michael Higgins.
48. "Gay" city in a Porter song: PAREE.
49. Blue-green shade: TEAL. Popular game duck in Minnesota.
50. Bluish part of blue cheese: MOLD. Yuck!
54. Wrap up: END. Tight guy on the front line.
58. Biography datum: AGE. My High School reunion is coming up in
a couple of weeks. There I will be a 73 year old hanging out with a
whole bunch of 74s.
59. Bring joy to: ELATE.
60. Tearoom biscuit: SCONE.
61. "Anchorman: The Legend of __ Burgundy": RON. All I know he was a goofy weatherman in a San Diego TV station who always wore a Burgundy Jacket.
62. Closer to maturity: RIPER. Our vegetables are no longer
getting RIPER. Squirrels ate the plants. I think the drought might have
something to do with this. We never had this problem before.
Down:
1. Requests: ASKS. And you shall Receive.
2. Stir up: ROIL. I had the OIL changed in the Santa Fe last Friday. They did not have any with "R".
3. Astronomical bear: URSA. Major or Minor?
4. Oscars category adjective: BEST. And you receive a goofy trophy. In the Olympics you get a gold medal!
5. Lob trajectory: ARC. Great for a nine iron, not so good on a putt.
6. Church decrees: CANONS. We do not hear much about CANON laws at church anymore.
7. Clear-thinking: LUCID.
8. Port of Yemen: ADEN. Back when I lived in a three bedroom home, my dad turned one of the bedrooms into A DEN. I slept in the basement.
9. Knightly title: SIR. Gold or silver bars, oak leaves, or
stars on the collar. Sorry Spitzboov, I only know about the Army.
Maybe you can fill me in on Naval officers, Sir?
10. Emergency phone link: HOTLINE.
12. Photoshop creator: ADOBE.
13. In good muscular shape: TONED. I wish I were.
18. Lena of TV's "Riviera": OLIN.
23. Houdini feats: ESCAPES. Houdini was truly an ESCAPE artist. However he could not escape an appendix attack and died at the age of 52.
24. Gag writer's asset: WIT. I try.
25. Lose brilliance: FADE.
26. Many lipstick shades: REDS. Cincinnati baseball team. Doing pretty well in the NL.
27. Off-ramp: EXIT. Also a lighted sign in a dark theater.
29. Clear overlay: ACETATE.
30. Annoying racket: DIN. The only annoying DIN heard at Target Field this year is the sound of opponent's bats on white baseballs.
32. Casual hellos: HIS.
33. Sword with a three-sided blade: EPEE.
34. Declare false: DENY. I didn't do this.
36. Faucet handle word: COLD. We don't have COLD on our faucets. We have to guess.
37. At least one: ANY.
40. Surprise success: SLEEPER. I think I will use this to call a putt that goes in over ten feet away. That will be a surprise !
41. Chop down: HEW.
43. Team member: PLAYER.
44. Breadbasket item: ROLL. Or a shot at the Craps table.
45. Pickle serving: SPEAR.
46. Letter after Sierra: TANGO. It takes two to do this.
47. Midler of "The Rose": BETTE. I remember the Seinfeld episode at a softball game where Kramer gets her a Popsicle.
49. Lint catcher: TRAP. They also work on mice. Maybe not quite as well.
50. Speed-of-sound word: MACH.
51. Garlic tip-off: ODOR.
52. Lantern-jawed Jay: LENO. He's really got some fancy old cars. They look new.
53. Neither won nor lost: DREW.
56. Oscar winner Mahershala __: ALI. "Moonlight" and "Green Book".
57. Charlotte winter hrs.: EST.
Boomer
Blasted right through this fun, witty unclefred-Monday-level CW and was shocked to discover it still took me 14 minutes! Only W/O RILE:ROIL. I guess I'm just getting slower and slower as I get older. :-( Oh well. Anyway, I really liked this CW, got the theme and reveal and had no nits to pick, this CW was NOT lousy with too many names or any of my other usual suspects. Thanx, FP, for your fun and witty CW. And thanx Boomer for your as usual fun and informative write-up. I've got my third roofer coming today to have a look. Gotta replace the entire roof, OR move out. Long story involving termites.
ReplyDeleteGood morning!
ReplyDeleteReally liked Fred's puzzle, even though d-o missed seeing the reveal and didn't get the theme. Some things never change. Boomer, thanx for the guided tour.
unclefred, seems like everybody around here is getting a new roof. We had a 30-second hailstorm a couple months ago and the roofers descended offering free (Whoa, you gotta replace this roof!) inspections.
SIR: Boomer, the metal rank designators are exactly the same in the Navy. Only the names have been changed to protect the innocent.
Weird WALLY's love was lith and long-limbed,
ReplyDeleteTo kick off a romance, his hopes had dimmed.
He tried to THROW a KISS
To his cheerleader miss,
But all that he managed to do was pass WIND!
When RON decided to THROW his hat in the ring,
The goal of PARTY LEADER was his thing.
The voters' reception
Of his ten-gallon STETSON
Was hottest with his party's buffalo wings!
{B, B+.}
FIR, but had to fix tied-->DREW.
ReplyDeleteVideo's partner is AUDIO, except at my house. Great AUDIO on DirecTV and YouTube, but no AUDIO with Prime Video. I'll have to troubleshoot it this week.
Filled in KISS CONCERT without any perps because of the lyrics in one of my favorite Jimmy Buffet songs:
"Don't try to describe a Kiss concert if you've never seen it
Don't ever forget that you just may wind up being gonged"
Before retirement, it seemed like the pilot always announced that we would arrive at ATL's TANGO (some number) gate. Just a tram ride away from the terminal.
Boomer, the Washington (don't call us The Redskins) coach is frustrated because less than 50% of his players have been vaccinated. Our local paper ran a cartoon today from Ramirez of the Las Vegas Review-Journal lampooning CDC honcho Dr. Walensky singing:
"You put your mask back on
You take your mask back off
You put your mask back on
Until you make them scream and shout
You got a vaccination now we say its not enough
That's how we're sewing doubt"
(The link to it in our paper is behind a paywall.)
Fine, easy puzzle, Fred. Just right to start the week. And thanks for making me smile, Boomer. (I'm a bit of a pack rat too. I still have my first computer - an Apple II - in its original box from somewhere around 43 years ago.)
Funny ditty about putting your mask on and taking your mask off again due to ever changing situations reminds me of our "stagger stagger" dance crossing of the Delaware Bay on a Ferry. We must step to the beat, but when the ferry rolls, we must stagger.
ReplyDelete"Great day for swimming, no rain in sight. Go right on in. OOPS! I hear thunder. Get out immediately."
Nice fun run - took the reveal to figure out the theme.
ReplyDeleteOnly changed ACETONE to ACETATE and ORATED to STATED, as well as MAINE to CAINE.
Thanks Boomer and Fred!
Tomorrow is my state of Missouri's bicentennial - since the ice cream cone was invented reportedly at the World's Fair in St. Louis in the early 1900s, every town that has chosen to participate is having a simultaneous ice cream social tomorrow afternoon!
That was fun. A Monday FIR with a theme easy to find after the reveal. Thanks, Fred! Boomer, your wit always comes through well, adding fun to your informative review.
ReplyDeleteBefore reading the blog, I patiently proofread my fill, not finding any problems and appreciating the word variety. That gives me energy to return to yesterday's puzzle which I haven't finished nor given up on yet. One last heroic try before reading the blog. Hoping for the BEST and for you all as well today.
Fred P. is a wonderful pro constructor and Boomer never disappoints but today marks not only the beginning of the work week but the end of an era as BOBBY BOWDEN died. As a Florida alumnus he was not always a favorite of mine, but his record of 14 years in a row finishing in the top four college football teams is unparalleled, even by Nick Saban. Also, my oldest boy and hsi wife went to college there at FSU so I softened.
ReplyDeleteAlso, MARKIE POST an actress who began her showbiz career as an associate producer on Alex Trebek'S pre-Jeopardy show DOUBLE DARE .
Be well all
Thank you Fred for the Monday romp. No need for a FIT and I even tried to THROW it, but FIR'd anyway. And thank YOU Boomer for THROWing a BOOMERang review. The theme CAME AROUND to me when I finally got to the PARTY.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite of course was 24A FISHING for STRIPED BASS, Maryland's State Fish, A.K.A. ROCKFISH in the "Land of Pleasant Living". Sort of like eating slabs of CRAB MEAT without all the shells.
43A Here's the lick from GRACELAND, everybody's fav Simon album.
32A Our three youngest granddaughters just arrived for an overnight and 2 of them will be sleeping on a HIDEABED.
50A BLUE CHEESE - Yummers!
62A Our TOMATOES are getting RIPER. I'll probably jar a dozen pints or so next week. Using some of last year's batch to make stuffed cabbage this week.
3D Can't BEAR it BOOMER.
6D Yesterday we had CANONRY. The CANON is also the authorized list of the books of the BIBLE. There is some disagreement about what belongs in the HEBREW BIBLE, A.K.A. the OLD TESTAMENT to CHRISTIANS. Can say more here. It's complicated.
12D ADOBE Also dwellings made from CLAY.
24D DW says I'm trying. Very trying!
40D SLEEPER wasn't a SLEEPER, but an INSTANT HIT for Woodie Allen 1973. I know he's not PC these days, but I think BEETLES are still OK.
Cheers,
Bill
Jinx @ 7:26 AM That Apple II might be worth more than the gold in the terminals.
ReplyDeleteGood morning everyone.
ReplyDeleteMostly easy Monday; no problems with the solve. FIR.
SIR - - Boomer; what D-O said. Here is a Link showing the various services' rank insignia. Scroll down to "Officer Insignia." The Navy's collar insignia is not quite as garish as the Army's IMO.
Have a great day.
Marvellous Monday. Thanks for the fun, Fred and Boomer.
ReplyDeleteI’m early to the party after missing the weekend gathering, and just lurking later.
Just a little crunch today (or perhaps I am out of practice); several inkblots, but I RIRed and saw the THROW theme (in the bottom corner where we can pull it up over the HIDEABED).
I changed Rile to ROIL (hello unclefred), and my faucet said MOEN before COLD (we have had too many plumbing discussions here LOL).
I Tied the game before I DREW. Perps corrected everything ( yes, Maine to CAINE inanehiker ker)
PRESLEY at Graceland and Simmons at a KISS CONCERT today. Hmm. (waseeley connected them with Simon😮😁)
We had CANONry yesterday.
STETSONS is a CSO to any Lurkers here from Calgary (and their famous Stampede which actually happened this year😮).
I’m off to pick the RIPER fruits of my labour in the garden (BLTs anyone😁👍), and water before it gets any hotter ( too hot to can here waseeley).
Wishing you all a great day.
ReplyDeleteEasy Monday from Fred with only a few WO's. Boomer's tour was good as usual.
I had to change RILE to ROIL, TIED to DREW and AQUA to TEAL (I'm partially Red/Green colorblind, so I can't tell the difference.) Other than these changes it was a smooth fill today.
I think the CAINE Mutiny, with it's stellar cast, was one of the better movies of the 1950's. I've watched it many times.
CanadianEh: (Here is another plumbing story.) In Montreal a guest asked his host why the Hot water faucet had a C on it instead of an H. The host replied that the C stood for CHAUD which is French for Hot. The guest then asked if that were the case, why was the other faucet labeled C instead of F for FROID which is French for COLD. The host replied "We are bi-lingual here."
Oh well, not much else to say, so I hope you all have a great day.
Musings
ReplyDelete-ARUBANS speak Dutch but their children are required to learn English
-Occasionally the AUDIO and video from our cable box do not match up
-Paul McCartney says he saw his “deceased mother named Mary” in a dream and she advised “LET IT BE” and things will be fine
-Queeg had a generation gap aboard the USS Caine
-Olympic gold in gymnastics is determined subjectively but in races it’s done objectively
-I don’t think lantern-jawed LENO exchanges holiday greetings with Conan O’Brien
Good Morning:
ReplyDeleteThis was a fun solve with a cleverly hidden theme until the surprise reveal. My kind of puzzle! No w/os, no unknowns, so no problems. Fred treated us with oodles of fun duos: Olin crossing Loin, Sir and Loin, Toned/Fit, Roll/Roil, Dance/Tango, and Cold/Mold.
Thanks, Fred, for a nice start to the week and thanks, Boomer, for the usual comical commentary and healthy dose of nostalgia.
Have a great day.
I almost got this whole Monday puzzle (except for a little trouble in the south). Lots of fun, so, many thanks, Fred. And, of course, always enjoy your commentary, Boomer.
ReplyDeleteI always start of well in the north-east corner, and it worked again this morning. The three-letter words probably help, and FILL THE BILL fell right into place. Fun to get HELEN of Troy and Elvis PRESLEY right next to each other. "Gay" PAREE was funny too.
But, like CanadianEh I had MOEN before COLD and MAINE for Queeg's ship, and, like Oc4beach, I had TIED before DRAW and RILE before ROIL. But, thank goodness, fixed them all in time.
Have a good week coming up, everybody.
YR - I loved your story of dancing on the ferry. One of my father's Dad Jokes was "don't go near the water until you know how to swim."
ReplyDeleteInanehiker - I have always thought that Missouri's tag line should be "Missouri Loves Company."
Bill - I like bleu cheese too. A local restaurant servers a burger with in infused in the patty. Double yummers. And all I have to do now is locate an analog TV to connect Apple II to, and a cassette tape player to boot it up.
I enjoy Fred Piscop's work as it is always clean and concise no matter what the level of difficulty.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the recap, Boomer.
The mad rush of the wedding (Valerie's niece) activities is now over and I can begin to catch up on the rest of what the Bank of America used to refer to in their ads as "the business of living."
Off to the sale mine. As someone here often says, play later.
ReplyDeleteThis was a nice Monday puzzle that filled quickly.
No write-overs today.
So it looks like Viking Cousins is joining Yankee Rizzo on the MIA team…Missing in Action?….NO…MORONS in Action.
A couple of things I don’t understand…(1) why do these non-Vax chumps continue to be paid when they get a preventable illness, and (2) why are insurance companies covering this with no penalty for no Vax? I’m tired of my insurance paying for others ignorance or refusal to accept reality.
You go through more checks for any other kind of insurance.
You don’t want the Vax, fine, you should have the courage of your convictions and so should your wallet.
I’m a blue cheese fan as well.
Isn’t Cold always on the right?
See you tomorrow.
Just right puzzle for a Monday morning. Here in the desert doesn’t matter what the faucet says we get hot water out of both. No cold showers until October. For years our local paper ran a generic crossword that was a quick easy fun solve. They upgraded to the Universal crossword edited by David Steinberg and readers are in an uproar over the difficulty. For example today’s puzzle had, “Cello opening” answer is “Fhole”.
ReplyDeleteTo add more fuel to the fire, they changed the layout since it is a bigger puzzle, and you can no longer fold the paper in half, which makes it awkward to do. It will be interesting to see who wins this battle.
PVX, those millionaire chumps get away with it because of collective bargaining agreements. And the reason you can't pick and choose your health coverage benefits is because it is a heavily-regulated industry. I don't need childbirth or substance abuse coverage for example, but the government makes it illegal to sell policies without them. The crossword-frequenter ACA added tons of "must cover" items. Try to buy car insurance to fix your fender AFTER your kid crushes it against a fence post.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteThank you Yuman for your diatribe about the more difficult puzzles ...
When you wrote the answer 'Fhole' on a Cello, I thought you were kidding.
Thanks to Google and Wiki on Sound Holes, I learnt something new today.
Apparently, in addition to F holes, there are also, ... C Holes, D holes and Rosette holes ... but no A holes ( in civilized society- ).
But, on the whole, I agree with you, One would have to be an ardent music lover to be aware of such intricate parts of the musical instrument.
But, as our Lemonade had said a few days ago, one does CWs to also learn something new every day. Thats the puzzle part of the crossword.
OC4Beach, thank you for the bilingual french-english MOntreal joke .... I laughed so hard that I sneezed. I must remember that joke, and the words CHAUD (hot) and Froid (cold), otherwise the joke will be useless.
Now, to find out through Utube, on how those words are pronounced ....
Thankyou Mr. Fred Piscop, for a very nice and easy CW, and Boomer for an excellent review. Hope you are keeping well.
Have a nice day, all.
Have a nice day, all.
I just reread Mondays post and I mentioned incoming rockets sounding like the Kingston Trio's "train rumbling through " The General from 60 minutes last night said the same thing
ReplyDeleteBoomer, entertaining as always, same for Owen
Atl, keep at it and double check. I missed some obviously wrong ones. Hint: It's not TACOMA
L214, thx for Markie Post link.
WC
WC - You transported Lemony from Orange County, CA (714) to Dallas (214). Having lived in both, I think thanks are in order.
ReplyDeleteAt least I got the 14 right
DeleteInanehiker, I believe it was the ice cream waffle cone that was invented at the St. Louis World's Fair, but no matter, ice cream in a cone is always a treat.
ReplyDeletePVX and Jinx,
Insurers can and do charge higher premiums for behavior deemed risky. Accident-prone teenage drivers are in a different, higher rate class than drivers having a clean record of being accident-free and having no moving violations. Work in a high risk job ? Police, firefighters, loggers, commercial fisherman, etc ? Your life insurance premiums are higher.
Ditto for medical insurance for many. Premiums for smokers, for instance.
Food for thought... It remains to be seen what insurers will do, but they're not likely to sit by idly. I read this article earlier this week when it first started making the rounds on some of the content providers news feeders. The source article was Kaiser Health News: Analysis: Don’t Want a Vaccine? Be Prepared to Pay More for Insurance
WC @2:27PM about Sunday's puzzle. I did finally fill in my 12 blank squares this morning correctly but had another wrong one I missed while proofreading. Still it went better than I expected and I found all the animals! Thanks for your encouragement.
ReplyDeleteAh, yes, Gay PAREE!
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed the promo for the Paris Olympics. Imagine using the Eiffel Tower as a flag post!
And ya can't do wrong with fighter jets in close formation spewing red, white, and blue exhaust smoke. Far better than the other stuff they can spew!
A good Monday PZL, a pleasant experience throughout.
~ OMK
____________
DR: One diagonal, far side.
Its anagram (14 of 15 letters) refers to the kind of person who is against using the Spanish language,
or,
to be more specific,
one who disparages diacritical marks such as we find in Spanish.
I refer of course to a...
"TILDE DENIGRATE"!
oc4beach - I loved the story about the tap labels. Bilingual LOL😁👍
ReplyDeleteVidean- FROID is pronounced like Frah and CHOID like Show (in my closest approximation) 🇨🇦
OMK- yes, that promo for Paris 2024 Olympics was impressive.
I liked this puzzle and I enjoyed reading all your comments. The big, very big, nose wrinkler was DREW as clued.
ReplyDeleteI think the only person in the entire world who is described as lantern-jawed is Jay Leno. What a strange adjective.
My dad, just prior to carving a roast beef, would invariably tap it with the carving knife and intone "I dub thee Sir Loin." We all got very tired of hearing it but he never got tired of saying it.
When I was kid growing up in Sturgis the only hat anybody would deign to wear was a STETSON. Apparently Lee Wranglers was the bluejeans choice as well. I hated them because (1) the fly was buttons instead of a zipper, and (2) the distance from crotch to waistline was very short, forcing one to wear them very very low, causing, in my case, the need to hitch them up from time to time as they otherwise tended to fall down.
Elvis PRESLEY was royally screwed over for years by his manager "Colonel" Tom Parker.
Loved the Chaud-Froid joke.
Good wishes to you all.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Canadian Eh!, for the correct pronunciation of the french words, FROID and CHOID.
We missed you when we had DPT - the ( originally pediatric shot ) vaccine as the answer, a couple of days ago. Your comments would have been valuable.
The problem is I am going to be repeating this joke to people who have no exposure to the french language, but have some inkling about the french words, like froid ( as in Sang froid).
Soo, if I pronounce it the right way, as you suggest, my target audience will have no idea of what I'm talking about... Unfortunately, I will have to pronounce it with the exaggerated american english french - pronouncing every vowel in the word before they will have any idea of what the joke is about.
So, its a Catch 22, to murder the french language, to make a french joke for the uncultivated in the french language.
I remember when I was giving a lecture in a small gathering, I mentioned about Francoise Hollande, then President of France. I called him, President Olan, .... and none of the audience knew who I was talking about. Then I said ..'President Holland ! As in the Hollandaise sauce ' ...and then they all said, Aaah, we know of him.
Forgive me, for taking all these liberties.
I just took a stab at a diagonal for today. The best I could come up with was GREED IN A TITLE, which also used 14 of 15. Only the second D remained, but it seemed rather weak. On a whim, I searched for movies with
ReplyDelete"greed" in the title. Hmm. I wonder how many books have the word greed in the title ?
Multiple tornadoes around here. Big, big storms in Chicagoland. Heavy pouring rain. One area just to the west was reported as getting 5 inches per hour. Perhaps we are too.
Although we need rain, it's too bad that it's not falling in the Pacific Northwest, Canada, or in Northern Cali.
However, I heard on the news in the last few days that even if there was a torrential downpour on that NorCal "Dixie" fire, it wouldn't really help as the heat from the fire is so intense that the water would mostly evaporate before getting anywhere near the flames.
Sensationalism ? I don't know, but I would have to think that all this rain wouldn't hurt that firefighting effort...
The extended TV news coverage of the storm just reported that, "erring on the side of caution" the control tower at O'Hare airport has been evacuated...
Ceh @5:48,
ReplyDeleteIs that a Canadian French pronunciation of froid? I had always heard it in France as more like "fwah".
Of course, I'm definitely no expert.
Who's going to land the planes? Of course I'm not talking about the pilots.
ReplyDeleteBecky
Becky, hi. Operations for O'Hare and Midway airports failsafe over to a continuously operational facility in Aurora, IL (of Wayne's world fame "Party on, Wayne. Party on, Garth"). Continuously operational except for the time in 2014, when a stoned knucklehead engineer contractor decided to set a fire in the place.
ReplyDeleteWhen the control center in Aurora goes down, O'Hare and Midway are also shut down. Thousands of flights around the country got cancelled. Landings at O'Hare and Midway were diverted until the second backup system came online. The knucklehead contractor got 12 years in prison.
The storms have now passed and are somewhere over Lake Michigan. All is calm for now. Remarkably, the White Sox are hosting the Twins on the south side of Chicago, and the game started on time while the storm was raging near us. The score was 7-0 in favor of the Sox after the second inning.
Hi All!
ReplyDeleteBack home safe and sound after ~2 weeks visiting families in SFO and SPI. What a fun trip.
Thanks Fred for the fine puzzle to play on my travel day (also did NYT, WSJ, & USAToday). Yours filled WO free.
Thanks for THROWing the after-PARTY Boomer!
WOs: N/A
ESPs: ALI, CAINE
Fav: All the music the puzzle evoked. Waseeley called out Paul Simon's Graceland, we all know KISS (#KissArmy) but there was also Beach Boys @ARUBA and The CLASH [London Calling]
{B+, A}
Long walk to a cute DR, OMK ;-)
Welcome back MManatee - I assume you meant "back to the SALT mine"(?)
Jinx - I was at Mom's & saw an original Mac. It wouldn't fit in my suitcase :-(
Thanks for the article on classic Apples, Waseeley.
C, Eh! Pop, the Girls, & I harvested so many of his tomatoes we had BLTs before we made sauce.
oc4 - LOL bilingual.
TTP - Down in SPI we had a pretty good storm overnight too. It was all cleared up over STL before our 4:25p flight. BTW, your talk of control centers made me wonder - where's LEOIII been? He informed me that once planes leave HOU they are switched over to IAH for flight control; HOU only does approach and ground control (I think I got that right).
Re: Vax. On the ride home from HOU, the football story was on the radio. The cabbie went on a little tirade about folks that neither vax nor mask. Said he had 3 fares last week that were anti both - one fare got so belligerent about it he said, "let's change the subject or end this ride."
We assured him we agreed with him and we're all mask'd & vax'd. :-)
Cheers, -T
Nice Monday puzzle. Fred Piscop, and nice review, Boomer.
ReplyDeleteJinx, I’ll call us the REDSKINS! As -T can tell you, one of my badges at the museum is on a REDSKINS lanyard. Don’t get me started, though!
My first job out of high school was working in the mailroom in a Navy office in the DC area. Being an Army brat, I knew nothing about Navy rank. Had to learn FAST!
-T --- You are correct. Hobby departures are handed off to Houston Center up at Intercontinental as soon as the planes are up in the air; arriving traffic doesn’t contact our tower for landing clearance until they are eight or ten miles from the end of our runways. However, the ladies and gentlemen up in the control tower STILL have to put the planes on the ground and get them off the ground, and those were peeps who would have been evacuated during the storm at O'Hare. In that kind of weather, though, nothing would be taking off or landing anyway.
There’s more to the story, though. As TTP said, Chicago Center went down in late 2014. In early 2015, some airport-types came over to our place, and I had to take them up into Never-Neverland (the original control tower on top of our museum). They were scouting out a backup spots where they could operate, if their tower across the street from us ever went offline.
Me: “Oh, like what happened at Chicago Center?”
Them: “Oh, no, no! That had nothing to do with it. We’ve been thinking about this for a long time.”
Me: “Oh, OK. Sure you have.”
They actually rewired electricity up into Never-Neverland. They said that they could actually handle arrivals and departures from up there with just their laptops and their cell phones.
Oh, and I’ve been half-busy and half-lazy! I’ve managed to finish some of the puzzles in the past couple of weeks or so, but it’s usually late before I have a chance to get here --- like tonight. I finished this one around noonish, but I’ve been doing other stuff. Got to get my priorities straight!
LEOIII - good to see you...
ReplyDelete10 miles out you say? No wonder the ground crew didn't expect our flight 20 minutes early.
//had to wait on the tarmac for 10 minutes whilst they scrambled, we did.
Oh, here's a fun thing. Eldest works with AFA (a music education group in the city) and HOU has local quartets playing at the airport...
It was Eldest's friends playing at the terminal!
So, we stopped and listened, had introductions, took pictures, and nearly missed our bags at the carousel :-).
For Eldest, it was the cherry on top of the icing of our vacation cake.
Cheers, -T
ReplyDeleteDash T, welcome back. I find it's always good to be back home even after vacations.
Your comment about flying out of STL made me think about it for a minute. As many times as I have been to (meetings downtown) or through St. Louis (on the way to and from Texas), I didn't where the airport was. Good reason, I guess. We always take I-55 and get on I-44 through town. We've never taken I-270