Got to be birds flying higher

Over the course of nearly half a century, Siegfried & Roy performed 30,000 shows for 50 million people and generated well over $1 billion in ticket sales. Although the German-born illusionists and pop culture icons were mega-famous, much about their private lives, eccentric public personae, and tragic final show remained shrouded in mystery…until now. Emmy®-winning filmmaker and journalist Steven Leckart, in his very first podcast, takes you behind the velvet curtain to reveal shocking moments, surprising details, and hidden truths about two men who were lionized by millions of fans, lampooned by the media, criticized by animal welfare advocates, and endlessly scrutinized by the public.

This podcast landed shortly after the Tiger King hype died down, but it's still a great listen. As an animal-loving teenager, I totally would have jumped at the chance to see Siegfried & Roy live--and they were still performing in Las Vegas when we went there for the first time in 2007. Probably a good thing--this podcast is a great reminder that many animal acts aren't always in the animals best interests.

https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/wild-things-siegfried-roy/id1599176021

x-posted to vintageads

...if you're hungry, call The Lydo. FREE DELIVERY!

Eventually, the Internet coughs up everything--and apparently, seven months ago someone found and uploaded a ubiquitous hometown ad to YouTube. The local earworm was heard on TV and radio throughout the 80s. I shrieked with delight last night to hear the jingle; it had been decades. Although I sang it to myself at times, it was just not the same.

The Lydo was a legendary Chinese restaurant, located at 9203-111 Street NW, which opened in 1966 and closed down in 2003. The food was not great, yet somehow it managed to stay in business until family problems forced the closure in 2003. Today, the building is a sleek catering business.

Watch on YouTube

Watch on YouTube

I can't wait to dig into this, but I'm rather surprised. The new granular regions have me going whoa!

I caught up with a friend who I hadn't seen since May yesterday. We went birdwatching in our area and saw quite a bit for late in the season. There is a ravine and two storm ponds located close together, making them perfect for birds to hang out or take a break.

We saw...

American coots
American robins
Black-billed magpies
Canada geese
Chickadees
Cormorants
Crows
Gulls of some kind
House sparrows
Mallards
Rock doves (pigeons)
Swainson's hawk (juvenile)
Yellow-rumped warblers
White crowed sparrow
White throated sparrow
Wigeons

Merlin flagged vesper sparrows being in the area, but we felt it was unlikely. The sparrows were hard to see--they were really deep in some bushes. The warblers were all about, though!

In 2012, a woman was found with her hands bound in the Mojave Desert. She led authorities to a grisly crime scene where a barbaric attack had taken place. This moment marked the beginning of an international manhunt and a sting operation that turned a once-devoted wife into an informant. Authorities zeroed in on the so-called mastermind behind the attack: Hossein Nayeri, a charming man who had ties to the emerging medical marijuana industry in California. Told with police tapes, secretly recorded informant calls and footage of a prison break, “Devil in the Desert” unravels a crime so brutal that it still haunts investigators today.

CW in the first couple of episodes which describe the brutality of the attack.

https://abcaudio.com/podcasts/devil-in-the-desert/

Our summer vacation this year was in Perth, Ontario. We travelled to Perth last year as part of our 20th anniversary trip. It's where I discovered that there's been a big family bbq reunion going on for 30 years on hubs' side of the family. Neither hubs nor my FIL mentioned it all this time ;-D

So we returned with a promise to make the bbq. Alas, being Prairie people, we were not used to the mega high levels of humidity! We were melting and constantly running for air conditioning. While watching glasses sweat at restaurants, I wondered how anyone enjoyed living out here ;-D

I posted some snaps on Threads--more details soon!

https://www.threads.com/@calzephyr77/post/DMQrkntuZwK?xmt=AQF0u723d33wlJlqchqxsermUJrmLO8yGnDBSiP3JLajyg

I'd watch the heck out of this!

Watch on YouTube

I'm happy and a little sad--our adventure into the Abomination Vaults is over!

It's hard to believe that my hubs, some friends, and I started playing the Pathfinder adventure in October 2022! Being a very casual gaming group, we met every couple of weeks, as it was hard to find dates that worked for everyone.

Instead of pen and paper, we used Foundry software, which presented a learning curve, along with learning Pathfinder. It has many similarities to Dungeons & Dragons, but often uses different names. For example, haste is called quickening, and the Dungeon Master is called Game Master.

Abomination Vaults is a multi-level dungeon crawl with monsters, treasures, and several mysteries to solve. Our party consisted of:

• Azurial, half-elf sorcerer and merchant; tallest of the group😄


• Bloodblade, a brave catfolk fighter


• Gnak, a goblin rogue who brought a lot of flavour to the campaign


• Mauve, Halfling ranger and scholar


• Skigim, young ratfolk monk fighter

Like all RPGs, it was wonderful to see how our party progressed from running away from mitflits to battling large groups of monsters and taking down the Big Bad with ease at the end.

Our party was a little unbalanced for the adventure, especially since we didn't have a cleric. Mauve became the default healer for the first few levels and often implored party members to have a sense of self-preservation. She excelled at ranged attacks for this reason and finally got around to trying melee after level five. Mauve started out with a pony, Swifty, but he ended up staying in town for the duration of the adventure. The GM and I weren't quite sure how to integrate the pony into the action. A dungeon is no place for a pony anyway!

Hubs struggled with playing a magic user. He often played Azurial as a barbarian, rushing into rooms and into danger :-D

The next adventure is set in more open worlds with travel between towns, but I bowed out. Hubs is returning though with a dromaar fighter. I think he'll enjoy it much more.

Hubs finally decided to tackle the disaster that is his office after 20 years, and can we give him a big round of applause for shredding every bill and receipt he had from 1998-2002???

It's a wonder the shredder didn't burn out! I've been after him for years because no one needs pay stubs from 1998. Keep one or two as a reminder, but the rest can gooooooo! This is why you have to keep on top of document management, otherwise you and your SO spend all Sunday night shredding and bagging.

He bought a new Besta bookcase from IKEA, and everything that was just stacked willy-nilly is now nicely organized!

Have you heard the one about the time Philadelphia police dropped a bomb on a neighbourhood forty years ago?

Neither did I until last year when I listened to The Africas VS. America. It is disturbing and nauseating, so huge CW beforehand...but more people need to know more about this story.

In 1985, police dropped a bomb in a Philadelphia neighborhood. Their target? A family of Black radicals known as ‘MOVE,’ who found themselves ensnared in a city — and nation’s — domestic war on Black Liberation. Over seven episodes, host Matthew Amha investigates the events that culminated in the MOVE bombing, and the long afterlife of a forgotten American tragedy.

https://www.cbc.ca/listen/cbc-podcasts/1350-the-africas-vs-america