Steve and Judy's Travels!

 

Judy now has a new knee.  When they take the joint apart, they don’t really cut off the bones on either side of the joint.  It’s more a matter of taking out the old joint, then recontouring the bone ends to fit the prosthetic knee.  They only take off a few millimeters of bone. The new knee joints are produced in multiple sizes and are modular, so the different parts plug together to be just right for each patient.  The vendor is present during every surgery to make sure every aspect of the joint works just as it should.  It only took two hours in the operating room and just one hour of that was the actual knee replacement by the orthopedic surgeon.

 

Within two hours of surgery, and while she was still waking up from the anesthetic, physical therapy was in and Judy was up and walking around.

 

This afternoon she did her second walk of the day, circumnavigating the entire floor, and practiced going up and down steps.  When we got back to the room, the PT announced that she had just done the entire sequence of Day 2 expectations on Day 0.  That was cool.

 

She’s not past the pain yet.  That will take a little longer.

 

Meanwhile, our domain.

 

A most promising Day 0.

 

 

 

Settled in at our hotel in Corpus.

 

Here in time for a walk around Blucher Park.

 

 

 

Not Judy though.  She’s not walking that much until after she gets repaired.

 

Parmesan crust snapper with crab sauce for dinner at Landry’s with a marina view.

 

We report for duty tomorrow morning at 05:30.

 

 

 

And probably I’ve wondered about this during political campaigns.  It’s about the economy.

 

The economy is made up of exchanges of goods and services (and money).  The more goods, services, and money we exchange, the more our economy is booming.  What I wonder is, does it make any difference if the exchanges are actually accomplishing anything?  Is there such a thing as good or bad exchanges of goods, services and money?  Or is the economy blind to accomplishment and all that matters is the churn?  My gut says that money spent to build a bridge or a school is more important than say money spent on a political campaign, but it all gets counted as part of our economic activity.

 

It is projected that 2.7 billion dollars will be spent on the presidential race alone in 2020.  Sure, money changes hands.  People are hired to work on campaigns.  Television and digital advertising platforms will enjoy profound benefit.  But really, an election could be accomplished for much less.  The end result of an election is that someone is going to be elected.  All that money spent doesn’t change the result.  If we eliminated billions of dollars spent on elections and limited it to a few million dollars, would we have just robbed the economy of an important component?  Should we just make everything cost more and churn more money so our economy will look better?

 

So if it doesn’t matter what the money is spent on; it just matters that money is spent; we could all just give each other ten dollars and boost the economy even more.  No change in overall dollars, we just increase the churn.  Hey; even better, everybody each just send me ten dollars and I promise, I’ll spend it on something…

 

 

It’s time to vote in the Texas Democratic Primary.  We’re a Super-Tuesday State.  We get to make our choice for the Democratic Presidential Nominee.  But in this field, we can’t find a clear preference.  Bernie; four years ago we were feeling the bern early, but he seems still stuck on a revolution and all we want now is back to normal.  Biden; he would be good for normal, but he’s not exactly inspiring/energizing.  Bloomberg; who knows.  All we know is he has a lot of money and he has flooded the market with ads.  But at least he’s saying normal things.  Buttigieg; he seems kind of normal too, but does he really have the chops for this?  Warren, Klobuchar, Steyer; principled all, but it seems now they’re just bashing each other until it’s time to get out.

 

There are 12 candidates for Senator; I don’t recognize any of them, because we don’t have any Democratic Senators in Texas.  One Democratic Representative for our district running unopposed, we recognize him, Vicente Gonzales.  Otherwise, Railroad Commissioner, Supreme Court Justices, Judges, Sheriff County Tax Assessor-Collector, Justice of the Peace, Constable, and County Chairman.  Not a name in there I even know.  Additionally, eleven Propositions that could all be summed up as “Do you think America should be good and fair?”.  They’re just statements; not actually propositions to do anything.

 

There is no danger that Judy or I will miss the general election.  In the meantime, should we go vote in the Primary?  Can’t find any point to it.  It’s not that we don’t care, it’s that we’d just be randomly checking boxes this early on.

 

 

That small wire coming down off the electrical pedestal.

 

There were lots of good guesses about what it might be for; and they were all that it’s a ground wire.  Grounding wire would win by popular vote!

 

But wait.  This is an insulated wire.  There isn’t any reason to insulate a grounding wire. A grounding wire is just a bare wire anchored to something in the ground.  We have one late-arriving dissenting opinion.  It’s a communications wire.  If something goes wrong; if one of the relays in the boxes fails, the system needs to alert the operator.  There is an alarm or a blinking light, somewhere in a shack or a control room where the operator is.  The alarm wouldn’t be wired into the electrical grid, because if the electrical grid failed, then there wouldn’t be anything to power the warning.  Time for a recount.  I’m going with Henry’s communications wire theory!