wild_turkey

.gnitseretni si efiw htiw xes. tey tuo t’nsi ti tub niaga ti ees ot deirt .ti deyojne yllaer dna thginot ti was

The $300 travel credit is easy to use, so that leaves $250 worth of annual fee that I need to get value out of. I don't use Door Dash and don't have much interest in starting. I don't want a credit card that I need to start using a service I don't care for just to justify the card's AF. I'm also under the impression the Door Dash credit is $120 total over 2 years from 2020-2021. So even if I max that out, the benefit is limited moving forward. Lyft Pink - meh, especially during Covid when I'm avoiding ride share as much as possible Priority Pass lounge access - I've been completely underwhelmed with them during the ~3 years I've had the card. My home airport is DFW and the only lounge is The Club in terminal D. It's okay to get a couple free drinks if I arrive early for an international flight, but that's not very often and I'm not having much international travel anytime soon. So beyond the $300 travel credit, I'm struggling to find ways to justify that extra $250 right now. I can always get it back later, but they increased the AF by $100 and added 2 features that aren't really appealing to me. Chase Ultimate Rewards are pretty easy to use and I enjoy that, but I can still get that with a different Chase card without the $550 AF.

Any recommendations on cards to accumulate travel points while travel opportunities are scarce? I have a CSR that I'm going to cancel before the $550 fee comes up in a couple months. I don't really want perks like lounge access or Uber or Lyft credits right now. I'd like to build some points back up for whenever I can finally use them freely. I've never done anything Amex so I was considering the Amex Gold card with a 75,000 mile signup bonus and a $250 annual fee. Seems like the points can be easily transferred to airline or hotel partners. Anything else I should be looking at?

Fort Worth

We're putting in a raised bed to grow some fall veggies. The plan is for it to be 4' x 8' x 18" high using rough cut cedar for the sides. What do y'all recommend for soil? Wife has been looking into this quite a bit and is leaning towards a blend of 50% topsoil, 30% compost, and then 20% mix of things like worm castings, biochar, mushroom compost, mineralized soil blend, old leaves, etc. I'm not sure how practical this is or where she plans to get everything. Maybe it is the way to go, but I feel like it will be difficult to get a reliable source on all of these things, especially the topsoil that can have a lot of variation in quality and would make up 50% of the soil. How does that plan compare to buying pre-blended soil like one of the Miracle Gro organic mixes for raised beds?

I bought that off Amazon and it came in large print which was not clear from the listing. That annoyed me so I sent it back, then I read the reviews to see if other people had the same problem (they did), then by reading reviews I convinced myself I wouldn’t like it after all. So I’m curious to see your review when you finish it.

Shout out to Chewy.com who sent us flowers after Shelby's death. We were ordering her food and IV fluids through them and I think my wife called to cancel an auto-shipment so they figured it out. We were pretty surprised by this but it's a good way to build customer loyalty.

Sorry for your loss. We’re going through the same thing and it sucks. Yogi gets to live like a king in doggy heaven now.

We said goodbye to Shelby today. She was 12.5 years old. She beat cancer this past year but unfortunately kidney failure was too much. She was a hell of a fighter and her vet oncologist said she’s a huge success story on the cancer front and plans to write her case up for the vet journals. She was sweet, friendly, gentle, playful. She liked walks, pets, car rides, swimming, fetch, hunting squirrels, and helping us cook. She greeted us at the door every time we came home and she snuggled up against me during the night. She was about as close to perfect as we could possibly ask for. I’ve had other great dogs and generally love most dogs but she really takes the cake for me. We got her as a puppy from a foster family. We always considered her a chocolate lab but assume she had a slight mix because she was small and her coat was incredibly soft. We submitted a DNA breed test to give us a little more info so we don’t always wonder. We’ll miss her terribly but once the sadness passes we’ll still have the good memories. Here’s a few pics from the years: So long my friend. Tell Dusty we said hi and I’ll throw the ball when I get there.

Binged this past week and really enjoyed it. I'm surprised more people aren't talking about it. Reminded me a little bit of Sicario with elements of Narcos mixed in. Thought it was a good take on the drug trade and the script was well written.

I tend to agree because I don't think the show will do as well if any of them are gone. Beth and John should be dead from their injuries. A bomb explosion big enough to send debris onto the street and Beth was 10 feet away from the blast. John got shot multiple times in the chest. But I think both of them will survive, which seems a little bit like The Walking Dead when you create fatal situations for your main characters only to have them all magically survive. The Market Equities story was just a mess. Sawyer had 2 minutes of screen time each episode to act angry at his stock prices and lack of fishing time. They hired some ex-con hitmen to basically do nothing except get themselves killed. The CEO doing a hostile takeover of Beth's company and then getting sidelined for "workplace misconduct". I suppose they will continue to be the evil bad guys in season 4 since none of them were actually killed off and the airport ski resort plan is still in motion. I hope they clean it up a bit.

I still don't understand the point in permanently cancelling Le Reve. I understand why it is cancelled indefinitely during COVID, but the operating expenses are presumably close to zero right now and that space in their building cannot generate money by any other means. Seems like they would simply keep it closed until COVID is over, then start it back up. Maybe they were on the verge of redoing it anyways?

Not sure I understand the financials that factor into the decision to permanently close Le Rêve. I thought Wynn actually owned it so there isn’t a lease on the building space to satisfy, plus that theater can’t be repurposed for anything profitable while COVID is ongoing. The show isn’t running so production costs are zero. Seems like they could furlough the employees and then start it back up once the COVID situation is under better control.

I think it’s Peloton. The email doesn’t say anything about XPO.

The obvious answer to most of the Dutton’s problems is to get law enforcement or the legal system involved. As you mentioned, they surely have deep family connections in that part of the state and you would think law enforcement would come to their aid against an out of state corporation that employs ex-cons to provoke local ranchers via petty and sometimes violent crime. But we don’t get that because that would deprive us of getting to watch Wild West cowboy justice with horse chases, hanging guys from trees, cutting brands out of their chests, and dumping bodies off of cliffs. Last season the Beck Brothers kidnapped a child and instead of alerting the police and having a massive manhunt upon them, John begged the sheriff to keep it quiet so the Dutton family could turn into Seal Team Six for a few minutes. This show depends on these situations where bad guys provoke the Duttons to justify killing people and disappearing bodies. The writing is just very sloppy in setting it up in a way that’s at all believable. When they can’t figure out a way to make main bad guys die, they toss in a random episode where a biker gang decides to tailgate in a Yellowstone pasture and then attempt to burn the land for no plausible reason. I predict next season an oil company will decide they need to start drilling on the land.

I bought a Peloton today. Currently scheduled for Sept 16 delivery. Wife and I normally run or cycle outdoors several times a week but it’s too damn hot right now. We also had a gym membership which we would use for weight training or for indoor cardio when the Texas weather gets too hot or too cold. The gym is out for us until COVID has run its course, so we need a way to maintain cardio from the comfort of our home. We’ve also done a mixture of Cyclebar, Zyn22, Smart Barre, yoga, Class Pass, etc. and I hope the non-cycling part of the Peloton app will fill that void until further notice. Pretty excited, just wish delivery could be faster.

I was pretty critical of season 1 for 2 key reasons: -I hated all of the main characters -The plot was absurd I did a hard pass on season 2 last year, but due to Covid and having abundant free time, I caved and just binged seasons 2 and 3. I think season 2 went a long way towards redeeming the show for me, primarily because they made certain characters more likable. Kayce became less of a dumbass, John became less of a complete narcissistic asshole, and Rip is definitely someone I can root for. Instead of having the entire Dutton family constantly fighting each other, they created good external antagonists with the Beck brothers. I do think it was a major mistake to kill off the Beck brothers in the season 2 finale, especially the limp dicked way in which they did it. Sounds like that’s a common criticism. Season 3 has been a mixed bag for me so far. The characters have progressed in a way that mostly interests me, aside from Jamie constantly getting the Theon Greyjoy treatment. The way Beth and John constantly treat him like trash and then watching him sit there and take it like an abused dog is beyond tiresome. The plot continues to be a hot mess. Jamie’s ascent from ranch hand to Livestock Commissioner to Attorney General was comical. Agent Hendon killed the guys in the back of the horse trailer, then later apparently walked free and back to being an agent no big deal. Monica serving as bait for a murderer rapist also seemed out of place. The biggest plot objection I have is the idea that teenage Beth went into a clinic for an abortion and got a full on hysterectomy in a span of hours. Even if we put aside the issue of informed consent for a minor without her parent present, that’s a major surgery that requires anesthesia and post-op recovery, yet she seemed essentially normal when she saw young Rip in the stable later. The idea that this could occur so quickly and easily without John knowing is absurd. But then again, this show converted John’s colon cancer into fake cancer after a vet did abdominal surgery in the field and declared him good based on an X-ray. Despite the plot shortcomings, I’m back on board mainly due to the improvement in the core characters. Hopefully Sheridan can eventually figure out the story telling part.

I enjoyed this quite a bit. Maybe a few weak spots but overall I thought the script, acting, and production was great. It’s set up nicely for next season which I’ll be looking forward to.

Shelby had a blood transfusion last week and rebounded to about 90% normal for a few days, but unfortunately started a downhill slide this past week. We took her back to the vet and they did more testing and determined she has renal failure and there is nothing more that can be done. We have her on 6 different medicines that they hope will prolong her life, but it’s basically palliative care at this point. My wife and I both knew this would eventually happen - she’s 12 years old and had a cancer that is considered terminal - but it’s still a gut punch. She’s had surgery, a 12 week course of chemo, and ongoing medical therapy. Her quality of life has been unbelievable throughout this time and my wife is a saint for taking her to every appointment and making sure she never misses a medication dose. We’ve spent the equivalent of a new SUV on her treatment and it was worth every penny, but eventually there is a time when it simply can’t be fixed. Today was a bit tough for us because she was lethargic and just seemed a bit dazed. No signs of pain because we know what to do in that case, just slept a lot and slow to move, definitely not her normal self. The writing is on the wall and that hit us hard. We went out to eat to take our minds off it and came home to find her standing at the back door and wagging her tail, waiting on us to come in. That made me pretty damn happy because I love the way she greets us (her sister, Nora, ignores us) and I thought the days of Shelby greeting at the door were over. Even in her poor health she still misters the strength to welcome us home. Sorry for being a downer, it’s just a shitty process and it helps to externalize it. She’s still a part of our lives but time is short and every moment is increasingly precious.

Telluride is great. Probably our second favorite place on Earth and we almost went there last month when we thought our St. Barth trip would be nixed. We’ve had 2 different sets of friends who went in June and said it was fine during Covid.

Sorry for your loss. He was a great dog.

Forgive me if this has been addressed but I’m out of the loop here... the Texas DSHS dashboard shows daily fatalities dropping to zero the last few days. What’s up with that? I obviously don’t believe the data, but up until this week, I had trusted that source for Texas specific COVID numbers. Is the website broken or is something else happening?

Ours was 11 when this started so I definitely understand, but it’s your family member and money is just money. Good luck to Crosby. Hopefully it turns out benign.

Shelby made it home today. Doing pretty well and definitely better than when we took her in, but still has less energy compared to a week or so ago. We’re just happy to have her with us again and we’ll see if she’s able to recover some more over the next few days. Thanks for the well wishes.

+1 in favor of Wild Acre on Camp Bowie. Any info on their to-go beer prices?