{"id":385,"date":"2010-11-04T09:04:59","date_gmt":"2010-11-04T14:04:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/gazette\/2010\/11\/04\/101104_randomthursday\/"},"modified":"2023-10-10T13:52:01","modified_gmt":"2023-10-10T18:52:01","slug":"101104_randomthursday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/2010\/11\/04\/101104_randomthursday\/","title":{"rendered":"Random Thursday"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A few observations while marveling at the fact that a &#8220;Random Thursday&#8221; post is actually getting posted on a Thursday.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I was reading <a href=\"http:\/\/www.biblegateway.com\/passage\/?search=Lamentations%205&amp;version=NASB\">the fifth chapter of Lamentations<\/a> this morning (when&#8217;s the last time you read the most depressing book of the Bible?) and a particular verse caught my attention. Now, keep in mind that Lamentations was written as just that&#8230;a book of mourning over the sad state of Israel, suffering God&#8217;s judgment for the nation&#8217;s willful sinfulness. Many, many bad things have happened to Israel, but verse four expresses dismay at one quite specific tragedy:\n<div class=\"quote\" style=\"margin-top: 1em;\">We have to pay for our drinking water.<\/div>\n<p style=\"margin-top: 1em;\">My, how things change. Or not.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li style=\"margin-top: 1.25em;\">Today is the last time I have to give my father-in-law a daily injection of post-surgery blood thinner. I&#8217;m going to suggest that, given the level of shot-giving expertise I&#8217;ve developed, we celebrate the occasion by me doing it blindfolded. I&#8217;ll let you know how that goes.<\/li>\n<li style=\"margin-top: 1.25em;\">We were discussing grapefruit at dinner last night (yes, our conversations represent the pinnacle of human intellectual endeavor) and everyone shared their family&#8217;s peculiarities when it comes to eating that fruit. Some opted for salt; others, sugar. My family fell into the latter category, although I don&#8217;t recall that we ate a lot of grapefruit when I was a child. But I remarked that we probably went the sugar route because Ruby Red grapefruit probably hadn&#8217;t been invented at that time, and so the grapefruit we ate was overly tart. Well, I was wrong about that; according to Wikipedia, <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Grapefruit\">the Ruby Red was patented in 1929<\/a>, and despite what you think, I&#8217;m not that old. But I do wonder whether any Ruby Reds ever found their way to Evans Grocery in Fort Stockton in the late &#8217;50s\/early &#8217;60s.<\/li>\n<li style=\"margin-top: 1.25em;\">And, finally, let&#8217;s talk bicycles for a bit, shall we? Below is a photo of what is by far the coolest recumbent I&#8217;ve seen in a while. It&#8217;s manufactured by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hi-bent.com.ar\/\">an Argentinian company called Hi-Bent<\/a> and while its website doesn&#8217;t have an English language option, it&#8217;s easy enough to determine that the bike has an aluminum frame, front and rear disc brakes, and a unique front mono-fork. Cannondale has for years spec&#8217;d its <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cannondale.com\/usa\/usaeng\/Products\/Bikes\/Suspension\/Headshok\/LEFTY-ULTRA\/Details\/2810-LFTYUCPBR-Lefty-Ultra-Carbon-PBR\">Lefty<\/a> mono-fork on its high-end mountain bikes, but I can&#8217;t recall seeing this on a recumbent.\n<p style=\"text-align: center; margin-top: 1em;\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"border: 1px solid #cccccc;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/images\/misc\/hibent.jpg\" alt=\"Photo - Hi-Bent Recumbent\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-top: 1em;\">The other thing that caught my eye is the unusual construction of the rear frame. It appears that there&#8217;s no wheel dropouts; the rear axle skewer must be completely removed in order remove the wheel. This seems excessively complex and I don&#8217;t understand the benefits, but it&#8217;s certainly a different look.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A few observations while marveling at the fact that a &#8220;Random Thursday&#8221; post is actually getting posted on a Thursday. I was reading the fifth chapter of Lamentations this morning (when&#8217;s the last time you read the most depressing book of the Bible?) and a particular verse caught my attention. Now, keep in mind that&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/2010\/11\/04\/101104_randomthursday\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Random Thursday<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cycling","category-random-thursday","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=385"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12591,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385\/revisions\/12591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}