csziggy
csziggy's JournalStephen Gives A Presidential Makeup Tutorial
Traveling to the UK next year! Need accomodation advice
My husband and I will be there for over two months with a specialized tour in the middle of our time there. We will start in Glasgow, tour Scotland, Yorkshire, and Lincolnshire before the tour. Then we will be in London for a week, and move on to Devon, Cornwall, Wales and other parts of southern England.
Originally I was looking at renting cottages for a week at a time in the middle of the areas we want to visit and had looked at Sykescottages.com and cottages.com. While the cottages they list look great the reviews of the companies are terrible. I thought about AirBnB but their reviews as a company are worse.
So now I am checking out combinations of bread and breakfast facilities and hotels. I am confused by the room designations.
When they say "double room" without listing the size of the bed, does that mean a double bed? My husband and I are large people and we're used to a king size bed. A queen or double would simply be too small!
Because of past health issues I need a shower and not shower above a bath tub. Can I reasonably expect any traditional B&B to have that?
Any suggestions for the best place to search for my needs and book rooms? I've looked at Hotels.com and TripAdvisor.com for reviews but never booked with them.
Thanks!
Despite federal ruling, Jacksonville college campuses won't have early voting this year
By Andrew Pantazi
Posted Jul 27, 2018 at 2:46 PM
Duval County Supervisor of Elections Mike Hogan closed the door on the possibility of opening early voting sites on college campuses for the 2018 elections.
This week, a federal judge ruled that the state could not bar elections supervisors from hosting early voting on college campuses. Already, supervisors in other counties have said they plan to open early voting sites in time for November.
Alachua and Hillsborough county’s elections supervisors have already said they intend to host early voting at the University of Florida and the University of South Florida, and Leon County’s supervisor said he wasn’t ruling the possibility out at Tallahassee’s colleges.
But Hogan said there are no plans to open up early voting at the University of North Florida or Florida State College at Jacksonville.
http://www.jacksonville.com/news/20180727/despite-federal-ruling-jacksonville-college-campuses-wont-have-early-voting-this-year
Trans Women Say the State Department Is Retroactively Revoking Their Passports
By Mary Emily O'Hara
July 27, 2018
Since she transitioned in 1998, at the age of 16, all of Danni Askini’s identity documents have read “female.” But last month, when Askini went to renew her passport, her request was denied. Askini says the U.S. Passport Office told her she had “failed to disclose” that she was transgender and needed to provide proof of gender transition — after 20 years of having a passport that says she’s female.
“Make no mistake, this was an intentional action by the State Department to withhold recognizing my gender,” says Askini, who was eventually granted a temporary two-year passport that allowed her to travel from her Seattle home to Sweden. The activist and executive director of Gender Justice League needed to leave Seattle, she says, after a series of death threats posted on the anti-trans website Kiwi Farms, as well as threats from local alt-right groups in the Pacific Northwest. She’d had her most recent passport for 10 years, but it was up for renewal.
<SNIP>
Askini bhttps://www.democraticunderground.com/122858544elieves the only reason she was eventually granted a temporary passport is because Seattle-based congresswoman Rep. Pramila Jayapal’s office put direct pressure on the passport agency on the well-known activist’s behalf.
“I believe that the Trump Administration or someone in the Seattle Passport Office has targeted me politically and politicized the process for obtaining passports,” says Askini. “Their actions and statements are NOT consistent with the actual letter of the code related to trans people.”
Morehttps://www.them.us/story/trans-women-state-department-passports
Here's Why This Mama Merganser Has More Than 50 Ducklings
I can't post the picture here - but it is worth going to the Audubon page to see it!
By Jillian Mock
July 13, 2018
Update July 17: According to the photographer of the first image, the mother merganser has since been spotted with another two dozen ducklings, bringing her total up to 76 .
Choppy waves bounced Brent Cizek’s small plastic boat as he headed for the shore of Lake Bemidji in Minnesota, hoping to beat a fast approaching summer storm. An amateur wildlife photographer, Cizek had decided to brave the late-afternoon winds to scope out the lakeshore for future shoots. He’d only brought one lens, thinking he might get a shot of a mallard he’d seen the day before, but wasn’t expecting to photograph anything special.
Then, as he motored toward the boat slip, Cizek saw something remarkable: a female Common Merganser surrounded by more than 50 little ducklings. While Cizek watched, the little mergansers formed a long, orderly line behind their mom and began swimming away. The scene was too good to pass up.
“I probably shot 50 pictures, and I was just praying that one was going to turn out sharp because the waves were so strong it was nearly impossible to even keep them in the frame,” Cizek says. To further complicate things, he had to alternate between maneuvering his little trolling motor and quickly snapping pictures. “Luckily enough, just one picture turned out.”
https://www.audubon.org/news/heres-why-mama-merganser-has-more-50-ducklings
Bluetooth mouse not working
Yesterday I switched out one of my hard drives - a 6TB for an old 3TB - no problems at the time. I partitoned and formatted the new drive, then copied the contents of one partition off the old drive,no problem.
I wanted to wait until the evening was over to copy the other two partitons, but suddenly the bluetooth mouse stopped working. I got out the bluetooth mouse for my laptop - nothing. I've uninstalled the mouse and the software, rebooted the computer to let it reinstall (which it did), nothing. I checked the bluetooth service (which was off), restarted it, nothing.
I've back and forth between the two different bluetooth mice, one a Microsoft the other a Logitech, at each step, nothing.
Any suggestions? When I go into town today I'll pick up a wired mouse but at this point I'm concerned that won't work either! Using Win 7 with a non-touch screen is pretty much a PITA without a mouse.
HELP!
The Rarest Ducklings on earth
ETA - this the the same guy that posted "The Smallest Bird you have ever seen" video about hatching a tiny egg and raising the chick that came out! His YouTube channel is A Chick Called Albert: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBjh-uGy5RcclATnFpQBobw
The Bell Museum at the University of Minnesota
Was just rededicated in a new building this past weekend. My husband and his brothers, plus one of our nieces and her family attended - because my husband's great grandfather, Dr. Thomas Sadler Roberts was the first Director of the Bell Museum.
Dr.Roberts grew up in Minneapolis and in his teens he worked as a surveyor and explored much of the state of Minnesota. Even as he continued his education to be a physician, he kept his love of the wilderness and of birds. He was as much an ornithologist as a medical doctor, writing The Birds of Minnesota, a massive two volume compendium that exhaustively covered the birds of his home state.
One of his patients was James Ford Bell, the founder of General Mills and a dedicated conservationist. Bell donated the money to found the museum and enlisted his friend, T. S. Roberts, to organize it. As T.S Roberts traveled the state of Minnesota to collect specimens, he was upset to realize how much the environment had changed since he first explored the land. He had to go to other states to collect samples of some of the species.
The dioramas at the Bell are renowned for their natural depictions of the varied habitats of Minnesota. The specimens are put into settings that emulate their native areas. Those dioramas were the hardest part about moving the museum since the curators wanted to preserve not only the specimens but the murals that provided the background for each scene.
There is an hour and a half long video about moving the dioramas - I haven't watched it yet since my husband just told me about it today. he got home at four this morning so we are still catching up on his time in Minnesota. But I found it on YouTube:
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