Iona Abbey, Scotland
Christmas 2022
by Bunk Five Hawks X ( 133 Comments › )Filed under Uncategorized at December 25th, 2022 - 12:00 am
A Sad, Yet Inevitable Open.
by coldwarrior ( 225 Comments › )Filed under Open thread at December 16th, 2022 - 12:34 pm
IT’s AN OPEN! don’t be sad!
Some days are better than others, and some days just suck.
Mrs Coldwarrior is on her way to New Jersey to help attend to her father who will pass soon. Arch-Priest Dedushka Coldwarrior does not have long. He has fought liver and prostate cancer for 5 years and will soon finally lose. His pacemaker was shut off last night.
This was an extraordinary fellow. His family was kicked out of the Soviet Union in 1984. Even in the bad old days, the Soviets didn’t shoot or gulag the priests. Pope John Paul II secured passage to Rome. JPII did not need to do these things as there has always been some animosity between Rome and the Orthodox church, as silly as the arguments over Filioque are. They left Moscow and lived in the Vatican for a year. What a difference! My sister in law worked in the papal gardens and Mrs Coldwarrior had run of the place! Rome worked with the Orthodox Church to find him a Parish. And, as luck would have it, he got one in southern New Jersey. The Vatican paid to get them from Rome to NJ. There are reasons that JPII is a Saint and has Eastern Orthodox Icons written of his likeness.
After the move, Dedushka started working in the Parish and took a job at Green Giant where he worked for 30 years. Babushka Coldwarrior cleaned houses up until she passed 6 years go, MEMORY ETERNAL! His story of how he tried to pay back the state of New Jersey for the welfare benefits they used are legend. NJ had no idea how to process his payment. PAID.BACK.IN.FULL. He finally had to get a local state rep involved. There is a framed letter from Gov Whitman lauding his pay-back that Mrs Coldwarrior is going to try to get. Dedushka is also a shockingly amazing artist. His copies of famous paintings are unreal in their accuracy. As long as the copy is of different size from the original, it’s legit. This passes to our middle daughter, quite the artist.
Imagine, you are a teen-age girl and have no English, enter a new high school in a foreign land, and then become successful. It’s extraordinary. All three daughters are RN’s. One is a nurse practioner, Mrs Coldwarrior is advanced practice neurotrauma / stroke, and the other is a burn/trauma specialist. All 3 are VERY MAGA. This is how immigration should be.
So, my next few days are up in the air, waiting for the sad inevitable. Our girls are very sad. We would all see Dedushka on our trips to the beach. We would make sure that he stayed a few days on the ocean and relax. He would always buy us too much fresh fruit to carry home. This became somewhat of a family joke to the point that I would have may largest cooler empty for the trip home for the 30 pounds of fruit! Tell me, how are 5 people supposed to eat that much fruit before it all goes off? He would have one cigar a year, with me, out on the fishing deck where we rent. A Hammer and Sickle Hermitage. I have 3 in reserve in the humidor, they haven’t been made in years. I will have one now, look out over the Ohio River Valley, have a shot of Russian Vodka, and wait for my kids to get home from school.
Our local Orthodox Church will have this day’s vespers for him, Sunday’s Liturgy will be dedicated. I will refrain from ‘memory eternal’ and lighting incense, and praying at Icons until it is time. For those of you of the religious persuasion, no matter the denomination, please pray for consolation for Mrs Coldwarrior, her sisters, and the Parish who are losing a great man.
He is the reason I converted from Catholicism to Orthodox, he is always serine, always at peace, always bigger than life in my eyes, yet he is only 5′ 4″ on a good day.
NCAA Football Army v Navy 2022
by coldwarrior ( 228 Comments › )Filed under College Football, Open thread at December 10th, 2022 - 11:29 am
No Heisman trophy nominees, no super-stars, no one going to play on Sundays. It’s sport for the sake of sport and for the sake of pride. It’s old school, wing formation, option run offense. Navy is 8-1 when they DON’T throw the ball even once! The quarterbacks on these two sides are just another running back who just might throw the ball a couple of times.
It’s Army-Navy Football. It’s the only game played on week 15. No one would dare schedule another game today.
|
@
 Army |
3:00 PM |
Navy is a 3 point favorite today in neutral-site Filthadelphia. I’m down to $400/1000 this year, so I suck. I’ll save that $ for bowl games. This is the first time ever that I am in the negative at the end of the season, and I’ve been betting college ball with ‘fake money’ for a good 15 years!
Enjoy the game
GO ARMY, BEAT NAVY!!!
NCAAA Football Week 14 2022. Championship Week OPEN
by coldwarrior ( 196 Comments › )Filed under College Football, Friday Cigar, Open thread at December 2nd, 2022 - 10:55 pm
Written from the deck whilst (yes, I said whilst) smoking a brisket and an Opus X:
Well, i’m back down to $1000/1000. If this were real money, I would have quit at being +600., as I said.
But, this aint real money and it is Championship Week.
I am smoking a Fuente Opus X. Insane expensive, I didn’t buy it, it was gifted by an MD I work with. I helped him through his rotation in the ER (a rare resident MD who actually asked the RNs questions, more on that later). Tabacalera A. Fuente make some insane excellent cigars. This one is just…It might be the best cigar that I have ever had.
10 minutes later…yep. Good God. Ok, I get it.
Lets mess with some ball:
At the time of writing, USC is losing the PACwhatever to Utah. This kills any chance of a team in west making it to the playoffs. Keep playing fagbollsoccer westies! Participation trophies to all yins. Like i said at the beginning of the year, the PAC? is gonna be over rated again…Oregon…just like every year. I remember the days where the UCLA v USC game was the gateway to Rose Bowl, and glory heaped upon the victors by Keith Jackson aka Plini the Elder).
It’s desolate in the football west. Sad hunks of metal of what were proud, dominating football machines are meandering in mediocrity and can’t quite get their footing, any footing, something. It’s a sad as hell day when USC or UCLA aren’t part of the End Of Year ‘Who’s the best?’
So who is the best? After what M just did to ohIo….go dot an i osu. I can’t say that I was upset by this because, to be really honest, the only people who I know who are more obnoxious and single minded than PSU fans are the Ohio State faithful. I’m a PITT guy and live half way between the two nut farms. O or M….well, I know folks who graduated from both. BUT…my great uncle was M Law…so that trumps it. Now, M has to get on the horse. They will most likely have to play SEC…GEORGIA if they get that far.
There are no participation trophies today, who gets to the playoffs is done after tonight:
9-3 Utah just crushed 11-1 USC at the time of writing, maybe USC makes the playoffs as the sad gimp from the hinterland. Probably not.
None of the Championship games matter this year because the big divisions got so big so fast the they cut them up in to two, east west, north south… Watch these inter-divisions go away after this abysmal showing.
Michigan and Ohio State are in the same group of the Big10…M gets to play some team from another group…Perdue, i think, to win the big 10. Maybe M and OSU might have to play twice, throw PSU in there…Purdue??? Purdue.
Same thing in the other groups. I can see where this divisions in leagues goes away real fast.
This is the worst Championship Saturday that I have ever seen and I have no interest in any of the games. Let’s look:
 10 Kansas State |
@
 3 TCU |
12:00 PM |
Blowout
Woops…..the line is 1.5 against the frogs? TCU covers x$600!!!
 14 LSU |
@
 1 Georgia |
4:00 PM |
18 points? this is supposed to be AN SEC CHAMPIONSHIP GAME!!!
bite me
EFFF OFFF.
|
@
 2 Michigan |
8:00 PM |
8-4 Boilermakers V 12-0 Michigan for the Big 10 Championship??? the line is 17. so what.
There are other games, but what matters is the playoff picture.
Georgia, Michigan…and the also rans. I must admit, I do love watching Ohio State implode over and over again.
Maybe recruit some better people with a modicum character instead of fast hood rats. Woody Hayes would have done this differently.
College football is a wonderful thing, a day out supporting my Beloved Panthers as an undergraduate, graduate, and then as a dad with my kids and wife (also a grad) is something special. It’s the Alma Mater, the comradery, and the knowledge in your heart that those people from that other school are under educated neanderthal scum! But I digress, It’s OK that there is almost zero interest in my college football rantings here. Yinz put up with me. And that makes this all worth it.
