Paying the Price

 Well, the Staycation has begun.  Nothing is really planned for the next 6 days.  This means I'm wondering if I'll end up taking a personal day next Saturday.  Now why would I do that?  I'm scheduled  off on Sunday, and that would give me 8 days in a row.  The temptation is there, believe me.

I watched the Disney / Pixar film Coco last evening.  It was entertaining.  I was surprised, I thought it was going to be a musical.  The song at the end, the one that won the Oscar?  I thought it was nice, but evidently didn't find it as emotional as some did.

And there's now a movie on tap for tonight.  

Biggie's laying on the floor looking at me. I didn't have my regular breakfast, which has changed from the oatmeal.  Now it's an egg over easy and a slice of homemade Italian bread.  Usually, he and Lilly get a lick at the bowl, but this morning I had cottage cheese with blueberries and walnuts so that didn't happen today, and now brown eyes are damning me to hell.  

And yesterday The Guardian published an article blatantly points out what many of us have known for months, that Republicans are killing their own voters with Covid.  For them, the comparison of Republican Governors is to Nero, who's now seen as a psychotic.  You know?  Letting Rome burn while he fiddled away on some hill.  And, evidently that ass Abbott went to some loon festival celebrating no masks and no vaccines and played his fiddle.  I think it's funny, they call themselves Patriots and I call them suicidal.  Truthfully, I wouldn't be surprised if everyone in the picture has been vaccinated.  You know how Republican minds work.  It's always the little guys who pay the price.

Cover this

 After today I don't have to work for 6 full days, now isn't that nice.  I am sooooo happy for that.  And just what will I be doing on my Staycation, probably not as much as I did on the one I took about 3 weeks ago.  But then, isn't this how life is supposed to be as we get older.  Do less while we do more?  This means I'm not going to laze around, though the temptation will be great.  There is a difference between doing, and accomplishing, one is a process and the other a completion.

Yesterday was really slow I work.  I had an appointment scheduled for 5:15 PM and the customer showed up 10 minutes before I was going to leave, over an hour late.  This was for a blind design.  Some customers will spend a lot of money on blinds, thousands of dollars.  Yes, you read that right, they will fork out thousands of dollars.  The associate I handed them off to is very meticulous with his designs.  Customers love him for that.  He will spend 2 hours making sure the design is correct.  Me?  I'll spend 10 minutes.  Yesterday's late customer will probably be much happier with him.

Here's a bit of something you might find interesting, concept art for the next book cover.  As I said, it was a fairly slow day at work yesterday.

I saw where Dum Dum DeSantis rolled out treatment for Covid: monoclonal antibodies.  Treatments are intravenous and take over an hour, and help patients with mild to moderate symptoms.  This is some of the same shit they shot into Trump when he had Covid.  This is doing nothing to stop the spread.  Wouldn't it be smarter to get people vaccinated, rather then wait until they were moderately ill to do something?  Not if your a MAGA.

Oh, and speaking of Loser #45.  Yesterday was supposed to be reinstatement day for him.  Stop...Laughing!  Stop...Laughing!

News

 Well hello and good morning!  This is my 2nd day off in what one person at work called a mini-staycation.  I have been relaxing.  Taking the occasional ibuprofen for my back.  I switched from naproxen,  For some reason, the naproxen didn't seem to be able to knock out the inflammation.  Mornings do make me feel like a creaky old man.

I'm going to need to mow the lawn either today or tomorrow.  The weather's forecast to be nice both days, of course the forecasters have only been accurate about the heat.  Yesterday there was a 70% chance of rain and?  Nothing.  Not a single drop.  Which is good.  We've had way too much rain while other places have nothing but drought.  In time, people living in those stricken areas will begin to migrate.  This is how things have worked since the beginning.  Now, however, we are a much more mobile society so they'll drive to their new homes in places where the temps aren't so hot and dry.

I wore a pair of my new socks yesterday.  They're climbing socks, however, I didn't climb.  I only needed 4.5 miles to reach my goal for the week, so I rode 10.5 miles.  When I'm riding, time goes by fast.  My brain works.  Things just click, especially in the creative regions.  A friend says it's because I'm oxygenating the hell out of it.  What ever the reason, new ideas pop open like unseen vistas waiting to be explored.  Here are my climbing socks, in case you were wondering, and no, I didn't buy them from the giant orange home improvement retailer I work for.

I saw where Chris Christie was mumbling gibberish about the unvaccinated, saying they don't want to be indoctrinated.  Now, isn't that ripe.  These very conservatives are trying desperately to indoctrinate Americans into believing The Big Lie.  The article is rather amusing.  He laments how our political leaders haven't done a good enough job explaining vaccines.  Notice, how he tries to incorporate all political leaders.  Anyone with half a brain, that automatically excludes Republicans, knows that the only political leaders who have been running a constant tirade against vaccination are... Republicans.  To do otherwise would insinuate their Liar in Chief was... well... a liar.  No news there.

Fortune

 Monday has arrived.  This is my Staycation Hump Day.  I'm right in the middle.   Unfortunately, I've got to spend some of today at the car dealership.  There were 2 recalls that need to be taken care of on my car.  Hopefully they will only waste about an hour of my time.  I will do what I did last time.  Take the first chapters of The Body in Repose and reread and edit.

Yesterday, I spent the afternoon down in York with my friend Betsy.  We had lunch at a Chinese restaurant.  As is always the case, I ate way to much.  Here's my fortune:

I harvested my first cucumber yesterday.  I think I purchased the wrong kind, this looks more like the ones used in making pickles. Does anybody know if they're still edible?  I suppose they are as those you buy in the supermarket.

My lower back has been bothering me, so I'm going to go back on the naproxin regime.  It's been a quite some time.  Most likely I pulled something, or strained something.  Everything's ducky dandy after about 20 minutes with the heating pad, so I know it's nothing serious.

Evidently the Matty and MTG mini hatefest couldn't fine a venue wanting to let them spread their lies while they were in California.  They struck out 3 times.  Someone should tell them that after 3 strikes, your out.  Not that they'd believe you.  They'd claim you were lying.  This is what they desperately want to believe.  Any other truth would define them as seditious losers.  

And not surprisingly, China is now being charged with global hacking.  Duh.  I see these headlines and can not help but wonder how people could not realize this was happening.  I do hope our government is responding in like kind.  In fact, I'm even more surprised that we are not in the forefront of using this tool against our enemies.

Greece, and other things

 Today's my Friday.  Literally.  And this is odd, because it's also Friday all over the world!  For me, this is almost like celebrating a lunar eclipse.  And, of course, my staycation begins tomorrow, or to be more precise, around 7 PM this evening, give or take a few minutes.  I might leave work early.  The great orange home improvement retailer I work for gave people over the age of 65 six weeks of personal time because of Covid.  They were very generous.  I cashed a lot of a number of days in to pay off my car, and used the occasional day now and then.  The days I haven't used will be paid out on my next paycheck.  Now, ain't that nice?

So, what am I going to be doing with my time off?  Well, work on the aquariums, for one.  The fish have started eating some of the plants in the big tank, not all the plants, they don't touch the broadleafs, but everything else?  Hungry little buggers.  They get fed three times a day.  So, I bought some artificial tall plants for the back of the tank.  If they look okay, I'll keep them.

A friend of mine started ending his emails with punctuation smileys.  They're odd.  Like this: (;  I'm wondering if  he might be a little dyslexic. 

And I went for a ride in Greece yesterday.  Lordos.  There are some nice 9% and 12% grade hills.  This is the ride where the deer run across the road.  Here, in central PA, it's not that unusual to see deer running across the road.  You don't really expect it in Greece.

I find it rather amusing that Republicans in congress are now wringing their hands and whining horrifically the Schumer is playing hardball, and that it's not fair.  Excuse me, but this is the same party who, when they had control of both the House and the Senate, told everyone to "shut up, we're in charge, we're going to do what we want."  Of course, this what we have come to expect from stinking losers.

Harvesting

 So, Day 1 of my Staycation was fine.  I had lunch with my friend Betsy, teased her with the first chapter of The Body in the Loch, and ended the visit with a trip to Dairy Queen where I had a large Drumstick Blizzard.  As I commented to Bathwater on 6/8 I love Blizzards. 

The rest of the evening was spent in relaxation, not doing anything... well, that's not quite true, I did run the dishwasher, but that isn't really work.

I packed away the medical thermometer given to my by my employer, the large Orange Home Improvement retailer.  Hopefully, I will never have to use the damn thing on a daily basis ever again.  Unfortunately, I still need to complete the Associate Health Check before the time clock will let me punch in; I can't wait for that to disappear as well.

Here are some of the character names from The Body in Repose:  Cookie Lindquist, Raj Beneh, Sheila Caine, and Antoine DeGuerre.  Character names are very important.  It's not unusual for me to spend several weeks choosing them.  I guess, in a way, it's a lot like naming your children, which is odd, since why would you want to give a good name to a character you know is going to be bad?

The harvest has begun on my peaches.  Some of them are fairly sizeable, some not so, being the size of walnuts.  

Oh, and it case any of you didn't know, Bibi Netanyahu got his ass fired.  I saw where he's spitting his own version of The Big Lie.  Not only is he a corrupt politician, he's a bad loser, almost as bad as the Orange Anus.  And I saw where Putin defended Russia's action against his political rivals by calling them dissenters and claiming we did the same thing...  you have to remember, he's talking specifically about the Republican party, and even more specifically the Orange Anus.  He's going to create a Civil War in Russia... and he's going to lose.  I will harvest peaches and he will harvest failure.

Winding Down

On the last day of my staycation, I plan to do laundry.  I am an excitable one, aren't I?  Not having to go to work, I've spent most of the past 7 days wearing sweats.  Comfy, eh?  That's the idea.  I had planned on getting more running and cycling in... well, they didn't happen as much as I had hoped.  Keep in mind, flexibility is essential for survival.  Things narrow when you strictly follow a regime excluding chance or choice.  I know people who are rigid and unbending and wonder how they can live a life so void of opportunity.

Anyway, I don't know if Maddie's entry yesterday on scrotox influenced me or not, but yesterday afternoon I made meatballs.

I've also spend quite a bit of time working on the final draft of The Body in the Loch.  I like to think my books are a cross between Hitchcock an Christie.  This one is a bit different, however, more like Hitchcock turns Downton Abbey into a thriller.

And, of course, I have been thinking about the next book.  Right off the bat there are certain things I need to exclude:  water, snakes, towers, museums, ghost towns... oh, and tango dancers.  I might go artsy, with a touch of art deco.  One of the titles flitting around in my head is The Body in Repose, sort of like a still life painting... with a little murder.

The impeachment is in the process of wrapping up.  Trumps idiot defense team took all of 3 hours to lie.  Either today or tomorrow the Senate will vote on his guilt or innocense.  Most think they already know the outcome.  During this trial we've seen Republican Senators doodle, and dawdle, and even disappear from time to time.  These Republicans believe many of America's voters have a short term memory, that by the time the 2022 election rolls around they will have forgotten January 6.  They really don't give Americans much credit, do they?  Niki Haley, however, is breaking ranks.  She understands that the far right, the MAGA heads, will never vote for a woman, so she's setting her sights on all those dissatisfied, moderate Republicans.  Breaking with Trump will give her some advantage, however, her socially conservative background is a big hindrance since American now realizes that without Social Conservatives, there would never have been a Trump in the White House.