Oh, Canada!

We have 64 (F) outside and high humidity.  There was a threat of thunderstorms throughout yesterday with dark clouds rushing overhead and a constant breeze from the west.  We got nothing, until last night, or I guess I should say early this morning.  Then we had a thunder boomer loud enough to wake me up.  And then we had over 15 minutes of sirens.  Today?  They're calling for more sunshine with a high in the upper 70s (F).  I work all day, so the weather isn't going to effect me that much,

Saturdays and Sundays are none workout days, but some nice words were written yesterday before I went to work.  Are the Cassadas, Mary and Carlos, in over their heads?  Or is there something else going on?  She wrote a bestselling fitness book, "Some Do, Most Don't," and he owns a string of gyms in Barcelona and Madrid called "Todo o Nada."  One might wander why they set up a wellness clinic in Bally-Seamus, Ireland.

I got 2 measures yesterday, which will keep management happy.  Evidently there are some changes coming down the pike in regard to attendance that are not going to make people happy.  They want people to conform with policies that haven't been enforced in years.  I'm part-time, so these really don't effect me that much, though some full time associates will have problems.  I don't doubt that this is a means to speed up the move from full time associates to part-timers.

And what about that Mark Carney?  Believe me, every country in the world is watching Canada.  Their Prime Minister has drawn a line in the sand, and let's be honest here, the loser in the White House is spineless.  He does not deal with confrontation well.  He gets mad and stomps his little feet, and shakes his little fists, then backs down repeating the lie about how he wins so much.  

From what I'm hearing, the US was demanding more than trade concessions, there were demands on language concessions and cultural concessions.  This is because those pea brains running this country do desperately want Canada to be a 51st state.  The conservatives running this country are concerned about 3 things:  selfishness, greed, and expansionism.  That's right, expansionism.  Their brains are living in the past.  They want to return to the time when there was an Ottoman Empire, and a British Empire.  They want to rule people, and dominate people.  The fact that the human species has been down that road before, and that path led to miserable failure.  There is a reason there are no longer any empires.  But these pea brained conservatives never think.  They will never learn from the past.  They don't understand that unless they change, they're running straight towards the guillotine. 

The End of Oak Street

We have 59 (F) outside and last night was great sleeping weather!  Sunshine is on the menu for today, with temps in the 70s (F).  That's another plus.  Tomorrow, however, skies are supposed to be overcast and there's supposed to be rain.  That's okay.  I work.  Our daily highs in the long range forecast might hit the low 80s (F).  That's fine, too.  I'm looking forward to autumn.  Looking back, except for those 3 weeks during which our temps were simply scorching, this hasn't been a bad summer.  But we did have severe storms.  We had another yesterday afternoon.  While there were some serious gusts of wind, the torrential rains were what caused all of the flash flood warnings.

No yard work was done yesterday because the threat of rain was constant.  So, I puttered around the house, and worked on the book.  The Cassadas, Carlos and Mary, have entered the plotline.  I'd sent the first chapter to a reader for an opinion and received the comment, "at least no one's name ends in S."  Some people have a problem with names ending in S when you make them possessive.  Should the name be Cassadas' or Cassadas's.  There are a lot of rule books, and depending upon which you follow, either example can be correct.  So, I promptly informed the reader that he hadn't met the Cassadas yet.

I went to see The End of Oak Street last night.  Set in the early 1980s, a family wakes up to discover that a 2 mile diameter section of their suburb has been transported back several million years.  That's right, there are dinosaurs in the neighborhood.  This movie rocks!  For a long time scientists thought dinosaurs were large reptiles, then, as discovery and discovery was unearthed, they realized they were not related to lizards but to birds.  Believe me, a T-Rex with feathers is far more terrifying than one without.  Put simply, this is the story of the Platts trying to survive as their neighbors become dinosaur food.

So, someone in the White House is leaking the dirt on Natalie Harp.  Rumor has it that the leaker is none other than Karoline Leavitt.  Supposedly she's royally pissed that Orangie left her on the decoy plane to be blown to smithereens.  I also understand that the cultists are all fluttery (key feathered raptor image) in a good/bad way.  To them, he is a celebrity president who is now embroiled in a scandal they find most titillating.  And the administration is so flummoxed they paid Melanoma an untold sum of $$$ to put in a personal appearance with Orangie yesterday.  Can you hear me laughing?  No one is going to believe that expensive charade.  Truthfully, they may have done more damage than good.  Obsessives like Natalie, while knowing secrecy is imperative, desperately want the world to know that she is Orangie's personal binky.  In fact, some are pondering if there's a boiled bunny in her future.

For those who are intersted, here is one of her letters to Orangie.

 

Tax the Rich

So, we've got 69 (F) outside and an overcast sky.  Rain is in the forecast.  Temps will hover in the mid 70s (F) and the showers will be on again, off again.  Right now they're off again.  Oh, and the humidity is back.  The threat of rain pretty much pretty much eliminates the possibility of my doing any yardwork.  That's disappointing.  Now I'm going to have to go for a ride on my bike to get my daily cardio.

I did get yardwork done yesterday  Bit by bit the branches are disappearing and my piles of mulch keep growing.  I got 2 bags of mulch yesterday.  While mulch isn't expensive, mine is free, and I'm going to end up with the equivalent of a truck load.

The new schedule is out and starting the week after Labor Day, I'm back to working Thursdays.  This is a good thing.  I want to pay my car off and those 18 hours weeks were slowing down the process.  

Otherwise, yesterday was pretty meh.  Some laundry was done.  Some cleaning was done.  An hour and a half of lawn cleanup was completed.  

Two new characters have entered the story in The Body in the Words, Heath and Mrs. Porridge.  I don't know if I've mention this or not, but there no one name Porridge lives in Ireland.  I've checked.  So this makes Mrs. P quite an original character.  She, herself, is aware of this and loves the fact that she is so distinct from everyone else.

And yesterday this happened.

Republicans knew were going to hit this number, however they thought we get this deep debt at some point later down the road.  And why were they wrong?  Total incompetence for one.  As I've said before, Republicans will always kill the economy.  One of the big reasons for this horrific amount of debt is the completely unnecessary war with Iran.  Hegseth is spending money faster than our mint can print the stuff.  Another big reason is that big tax break Orangie gave the 1%.  There are other reasons, but those 2 are at the top of the list.  Because Republicans bend over backwards for the 1%, that tax burden is placed directly on the backs of the average American.  Someone's got to pay the bill, and it sure as hell isn't going to be Bezos, or Zuckerberg, or any other member of the billionaire club.  The only way we will ever get rid of this debt is by taxing them... a lot.  They are the reason most Americans suffer.  We have a political party that would rather give them everything they want, which gets them large campaign donations, rather than think about the common man. And the billionaires want Republicans in power.  They know reliable Republicans only comment will be, "where's the lube?" 

 

Hypocrisy

 The temperature didn't really drop much over night.  If the air was so thick with humidity, we'd be sitting at a comfortable 75 (F).  Ah, but there is that humidity.  Rain is in the forecast.  Showers with the possibility of a heavy thunderstorm of two are quite possible.  Thanks to that little storm we had on July 4th, we're under a flood watch.  According to Accuweather, the rain should be starting in about a 30 minutes.

My upper body workout went well yesterday morning.  Riding the bike takes care of my legs.  I do, however, want my upper body training to be more than picking up boxes of tile at work.  I jokingly told my trainer that this routine makes me feel swol.  He thought it was funny.  I don't think he has very many semi-senior clients, which means this will be a learning experience for him.

I've decided to can my Norwegian lessons and focus more on refreshing my French.  I get Le Monde, so I have no problem reading French, it's hearing and speaking it where I've lapsed.

I was going to cut up the branch that the storm ripped from one of the maple trees on the hill behind my house, however, the weather is not working in my favor.

An amusing thing about my writing is that I tend to like characters whose names end with s.  This, as one of my editors has told me, creates a conundrum with possessives.   For example, is it Jules' or Jules's.  I sent him a copy of the first chapter of The Body in the Words and he replied how nice it was not to have a character whose name ended in s... so, I introduced him to Carlos Cassadas, the tall, handsome Spaniard who, along with his wife, runs the Hygia Wellness Clinic. 😂🤣😂

The dementia of our 47th president was on full display yesterday when the Orange Anus claimed that the Islamic Republic of Japan launched 111 missiles at the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln.  He also fell asleep again... on the world stage.

You got to hand it to Republicans, while their incompetence at governing is in full view, it has no problem sharing the stage with their boldly glaring hypocrisy.  You can show them a comparison of Biden's slight slippage next to Orangie's full collapse and they will still say "but Biden."  Now the Cultists will accept this, but do they really believe a majority of Americans are that stupid?  The answer's yes.  They have never come to grips with how intelligent Americans are, and so they double down on their hypocrisies. For a long time Americans did believe their deceit, that they were the party of Family Values.  If there is one thing that the Orange Anus excels at, besides lying, it's ripping the mask off the Republican Party.  He has made it so clear that the GOP is the party of selfishness and greed, that no lie is too false, that they celebrate their racism.  Their downfall is that they simply refuse to understand that today's Americans see right through their bullshit.

The Sum Total of His Failures

What difference a day makes.  We are chillin! with an outside temp of 28 (F).  Yesterday, as the cold front rolled over Pennsylvania, social media was filled with pics of wind, and rain, and snow showers as the temps did their version of a later winter plunge.  As far as I could tell, my neck of the woods didn't get any snow.  To be perfectly honest, I spent very little time glued to my windows looking out for randomizing snow flakes.  Our afternoon high temp will rise into the low 50s (F), which is warmer than was originally predicted.  

Yesterday was rather productive.  Instead of doing my workout in the morning, I spent those hours doing my run-around chores.  The old phone has been shipped back so I can get that nice $500 credit.  A clear case was picked up for the new phone; why buy a nice blue phone if no one can see the blue? Shopping was done.  Bones were bought for Howie.  And a load of laundry set out to dry.  Then, I did my workout, which went quite well.  I know because my inner thighs are little sore thanks to the lateral lunges.

Words were edited.  

I have a bike ride scheduled for this afternoon.

Where does inspiration come from?  I have no idea.  Notes are being jotted down for the next book.  The title is already set, that happened a few months ago.: The Body in the Words.  I can't tell you what it's about because it's secret.  I was looking around for a setting.  Eli and Max have been to France, and Greece, and Scotland, so going abroad isn't a problem.  They've also spent some time in wintery Michigan, and in the ghost towns of Colorado, as well as well as Olde Town, which, for those of you who don't know is Central PA.  Then, this morning a friend was talking about a trip she'd just made and this was one of the pics she shared.  I now have a setting.  Ireland.  Max Sullivan will feel right at home.  What a great place to find a dead body, don't you think? 

And the war with Iran continues.  One of the media giants was talking about how the conflict was dragging on.  You may have heard me laugh at that one.  Russia's illegitimate invasion of Ukraine is dragging on.  I think that conflict is now heading into it's 5th year.  You'd think Putin would have realized the error of his ways by now.

Though, with Orangie's decision to invade Iran beginning to press heavily on the minds of Americans the past week and a half many may think it's dragging on.  I'm betting this must be torture for his demented soul, after all he's a loser who needs to take credit for wins, not losses.  And that's something he simply cannot do.  He can lean on a podium and or sit at his desk and decry that the war is over and that people need to move on, but it ain't happening.  He is reaching the sum total of his life's failures.  He has 8 bankruptcies, but will only admit to 6.  He has more failed startups than anyone in history. He has molested young girls.  Up until he decided to run for president, he was getting away with it all.  But once his ego gave into his greed for power, the shit started slipping through the cracks.  Now that shit has started to gush.  Nothing is going to stop this dam from breaking, and it will wash away the Republican party.