Tasty

I'm back to work today... for one day, and then off again.  Then it's back for 4, off 2, on 2, and then off for 5.  I have this vacation I need to use before September, so I'm taking time off in July and in August.

Yesterday was slow and uneventful.  The temps were hot, but didn't crack that 100 (F) mark which had been predicted.  In the evening we had brief dry thunderstorm, that was very loud for a few minutes.  Since there was no rain, I ended up going out and watering my garden.  My eggplants are getting large.  I picked 2 of my banana peppers.  

For lunch, I made a cold meatloaf sandwich on fresh, homemade bread.  It was delish.

Windows is doing an update, so everything is slow.  I don't know if this is part of the Windows 11 package, but things have changed in the way I find pictures.  Something new to learn.

For those of you who didn't hear, last week the RNC was hacked by the Russians... or at least one of the cybermobs funded by the Russians.  Now, I don't know about you, but I think this is rather amusing.  I wonder if Load #45 even cares that his Besties are trying to find out what his party is up to, probably not.  Or, maybe they were just interested in getting all the email addresses for every MAGA head in America. 

Hey, and I even saw where McConnell is beginning to really push his constituents to get their asses vaccinated.  Oooohhhh.  Maybe Mitch has finally realized his old ass can't get re-elected if half of his supporters are either dead or ventialted.

Eternity

 Holy Crap, it's Friday!  I can not believe how fast time is flying by... or maybe I've just had too much caffeine this morning.  Nah, that can't be it.  I'm one of those rare souls who can drink a pot of coffee and then go to bed.  Blame the Navy.  There were times cruising around the Gulf of Tonkin where our shifts were 6 and 6: 6 hours on and 6 hours off.  That's the definition of rotation hell.  Most likely it is nothing more then a side effect of the aging process.  And though it may seem to be flying past at breakneck speeds, this is not to say passing hours are always enjoyable.  Yesterday, for example, was slow and every minute seemed like a freaking eternity.  To be honest, I think those who desperately are seeking to spend an eternity in an afterlife are crazier then hell.  For them, conceiving the length of eternity is beyond their feeble little brains.  For them, the same is true about the universe.  You say universe to them and you can tell simply by looking in their eyes that their personal universe has a perimeter about 217 and a half feet (66.29 M) away from their confused consciousness.   See, I told you it wasn't the coffee.

The size of the universe is too much for some to bear

Next Saturday, some of my Navy friends are having a Zoom meeting and I plan to participate.  I have not seen any of them in 48 years.  This should be interesting.  I'm thinking about recording it and then sending them copies.  Thanks to the Pandemic, Zoom has changed our lives in so many ways.  This is a future no one quite predicted.  

The Cult of Trump began its annual meeting yesterday.  This is a group which has spent what to them feels like an eternity, or at least since Reagan's reelection, an eternity trying to wrest power away from our Democracy.  Formerly known as Republicans, their only goal is to dictate and control.  They have moved so far to the right the idea of a country that is mostly Centrist horrifies the hell out of them.  Creating a holy evangelical empire is their goal.  They have no true idea of how long eternity is, they just know they want to spend it demonizing everything they hate.

Tick, Tick, Tick

 Can we talk about personal accomplishments?  Jeez!  Yesterday was:  aquarium? (check), laundry? (check), bike ride? (check), groceries? (check) dog walk? (check), bike ride? (check), haircut? (check). 

 About the bike ride?  A really super great improvement Garmin has initiated in their Tacx software is the ability for you to create your own route.  That's right.  Now you can break up a 40 mile ride into what ever lengths you want.  The video starts where you want it to start, and ends where you want it to end.  Now you can create fresh, new rides where ever you want!  

As for The Body in the Loch?  I'm rapidly approaching the denouement, a little chapter called 'All Knives Can Kill.'  

And, of course, I do have to go back to work today.  Can you feel my excitement?  These are the doldrum weeks, those days when you decide to take a vacation because there are better things to do then sit at a flooring desk.  The aisles are fairly empty and the slow ticking of boring seconds can be a monumental weight.  True, there are worse things then being bored, but reminding yourself of this fact while you're checking the time every three minutes as you wait for your shift to end is always difficult in what seems to be one of the most difficult times of your life.  Will it ever end?

There is also what seems to be the eternal wait until the Congressional vote tomorrow brings some finality to the 2020 election.  I have to remind you that does not mean this is going to end.  Sometimes putting the final nail in the coffin is just not enough.  We will still have to deal with the zombies for some time to come...

though I wouldn't be surprised if quite a few of them attempt to follow him as he relocates to... well, right now Scotland seems to be his point of entry into Europe. Don't expect him to stay there.  Damn, those men in kilts will stomp his wannabe tinfoil dictator's ass into smithereens.    

Out with the Old, In with the New

Holy Crap!  It's Monday.  This is my 5th day working.  I have one more before I get the day off and that's tomorrow.  Somehow I think I'm the only Specialist scheduled.  Makes sense.  Who in their right mind goes shopping for flooring on New Years Eve?  Oh, that's right, I forget, there are those morons who believe every holiday equates to a SALE.  Not this holiday.
I went downstairs this morning to find a little guest sitting in my kitchen sink.  You know, I had thought my buddy Mr. Snake had taken care of all the mousies around my house.  Well, he missed one.  This one was just teenie weenie.  Now, I don't mind if mousetraps do their job, but me?  I have a difficult time bonking the little suckers on the head.  Instead, I scooped him up in a pan set him free outside.  That right, I'm a sucker for fur.
There's an interesting article in Reuters about Religion in America... Or, maybe I should say Evangelicalism, which is a sect of Christianity.  Poll results show there are schisms forming mostly among generational lines.  The older, crazy Christians want to be much more politicized; the younger ones see them as failing.  The issues are those every Evangelical is supposed to hold dear to his heart:  immigration, no gun control, abortion, and LGBT rights.  That's right, the older ones are enamored of the late 1950's and 60's.  The younger ones see the religion as evolving and evidently less interested in Cherry Picking.  Not surprisingly, I've read that Billy Barr sees America on its way to hell... but then he's an old school Crazy White Christian.

And finally, in a little more than a day and a half we will be starting a new decade.  Some are going through a "what the hell" stage.  Not me.  I look forward to the future.  Whether you want to believe it or not, evolution happens.  Without it there is death.  Change is essential for continuity.  Life cannot exist for long in stasis.  And life here on earth will continue.  Those who dismay at change will die off.  This has been happening since the dawn of time, or the Big Bang... which ever came first.  The only thing we can do is sit back and enjoy the ride.  This year will be very interesting as more of the old school dies off and more of the new school continues to exert itself.  Out with the Old, in the the New.

The Wasting of My Time

As I get older I do find myself thinking about time.  Not wishfully, mind you, or even wistfully, as other's seem to do.  There are those who lament about not having enough time, how they might been able to do more if only the hours hadn't started to run out.  This is not me.  Now, I'm not old, middle-aged to be sure, but neither frail nor feeble.  If continue taking care of myself and everything keeps ticking the way it's supposed to, I figure I'll probably squeeze another 35 years out of my life.  With medicine advancing the way it is, that number might actually be higher, which, as long as I have my facilities, wouldn't be bad.  Nary a day goes by without my seeing some octogenarian seeming to be much younger then their biological age.  That's how I want to be.  I've already told my friends if I end up turning into a professional invalid they have my blessing to put me, and the world, out of my misery.

What I do seem to be doing more and more is tracking the length of time it takes to accomplish a task.  For example, when I got Gert I worried that her puppy feet might have a problem with my staircase, so I put down a runner.  Now that she's 4.5 years old and Lilly is almost a year old, I decided the carpeting was no longer necessary.  It took between 15 and 20 minutes to do the job.  Once again you can see my staircase.  It's beautiful.  My house is 109 years old and the staircase is painted white with ivy stenciling on either side.  That 15 to 20 minutes was completely worthwhile.  However, what I'm disliking more and more is spending my time on things that have little or no worth.

These things tend to be those I am obliged to do, like losing 1 hour and 45 minutes of my time while I waited to have the Pa State Inspection performed on a new car.  Having to stand in line at Self Check-Out is another one.  In fact, here lately standing in line has become one of the biggest wastes of my time.  It happened at the movie theater when I went to see Maleficent because they only had one ticket register open.  It happened at K-Mart on Wednesday morning.  If you start adding up all of those minutes you waste waiting it's rather amazing.  I did something to my lower back a few weeks ago and decided to go to see my Dr. about it.  I waited for 12 minutes before they took me back to wait in an examination room for another 15 minutes.  In other words, I actually saw my personal care physician 27 minutes after my set appointment time.  In that half hour I could have taken the dogs for a walk.  I could have made some notes on a future blog, spent some time with Rosetta Stone working on my German, or even mowed my front yard.  Do you think they cared about wasting my time?  Hell no.   

    

Evil Comcast raises its monstrous head

Comcast wants to buy Time-Warner and negotiations have a reached a point where it will be up to the SEC to decide if the deal goes through.  I'm hoping the vote it down.  Comcast is big enough.  .If a thousand people suddenly raised their hands in anger and shouted "enough price increases!" do you think Comcast would care.  Not a bit.  You see they are already so big that their average customer has become infinitesimally small.  They would not even notice a thousand people protesting Comcast's ever increasing prices because those people are so teeny, weeny, small and unimportant.  Would twenty thousand make a difference?  Nope, not at all.  Remember, Comcast is very big... and they want to get even bigger.  They want to rule the world.  Well, maybe not the entire world, but they do want to rule the cable and entertainment industry.  They want to call the shots.  They want to tell you how much you're going to have to pay for the channels you want to watch.  You can bet if the Comcast / Time Warner deal goes through those deals are not going to get all sugary sweet.  The exact opposite will happen.  They will sour your wallet.

Now I know there are people out there who are claiming this will never happen.  Those people are either dumb as bricks or Comcast lackeys on the payroll.  Of course they're going to raise their prices in what they consider a timely manner.  Every expense they experience will increase your rates, and they will go up.

Their rates are high already.  Here, let me give you an example.  My contract with Fios just expired and I decided to call around, since I think they, too, are fairly expensive.  The Comcast Customer Service Agent turned out to be a real asshole.  After explaining why I was checking out prices and what I was interested in (cable and Internet only) he quoted me a price of $180 (plus) and that cost included phone.  I reminded him I was not interested in phone service.  He could not understand why I would be turning down such a 'great deal.'  So, I reiterated again, just cable and Internet, and his tone began verging toward rude.  Now I don't know, maybe their agents get a little bit of bonus when they sign a customer up for the Triple Play and maybe that was his real incentive, but he was not listening to me at all.  When I finally did get him to understand what it was I wanted, he quoted me a price which was $2 more then what I am already paying for Fios, and his cost did not include any taxes or rental fees.

This is what many millions of Americans have to deal with right now.  If the deal with Time / Warner goes through, many more millions will be cursed with the monster called Comcast.  They will screw the American people over and tell them to shut up because they're getting a good deal.