Hailey's Running

 Tuesday, my day off, and I'm going to enjoy it.

I'm scheduled to work over 25 hours this week.  (Bit of a heavy sigh).  I do enjoy the days that I don't go into work.  However, I also don't mind going in and sitting at the flooring desk for a couple of hours a week.  Full time is considered 30 hours a week or more and 25 + is too close to that, if you know what I mean.

I've talked before about how the big orange retailer I work for gives bonuses out to employees through what they call Success Sharing.  Those checks are dependent upon how closely each store's sales come to either hitting their forecast, or at least coming close.  As far as I know, they're still doing Success Sharing this year, though checks are going to be minimal.  This is because corporate built a forecast last year based on three years of pandemic sales.  Ouch.  Prior to Covid, we never hit $1 million a week in sales.  During Covid that changed.  Sales went though the roof.  Over the past year they have dropped off drastically, to pre-Covid figures.  In order to compensate the stockholder's greed, they raised prices.  That didn't help. Only 3 stores out of 27 came close to hitting their forecast.  For 2023 the forecast has been lowered to a more realistic figure, however that is not going to fix the sales for 2022, which means our Success Sharing checks are going to be as dismal as the sales they were based upon.

My angelfish laid eggs again.  This is the third time and they did what they did the previous two times.  Ate them.  They are not known to be good parents.  Here's a blurry picture I took of them last evening, before the feasting started.

And, Nikki Hailey announced her candidacy for President this morning. This is how the Republican blood bath begins.  This is going to get nasty.  His MAGA base is going to bluntly tell America what they really think about women, that they need to leave politics to the men.  I'm wondering how long it will be before Trump calls her a two-bit whore, or something similar.  I wonder how she's going to deal with the fact that many MAGA brains will say she slept her way into that position.

Word has also come out that those UFO's we've been shooting down are far less sophisticated than the Chinese balloon which started this mess.  Oh, and they were smaller.  Normally, the Republicans would make hay out of this, however, with Nikki's announcement they'll be focusing on their civil war instead.

The Essence of Awesomeness

 The temps are supposed to climb into the upper 50s (F) today, it isn't until tomorrow that we're going to crack that 60 (F) barrier again.  Of course, after Wednesday, when I go back to work, they're supposed to do a shallow dive back into the mid 40s (F).  We'll have to wait and see if that's true.

As expected, yesterday things were somewhat steady in the retail world of home improvement.  I got my 3rd measure for the week.  I also talked to a gent who had no idea how heavy a 96 inch wide faux wood blind would be (about 50 pounds).  People don't think.  I also sold some vinyl tile to a New Orleans police officer who had relocated up to Harrisburg.  I brought up The Body in Repose, how it was set in the French Quarter, and had even created an Egyptian night club called the Amon-Ra.  He thought that was amusing, then said "it's nice for a quick touristy visit, but it's a bad place to live because of the crime."  Just passing this on to those who might be thinking of relocating to a warmer climate.

And, of course, there was something called the Super Bowl on TV.  Since I don't watch TV I missed it.  Instead, I played Fallout 4.  Some guy named Mahomes was the winning quarterback.  He evidently was spitting out flapjack comments about how God had was responsible for being there.  This was his way of saying that his universe does not extend beyond the 50 yard line, that it's very small.  That way he can be very big and very important.

And then there's this:

 UFOs abound around us.  In case you thought these babies were only soaring over the US, think again.  The Russkies are claiming they shot one down last month.  Yesterday the Hindu Times noted that the Chinese were going to shoot down another UFO over the Yellow Sea.  I'll be honest, these incidents remind me a lot of Star Trek.  I mean, how many times did the Enterprise send out unmanned, unarmed probes that were shot down?  And while it didn't happen in every episode, the shooting down of probes did happen frequently.  Of course, this isn't a movie, or an episode of a TV show.  Any species capable of traversing the space between stars would have no problem of exacting serious damage to the planet.

Of course, there's the gods of old have finally decided to show up.  Could it be that Zeus is testing the waters, thinking about making a come back?  Honestly, I think that would be the essence of awesomeness. 

Cylindrical

 Sunday, the day of rest, and I did sleep in a for a bit.  The skies are over cast and the temperatures are hovering around 32 (F).  After today, things are going to begin warming up again.  We're hitting the mid 60's (F).  Tuesday will be a day for cleaning up the yard.

When they emptied out the house next door, they threw lots of detritus out of the 2nd story and 3rd story windows.  Papers and lite weight items blew all over the neighborhood, some finding a home behind my fence.  Things that I've picked up in my front yard so far:  personal letters, medical reports, and tax documents.  That and supermarket shopping bags, some of which are hung up in the branches of the trees surrounding my house like tiny ghosts waiting for a breeze to free them.

One of my Navy friends is turning 70 on the 25th.  His wife thought it would be nice if 70 of his friends could send him a birthday card.  I like the idea and put a note in my calendar to make sure I mailed one off in time.  Another of my friends thought it a good idea, too, however he asked her to send him a reminder on the 20th.  That's right, he wants a reminder.  (Heavy sigh).

So I got the letter from PP&L detailing the price increase.  Wowza!  In June of 2021 the rate dropped .6 per KWH, however in December of that year it started climbing, increasing by 3.5 per KWH, and then in January of 2023 it increased by another 2.2 KWH.  Someone, somewhere is making mucho moola.  This is why inflation is high.  Everybody's in it for the buck.

Wyoming is raising a stink because there's a group of people who want to actually set the age at which young people can get married.  The Republicans are up in arms.  You know those Cracker Jack Crazies are going to that's against their religion.  There's nothing in their bible which set the age of consent.  The fact that 2000 years ago many children didn't survive birth, and if they did, it was quite possible their mother might not doesn't occur to them.  Because of this, young girls were married off as soon as they could bear children.  See, in the Christian mind, even back then women were nothing more than breeders.

The Super Bowl's this evening.  Guess who isn't going to be watching.

Finally, another UFO was shot down over Canada.  We have a tad more information about this, since one of the Canadian spokespersons said the object was cylindrical.  That sort of rules out a balloon, unless, of course the Chinese shop for their balloons at their local supermarket where they come in all sorts of shapes and sizes.

The Document and the Laptop

 Well, hello Saturday.  We are 38 days from Spring.  If the long range forecasts (meaning next week) are accurate, we will be hitting that season early.  Weather can be so fickle, though.  Still, if they're correct, we should be in the mid 60s (F) by Wednesday.  While the good temps have been good for the heating bills, one does hope they don't portend a stinkin' hot summer.  Of course, I have a new electric provider, so we'll have to see how that works out.

I haven't baked anything for a while, mostly because I've been busy with other things.  I also need to get back on the treadmill.  Instead of everyday, it's been every other day.  

Biggie no sleeps up on the bed, well at night he doesn't.  The minute I turn off the light he's heading down to the couch.  Interestingly enough, if I lay down to take a nap during the day he is on that bed faster than you can say "nap."  Also, since he's sleeping downstairs, he's no long getting up 2 - 3 times a night to go potty outside.  That was one of the reasons they thought he had Cushing's.  I'd say that was pretty much a missed diagnosis.

And I popped another little video onto my channel about the upcoming The Body Under Ice.  They're fun to do, and while I have an idea of what I'm going to say, mostly their ad-libbed.  I did have to re-record one because I said the title of the book wrong and that was followed by a stream of profanity that could have come straight from Bobby Tussel's mouth.

Our military shot down a UFO yesterday.  No, not one of those saucery shaped things the people from Alteres Nebulon fly to Earth.  Nope, this one was probably a surveillance drone of some sort.  Of course, they didn't say it was a surveillance drone, just that it was an unidentified flying object about the size of a small car.  It was reported on Twitter that it took Fox news 5 minutes to deride the shooting down.  They were slow on the trigger with that one.

I did see some posts that musky Elon was a little perturbed because his Tweets were just hanging there, not a lot of re-Tweets, and his usual number of bots hitting the like button.  I find it amusing that one of the richest people in the world's ego is being burned and it turns out he's a cranky as a 12 year old.

Finally, I saw where one of Trump's attorneys turned in another classified document to the DOJ... and also a laptop that had a copy of the document.  At least, I think it was the same document.  People were quite skittish about that.  A document on a laptop can be emailed.  There was also mention of a thumbdrive, too.  That would make the document so very much more portable.  People travel with thumbdrives all the time.  They carry them in their pockets.  This is not good.

Roswell denied

Since 1947 people have been talking about Roswell.  At first there were just mutterings, but during the early 60's, something happened, Betty and Barney Hill.  That's when the alien talk took off, so to say.  There was a movie in 75 about them and then those dear little aliens showed up in Close Encounters.  Suddenly you weren't anybody unless you happened to have seen a UFO.  Jimmy Carter saw one.  Then, of course, there were the abductions.  It was almost like "be the first on your block to be hypnotized and discover you've been abducted."  Most of this was horse shit; people needing to be recognized as having had to deal with an anal probe.

As you can tell, I'm not truly impressed by most of the so called authorities and their invented data.  This doesn't mean I don't believe there might be UFO's, in fact, I suspect there probably are, however the logic takes over.  If they are real and they are being observed, then they want to be observed.  Which brings me back to Roswell.

This is a picture of some of the debris which since been declassified by the government as some sort of weather balloon (read possibly spy balloon).  That's what it looks like.  My main problem with the whole Roswell alien crash is that what superior species would design a craft to travel light years through space only to have it crash in Arizona?  Remember, this is a superior species so the idea of their  craft crashing is a bit ludicrous.  We can't even send men to Mars, yet they can send them light years.  Maybe they used a wormhole and didn't have to worry about going faster then the speed of light.  How many wormholes do we know of?  No matter how much you want to believe, the logic thing keeps it from working.  These ideas were formulated in a much more simpler time and place.  Some people want to believe.  That's fine, what ever makes them happy.