Republicans are Screwed

 We did get snow overnight.  In fact, we are still in a what you might want to call a light flurry stage, which is supposed to last another few hours with little to no accumulation.  Total snowfall?  Maybe 2 inches at best.  This will take about 5 minutes to clean everything off, which is good as I'm going to go to my neighborhood Giant Supermarket later this morning.  I'm going to try chicken souvlaki in the crockpot for dinner.

And yesterday was another meh day.  Well, that's not completely correct.  I did work on the aquarium in the writing room.  I made pasta and and sauce for dinner.  But otherwise nothing much was accomplished.  There are so many things I want to do, but I just never seem to get around to doing them.  This is, no doubt, a result of the shit show that's going on in Washington.  The whole thing is so terribly depressing, and for those of you who don't know, being tired is a symptom of being depressed.  So, I end up taking a lot of naps.  Honestly, I do need to get my ass in gear, literally.

My friend Patty said she'd take care of Howie if I decided to return to Greece and that means I've got to take him over to meet her 3 dogs.  Hers are tiny, and Howie is probably approaching 60 pounds.  He doesn't like the neighbor's goldendoodle at all because when he was a little puppy, their dog lunged at him barking loudly.

Here's a pic of the pasta.  It's eggless, so it doesn't need to be refrigerated.

Inflation when up 3%.  That's not good for Orangie, but then many of us knew this promise to lower prices was a lie.  All he ever does is lie.  And his tariffs on steel and aluminum?  Well, the aluminum is going to increase the cost of a case of beer because the cans will be more expensive.  That's going to piss of his beer guzzling cultists.  

And how many of you saw any of Elonia's presser yesterday?  I just saw bits and pieces, enough to realize he was giddy with delight at doing his first press conference with his puppet sitting solidly behind the Resolute Desk.  Elonia brought along his prop child, the son he uses as a bullet shield.  At one point, the shield was sitting on Elonia's shoulders.  Every now and then Orangie would say something, but mostly Elonia did all of the talking.  Believe me when I tell you that the Republicans are so screwed.

A Pox on both your Houses

 So, here it is Saturday, and it was 20 (F) this morning when I got up.  For those using Celsius, that's below 0 and that's cold.  Temps are predicted to climb up into the mid 30s today, that's nice.  I'll be able to go outside and clean up the frozen poop.

And, what's really surprising about today is that I am not scheduled to work.  I will work tomorrow, however, and then Monday.  I'm only scheduled for 15 hours this week, and next week, that's fine with me.  After that it appears that I'm going to be back on my 20 hour a week schedule. I just got a small award for being the top salesperson in the department, so I will probably not get my hours cut like the other part-timers, or, if I do, the cut will not be as drastic as theirs.

I did get 30 minutes in on the treadmill yesterday.  It's a great place to work on the Greek language course I signed up for with Pimsleur. I also made some homemade pasta, some of which will be dinner this evening.  The only bad thing about making pasta is that eggs are used in the process, and that means it needs to be either refrigerated or frozen.  My Pa Dutch grandma used to make eggless pasta.  I'll have to see if I can dig up that recipe, that way I'll be able to make it, dry it, and store it for future use.  Here's a pic.

One of the most laughable things I've seen today, and let's be honest, absurdist events and statements will be the meat and potatoes of this incoming administration, was CNN stating that most Americans are satisfied with their Health Care.  I have to be honest, I actually saw this in a Rolling Stone Commentary.

That's because CNN's website is filled with ludicrosities.  That's not an actual word, but it should be, the plural of ludicrosity: a piece of stupidity so unrealistic only a MAGA cultist would believe it.

And for those who didn't see it, RFK wants to get rid of the polio vaccine.  When I was looking at that ludicrosity I saw that some individual was wondering if Elon Musk had bought an iron lung factory.  This is pathetic.  I suppose the only thing that will change people's minds about vaccines is when their children start dying of measles again.  Or chicken pox.  Perhaps people need to understand how terrible the curse "a pox on both your houses" is.

Truth instead of Lies

Thursday morning.  I get to go back to work tomorrow.  I am not excited at all.  Work is... work.  It's not that I don't like to work.  I enjoy working out.  Poring over an unpublished manuscript and doing subtle changes is fun (believe it or not).  Explaining to a customer that cheap ass laminate flooring should not go in a bathroom because it's not waterproof isn't fun.  Seeing stunned looks of disbelief when you describe what happens to laminate flooring when it gets wet is... ... well, if you saw any of Billy Barr's Q & A yesterday you know the looks I'm talking about.  I do believe Billy that that with all the Republicans in the room he was going to be safe.  Holy Shit.  Watch just five minutes of it and count the number of times he touches his face.  You see, liars begin to finger their chin, rub their cheek, and scratch their ear because deceit pushes their brains into overload.  They have to remember every lie they tell... otherwise they'll be caught.  They use their fingers in an attempt to create a web of lies... and fail.  At one point he actually like he might start to cry.  Does he think everybody is as gullible as the MAGA heads?  Bill was all handsy yesterday, but then that's normal for liars.  Except for the Idiot Jerk in the White House.  He rarely touches his face because almost every word out of his mouth is a lie.  I suspect that for him it's the truth which is most unsettling.
Billy will not be having a Q & A with the House.  He'd have to wear his 'big boy' Depends for that and he knows he'd fill those suckers up in no time flat.
I made some more pasta yesterday.  This time I dried it on a pasta tree.

And poor Seig didn't get any of it.  I had some for dinner last night.  It is delicious.  From start to finish it took... oh, about 40 minutes.  And I made it.  It wasn't mass produced in a factory. Hhhhmmm, so goooooood. 

Mayor Pete

Back to my normal time schedule for today and tomorrow.  I'm off Tuesday.  UGI is sending a repairman to replace a part of my gas meter.  Evidently there is mercury in it and they say that has got to go.  Two hours they said it is going to take.  That's 2 hours in which the dogs will be sitting at the top of the basement stairs looking down, watching every move he makes.
We had torrential rain last night, probably part of the storm the mid-west got and for a while we were under a tornado watch.  Today we under a 'high wind' watch.  Boy, talk about exciting weather!
Mayor Pete went all official yesterday to the consternation of the Crazy Christian contingent in this country.  (Holy Shit!  How that for alliteration?)  He is a Christian, but he is also... openly gay.  They desperately want an old, white, anti-gay, racist in the White House.  They will vote themselves from here to Hell and back in order to give their hatred life.  They will lose.
I only look at Facebook once in the morning, usually to see if I can sow a little havoc, and that's usually in the morning.  Take this morning, for instance.  One of the many friends I have, posted a meme yesterday about Jesus leaving the flock of 99 to go in search of the 1 lost lamb.  My comment:  "of course, when He got back there were only 87... poachers, you know?"  I'm sure that will go over well.  That's what makes these people so crazy... they park their logic in a car... and then can't remember where they parked their car.  This is so obvious when you listen to what they talk about 'love' and how they 'love' everybody... all the while doing everything in their power to make lives miserable.
So, I'm thinking of putting a list of characters at the front of the book.  While 3 of the main characters were in the first book, not everybody read "The Body on the Lawn."  There are a lot of new characters in "The Body in the Tower," and while some of them have English names, some of them have French names like Moussierre Centee (also known as Mouse), and Jules Laurent, and Saba Fourchette.  There's also Felix Rios, who writes facial recognition applications like Casper and Fatso.  The problem with a list is... how much information do I provide without including any spoilers.  Hhhmmm.
And one additional note about the pasta I made.  When everything was said and done, and dried, I ended up with 2 large bags.  On Saturday afternoon, Big Seig took one of the bags from the counter.  I found him laying on the futon happily chomping away.  He got a smack on the butt which didn't phase him one bit.  He looked really guilty.  I managed to snub him for about 15 minutes...

Gay Fettuccine

We had a lot of rain last evening.  My phone was flashing me info about storms in the area, but there was no thunder so they must have been fairly far away.  All the bulbs and seeds and tubers I planted got a really good soaking.
I also made my pasta.  I made a lot of pasta.  I ran into 2 issues.  The first is that the pasta maker needs to be clamped down and the clamp doesn't work with my counter.  As a result I had to use the kitchen table, which meant sitting down.  I'm a stander.  I like to stand at the counter to do my prep and processing.  I ended up doing the preliminary rolling at the counter, then going to the table, sitting down, and running the dough through the maker.  After that I had to get up and take the cut pasta back to the counter where I had the drying rack set up.  Very inefficient.
There are a number of pasta recipes out there, all of them using basically the same ingredients, flour and eggs, though with different quantities.  None of them tell you how much pasta you're going to end up with, and that was the 2nd issue.  I have a lot of pasta and I used what seemed like an average recipe.  The drying rack I planned on using was filled in no time, so I started laying it out on sheets of wax paper - which only let it dry on one side.  My pasta got moved a lot.  The more I turned it over and moved it around, the more out of shape it got.  As a result, my fettuccine is anything but straight, which I guess means I made gay fettuccine.

This is just a small portion of my pasta

One of those pasta drying trees is essential.
And I saw yesterday the Idiot Jerk was thinking about sending those immigrants he hates so much to Sanctuary Cities.  This man does not understand America, the land of the free, the home of the brave.  He thinks America is all white and selfish like his MAGA heads.  We are not.  Oh, and evidently he told the Acting Director of Homeland Security that if he got in legal trouble by shutting down the borders, what the Idiot Jerk wants him to do, he will be pardoned.  I almost laughed when I heard that... really, I did.  The Idiot Jerk defines the Republican mindset. 

How it works

Sometime last evening I went over the hump.  It's all down hill from here until Friday, which is the first day of my weekend.
Since nobody hated my little confetti shooting picture yesterday, I may have to look for something else to shoot out confetti.
So, is everybody else simply amazed that the Idiot Jerk in the White House is driving the white Republican party straight for the white supremacist cliff?  Of course, we always knew he was stupid, vicious man, but what he's doing now is pretty much the same thing as a pre-autopsy.  Not that there was much life left in his base, but he does seem hell bent on cutting them open and showing all the dirty bits that are inside.  I know there are a small few out there who think Kirstjen Nielsen was the worst thing to happen to immigrant children... just wait until the Idiot Jerk puts in one of his White Supremacist lackies.  He's also going to put one of them in charge of the Secret Service.  This is what the Republican Party has wanted since that schmutz Reagan won by a landslide: a dictator.  They have no problem if he's a white supremacist since their party is almost entirely white.  Unfortunately for the party, and the wannabe dictator, they are a minority group that's part of what will soon be a minority group (white people) because of evolution.  This is how the world turns, how change happens.
Anyway, we're supposed to have another warm one today, up around 75 (F).  That's fine with me.  Oh, sure, it's going to cool off with a possible thunderstorm this evening.  This is life, too.  I wanted to purchase some seed packets yesterday, but ended up leaving them at the flooring desk.  I actually ended up getting overtime.  I hate overtime.  Normally I will head back to the time clock a bit early but yesterday I had to cut some blinds.  He wanted 5 - we only had 4.  He asked if we "had more back in the warehouse."  I very politely told him we do not have a "warehouse."  In modern retail, you do not store up additional stock in your warehouse.  There is an algorithm which calculates how many blinds we need to keep on hand based on the frequency with which they sell.  Once the count gets too low, they are automatically reordered.  This is how retail works.
And, since I'm off on Friday I'm going to whip out the new pasta maker and crank out some fettuccine.  If everything works well, I might take a picture and shoot confetti all over my noodles.  Now, doesn't that sound exciting?

Confetti gun is ready!!

Think about it

Okay, so I ordered a pasta maker.  That's right, I do make my own pasta... and I'm tired of using a knife to cut it into noodles.  The one I'm getting comes supplied with  fettuccine and spaghetti blades, if I want linguine I'll need to purchase it separately.  It should be here this afternoon.  Sunday delivery.  Thank you Amazon.  No, I'm not buying one of those cute little drying trees.  I have a cooling rack I use for bread, that will do just fine.
Patty, who's been reading the rough draft of The Body in the Tower called Friday evening, most likely to tell me she had finished.  I didn't answer because... I had my phone on mute.  I tend to do that a lot.  On an average, I'll get 4 -5 telemarketing phone calls a day.  While they don't call early, they do call late.  Last night one of them called at 8:37 PM.  This is why I keep my phone on mute.  I work with her this today, so I'll probably find out then if she's finished her read through.
There was an interesting article in the Washington Post about about Biden, the Democratic Party, and the race for 2020.  For those who don't know, the party is not considered Liberal, rather, because of the large number of Democrats, we are considered Centrist Left.  Biden is pretty much seen as a bridge between old and new.  Even though old Bernie can rake in the money from the Far Left, if he were to somehow get the nomination vast sums of voters would stay home.  His Socialist Squawkings are just too frightening to them.  This one of the reasons we have the Idiot Jerk in the White House, those supporting Bernie refused to vote for Hillary.  He will do this again if he gets the chance.  For him, it's not about America, it's about Bernie.  While Biden might not get the nomination, his message is something Americans respond to, so the other wannabe candidates need to take notice.
And I've been digging into my picture archives again.  I've got lots of them, you know?  Old pictures.  Here's one of me with my Grandma Snyder.  She was the smart one, college educated, Kutztown University, 1927.  How many women can you name who graduated from college in 1927?

She taught school in Pine Grove, a small town of around 5500.  During World War II the citizens of Pine Grove were so worried about the Germans they set up a surveillance team, a squad of citizens who would stand watch in the stone water tower behind the high school.  At night, they would climb the ladder to the top of the water tower with binoculars and scan the skies for German aircraft.  I'm proud to say that my Grandma was a member of that squad.  Amazing!  When I was in high school, she started doing Yoga... think about it.  Her name was Gertrude.

Expire this

I don't know about the rest of the world, but as a nation quite a few of us have a legitimate concern about expiration dates.  When you buy a quart of milk you do want to know how long you will be able to let it sit in your refrigerator before it starts to turn.  I'm sure most of us who enjoy cream in our coffee have experienced that one moment when the flavor was just a little bit off, or looked down to see flecks of curdle swirling around as we stir our spoon.  Expiration dates also give us an idea of just how long that quart of milk has been sitting on our grocer's shelf.  Some people, however, don't understand expiration dates.  They feel that at some point in it's life a product is going to expire.  I have had people ask me if the batch number on the top of a paint can contains the expiration date.  No, it isn't.  I'm sure if you contacted the manufacturer they could tell you when that paint was manufactured, but that's about it.  I always tell people, paint is not like food, it doesn't go bad.  Keep it tightly sealed and it will last for years, and years, and years.

There are those who think the day a product reaches its expiration date you need to throw it away.  Let me give you an example.  I was in the produce section of my local Giant supermarket filling my cart with fresh vegetables (I almost always eat fresh), when I noticed a woman in front of the baby carrots.  I like baby carrots, they're a nice snack.  Grate them up, add a dash of olive oil, garlic salt, salt and hot pepper flakes and roast them for a nice side.  As I slid my cart in beside her's and reached for a bag, she stopped me.  "Those are expired," she said.  Reaching into her own cart, she grabbed another bag.  "Here, take these, they're still fresh."  I thanked her and moved onto the mushrooms, wondering if I should tell her that carrots are a root vegetable.  Before refrigeration, people used to hang them in root cellars, in bunches, for months at a time.  They may not have been as fresh and crisp as the day they were pulled from the ground, but they didn't make people sick.

Now I can understand the rationale behind expiration dates, making sure your grocer rotates his product so you don't end up purchasing food which has been sitting on the shelf for nine or ten years.  But they've also become an easy way to get shoppers to buy more.  There are a lot of people out there, like the woman with the baby carrots, who believe that once a food has hit it's expiration date it needs to be thrown out.  Produce shouldn't need to be dated.  If you can't tell when it's going bad, then you shouldn't be buying it.  If a peach has little, fluffy mold spores building a metropolis, then it needs to go in the trash.  So what if the Rotini pasta in your cupboard expires in a week or so, it's dried.  It's not going to cook up differently because it's passed its expiration date.  Just use a little common sense.  Unless you're one of those people who needs to be told what to do and when to do it.  When I meet people like this I usually just smile.  What I really want to do is say "expire this."