Negotiation

 It's a sunny Saturday morning and it's cold outside.  Over the next week, the temps are only predicted to go above freezing twice... though that will probably change as the Arctic Blast moves north and east.  As far as the temps go, the forecast has already been moderated upward several times.  We are still supposed to get snow on Sunday night, so I brought the snow shovels up out of the basement.

I got some stuff yesterday, however the planned workout failed to materialize.  Was it the cold cloudiness of winter?  Well, temps were rather moderate, so nice that I took Howie for a walk.  He loved it.  The neighbors down the street have a German Short Haired pointer and he and his owner were out, so we stopped and chatted with them for a few minutes.  The dog was never socialized so he's very jumpy bouncy, more so than Howie, who wanted to say hi.  We didn't.  We were told that jumpy bouncy was difficult to control.  

I do get to go and work today.  I'm not excited.

The neighbors were loud again last night.  If they're loud again, I'll plug in my soundbar and give them a taste of their own medicine.

Howie's 5 months old today.  For the most part, he is housetrained doing most of his business outside.  Every now and then he slips up.  Interesting bit:  all I need to do is look at him and lower my voice when I discover the done deed and he knows he's been bad.  If this were a Dune movie, I guess I'd have the power of the voice.

I understand that Orangey is a little upset that he's still going to be sentenced for his election interference.  No jail time, but probably community service of some sort.  Picking up garbage along the roadside would be nice.  Don't doubt for a second that he will try and get out of it.  

So here's a funny thing.  Mikey Johnson was re-elected as Speaker of the House yesterday.  The far right hates him because they feel he's been compromised by negotiating with Democrats to get legislation passed.  For years these negotiations were quite common, until Newt Gingrich decided to form the Just Say No party.  Yesterday Newtie advised the hard liners that they needed to vote for Mikey which basically told them that it was okay to negotiate.  This doesn't mean that they are going to change how they operate.  What it does mean is that nothing on the Republican agenda will be accomplished because they have such a very slim majority, they are going to need Democratic votes to get bills passed, and that means negotiation.  These next few years are going to be Hell for Republicans.