Flooring, and other tidbits

 Okay, so we've made it to Sunday, the end of the week, the day of rest, except for me.  I always work on Sunday.  Today is supposed to be sunny, too.  Temps climbing into the middle 409s (F).  Short range temps are to continue climbing, reaching the low 60s (F) by Wednesday.  There is some rain thrown in there, but the we are nearly in spring, when spring showers drizzle.

I've finished more of my kitchen floor yesterday.  It's... approximately 3/4 complete, and most of that area by the chimney, and under the refrigerator.  I will need to have to do some serious cuts around the floor vent, but I don't see them as being so difficult as to cause much of a problem.  After the tiles are in, there's the quarter round needing to go in around the perimeter, and the almond color cove base under the cabinets before the construction is finished.  I will be glad.  While it's taken me longer than I though to do this myself, the alternative would have been expensive.   With the floor prep, the cost for someone else to do it would have been around $1000, and that's a conservative estimate.

Lily is back to being an upstairs / downstairs dog, and by that I mean she goes upstairs in the evening to go to bed, and then downstairs in the morning.  The rest of the day she spends on the sofa in the writing room, or chewing on one of her snacks.  She's eating fine.  Her stubby tail is wagging again.  What was her problem?  Well, she has a cyst on her wrist that shrank in size, meaning there was some internal leakage, and she had a swollen gland on her cheek that caused her nictitating membrane  to swell.  All is back to normal.  

SAG awards were last night.  I didn't watch.  But Oppenheimer continued to steamroll it's way through award season.

As expected, Trump won the Republican primary in South Carolina.  59.5% of Republicans in that state voted for him, however, his victory was not a slam dunk.  39.5% of the voters chose someone else, mostly Hailey.  He has lost the loyalty of these people.  That is something the Republican party simply doesn't understand.  They deeply believe the individuals who cast their ballots for someone else will automatically vote the the party's nominee.  Nope.  The only thing they can count on are the MAGA cultists.  Rather than having to chose between Biden and Trump, many old school Republicans will simply sit on their hands and not vote.  And, as several pundits have already noted, one guilty voted will send that number through the roof.

The Go-To Whine

 We're getting rain today... well, showers, on and off with not much accumulation.  For some reason, whenever rain, or snow for that matter, people envision torrential downpours.  That is rarely the case.  Even the steady rains we get are slow to accumulate.  Rain is predicted for tomorrow as well.  Altogether we'll probably get about .75 of an inch, not enough to cause flood warnings.  On the temp side, ours will be hovering in the mid 40s (F) all day.  By this evening, most of the snow we received will be gone.

And I do have to briefly mention the Oscar snubs among other notes.  I was surprised Greta Gerwig didn't get one, but but Barbie is a comedy and the directors (directors nominate directors) love them their drama.  On Margot Robbie?  I never thought she'd get a nomination; comedic performance.  On Leonardo DiCaprio?  Never thought he'd get one; he played stupid well, but his character was barely 2 dimensional.

On Oppenheimer's 13 nominations?  They won't win all of them.  Adapted Screenplay is going to Gerwig, and production design is going to Barbie.  Costume design will probably go to Napoleon, the voters love period costumes.

Because Ryan Gosling is nominated, as well as his song, there's a good possibility we'll get to see him cavorting half-dressed across the stage singing "I'm Just Ken."  He'll probably lose to Robert Downey Jr, who's black and white malevolence in Oppenheimer was so well played.  

Anyway, this was a really good year for movies, in fact, I might compare it to 1939 when Gone with the Wind was up against The Wizard of Oz for best picture.  Of course, that was also the year before war broke out across Europe.

I baked some Italian bread yesterday, and then made a BLT for dinner.  Scrumptious.

And, of course, the New Hampshire primaries were yesterday and Trump won, as expected, how ever, he only received 54% of the votes.  Looking at the numbers, the only Republicans voting for him are the hard core conservatives, moderates, centrists, and Independent voters turn away.  He needs the Independents if he thinks he even has a chance to win the election.  He's not going to get them, which means he's going to rally as many losing Republicans around him by shrieking Election Fraud.  For a brief moment that was a rally cry, now, however, more and more people are seeing it as nothing more than a rally whine.  Conservatives will never admit their political views don't jive with a majority of Americans, meaning they will need to blame something else for their loss and election fraud is their main go-to whine.

Oppenheimer

 Yesterday was sunny, the temps were comfortable, hovering in the low to mid 80s (F).  Right now we have drizzles outside.  Yep, it rained overnight.  My dahlias needed it.  

Also, the electrician showed up a bit early and we walked through some of the updates I want to have done in the house.  One of them, moving and outlet and prepping for the installation of a new sink and dishwasher is going to be put on hold for at least 7 or 8 months.  Instead of that expense, I'll have my drywaller remove and install new vinyl plank flooring.  What have in the kitchen now is old, and it was very inexpensive. We don't install the product anymore because it's not waterproof, water can leak through the seams, and the wear layer was not intended for dogs.

I went to see Oppenheimer last evening.  This is truly one amazing film.  There are two stories here, the first being the creation and detonation of the first nuclear weapon, which is in color.  This is juxtaposed with the politics of the era with all of the hobgoblins of McCarthyism, and the cold war, which is is stunning black and white.  Cillian Murphy is outstanding as a man glorying in the authority and power his creation gives him while coming to terms with the true horror of what he has helped to create.  You sympathize with a man whose reality was fed by an ego that was fed by the popular press, someone who realizes too late that he wasn't always in charge of his life.  If you get a chance, see it on a really big screen, and prepare yourselves, I cannot even begin to explain the emotional impact this film had on me.

And, of course, while I was getting sucked in to Oppenheimer, my phone turned into a vibrator as pictures of Donald J. Trump's mugshot flooded the Internet.  I didn't look at it until I got home from the movie and the first thing that went through my head when I saw his glowering face was:  this man is pissed off from here to Hell and back.  I did think about it a little this morning and decided that was his attempt at instilling fear in all those anti-Trumpers.  He failed.  While his base may rally, there was nothing about Trump's mugshot that might move you to sympathize with him, in fact I'm rather enjoying his humiliation.  Let's all hope that October trial date stands.  So many millions of Americans want to see him live in the courtroom.

Oh, and Putin says that he had nothing to do with Prigozhin's death, that he did not give the order for someone to place an explosive device on that private plane causing it to explode killing everyone onboard. 

Something's Coming

 Well, it's Monday morning and we are sitting under a small thunderstorm, barely a splotch on the map, and the whole thing should be done with in about 20 minutes.  So far, this summer has turned out to be rainier than most.  Rain is not a bad thing, as long as it's not torrential.

Yesterday was very slow at the store.  There was a bit of a customer incident in the grout aisle.  I saw a friend of mine walking towards the flooring desk and as I stood up, he told me a woman needed assistance. The first thing she asked me was "do you have any grout lighter than platinum?"  Our selection of the Simple Grout she was looking at is very limited, so I told her I didn't know.  That was not the right answer.  She told me the other associate was going to get a ladder because she said, "I need 2 of those," pointing to a higher shelf.  Growing impatient, she asked how much grout she needed for coverage with hexagonal tile.  I told her our charts are for square tile, but gave her a guestimate (not what she wanted).  The associate came back and pulled down the box she'd been pointing to, and she scolded him, "not those, those up there," without naming the product.  She wanted 5 gallon buckets of premixed mortar (heavy), so I told her he would need to get an electric ladder.  (Not what she wanted to hear).  While I went to get my store phone to check inventory, she went latched onto an appliance specialist since I wasn't providing her with the service she was demanding.  I ended up selling carpet to another customer while the appliance associate and a plumbing associate filled her order.  I'm not very good with impatient people.

I took a picture of some red raspberries while Lily and I were out on her morning walk the other day.  Behind the berries and hidden beneath the ivy is a concrete staircase leading up the front entrance of a house.  Nice, eh?

So, Barbie smashed box office records yesterday raking in over $155 million in the US alone.  Oppenheimer didn't due to shabbily either, pulling in $80+ million.  The Internet had a big laugh at Bennie Shapiro burning Barbie and Ken dolls dress like Ken.  That's right.  Bennie evidently didn't realize that the black T-shirt and pants he was wearing matched Ken's outfit in the movie... and this is after seeing the movie.  Perhaps his subconscious just need to send a subliminal message to his viewers that deep in his heart he desperately wanted to be just like Ken.

And, of course, social media was abuzz because large media vans and trucks began filling up the parking around the DC Courthouse.  Something is expected to happen there either today or tomorrow (perhaps).  That's right... Something's Coming.

Zoom into This

 Sunday, and here in Central Pa the outside temp is 64 (F).  Nice sleeping weather.  My A/C rarely runs during the day and it's set at 73 (F).  I'm sure the River Birch tree and the Gingko trees help with keeping the inside temps down.  So far the summer has been fine here in Central PA, however we still have all of August and half of September to get through.

I had my Zoom call yesterday, and for the most part it was boring.  Only eight of us participated.  One of the problems is that the the guy who organizes them believes they need to be held on Saturday afternoons as that is the time when most people are available.  That is simply not the case.  We are all retired, or semi-retired and for those with families, weekends are the times when they get together with their kids and grandkids. And so there were excuses from those who didn't attend: one was kayaking with his wife and grandkids, another had chartered a boat to go deep sea fishing, another was visiting a flower show with his wife and daughter, one was on the golf course.  Anyway, here's a pic from it.

And for those who didn't know it, Barbie is smashing box office records, with Oppenheimer distantly on her heels.  Conservatives are flipping out as their carefully curated shrieks of Wokeness are falling on deaf ears all across the country.  While the director, Greta Gerwig, did not openly eviscerate the Cracker Jack Crazy Conservatives, she did jib and jab at them enough for Benny Shapiro to buy Barbie and Ken dolls and set them ablaze.  While I'm sure his followers nearly wet themselves with glee, the rest of America looked at his prank and realized he's as big of a dick as Ronnie DeSantis.

Speaking of Ronnie, he's doubling down on his "slaves benefitted from being slaves" rhetoric.  He is not moving to the far right, he's just becoming more and more extreme about his racism.  You look at his campaign, and at what he's doing to Florida, and you think he can't get any worse and then his administration pulls something like this.  I can't even imagine what world he's living in.