Coalition of Death

 Today is starting out warmer than yesterday when I woke up to 50 (F), outside, of course.  This morning the temp was 60 (F) and the expected high is in the upper 70s (F).  Because the weather forecasters are saying we will be having much sunshine today, I'll be using my drying rack.  That's a non too subtle hint that my first load of laundry is in the washer.

Yesterday some things were done, and other things weren't.  I did take out the window A/C unit in the workout/computer room and put it away.  If my memory is correct, only used it 4 times over the summer, so mostly what it did was block the light.  The unit in the bedroom will be removed today.  That one has a thermostat so, while it was used more, I'd have to say that it was off more often than it was on.

I also spent some time on the Fit Gent YouTube channel picking out some additional ab exercises to do.  These are to be added to my upper body routine.

And even though I did make a salad for dinner to compensate for the heavy breakfast I had yesterday morning, I still ended up snacking my way through the evening.

Late yesterday afternoon, I did get an email from UPS regarding the broken Xerox printer, they wanted more pictures.  Well, I was told to pack the thing up and set it out for delivery, so I sent them the pictures that I'd already taken.  

America's health care is descending into chaos because of this man.  He is a Kennedy, and the Kennedy's despise him.  He has a Bachelor of Arts degree in History and Literature, and a Jurist's degree which allows him to practice law.  He has no experience in any of the fields of medicine.  What truly defines him is that he is a wack job extraordinaire.

The only reason he is the Secretary of Health is because a coalition of anti-vaxxers whose votes helped put the Orange Anus into the White House for a second time.  Orangie needs those voters to keep voting Republican so in order to keep them loyal, he made RFK (and his brain worm) the Secretary of Health.  While the rest of the world moves ahead with research and development in the field of medicine, this guy is eliminating positions.  He will be the death of many of the very people who voted for Orangie, the only problem is that many of them cannot die soon enough.  You would think Orangie would realize this is a detriment to his administration, but then he has never been a man of forethought.

Presence

 Our Central PA temps are predicted to climb up into the mid to upper 40s (F) today.  The snow showers that were forecast for Friday are now rain showers.  Does this mean our warm-up has begun?  I don't see any reason why we shouldn't believe so.  I'm fine with that.

Since I do drink the occasional glass of wine, people have asked me if there was a specific wine I prefer and I always tell them red, though the occasional dry white is fine.  The vintner I prefer is Josh Cellars, so much so, I've set myself up as a member with a drop shipment happening every 2 months.  Yesterday I received my first shipment.  When I opened the door, the UPS driver looked down and, upon seeing Howie said, "Oh, you have a different dog."  The same driver had delivered a box of wine a year ago.  At that time he'd tried to give Lily a biscuit and she refused.  Isn't that an interesting point to remember?

I saw a really good movie last night.  "Presence," directed by Steven Soderbergh.  It's not really a ghost story, and yet it is.  A family moves into a house only to discover there is a presence already there.  Since this is a Soderbergh film, the family is dysfunctional, with the mother doting on her son, and the father doting on his daughter, and of course, there is the Presence... just who is that?

And, as we all should have been expecting, yesterday was another day of Chaos with the Orange Anus playing host.  Surprisingly, not everybody knows this, but around 3 PM every Medicaid portal in every state shut down.  This meant that no claims could be filed, and probably more important, no claims could be paid.  Health providers were angry as wasps who nest has been attacked.  Two hours later the portals were turned back on.  Orangey's administration says the outage was accidental.  Me?  I think they floated a trial balloon to get a reaction.  They learned that if they do something so stupid again, they're going to be faced with open hostility.  Curiously, at about the same time, Mike Johnson, the Idiotic Speaker of the House said Republicans would be willing to work with Democrats on the debt ceiling.  Coincidence?  Orangey is learning that if Congress won't put up guardrails, the American people will.

That brings me to Inflection Points.  When historians look at the world, they see certain points that change the direction of society.  Often they lead to wars.  One thing is always true, there is no going back to what was before.  The last major Inflection Point was the French Revolution in which the ruling class, the oligarchs, so to speak, were on the losing side.  In fact, authoritarianism has always lost.  I suspect that these Inflection Points happen mostly because Authoritarians never, ever learn from their past mistakes.

No Sleaze Please

 Two deliveries are expected today:  Biggie's meds by FedEx (he loves FedEx drivers) and a case of wine from St. Michelle Winery in Washington (the state, not the city) by UPS.  Both dogs love UPS drivers, in fact I don't doubt for a second that if the dogs held a competition between the two, UPS drivers would easily top FedEx drivers.  Don't ask me why that is, I don't know.

I also bought myself a new wireless keyboard and mouse.  The old ones had wires and I am literally trying to be done with wires.  

I've also set up a YouTube channel.  I can import any length video from YouTube into Blogger, but there are severe limitations when trying to import them from my phone.  So, I'm resorting to this work around.  We'll have to see how much fun this is.  If I have an enjoyable time, I may make it public.

Did everybody get a chance to see Lindsey Graham ask Kitanji Brown Jackson about her faith yesterday?  His attack was clearly to appease the Cracker Jack Crazies who were upset that Amy Cony Boney was asked a similar question.  People were very concerned that Cony Bony was nominated not so much for her fairness, as she was to push religious zealotry on America.  Let's be honest here, while Conservatives are terribly upset  about her being black, they are horrified she might take away some of the zealotry they have already packed into the court.  Here's the clip if you want to watch.  This is what sleaze looks like.  

Does anybody know how Clarence is doing?  Still on the drip?

Tit for Tattying

Tuesday, Vacation Day Number 2

Yesterday I didn't do much of anything, besides buy stuff on Amazon: new case for the new phone (red), a wireless charging station, a pre-order of Cyber Punk 2077 (video game).  I drove to Target because I wanted a pair of sandals / flip flops... the smallest size they had was 13.  I have tiny feet, men's size 8 1/2.  A size 13 would fall off when I walked.

UPS dropped off the wrong package.  I had ordered a Lenovo tablet.  The box I opened contained large plastic syringes and plastic tubing.  About 2 minutes after I opened it, there was a loud pounding at the door.  It was the UPS Driver with the correct package.  Ooops.

I want to swing by the store this morning and get another jalapeno pepper plant.  Something, most likely the curious nose of a dog, snapped the one I had in two.   That sucker's a gonner.  And I do want to grow peppers.  My one tomato plant has flowers already.

I also want to mow the lawn this morning... before it gets too hot.  The temp is supposed to soar into the 90's (F) today.  Tomorrow we have the same forecast.  From then on it's kind of iffy because of Cristobal.  That storm front is supposed to join up with another, larger front moving east creating a much larger storm.  We're going to get wet.

Strava sent my my May stats yesterday.  I rode 284 miles last month.  I'm happy with that.  

For those of you with a hankering to play the Stock Market right now... hold off.  It's going to drop.  Let the super rich take the hit when it comes, because it is going to come.  The vast majority of Mom and Pop investors don't have the necessary financial cushion to survive the serious drops when they come.

And again, yesterday seemed a rather quiet one for the Idiot Jerk in the White House.  That does not mean it was politically quiet.  Billy Barr said that it was the Secret Service who told Bunker Boy he needed to go into hiding.  Ouch.  He and the Idiot Jerk seem to be in some sort of little blame game, tit for tattying each other.  Of course, they're both gutless Republicans so this is normal.  Someone else is always to blame.

Finally, I snapped a picture of one of my red roses yesterday. This has color and perfume.

My Day of Adventure

It's Friday!  Two more days and I'm off for 4 - that's almost a mini-vacation.  I'm excited.
And yesterday?  Well, it turned into a day of adventure.  The new TV for the cycling room was scheduled to be delivered.  I spent most of the morning getting the room ready, redecorating, so to speak.  Notice, I used 'redecorating' rather than 'rearranging' since the latter comes across as rather mundane.
After the redecorating was finished, all I had to do was wait.  There are some occasions where I suffer from impatience.  Yesterday... was one.  Mostly because I had gotten that email from Amazon telling me my delivery date had been changed to today.  Then, at 1117, I received a text to let me know my TV had been delivered.  This was odd, since the dogs, believing every UPS delivery man is a present from god, had been silent.  There had been no joyous "he's here! he's here" barking, or jumping around.  Nothing.  Just silence.  So, I opened the front door and looked out onto the porch and saw... Nothing.  No TV.  Son of a bitch.  I called UPS and was told that yes, the TV had been delivered at 1106.  I told the girl on the phone "not at my house."  That's right.  My Ultra High Definition, 50 inch, Smart TV had been delivered to the wrong address.  Son of a bitch!
Now, I wasn't feeling distraught, just... aggravated.  I understand UPS drivers grow a third ass because they run off two over the holidays.  Putting on shoes and pulling on my winter coat, I started my trek down the street in search of my TV.  My thinking was he had gotten the street right and the address wrong.  And I was right.  Five houses down my spanking new TV was nestled on someone else's front porch.  So, I picked it up and carried it home, not even considering the fact that some might see me as being a porch pirate.
A little after 2 the UPS driver showed up and asked if I'd gotten my TV.  I saw his truck was parked halfway down the block, at the wrong address, and there was another driver with him standing out in the middle of the street.  He asked if I had gotten my TV.  I told him "yes," and he apologized.  This is how it goes sometimes.  I'm sure this happens more often then we might like to think.  They are human, after all.
Anyway, this is what the new set-up looks like:

And, sitting on the screen, I am really close to that big screen:

It's like looking out a window.

Also, for those interested.  I discovered I can go into Bob's blog by using Explorer, or Internet Explorer, or what ever the hell Microsoft calls their browser.

UPS, Samsung, Kardashian inside job, and taxes

Well, I didn't go in to work today.  I called and told them I'd be in late... how late I don't know.  You see I'm waiting for UPS to come and pick up that expensive Samsung television that was delivered broken / damaged.  That's right.  It's going back to Amazon.  Last night, while I was waiting for the alarm check in the store to be finished so I could leave, I checked my email.  Lo and behold, there was a communication from Samsung, and once again they apologized for my inconvenience, and once again they confirmed that I would have to pay the expense for fixing the TV.  So I popped on over to Amazon and processed the return.  And, as I said above, they're picking the TV up today.
On the Kardashian robbery?  I honestly think it was an inside job.  You know, just a little something to keep their names in the headlines.  I mean, that bimbo can't possibly have over $10 million in jewelry.  Of course, that may not be the appraised value for her paste rocks, just her idea of what all of that zirconium is worth.
And what about Trump not paying taxes?  Ha, ha.  That his supporters are saying he's a genius for figuring out how to cheat the government?  That's kind of sad. It's Trumplodite mentality all the way.

And I have started looking for another TV.  I have an 8 year old Sony Bravia flat screen now that was rather expensive way back when I bought it.  It has been hoisted around, carried here, moved there, and I've never had a problem with it.  When I emailed Samsung and said I'd be buying a TV from one of their competitors I was right, and it just might be another Sony.