The life at the End of the World

Crap, I get to go back to work today.  Now, ain't that just damn ducky?  And snow is on the way, not much, they're calling for 1 - inches, at least the last time I checked Accuweather.  I had been hoping the white stuff was going to start falling over night, then I might have an excuse for calling off today... a weak excuse, I'll admit, but still something on the periphery of acceptability.  No such luck.
I got a nice ride in yesterday afternoon:  Ratzenreid - Wegscheidel.  It took me a little over an hour to ride 19.2 miles.  My legs felt fine afterwards.  Burned off almost 800 calories.  To celebrate I made egg rolls.  Delicious.  That is the compensation, you know?  Being able to eat with out the worry of putting on that extra pound.  And building muscle, too.
'The Bend in the River' chapter is finished, at least the rough draft.  I've moved on to 'Conversation in a Pickup Truck.'  This is where our heroes have a  Q & A with Cedric Greely.  Nice name, eh? 
And I understand neither the Idiot Jerk in the White House nor one of his council will be sitting in during this weeks Impeachment process.  They say to do so would insinuate guilt, and they claim they did nothing wrong.  Of course, just about every criminal convicted has always said the same thing. 
And for those who didn't know, Jade Evans is back on Youtube.  Jade who?  She's one of Lori Loughlin's media slut daughters.  This is making news only because her lying scab of a mother is involved with that college entrance scandal.  I didn't read either the NYT or the LA Times articles because... these are bad Americans, the trashy kind who love basting themselves in their own, phony superiority.
About the title... I had this weird dream last night.  It was actually me reading the legalese crap Google (or any app, for that matter) has you read every year concerning your security; the documentation where you acknowledge your rights to privacy and how much of your information they can share.  And it wasn't so much as my reading, but rather hearing a voice read it aloud.  Everything was going fine until the voice said "and I give all password access to the life at the end of the world," at which point I stopped it.   The life at the end of the world?  Who the hell was that?  Since I didn't know, I revoked the access... and woke up.  Interesting, eh?  So much so, I Googled 'the life at the end of the world,' after making coffee, of course.   This is what I found:  something by Wendie Renard.  You can read it in French, if you want.

Hhhm, looks like I denied Wendie password privileges. 

Smart balls

Well, I get to go back to work today, for just one day.  After today, however, I'm going to have a couple of 40 hour work weeks.  That's okay. 
The rain has finally stopped.... until tomorrow, my day off.  Looking at the long range forecast, or at least the 2 weeks Accuweather provides, this pattern is not going to change.  High humidity and thunderstorms are to be expected.  Zounds!!  What a stinky summer this is turning out to be.
I did free weights yesterday, upper body, so I'm a tad sore.  That's fine.  There's absolutely nothing wrong with working your muscles.  My mom once told me that if you're the slightest bit sore you did too much.  She was quite adverse to both exercise and perspiration.  Her idea of a workout was very easy repetition - a workout without the work.
I went to see her yesterday.  She was sitting in her chair wearing her night gown.  It was around 1:30 in the afternoon.  She told me she was packing to go home.  She is very confused.  She still recognizes me, my brother, and my sister, but at some point that will fade as well.  This is dementia.  My sister is finding it emotionally stressful.  My brother is digging into his religious denial chest and pulling out who knows what.  He visits her and they pray, as if that's going to change anything.  Me?  I think we should have left her die 3 years ago, when she was having heart attacks daily.  Of course, we listened to her doctors.  That's what you do in situations like that.  The sad truth is that the longer they manage to keep her alive, the more money they make.  They could really care less about the quality of her life.
And the Idiot Jerk's Blow Buddy Vlad gave me a soccer ball with a transmitter chip.  The balls are made that way.  The chip works with your cell phone.  You could sort of think of it as a talking, listening ball, sort of like a 'smart ball.'  Funny, you know?  Putin giving the Idiot Jerk smart balls?
While I was scanning news articles yesterday, I chanced upon an interesting tidbit.  Evidently the Idiot Jerk in the White House is frightened of Joe Biden.

You see, the Idiot Jerk knows that Joe, even as old as he is, can dribble circles around him on the basketball court.  While Joe goes in for an easy lay-up, the Idiot Jerk is going to be screaming "why do I always have dumb balls!  Why don't I ever get any smart balls?!"  I guess no one ever took the time to tell him that not one of us has smart balls.

NBC Sports disappoints with Tour Down Under coverage

Now, while I have to admit Australia is a long way away, there is no reason why NBC Sports needed to give it such crappy coverage.  Those of us who like cycling got basically a half hour per day for highlights.  That's it.  Those half hours?  They were not even broadcast at a set time, say like 5 PM everyday.  No, one day it was at 1:30 PM, the next day at 3:30PM, talk about stupid programming.
On February 10 they will dedicate one complete hour to the six day race.  Boy, I'll bet that's going to be chock full of sprints and chases!

For those of you who missed it, here are the top three winners.

Now, I'll admit the Tour Down Under does not have the prestige of the Tour De France, but let's give cyclists their due.  Of course, cycling has always gotten short shrift here in the United States.  It's not American, not the way major league baseball is, or football, or hockey... well the NHL did kind of shit in their pants this year, didn't they.  In fact, recently the only cycling news people were even talking about was that American embarrassment, Lance Armstrong.  Of course, why should he really be considered an embarrassment?  It seems as though every news feed I get names players of major league sports who have used performance enhancing drugs.  

The real problem is that we want to dominate.  We need to be number one.  All you need to do is watch the Olympics to understand.  We wouldn't send athletes if we weren't winning a lot of gold medals.  To see how right I am, compare the Olympics with the World Cup.  Our soccer players go out and bust their asses, but when it comes to coverage our Sports Networks only provide a video feed when the Americans are playing.  This is not the case in the other countries of the world where there are actual rivalries; not so with the United States.  I suspect the only reason we send a team at all is because we feel it's necessary.  Sure, we'd like them to win, but very few here really care, after all, it's only the World Cup.  It's the same thing with cycling, a sport that, because we don't dominate, we really don't care to watch.