Working in the Yard and Lying Liars

We have been doing more home improvement.  Actually, it was prophylactic home improvement.  First there was the matter of a smoke alarm.  Notice how high up in the air Jim is.  That's an eight foot ladder.  The smoke alarm is hard wired.  Originally he went up to change the battery.  It must have a battery in the event of a power outage.  After the battery change it started chirping.  It chirped for awhile, then it stopped.  At this point we no longer had faith in the smoke detector because its manufacturing date was 1999.  They're only good for ten years.  So Jim removed all of it.  We bought a cover for the electrical box and installed a new detector at a lower altitude.  We were concerned that it might start up the chirping again in the middle of the night, the 8 foot ladder would have to be brought in from the garage, and no one would get any sleep.

The toilet flooding in the downstairs has left scars on my psyche.  Despite replacing the float in the powder room toilet, it was still making the occasional sound that suggested impending doom.  So, we bought a set of replacement toilet guts.  We went to Ace, the home of the "helpful hardware man."  They have a new policy that if you're wearing a mask, you must remain at the front of the store, under surveillance and they'll go get your items for you, or you must be escorted through the store.  I get that they are having a shop lifting problem, but I don't think that profiling elderly people wearing masks as potential thieves is going to generate any customer loyalty.  When I questioned an employee about their reasoning, they said they couldn't identify people on the cameras if they had masks on. This is a stupid policy.  But I digress.  Here is Jim on the floor.

It's a very limited space.  Here is me, shortening up a chain that's part of the works.

The new toilet parts no longer have the floating ball.  They've gone to a part that floats up and down on the vertical thing on the left.  I have no idea what that would be called.

As of now, all three toilets have the new and improved interior parts, and hopefully I will not have to speak of these things again.

The tulip is blooming.  Perhaps we'll plant more bulbs in the fall.

By now, we all know about DeathSantis banning math books in Florida because they allegedly contain Critical Race Theory.  No proof of this has been forthcoming.  Apparently the only text book company who has acceptable books is Houston based Accelerated Learning.  It turns out that up until 2020, the CEO of The Carlyle Group, the global investment group that acquired Accelerated in 2018, was none other than the newly-elected government of Virginia, Glenn Youngkin. He had been with Carlyle for 25 years.  Virginia is proposing legislation that is the same as Florida's.  Koch Industries owns stock in the Carlyle group.  The Kochs have interfered in school curricula for years. There is more than can be read here.

Marjorie Taylor Greene was called upon to testify under oath today about whether or not she participated in the Jan. 6 insurrection.  In order to avoid perjuring herself, she went with the "I don't recall" defense.  She's such a liar.  She did this thing - own it.

Kevin McCarthy has also been outed as being a liar.  He claimed he did not think the orange ectoplasm should have resigned after inciting the insurrection.  He's recorded on tape talking to Rep. Liz Cheney about thinking about calling the ectoplasm and encouraging him to do exactly that.  Liar, they are all liars.  The question is who recorded the conversation.  Ms. Cheney says it wasn't her.  Perhaps it was Rep. Elise Stefanik who wants McCarthy's job.  It's unlikely that there will be any consequences for any of these things, there are two systems of justice in this country.

Today started out nice.  Jim had previously removed an ugly spirea from along the path.  Today we continued digging and pulling out roots.  It's a surface rooter, and there were many.  We replaced it with a box wood.  Now we have a giant pink bucket full of dirt from the hole.  It has a high clay content.

We also got the geraniums put in the planters.  I'm not sure how well this installation will do, they're in shade starting about 1:00 in the afternoon.  We'll see, the mantra here is produce or die.  The pot below will do well, they have full sun all day.

There is one more ugly bush to dig up.  We need to find a replacement that is less ugly.  I had been thinking about forsythia until I realized how big they get, so nope.  Something else will be purchased.

Other than this, I have nothing else on offer.