Riding and Wingnuts

Yesterday afternoon the ridge of high pressure that had been constraining the smoke and heat under an inversion finally broke down.  High winds entered the area, and things were better.  The smoke was not gone, yet.  This is last night.  Still orange.

This is a terrible cell phone picture of the moon, which, as you can see, is also orange.

This morning, a miracle occurred and the AQI was in the low 20s.  Finally we were able to ride outside.  There is a bridge replacement project on the route we normally drive to the trail head.  So now we have to park in a different place, start the ride in the middle, and ride big hills right off the bat.  

There are two camp hosts at the lake.  Both of them were off work today, a weekend day in the summer.  There were many people at the ramp, it was early enough that no one was drunk or obnoxious about the wait.  These people are in line.

The millfoil is amazing this year.  It's never been this big or this bright yellow.

47 made a complete ass of himself at the White House Correspondents dinner.  The media people should have stood up as one, and departed.  Instead, they sat quietly while he was rude and obnoxious, particularly to Kaitlin Collins.  He's still at it today.

I often speak of wing nut politicians in Arizona, one of which would be Mark Lamb.  He won the primary for the 5th district in congress.  He's a wing nut.  From a Salon article we learn the following.

The story journalists told about Mark Lamb’s victory Tuesday night was one of victory over scandal. Lamb, who ran with the slogan “God, Family, Freedom,” won the Republican primary for Arizona’s deep-red 5^th District despite reports that for years he had engaged in sexual behavior at odds with his traditional-values image. Lamb, an Arizona Republic investigation found, had sexted women other than his wife and threatened one with consequences if she didn’t keep quiet. The paper also uncovered racist texts. (Lamb’s campaign denies the allegations.) Despite the reports, President Donald Trump endorsed Lamb—and reiterated his support after the scandal came to light—and Lamb won easily. It was another data point for the power of Trump’s endorsement, and a significant one: Due to his district’s makeup, Lamb is heavily favored to win the general election in November.

But beyond the scandal, there’s another story to be told about Mark Lamb, one that’s arguably more concerning: Lamb has ties to the fringe right-wing “constitutional sheriff” movement. This movement argues that sheriffs have the ultimate authority in their county, per the Constitution, to decide which state or federal laws are lawful and therefore which should be enforced. Legal experts consider this to be bogus. Lamb, apparently, does not.

This constitutional sheriff thing is just bad. 

Other than this, I have not too many things to say.

Smoke and the Eye is Better

Ho Hum.  How are you doing in the time of forest fires?  We are bored spitless.  The AQI has been such that neither one of us wants to go out and inhale.  Plus it's hot.  When we get up, the first thing we do is make the air conditioning colder.  

Yesterday we drove out to Spokane Valley to Squeaky's car wash.  It's touchless and they spray a wax on it that is actually effective.  Back in the day, Jim would wash the car, clay the car to pick up any missed dust, and then wax the car.  It was pretty much all day, especially when we had mini-vans.  This is better.

Here is some local fauna.  This is a young turkey.

A California quail sitting on top of an evergreen that was pruned into a point by the previous owners.  He's keeping an eye on mom and the kids.  They are the state bird of California.
 

Jim is healing quickly.  After uncovering the incision I counted stitches, there 13.  They're really close together, and very neatly done.  I am now a believer in having a plastic surgeon do the Mohs if one is available.

The incision in all its glory.  We were very surprised at the size of it.  This was taken July 19.

This is from today, July 23.  Much progress has been made.  The green area has been reabsorbed, and the black eye is well on its way out.  The sutures dissolve, and appear to be starting that process.  If you look slightly above his right eye, that is a previous Mohs scar.

Here is sunset two days ago.

Other than this, I have nothing further to say.  The country continues on its way to hell in a hand basket basket because the spineless republican reptiles continue to let him run amok.  It's interesting that when a Democrat is president, they position themselves as blocking everything.  But now, with a man deep in dementia, anything he wants is just fine.

Smoke and Mohs

Greetings Smoke Eaters.  We woke up very early today, the atmosphere was poisonous.  It's not as bad as the east coast, but it's bad enough.  It's making my eyes and my throat hurt.  It appears that there will be no, none, not any riding of a bike outside until the wind changes direction.

This was last night, pretty clouds.

So, Jim had a 7:40 surgery check-in this morning.  One of his benign skin cancers had morphed into a squamous.  Worse, it's very close to the corner of his eye.  We elected not to use the practice who had the thing biopsied for its removal.  We have seen the kind of scars their Mohs surgeons leave, so we found a Mohs/Plastic Surgeon and had her do it.  Only one layer of flesh had to be removed which was good.  It's a 40 minute drive, so we were up and out early.  Look at Jim's right eye.  The accumulation of tissue juice in the eye lid is formidable.  There is probably a black eye in his future.

Apparently 47 was once again off the rails last night.  He's really pissed at how few networks covered his proof of a stolen election. He's threatening Canada for not raking their forests properly, thus causing forest fires.  He's going to call Premier Carney.  I would like to hear that call.

Other than that, I got nothing. 
 

A New Refrigerator and That Man

Greetings Earthlings!  How are you in this time of trial and tribulation?  Jim and I are fairly despondent about the state of things.  It seems to be getting worse everyday.

We got the new refrigerator last week.  The frig itself is an improvement, but boy howdy was the install flawed.  We paid for a white glove delivery.  The two meat heads that brought it did not white glove it at all.  

First, they left the packing tape on the inside of the refrigerator as well as the plastic enclosing the drawers and shelves.  When they left, they were practically running for the front door, telling us that "code" would not allow them to put their hands in the refrigerator and we would have to deal with it.  They also did not tell us that we should pull the tape before cooling it down.  Not knowing this, we left and went to Costco, leaving it to cool off.  This was not good.  The tape would not just pull off, it left layers of tape behind.

See how the color lightens at the end of the strip?  When it reached that point, we were scraping it off with our thumbnails.

These two little remnants were difficult to remove.

This is it, it's a terrible photo. 

We have so much more space in the refrigerator side.  The freezer is about a push on capacity.  The ice maker is way better, and does not spit ice on the floor.

Their second sin was they delivered it in sleep mode.  We couldn't understand why the light for the ice maker wouldn't stay on.  After several readings of the manual, we deduced that the box was sleeping.  To take it out of sleep, you push two buttons at exactly the same time, and hold it for exactly 5 seconds.  That was time consuming.

We saw this at Costco.  Potato chips cooked in Wagyu beef fat.  Who thinks this is a good idea.  Oh right, RFKJr thinks we should all be eating beef tallow, and no seed oils.

47 continues to run off the rails.  He's back to bombing Iran and closing the Strait of Hormuz.  Yesterday he announced that he's opening up Bear's Ears and the Escalante National Monument to mining.  He wants to close an additional 30 monuments for mining.  

Trump just shrunk Bears Ears by 91% and Grand Staircase-Escalante by 90%. Bears Ears was the first national monument co-managed by tribes. Five tribes spent years building that partnership. It's been walked back. 100,000+ archeological sites now exposed to mining and drilling.
Posted by Rebecca Nagle

A year ago, CDC made Cyclospora surveillance optional. It had been tracked for 28 years. Today: ~3,000 cases across 31 states, no confirmed source, and CDC’s own count (843) is trailing what states are reporting by thousands.  At present, they're thinking it's in bagged salad.  This is not good, bagged salad is a dinner staple on the way to Tucson.  That's assuming we still have gas available in October.

So, Lindsay Graham died.  Many people have had many things to say about that.  I think this is the best statement.

And then there is Mitch McConnell.  He's like Schrodinger's cat.  Is he dead or alive?  Who knows.  His proof of life photo was not convincing.  Snopes rates it as AI generated.

Other than the destruction of the democracy and the breaking of the planetary economy, there's not much to report.

The Lake and the World in General

It's hot now.  Riding must be done earlier than we like.  However, tomorrow is off the table since the new refrigerator is being delivered.  I have HAD it with the old one; the ice maker throws ice on the floor, the chute is always getting plugged up with multiple cubes stuck together which means I have to stick my arm in there and fish them out, plus the the freezer is a drawer and finding anything that sunk to the bottom is difficult.  So the new one is going to be a side by side.  Buying a frig is an information free zone, they're not on water in the store so who knows how the flow rate is for the water dispenser.  Our time slot is 8:30 to 10:30, so it will not spend the entire day sitting on a hot truck in the sun.

There has been riding.  The milfoil is now blooming.  It's that yellow streak on the water.

These people live on the water, near the park.  They pretty much have housing perfection.

This a pit toilet at the parking lot of the trail head.  This sign went up a little bit or so ago.  I'm not sure why this needed to be said.
 

So 47 was at the NATO meeting, sleeping through meetings, being belligerent, and bombing Iran.  He called the Iranian people scum, and was generally unpleasant.  When he went to Turkey, he took the new plane that was a gift from Qatar.  It was refurbed somewhat, but it's lacking in defensive capability.  The real planes have missile detection, chaff dispensers and like that.  The current AF1s also have in air refueling, the new two do not.  I think that was a grievous error in judgement.  Anyway, after hostilities started up again, a current AF1 was sent to fetch him, since he has created hostile skies with his actions.  The Qatar plane was taken to Europe so the troops could see it.  Right.

The US is wondering if Mitch McConnell is dead or alive.  If he's dead, then a special election must be called to replace him.  If he dies after August 3, then there is no special election and they wait until mid-terms.  The republicans don't want a special election because they fear Thomas Massie will run as an independent, win, and join the Senate to bedevil 47. 

This is a good tweet on that subject.  "Don't forget that the establishment kept a deceased pregnant woman alive, against her family's wishes and medical evidence, to incubate a fetus to viability like a science experiment... They would certainly keep a dead senator warm if it meant hanging on to power."
Posted by Jezz

Other than a new appliance, there is not too much happening here.  The marmots are eating our neighbors' flowers.

Belgium Beats the USA

 I do love this.  From the Washington Post:

After the game was over, the team did Trump's signature dance in the locker room while singing YMCA.

Congratulations, Belgium.  The 4-1 score was pretty dang impressive.