Life and Loss

Welp, the elections were surprisingly good.  Very good, really.  The fact that 47 is furious about the whole thing is a large source of enjoyment for Jim and me.  

Things are domestic here.  Yesterday we dropped an Amazon return off at Whole Foods.  It's a fabulous service, especially since we don't have a printer here to print return labels.  At Whole Foods, you show them the QR code from Amazon on your phone, and they take the objects (no packaging required) away, and you're done.  I was in the store maybe 2 minutes.  Then there was a Walmart pickup of coffee filters and what not.  Oddly enough, Walmart branded #4 coffee filters are better than Melitta.  Melittas have started to leak grounds, Walmarts' don't do that.  Walmart has imposed a $6.99 charge to bring stuff to your car.  One article said it was because people were ordering small items and having people bring them to them.  Walmart vehemently denies that the charge is an effort to get money back from the tariffs.

Then it was time to put the new curtains up in the primary bedroom.  It was difficult, there was a small area of wall available to get the grommets higher than the valance for the vertical blinds (which we left in place) and not run into the ceiling.  The first wall anchor went in fine.  The second two hit wood, which meant a trip to the hardware store for wood screws, but no wall anchor needed.  I think we're not as smart as we used to be, it took a lot of measuring and figuring heights.  And all of it was done working over Jim's head.  I just handed him things.  It's done.  They don't block 100% of the light, but I would say it's about an 85% improvement, which is a lot since that window faces east.  Eventually there will be a photo once the ladders are out of the room. The morning sun here feels like you're being x-rayed.

We saw this the other day.  It's an interesting bicycle.  Look at how much lower the handle bars are than the seat.  Generally there is only an inch drop for the handle bars on a mountain bike.  Then look at the seat.  That looks like a road racing seat, it looks very uncomfortable, especially on trails and rocks.  It's an electric bike, the battery is the black section of the down tube.  That's a heavy bike, I'm impressed that the owner can life it that high on to the rack.  Many e-bikes use ramps to the rack, and a slow speed to get the bike lifted.

Here are a few article head lines from The New Republic.  They're amusing to me. 

 Other than this paltry offering, I have no too much to say about things.

Scenery

Greetings Earthlings!  How are you all doing in this time of fear and loathing.  It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.

The weather continues to be stellar if not a wee bit toasty.  I'll take it over Spokane where it is 41F and raining.  

Here we have an ocotillo in the side yard.  He was late to leaf out last spring, and he never really bloomed.  But, he's not dead, so that's good.

This is a tree in the front yard.  It drips leaves and debris on four ugly plants that grow under it.  We're going to have the landscape dudes dig them up.  The leaves deposit in the ugly plants and make piles of debris that is difficult to remove.

The ugly plants in question.  Three large rocks will be placed artistically in the general area.

I saw this riding this morning.  This is one of the most magnificent bougainvilleas I have seen recently. I love the way it drapes itself over the wall. 

 Jim's back continues on the path of weirdness.  We put the bike rack on the car day before yesterday.  It's fairly stout, and we were slow in getting the shank into the receiver. Jim's back was not happy about this.  At first we feared it was more spine badness, but I think it was actually muscle strain.  Yesterday was a bad day, today was fine.  There was a bike ride and then a trip to JC Penny's for a curtain rod.  That store has really changed, there are way fewer places to pay.  Macy's has changed, as well.  They put all the shoes out on shelves, like the bargain shoe stores, and shoes are now self serve.  That actually works for me, I hate shoe guys hovering over me and my wretched feet, wishing I would just buy something and leave.  

I'm giving it a rest on the orange gibbon today.  You're welcome. 

The Back and That Man

Greetings.  Yesterday was a veeeery long day.  We had an appointment with the Tucson Orthopedic PA.  He really could not say anything without an MRI, which we had done after the appointment.  We got the results on the portal, basically Jim's spine is a hot mess of osteophytes and osteophyte complexes, stenosis, arthritis, and badness.  The PA called this morning.  The compression fracture at L1 is old.  Because it is old, and there is no edema, Medicare will not pay for any work done on this vertebra.  I'm very unhappy about this.  The PA wonders if L3 is the actual bad guy in terms of Jim's leg pain.  Here is a good portrayal of what nerve goes where.  So, yes, L3 could be the villain.  He's proposing an RF nerve ablation.  It will stop the nerve from transmitting pain to the brain for 6 to 18 months.  Then you can do it again.  It's a very short recovery time, and this is something Dr. Holt does a lot.  They first shoot anesthesia into the area and see if the pain stops.  If it does, they the nuke the nerve.  So, that's where we are at the moment.  We need to get some relief, Jim is still unable to walk for any distance so we're not getting weight bearing exercise.  For those of you 60 and up, I can not stress the importance of weight bearing.  We sort of blew it over the years because we were on bikes all the time, which is worthless for bone formation.  

The sages in the yard are putting out an anemic bloom.  Some of the plants in Tucson are just covered in purple.  It's ok, fewer petals to fall in the rocks.

The mountain lion has not been heard from again.  We did have a coyote in the back yard a few days ago.  There's a game trail in the upper back yard, I guess he likes to come through and smell things.  So far, no javelinas or deer have been seen, but there is a good sized pile of deer poop close to the house.

So, 47 did a whirl wind tour of Asia.  While there he did his little dance after deplaning in Malaysia.  He once again claimed he settled the dispute between Cambodia and Thailand.  On twitter, we see this: Xi bitch slapped Trump in front of the world correcting Trump that he did not broker peace between Thailand and Cambodia and that it was indeed China.  While 47 was there, China agreed to buy the same amount of soybeans that they always do. And in exchange, Trump gave them access to the most valuable technology humanity has ever created.  He's going to sell them Nvidia chips, which are crucial to AI.  We're doomed.  Here is a NYT gift article on how negotiations went.  Sources say foreign dignitaries are now referring to Donald Trump as president-shit-his-pants, a playful and endearing nickname for the US president’s repeated soiling of himself during official trips.  I can not be any more embarrassed to be a US citizen.

 

47 has replaced Rear Admiral Kurt J. Rothenhaus as chief of naval research with a DOGE person.  She knows nothing.  This is a slap to the admiral, the service, and all of us.  Read all about it.  47 has been going on about wanting aircraft carriers to go back to steam catapults.  The electromagnetic catapults had issues early on with launching and recovering air craft.  The problems are worked out, rate of launch and recovery is better, they can launch drones with the systems, and it's not as violent to the airplanes when they launch.  It works, it's in place.  The current class of  carriers under construction is built around the electromagnetic system, just as the A10 Warthogs were built around their cannons.  But no, he wants future boats to go back to steam.  But, he does know more about catapults than anyone.  Anyway, we wonder if putting the DOGE person in that position is in order to facilitate the going back to steam.

 

MS Word now has an AI grammar checker installed.  It does not know the correct use of less vs. fewer.  How much money is being spent on this crap?   

 

Later, this may or may not be true, it's from facebook.

 

Too Much Nature

Last night, while reading in bed, this is what we heard.  It started out in the back yard, and then the sound traveled away.  It was a mountain lion.  I did not know they sounded like this.  This is a better youtube, play this one.

The Yard and That Man

Yesterday we worked in the back yard a little.  Last year when we were here, nothing was growing in the yard.  This year, we had several of these.  They were difficult to remove. 

And this would be why they were difficult.  The brown things are part of a root.  It's quite a long root and it goes up in to the very back of the yard.  We don't know the point of origin, or what it was.  I suspect this will be an on going project of removal.

Google search does not know what they are.  

This is a fairy duster.  They're nice looking plants. 

 While in Asia, President Trump told reporters he had an MRI during his recent trip to Walter Reed: “I did. I got an MRI. It was perfect…I gave you the full results. We had an MRI, and the machine, you know, the whole thing, and it was perfect.”  He went on to discuss taking the Montreal Cognitive Test and how well he had done, much better than either AOC or Jasmine Crockett could do.  He then followed up with, "I put the star in the star hole. A lot of people can't do that. They try to put it in the hexagon hole. But I put it in the star hole, and it only took me three attempts. I'd like to see AOC do that."  

Three attempts to put the star shaped object into the star shaped hole.  That's just sad. 

Adam Cochran posted this:  Trump is 6 months from his last physical (and last MRI). He is 3 months from his disappearance on labor day. -6 month MRIs are used to monitor severe progressions of Alzheimer’s or Vascular Dementia. -3 month follow-ups are used after a stroke. No non-serious condition requires anyone to get a 6 month MRI. The Presidents currently disclosed conditions do not merit a 6 month MRI. So the question is: -Stroke, dementia, or Alzheimer’s?

The man is seriously deranged.  How much longer are the republicans going to let this continue?

 

Today in extinction:

 

 

So that's what's shaking today.

Settling In and Other Stuff

Greetings mellow humans.  I think the great settling in to the house has completed.  There was the veeerry  expensive trip to Costco and a less expensive trip to Safeway.  Yesterday we finally cleaned the floors.  Dust here is different than other dust, I should get a photo of it.  Anyway, I have a bagless vacuum cleaner with HEPA filters which has to be field stripped and washed every time it's used for any length of time.  I'm giving serious thought to getting something else.  So, to mitigate that, there is a dust mop.  It's good, it gets up a lot of fuzz and dust prior to vacuuming, so there is less field stripping.  We also changed the furnace filters yesterday.  Next time, we're going to try it with only one ladder.  Getting the eight footer in the house is too hard.  Since the vacuum created by the running air conditioner will hold up a filter, two people don't have to be involved in this.

So, we are now clean and the larder is full.

The trichocereus surprised us by blooming again.  We saw it in June and did not expect to see it again.  And yet, here is it.  This was yesterday in full sun.

This morning, with me providing shade so it's not so washed out.

We finally got a decent ride in this morning.  It's so demoralizing how fast one loses fitness!  Jim has been off the bike since early September because of the leg pain, I was riding and rowing downstairs, but it's not the same.  Anyway, we did hill repeats and now we are tired.

The two worthless PAs in Spokane we saw for the leg pain, were worthless.  Neither of them ordered images of the spine.  New xrays ordered by the AZ GP reveal there is an age indeterminate compressed fracture at L1 with 25% anterior height loss..  Hopefully this will not require a full on spinal fusion (90 day recovery) and can be fixed with Kyphoplasty, for which hopefully Medicare will provide coverage.

Kyphoplasty is a variation of a vertebroplasty which attempts to restore the height and angle of kyphosis of a fractured vertebra (of certain types), followed by its stabilization using injected bone cement. The procedure typically includes the use of a small balloon that is inflated in the vertebral body to create a void within the cancellous bone prior to cement delivery. Once the void is created, the procedure continues in a similar manner as a vertebroplasty, but the bone cement is typically delivered directly into the newly created void. 

I can only think about this for short periods of time, it just weirds me out too much. 

Go here, and listen to Mark Cuban talk about how bad the Pharmacy Benefit Manager system is.  It's very bad. 

47 was asked if he would need a declaration of war to continue bombing small boats in the Caribbean Sea, or eventually to invade Venezuela.  This is what he said.  “I don't think we're gonna ask for a declaration of war. I think we're just gonna kill people. Okay? We're gonna kill them. They're gonna be, like, dead.”  Always the erudite speaker, he is.

The East Wing of the White House is now completely destroyed.  The cost estimates continue to increase at $50M a leap.   

The back yard a few days ago.

 So, that's what's happening here.

OK, here is what's happening in the Inland Empire.