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.

The Fourth

Happy 4th for those who observe.  We do not.  We did go for a walk, which was warm, but good.  We need to walk more.  Our neighborhood is largely elderly, and many of the men are losing the ability to walk well.  They take very guarded tiny steps.  Jim's mother did this towards the end, she traded in her long stride for baby steps.  My current theory is that we need to walk more to avoid that.

There are approximately 400 Proud Boys parading through D.C. today.  It's hotter that the hubs of hell and some of them are suffering from the heat.  People on the streets are yelling at them, telling them to take their stupid Confederate flags and go home.  I support this position.  Here is an interesting photo from the subway.  The photo is by Cheney Orr, who is a freelance photographer.

Those people are just disgraceful.

We went to the John Finch Arboretum Wednesday.  It's a very pleasant aspect, with the exception of I90 running along its border.  The noise was ferocious.  They have many kiosks telling you about water management in urban areas and the importance of trees. 

It's difficult to see, due to the harsh sun and shadows, but this is a very large tree that was either hit by lightning or high winds that is currently broken.  There are two outliers now that used to be upright.

There are many marmots there.  Many.  They dig holes like this and then burrow.  Marmots really have no predators in Spokane, so they are multiplying.  

The creek, so there is a water supply for the critters.

Another house was re-roofed last week.  It was a huge roof.  Progress was slowed by this tire on their trailer blowing up.  It sounded like a bomb.

The chords are visible along the top of this photo, they sort of look like teeth.  They're big, that was a very heavy duty tire.

We saw this on the walk today, it's clever.

Other than this paltry offering, I have nothing to say.