Ukraine

Welp, today Putin committed two verifiable war crimes.  He's using cluster bombs against civilian housing.  Cluster bombs are forbidden, so is shelling civilians.  He waited for curfew to be over in the morning, so people would be moving around, and then shelled an apartment building.  There are reports that a thermobaric bomb was detonated over an oil storage facility, but I don't know if that's confirmed. 

Meanwhile, Ukrainian pilots have arrived in Poland to pick up donated Mig-29s.  What they really need is a bunch of A-10 Warthogs to go kill some tanks.  Javelins are good, Warthogs are better.  Originally Bulgaria was going to donate Su-25s, which is the Russian Warthog, but apparently they have decided not to.

The response to this was has been interesting.  First we had the orange ectoplasm in Mar-a-Lago saying “Putin is smart. He's taken over a country for $2 worth of sanctions. I'd say that's pretty smart.”   It's turned out to be considerably more than that, even Switzerland is embargoing Putin's money.  The GOP was originally in favor of Putin's actions, but apparently has realized that was not a good look for them, and they're backed off a little.  However, this is the US, and we always have our crazies.

Go here for the video.  I still don't know how to imbed a talking tweet.

And then there is this.

Russia’s main state news agency RIA Novosti posted, then removed a piece with invaluable insight into what Putin wanted to gain from the war he waged against Ukraine. Apparently, the war was supposed to end on Feb. 26 with 🇺🇦full irreversible capitulation. This is a translation of the original Russian text.

It's not looking good, Russian is laying siege to cities.  Currently there is a column of tanks and other equipment stretched over 40 miles on the way to Kyiv.  If they had Warthogs they could deal with this, but they don't.

In addition to the loss of life, there will be the loss of history and art.

A Meandering Ramble

Mellow greetings, citizens.  Looking in my file of recent pictures, I don't find all that much interesting that has happened since I last posted.  We have been doing some other house projects, but none reach a level of interest that would justify making you read about them.

I will say that we decided to engage an insurance agent to help with the process of shopping our car and house insurance bundle.  We're currently with Progressive, and we kept thinking that they were really expensive.  Nope!  We were wrong about that.  The agent did tell us our limits on personal liability and under insured motorist were too low so we will increase those amounts.  The most interesting thing was the Safeco report on us showed an at-fault car accident from 2019.  Actually, we were rear ended.  Thank the saints that we still had the photos I took at the accident scene of the other driver's insurance card.  We called his insurer and they changed it in their data base.  Hopefully this will propagate everywhere.  It was a clerical error, but could have been very expensive.  So, Progressive it is!  Oddly enough, the policies offered by Costco and our credit union were more expensive with less coverage.

A careful examination of a wall we do not want to paint has revealed some paint damage.  We will hang a photo there.  The candidates are as follows.

They are a prickly pear in bloom, the Hickman Bridge in Capital Reef, and from the trail to Observation Point in Zion.  The wall really wants a portrait oriented frame, but I think I'm going with the Hickman Bridge.  Although, maybe not, we'll see.

As we all know, the wretched Putin has invaded Ukraine.  It always sounds weird to my ear not to say "the Ukraine" which makes no sense, we don't say "the Russia."  Anyway, the Ukrainian language, which is NOT Russian, does not have articles.  Vox put up an interesting article as to why Putin is doing such a bad thing, which you can read here.

From the department of covid is not the flu, we learn that one strain of the flu appears to have gone extinct during the time of masking, social distancing and excessive hand washing.  Look for the pink column on the chart.  As of July/August 2020, it's not there anymore.  Then look for the teal column, as of May/June 2021, H1N1 is not there.  The article this chart was lifted from posits that B/Yamagata could be extinct.  It's too early to tell about H1N1, which as you no doubt recall caused the Spanish Flu.

Who remembers the Griswold decision?  I actually do not, but I do know it was brought to overturn state laws banning contraception and any sexual position other than the missionary position.  Yes, they really did have laws like that on the books.  Anyway, Griswold is the basis for Roe V Wade as well as same sex marriage.  It was the decision that told the government to stay out of people's personal business.

Looks like we are heading back to the good old days - for white men.

The governor of Texas provided us with even more reason to hate him.

I think Florida is backing off on their requirement that teachers out their LGBTQ students, but Texas has one upped them in terms of being heinous.

Denmark is seeing increasing case counts of Omicron BA.2, which is the follow on to Omicron.  One can only hope it won't over run the US, now that masking and distancing is being done away with, but there's no reason why it won't.

Finally, here is something that won't make your hair stand on end.  This mural of Harriet Tubman is the most amazing art.  There is a page on the artist, here.

These are the things I've saved off my twitter feed that I don't want to lose, so here they are and now you can see them, too.

Painting is Over for Now, More Perfidy and Malfeasance

Greetings!  We're no longer painting.  On Valentine's Day we declared victory, put the painting supplies away and tidied up.  The primary bathroom still needs to be painted, but that's on hold for awhile.  For an activity that does not work up a sweat, painting is amazingly tiring.  It was putting a crimp in the workout schedule, we were back at it last night and it was fairly difficult.

Tuesday we had a sales rep out from Budget Blinds.  They seem to have policy of not giving a caller any idea of what something might cost over the phone.  So, the young woman came out, measured the two windows for blackout cellular shades and gave us a quote.  It started at $1,000 for both windows.  But wait!  there is a 30% discount that can be applied.  Installation is free, but there is a $25 per shade shipping charge.  All told it came to $800 and some odd dollars.  I'm a little fuzzy on the exact numbers because I was in such shock at the price.  She allowed as how they've been hit with some substantial price increases, and I commiserated with the fact that paint prices are also going through the roof.  Anyway, we will not be spending that much money on two windows.  That's just crazy.

There was a sunset Tuesday, it was kind of nice.  Not AZ quality, but pleasant.

An artist we like a lot is Walasse Ting.  He was fairly recent, living between 1929 and 2010.  I first became aware of him when I bought a framed print of parrots at Ikea, decades ago.  We have no memory of when that came into the house.  Anyway, the mantel area is huge, because it's in the corner, and the other wall needed something.  Art.com has a fair amount of Walasse Ting, much of which is out of our price range.  However, the framed lithograph was doable so we got that.  The Ikea print is on the right, the new one is on the left.  I think that part of the living room is now well and truly anchored.  There is a post card on ebay I might get, I am still thinking about it.  The guy on the mantel is a reproduction of a Chinese roof tile I got at Gump's in San Fransisco a very long time ago.

Costco is selling chair mats - the carpet we have is thick, the pad is thick.  Wheeled chairs sink and do not roll.  It's aggravating, the first round of chair mats were a complete and total failure.  The Costco mat is thicker and does not dent the way the first mat does.  This carpet is treated with some sort of super stain resistant chemical.  Duct tape will not stick to it, nor will painter's tape.  Fortunately we will not be painting base board that is over carpet, masking would be difficult.  Everything moves, including the first chair mats.  The new ones have ridges, so maybe they'll stay put.  My next task is to organize the multitudes of paper the new health and drug insurance companies have sent us.

Here is news from Texas.

I guess this is one more method to keep Democrats from voting, just delete their records.

Other than this, I have zippity doo dah all to report.

Still Painting and Other Stuff

What have you been doing?  I think you know what we've been doing.  Painting.  It would probably go faster if we got up earlier, and got to painting earlier, but we don't.  So there you go.  For the most part we are done with the upstairs.  There is a door ding I missed in the primary bedroom closet, and that's about it.  

The primary bedroom closet, pantry, and sewing room are all the original interior color.  We took many paint chips home trying to get as close to the color as possible.  It's a light color, with an under tone of peach.  The best chip match was the same shade of color, but with a green undertone.   It's so weird, I can take the green paint and paint over the peach paint and it blends in nearly perfectly.  The one place where we put painter's tape on the wall to cut off how how close to the shelving units we were willing to paint, the difference is visible.  Today, cutting in walls and baseboard in the sewing room it was tough to tell where we'd left off.  Paint is weird.

Here we have stuff out of the pantry.

This is my ancient turkey roaster.  I've had this from the early 1980's.  It will easily hold a 25 pound turkey.  Good gravy is made from drippings (butter) in this because it burns a little.  It beats the socks off of a disposable aluminum pan. 

We're having the granite in the dining room replaced.  If you look at the right side, you can see the gap between the slab and the wall.  A lot of work was done in the house after the Wilsons left for assisted living, and I think there was not much over sight.  Anyway, the guy who does the templates came out to measure.  We want the sides to extend out into a bull nose and wrap around the top of the cabinet.  Measuring dude called the office to see if this could be done in a solid surface material, and was told that it would look "stupid as f*ck."  He was on speaker.  Really?  Anyway it can be done and that guy is sort of an idiot.  See the tape and the dots?  They put the tape up, photograph it, and then transfer it to a program that does measuring that's very exacting.  I'm wondering if the dot data feeds NC machines. 

We're not getting granite.  For this small of an install, it would be prohibitively expensive.  Instead we're going with a solid surface similar to Corian.  It's close enough to the other granite in the kitchen, and much less money.  It's also not orange, my phone camera makes everything orange.  The picture above is more true to life.

Yesterday we walked up the hill.  It was a gorgeous day.  The snow in the shade has turned in to ice, so not all of the trails were available.  It was still a good walk and it was nice to be out of the house.

Remember Special Prosecutor John Durham?  He did some sort of a court filing yesterday, that was widely mis-interpreted.  Firstly, the statute of limitations has passed for anything he discovered to be prosecuted.  Secondly, the statement that the Clinton campaign had hired people to spy on the campaign of the orange ectoplasm was not made by John Durham, it was made by Kash Patel, Principal Deputy to the Acting Director of National Intelligence some time ago.  Patel never followed up on this. Anyway, facts not withstanding, the orange guy felt compelled to issue this statement.  Crazy much?

 
Orange dude can't seem to remember Mr. Durham's name, either.  If you're on twitter, you should follow @emptywheel who has written extensively about this.  More on the subject is here  and here.

I bought a new baking pan, it was supposed to be 9X13, which it's not, but it's close.  Anyway, this is the cardboard that came in the bottom, demonstrating what yummy delights could be cooked in it.

I think it's a duck.

Painting and Perfidy and Malfeasance

And...... we're painting and painting.  Today we masked the cap rail on the pony wall.  It took awhile because we only painted the top, and so the painter's tape had to go just over the edge.  Then there was plastic sheeting to protect the walls and the stairs and the hand rails down the stairs and the carpet.  Masking took about two hours, painting was about 20 minutes.  That's the way of it.

This is the new technique for transferring small amounts of paint from the can to the roller tray.  Jim is using my soup ladle.  The best part of this is not having to pour the paint out and get it all over the top of the can and the sides.  If you wash the ladle with dish detergent immediately, it's still food safe.

So, yesterday the republicans censured Representatives Kinzinger and Cheney.  I'm still pissed at them for voting against the voting rights bill, but at least they're standing up for justice on the subject of the January 6, 2021 insurrection.  The language in the document is just stupid.  Spraying law enforcement with bear spray and threatening to hang VP Pence is hardly legitimate political discourse.  These people are awful people.

Rick Wilson of the Lincoln Project had this to say about the orange ectoplasm after Pence finally grew a spine and said the ectoplasm was wrong, he (Pence) did not have the authority to overturn the election, and further it was wrong to assume one person could choose the president for the entire country.  Maybe he should have come forward earlier, like in December of 2020 when this was being planned, but better late than never. 

We had a little sunset last night.  Tonight's was better, but I was in the basement and didn't see it in time to get a camera.

Today was sunny, it was lovely to see out of the windows as we painted indoors.  Actually, we did leave the house on the hunt for foam rollers for tomorrow.  They've become something else you can't have.  It took visits to three stores before we could find them in stock.

That's it!  Another boring post.

Still Painting

It's February already.  It's also snowing, which was not in the forecast.  Oh wait, it stopped, so that is good. 

We've completed the second phase of painting, which was improving the way the door frames to the primary bedroom looked, as well as the back of the door to the bathroom.  The bathroom door was down to bare wood at the bottom.  I don't know if they had a dog clawing at the door or what, but it was bad.  I filled the damage from the wheel chair hubs, and they don't look too bad.  We were expecting to have to paint every square inch of the doors, but we didn't.  Yay!  The paint was an extraordinarily good match, so we were able to dab a lot of the dings and do one section of the door - where the putative animal was.  The door frames had to be painted everywhere which was excruciating, after awhile I flounced off leaving part of my frame to Jim to do.  I did, however, do the doors, and the base boards in the bathroom.  

Here is Jim, masking hinge plates.  That was also tedious.  One tapes over them, and then removes the excess tape with a scalpel.  Sounds like it should be easy, but it's not.

By Monday, we were pretty much done with it all, and happy we are about that.

Yesterday we went to REI, and returned yet another pair of shoes that my feet will not tolerate, and a pair of wool socks that were too fat.  I also picked up a new pair of socks that I had shipped to the store, which is free.  They are cuter than cute.  Socks with graphic designs are a new thing for me, I've always been a solid color sock type of person.

Today Jim embarked on his project to change out every single outlet and switch cover and wash the fixed parts.  The previous owners had smudgy fingers.  Simple Green cleans everything.  He's cleaning the switch for the garbage disposal here.  I am still filling woodwork dings.

Many of the Republicans are all up in their hair about Pres. Biden saying he would nominate a Black woman to the Supreme Court.  None of them were upset when Reagan said he would (and did) nominate a woman, they were fine with it.  I wonder what the difference could be.  Senator John Kennedy made it pretty clear how he feels about it.

So, this might be the most boring post ever - sorry about that!