It's Still Hot

Holy crap it's hot.  It's almost Tucson hot.  This is a screen shot of my phone yesterday.  That 79F that was forecast for Thursday was giving us all a little hope, but they've changed it to the upper 80s, so no joy for us.

Yesterday we were up and out early to ride to the lake.  It was amazingly still, no breeze whatsoever.
It's unfortunate that I didn't see the stick in front of the silo reflection, so the image is not as good as it could have been. 

The maple trees at the 9 Mile Lake park are full of maple seeds.  Fortunately, they do not all germinate.  We have many in our yard and spent time in early spring pulling up the sprouts.

The tall grass is heading up, making grass seed.

The orange ectoplasm has really hit bottom with his most recent atrocity.  He has been keeping goats on the New Jersey golf course, so he gets a farm write off on taxes.  Then, his first wife, Ivana, died.  Her next of kin, either her mother or her rotten children, gave the ectoplasm permission to bury her on the Bedminster golf course.  Why, you wonder?  The golf course has now been reclassified as a cemetery, and ectoplasm will not have to pay taxes on income generated by the course, or pay property and sales tax.  What a guy.  Her grave site is just sad, no headstone, just a flat stone with her name, date of birth and death.  On the bright side, the LIV pro-am he hosted there failed to attract very many spectators and they ended up selling tickets for a dollar.

Periodically, google sends me pictures from out of the past.  The most recent tranche was from Capitol Reef.  It's such an amazing area, really beautiful.

So, that's it!  That's all I've got.

From Russia, With Love

I find this to be hilarious.  Allegedly it's true, but it's also twitter.

Go here to play the video.  

Other than whining about how dang hot it is, I have nothing intelligent to say; other than it's hot.

Picasa and Other Stuff

The other night I deleted 10,579 unread messages out of Yahoo mail.  Then I cleaned out the 9,000 or so emails in my in basket.  The Sent file still needs to be cleaned out.  In the middle of the night I realized I had deleted an email I sent myself with the last known address of a Picasa download.  Fortunately, I was able to google and get the link in the morning.  So, I'm putting it here, so I will know where it is. 

https://picasa.en.uptodown.com/windows

It's hot!  It's going to be hotter in the next few days.  It should drop after Sunday to something more tolerable.  We were up and out early (for us) and rode to the lake.  Coming back it was pretty toasty.  I'm glad we went, we always feel better after climbing some hills.  Saturday we went, as well.  It was a beautiful day for boating, and the boat ramps were crowded.  Some people don't seem to understand that they need to pull forward so people can back down the ramp, or exit the lake.  The people watching was good.

The hydrangeas are blooming.  It has scent, which was surprising to me.  The lady bugs and the bees are all over it.

Sunday night was exciting.  The spring on the garage door broke, and the door dropped about 3 or 4 feet.  The noise was astonishing.  After that happened, we learned on youtube that after the spring breaks you may not try to raise it with the opener, it will burn out the engine.  So that was exciting.  We got someone out the next morning, but in the excitement I failed to notice that I had a dentist appointment, so that was a bummer.  I'm hoping they won't charge me for a no-show.  Next available appointment is at the end of September.  Quelle domage.  Here is the broken spring.

Home ownership is so entertaining.  For what it's worth, a spring is good for about 3,000 cycles and if you replace one, replace the other one even if it's not broken yet.

I must go now, it's time to order more N95 masks so Jim and I can be the only masked people in the stores.  Actually, there are sometimes four of us.

Run, Josh Hawley, Run

Yesterday, in the January 6 hearings, a short video of Josh Hawley was played.  The committee lead off with the infamous clenched fist he flashed at the insurrectionists, followed by a clip of him running at speed away from the building.  There was laughter in the room when the clip was played.  Since then it has been set to many musical scores.  You can see and play them here, it's worth a look.  That is Josh in the spot light.

It's going to be hot this weekend.  It's forecast to be right around 100F for three days.  That's hot.  Guess we'll be getting up earlier so we don't melt on the bikes.

We went yesterday, it was a gorgeous day.  It's nice that parts of the trail are shaded, so it's not a total baking in the sun.

That's it, that's all I've got.

Cognitive Dissonance

There is not much to report, I write so you all won't forget me.  A review of the photos on the phone reveals that I have taken virtually no pictures as of late.  I do have these to share.

There are deer in the neighborhood.  We never see the babies, but occasionally we see bigger ones.  These two appear to be the same age, twins perhaps.  they don't stay out in the open for long, they go back into the woods.

There has been walking up the big hill.  Along the path, I saw this, a flower we used to see in Tucson.  According to Google Lens, it's a Splendid mariposa lily.

The big rock was looking moody that day, with good reason.  A depression went through the previous night and we woke up to very cool weather.  So there was walking instead of riding.

Yesterday there was riding.  It had warmed up quite a bit.  It's supposed to get warmer, there are a couple of days in the forecast showing 100F, which I would prefer not to happen.  The grass is looking scabrous.  This neighborhood is built on bedrock and the prevailing theory about why some yards look so bad is because there is not enough dirt and their little roots are baking. 

Anyway, this is a weird looking boat we saw at the boat ramp.  It appears that either the boat or the truck were painted in a matching color.

 Someone has superimposed "Starry Night" upon the Webb telescope image.  It's pretty cool.

Missouri has passed an anti-abortion law based on their belief that "a fetus is “a separate, unique, living human being” and that the “life of each human being begins at conception.”'  More recently they have passed a law saying that a person who is pregnant can not get a divorce until the pregnancy is over because "Missouri divorce law “does not see fetuses as humans.”“You can’t have a court order that dictates visitation and child support for a child that doesn’t exist,”"  Apparently they can hold two conflicting ideas in their tiny little brains.  You can read the article here.

Finally, much of what one reads on Twitter is complete and total bull shit.  I don't know if this is true or not, but it might be.

So that's it - that's all I have to say.

Hot!

Greetings Earthlings.  I understand that Europe and London are looking forward to 104F within a few days.  That sounds really awful, particularly since so many apartments and houses do not have air conditioning.  It's hot here, but not that hot.  The Tour de France is just cooking, it's so hot.  I don't know how the riders stand it.

Today was warm.  It started out with the neighborhood yard sale.  We just got here and have not had time to accumulate enough stuff to need to yard sale.  We did that once when we were leaving West Seattle.  Never again, it was a lot of work, not that many people showed up, and they all wanted half price off.  When we left North Carolina, I put ads on Craig's List for "free, come get it, owner will not help you."  They did come and take a lot of stuff away, I don't think we did any dump runs.  Anyway, this was car was parked in front of the house this morning, it belonged to one of the neighborhood sale customers.  It's a 55 Chevy station wagon, it's a basic model.

We rode to the lake again.  Jim has put a new bike computer on his bike, and reports that we are, indeed, faster on the new bikes.  It's not surprising, they weigh less and have smoother tires.  They're not narrow, but they're not knobby, either.  The boat ramp was very busy. 

This is one of the hydrangeas that came with the house.  It's not one of the giant fluffy bloomers, it's more subdued.  In the fall the flowers turn a rust color and pretty much dry on the branches.  I cut one back last fall, but not the other.  The one I cut back is blooming better, to there's a data point for this year.

I find these tweets disturbing, but informative.  This, from the heartland.

These are from health care workers in the Portland, OR area.

So, this pretty much validates our decision to not ride in traffic with cars anymore.  I am too afraid of getting hurt and the ERs being full.  It's kind of depressing.

That's it!  That's all I have to report.

New Bikes

It's been a week since the last post.  I'm experiencing a fair amount of malaise.  It's the usual, the supreme court, the stupidity of a large part of our population, guns, death, etc. etc.  

We did buy new bicycles.  Jim had HAD it with riding the mountain bikes on the pavement.  They have heavy knobby tires, with a lot of rolling resistance.  Going anywhere took forever.  We ordered a small and a medium Trek bike locally.  For whatever reason, the guy at the bike shop ordered two mediums.  I can't ride a medium, too big.  It was interesting, there was some mansplaining going on about how it would be fine, they could make it fit, and etc.  Finally, I looked the offending man in the eye and said that I had been riding for 50 years, often on bikes that did not fit, and that I could look at the medium and tell it was too big.  So, they got on the computer and found a small in Bellingham at the Trek Superstore.  Buying it over the phone was another ordeal.  They wanted us to buy it on line, their website wouldn't do it.  Called them back, no they did not want to take a credit card over the phone.  Jim finally got on the phone, and got them to sell us the bicycle.  It really should not be that difficult.  So, we left Wednesday morning to go get it. 

We will never make that drive again.  Once we hit the northbound freeways in the Seattle area, traffic was just abysmal.  We left early, thinking we would miss the terrible traffic.  It's been too long since we lived in the area, we did not realize that the are no good times to drive, that building has run amok, and we're really happy we don't live there.  Anyway, we made it to the bike shop before they closed.  There was a Subway within walking distance of the hotel, so once in the room, we stayed there.  Coming back we went the scenic route over Stevens Pass which created much less agita.  The roads are two lanes, but there are passing lanes and it was not a terrible drive.  Here are a few photos.

This is going down Snoqualmie Pass towards Seattle.  The clouds are typical GPNW weather.

I think this was taken somewhere in the Columbia Gorge.

After you leave the fruit raising areas, it's like this for awhile.

We bought the bikes sight unseen, sort of like what we did with real estate, only there is less money involved.  The bikes are good, they are carbon fiber, and have an upright seating position, which we both need since we're old and our shoulders and hands will not tolerate dropped handle bars anymore.

Jim's FX4 Sport.

Mine.

Bikes are very different these days.  Our old bikes had two or three chain rings in the front, and some in the back.  Multiple front chain rings are gone, and there are more gears in the back, and they go from very small to very large.  I don't think we have the range of gearing we had with triple chain rings, but this is what there is now.

Here is a video of  Pennsylvania politician.  I'm not sure if she's house or senate.  It's worth watching, we need more people like her.  Click here to play it.

And finally, here is a cool photo of lightning.

That's it!  All I've got is two new bikes and the difficulties of obtaining them.

Not Celebrating Much

“Fourth of July Parade Halted Due To Shooting.”

This is the most American headline, ever.  A young white man climbed up a ladder to the roof of a building on the Highland Park, IL parade route with an AR15.  The death toll so far is said to be 6, with many hospitalized.  What is it going to take?

I, personally, don't see much to celebrate this day.  Justice Thomas has said that gay and trans rights, contraception, same sex marriage, and privacy of medical records are on the line next.  We're truly heading toward a dictatorship.  Jim and I keep hoping that we die before it's complete, but they're moving right along with killing elections.

Next session the SC will be considering North Carolina's desire to implement the independent legislature concept.  This would allow the state legislature to pick the electors, irrespective of who the citizens voted for.  They can all be dictators for life!  Yay!  Many of the lawyer pointy heads are saying this is not what the constitution says/means when they say states control how elections are run, but the Gang of 6 will probably go along with it because they want the old white men to stay in power.

And then there is the overturning of Roe v. Wade.  It's already affecting women's health care.  Pharmacists are denying methotrexate to women because one of its uses is treating ectopic pregnancy without surgery.  Seems like a good idea, eh?  No cutting, no pain, woman does not bleed to death.  But nooooooo.  Pity the unfortunate women of child bearing age who have lupus, rheumatoid arthritis or cancer.  No treatment for them because they might get pregnant. 

Methotrexate is in a class of medications called antimetabolites. Methotrexate treats cancer by slowing the growth of cancer cells. Methotrexate treats psoriasis by slowing the growth of skin cells to stop scales from forming. Methotrexate may treat rheumatoid arthritis by decreasing the activity of the immune system.
The most common drug used to treat ectopic pregnancy is methotrexate. This drug stops cells from growing, which ends the pregnancy. The pregnancy then is absorbed by the body over 4–6 weeks. This does not require the removal of the fallopian tube.

This is a twitter thread I screen scraped from Threadreader.  It discusses how saving the life of the mother will probably work in Kansas.

Lisa Larson-Bunnell

🧵1/For those of you who don’t know me well, I am a healthcare regulatory attorney and work in a hospital. I work in a state that has banned abortions at my hospital except those necessary to “save the life of the woman.” Let me explain how this works in practice.….  

2/I get a call from a physician who tells me that our patient is 28 weeks pregnant and the fetus is dying from a naturally occurring condition. As the fetus dies, the woman’s body can quickly become infected and she can die as well. So, why are they calling me?

3/Because in Missouri (in public facilities), if there is still a heartbeat, it is considered an abortion to terminate the pregnancy. So, the question becomes…is the woman close enough to dying to justify the abortion.

4/Let me repeat that: me, a lawyer, has to help a trained physician make the decision of whether their patient is near enough to death (under the law) for them to take action that is agreed to by the patient (and often their spouse).

5/I can’t tell you how messed up this is. This is what we were already dealing with. Missouri’s new trigger ban resulting from the fall of Roe has made things even worse. These are women who did not plan to terminate their pregnancy.

6/They are wives, mothers, sisters, and employees who are dealing with a tremendously difficult situation. Their lives are risked by delaying life saving care.

7/And, under the heartbeat rules (now standard in several states), there is serious question about whether an ectopic pregnancy can be treated before the Fallopian tube ruptures (a life threatening condition).

There's more, but those were the high points of her thread.

In other news of the bad there is this:

And this:

Here in the GPNW it rained most of the day.  It stopped about 2:30 and the sun came out.  As always, we feel badly for the people who made the effort to pack up the spouse and the kids and head for the great outdoors.  When we used to spend summers in Issaquah we always had to remind ourselves that summer did not start until July 5.

I Have Questions.

I have questions.

First:  is this a weird growth pattern on my succulent?  Usually they're sort of flatish plants, but mine has developed a top knot.  There's nothing to be done about it, but I'm curious as to whether this is how they grow.  Maybe not enough light?

Second: who knows how to create a second blog, using the same google mail account for the present blog (this one) and the new blog.  Everything I read doesn't match what I see on the screen.  Can someone please tell me how this is done.  Talk to me like I'm five.

Here is a nice picture of Venus, taken by Curiosity.

That's it!  That's all I have the will to post at present.  Current events are sucking my life force dry.