Delayed Again

It's becoming evident that the wheels have come off this country.  I will have more to say about this, but first there are a couple of pictures.  

The 9 Mile recreation area put this sign up to make it clear that they mean business about the work they'll be doing.

They mean it!  They really really mean it.  Oh wait, they still haven't started.

Last Sunday when we rode, there was some sort of emergency response.  There was a technical rescue truck from the fire department, another truck that dropped off an ATV, and then on the way back we saw a full sized fire truck coming toward us.  We did not see anything that would be used to transport an injured person, but maybe they went out of the area on a different route than us.  Here they are coming from the bike path out to where we were parked.

What is so amazing to me is that the fire truck went over the Deep Creek Bridge.  If you go to this old post and scroll down you can sort of see the bridge.  It does not appear to me to be that strong of a structure.

It rained today, ALL DAY.  It's cold, it never got out of the 50s.  Today was supposed to be a ride day, but we bailed.  We used to ride in the rain, but we don't do that anymore.  There were turkeys this morning.

In the last few days, Kevin McCarthy announced the republican plan to save America.  You know the one; do away with Social Security and Medicare, raise prescription drug prices, and out right ban abortion in all 50 states.  While he was speaking, this woman stood up and read from a prepared speech.  CLICK HERE to play the video.

She's having a cow over Social Emotional Learning.  Anti-bullying is bad, inclusion is bad, they're all forms of Marxism that are indoctrinating our children.  This is the one of the most depressing things I have seen lately, just for the stupidity that informs her thinking, and the fact that she's against teaching kids to be kind and not be bullies.  I suppose she'd like to bring back stoning of the gay kids.

Judge Cannon today undid all of the Special Master's deadlines for the orange manbaby's action items.  She moved them all to the right giving the team more time to figure out how to lie in court without getting disbarred.  Manbaby still has to explain how he declassified documents just by thinking about it.  Also required will be identification of which documents he thinks were planted by the FBI.  Apparently there are about 200,000 pieces of paper to be reviewed by the special master.  The plan had been for manbaby to hire a document scanning firm to copy them, but no business would do it because they knew they would not get paid.  DOJ has said they will pay, and bill manbaby for it, but so far no business has signed up.

Justice Kagan had thoughts about the Supreme Court.  It's interesting that there is open disagreement among the justices, they did not used to do this.

Meanwhile, someone has sabotaged the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline.  Tucker Carlson, noted Fox News contributor, and intellectual giant, has actually suggested that the US did it.  These people are crazy.

Speaking of crazy, Marjorie Taylor Greene's husband of 27 years has filed for divorce.  We don't know why, but the trolling on Twitter has been intense.  She is asking for people to respect her privacy, like she did when she followed David Hogg down the street yelling at him for being a wimp because the death of his friends in a school shooting had upset him and made him want better gun control.  She has also said that Democrats should be dealt with like the feral hogs she's been shooting out of a helicopter.

So, yes, divorce is hard on the kids and we do feel bad for them, but it's hard not to enjoy this just a little.

So that's it!

Manbaby Blues and Autumn

We're still riding to the lake on alternate days.  Now we can go later in the day which has just been delightful.  Fall really is the best time of year here.  The geese are very happy, the people are gone and there is no heavy equipment tearing up their yard.  Zero work has begun on the recreation area.

We saw this the other day.  It's fall!  But the quail are still making babies.  Look at the little brown dots on the side walk, baby quail.  There are actually more, but they're underneath the mugo.

It's also fall next door.  The sunflowers are looking at the ground now.  That big mass of green next to them are seedless blackberries.  They used to be taller, but they've been cut back a little.

Twitter has been illuminating today.  I want to keep these links, so here you go.  

Yesterday, the orange manbaby did an interview with Hannity.  I believe the interview was recorded before the Special Master ruled that manbaby would not be keeping any classified documents as well as the 11th Circuit upholding that decision, saying no classified documents for manbaby.  Actually, they said this, "Plaintiff suggests he may have declassified these documents...But the record contains no evidence that these records were declassified…Even if we assumed Plaintiff did declassify…that would not explain why he has a personal interest in them.” This clip is one of the most deranged things I've every heard; particularly since he confessed to sending classified documents to Mar A Lago - out loud, on tape.  He also said that he could declassify material just by thinking about it.  CLICK HERE to play the video.

The White House has had it with the continued lying performed by the awful Ted Cruz.  Yesterday, they called him on his performative bullshit and posted this rebuttal.  CLICK HERE to hear lies come out of Ted's mouth.

Here is a meditation on repairing a hole in fabric.  I love watching this.  CLICK HERE for video.

Between Letitia James suing manbaby for $250M, and the Special Master turning on him, and the 11th Circuit not ruling for manbaby, it's been a bad couple of days.  Oh yes, and his website, Truth Social, is in terrible financial straits.

So that's it for my schadenfreude today - that's all I've got.

New Phone for Jim and Judge Cannon Marches On

Well, it's been a week.  Wait - it's only Thursday.  The refrigerator guys came Monday, there is a broken switch in the lever that releases water.   Parts are on order.  They did tell us that there is a child lock feature that will prevent water from being dispensed, so we can quit turning the water to the refrigerator off and on.  Yesterday, Jim's phone rang.  I went over to swipe up to answer, the ring tone trailed off and the screen went dark.  It's dead, Jim.  The phone is not totally dead, when you pick it up it does the haptic vibrate, and the blue status light is still blinking, but the screen and power button will not respond to external stimuli.  So it was off to Verizon for a new phone.  I just happened to have a 50% off promo code sitting on my account so the phone was half as much as it would have been.  I believe this promo code story not even a little.  We have to go in Saturday to see if they can get the contacts list moved over.  If not, this will be a catastrophe of the first water.

We rode to the lake this morning.  It was 60F when we departed the car, there was smoke in the air.  We were wearing an undershirt, jersey, black arm warmers and a vest.  The start was chilly, it warmed up on the way back a little, and all clothing remained on for the entire ride.  It felt like the beginning of cold riding season.

As you can see here, they still have not broken ground on removing the invasive shore plants, replacing the sprinkler systems, removing the RV sites and the dump station, and planting the 40 new trees.

Judge Cannon has denied the DOJ request for a partial stay on the dumpster fire's illicit possession of classified documents and documents belonging to the National Archives.  Some of the twitter lawyers think that she's actually questioning whether or not the papers marked classified are really classified.  The US government already made that decision.  Renato Mariotti tweeted "When your property is seized pursuant to a court-ordered search warrant, you are not entitled to judicial relief prior to indictment except for very rare and unusual circumstances. But Cannon found Trump was entitled to a special process despite the countervailing interests."  Basically she's said that because he's a former president, he gets special treatment, and national security be damned.  I will be extremely surprised in the intelligence community hands over anything marked classified.  Currently DOJ is at the 11th circuit filing an appeal.  I have to say, his judge shopping was extremely effective thus far.

My white lace cap hydrangea is changing colors with the season.  Last fall's experiment taught us that the one that got pruned in the fall, vs in the spring, bloomed more and better.

Close up of one of the few blossoms remaining on the hibiscus.

That's it.  That's all there is.

Smoke and the Mafia

The smoke is bad today.  It was less bad yesterday when we we rode to the lake.

The key learning yesterday was when the smoke occludes the sun, it's colder than you think it will be.  We warmed up after the first killer up hill, but the first down hill was uncomfortable.  Undershirts would have been good.

This is a terrible cell phone picture; due to the smoke the sky was really dark, and the camera could not focus on anything.  However, look at how orange the moon was. 

It's been a memorable stretch of days.  Queen Elizabeth died last Thursday.  This photo was taken by Pete Souza, who was the official photographer for President Obama.  He liked this photo a lot, and so do I.  Say what you will about the draconian colonial policies carried out by the British Empire, the Queen stayed the course and did her job for 70 years.

Ukraine is currently kicking Russia's butt.  Ukr has commandeered Russian supply trains and is currently using the enemies' guns, ammunition and food to chase the Russians back to their borders.  Unsubstantiated stories of Russians dropping their weapons and fleeing are everywhere.  Russia has announced that it's not sending anymore troops to Ukraine.  However, since they are bastards, Russia continues to shell the nuclear power plant, and power plants, and schools.

The special master saga continues to slog on.  DOJ has accepted Judge Dearie (proposed by the ectoplasm's lawyers) as the master.  These same lawyers are now questioning if classified markings on a document mean it's really classified.  Who knows who is paying for the document review, DOJ has made their position clear, they're not paying.

Meanwhile, last night, the ectoplasm departed Bedminster in his Citation (a jet), arriving Dulles airport.  What was so odd was that he was wearing a golf polo shirt, golf jacket, and golf shoes.  It appeared that his minions had gone and gotten him, and put him on the plane with no time to change.  What would be so important that he would get on his airplane wearing golf shoes?  This morning he was seen driving around his Virginia golf course in the rain, with no clubs on the cart.

He later rendezvoused with several other people in carts, and they stood around looking agitated.

Twitter thinks they're standing around outside because they don't know who the informant was for the search warrant on Mar a Lago, and/or they don't want to be inside because they're afraid of listening devices.  Perhaps it's related to the 40 subpoenas related to January 6 that DOJ issued last week, to include the seizure of two cell phones.  John Gotti and his lawyer used to walk around outside when they were discussing secret mob business, this reminds me of that.

It seems like we've already reached this stage of perfidy and malfeasance, and why isn't he in jail already?

That's it, now we're waiting to see what happens next.

Fall is Approaching

It's feeling very fall-ish today.  So fall-ish that we bailed on the early morning ride, too cold.  I guess we'll be moving in to the late morning/early afternoon ride pattern.  Right now we are waiting for the garage door repair people again because Wednesday the door would not go all the way up or down unless one kept one's finger on the door opener button continuously.  After we called for the repair people to come out, it of course, fixed itself, but I would still like someone to look at it.  Yesterday was also exciting when the water dispenser in the door of the refrigerator turned itself on all by itself.  After some amount of struggle, we were able to pull the refrigerator out of its nook and turn the water off.  Until that gets fixed, the water can only be on when we're around to deal with the dispenser should it fire off again.  Home ownership can be such a delight.

There have been turkeys on parade.

Wednesday we rode to the lake.  It was a delightful, if not slightly chilly ride.  We went down to the recreation area to see what was going on.  In a word, nothing was going on.  There is a relatively short window for the work they want to do on the area.  Once it snows, I'm not sure what they can accomplish.  This is looking up where the RVs used to park.

A nice looking tree.

We rode down and sat a a picnic table near the water.  Because of the boat ramps being busy, we've never sat there before.  It was very pleasant having it all to ourselves.

Later on Wednesday there was a decent illuminated cloud at sunset.

Later there was a good moon.  I took these pictures with my cell phone, I'm actually surprised it saw anything since it was dark.

A tripod would probably be helpful.

The news cycle is currently occupied with the death of Queen Elizabeth, and the orange ectoplasm's case wherein he was granted a special master who would review classified documents to see if the ectoplasm was entitled (as a private citizen with no security clearance) to keep them.  

Remember the lawsuit the ectoplasm filed back in 2016 accusing Hilary Clinton, Peter Strzok, and others of maligning his character?   He tried to file it in Judge Cannon's court (she of the special master) but it ended up in Judge Middlebrook's court.  Today he dismissed the case in its entirety and is considering sanctioning the attorneys who brought it.  Let us hope that he does sanction them so that they don't try to refile in Cannon's court. From twitter we have this reaction.

Other than that, there is not so much upon which to comment.

Last Day for the Lake

The Nine Mile Lake Recreation Area closes tomorrow for the year.  Normally they're open until October 31, but they have much work to do, like removing RV sites and the dump station.  I'm still cheesed about this.  It's nice for the families with kids to come in the RV, park, and stay put, and there's the lake right there for swimming, paddle boarding, or kayaking.  Day use mothers always look like pack animals given the sheer volume of stuff that has to be carted down for the kids to have a fun day at the beach.  However, no one asked my opinion and nobody cares what I think.

Last day to launch the boat this year.  

Last campers ever. 

Last line up at the dump station.  You can't see it, but there is another trailer waiting after the Class A.  The guy at the head of the line was finishing up, and both he and his wife handled the sewer hose with bare hands.  We always, always wore gloves.  Then they chucked the hose into the forward storage bay, no container, no nothing.  We might have been somewhat germa-phobic in our habits, but at no time did we smear the inside of our truck or motor home with e. coli.

This is our favorite picnic table.  It was recently rebuilt with new wood.  They'll be back in the spring.

So, on our way back, there was a man on the side of the road pointing at the water.  We stopped and he said there was a moose swimming across the river.  That was unexpected.  The area he's heading for is very residential.  Anyway, it's a cell phone camera picture.  Look mid photo at the arrow, which is pointing to his head which you really can't see.  It was so cool to see one here.

This is from twitter.

Today the orange ectoplasm got his special master, and the DOJ was told to quit using the seized documents to build a case against the ectoplasm, BUT ODNI could continue to do their security damage assessment using the very same documents.  There are several constitutional scholars and lawyers on twitter, and their assessment of the judge's ruling has been that it's crap.  So, we'll see what happens next. 

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

Riding to the Lake Some More

Greetings Fellow Humans.  It has been a week in the life of the orange ectoplasm.  The ectoplasm's legal team went forward with the request for a Special Master to review the documents taken by the FBI.  I don't understand how that works, the FBI is done sorting classified from not classified, and some of the secret docs are so secret that some of the FBI people couldn't even look at them.  Apparently the judge is still considering the special master, but I do not know to what end.  They are still arguing executive privilege, but he has none.  He's an ex-president, Biden did not allow him to keep executive privilege, and in fact cancelled his daily security briefs.  So, it will be interesting to see what happens with this.  I still think they should search Bedminster, and perhaps under Ivana's coffin.  That would get him going.

The enormity of driving to Tucson in the winter is beginning to set in.  We got out our trusty Mountain Directory West, which shows where all of the terrible hills are.  Comparing routes and elevation changes has convinced us to go the way we came here last August.  The more westerly route has a 12 mile grade with three significant up/downs and worse weather.  So, we will not see anything new on the trip.  We are going to buy cable chains for the car, which hopefully will ensure that we don't need them.

There has been riding to the lake.  I figured out how to panorama with my cell phone.  The two vertical arrows indicate the start and finish of the blooming milfoil.  It's huge! 

Jim talked to the owner of this boat for a bit.  It's a bass boat.  He bought it from a friend who is a boat dealer, and it has every toy known to fisher-people.  The square things up front are the screens for the fish finders, they send out an electronic impulse that comes back and shows you where the fish are.  There is also a trolling motor on the front, folded up.

The vertical things in the back are shallow water anchors.  They go into the lake bottom if you want to stay put.  That is quite the boat, but it's definitely a single use item.

On the way back we saw this red car.  You can't see the passenger seat, but there is a dog in it.  The dog is alone, and he's not happy about it.  When his owner gets back, he should bite him.

Today was also back to the lake.  There was enough smoke in the air to cool things off.  Except for the smoke, it was rather pleasant.  It's hazy.

There were a fair number of people on horse back today.  There are horse trails cut into the woods for them to ride on unmolested by people on bikes.

They are closing the state park September 6 for the year.  There is much maintenance to be done.  The edge of the lake is eroding; the plants that are currently stabilizing it are nasty non-natives, so they are digging them up and replacing with natives.  Unfortunately they are converting it to a day-use only park.  All of the RV sites and tent sites will be replaced with picnic tables.  I'm fairly disgruntled about this, it's hard enough to find places to put an RV and now these will be gone forever.  So, that was an unhappy thing to learn.

I have also discovered the macro setting on my cell phone.  I'm not even going to say how long I've had the phone, apparently I am a slow discover-er.  This is the kitchen sponge, up close.

And here is a moth, hanging out on the dining room window glass.  He looks pretty furry.

Serena Williams did not win the U.S. Open.  Apparently she's decided to move on from tennis.  I don't follow the sport, but I have always been aware of her and in awe of her strength.  She's going to be a tough act to follow.

From the depressing side of twitter we learn the following.

So on that cheery note, that's it!  That's all I've got.