Halloween

Happy Halloween.  

I just spent an hour of my life that I will never get back.  Before lunch I was out on Google Photos examining the number of drawers that the new kitchen does not have.  The software was working fine and life was good.  Two hours later, I discovered I was kicked out of google.  No Gmail, no access to Blogger, no google photos, google did not know me.  I'm on a different PC, I'm sure that had something to do with it, but why was it fine, and then it wasn't.  It was fine on my phone.  After an hour or so of trying to convince google it was me, I clicked on the "recover account" button on a help article, and low and behold it worked, I was back.  So much of my personal history is on blogger in unpublished posts, I put stuff there to have it where I can find it.  The inner workings of Google are a mystery to me.  Of course, I could say the same thing about Microsoft products.

My laptop is at the PC doctor.  I charge it at night, shut it down, unplug it.  Then, in the morning, sometimes the battery is at 0%.  This is the laptop I bought in February 2024 to replace the one upon which the hinge failed.  This is a failed hinge below, you can't close the laptop anymore.  So, he's trying to determine what the issue is.  If it wants a new battery, I'll pay for it.  If it's the mother board, it's going back to somewhere because it's under warranty.

I think this is fairly emblematic of the world at the moment.  First we had a happy skeleton with his jaunty pose next door.

Then there was a windy afternoon.  No one has been out to pick him up. 

The inflatables have been out since September.

We were just visited by quail.  Many quail.  Look left in the photo, just off the grass, tree in the background.  That gray blur is a quail flying straight up.  I thought it was a smudge on the window, but it's a quail.

It rained a lot today, but then the sun came out, so I guess the trick or treaters will be here after all.

More Fall

This is a quick post to mash down the post I just mistakenly published.  Some of your blogs are fast on the draw to update your blog rolls.  Anyway, here goes mashing down the stack.

In news of the good Shaye Moss and Ruby Freeman take possession of all of Rudy Giuliani's worldly goods today.  I love that.  He ruined their lives with his lies about them passing a thumb drive to each other.  So, this is a good thing, reciprocal ruination.

It's fall, this was yesterday.

That's it! 

Madison Square Garden

Did you watch the klan (also Nazi) meeting held in Madison Square Garden?  I don't think the orange guy helped himself much.  This video of Tony Hinchcliffe particularly seems damaging.  GO HERE, play the video clip.  If you can't play it, this is what he said.

“There’s a lot going on. I don’t know if you know this but there’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it’s called Puerto Rico”

Tony Hinchcliffe may have just scuttled the orange intestine's campaign. The clip is everywhere, it's on Facebook, Instagram, twitter, everywhere.  Meanwhile, Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, known as Bad Bunny, shared to his 45.6 million Instagram followers a video from Harris’s official account in which the vice president outlines her vision for Puerto Rico. A source close to Bad Bunny confirmed the post was the artist announcing his support for Harris.  I've never heard of Bad Bunny before, apparently he is a much beloved rapper from Puerto Rico.  You can read more here.

Then there was this.

 

Soon, this will be over.

Project 2025

Project 2025, the plan put forth by the Heritage Foundation, an unelected group of religious lunatics, is 900 and some odd pages.  It's their plan for the US post election, should that man win.  We know it's bad, but really, who has the time to read 900 pages.  Knowing this, a group of cartoonists converted it into a smaller size. Each tile expands to provide more detail if you click on it.  The health care section is particularly chilling.  Here is is:

Stop Project 2025 Comic

Angst and Hotels

Greetings Fellow Humans.  My existential angst knows no bounds.  If that man wins it will be the end of us.  The rat bastard owner of the WAPO, Jeff Bezos, has declined to endorse a candidate.  Apparently he is afraid his company, Blue Origin, will lose government contracts if the orange intestine wins the election.  Meanwhile, it has been revealed that Musk has been having frequent conversations with Putin.  Elon should lose his security clearance, all of his government contracts, and be de-naturalized and returned to South Africa. Rich people are the bane of our existence these days.

There have been many pharmacy closures as of late.  This is particularly true of independent pharmacies.  Here is part of the reason why.

 Pharmacies traditionally earn money in two ways. The first is the obvious one: filling prescriptions. But that model is increasingly under threat. A major culprit? Pharmacy benefit managers, also known as PBMs. These companies originally intended to save patients and insurers money by negotiating discounts from manufacturers on medications. But more recently, they have been snapped up by larger and larger conglomerates. As they consolidated — the three largest PBMs handled almost 80% of all prescriptions issued in the U.S. in 2023 — they steered business toward favored pharmacies (including ones they owned) and mail-order facilities.

Independents are suffering the most because they're being forced to sell drugs below the cost of what they paid for them.  It's not a sustainable business plan.  The head of the FTC is on the case, and is hoping to rein in this industry.  Article is here.

One of the ways Medicare Advantage adds to the cost of health care in this country by doing "home risk assessments" as well as "chart reviews."  They charge for these activities, and then don't follow up if they actually find anything.  Here is a link to the tweet which spells this all out.  In the tweet is a link to statnews which did an article on the subject.  Project 2025 details the pubtards' plan to force everyone to enroll in Medicare Advantage, that is if senior health care still exists, because the private companies who run these plans make millions. It's predatory, and one marvels at the goodness of the lobbyists that perpetuate this horn swoggling of the US public.

Speaking of Project 2025, one of their stated goals is this.

Deep within Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s 925-page roadmap for the next Republican president, its authors say they want the service academies scrubbed of anything and anyone deemed insufficiently pure of thought — exactly what they did to Ben-Ghiat.

“Audit the course offerings at military academies to remove Marxist indoctrination,” they wrote in the section on the U.S. military, “eliminate tenure for academic professionals, and apply the same rules to instructors that are applied to other DOD contracting personnel.”

Ruth Ben-Ghiat had been invited by the history department at the Naval Academy to talk about how the military is affected by being part of an authoritarian government.  It was a discussion of things that happened in the past.  The Heritage Foundation got wind of it and got her dis-invited from speaking. Since when does the Heritage Foundation have any say over what is taught at a tax payer supported institution?  This is not getting much attention, the article is here.  Interestingly enough, Elon suspended the Naval Academy twitter account immediately after this became known.

The Fascism is creeping in already, some might say it's already here.

I've been gathering up stuff that needs to go south for the winter.  If I don't go and get it as soon as I think about it, I forget.  So, it's piling up in the room we don't use.  Tomorrow we're making hotel reservations, one of my most hated activities.  I would really like it if we could get one route down there, with hotels we don't hate, and then one route back and just repeat the process instead of having to re-invent the wheel each time.  We had planned to go through Butte this time until we checked the weather and say the predicted lows were in the teens.  Too cold!  We've got the two long days in the middle, so day one and day four are shorted driving days.

Other than my angst, I have not too much to say about things other than I want this to be over.

A Walk by the Lake

I think yesterday was the last decent day.  Today has been rainy, chilly, windy, partly sunny, and now it's dark and gloomy again.  So, yesterday we went for a walk next to the lake.  It was pleasant to be down by the water

Parts of the trail are studded with rocks.  Those parts are unpleasant.

I have zippity doo dah all to post about.  Life, at the moment, appears to be in wait state.  Later, gater.

Rabbits, the Orange Menace and Some Bad Stuff

Ho hum.  I have not much to say.  I can not tell you how happy I will be when this steeenking election is over.  There was an article about how he could conceivably get the results into the courts if it's close and he loses.  We need a landslide something fierce.

Here are some terrible photos.  It's been cloudy and overcast, things look dismal.

Rabbits out grazing.

I think this is a crab apple tree across the street.

These pictures were taken eight years apart.  The first was during or around the inauguration of the orange menace.

This was last night at the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner last night.  It looks like some things never change.

DonOLD has not had a good week.  Judge Chutkan ruled that part of Jack Smith's filing about January 6 can be made public.  Oddly enough, NONE of it has appeared on twitter.  Hopefully someone will do an article and tell us what it says.  I hate reading legal stuff.  He continues on the glide slope to full blown dementia.  This was one of his more random statements recently.  It's worth watching.

Now, from the department of bad news you can't do anything about, we have this.  The short version is that the carbon sinks that have been working forever, have stopped taking up carbon.  This makes predictions of the coming climate disaster worse and sooner.  Natural sinks of forests and peat were key to Finland’s ambitious target to be carbon neutral by 2035. But now, the land has started emitting more greenhouse gases than it stores.  This is a Guardian article.  It's not paywalled, but they do ask for money, click the X and move on to the article. 

A  NOAA article has noted that the oceans are also not functioning as carbon sinks as well as they previously did.  This is also bad.  You can read about it here.

It would appear that yearly dental x-rays are not necessary.  There is no data to show they're required, there's no data about much of anything in dentistry.  We quit a dental practice north of here because the dentist was making head CT scans a condition of seeing him.  They were every three years, but they were also $300 a pop and that's a lot of radiation.  So, I guess I'll have a chat with my current dentist and ask if they would like to quit irradiating me so often with X-rays.

Soon it will be time to start putting clothes into space saver bags.  The amount of stuff going south seems to have expanded exponentially.  Not sure how that happened.

WAPO vs. NYT

 This is the headline from WAPO regarding the town hall held last night in Oaks, PA.

If you can get past the paywall, here's the entire article from WAPO.

Meanwhile, back at the NYT, this is how they framed the event.

Since last night, his scheduled appearance on CNBC has been cancelled.  George Conway is encouraging people to sign up for the upcoming Klan Rally in Times Square and then not show, it would be like Tulsa, OK when all the Tiktok kids signed up and then didn't show.

So that's what's happening this morning.

 

More Fall and the Orange Guy

Today was a glorious fall day.  I think it may have been the last ride.  Tomorrow we have the guy out to drain the irrigation system, and the guy who maintanances the furnace, and then we visit the Medicare Plan D sales lady.  We need a different plan, and I want to have this done before we head south.  Then the rain comes and temperatures get out of my comfort zone for riding.

Here is the always lovely lake.  

This is fall across the street.  I like the bushes to turn red in autumn.

Who has been following the lunatics?  Armed people in North Carolina stalked FEMA workers.  They had to be pulled out of two counties due to fear for their safety.  FEMA!  They're stalking FEMA. 

The orange menace has just been off the rails as of late.  Last night he had a rally in Coachella, CA.  For some reason, people had to be bussed in 4 or 6 miles to the venue from where they parked.  After it was over, no busses came to take them back to their cars.  They were out in the middle of nowhere, it was pitch dark.  Apparently the campaign did not pay the bus company, so they didn't return.  I have not heard if they walked the distance back or how they got home.  Many of those people were old, that's a hike for an old, out of shape person.  He can't organize a rally, but he wants to run the country.

Then there was the town hall meeting in Oaks, PA.  This is a thread done by Aaron Rupar, he chronicles much of what the orange guy says.  There's a lot, but you can get the gist of it, just reading what Aaron wrote about the video clips.  Or you can suffer and listen to the orange guy speak, which is fairly concerning.  Apparently he spent 20 minutes on stage swaying to different music clips.  Pretty weird.  The thread opens in the middle, scroll up and start at the top.  I don't know why it does that.  Here is a short clip of him swaying to Sinead O'Conner.

He's back on the Nazi speak, talking about the "enemy within."  If he wins again, it's going to be so bad.  I firmly believe that he'll be removed from office and JD Vance will be installed.  It's going to be a war on contraception, IVF, abortion, freedom of movement over state lines for women and etc.  Yes, I know, I sound like a conspiracy nut, but given his rate of decline, they'll have to get him off the stage.

So, that's my fear and dread for today.

Fall and a PSA

Greetings on this beautiful autumn day, most of which was spent sitting in front of laptops until it was time to leave to get flu shots.  Why, you wonder.  I will address this later on the page.  But first, some fall foliage.

I've posted this picture many times this summer, notice that the familiar yellow streak across this middle of the lake is gone.  The milfoil has quit blooming and is once again sinking to the bottom of the lake.

The lake is really low.  Flow from the Spokane River is down, and not the banks are visible.

Yellow trees on the way home.

This yard gets many leaves.

So, back to the laptops.  Medicare open enrollment starts October 15.  If you are on heritage Medicare, ie not Medicare Advantage, or Medicare C as it's also called, this is the year to pay attention to your plans.  Our monthly premium for Plan D went from $3.37 per month, to $38 per month.  The deductible doubled.  Our Medigap policy premium is going up 15.8%.  Plan D is up due to the cap on insulin prices, the $2,000 limit on drug costs for seniors, and general greed and malfeasance.  So, we will be building a spreadsheet to see who is paying how much for what, and adding in the monthly premium to get the most bang for the buck.  I, personally, am considering a zero monthly premium plan because my two generic drugs are cheap on Cost Plus Drugs.  Jim's generics are not, so that will require some thought.  We went to sleep on it last year, and it was OK, this year is different.

Carry on and keep calm.

Yard Work and a Walk in a Park

Hola!  We've been doing fall stuff.  Saturday was the annual wrapping of the arborvitae in deer netting.  It's a terrible job, the mesh is the perfect size to catch the buttons on the shirt sleeves and it's just a pain.  As much as I hate the arborvitae, I don't want them maimed by the deer this winter.  So they're done now.  You can see the light glinting off the mesh.

Yesterday was the pruning of the hydrangeas.  It's not difficult, but it's pretty boring.  They had a good year this past summer, and were up against the house and surrounding trees.  So, bye bye pretty blossoms.

Then it was on to trimming the boxwood hedge.  I didn't take much off, but there were some wingers that needed to be dealt with.  Over the three years we've been here, we have not been sufficiently brutal with the hedge trimmer.  It's taller than it was when we got here, and it's closer to the walk way.  I'm not sure if it would be a good idea to cut it back a lot.  I guess if we don't let it get any bigger, things will be fine.

Today was chilly, we were just not in the mood to put on all the layers to ride, so we went to Manito Park. It's a delightful park.  It's surrounded by older homes which are well kept and I would imagine updated more than once in their history.  We also saw some new construction done in the style of the neighborhood.  It would be a cool place to live.  I have photos!

The Mirror Pond.  It used to be a natural seasonal lake, but there was a desire for it to always have water, so they paved it.  There are tiny fish and ducks living there.

After wandering for a bit, we found a map next to the Cafe (which was closed) and discovered the location of the conservatory.  They have a lot of foliage plants as well as cactus and succulents.

There is a Japanese garden.  The water features are lovely.  The orange blog is a big koi.

It was fun.  It's kind of a hike for us, but for the people who live near the park, it's a treasure.

Sunset the other night.

That's it, that's all I've got until Milton hits Tampa Bay.  Currently it's a Cat 5 hurricane, so not good.

Human Nature

Greetings Humans.  Today we have had human nature on display.  The dock workers are threatening to strike.  Actually, I think they did go out.  Their union president is a fan of the 45th president.  He was heard to say that he would cripple the economy prior to the election.  The union guys were offered a 50% raise, nope!  They want 61%.  For that, they'll strike while there's  hurricane disaster relief going on, with another storm waiting in the gulf.  Anyway, they've decided to hold off on the strike until January.  This is where the union boss lives.  Pretty nice, eh?

Anyway, back to human nature.  The materiel on the ships that would have been impacted by a strike is stuff from China.  Toilet paper is made in the US.  However, the hoarding has begun.  Today we were at Costco (for toilet paper, just in case) and every single package of TP and paper towels was gone.  They employee we spoke to said there would be more tomorrow, but we'd need to get there right when the doors open. 

We stopped at Target on the way home (and bought toilet paper), they had plenty.  I'm beginning to wonder if mass hoarding is a characteristic of the Costco demographic.  Target was not busy at all.  Costco was packed, and people were panic shopping.  Many people had the big flat trolleys just loaded up with everything.  So, it's good that the dock workers are holding off a few months, it will give toilet paper manufacturers time to increase production.

I saw this in the neighborhood down the street.  This is funny.  The people who live here have a cat that roams at night, and brings them presents.  So, they've put them out in hopes that the owners of the presents will see them and take them home.

Costco has nice plantings.  They've spent some money on landscaping.  This is the view through the wind shield.

In terrible news you can't do anything about, there is this.  Rwanda has had a Marburg outbreak.  It has made its way to Germany.  Marburg is known as the "bleeding from the eyes" virus.  Until this chart, I did not know just how bad it is.  I also did not realize how bad bird flu is.

This was on twitter yesterday.  It, too, is funny.

Other than observing my fellow humans, I have not too much to say.