This blog isn’t intentionally political. I have other blogs where I make my politics well known. This one is more about life and the joys and struggles that accompany it. And recipes, and movies and other things I need to keep in one place.

But I do live in the real world and need to address the idiot follies that are so prevalent in today’s world.

The golden rule may be do onto others… But the true rule is don’t do things that infringe on other peoples fundamental rights. And conversely, keep your nose out of other peoples business unless it’s directly impacting you (mostly). Uncomfortable in the male body you were born in? Fine, get the parts whacked off or added as you see fit. Makes no never mind to me what you do to your body, it’s yours have fun! Now, you feel like a woman, so you want to play women’s sports. No you dumb ass. Why? Because you’re now infringing on someone else’s rights. You are not inherently a woman, and despite the fact that you’ve crafted yourself as one, you don’t get to compete against those that were naturally born as such. It’s almost beyond the pale that any rational, thinking person would consider that kind of competition fair. Yet that’s what happened and it so incensed people that inherently have trouble being rational and thinking that they’re literally willing to throw away democracy so they don’t have to deal with it. And while it didn’t impact me personally, if I think about having a daughter, and having a ‘trans athlete’ competing against them, I’d be pissed too.

The above mentioned incitement point can then easily be packaged with other less morally acceptable points like immigration and immigrants removal. And also things that sound good on the surface but the people who have trouble with rational and thinking like ‘less government’. And people are really too stupid to realize that the government is there for them. The people that make up the government are your neighbors, the services that they provide are for the people. There aren’t very many mail men and women who belong to country clubs. There’s no line of luxury and sports cars lined up to get into government and military installations because the people lined up to get in are going to work to go about the business of running day to day operations of a superpower or keeping said superpower safe.

And now we have a South African taking a chainsaw to it while the felon rips out the roots democracy tempting a court that he appointed 1/3 of to do something about it while the impotent members of our legislative branch cheer it on. Democracy is floundering and we really only have ourselves to blame.

The sad part of it is, the moral outrage being stirred up, the upending of protocols developed over the growth of our nation and the hatred being sowed is nothing more than a diversion so the rich can get their tax breaks at the expense of services that were set up for the common people. We’ve let our politicians let companies make profit over peoples health. They force us to buy home and auto insurance and then take money from the insurance companies as they raise our rate or simply refuse to insure cover anything. And when the insurance company goes bankrupt because of a natural disaster, the federal government has to step in and bail them out. This is, of course, after the stockholders have walked away with the profits instead of using them to shore up the company.

We have the president saying we need more work visas available because we don’t have smart enough people here, then the next day he’s dismantling the department of education.

It’s going to be interesting to see how things play out. The one thing that differs from history in this situation is that we have a very well armed population that, theoretically, is armed to prevent dictators and kings.

It was a short but good week. I finally sent out the invite for review of the export. There’s still some things to figure out but it’s time for show and tell.

I want to say a bit about regrets. I have my share, actually I carry around more than I care to admit. It haunts me and at times consumes me. But what can you do? You can try to drink them away and in the process create more. Not really an option a sane person would take. You could let it own you, as I do at times. But there’s no joy to be had in the throws of guilt. The tears don’t provide absolution. But sometimes if you get busy, you forget to hate yourself. That’s about as good as it gets and the best you can hope for sometimes.

The electricians showed up today. We were not expecting them. They were cool about it. We’ll clean the house to get ready for them and hopefully take some notes about what they need to do. It’s all about getting things safe and up to code. It’s going to be expensive but it’ll be done.

I spent the day trying to figure out how to tell work that I’ve got done what they needed me to do but I kept changing things to make them better, or at least make a better impression. It’ll be something I can send out bright and early in the morning and we’re still on track to get it into place from my understanding.

The weekend is almost upon us. I’m trying to figure out what I’d like to do. We’re in the doldrums of work as the next day off is Memorial day and that’s 3 months away. We do have a wedding to attend before that. Grace is getting married in May in Virginia. That’s actually on Memorial day weekend.

I sort of started the class today, it was a bit of a rough start because it is going over how to ‘distance’ learn. I guess they don’t know I got my bachelor degree from them. A mandatory meeting with the course advisor, yada yada. I’ll get to it. I really need the information in the course so the sooner the better. I’m trying to get rid of the last project so I have more desk space. That’s a real thing…

It’s been awhile since the cold froze the hairs in my nose. Now, maybe it’s because there’s more hair in my nose than ever, or it could be that it’s 20 degrees out.

I went to a funeral today. Kodi & Tyla’s mom passed and tonight was the viewing. It was good to see them and the others that I knew but it was sad that it was a funeral. An amazing bright spot was meeting Kodi’s daughter Allie. What an amazing spark that one has. The excitement in her voice as she described her college life and aspirations was amazing, I don’t think I’ve ever had that kind of zest for life.

I almost had a heart attack today at work, I had been heads down trying to get the ‘standard’ offer letter done and hit on some other issue only to realize there are a whole bunch more offer letter types to contend with. But the code was sound and works as written with just a few modifications. I think I’m ready to show and tell at work with this thing, we’re close enough for that.

I signed up for the AI usage class today. I haven’t taken the intro yet but I’ll get around to it shortly. I’m kind of excited to take the class and learn how to use it. I’ll keep you up to date on what I learn.

The temperature dropped throughout the day on their way down to 13 tonight. I don’t mind, it’s not like I have to go anywhere. Just hunker down and get to work like I usually do. I do worry about the outdoor creatures but I guess they’ve been dealing with the outside for literally thousands of generations. I’m also convinced that they just don’t feel cold like I do. One of my faults is that I empathize too much. So if I’m cold inside looking outside, how is the skinny little cat supposed to survive? Well they do and not only survive but thrive. I need to quit projecting my limitations on the other living beings that I encounter.

Other than that, we’re on the hunt for auto insurance. I am of the opinion that insurance is one of the greatest scams that exists. The reason we have a government is to run services that the people need that shouldn’t be a profit maker. So things like health care, infrastructure and insurance need to exist but no one should be making a profit on them. It needs to be run by the government as a non-profit. Only making a 3% profit that it returns to the general coffers. No stock holders demanding constantly increasing profits. Insurance fraud becomes a federal crime and the agency is under congressional control, although that group of idiots needs to be revamped.

We had a sit down dinner of meatloaf, mashed potatoes and green beans with biscuits. It was a nice way to get used to the cold and pretend we’re someplace in a cabin by the fireplace as the winds howl outside.

Well the three day weekend is at an end. I didn’t get much of anything done with a free day. I did make it over to the gym for 30 minutes of a workout. I did my usual thing of trying to see how high my BPM can go and after a lap and a half full speed I felt a little off, like I couldn’t catch my breath and my pulse topped out at 157 or so. Probably my fault, my nose was a bit stopped up.

I got my steps and circles done. Yay for me. I lost 6 pounds over the last month. So it can be done. But you have to eat properly. And that’s a hard thing to do.

We did sign and send in the quote for the electric rework. 10k seems like a lot but it’ll be done by the book and have it inspected. Then we can get the insulation blown in to hopefully save some money over the summer.

Tomorrow is a federal holiday so I believe I have the day off. They didn’t really say and I don’t get paid for days off but I can’t work when they don’t? I don’t know, if there’s no mail I don’t have to be at work as far as I know. Also I may have been laid off on Friday, I don’t think so but who knows. I’m not going to sweat it and I’ll be back at it on Tuesday.

I didn’t make my steps yesterday and it wasn’t looking like I was going to do it today either but I took charge and got on the treadmill and knocked out 2.5 miles. It was enough to close all the circles. It was also enough to knock me out for an hour long nap. It was nice though.

The temperature made it up to 46 and we ventured out to Target, they had a 10 pack of t-shirts for like $22. It was nice to just walk around. We didn’t spend a bunch of time there. We’ve both felt really lethargic today, maybe it’s just the cold but it’s nice to have a down day.

It was also a fairly lazy day. We did make it over to see mom since she’s out of the hospital. It was nice, I sat next to her on the porch and we watched some buzzards pecking at a dead possum. It did sort of bother me that mom had to shout out to anyone walking by to leave it (buzzards, carcass, et al.). I guess the days of her having a filter are gone. I was able to live in the moment though and not think about the inevitable.

When we got home we jumped on the bikes and went for a ride over to the east side of Hurst. We were over by the shopping plaza at Pipeline and Brown Trail and stopped in for lunch at El Patriota #1, I believe we were the only English speakers in the place but it was nice. We split a large Patriota (Cheese, Pork, Chicken, Turkey, Pastrami, Mayoketchup, Lettuce, Tomate and Potato stix chips), we definitely enjoyed it and wouldn’t hesitate to stop back in.

It got cold while we were biking, a front moved through and you could feel it, from the time we left from eating lunch, to the time we got home the temperature dropped about 10 degrees and the wind was gusting to 20. We stopped by the Dollar General for Oxyclean and Shout and tore home to get out of the weather. Got the hoses drained and put the freeze guards back on them as it’s going to be cold the next week.

Happy to have Friday here. It was a rough day, I got up and started at like 5:30am but I’m getting damn close on the project I’m working on. There’s an issue that the HTML is being rendered in cp1272 instead of UTF-8 which sucks because things like the ‘right leaning apostrophe’ don’t display right. I’m close to figuring it out but I have no place else to test it except for the server at work. And I have to add the pictures. They’re not showing up now but I think that’s because we’re using the full URL, I think I need to change up the href so that the image is local and we should be good. Hopefully.

Still a little chilly today. We went to the mall at 7pm to do some walking and people watching. The younger crowd was out, just being young and stupid, wearing house shoes while shuffling around the mall, all that energy and they can’t even put on shoes.

Mom made it back to the house, we’ll go see her tomorrow. It’s supposed to be a 70+ degree day so maybe a bike ride is in the future.

Mom fell again, at least nothing is broke but she’s black and blue in the face. Old people falling is an epidemic that we need to address. I probably shouldn’t say anything else I’ll have it worse than anyone else. Roger died after a fall. Mom’s been falling more and more and she’s been extremely lucky but the next time who knows!

Kodi’s mom died this morning. And with Nichole’s passing fate is looking for a 3rd, although I think it’s going away, I mean I never actually met Kodi’s mom that I can remember. I hope it’s waning anyways.

So the property that Sarondy is about to aquire is going to be in court in a week. Well not the property itself but the guy who claims to own it. To that end he was served papers by a constable, from what Ron said, he went back inside, retrieved a baseball bat and proceeded to attack said constable. No wonder he had me get a PO Box.