Well…that kinda sucked….decided to stop using the sleep aid that I have taken for a few months last night and the results are what I expected…tossed and turned all night and woke up about 20 times…okay, maybe 5 times but it felt like 20…and I have a bad headache today that I will probably have to take something for before I head out for the grocery run this morning…so now I’m down to no artificial anything and I’m not sure if I like it so much….since the sleep aid was an antihistamine, it kept my head clear all night so I could sleep but I woke up with it completely plugged up and that is probably the cause of the headache….oh, well…started to work on the bathroom yesterday and pulled one of the paint clogged hinges off the door and put it in some strip but the 40 year old stuff I have here just couldn’t cut the 10 or more coats of paint that was on it…so I need to stop at Menards this morning to get some better stuff since I will need to strip the heat registers that have the same amount of paint on them too….but I really should wait til it gets warm enough to wash the strip off outdoors since I don’t want to wash it down my sink downstairs….or I may just see if I can get new hinges but I like the decoration on the current ones that goes with the age of the house…man, I feel like crap this morning and I am sitting here sneezing like crazy and sweating but I guess that is all part of moving to natural sleep and will probably take a couple of weeks to have my body stabilize….not much to do today…need to hit 4 stores this morning to get the food that I need to stay in for the next week…or two grocery stores, Menards, and the dollar store since I need some light bulbs and other stuff…going to make a pork shoulder tomorrow and that will give me ingredients to make some pork soft tacos with pickled red onions and sauteed red peppers for the second meal for the rest of the week…and I really do need to finish my week off working on this place since I hurt my right hand again yesterday just doing the puttering around that I did…more later….
Monthly Archives: March 2022
Ukraine developments…
Well…just sitting here paying some bills and reading some news when I saw that Ukraine is claiming they destroyed 45 Russian helicopters yesterday…and with all of the other equipment they claim destroyed (which does need to be taken with a grain of salt given the nature of modern warfare), it does appear that the Ukrainians are making Putin pay for this war in ways that he never expected…and news this afternoon is that Poland has transferred all of their Russian built fighters to the US and they are being flown to Germany so we can take possession of them officially…and then they will be given to Ukraine to bolster their air force and give them the chance to knock down even more Russian aircraft and kill other vehicles they are using to commit their war crimes. I’m sure the deal was structured this way so that Poland won’t be threatened by the criminal Putin, and if he wants to threaten NATO for the transfer, he really does have to know if he draws a modern armed force into this fight, he will lose and lose badly…and will have no army left to protect himself from the Russian people. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a dumber head of state other than the idiot trump…he has killed his economy and that will last generations and Europe is going to figure out how to do without his gas or oil so what does he have left? Nukes? That’s about it…I’ve never seen such a huge miscalculation in my lifetime…and it is going to rid the world of Putin once and for all…
Looking for a place to donate….
Well…with the coming 5 bucks a gallon prices for gas out here in Muskegon to support the cut off of any Russian oil imports to the US, I am looking for a place out here to donate a little cash for people who are not as fortunate as I am…I don’t really have to drive much…I think it was 6 miles last week so I can easily afford to pay for my gas but I know there are people who this is going to break their budgets…so, over the next few days I’ll be looking for a place I can donate a few bucks to to help some people out and get them to work and back…and I am not ever going to bitch about the cost of gas even though a lot of the price rise has been gouging by the oil companies who have just had the most profitable year ever in their histories….but that is for another one of these…
Whose “freedom”?
Well…you know, it makes me gag to hear the repubs talk about “freedom” these days when the freedom they speak of is only for white repubs…and it is the freedom to be an asshole and the freedom to not be called out for it or they howl “cancel culture” when they do get called on it….and the latest is a Uof Va student (and MAGA asshole) who whines and complains in the NYT that she is being silenced (damn, I’d love to be silenced like that and given the Op-Ed page to cry about it) and no one will “debate” her since she has right wing views….no, no one will debate you because you regurgitate right wing talking points and you think that everything has to be a “debate” as you try to jam your right wing hooey down everyone’s throat. This woman is one of the righties who think that everyone should like her since she is so brilliant even while spewing the same old crap that would have gotten her ostracized in polite society a generation ago…and when they talk about freedom, again, they are talking about freedom for them only as they try to ban books,ban black history, ban transgender people, ban saying gay, and ban voting so people only get to do what they say…is that “freedom”? To them it is…and with all of this, we need to remember that at the same time that Putin is banning “subversive” books in his totalitarian Russia, the repubs are doing the same damn thing in states they control…do you need to know anything else? Didn’t think so…geez…
Fooling around with a few small things…
Well…as I do my week off from working on this place, I have shifted to just fooling around with small jobs to get some information that I need to start planning the next big job…first, I thought I had lost the spare keys to the house and spent an hour looking for them…but the funny thing is that I found them exactly where I thought they were after looking there twice…so that was cool…and one weird thing about this place is that every interior door has door knobs with locks in them and I didn’t get any keys for them so I thought I’d have to replace them at 40 bucks a pop…but, this morning, I found that I can unlock them with just a screwdriver so I won’t have to replace them after all….just one less thing I have to do…but all of the interior doors need a lot of repair to fix the cobbled up jobs they did putting the new knobs and latches in…so they may need to come off for that but that’s okay with living alone….I also figured out how to remove the heat registers so I can strip and paint them…the backs are only held in by the ends of the duct work folded over a flange and the grates have two screws with catches that I got to work by chipping the paint off them so all of them now fit how they are supposed to and I can take them all off when it gets warmer and start stripping them…I did get started on checking out the big blobs of stuff that were stuck to the walls in the bathroom and it looks like they are just filler that was never sanded and it came off with my putty knife…and that got me started on the bathroom so I guess that’s the next room to work on…I wonder if I should start on the window first? But not today…I’ve already hurt my thumb again and that sucks…so maybe back to resting for the rest of the day…
March 8th
Well….darn, already running late today and it’s only 6:41….didn’t get out of bed until after 6 and didn’t have any dreams that I remember and that sucks a little….have been sleeping pretty well lately and that usually means some dreams and I may be getting spoiled from it….I did sleep on my right shoulder again and it is howling in pain and I’m glad I have this week off to let things rest…had a completely veg day yesterday that should have happened Sunday but today is going to be a little busy with trying to find a dentist and doctor so I can get back on track with my health….I have tempted fate too much by waiting to get going on my teeth and I am longing for the day when I can eat without pain again….and I know I need a yearly checkup that I missed last year with the pandemic going on and I hope that being good has helped my blood pressure some…I know I weigh less so that should be a good thing….we did get a bunch of snow out here yesterday but I didn’t need to shovel with the walks melting off as the day went on…I really hope that will be the last time it snows out here but the forecast is for temps that are around 10 degrees below the average for this time in March….I do need to cancel my Netflix account this week since they are raising prices again next month and it is not worth over 15 bucks a month….I rarely use it anymore with Plex and emby available so I need to say goodbye to them….and I will tell them why in a scathing e-mail if I can work up the outrage of their almost constant rate hikes…two this year already? I think they have miscalculated the necessity of using their service with everything else that is out there….not much to do today…and that is boring, boring, boring….just the bike and then planning for the next repairs on the house…I am really leaning toward doing the bathroom next since it is the second worse room here after the kitchen and it is small enough that it won’t take much time….and I may let the ceiling go til summer since it needs lots of plaster repair…we’ll see….more later…
The “happiest place in the world” is a fraud….
Well…not sure if you’ve been following what has been happening in Florida with deSantis and his troglodyte followers passing the “don’t say gay” law that would prevent any teacher there from mentioning that gay people exist or even children from talking about their gay parents and their family…and would allow any asshole parent to sue teachers if they even hear if they might have slipped and mentioned that gay people exist….and one of the biggest donors to these assholes is the Disney corporation who continue to pour money into these cretins to help them get elected….and they explain it by saying that they can’t speak out against the law or stop their donations or the extreme right wing assholes may boycott Disney and cost them money….but that is all just an excuse…what they are really doing is protecting their sweetheart tax deals they’ve gotten from Florida that allows them to essentially pay no taxes at all….and that is what concerns them more than laws that codify discrimination against the LGBT community….after all, Disney is run by a MAGA apologist who donates only to right wing assholes like trump and he is just fine with gays being treated like crap….so he fakes that Disney is being blackmailed by the red hats out there when he really doesn’t want to do anything to support the gay community anyway…it’s all just a convenient way for him to wave away the cynical calculus he is making to keep the cash pouring into his own pocket…the happiest place in the world, my ass…boycott Disney until they show that they care about all humans, not just the ones that line their pockets…geez…
I’m bored, but feeling better….
Well….damn it’s before 10 am and I’m already bored with taking time off working on the house but this happened last time I did it, too, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised….have done a little meal planning for later in the week and that includes getting a pork shoulder for 99 cents a pound at Meijers and cooking it in the instant pot Thursday…and that gave me an idea to make some pulled pork soft tacos for the second meal later in the week after I finish off the container of ham soup that I thawed the other day…but that means making some pickled red onions and sauteeing some red peppers to go with it….and I need to figure out the spice flavors I want to use on them….probably some chili powder, cayenne, and cilantro would be a good start….will have to look on the internet to get some ideas…oh, and I’m starting to feel better after going really hard on the bike this morning but still feel like I have a cold with the slight headache I’ve had for a month now…I wonder if that could be the caffeine in the coffee? Not sure but at least I have a little energy again and need to remember to keep eating two meals a day to help that….more later…again….
Bill Barr, Mark Meadows and a few other things…
Well…lots of stuff going on today in the news but I’m still trying to get my brain working to be just a little lucid and talk about it…okay, Bill Barr…the rehab process goes on for the trump protector Bill Barr and it is just sickening to hear how he justified not doing anything to hold trump accountable for his crimes and how he tried so damn hard to discredit the Mueller report and yet the major news channels bring him on and let him lie his ass off like the hour he was on tv last night…do you need any more proof that the media is run by right wing apologists who have an agenda to wreck this country and allow trumpism to flourish? Now, with Mark Meadows, the idiot boy’s chief of staff who was neck deep in trying to overthrow the results of the 2020 election and who should be charged by now…it was reported yesterday that he has committed voting fraud in NC by registering to vote at an address that he has never owned, never lived at, and that the former and current owners have no clue why he would use the address….and the excuse the repubs in NC are using to justify not prosecuting him is that “no one has filed a complaint yet”…so now I guess it’s okay to commit crimes in NC just as long as no one complains? Let’s remember that every damn instance of voter fraud revealed in the past few years is all done by repubs as they wail about it….I wonder if the old saying “thou doth protest too loudly” applies here? Oh, and one last thing about Ukraine…a defense department official has said that the most effective weapon the Ukrainians have is the Javelin anti tank missile they got from the US…remember the Javelin? The missile that the idiot trump tried to use to extort Zelensky into fabricating dirt of Joe Biden? This shows just how dangerous that extortion was and how trump was working for Putin at the same time he was trying to cheat to an election win…I wish the media would ask some of the repubs about the Javelins and why none of them voted to convict trump in the senate for withholding them…it would be fun to watch the squirm….
March 7th
Well…that was strange…had some long lasting weird dreams last night where I was trapped in the office I was working in by a nuclear or biological attack of some sort and I had to figure out what procedure to use to get out of it and no one was telling us what it was…yeah, pretty damn weird and it took a lot out of me that I am still feeling right now…and I wonder how that works? How do you get tired from the stress that happened in a dream? Or is it just a continuation of how I felt yesterday? I know I feel pretty worn out and it is no better than yesterday…getting on the bike is going to be hard this morning but maybe it will make me feel better…and I think I may have to get the french press out to make more coffee later since I went through more than half of this pot yesterday and I need more than two cups to get started in the morning….and to reward myself for getting on the bike and doing the miles…it looks like we are getting 2-4 inches of snow today and I’m glad I have nowhere to go today…and it is going to be a shock to put gas in the car wed with the prices almost 5 bucks a gallon but I don’t drive much so I can live with it for a while….not much to do today…I am still in my rest and healing week and, after two days off, my hands are getting better and the cuts are starting to heal up so that is progress…and there is not too much pain so I’ll be ready to start on the dining room next week…but, I am thinking about doing a quick paint job on the bathroom first since it is the second worst room in the house and I could get it done in about a week but haven’t decided on the color yet….maybe I’ll start on the trim first and see how it goes….more later….