Well…with how my hands are feeling, I know the only way I’m going to get relief is to rest them…so that’s what I’m going to do today…I did get the detail work on the cabinets done and gave myself a haircut and that really made me realize how bad my hands, shoulders, and back are and that they do need some repair time…so, it looks like I’ll be taking the weekend off with my normal off day Sunday and I can really use it…and the racing season starts today with the Daytona 24hours starting this afternoon so I’ll have something to listen to in the background that isn’t related to gold in any way…and Tom will get that one….still one more later….
Monthly Archives: January 2022
Right wing book banning…
Well…if you’ve seen the news lately, you would have seen that repub controlled school boards across the country are making it their only reason for being to ban books they don’t like, mostly by people of color or that shine a light on the racism in this country…with their rationale being that kids shouldn’t be exposed to the Holocaust or anything that might make them uncomfortable. Damn, I am so tired of these snowflakes trying to keep kids from understanding what the world is really like…from slavery to the cold war to rampant discrimination to fascism, they don’t want children to know the reality of the world since they think that knowing history or difficult concepts that will shine a light on reality will harm them in some way or make them ashamed of being white…yep, that’s a big part of it…they just don’t want white kids to know that their ancestors were responsible for the slave trade and Jim Crow on to the discrimination that still exists now…look, when I was 8 or nine years old, I bought the book “Fail Safe” from the Scholastic book club that came around to schools and made books available to everyone in grade school….now, that book was about the possibility of a military officer taking it upon himself to leave his fail safe point and drop a hydrogen bomb on Moscow…which was one of the fears that we all had growing up during the cold war where we could die any day we woke up…but the twist was, to prevent an all out nuclear war, the commander of US forces made a deal to drop a bomb on New York city to make up for Moscow….and the searing part of it was that his family was in NYC that day and he had to sacrifice them for the good of the world….this drove home to me that leadership sometimes meant doing the right thing at great personal cost but honor and duty required that choice….now, this was a deep concept for an 8 year old but one that helped shape me throughout my life….and the thing was that no one banned that book and it was not too tough for an 8 year old to understand and I think the same goes for today…I mean banning “to Kill a Mockingbird” since it shows the widespread racism and it’s effects on black people in the south in the 30′s? That’s something that every person in this country needs to know since progress on race in this country has been fitful at best…and it’s best if children are taught these concepts before their views harden as they get older…geez…
January 29th
Well…darn…another 3:40 night but I didn’t get out of bed until after 6 so I guess that fits on the normal scale…but I feel like I had cocktails last night but didn’t…I wonder if it’s the release of stress from getting the cupboards done yesterday? Even though I bitched about how the white paint looked, as it cured it started to look better and better and now it looks pretty good and I can easily live with it…I still really like the paint I chose and you can’t beat it for under 20 bucks a gallon…and while was waiting for the paint to be colored at depot, I found some black switch and plug plates that I put up yesterday and they look cool…and I adjusted the electrical outlets so they are straight instead of skewed so now they are level…and the plates are 3/8th of an inch bigger and cover all of the bad plaster around them…and I took the time to remove the old telephone landline that was there for a wall phone in the kitchen since I’ll never have a landline again and it needed to go before I get to painting the walls in the kitchen….I really do feel pretty beat up today and I may use the 24hours of Daytona for the excuse to take it easy today after I do the bike ride…or I may just do the touch up of the grey and call it good…I have to get at cleaning up the dining room since it has been my work room since I started on the kitchen and it is dusty and has tools and materials everywhere…and I need to do a haircut today, too since it is getting shaggy and I don’t like it looking messy…not much to do today….can I just take one day easy and screw around a bit instead of getting right on the doors? I need a day off since it still hurts to do this and my hands won’t heal unless I rest them….more later….
Done….
Well….finally, I’m done with the cupboards…or only the actual cupboards and not the 11 doors that I still need to fill, sand, paint, and drill new holes for the pulls…and my hands seem like they won’t take any more abuse for a while so I may have to take the weekend off and let them rest..I guess they look okay with what I had to work with and I do really like both the grey and white paint…but, I pulled off a couple of small parts of the grey paint on the interiors today with the painters tape I put on to keep the white off the grey…and I think that was just because they hadn’t had time to cure yet and I can fix those couple of spots in about a minute so no big deal…but, that reminds me that I do have to wait a week or so before I start putting the stuff back in the cupboards so the paint will be fully cured and won’t stick to my dishes….I am going to have to take a day to clean up my tools after all of the dust that the sander spread all over everything and get my work box ready for the rest of the work in the kitchen…but not now…have been on the run since 7 this morning and it is 4 now so that is 9 hours and that is enough for one day…still thinking about that cocktail…
Not satisfied with how the cupboards came out…
Well…after painting the first coat of white on the exterior of the cupboards, I am a little disappointed in how they came out…there are still so many flaws in them that I missed that they are little better than they were…okay, more than that but after 3 weeks of sanding, filling and working on them, I really expected they would look better than they do…I know they are 82 years old but damn, they should look better after the abuse I put myself through working on them….lots of the flaws just didn’t show up until I painted them and I blame myself for that…should have kept working on them and worked harder…oh, well….still have the second coat to put on later and I am hoping that will hide some of the flaws…darn…almost makes me want to have a cocktail or seven tonight….
You just gotta love Neil Young…
Well…with what has happened over the past couple of days, you just gotta love Neil Young…not sure if you have heard of this in the news but some idiot low level comedian, Joe Rogan, was given a huge contract with the music service Spotify for his podcast where he spouts right wing talking points all day and has been one of the biggest anti vax assholes out there…almost every one of his shows has these quack doctors on it pushing Ivermectin and all of the other bullshit “cures” for covid along with every lie about the vaccines…and yesterday, Neil Young had had enough…and told spotify that it was Rogan or him…they couldn’t have both on their service and told them he would pull his music if they let Rogan keep spewing his lies…so of course, the right wing assholes who own Spotify chose to keep Rogan since they paid him 100 million dollars for his podcast and they probably believe the crap he spouts….so, Neil, being a person who keeps his word, pulled his entire catalog from Spotify and moved it to Apple music along with many other artists including Barry Manilow if you can believe it…and so many people have been trying to cancel their Spotify subscriptions that the site went down…or that’s what Spotify says…I’ll bet they shut the cancel function down to keep people from being able to cancel their subscriptions, hoping that the whole thing will blow over without too much damage….one thing I can’t understand is why they stay with Rogan…since they allowed him to be a right wing asshole on their service, their stock price has taken a beating with losing almost 25% of it’s value…and if they think this is going to blow over, they just need to look at Twitter where every third post there is in support of Neil and of cancelling their subscriptions…so, keep it up Spotify…ride Rogan right down the tubes to your end…can’t wait to see it…geez…
Janaury 28th
Well…that was a little strange…slept all the way through the night with just some tossing and turning but not waking up at all…so for the first time in a long time, I got a full 7 1/2 hours of sleep and I’m not sure how that happened….but, I’ll take it and I hope it means I’ll have a lot of energy today since I’ll need it with getting to painting the exterior of the kitchen cabinets today and I am going to try to finish them…so that will take a few hours but the milestone of having them done and being able to use them while I work on the doors over the weekend….that means I need to go out and get more grey paint this morning and I am going to stop at Aldi’s, too, to get the fruit that I forgot Wed…it looks like it’s going to take about 3 gallons of paint to do everything grey in the kitchen but that’s not bad at 18 bucks a gallon….hope to have the doors finished and mounted by Wed of next week and the I can get started on the baseboards and door frames…may have to get a gallon of white paint to finish that stuff up but the white seems to go farther than the grey….it is nice to finally see progress but there is still quite a bit to do in the kitchen…I do have to remember that I have time and don’t need to rush but would like to have the kitchen finished in the next couple of weeks…I may have to rest my hands Sunday since the cuts, bruises, and strains are getting to the point that it hurts just to do this and the cuts are taking a long time to heal with continuously banging them on the cabinets I’m working on….not much to do today…okay, that phrase needs to be retired until I get the house done since I always have lots to do but it’s been a habit since I started this and a tradition that is turning into parody….more later….
The interiors are done…
Well…finally, I got the interiors of the upper cabinet done today with two coats of paint and that is a relief…I probably could have done a better job of prepping it but I just ran out of patience and got damn tired of all the dust…and I’m still feeling the effects of breathing in the dust even with wearing a dust mask all the time and I was just done with it…but, it looks a lot better than the dirty, stained white that was in there…and getting that done today gets me to working on the white exterior of the cabinets tomorrow…I may go out and get another gallon of the grey paint tomorrow morning so I’ll have it on hand if I want to get started on the doors over the weekend…and I forgot to get oranges at aldi’s and I tried some provalone cheese slices for 1.49 for half a pound that are really good so I think I may get more of those, too…I did get out and get more sanding pads and tape at HF this morning and I did get the seasoned beef steak roast for 1.79 a pound and I am thawing it in the fridge for a few days before I can use it for beef/broccoli stir fry over the weekend…so, one more errand tomorrow…man, I’m spending a lot of cash this month…
Justice Breyer is retiring….
Well…there was some good news about the supreme court yesterday when Justice Breyer, one of the only 3 judges left who actually follow the law, announced he will be retiring at the end of the present term at the end of June…and that means the Joe Biden will be able to appoint a justice that is not pushed by the Federalist Society, the right wing organization that has funneled millions and millions of dollars into the fight to get only unqualified right wing ideologues on the court. I almost laughed when I heard Susan Collins, who backed jamming Barrett through to the court in the last 30 days before the dems took over the senate, opine that there is no need for speed in getting the next justice appointed…yeah, since they already did it for one of their pet justices but it’s different now…the dems are in control so she thinks they should delay and delay until the possibility of the repubs taking the senate back in November so McConnell can steal a 4th seat. Luckily, Chuck Schumer is using the Barrett appointment as a template for getting the next justice through and will use exactly the same timetable as McConnell did…and we need to play hardball to make sure we get a true progressive that is not beholden to business and the right wing of this country…so, I am waiting to see how this all comes together over the summer…and to see if Clarence Thomas’s wife Ginny is indicted for her part in the January 6th insurrection…and she was all over the conspiracy so she should be….geez…
january 27th
Well…I like my new coffee mornings when I get up and smell the new pot brewing and knowing I’m going to have good tasting, fresh coffee…it’s enough to make a good start of the day and set me up for getting some work done…slept okay last night and didn’t get out of bed until 6:20 and now I’m running a little late for getting on the bike by 7:15…I guess I can get on it by 7:30 since I have to run an errand this morning to HF to get some sanding pads and painter’s tape and then across the street to DD to get a 5 pound seasoned beef roast for 9 bucks and a 1 pound breakfast sausage roll for 1.49 since I have two eggs left from last week and I can make a sausage and egg breakfast for a meal in the next day or so…yeah, I know that stuff is bad for you but I haven’t had anything like it in years so I guess I can have it once in a while…bought lots of protein this week since I got tired of chicken leg quarters and they had big ribs on sale…and I got boneless skinless chicken breasts to use in a lot of recipes…and most of them will end up in the freezer but that’s okay….I did get the insides of the cupboards painted yesterday and the second coat looks a lot better than just one….a nice smooth surface that I can live with even though the repairs weren’t perfect….and I do need to get on the upper cabinet today and use up the rest of the paint for the first coat….will need to hit depot for another gallon tomorrow to do the second coat and the doors that I’ll get started on this weekend…nope, need to do the white on the cabinets first but that should only take a day or so to do both coats…not much to do today…need to get on the bike soon but DD doesn’t open til 9 so I have time to finish my first cup of coffee before I get started….more later…