Well….okay, the coffee just finished so I have to go get a cup before I get started….that’s better…had an okay night of sleep but was up at 2:44 and then for good at 5:31and I think I can cope with no sleep aids pretty well…I do remember sleep like this and it’s really not too bad…one weird thing is I’m not as cold as I used to be when I’m in bed and I wonder why that would be? I do know that I feel okay with how I’m sleeping now so I’ll take it….I did do another small cleaning project yesterday when I was in the dining room and finally got tired of looking at the dirty ceiling fan with one light burned out so I went to work on that and spent an hour cleaning the globes, taking the fan blades off and washing them, and then washing the motor to get the dust and crud off it…just like everything else in this house, the whole thing was coated in a greasy, dusty dirt that took a lot of scrubbing and soap to get it clean…and the globes looked like they were frosted when they are clear they were so coated and hadn’t been cleaned in years…one side effect of the clean globes is that the three bulb light on the fan now lights the dining room up like the damn sun it’s so bright…I may even have to go down to 60w led bulbs from the 100’s I have in there now….and that would help with getting rid of the cfl’s in the rest of the house that are so weak they barely light anything…I do have to try to balance the blades since the fan swings when it runs and that is a little annoying….but a piece of duct tape on the top should do it when I find the time….not much to do today….it’s going to be a cooking day today with doing the 8 pound pork shoulder in the instant pot this morning and everything that goes with that and the cleanup that comes with it…but I am looking forward to both the lunch of pork and mashed potatoes and gravy and the pork soft tacos for later and I won’t have to cook for 4 or 5 days after today…not sure what small project I’ll do today but I know it will be something…probably laundry and cleaning to finish out my week off….more later….
Don’t feel like working today…
Well…as the fallout from trying to sleep without aids continues today, I really don’t feel like working at all….have been sneezing and coughing all day and feel pretty worn out but haven’t been able to take a nap this afternoon to try to help it…but I haven’t done much else, either, other than make some pickled red onions to use on the pork tacos I’m going to make tomorrow….I did get an 8 1/2 pound pork shoulder to cook in the instant pot tomorrow and I am going to make some mashed potatoes and asparagus to go with it…or I may do potatoes and carrots and make a gravy from the cooking liquid or maybe an au jus that will be just the cooking liquid without any thickening….or maybe both…I am going to add some veggie broth for the cooking liquid with some celery, garlic, onion, peppercorns, and carrots for taste along with a couple of bay leaves and just set the shoulder in the liquid without the lifting grate that normally goes in the bottom….this should make enough protein to keep me going for the next week or so without taking anything out of the freezer…and I got some Texas style boneless ribs that I am going to just portion out and freeze since I won’t need them til next week…oh, and I did get a huge bottle of laundry soap at Menard’s for 8 bucks along with the new strip that says it will strip anything in 2 minutes but I’ll believe that when I see it….I even hit the dollar store to get some 100w led bulbs to continue to replace all of the CFL’s that are all over this house and that don’t put out a lot of light….and I put gas in the car at the highest price I’ve ever paid at 4.19 but I’m okay with that….anything to help beat Putin….
The speculators are getting hammered…
Well…this always brings a smile to my face when it happens…it looks like the oil price speculators and traders are getting hammered today with the price dropping by 14.20 a barrel or almost 12% when the speculators were betting on the price to hit 150 bucks a barrel by the end of the week…it looks like the loss of Russia’s oil has already been priced into the market at 110 bucks a barrel and with the price of gasoline rising so much in the past two weeks, usage is plummeting and we may even see a glut even with the Saudis siding with Putin and Russia and cutting their production to support the price…and with the Saudis refusing to even discuss the price with Biden, another “leader” of a country has made a huge miscalculation by snubbing the US as the US does everything in it’s power to increase supplies and get the price down. What are you going to say now repubs? These traitors have been all over the news the past couple of days blaming Biden for the increase in gasoline cost so will they now admit that his efforts has dropped the cost by 10% today? Of course not, with these cynical bastards pushing to cut off Russian imports just to have another issue to hammer Joe with when gas prices rise, the media needs to ask every damn one of them what their role was in cutting off Russian imports and why they are attacking Biden for it when they all voted for it. It will be interesting to see how this shakes out over the next week or so…I’m sure we’ll see some pretty wild swings in oil prices but 200 dollar oil? Nope…and I hope every one of these damn speculators loses their shirt…geez…
The Saudis and the UAE can go to hell…
Well…as President Biden talks to damn near the whole world to further isolate Russia and try to blunt the effect of cutting out Russia’s oil exports…we find out who our friends are in the middle east..just yesterday both the Saudis and the UAE threw in with Putin by refusing to even talk to Biden about increasing oil production without trying to blackmail the US into giving them a veto over our foreign policy in the middle east. The Saudis (whom I mean the murderer bin Salman) even have gone so far as to tie immunity to suits for the murder of Khashoggi to any talks…all the while they keep cutting oil production with the aim of getting the price per barrel to 200 dollars…so, we should say go to hell to both of them and tell them they are on their own and try to protect their countries themselves…and the Saudis have been whining about needing more weapons for their war in Yemen and expect us to give the weapons to them for free…I think we should just say go to Putin if you want more weapons since we know he has very few reserves and won’t be able to make any with the sanctions on Russia…look, both of these countries are pissed that Biden won the election and their favorite stooge trump can’t help them anymore…and I think these guys are lashing out since they see the writing on the wall that they will be out of the oil cartel business in the next 20 years and will go back to the backwaters they were before oil…and it can’t happen too soon for me…geez…
March 9th
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….
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…