Well…no matter how much the right attacks and tries to belittle him, isn’t it nice to have a real president acting like a real president should? That thought came to me over the past few days after the Ukraine crisis bubbles on and as Putin has been trying all his old bullshit tricks to justify invading a sovereign nation…could you imagine how screwed up the world would be if idiot boy was still in charge? Cripes, Russia would be taking over it’s third or fourth country by now and trump would be in Moscow praising him for being so “strong” while abandoning all of Europe. It seems that someone in this administration plays chess with the moves that Biden has been making…and his restoring of our vital alliances and his leadership has all of the rest of the world on exactly the same page…and if Russia does invade, it will be the end of Putin as a player on the world stage and it’s economy will take a hit that will take decades to repair if it ever can. All of this from a “senile” old man who can barely talk if you listen to fox news…and I sure hope you don’t….look, Biden has restored the US’s leadership in the world by our actions, not the bullshit that trump and his administration spewed every day…and with Biden making sure that our allies understand they are equals that we value, I see a sense of relief from them and a willingness to back our actions since they are based on facts and not the “gut feel” of a moron…and that gives me relief to know that a real president is at the controls….
February 19th
Well…this is just damn weird…two days of howling pain in my left jaw just stopped yesterday afternoon before I made pizza and it didn’t come back last night or overnight…I wonder if it was an infection and the amoxicillin I took knocked it down? All I know is that it still doesn’t hurt right now but I am going to keep the dentist appointment since I have been waiting 10 years to get started on the repairs that will allow me to eat ice cream on my birthday again…so I have til July to get that done…I’ll keep my fingers crossed that I can get through this week without pain….I was a little concerned last night with all of the high winds out here when my power blinked and the tv reset itself and that put me a little on edge since it is only about 11 degrees out there and heating this house with the range would be a huge pain in the butt…but, everything is still working and I am gong to get cramps from keeping my fingers crossed…again…even without working on this place for a day or so, my right elbow is really hurting this morning and I am wincing to just pick up my coffee cup and that is a little confusing but not really new….I wonder if all the sanding and abuse of my right arm and hand has done permanent damage to it? Sure hope not since I want to get 5K miles in on the bike this summer….not much to do today…just need to get on the bike here in 15 minutes or so and then I’m just going to wing it for the day…I do have to get out and shovel the snow but it doesn’t look as bad as I expected…we maybe got 2 inches of snow instead of the 4-6 that was forecast and I’ll take that any day….more later…damn, the tooth pain is starting up again…crap….
Made a good pizza….
Well…after being in pain all day with my teeth seeming to have a direct line to my brain, they went calm for a couple of hours so I decided to make the pizza that I had planned for a 4 day meal…and I wanted to try to add some flavor to the crust so I gave it a little garlic powder and Italian seasoning when I was mixing it up and hoped that even with the small amount I added, it would add another component to the taste…and I will say that it did and I’m happy with it…no more bland crust even with the tiny amounts I added…and I may add just a little bit more next time if I remember…I may have to make a note to the crust recipe I have in my notebook to make sure I do it right next time…my teeth are still only hurting a little and I have to try to figure out what I did to make that happen so I don’t suffer like I did last night…it is nice to have an appointment with a dentist to get the process of fixing my teeth started even if I do have to wait til next Friday to get in….and I still think that paying 360 dollars for a year of insurance to get 2500 bucks worth of work is a pretty good deal and I hope that it’s enough to get all of the work done except the molar removal and implant that I need…okay, the wind has been blowing so hard out here this afternoon that I can barely hear my tv when it gusts…and there is 3-6 inches of snow coming along with it so I may have drifts for the second time this winter….hope not…
Whitewashing history…
Well…so now I guess the latest spasm that the repubs are going through is passing laws whose only purpose is to whitewash history and make sure that no teacher in repub controlled states can teach the truth about this country at all…they want it to appear that there was no slavery, no Jim Crow, or no continuing racism that goes on to this day…and no Klan or lynchings…and I guess nothing about the gilded age where the rich stole everything and rigged the system so no else could even get a tiny share…and their reason is that if little white kids are told the truth, it may hurt their feelings and they just can’t take that as it may scar them for life….and the irony of that whole argument is that little white kids can’t be taught about it…but a little black girl, Ruby Bridges, lived it when she was the first black to go to an all white school and had to listen to all of the white racists scream at her and call her the “N” word…and to have adults throw things at her and threaten her life…she can endure that but little white kids can’t be taught about it since they may “feel bad” about being white….now, this crap is just as racist as the whites who screamed at Ruby and tells you where all of these new laws are coming from…they want to keep the “uppity” minorities in their place and make sure they know they are not in any way equal to little white kids who need to be protected from everything….and their culture and experience in their lives has no value to “normal” society. Now these white southern racists are going after teachers by passing laws that give any screaming white racist the ability to rat out any teacher that teaches anything about race in this country and then get the teacher fired…so now Martin Luther King and the racial equality movement no longer exists in Texas. Mississippi, and every other southern state and the happy face of slavery is the new reality in schoolrooms across the south…I knew that racism was still bubbling under the surface of this country but I really thought that we had come past the overt stuff that plagued my childhood…but this is worse than then…and we have come nowhere at all…geez…
An eventful morning…
Well…my damn teeth are howling at me again this morning and that spurred me into talking to delta dental and getting a list of dentists out here that take my medicare dental insurance….very nice person at delta got me that list and then gave me some advice that I should look into the supplemental dental coverage that is available through priority health…so she transferred me to them and I found that I can get 2500 bucks a year of coverage for 29 bucks a month and they will take it out of my SS check so I don’t have to deal with it at all…so, I signed up for it and made an appointment with a dentist that is near me and has great reviews but they can’t get me in for a week but I’m hoping that they get a cancellation so I can get in sooner…but the insurance doesn’t take effect until the first of March but they will need to do a cleaning and take some x-rays and those are already covered so at least I can get started and maybe they can help with the pain until they can start working…or I can just pay for the first filling until the ins starts….it is nice that I have that at least started and maybe I’ll be able to eat ice cream with berries for my birthday for the first time in years…and the person I talked to at Priority is sending me a list of spectrum doctors out here so I can get that taken care of too…so it has been an eventful morning and I’m glad I finally got off my ass and got this started….
February 18th
Well…damn…that was a crappy night with having pain on the left side of my jaw all night but, thankfully, I was able to sleep some and the pain is manageable today…but even with the pain at a low level, the anticipation that it is going to get as bad as yesterday has me on pins and needles as I do this…and I think it may be an infection since it hurts across my jaw both upper and lower…and to have all the teeth on both of them hurt at once is not how cavity pain usually works…I was lucky to have some leftover amoxicillin to take and that may be working and I have enough to get through a couple of days so I hope I can endure until I can find a dentist out here….crap…. so that was my focus for the whole day yesterday and didn’t get much done and today will be the same if the pain comes back…and the weather is going to go to hell this afternoon with 2-4 inches of snow and wind gusts up to 55 mph so I need to be able to get to Monday before I can go anywhere…..so, I’ve already taken some ibuprofen and some amoxicillin to try to get ahead of the pain and survive the day…and I need to find out if there is a dentist out here that will take my medicare dental so I can save a few hundred bucks on x-rays and cleaning…..no much to do today…going to get on the bike here in a few minutes and I really wish I didn’t have to….and I need to shovel the snow we got last night before the storm starts this afternoon….and I planned to make a pizza today but I’m not sure if I’ll do that with the pain in my jaw but I really should before the veggies and mushrooms go bad….I do need to put the chicken I got Wed into bags and get it into the freezer…won’t have to buy any protein for the next couple of weeks with getting 17 pounds wed….and I have three pork chops marinating in the fridge and I planned for one later today but I’m not sure if I can support that many calories in one day….more later….
Well…maybe no one IS above the law….
Well…in a surprising ruling, to me anyway, a NY court just ruled that the trump crime family had to sit for depositions in NY’s civil suit against them for their corrupt manipulation of evaluations of their properties to get loans and avoid taxes. That means that the idiot boy, cocaine don jr., and griftanka have 21 days to comply and sit down with AG James to answer to the evidence she has gathered that show they have been breaking law for years…and after this, there is still the criminal case brought by the NYC AG for exactly the same things…and, in their letter firing the trumps from being represented by them, Mazars laid the whole thing right on the idiot boy, saying that he was responsible for providing them with the false information that they based his taxes on. Now, we know he is going to try to take this to the SC where his pet judges don’t follow the law and we can be pretty sure they will give him a “get out of jail free” card….but, if they don’t, we also know that the only thing we’ll get out of the three of them is new records for how many times someone takes the fifth in one deposition….I think the record now is 500 times and I would be surprised if the idiot even responds with his name instead of taking the fifth…hmmm…I seem to remember a guy named donald trump saying that only gangsters take the fifth and if you don’t have anything to hide, you don’t need to…but in a “witch hunt” as idiot boy calls it, all bets are off…tick tock donnie…and donnie jr. and griftanka…
This is depressing…
Well…after working on the small bits of filling I needed to do to start prepping the walls for painting in the kitchen…as I looked close at the transition between the baseboards and the wall I noticed there is no straight demarcation between the two since it has too damn much paint on it…so that just doubled the work I’m going to have to do to make it look okay…and the corners are full of paint that is going to have to be chiseled out like I did for one this afternoon and it revealed at least 5 coats of paint and took me about 20 minutes to get it to the point where I can fill and paint…so any hope that it would be easy is gone and that is depressing….and every inch of the baseboard is going to have to be chipped out, too, and I can see that taking at least three days before I can even start to sand, fill, and paint them…so I’m looking at another week or so of prep before I can paint…darn…at least I got the downstairs cleaned up to the point that I can live with it and won’t have to do any more work downstairs until I get the kitchen done…but, I am going to take my full week off since the small amount of prep that I did on the baseboards hurt my thumb like crazy and I am not looking forward to being in pain for weeks again…oh, well…
Let’s get this straight…
Well…it looks like the movement of Russian troops away from the border with Ukraine was a lie and there is still a real chance that they are going to invade before the week is out…and with that, I will admit I was wrong to think that Putin has any thought about anything but himself and playing the tough guy on the world stage…and when sanctions are imposed, the Russian people are going to pay for his stupidity while he and his oligarch buddies sit there and count their money that China is going to guarantee keeps flowing into their corrupt hands….and let’s get this straight…no matter what fox news says, the only one responsible for the deaths and carnage that is going to happen is Putin…it is not Biden’s fault, it is not NATO’s fault, it is not Ukraine’s fault…it is all on Putin and I really hope that the UN and the rest of the world hold him accountable and make sure Russia no longer has the capability to threaten it’s neighbors…we need to remember that Russia is a third rate economy and Putin is doing this to distract from all of his theft of anything that is not nailed down…geez….
February 17th
Well…boy, that was a lousy night and I feel pretty worn out this morning…and it is so disappointing that I’m back to the bad sleep patterns that have haunted my nights for years and years now….and that was one of the reasons for having cocktails so much for the past year…but I will trade feeling worn out for not being hung over any day since the coffee is now no longer needed to get me back to functional but I can enjoy it as it reverts to clearing out my head…and that’s what an old guy needs…I did get some work done yesterday and got the back stairs vacuumed and scrubbed along with more cobweb removal and I can’t figure out how I never saw all of them before…I know the dust made them pretty visible but damn, there were a lot of them and they would have made for a pretty good Halloween haunted house…so this place is a lot cleaner than it has been since I moved in here and I still have more work to do..one nice development is that once I got all the dust cleaned up and aren’t making more, the combustion blower on the furnace is no longer making the whining noise it has been for a couple of weeks and that is pretty cool..I was expecting to spend 300 bucks to get a new one installed and can really use a month of no extra money going out after burning a pile of cash last month….it is going to be a leftover day today even with buying 17 pounds of protein yesterday but I will need to get some pork chops in a marinade today so I can have them tomorrow with the asparagus I got for 1.49 a pound…and I have oranges! So there will be healthy fruits and lots of veggies to go with the pork chops that are not too good for you and I hope that balances it out….not much to do today…I am going to finish up the filling in the kitchen today and I do need to clean up my sander so I can get at the baseboards and the door frames…and I will need to clean under the range since it is one spot I haven’t cleaned since I bought this place and, if it’s anything like the rest of the house, it will be gross under there and probably take two or three passes at it to make it acceptable to me….more later….