Well…not sure what is going on but I’ve only read one article on what I think is a big damn deal…this week, the Equal rights Amendment to the Constitution was deemed to be ratified by the Office of Legal Counsel of the department of justice which makes it the 28th amendment to the constitution….and the decades of trying to enshrine the rights of women to be equal to those of men has finally been started by this adoption…it has been a long and hard fight that has been pressed by generations of women across this country and has been fought at every step by white men who think that women are things to be owned and controlled and inherently have no rights other than those given to them by these men….and this crap goes on here in 2022 with laws written by men that limit the control that women have over their own bodies and that are exploding in repub controlled states across the country….and when the repubs take over states that have ratified the amendment, the first thing they do is try to de-ratify it…just like they did to the 14th and 15th amendments that were ratified just after the Civil war and that the supreme court has rejected time after time…imagine that, this same party has not grown past the 1870’s where they objected to the 14th amendment that grants equal protection under the law…and the repubs didn’t want equality then and they sure don’t want women to be equal to them now. I will be interested to see how the repubs fight now to keep this amendment from being implemented…I’m sure it will go all the way to the supreme court and with the right wing assholes that sit on the court and ignore precedent in their ongoing efforts to push their right wing ideology, it is still going to be a hard fight since these idiots don’t think that anyone should have rights except repubs…geez…
January 30th
Well…it was a 5:44 morning this morning and I just laid in bed enjoying that comfortable place between being asleep and awake until around 6:30 and that was cool….slept quite well last night and feel pretty good this morning but the lock on my garage door was frozen when I went out to get the paper…luckily, a little shot of wd thawed it and I didn’t have to get my propane torch out to melt it like I did a few weeks ago….I probably should do the car locks, too since I haven’t done them yet this winter and they are feeling a little stiff…and I should do all the door hinges, too, since they seem stiff and squeaked a little today…I did get a new set of Michelin wiper blades last week but the ones on the car are still okay and I may just wait til spring to put them on…I did take the day off working on the house yesterday to rest my hands and it seems to have helped some but I still feel guilty about doing it with Sunday being my normal day off…it is cool to know I’m not getting on the bike today and can just ease into the day with lots of coffee and the 24 hours of Daytona on in the background….I do need to write about 700 bucks in bills today and that stings a little but that’s part of owning a house and I’ve got the cash so no big deal….I think I’m going to order the blinds and range hood for the kitchen today so I will have them here when I get all the painting done…and I really do want to get the newspaper off the window so I can see out of the one over the sink….not much to do today…just going to clean up the dining room some and get my tools organized for the final push in the kitchen…hoping to have that done in the next two weeks but I think the Olympics are going to interfere with that a little….more later…
A new record…
Well…as you can see, I have been writing a bunch more than has been normal over the years and this month I’ve made a new record for the number of posts in a month with this one being number 115 and I don’t think I’ve ever gotten to 100 before….but, I do feel a lot of it is cheating with so many posts on progress with the house that I started this month…and I wonder if not having cocktails all month has something to do with it? I do seem to have the desire to write more when I’m feeling better and my brain seems to work better, too…I do need to do more of these on politics and other relevant topics and I may even do that today….that would make 5 for the day and that is just so unusual when my normal daily output used to be two a day…but I am going to write when I feel like it..it feels good to not have to force it and to have something to choose from when I come here…and there are two more days in the month so I could get to 120 for before it’s done….and that is just too weird….in a good way…
Taking the day off…
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….
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….