Well…3 weeks since my last post and while I could tell ya nuttin’ has happened there have been a few things. 

We’ve been on the COVID watch for Connie for the past 7 days as several of her friends at the Ladies of Elks came down with it and she had lunch with them the day before they announced they had it so could have been infected. No symptoms so far and all of them were sick within 5 days of exposure so likely she’s just fine. We’ve both had 2 immunizations and a booster but at this point are passing on the new shot since it is basically untested…and having had it twice each anyway with only mild symptoms…for us COVID is basically just another cold.

We’re hading off to the Florida Ladies of Elks confab for a couple of days…at least unless the tropical storm that’s supposed to form right off the coast where we’ll be in Daytona happens but even if it does we’re most likely go anyway. Neil will do a couple of birding trips in the morning assuming the weather holds though. 

We did spend some bucks though…Neil ordered a new bike as his is 13 years old and needs a lot of maintenance work…and given it’s age and construction (aluminum but the paint is pretty much flaking off at this point but it’s a cosmetic issue more than a strength one) he decided to upgrade. Ordered a Giant Defy Advanced model…and it’s got all the goodies, full carbon frame and fork, disk brakes, electronic shifting, all the brake hydraulic lines and shifting stuff is internal to the bike tubes…although he did pass on the more expensive model with carbon wheel rims since he doesn’t race…but it still wasn’t cheap. But it’s probably the last one he’ll need until he gets old and has to have a recumbent model old people bike. 

And we ordered a new stove…a KitchenAid induction model. He’s always preferred gas for cooking as it’s just quicker to heat up and cool down and when you turn down the gas the heat stops as opposed to electric where it is still hot and continues to do whatever it was doing before. Induction basically uses magnetic induction to heat the pot directly so the stovetop itself stays cool and if you turn the heat down the heat production stops right away…so it’s got the advantages of both gas and electric stoves (the flat glass no drip pan design that electrics have is soooo much easier to keep clean). It cost a lot…but actually less than his new bike.

And since induction only works with magnetic pans…all of our existing cookware which is aluminum Calphalon needs to go but we got a set of All-Clad that are aluminum sides and bottom but with a stainless steel magnetic plate bonded to the bottom so they work inductively. The mostly aluminum construction keeps them light and this set is all non stick so the chief cook and bottlewasher ‘round here (Neil) is happy with them.

We’ve started seeing a few birds and the gators out back the past week or two…the weather is starting to get a little cooler although it’s still hot and humid…

Other than that…not much new. Her choral group started up again last week, we have this season’s tickets to the symphony up in Sarasota, we continue to have date night and get up early on bike days so he’s back before it gets really brutal outside.

She did get a nice rainbow pic with her phone last night at chorus practice.

Lessee what else is in the news.

Oh yeah, the UAW is on strike against the car companies as I’m sure you are aware…and their demands are ridiculous…they want a 40% raise, a COLA on top of that, a fixed 32 hour work week for 40 hours of pay, more profit sharing, a restoration of the old defined benefit pension plan…and even a new better pension plan for already retired auto workers. To get these demands…they’ve struck one plant at each of the big 3 US makers and will strike at some more plants this Friday. I wonder what they’ll do when the companies shut down a lot of other plants and lock the workers out due to lack of parts? I realize they want more money and it’s hard to gripe about people wanting to get pay raises…but they’re already pretty darn well paid for a mostly low skilled manufacturing job…but the union is essentially pricing US auto plants out of business compared to foreign ones…realistically the quality of the imports is better (we know, we looked at cars for Neil a couple years back) and the price is better. Like many other industries…labor costs are getting out of control and this is why a lot of companies have moved a lot of production elsewhere. We see a bunch of whining from the unions and others about buying imported things…but until John Q Public is ready to pay higher prices for exclusively US made goods the world economy is going to continue to move production to lower cost places.

An the Democrats are all up in arms over the impeachment investigation into the President…the Speaker instigated the investigation (not an actual impeachment yet) to gather facts as he said but really he did it on his own without a vote in the House because he wasn’t sure he had the votes to pass it. Impeachment…although it talks about high crimes and misdemeanors…is really a political act, not a judicial one and while we think this is going nowhere…I don’t think the House will have enough votes to impeach unless some smoking gun is found against the President during the investigation and he’s going to be acquitted in the Senate just like the last 2 impeachments were because his party controls the Senate. The calls on the other side to impeach SCOTUS justices likewise aren’t going anywhere because they’re again…political acts because the other side doesn’t like the decisions made recently. Realistically…although one would not know it from the news…Justice Thomas probably erred in not reporting his various vacation trips…but then justices travel in the higher social circles in DC and they all have rich friends…including the liberal ones…and a realistic, actually non partisan look at all of the justices would reveal embarrassing things about all of their behavior. But as I said impeachment is a political act and both sides are just flapping their gums for votes.

I continue to wish that neither the President or his likely opponent were on the ballot next year…one is senile and doesn’t remember where he is day to day and keeps making statements that are patently untrue (I was at 9/11 ground zero the day after it happened is the latest one) and the other is losing it as well (yesterday he demanded that the Republicans in the House invoke the 25th amendment to remove the President despite them not being the ones who can invoke it and stating that he would not seek reelection in 2028 if he wins next year despite the Constitution clearly prohibiting him from doing so). And the former President will likely be convicted of at least some of the crimes he’s charged with (although to be honest is is actually impossible for him to get a fair trial on the facts as 100% of the people in America have already made up their minds about the man and would vote innocent or guilty sans any facts or evidence)…and the current President (although so far no clear and convincing evidence has been found they White House is doing an awful lot to hide from the House investigation) has a lot of smoke and investigating to see if there’s evidence of a fire seems warranted to me but I wish it could be an impartial one instead of a partisan one but that’s politics today.

And we have a new dress code in the Senate now…they no longer need to wear a suit and tie (men) and equivalent (women)…this was instituted essentially so that Senator Fetterman can wear his trademark shorts and hoodie onto the Senate floor…to which several Republican women said they would wear a bikini to the floor. I’m not sure what I really think about this…there’s certainly some justification in the idea to keep the formality and decorum but then again business casual is a thing so how far should their dress code go? Seems to me that if we’re going to have dress codes for school or what not then having one for government is just as good a thing…but even Neil would draw the line at shorts and a hoodie on the Senate floor…or a bikini…or the jeans, cowboy boots, and a Stetson that one of the Republicans wore yesterday although the latter comes closest to acceptable in his view.

I guess you saw the news about the prisoner swap with Iran yesterday…and while the US citizens were essentially hostages and held illegally…releasing $6 Billion in sanctioned funds to Iran as part of it sounds an awful lot like paying a ransom and negotiating with terrorists to me…and I’m quite sure that if the same thing had happened when the former President was in office the Democrats would have been screaming about it just as loudly as the Republicans are screaming about it today…but as I said…politics.

I guess you also saw about the “‘lost’ F-35 jet on Sunday…and Neil is really curious about what happened. It’s been advertised as a “mishap” by the Pentagon with zippo supporting details…but the pilot put the plane on autopilot and ejected right outside his intended landing airbase in Charleston SC after a training mission…and then the plane flew another 100 miles or so before crashing into a field. Now Neil’s not an aviator…but generally those guys tend to remain with the aircraft and do their best to save it and themselves and only eject as a last resort just before it crashes…and in most cases the news articles have information about an engine failure or whatever that caused the crash and ejection…so just saying “mishap” with no other information seems quite odd to him. If the plane was still in flyable condition which it obviously was until it ran out of gas and crashed…why didn’t he just land at his destination airbase which was about 2 miles or so from where he landed after ejecting? He’s really hoping we’ll find out what actually happened. He’s also shaking his head at the announcement one of the nutcase right wingers (can’t remember if it was Taylor Green or Bobert) who wanted to know how we could possibly not find a stealth aircraft on radar because don’t they have tracking devices on them? Now granted…the F-35 is an overpriced, under performing, not combat worthy pile of junk because of the whole design philosophy of making a single do everything for every service aircraft despite each service needing different things…but ejecting out of what appears to be a perfectly flyable aircraft seems…as I said…odd. The plane was eventually found about 100 miles north of the ejection location after it crashed into a field.

The pols in DC are also flapping their gums about the terrible impact Senator Tuberville’s hold on promotions is causing…and both sides of the debate are pretty much ignoring the facts of (a) what he’s doing, (b) why he’s doing it, and (c) what can be done about it. In case you haven’t been following it the short version is…the Pentagon is providing additional time off with pay and travel expenses for service members to travel for abortion related medical care if the state they’re in has restrictions. The problem with this…at least for Senator Tuberville…is that the Hyde Act outlaws spending federal money on abortion absent a threat to the life of the mother…so arguably this spending is illegal regardless of one’s position pro or con on abortion itself. His response is not blocking promotions…it is merely blocking blanket promote everybody the Pentagon has offered up for promotion at once without a floor vote. There’s nothing…zero…preventing the Senate Majority Leader (Senator Schumer) from calling an individual vote for any or all of the held up promotions…and realistically they’re all senior level generals and admirals. The press (and Democrats of course) are all over the incredibly dangerous reduction in military readiness…despite the fact that all of the generals and admirals who’ve retired from senior positions have been replaced in an acting status by the person who is being held up in the Senate. Those people are…in their acting capacity…making decisions and keeping the ball rolling…and while it is having a slight impact on the families of the affected officers…readiness has not really been affected and impact on families is no more or less than the impact on families from unscheduled deployments or whatever that goes on…all…the…time. But again…politics.

Interesting things found on the net.

This is why we use the grocery pickup thing from WalMart now.

And there was a terrible tragedy down here in FL last week…a pack of wild dogs viciously attacked one of our local alligators.

And finally…

Cyas.