Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
Do you people have any idea how many Mr. Frog pictures my mother sent me so that we would have them for the winter months to dole out like seratonin candy?
No?
Me either because I have been collating them for the last god damned hour and I am still downloading them.
Some good news today with that Arbery verdict. I was sure those shitheads were guilty, but in America, I was not even remotely positive about them being found guilty. So I was pleasantly surprised with the verdict, but it’s not going to bring back Arbery, nor is it going to change the corrupt system that wouldn’t hqve even charged these murderers unless one of the racist twats hadn’t released the footage of them on the hunt. And I know every American deserves legal defense and what not, but fuck Laura Hogue and she and her cohorts should at the very least face public chastising for their racist fucking bullshit.
In other news, I made the mistake to go out of the house today for groceries, and I won’t be doing that again until this holiday bullshit settles down. I’m so used to my midweek grocery that I forgot all about Thanksgiving crowds, and man they did not let me down. Every worst display of humanity from talking on phones while driving, cutting people off, flipping the finger as they drove, leaving carts everywhere, standing in the middle of aisles blocking shit. I can handle people individually and in small groups, but get a bunch of you together, and man you suck.
And everything was jam packed. Even Frederico’s, my little Italian grocer was just slammed. I got my staples (gallon of olive oil, a large glass container of anchovies, some hard cheese) and GTFO. Never seen the place so slammed before.
Tomorrow I am heading to Gerald’s, and I am excited about that because it means I will not be eating turkey dinner for the next week, turkey sandwiches and turkey salad the entire week after that, and turkey soup the next three months. That is what I call a win.
In other home news, I had my first plant fatality this fall- a beautiful green and red maranta just up and slowly died. No idea if I over or under watered or the move from one side of the house to the other killed it, or if the leaves just fell off for the winter. Poor thing didn’t have a… prayer.
It’s starting to get cold enough that the mold is being suppressed, so I woke up with clear sinuses to a sunny but partially cloudy fall day, about 35 degrees, and feeling pretty good. I didn’t have much on the schedule, so I called up Gerald and told him to tell Breyana to get dressed because we were going to go get some grub.
Picked her up, and neither of us had any firm idea what we wanted, so we just drove around a bit talking and trying to figure out what we wanted. We decided on Italian, and tried to go to a place she had never been before, but it was not open. So we hit up a little Italian market that has all the imported cheeses and meats and tins of italian products, and I got some prosciutto and cheese for her to try, and we then headed to another Italian place she had never been to.
She just loved alfredo, so she ordered that with chicken and broccoli, and she inhaled it:
Looking at this picture I am reminded how much she has grown up in just the past couple of years. Crazy. She’s becoming less a kid and more of a fledgling person, and it is fun to watch. She’s still goofy, of course, and is completely and totally unimpacted by social media and other things that mature kids too early, and I like that.
At any rate, she finished her meal, and I boxed up the other half the lasagne they gave me that was the size of my head, and we stopped for hot chocolate and went home. Next week we are doing a lot of cooking because I am going to their house for Thanksgiving. This will be the first year where I haven’t even pretended that I was going to cook at home, which is weird.
Currently watching wheel of time, sipping on mulled cider I made, and eat pistachios. Not an altogether bad day.
I’m in a bit of a funk. I’m tired of cooking and not interested in trying to think of new shit to make every night. I’m not interested in any of the restaurants around me. I don’t want to drive all the way to Pittsburgh to find something I want.
Similarly, I can not find a show to dig into. I’ve been watching Shannara from a couple years ago on Netflix, but it is not very good. I am excited for the Wheel of Time, but that doesn’t come out for a few days.
And I need a new game. I was playing New World, but hit level cap and am on a shitty server and there is never anyone to do anything.
Most irritating, I need to get a new pair of readers because my lenses are not where they need to be so I can read easily.
Or maybe I am just fussy and pissy because of the time of year.
I dunno. I mean, I do realize how lucky I am these are my problems, but they still honk me off.
So one of the insurrectionists was today sentenced to 44 months in prison for punching a cop and a number of other things:
A Donald Trump supporter from New Jersey who assaulted law enforcement during the attack on the U.S. Capitol was sentenced to 41 months in prison on Wednesday, the stiffest sentence handed down so far in connection with the Jan. 6 attack.
Scott Fairlamb ― the son of a New Jersey trooper and the brother of a Secret Service agent who served on first lady Michelle Obama’s detail ― was sentenced by Judge Royce C. Lamberth.
A tearful Fairlamb said he had brought shame upon his family and asked the judge to “show some mercy” when sentencing him for his “completely irresponsible, reckless behavior” on Jan. 6.
“I take full responsibility,” Fairlamb said, adding that prosecutors had been “nothing but professional” from start to finish.
Later on in the HuffPo story this tweet is featured:
“The government has been nothing but fair, honest, transparent, and very reasonable,” says Harley Breite, Scott Fairlamb’s attorney. pic.twitter.com/WkmiMW5Pah
— Ryan J. Reilly (@ryanjreilly) November 10, 2021
I watched that and IMMEDIATELY googled Harley Breite because he is the type of person I am drawn to like a moth to light, and man oh man I was not disappointed. He is quite the character, and there is even a film about him:
Enjoy. I can not wait to watch the movie, which has been described as such:
“Eloquently presented and articulated in this documentary, Harley’s story plays out like a train wreck in slow motion; you just can’t take your eyes off it”.
I think if we knew each other we would be friends.
Still in about week three of my personal funk, but finally some good news:
In a sweeping victory for the Biden administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday endorsed booster shots of the Moderna and the Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccines for tens of millions of Americans.
The decision follows an agency endorsement last month of booster shots of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and opens the door for many Americans to seek out a booster shot as early as Friday.
The coronavirus vaccines “are all highly effective in reducing the risk of severe disease, hospitalization, and death, even in the midst of the widely circulating Delta variant,” Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky, director of the C.D.C., said in a statement.
Her approval brings the country closer to fulfilling President Biden’s promise in August to offer boosters to all adults. The pandemic is now retreating in most parts of the country, but there are still about 75,000 new cases every day, and about 1,500 Covid deaths.
I’m headed to Walgreens tomorrow to ask when I can get my Moderna booster. I’m coming up on seven months since my second shot, and I want another dose every six months if possible. I heard Moderna was working on a covid shot that included a flu shot, and if so, that will become a regular part of my life.
With a booster shot and cases dropping, I am excited to going back to avoiding people because I hate them instead of the last two years when I avoided them so they couldn’t infect me and others.
In other news, I have spent the last 36 hours cooking down the infamous 30lb turkey carcass and ended filtering it and ended up with about 3 gallons of golden turkey broth. I added in some carrots, peas, onions, celery, garlic, bay leaves and other herbs, a bunch of the turkey, cooked it and am now freezing most of it. For tomorrow I think I will add some lentils and either tuscan kale or spinach. I’m freezing it without a carb for versatility. When I thaw a batch, if I want wild rice, I will add wild rice. If I want some noodles, I will add noodles.
In other news, apparently we had a tornado or barely missed a tornado.
getting tornado warnings and I just shrugged them off and muttered ehh you can have me https://t.co/WSFmfZnWyg
— John Cole (@Johngcole) October 21, 2021
It’s so windy here frequently I didn’t even notice it, to be honest. Benefit of having a solid, quiet house and being grossly indifferent. As I was joking around on twitter, I’m not too worried about a tornado because the geography of my town would make it highly improbable, and because NOTHING that interesting or exciting ever happens in Bethany.
In politics, it appears we have reached a crescendo of bad faith with Manchin and Sinema so I am thinking we are nearing the end of the theatrical performance and a deal is either imminent or near. Either way, I am excited to going back to not thinking about those fucking idiots.
I guess I have nothing else to report. Tomorrow is bath day for the dogs. I have not bathed them in months and this will be the first bath without Rosie, who I always had to do first because if I didn’t do her first, I would not see her for a week, so I think I will start with Thurston who enjoys the attention and do Lily second because she’s too dumb to notice. God I love her.
I am still in a crappy mood, pretty much irritated by everything, but on the upside I have a new furnace that is super quiet and has a nice thermostat that I can change shit on my phone, which sounds like something good until I will inevitably butt dial the god damned thing up to 100 degrees. The downside is it cost five grand and that means I am not going anywhere this winter on vacation, and I didn’t go last year on vacation because I bought a new fucking air conditioner. America, fuck yeah.
Manchin can still go fuck himself.
In other news the dogs and Steve have finally broken me down and I have given up on normal means, and am now the proud owner of this fucking thing:
Normal cleaning devices were not up to the challenge and I am tired of half measures.
Did I mention Joe Manchin can go fuck himself?
Also, the old redneck twitter guy on the way to Wellsburg must have died because his lawn is now manicured and no longer has his signage, but fear not, people, some jackass in Weirton flies one of those monstrous Trump 2024 flags on the front of his house and has his own redneck twitter feed:
Every time I drive by that house I yell FUCK TRUMP or TRUMP LOST because I am a mature functioning adult in the year 2021.