It was windy earlier in the week.
If it’s windy enough the chairs can get tipped over, but this time it almost went over the edge of the hill.
In addition, we lost a branch of of the big tree in the back.
We will rebuild. No need for a Go Fund Me…
Author Archives: momdude
A Mass Murder
THEY’RE ATTACKING OUT OF THE SUN!!!
If a large group of crows is a “murder,” this must be a mass murder. There at least 42 of them here (that is the answer, after all) and it was hard to keep track as they were all wheeling about, some joining and leaving all the time.
Regardless of the exact number, that’s a LOT of crows.
Filed under Critters, Photography
Cheap Thrills, Green Tags
Stupid backstory – lots of time in the back seats of station wagons as a kid, learned to play lots of “license plate games.” Now I have a “January baby” car so I get to be one of the first to get the next year’s California registration tags.
Again this year I haven’t seen one of the 2022 tags yet, which isn’t surprising since I go out and drive maybe twice a week to go to the grocery store and maybe get food for takeout. So I win! I have the 2022 tags!
Yeah, me!
(How bad is 2020? This might end up being one of the highlights that gets mentioned in our annual Christmas card letter…)
Filed under Paul, Silly Shit
Grandmothers
Someone mentioned their grandmother in a very moving and touching Twitter thread (she had come out to her family, terrified that they would reject her, and her grandmother in particular had done quite the opposite) and I got to thinking about how I never knew either of my grandmothers much.
My maternal grandparents both died before I was born (the result of my mother being near the bottom of the sibling list of a BIG family) and my paternal grandmother died when I was only four or five. (There’s a family tree around here somewhere, but who has time for that?) My few and hazy memories of her are probably more from the pictures and movies I saw of her than any actual memories of my own.
So if you have grandmothers, and they’re one of the good ones who are kind and thoughtful and giving and caring and nurturing and not one of the bad ones who torture their kids and make them sweep the ashes and cinders out of the fireplace and poison them with apples (I might be mixing my Disney metaphors badly here, but I’m really, REALLY tired) then give them a hug for me when COVID’s over and you can do that without infecting and killing them. In the meantime, just give them a call and tell them you love them.
Grandfathers, too. Same rules about good vs. bad, just substitute in some gender appropriate (or in this case, appropriately, some gender neutral or inappropriate) examples.
Damn, I’m tired. I need a grandmother to tell me it’s going to be all right and I’m doing great. And then give me cookies.
Mmmm, cookies…
Filed under Deep Thoughts, Paul
Random Old Photos – November 11th
The WWII memorial in Washington, DC. Seems appropriate today.
Filed under Photography, Travel
That Moment, November 10th Version
That moment when it’s been another frantic looooooooong day and there’s no end in sight and you’re absolutely on your last nerve and all of a sudden your phone just starts screeching with one of those “EMERGENCY ALERT!!!” notices…
…so your gut starts going “PANIC! PANIC!” while your brain says “Bye Bye!” to reality and all you can think of as you teeter on the verge of hysteria is:
And now, back to our regularly scheduled FY21-22 budget marathon.
Filed under Deep Thoughts, Disasters, Paul
No Context For You – November 09th
Oopsey?
It’s both good and bad to dive so far down into the work in a race to hit a deadline that you literally have no idea what time it is when you come up for air. It’s good because there’s a real sense of accomplishment when you hit your goal and pull off a very challenging task successfully. It’s bad because, dude, it’s just numbers – do you even remember the last time you spent a couple hours reading a book “just because?”
Tomorrow’s goals, maybe.
Filed under Photography
Puffy Cloud Panorama
After adrenaline comes the crash and exhaustion…
And then more adrenaline…
A couple of weather systems have been moving through SoCal this weekend, bringing the season’s first snow up over the Grapevine, a few showers around the area (I don’t think we’ve gotten a drop, damn it!) which can be hazardous and cause mudslides in those recently burned areas, made it windy as hell, and brought the temperatures way down near freezing at night.
It’s the winds that are probably responsible for knocking out the power three times at the office. Since it was out long enough and often enough to outlast all of the Uninterruptable Power Supplies and kill the server and my office computer, I got to panic and run in to bring everything online again so I can hit my deadlines for tomorrow.
It’s a hell of a drug.
So is sleep. Or so I hear, at least.
Filed under Panorama, Photography, Weather
Adrenaline
The good news, of course, was that as expected over the last couple of days, Day Five of the 2020 election finally got enough votes counted in Nevada and Pennsylvania (Georgia and Arizona are still up in the air, even now) to push Joe Biden over 270 electoral votes and the networks and news organizations both domestically and internationally all declared him the President-elect.
Of course, the whiny, spoiled, guanopsychotic man-baby in the White House who made the last years such a shit show is threatening to sue everyone and everything and never, ever concede defeat. But so far there’s not a single shred of evidence that he has a single fact to back up his insanity (pretty much like every other day of his regime’s atrocities for the last four years) so I don’t see that going far.
In the relief and realizing that we had been holding our breath for days and days and days (“I’m going to hold my breath until either I or Georgia turn blue” was one comment I saw), there was a tremendous release of adrenaline in the celebrations. Watching the outpouring of joy across the country made me truly realize just how much stress we had all been under. Even though it’s not over, I think we can see the finish line from here. Please, sweet baby Jesus, let us be seeing the finish line from here…
An hour after getting that great news, because of course life has to be a freaking roller coaster ALL THE TIME, I got this on my phone:
Again, the adrenal gland is designed for speed over accuracy, that whole “better to ask forgiveness” thing in a wetware implementation. The brain took a second to go, “Oh, his phone just got triggered and went off after detecting an ‘accident’ because he’s riding roller coasters at that theme park there.” (See, I told you it has to be a freaking roller coaster ALL THE TIME!) I’ve had my iWatch detect an ‘accident’ when I was hammering on something and set off my phone’s “ARE YOU OKAY??!!” response. And yes, that’s what happened and he’s fine.
But between the stress of this entire week and the stress of this year and the release of relief and then this shot of adrenaline, well… I’m sure there are a fair number of you out there who will agree that the whole country could really, REALLY use a good night’s sleep.
Sleep in tomorrow, forgive yourself any tasks that you think are critical and don’t get started early enough. Skip church if that’s your thing, or at least allow yourself to be late. God will understand – tell him I said it was okay. If you have to watch the 10:00 football games (the Chiefs are an early game tomorrow, damn!) maybe watch it from bed instead of after being up and running around doing errands and housework for four hours already.
EGBOK – Everything’s Gonna Be OK!
2020 Election Day Five
We’re in Hell, aren’t we?
Thank god we’re getting all of the really good memes out of this. And Gritty, the mascot for the Philadelphia Flyers hockey team, is our new national hero.
Yet another one of those occasions when I would probably have a much easier time of it if I simply didn’t give a damn.
Maybe tomorrow. I mean, really, second grade math says that when you get to 99.99% of the votes counted, there can only be maybe 1,000 to 5,000 left, and someone has a 40,000 vote lead, you can decide who won, right?
Maybe tomorrow.
Filed under Politics
We Love The Stars Too Fondly 