Summer Doldrums
25/07/21 07:17
Thus begins another week. Man, what a soggy frigging summer we're having. If it's not raining, then it's hot as the blazes. If it's not hot as the blazes, then it's humid as hell. I've luckily been able to squeeze in my bike rides between downpours on days where rain is in the forecast. I have an app that tells me what to expect in terms of temperatures, precipitation and probability of same, wind (MPH), and humidity readings. Every little bit helps.
Mrs. G was telling the missus and me the other day that her facility has a bus going to the new Whole Foods in Portsmouth for all interested party's. She was a little reluctant to go along because she wasn't sure she'd have a place to rest if and when that time arrived. I've only been to the store a handful of times now, but I have to believe they have accommodations for people like Mrs. G. I urged her to rethink her plans and reach out to them with her concerns so that they might reassure her or, at a minimum, allay her fears.
Mrs. G is not shy about pushing the envelope if that is what is required to get something done. We've regaled her with stories of our own experiences shopping at Whole Foods, so I'm guessing that might have helped her move closer to making a decision that works for her. We even bought a few things at the store for her to enjoy and enjoy them she has. For example, I bought her a package of specialty donuts before our last visit. The mistake I made was leaving them lying around our house in plain sight.
They called out to the missus time and time again. So insistent was the voice in her head that the minute we got to Mrs. G's with the package of donuts in hand, the missus was on bended knee asking if she might have but one of the lovely donuts. I'm not sure that she even waited for a response before opening the container. She proceeded to pluck one of the donuts from the box while simultaneously placing it into her mouth.
I'm not sure as I sit here today that her behavior didn't fly in the face of some socially unacceptable decorum kind of thing where you never partake of something brought as a gift before the recipient has a chance to do the same. Mrs. G will never know the pleasure of parsing out the entire array of pleasantries and savoring every last one to her heart's desire. It will always be one short. It's entirely possible, I suppose, that she took more pleasure in seeing the missus try the first one out of the box, so there's that. If the missus truly broke any unspoken rules, Mrs. G is far too sophisticated to have let her true feelings be known.
I had an urge myself last night after dinner to take a ride out to Whole Foods to pick up a few things. I had a full day yesterday, so when the time came to put my big boy pants on and get out the door, I just didn't have the oomph. I decided that a spoonful of my favorite chunky peanut butter and a ping ball-sized plum straight out of the fridge that had gone soft on me way too soon would have to do the trick for the time being.
The missus and I enjoyed grilled salmon burgers and vegetables for dinner. It was a push to get everything cleaned up before I could even think about maybe going to the store. Had the missus been amenable, I might have pushed myself to make the trip, but it was not to be. We had a lot to digest besides dinner, and that included the day's activities around nailing down a new ride for the Ev man.
Is the car that we looked at the right car for him? Is he just excited about it, or is he really enthusiastic about it? The mileage seems right, as does the make and model of the car. Whether or not it's the sweet spot we've been looking for remains to be seen. We'll know more in the coming days as we're having it looked at by our mechanic before deciding on the purchase. It's a familiar car to Ev, so that's good. He was otherwise oddly uncomfortable getting behind the wheel of a vehicle he was unfamiliar with when the time came to take a test drive.
Like everything else in life, buying a car is a process. Every aspect of buying a car is a process in and of itself. It's also a linear process in that certain things need to happen before other things can happen. It is an ordering of events that starts with the need to buy a car and ends with registering your new purchase at the town hall. Ev has never experienced the process firsthand, so I led the way, and he was on hand to see how the sausage gets made. He'll have a good feel for what's required the next time around when he needs a new set of wheels, and I'm not about to assist with the process.
I think the Ev man takes some comfort in knowing the next steps. Maybe that's my way of saying that he doesn't like surprises. I've been careful to make sure that he knows precisely what we're doing next to getting this car thing squared away. Anything more than a week out is probably too far out to matter, so I'm all about the next few days when I'm talking to him. It gives him something to look forward to, and it allows him time to digest and readjust his expectations if that is what it takes to keep him on an even keel. Who doesn't like having something to look forward to in these confusing times. Right?
There was a moment or two during this process when we thought there might be a chance that his old car could get repaired and he'd be on his way once the shop did their thing. We also knew there was a chance that the economics of the "fix" might not be warranted considering the car's age and given its high mileage. They are mostly highway miles, but 200k miles is a lot of miles nonetheless. The only calculus left to consider after finding what we thought to be a suitable replacement was, are we better off sinking money into a car that has a limited number of miles left or are we better off spending those same dollars on a vehicle that the Ev man will have for years to come?
This car we were planning to send into the dust heap of history wasn't just any car, mind you. This is a car that has been there for the missus year in and year out as she traveled back and forth from Boston for many years. It's been about as reliable a car as one could ask for, and it's earned our admiration and trust over the years for doing its job and doing it well. I don't think I'm speaking out of turn here when I say that the car has been a friend. It's been there when we needed it, and it's rarely if ever, let us down. Is that not the definition of a "friend"?
When we passed the car along to the Ev man, we knew we were doing the right thing, and we knew he'd be safe if and when he ever had the misfortune to get into an accident. Until that day came, which it now has, he would enjoy the relative comfort that the car had to offer with its many bells and whistles. We even had a remote car starter put in so he would never have to experience sitting and shivering uncontrollably behind the wheel of his car on a cold winter's morning while waiting for the heat to kick in.
These last few paragraphs sound like an obituary. The missus got a little emotional as we went through the car last evening, removing things that needed removing before the towing company towed it away for the last time. It was sad, I was sad, and the missus was sad. Maybe it was better this way. Having as many miles as it did on it, it was just a matter of time before our mechanic would be asking the question, are you sure you want to spend the money on a car with this many miles on it? That can be a long and expensive process. There is such a thing as keeping a car too long. Not this time around. Goodbye, old friend.
I've wanted to make stuffed peppers now for a while, but I can't seem to get it together. I'm reading about a lovely vegetable Napoleon this morning that might be doable. I've never considered steaming eggplant before, but it seems like a more healthful version of an otherwise standard recipe that involves sautéing or broiling the eggplant in oil. Once you add all the other things like mozzarella cheese and tomato sauce to the eggplant, you probably can't tell that the eggplant was steamed rather than sautéed. There's an abundance of local tomatoes available, so we may be off to the races with this recipe.
Last night, the missus and I had a couple of nice poke' salads from a local take-out joint called Ohana Kitchen. It's one of those places where you get to pick and choose the ingredients you want on your salad, and they throw it together for you. I like their standard Ohana salad that comes with chunks of raw tuna, slices of avocado, red onion crisps, sesame seeds, quinoa, and strips of fresh ginger. There are endless versions of this salad with the various mix-ins available, but I've found the one I like, and that's what I always order. Oh, and they have a wonderful soy sauce concoction that they throw in as a dressing. It's the bee's knees! No, really.
Mrs. G gave us a call last night, and she seemed pretty pumped that her local Staple's was willing to take back some printer ink cartridges she no longer needed. That's pretty good because one or two of the cartridges she was trying to return probably came from Amazon. On the other hand, it makes you wonder just how much old-lady charm she had to employ to pull this off. It won't be the first time that an elderly customer has used their age as a bargaining chip to get what they want when shopping out and about. Then again, the last thing a store manager wants is to have a confrontation of any kind with an elderly customer. It's just not a good look.
None of this was lost on Mrs. G. As a negotiator, she can be a tough old bird when she wants to be. I've never seen that side of her, but I know how savvy she can be, and, quite frankly, I'm happy to see her grabbing life by the balls and turning it on its head when it suits her purposes. So, if she wants to call us in the middle of the night to crow about her exploits, I say, you go, girl. Tell us all about it. We want to give credit where credit is due, and she did good, so we're applauding from afar. She and I had discussed this ink thing, so I knew she had planned to see if the store would take the unused ink cartridges. I never doubted for a minute that she would follow through on her plans.
Fast forwarding a day or two here, it looks like Ev's new car is a "go." She got good grades from the shop that I asked to give her a once over and the one or two things that didn't pass muster will be fixed before we pick it up. There was an issue with some codes that hadn't come up because they hadn't put enough miles on the car after resetting the codes. We know how this works because we've struggled with the same issue with almost all of our Volvo's. The car has a 3500-mile warranty which should cover any contingencies that arise after we drive the vehicle off the lot.
"Are you sure that this is what the Ev man wants" inquired the missus. Had she been a little more involved from day one, she would have known that he is very excited about the car we're about to purchase for him. I mean, very excited. Admittedly, it's hard to tell sometimes just how excited the Ev man is about something. It helps to tease it out of him by asking questions and maybe pressing him a little bit on how he really feels. I'm not sure he knows how he thinks about many things, but that is not true when it comes to the car. On the other hand, maybe he's just happy to be back behind the wheel of a vehicle, any vehicle. I suppose both can be true.
One thing that is likely to stay with him for a good long time is how I spied the car out of the corner of my eye as he and I were driving through Stratham and I insisted that we pull a U-turn to go back and take a look. That may be all he remembers as the years go by, but I hope not. It's the old "teach him how to fish" thing so he can feed himself during his lifetime that I'm thinking about here. Knowing how it (the process of buying a car) works and doing it are two separate things. If push comes to shove, could he get it done? There's no shame in leaning on a friend in a time of need, but taking the bull by the horns on your lonesome has its own rewards. That's just a fact.
The panic porn in the media about the vaccinated and unvaccinated continues. It seems like we have a new variant in the news every other day. I thought I saw something yesterday about some godawful Monkey Pox. The close-ups of the sores, pustules and rashes splashed across every inch of the infected victims were purplish and hideously disfiguring. The porn peddlers in the leftist media establishment seem more determined than ever to want to push Sleepy Joe Biden into bringing back the dreaded mask mandates and shutdowns. It worked so well in 2020.
I think the democrat party and their pretorian guard in the leftist media are scared shitless that the republicans will sweep back into Congress and take back the House from Pelosi and her gang in 2022. The Federal Government cannot mandate mask-wearing at the state level, so the red states may ignore any "mandates" from the Biden Administration. The red states have also tightened their rules around voting since the disaster in 2020, so it may not matter what the Biden Administration does or doesn't do to try and steal the election again in 2022 and 2024.
Another hypothesis circulating in the ether about why they're pushing so hard to get everyone vaccinated is that once they no longer have unvaccinated people as a control group, the drug companies will no longer have to explain away differences in mortality rates etc., between the two groups. As long as unvaccinated people qualify as a control group, comparable rates of all kinds may reveal that the vaccine is a likely progenitor of something far more pernicious than the risks posed by the virus itself.
The fact that our federal government is aiding and abetting the drug companies in this global scam only reinforces what we've always suspected about big Pharma and the power they wield. Did I mention that most of our drugs are manufactured in China?
I think the summer Olympics kick off today in Japan. This is probably the first time in the Olympics where there are no spectators. It's also the first Olympics where a man (who thinks he's a woman) competes in a woman's weight lifting event. Who's the brain trust who thought that was a good idea? Not having spectators is an interesting development.
I guess the country hosting the games is petrified that their sporting event might become something of a super-spreader event if they have too many people in too confined a space for too long. The very definition of "Olympics" seems to imply that spectators are just as important if not more important to the event than the athletes themselves. To me, this is now nothing more than a glorified track and field event. I expect the ratings when all is said and done will likely prove my point.
Mrs. G was telling the missus and me the other day that her facility has a bus going to the new Whole Foods in Portsmouth for all interested party's. She was a little reluctant to go along because she wasn't sure she'd have a place to rest if and when that time arrived. I've only been to the store a handful of times now, but I have to believe they have accommodations for people like Mrs. G. I urged her to rethink her plans and reach out to them with her concerns so that they might reassure her or, at a minimum, allay her fears.
Mrs. G is not shy about pushing the envelope if that is what is required to get something done. We've regaled her with stories of our own experiences shopping at Whole Foods, so I'm guessing that might have helped her move closer to making a decision that works for her. We even bought a few things at the store for her to enjoy and enjoy them she has. For example, I bought her a package of specialty donuts before our last visit. The mistake I made was leaving them lying around our house in plain sight.
They called out to the missus time and time again. So insistent was the voice in her head that the minute we got to Mrs. G's with the package of donuts in hand, the missus was on bended knee asking if she might have but one of the lovely donuts. I'm not sure that she even waited for a response before opening the container. She proceeded to pluck one of the donuts from the box while simultaneously placing it into her mouth.
I'm not sure as I sit here today that her behavior didn't fly in the face of some socially unacceptable decorum kind of thing where you never partake of something brought as a gift before the recipient has a chance to do the same. Mrs. G will never know the pleasure of parsing out the entire array of pleasantries and savoring every last one to her heart's desire. It will always be one short. It's entirely possible, I suppose, that she took more pleasure in seeing the missus try the first one out of the box, so there's that. If the missus truly broke any unspoken rules, Mrs. G is far too sophisticated to have let her true feelings be known.
I had an urge myself last night after dinner to take a ride out to Whole Foods to pick up a few things. I had a full day yesterday, so when the time came to put my big boy pants on and get out the door, I just didn't have the oomph. I decided that a spoonful of my favorite chunky peanut butter and a ping ball-sized plum straight out of the fridge that had gone soft on me way too soon would have to do the trick for the time being.
The missus and I enjoyed grilled salmon burgers and vegetables for dinner. It was a push to get everything cleaned up before I could even think about maybe going to the store. Had the missus been amenable, I might have pushed myself to make the trip, but it was not to be. We had a lot to digest besides dinner, and that included the day's activities around nailing down a new ride for the Ev man.
Is the car that we looked at the right car for him? Is he just excited about it, or is he really enthusiastic about it? The mileage seems right, as does the make and model of the car. Whether or not it's the sweet spot we've been looking for remains to be seen. We'll know more in the coming days as we're having it looked at by our mechanic before deciding on the purchase. It's a familiar car to Ev, so that's good. He was otherwise oddly uncomfortable getting behind the wheel of a vehicle he was unfamiliar with when the time came to take a test drive.
Like everything else in life, buying a car is a process. Every aspect of buying a car is a process in and of itself. It's also a linear process in that certain things need to happen before other things can happen. It is an ordering of events that starts with the need to buy a car and ends with registering your new purchase at the town hall. Ev has never experienced the process firsthand, so I led the way, and he was on hand to see how the sausage gets made. He'll have a good feel for what's required the next time around when he needs a new set of wheels, and I'm not about to assist with the process.
I think the Ev man takes some comfort in knowing the next steps. Maybe that's my way of saying that he doesn't like surprises. I've been careful to make sure that he knows precisely what we're doing next to getting this car thing squared away. Anything more than a week out is probably too far out to matter, so I'm all about the next few days when I'm talking to him. It gives him something to look forward to, and it allows him time to digest and readjust his expectations if that is what it takes to keep him on an even keel. Who doesn't like having something to look forward to in these confusing times. Right?
There was a moment or two during this process when we thought there might be a chance that his old car could get repaired and he'd be on his way once the shop did their thing. We also knew there was a chance that the economics of the "fix" might not be warranted considering the car's age and given its high mileage. They are mostly highway miles, but 200k miles is a lot of miles nonetheless. The only calculus left to consider after finding what we thought to be a suitable replacement was, are we better off sinking money into a car that has a limited number of miles left or are we better off spending those same dollars on a vehicle that the Ev man will have for years to come?
This car we were planning to send into the dust heap of history wasn't just any car, mind you. This is a car that has been there for the missus year in and year out as she traveled back and forth from Boston for many years. It's been about as reliable a car as one could ask for, and it's earned our admiration and trust over the years for doing its job and doing it well. I don't think I'm speaking out of turn here when I say that the car has been a friend. It's been there when we needed it, and it's rarely if ever, let us down. Is that not the definition of a "friend"?
When we passed the car along to the Ev man, we knew we were doing the right thing, and we knew he'd be safe if and when he ever had the misfortune to get into an accident. Until that day came, which it now has, he would enjoy the relative comfort that the car had to offer with its many bells and whistles. We even had a remote car starter put in so he would never have to experience sitting and shivering uncontrollably behind the wheel of his car on a cold winter's morning while waiting for the heat to kick in.
These last few paragraphs sound like an obituary. The missus got a little emotional as we went through the car last evening, removing things that needed removing before the towing company towed it away for the last time. It was sad, I was sad, and the missus was sad. Maybe it was better this way. Having as many miles as it did on it, it was just a matter of time before our mechanic would be asking the question, are you sure you want to spend the money on a car with this many miles on it? That can be a long and expensive process. There is such a thing as keeping a car too long. Not this time around. Goodbye, old friend.
I've wanted to make stuffed peppers now for a while, but I can't seem to get it together. I'm reading about a lovely vegetable Napoleon this morning that might be doable. I've never considered steaming eggplant before, but it seems like a more healthful version of an otherwise standard recipe that involves sautéing or broiling the eggplant in oil. Once you add all the other things like mozzarella cheese and tomato sauce to the eggplant, you probably can't tell that the eggplant was steamed rather than sautéed. There's an abundance of local tomatoes available, so we may be off to the races with this recipe.
Last night, the missus and I had a couple of nice poke' salads from a local take-out joint called Ohana Kitchen. It's one of those places where you get to pick and choose the ingredients you want on your salad, and they throw it together for you. I like their standard Ohana salad that comes with chunks of raw tuna, slices of avocado, red onion crisps, sesame seeds, quinoa, and strips of fresh ginger. There are endless versions of this salad with the various mix-ins available, but I've found the one I like, and that's what I always order. Oh, and they have a wonderful soy sauce concoction that they throw in as a dressing. It's the bee's knees! No, really.
Mrs. G gave us a call last night, and she seemed pretty pumped that her local Staple's was willing to take back some printer ink cartridges she no longer needed. That's pretty good because one or two of the cartridges she was trying to return probably came from Amazon. On the other hand, it makes you wonder just how much old-lady charm she had to employ to pull this off. It won't be the first time that an elderly customer has used their age as a bargaining chip to get what they want when shopping out and about. Then again, the last thing a store manager wants is to have a confrontation of any kind with an elderly customer. It's just not a good look.
None of this was lost on Mrs. G. As a negotiator, she can be a tough old bird when she wants to be. I've never seen that side of her, but I know how savvy she can be, and, quite frankly, I'm happy to see her grabbing life by the balls and turning it on its head when it suits her purposes. So, if she wants to call us in the middle of the night to crow about her exploits, I say, you go, girl. Tell us all about it. We want to give credit where credit is due, and she did good, so we're applauding from afar. She and I had discussed this ink thing, so I knew she had planned to see if the store would take the unused ink cartridges. I never doubted for a minute that she would follow through on her plans.
Fast forwarding a day or two here, it looks like Ev's new car is a "go." She got good grades from the shop that I asked to give her a once over and the one or two things that didn't pass muster will be fixed before we pick it up. There was an issue with some codes that hadn't come up because they hadn't put enough miles on the car after resetting the codes. We know how this works because we've struggled with the same issue with almost all of our Volvo's. The car has a 3500-mile warranty which should cover any contingencies that arise after we drive the vehicle off the lot.
"Are you sure that this is what the Ev man wants" inquired the missus. Had she been a little more involved from day one, she would have known that he is very excited about the car we're about to purchase for him. I mean, very excited. Admittedly, it's hard to tell sometimes just how excited the Ev man is about something. It helps to tease it out of him by asking questions and maybe pressing him a little bit on how he really feels. I'm not sure he knows how he thinks about many things, but that is not true when it comes to the car. On the other hand, maybe he's just happy to be back behind the wheel of a vehicle, any vehicle. I suppose both can be true.
One thing that is likely to stay with him for a good long time is how I spied the car out of the corner of my eye as he and I were driving through Stratham and I insisted that we pull a U-turn to go back and take a look. That may be all he remembers as the years go by, but I hope not. It's the old "teach him how to fish" thing so he can feed himself during his lifetime that I'm thinking about here. Knowing how it (the process of buying a car) works and doing it are two separate things. If push comes to shove, could he get it done? There's no shame in leaning on a friend in a time of need, but taking the bull by the horns on your lonesome has its own rewards. That's just a fact.
The panic porn in the media about the vaccinated and unvaccinated continues. It seems like we have a new variant in the news every other day. I thought I saw something yesterday about some godawful Monkey Pox. The close-ups of the sores, pustules and rashes splashed across every inch of the infected victims were purplish and hideously disfiguring. The porn peddlers in the leftist media establishment seem more determined than ever to want to push Sleepy Joe Biden into bringing back the dreaded mask mandates and shutdowns. It worked so well in 2020.
I think the democrat party and their pretorian guard in the leftist media are scared shitless that the republicans will sweep back into Congress and take back the House from Pelosi and her gang in 2022. The Federal Government cannot mandate mask-wearing at the state level, so the red states may ignore any "mandates" from the Biden Administration. The red states have also tightened their rules around voting since the disaster in 2020, so it may not matter what the Biden Administration does or doesn't do to try and steal the election again in 2022 and 2024.
Another hypothesis circulating in the ether about why they're pushing so hard to get everyone vaccinated is that once they no longer have unvaccinated people as a control group, the drug companies will no longer have to explain away differences in mortality rates etc., between the two groups. As long as unvaccinated people qualify as a control group, comparable rates of all kinds may reveal that the vaccine is a likely progenitor of something far more pernicious than the risks posed by the virus itself.
The fact that our federal government is aiding and abetting the drug companies in this global scam only reinforces what we've always suspected about big Pharma and the power they wield. Did I mention that most of our drugs are manufactured in China?
I think the summer Olympics kick off today in Japan. This is probably the first time in the Olympics where there are no spectators. It's also the first Olympics where a man (who thinks he's a woman) competes in a woman's weight lifting event. Who's the brain trust who thought that was a good idea? Not having spectators is an interesting development.
I guess the country hosting the games is petrified that their sporting event might become something of a super-spreader event if they have too many people in too confined a space for too long. The very definition of "Olympics" seems to imply that spectators are just as important if not more important to the event than the athletes themselves. To me, this is now nothing more than a glorified track and field event. I expect the ratings when all is said and done will likely prove my point.