Pick Your Poison
22/09/20 07:03
I think it's the first day of Fall today. It's getting colder in the house but not cold enough quite yet to have to turn on the heat. Wearing extra layers or staying more active should do the trick. I had a mind yesterday to start a fire in the wood stove just to take the chill out of the air. Isn't it a little early to be wearing extra layers? Evan has been over a bit lately and even he finds it to be a little cool in the house. There are days when it's warmer outside than it is in the house. So then we go around opening all the doors and windows? What the hey!
You know it's getting cooler when everyone in the house wants a hot coffee instead of the cold brew which has been such a mainstay during the summer months. Reaching into the freezer for a bag of ice cubes feels more like an out-of-body experience than not and something to avoid at all costs in retrospect. So I set about trying to replicate what we typically get at Starbucks when we feel like spending nearly $6 on a cup of coffee. I've gone down this road before but with mixed results. If the good Lord is willing and the creek don't rise, I'm going to get this right this time.
My espresso machine is up to the job so I just need to make sure I get the correct measurements of this and that along the way. My first try of the season, which was yesterday, produced two cups of espresso with a foam that was acceptable but just short of luxurious. I'm a long way away from delivering a cup with a nice head of foam and little heart or other smack dab in the middle of the foam. I should take a look at a video or two in YouTube just to refresh my memory of what the process looks like. I'm almost there but not quite.
The biggest problem with my first go-around was that the espresso was too strong. Well, too strong for Nancy anyway. She liked it because it resembled her favorite Starbucks drink (Flat White) but she found the espresso to be a bit too bitter for her tastes. The brew itself made her more than a little jittery. I do think it gave her the jolt that she needed to get through her afternoon but her cup was mostly full when I finally took it away. Today is another day and it looks to be cool enough where Nancy might welcome me taking another go at it. I'm game if she is.
We've got Evan's car sitting over at the shop getting inspected so he spent the night here at home. It's that pesky "engine light" again which always gives us fits and starts when the time comes to get the car inspected. It's been on for a while so we knew this was coming. We took it to our local shop where the owner finds a way to look the other way when these kinds of things happen but we sometimes have to jump through some hoops before we clear the final hurdle. The idea is to get the sticker without spending inordinate amounts of money for the sleuthing that goes along with getting to the bottom of things like errant "engine light" problems.
Evan asked me yesterday about what I thought Nancy might like for Christmas. This is coming from a fella who has to be reminded of holidays when they roll around and buying presents is never a priority one way or another. Where is this coming from? What is this all about? What is he up to? Not that I want to impugn his motives one way or another but it just seems odd. And then Nancy tells me that he was asking her the same thing about me. What did she think I might like for Christmas and would she mind pitching in with him on a present for me.
All I would say about any of this is that I don't want him spending what little money he has me or his mom. I would never say that to him and I would not for a minute have him feeling guilty or less of a man for following his heart. If all goes according to plan, he'll forget all about it by the time December arrives and we'll all have moved on to other things. Maybe I'll stick a few pesos in his top pocket mid-December or so so he has what he needs should he decide that he wants to buy his mom a little something to stick under the tree. If his mom does the same thing, maybe I'll find a little something with my name on it under tree as well.
I'm struck by all of the Biden/Harris signs sitting on people/s lawns all of a sudden here in town. I was telling Nancy yesterday that they seemed to have popped up overnight. They are all the same and it looks like someone went over the rolls of registered democrats in town and just put a sign on every lawn where the homeowner would allow it.
Can democrats, disaffected independents, and Republicans for Biden be serious about putting someone as frail and as demented as Joe Biden in the White House? Do they have a clue as to how and what the position of the presidency demands of the individual sitting in the corner office? Do they understand how dangerous it is to install a president who is not of sound mind and body? Has Trump made them lose their bloody minds?
In case the democrats haven't noticed, it's a dangerous world out there. We all know, of course, that the game plan calls for Joe to step down soon after the inauguration and for his Vice President to assume the presidency. It's the sleaziest shell game on the planet and everyone knows it but it's full steam ahead on all fronts for the democrat party. When and where the Democrat party is concerned, the ends always justify the means.
The pot of gold at the end of the rainbow for the hard core leftists is that Kamala Harris, Bidens VP selection, will ultimately take over the reins of government to oversee the installation of the socialist agenda of the freaks behind the curtain like Ocasia Cortez, Bernie Sanders, etc. They are proposing adding seats to the Supreme Court to counter the addition of Trump's pick in order to keep liberals in the majority, giving statehood status to Puerto Rico and Washington D.C. in order to add four democrat senators to the counter the current republicans majority, raising taxes, banning fracking, sidelining our carbon based economy, and that's just for starters.
When they tell us who and what they are, we need to believe them. This is real, my friends. They are all but convinced that Biden will win in November even if it means that the democrats have to steal the election. Several battleground states have already begun to bend and distort their rules to allow for more post-election interference that will roll back wins for Trump announced the night of the election. Boxes of ballots will turn up out of nowhere to put Sleep Joe over the top much to the delight of the shameless dems. Trump can't file lawsuits fast enough to stay ahead of the freight train of fraud that the democrats hope to use to steal this election.
Trump's raucous rallies continue here and there and mostly in battleground states which he won by small margins in 2016. They are all done in airport hangars but most seem to accommodate a good 10-15 thousand of his admiring fans. Mask wearing is encouraged but not mandatory. The rallies themselves are billed as "silent protests" in order to get around any state rules that require no more than a stated number of people in any gathering. Trump supporters scoff at the Orwellian rules that most states have imposed on their citizenry due to the virus and their out-and-out disdain is on display at every rally. Good for them is what I say.
The US tallied a good 200,000 dead as of yesterday as a result of the China virus which has been around since February or so of this year. It's not a good number but I'm of the mind that it could have been a lot worse had certain things not been done early on. I believe the mortality rate is perhaps lower than the seasonal flu and it kills mostly elderly people and especially elder populations with co-morbidities.
You can count the number of deaths as a result of the virus in people under 20 on one hand. Here in my town of some 5,000 residents, we've had a total of 22 cases. That number has been stagnant over the course of the summer months despite being a seaside town which draws thousands of out-of-towners during the summer months. Hysteria? What hysteria?
The Biden campaign has tried desperately to tag Trump and his campaign with responsibility for each and every death resulting from Covid-19. They were hoping to ride that puppy all the way to election day thinking that people would buy the bullshit that they were selling. In case they haven't been paying attention, Trump is the master of the 24-hour news cycle.
He can have them chasing new and exciting shiny objects until their focus on any one topic just evaporates. Filling the latest vacancy on the Supreme Court is just what the doctor ordered and that process is likely to consume everything under the sun including the news cycle right up through election day. Speaking of shiny objects, Trump is planning to announce his pick for the Supreme Court this coming Saturday at 5 PM from the White House.
I'm guessing it will be that Amy Cony Barrett woman but Trump is not one to follow conventional wisdom so it could be anybody. Will Chamberlain says that she's not only smart, she's scary smart. She is also a solid conservative so she has the leftists losing their shit over the very idea that someone like Barrett will replace their now deceased liberal icon, Ruthie Ginsburg. You know, the Notorious RBG.
Trump has promised that it will be a woman so there's that. In anticipation of a Barrett nomination, a good four days hence, the leftists are already assembling outside the Supreme Court building dressed in outfits worn by the handmaids in Margaret Atwood's dystopian novel, A Handmaid's Tale.
Did I mention that BLM and their Antifa buddies are now rioting across the country because the Grand Jury in Kentucky came back and largely ignored the lies and the MSM narratives created out of whole cloth for the last several months that black people are being hunted down and killed day in and day out. Time to lock them all up! Every fucking last one of them.
You know it's getting cooler when everyone in the house wants a hot coffee instead of the cold brew which has been such a mainstay during the summer months. Reaching into the freezer for a bag of ice cubes feels more like an out-of-body experience than not and something to avoid at all costs in retrospect. So I set about trying to replicate what we typically get at Starbucks when we feel like spending nearly $6 on a cup of coffee. I've gone down this road before but with mixed results. If the good Lord is willing and the creek don't rise, I'm going to get this right this time.
My espresso machine is up to the job so I just need to make sure I get the correct measurements of this and that along the way. My first try of the season, which was yesterday, produced two cups of espresso with a foam that was acceptable but just short of luxurious. I'm a long way away from delivering a cup with a nice head of foam and little heart or other smack dab in the middle of the foam. I should take a look at a video or two in YouTube just to refresh my memory of what the process looks like. I'm almost there but not quite.
The biggest problem with my first go-around was that the espresso was too strong. Well, too strong for Nancy anyway. She liked it because it resembled her favorite Starbucks drink (Flat White) but she found the espresso to be a bit too bitter for her tastes. The brew itself made her more than a little jittery. I do think it gave her the jolt that she needed to get through her afternoon but her cup was mostly full when I finally took it away. Today is another day and it looks to be cool enough where Nancy might welcome me taking another go at it. I'm game if she is.
We've got Evan's car sitting over at the shop getting inspected so he spent the night here at home. It's that pesky "engine light" again which always gives us fits and starts when the time comes to get the car inspected. It's been on for a while so we knew this was coming. We took it to our local shop where the owner finds a way to look the other way when these kinds of things happen but we sometimes have to jump through some hoops before we clear the final hurdle. The idea is to get the sticker without spending inordinate amounts of money for the sleuthing that goes along with getting to the bottom of things like errant "engine light" problems.
Evan asked me yesterday about what I thought Nancy might like for Christmas. This is coming from a fella who has to be reminded of holidays when they roll around and buying presents is never a priority one way or another. Where is this coming from? What is this all about? What is he up to? Not that I want to impugn his motives one way or another but it just seems odd. And then Nancy tells me that he was asking her the same thing about me. What did she think I might like for Christmas and would she mind pitching in with him on a present for me.
All I would say about any of this is that I don't want him spending what little money he has me or his mom. I would never say that to him and I would not for a minute have him feeling guilty or less of a man for following his heart. If all goes according to plan, he'll forget all about it by the time December arrives and we'll all have moved on to other things. Maybe I'll stick a few pesos in his top pocket mid-December or so so he has what he needs should he decide that he wants to buy his mom a little something to stick under the tree. If his mom does the same thing, maybe I'll find a little something with my name on it under tree as well.
I'm struck by all of the Biden/Harris signs sitting on people/s lawns all of a sudden here in town. I was telling Nancy yesterday that they seemed to have popped up overnight. They are all the same and it looks like someone went over the rolls of registered democrats in town and just put a sign on every lawn where the homeowner would allow it.
Can democrats, disaffected independents, and Republicans for Biden be serious about putting someone as frail and as demented as Joe Biden in the White House? Do they have a clue as to how and what the position of the presidency demands of the individual sitting in the corner office? Do they understand how dangerous it is to install a president who is not of sound mind and body? Has Trump made them lose their bloody minds?
In case the democrats haven't noticed, it's a dangerous world out there. We all know, of course, that the game plan calls for Joe to step down soon after the inauguration and for his Vice President to assume the presidency. It's the sleaziest shell game on the planet and everyone knows it but it's full steam ahead on all fronts for the democrat party. When and where the Democrat party is concerned, the ends always justify the means.
The pot of gold at the end of the rainbow for the hard core leftists is that Kamala Harris, Bidens VP selection, will ultimately take over the reins of government to oversee the installation of the socialist agenda of the freaks behind the curtain like Ocasia Cortez, Bernie Sanders, etc. They are proposing adding seats to the Supreme Court to counter the addition of Trump's pick in order to keep liberals in the majority, giving statehood status to Puerto Rico and Washington D.C. in order to add four democrat senators to the counter the current republicans majority, raising taxes, banning fracking, sidelining our carbon based economy, and that's just for starters.
When they tell us who and what they are, we need to believe them. This is real, my friends. They are all but convinced that Biden will win in November even if it means that the democrats have to steal the election. Several battleground states have already begun to bend and distort their rules to allow for more post-election interference that will roll back wins for Trump announced the night of the election. Boxes of ballots will turn up out of nowhere to put Sleep Joe over the top much to the delight of the shameless dems. Trump can't file lawsuits fast enough to stay ahead of the freight train of fraud that the democrats hope to use to steal this election.
Trump's raucous rallies continue here and there and mostly in battleground states which he won by small margins in 2016. They are all done in airport hangars but most seem to accommodate a good 10-15 thousand of his admiring fans. Mask wearing is encouraged but not mandatory. The rallies themselves are billed as "silent protests" in order to get around any state rules that require no more than a stated number of people in any gathering. Trump supporters scoff at the Orwellian rules that most states have imposed on their citizenry due to the virus and their out-and-out disdain is on display at every rally. Good for them is what I say.
The US tallied a good 200,000 dead as of yesterday as a result of the China virus which has been around since February or so of this year. It's not a good number but I'm of the mind that it could have been a lot worse had certain things not been done early on. I believe the mortality rate is perhaps lower than the seasonal flu and it kills mostly elderly people and especially elder populations with co-morbidities.
You can count the number of deaths as a result of the virus in people under 20 on one hand. Here in my town of some 5,000 residents, we've had a total of 22 cases. That number has been stagnant over the course of the summer months despite being a seaside town which draws thousands of out-of-towners during the summer months. Hysteria? What hysteria?
The Biden campaign has tried desperately to tag Trump and his campaign with responsibility for each and every death resulting from Covid-19. They were hoping to ride that puppy all the way to election day thinking that people would buy the bullshit that they were selling. In case they haven't been paying attention, Trump is the master of the 24-hour news cycle.
He can have them chasing new and exciting shiny objects until their focus on any one topic just evaporates. Filling the latest vacancy on the Supreme Court is just what the doctor ordered and that process is likely to consume everything under the sun including the news cycle right up through election day. Speaking of shiny objects, Trump is planning to announce his pick for the Supreme Court this coming Saturday at 5 PM from the White House.
I'm guessing it will be that Amy Cony Barrett woman but Trump is not one to follow conventional wisdom so it could be anybody. Will Chamberlain says that she's not only smart, she's scary smart. She is also a solid conservative so she has the leftists losing their shit over the very idea that someone like Barrett will replace their now deceased liberal icon, Ruthie Ginsburg. You know, the Notorious RBG.
Trump has promised that it will be a woman so there's that. In anticipation of a Barrett nomination, a good four days hence, the leftists are already assembling outside the Supreme Court building dressed in outfits worn by the handmaids in Margaret Atwood's dystopian novel, A Handmaid's Tale.
Did I mention that BLM and their Antifa buddies are now rioting across the country because the Grand Jury in Kentucky came back and largely ignored the lies and the MSM narratives created out of whole cloth for the last several months that black people are being hunted down and killed day in and day out. Time to lock them all up! Every fucking last one of them.