Month: December 2024

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Christmas Dinner was a bust, and not a bust…

Let me explain.

At Thanksgiving, the kind neighbors who invited me to their Thanksgiving & I got to talking. They’d had some family members show up and while their table accommodated us all, things were a bit cramped.

I suggested that we should have taken the food to my place and used my table since it is bigger and opens out to an even bigger configuration.

That led to the neighbor saying that Christmas will be at my place…

I accepted the challenge.

I spent the next month cleaning and making my home more like it had been when Jerry & I first moved in. The original idea was that the house would be uncluttered. Courtesy of the fire in ’08 we literally had nothing to clutter the place with. In our furniture selection, we tried to pick things that worked while preserving an “open” comfortable feeling to the house.

It worked very nicely, while Jerry’s instruments and music were at the church. When the church job ended the battle with clutter that had been more or less manageable suddenly became a major problem. I’ve been systematically going through and disposing of many of Jerry’s things over the past 2 years. Most of the items I’ve disposed of within the last 8 months. 

Clearing some things out of the dining area and then the kitchen area really opened the space up. It was a lot of work moving the stuff down to the garage. I re-tasked some of the cubbies that Jerry had relied upon for storage of his music, and bits of technology. This helped a little when It came to getting my tools organized in the garage.

At some point during this process,  I realized that I was smiling in the morning while getting my coffee.

The house, even with the Christmas tree was open, more free, more comfortable. I understood that part of this was me reclaiming my space. The pain of Jerry’s loss wasn’t so sharp. I was relaxing more into my own skin.

That spurred me on to more cleaning & sorting. There’s a lot to do in the office, basement, and garage but I’m pleased with the outcome this far. For however long this lasts I’m comfortable. That’s not to say that I was uncomfortable with all of Jerry’s stuff, but there were times when I felt like I was being squeezed out of this house because he kept adding more and more stuff.

Anyway by the time Christmas Eve rolled around, I’d cleaned vacuumed, scrubbed floors, straightened, & hand washed all the dishes and glasses that were to be used for the Christmas Dinner.

I went to bed Christmas Eve feeling pretty good. Jesse on the other hand, was sick to his stomach a couple of times during the night and I ended up cleaning the carpet (spot cleaning) at least once.

Christmas Day, Jesse & I went on our usual walk, came home, and then I started cooking Christmas Dinner. About 1:00PM, I texted my neighbors telling them dinner would be ready about 3. I didn’t hear back from them.

Dinner was ready by 3 and I kept everything warm until 4. When I still hadn’t heard anything, I went ahead and ate. I’d put a lot of effort into everything. I decided that even if they weren’t going to come over, I was going to enjoy the meal I’d prepared.

So I did. The ham was good, the wine was a nice pairing and the other portions of the meal were tasty.

I may have enjoyed it alone, but I demonstrated to myself that I know how to lay out a decent table if I’m entertaining. Moreover, I’m not dependent on anyone else but me to be happy.

I am very tired today and I’m not going to do anything. Hell, I may even take an old man nap. Sometime within the next few days, I’ll start taking the Christmas stuff down. The plan is to consolidate and repack the Christmas stuff, so that it’s easier to identify and perhaps move.

Tomorrow I’m planning to resume the job search and if I’m lucky perhaps I’ll land something that I can do remotely.

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Again Adam Schiff demonstrates that he really doesn’t get it.

Adam schiff democrat california house of representatives.I know this Washington snake is soon to be installed in the Senate. I know that properly I should be referring to him as Senator-elect Adam Schiff (D-CA).

I can’t. All I see is a lying, duplicitous, self aggrandizing, immoral, snake that shouldn’t be within 1000 miles of the levers of power.

I see him as a representation of everything that is wrong not only with Washington D.C. but also with the California electorate who votes (D) no matter what.

Schiff was bad enough when he represented the 30th District, but was typical of that district. The district encompasses parts of LA, Burbank, Pasadena and some of the filthy rich democrat enclaves in La Cresenta, Montrose, La Canada Flintridge, Glendale, Altadena, and parts of Tujunga.

Many of these areas enjoy gated walled communities and are largely disconnected from, or untouched by, the things they vote in favor of.

Prior to 2016 the only time I’d heard his name was when some political scandal broke. I don’t recall if he was condemning the scandal or was part of it. Honestly I didn’t care. Whatever was going on, it was the business of the electorate in the 30th district.

After 2016, he gained prominence by consistently lying and being caught lying in testimony to congress usually about Trump, often while trying to impeach the President. I’m for impeachment of a bad president for cause. I however have a serious problem impeaching the President based on false testimony, statements, fabricated evidence, and the word of a liar who happens to be in the House of Representatives.

Judy Chu 2048x1366.He was like Judy Chu (D-CA) who represents an adjacent district to the East. I ignored her too, until she had Obama annex a part of the forest in the mountains nearer Pasadena. She touted this as important legislation that would ensure the forest was maintained and reduce fire hazards. It didn’t. The feds haven’t done squat, and the recent “Bridge Fire” is ample proof of that.

After the last redistricting, Judy Chu, is unfortunately now representing me and my town so I do pay attention to her. Looking at the redistricting map it’s clear the powers that be wanted to destroy a large Republican voting block, that had formed in the high desert. Over the years conservatives who happened to be mostly republican moved to the desert where houses were more affordable and crime was lower. Interesting side note, that migration heralded the loss of Californians to other states for exactly the same reasons.

Judy Chu sends happy horse shit announcements about how interested she is in hearing from us. She invites us to hear her speak prior to elections on weekdays from 8-5 in Pasadena. After the election, we don’t hear anything at all from her or her office. Requests for assistance or even requests for clarity about specific addresses being in her district, or not, go unanswered.

Her notices tell us how important it is for us to be “part of the process,” and how interested she is in hearing from those of us in the mountain portion of her district. I’d bet she couldn’t find this town with a map, GPS, and police escort. She’s another California politician that sits in congress collecting her paycheck, finding ways to get rich like Nancy Pelosi, and doing nothing for the California people. But I digress.

Over the weekend, Schiff appeared on ABC’s “The Week” and said that Americans didn’t vote for Trump to see him pardon “criminals involved” in Jan 6. A brief writeup appeared in Breitbart

Uhhh Adam, yes they did. In great part because you and the Jan 6th committee engaged in what was clearly theater.

Generally speaking, everything the committee did looked a lot more like an old style Soviet show trial than actual justice. It was obvious from the start the committee was going to find anyone guilty that supported Trump and opposed the Democrat Party, or Joe Biden.

That farcical committee pardoned then arranged for a promotion of the single individual who discharged his firearm that day resulting in the murder of Ashley Babbitt.

The committee via the DOJ imprisoned 1000s of American citizens for the duration of Joe Biden’s presidency, many of them in horrific conditions and still awaiting trial or in some cases even pretrial hearings.

Then the committee destroyed evidence. 

We The People, want a lot more than pardons for the January 6 prisoners. We want justice. I can’t speak for all Americans but I want all the members of that committee investigated, tried, sentenced, and imprisoned in exactly the same conditions as the January 6th Prisoners.

Joe Biden might preemptively pardon some of the committee. Which in my mind, simply underscores their guilt, but he’s not going to pardon everyone who contributed to this reign of lawlessness and law fare.

Believe me, when all those underlings and “disposable” people are looking at prison terms, they will turn on members of the committee and even though those members will be sitting fat dumb and happy with pardons. Their guilt will be exposed. I won’t be surprised in the least if the families of those who end up taking the rap for “The Committee” come looking for a little bit of revenge.

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Wow, Twitter is dangerous for me

Not really, but it is very easy to lose time with it.

Why is this on my mind today?

Long story short, I was reading the morning news, after reading today’s thought in The Daily Stoic.

A news article led me to a tweet, which I opened to read. That led me to the news that a nice person I’d interacted with via Twitter, in Canada died on the 6th.

He’d gone to the hospital a day or two before with chest pain and the hospital decided he wasn’t having a problem, therefore wasn’t an emergency and the hospital staff put him back in the waiting room. After spending 6 hours in the waiting room he said “fuck it,” and went home.

Apparently he died at home. He was 39.

I was taken back to Jerry’s death and the way the hospital here and our medical people treated him, then him dying at home. Which led me to doom scrolling through twitter. 

All of this ties oddly back to The entry in The Daily Stoic, which is talking about everything ending. Empires, to lives everything ends. It doesn’t do well to dwell on it, but it’s equally not good to ignore that time is a predator that stalks us all.

And that leads back to twitter/ X. Which is insidious in the manner in which it steals our time, while not providing a lot in the way of tangible benefit. 

I was right all though years ago when I walked away from social media. I’ll be walking away from social media again real soon.

I have other things that I want to do rather than pissing my life away engaging with almost nightmarish insanity that social media is, and always has been.