Reluctant Blog

Here it is Sunday evening and I am just now starting to type up a blog. It is, as usual, going to be largely a flow of consciousness piece, with a little bit of editing just to ensure that I am not embarrassing myself or others. Or at least not too much.

Bernie news: Have you all seen his huge momentum going into the actual primaries and caucuses? And how Biden is falling? I prognosticated that Biden would come in at 2% in the early states and drop out before Super Tuesday. Sadly, that prognostication was wrong. Though it is looking like he might struggle to reach 15% in the first two events of the season. That would be nifty. And Bernie’s poll numbers, as we know from last time, are only the tip of the iceberg. He regularly over performed the polls. And I think he will do even better this go ’round. Will he get the 50%+1 delegate that he needs to clinch the nomination on the first ballot? I certainly hope so. But with so crowded a field, it will be more of a challenge. If only EW and PB would drop out, I think Bernie would be able to get the 50%+1 that he needs. Sigh.

I tried to start volunteering for another group in the Bernie Volunteer army – event sweeping. Boy howdy did that go crappily. Too many applications, too many steps that were glossed over in the training and, on my part, I did try to do two shifts at the same time, which lead to me not doing either very well. Sigh. So, I am giving up event sweeping for a variety of reasons. Yes, I am a quitter. Though I do plan to keep on doing Chat Desk for the foreseeable future.

Oooh, did anyone else see that Tesla Model Y’s are supposed to start shipping next month – though they weren’t scheduled to start shipping until Q3 or Q4! How cool is that?!? It would be nifty if going forward, Tesla keep beating its own schedules! And Space-X had a successful launch abort test. I just had a thought – well, I had it the other day, and am putting it down here – that maybe the Boeing Starliner capsule might eventually use a Falcon 9 as its launch vehicle – since a Falcon 9 launch costs a third of an Atlas launch.

In other news, Ed is still percolating along. I will admit that helping out with him is giving me flashbacks to helping out with my mom. And that is no fun. We are currently reading a biography about Theodore Roosevelt called “Bully!” For some reason, I felt compelled to tell Ed about Robin Williams played Roosevelt in the Night at the Museum movies. Anyway, learning lots about him. Cool guy! No wonder he is on Mount Rushmore!

Trivia last week was a weird mixed bag. We played ok on Monday night, but ended up in a 6 way tie for third place. And we luckily guessed almost the right year for when Pet Rocks were introduced – 1975 (we put 1974). And on Thursday we came in fourth.We missed two of the double down dares and the top three teams didn’t. I knew where the country that Algiers was the capital of was, but somehow couldn’t come up with Algeria. Sigh. And then I recognized the image for the last double down dare and new it was in Spain, but I couldn’t come up with the name. Double sigh.

I failed at going cold Turkey on Instagram and Twitter. I have been sucked back in. But I am going to start unfollowing people who make me heart sick on both platforms. I did a huge purge on Instagram a while ago, so I am doing ok there – but I need to unfollow a lot of people on Twitter who just make me feel unhappy. Just say no to choosing to feel unhappy.

Dinner tonight is going to be chicken vodka farfelle. Yum. I can hardly wait.

So there we have it – a newsy, fairly dull blog post. Just for you. And you. And you.

I don’t have a black eye – I just think I hadn’t slept awesomely the night before I snapped this photo…

No Shoveling Shoveling and more!

I love not shoveling. Seriously. Nothing makes me happier than when the snow snows and I choose not to shovel and nature gets rid of the snow. We have had our little January heatwave here in lovely Geneva, NY, and all the snow is gone! Yay. And, so weird. I remember the first time I experienced a winter heat wave. It was when I was living down in NC. We had a week of 100 degree weather in January in 2000. And it has happened every year since then – not always quite that hot – but a week where the weather was definitely more summer like than winter like. It isn’t quite so dramatic here in Geneva, but there were a lot of people walking around in short sleeves the other day.

I’ve decided to give up Instagram and Twitter. At least for the rest of this month. Maybe for longer. Too much time and effort for not enough connection. All I am looking for is a life partner! Is that too much to ask for? Probably. And maybe I am not really a life partner sort of guy. Anyway, the other day, I was on twitter and an account I was following was having an obviously bad day. And then their account went wonky. I wasn’t blocked, and they weren’t gone – they just seemed to be broken. And that made me sad. Then, two accounts with whom I thought I had a connection (I mean, one of them actually DM’d me!) stopped replying to my comments. They still “liked” my comments, but no more banter. And I have no idea why. And I didn’t ask. I figured if they wanted to tell me, they would. But they didn’t. And thus, I decided, enough was enough. I was spending way too much time on both of those apps anyway. Maybe I can find something better to do with my time. Like alphabetizing my collection of fortune cookie fortunes. That would be productive…

The Cracker Factory is having a faux prom. When I was in high school, I asked a woman I had had a huge crush on to prom. She told me no, that she wasn’t going at all. Her reason was that because two people had asked her, and she liked us both, she didn’t want to hurt either of our feelings, so, she decided to just not go. I think it might have been more fun if she had said that we both could take her. But, we all survived. And, honestly, I wasn’t all that upset about not getting to go to a dance. Since middle school, I have not been a fan of those sorts of social gatherings. Dances that is. Oh well. Later, it turned out that the woman I was enamored of was in fact enamored of women primarily. Life is that way sometimes.

Parmesan crusted Potatoes!

This is one of my favorite ways to prepare baked potatoes. And sooooo easy! Yum!!

 

January 5 Post

The other day, a few months ago, a friend from NC appeared on Facebook saying he was in Cortland, NY – not that far from me. I asked him to let me know the next time he was in the area. Which he didn’t do. Instead, I see that he has been to three places in Geneva. In. Geneva!! And he didn’t let me know! Grrrr. I wrote him, he wrote back, I wrote him again, and it turned out he was going to do more beering the next day out Canandaigua way. We arranged to meet! Yippee! I skipped the first place, since I had been there before (and honestly, wasn’t super thrilled or impressed) and met him and his girlfriend at their second stop – Young Lion. I was confused about the place. I thought they were a new location of a place that had been in Penn Yan (where the beer was, er, not to my liking). Turns out I was wrong. It happens. Sue me. Anyway, I had a taster and the beers were decent. They, between them, tasted all the beers! 16 or so I think! Wow! And, because the day was young, I tagged along to their next stop.

Other Half brewing is a satellite location of a Brewery from NYC. I hadn’t even heard of it. Or noticed it when driving down that road. I had seen Irish Mafia Brewing, and had vowed to go in there one day – I still plan to do so but Other Half was fine by me. Cool place. They don’t offer tasting paddles. They do offer tasting sizes (expensive!) and one has to just try to remember what each beer was. I ordered three tasters and some salt bread. Everything was yummy! We sat outside as it was really, really crowded inside. And brrr it was cold!! Still, it was great fun and awesome to see Aaron and to meet his girlfriend!

On New Year’s Eve, the annual “Wrapping of the Coins” transpired. I have been doing this for quite some time, actually. Every year around New Year’s, I wrap the coins I have collected over the year. I have two collection areas, the center console in my car and a box in a shoe box on a shelf on a bookshelf in my bedroom. In flush years, I sometimes have done two coin wraps. This year, being fairly lean, one was sufficient. Also, with the wider use of debit cards, I find that I use less cash which results in fewer coins collected. Anyway, I wrapped the coins – a multi step process – get the coins, sort the coins, wrap the coins. I have so many coin wrappers, I am happy to use them up! This year I wrapped $64 worth of coins! Woo hoo! I was going to take them to my newer bank, but they have a coin machine. Where’s the fun in that? So I took them to my older bank first. Luckily, they no longer require one’s account number to be on each roll of coins! I always thought that was a bit odd – I mean, I didn’t really want my account number floating around out there. Wrapping, I felt rich for a second or two! Yippee!

Salmon Chase was on the $10,000 bill. And?

Sorry for the late post. I had it mostly written last night, but alas, I spent a long time working on other stuff, and then went and played pool and yada yada yada.