If you don't know by now

Well, here we are at the absolute pinnacle of Romance—Saint Valentine’s Day. If you’re thinking about dining out tonight and haven’t booked a table, fuggedaboutit; tomorrow the prices will be lower, anyhow. To get into Trader Joe’s yesterday, you had to pass through a wall o’ bouquets ready for lotharios low on funds.

Love is, as they say, in the air.

But that’s only part of romantic love. Valentine’s Day is like a Hallmark movie: it’s all about the appearance of passion. We all know that the story goes on after Stacy and Todd fade out and the credits roll. Very often the next chapter is full of screaming fights and slamming doors. And the one after involves Todd crying into his beer with his bros while Stacy and her posse slap back cocktails and tick off every single one of Todd’s transgressions.

That session lasts the whole night.

I was interested to discover that one organization has recognized and even celebrated this aspect of love. Through today, Wildcat Ridge Sanctuary in rural Marion County, Ore., will write your ex’s name (in cat-safe icing) on a heart-shaped mass of meat and feed it to one of their residents. Your donation of $50 to $75 also gets you a video of the very satisfying meal.

(The director of Wildcat Ridge Sanctuary reports that people are also sending in donations with the names of work colleagues, friends, spouses and other sundry miscreants to become wildcat chow. This is their fourth year of offering the much-needed service.)

So, in keeping with the full scope of the day, we’re having Bob Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright”, sung by the Indigo Girls.

©2025 Bas Bleu

 

How it's going

When last we met, the Big Snow of February 2025 was just beginning to fall Tuesday afternoon. Here’s what it looked like yesterday morning.

Wasn’t too bad, really. Spent a brisk hour shoveling snow and clearing off my car. Then I was free to enjoy it.

©2025 Bas Bleu

 

Happy birthday, Abe!

The snow started around 1400 in the People’s Republic, but these guys were ready for it when I took my morning walk:

And here was the Nandina about one hour into the snow:

©2025 Bas Bleu

 

Dripping

I’m getting into the mood for the wintery mix predicted for the environs of The District They Call Columbia today by reviewing pix I took of one of the Storms of January.

Good times.

 

©2025 Bas Bleu

 

Gratitude Monday: Working as designed

It’s February, 2025, and I’m grateful my Social Security payment appeared in my account on Friday afternoon.

It’s quite the statement, actually, because a year ago it wouldn’t have occurred to me to be concerned. But for the past 20 days a feral pack of loser incels has been swarming like locusts from federal agency to federal agency, connecting devices to systems holding the most sensitive information in the country, downloading and adding data, and generally whizzing on everything within reach, under the aegis of a ketamine-stoked über willie-waving incel while the Adderall-addled president jerks around the media between rounds of golf and plans to use the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts for WWF competitions.

I mean—Pillsbury Spock has tweeted “Death to USAID”, stopped all payments to the National Institutes for Health (thus halting critical scientific and medical research), held up the threat of mass firings and promised to move into the FAA and air traffic control systems (coded in COBOL) to “fix them”.

Like he did to Twitter.

So, yeah—when I didn’t see my monthly retirement payment (reflecting the money I’ve paid into the system for decades), I got green around the gills. And when I finally saw it on Friday, I was relieved. And grateful that—despite their best efforts—some of the government is still working. So far.

 

©2025 Bas Bleu