Learn to fly

Last Friday I gave you the Beatles’ “I’m Looking Through You” because it had been buzzing around my head all week.

A friend of mine, the Viking Maiden, said that “Blackbird” had been doing the same for her, and I’ve been singing it ever since. A totally different vibe, and a reminder of how extraordinarily talented they were individually and collectively.

 

 

Real bargain

So, Fairfax County Public Library has a thing going now. When I checked out the latest Donna Leon (for which I waited months), the screen informed me of this: 

Well, I take their point. But I had to think about it, because, well—I don’t think about what it would have cost me if I bought every book I checked out of the library.

But now that I am thinking about it, imagine—what a bargain it is to have a tax-supported institution that gives me free (except—unlike certain elected officials—I do pay taxes) access to an entire world of knowledge, entertainment and some degree of crap.

(The downside is that I really wish they'd zero out what I've checked out once it's returned. This running total means they're keeping a record of what I read, and I'm sure I checked off the box on my library card application that said "don't do that". I may need to have a word with them.)

What would your annual savings look like?

 

 

Personal ethos

I’ve been steering clear of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s confirmation hearing of the woman the Right Wing Nut Jobs are trying to cram through the process, primarily because my tolerance level for both hypocrisy and fools has dropped through the ground lately. But I find one thing interesting from the bits and bobs I’ve picked up over the past few days. 

Amy Coney Barrett may be a RWNJ’s wet dream—primed to strike down Roe v Wade, Obamacare and Obergefell in an orgy of evangelical righteousness. Watching her call something enshrined in the USC “hypothetical” and therefore declaring her inability to comment upon it.

But she clearly understands the concept of perjury, and—unlike Brett Kavanagh—she is reluctant to commit it. She’d rather encase herself in a bubble of babble and be thought unbelievably stupid and ignorant than lie under oath.

She’s still a crime against democracy, but it’s interesting that she seems to have some personal ethical standards.

 

 

 

In situ

I tend to think of azaleas as pretty pedestrian. I mean, they’re nice things to flesh out your landscape plan, but it’s not like you can pick them and bring the flowers inside for a dining table centerpiece. You can only enjoy them in place.

(Although, if you’ve ever been to Norfolk or Virginia Beach in the spring, there is something enchanting about the absolute clouds of azaleas in the entire spectrum of whites through pinks to intense reds.)

However, the other day I noticed one of the HOA-planted (and badly pruned) shrubs in my front yard, just soaking up the rain, so I had to go out and take some shots. Not clouds, but still beautiful.

 

 

 

Gratitude Monday: trifecta

Friday evening I was eating dinner and I heard a knock at the door. I ignored it because it was 2045 and I was eating dinner. (Pro tip: if I’m not expecting anyone, when someone knocks on my door I ignore it. Just because someone’s there doesn’t mean I have to answer it. Same with phone calls.)

But Saturday morning I found a package on the walk, and I was a little confused. I’d already received the 15lbs of bird seed I’d ordered, and I wasn’t expecting anything else. But when I opened it, here’s what I found:

Well—quite the nice acknowledgement from our EVP for launching a brand new platform, a project that has chewed up countless hours over the past six months, in addition to keeping the old platform on life support.

But this other thing arrived on Friday as well:

Not only am I locked and loaded to vote before 3 November, I think this should satisfy the Commonwealth DMV’s requirement for “proof of address” so I can get my bloody driver’s license.

So treble gratitude today: civic responsibility and privilege ready and some bubbly to wash it down with.

 

 

 

You're not the same

 I don’t know why, but this song has been running through my mind all week. So I’ll share it with you.

OBE

Here’s how my Wednesday started yesterday: 

I don’t have a pantry, and my 1970 kitchen doesn’t have sufficient cupboard space for all the things you need for baking: multiple types of flour, multiple types of sugar, multiple types of chocolate, multiple types of dried fruit, multiple types of bran, multiple types of etc. So I have a bunch of paper grocery bags and half-cartons that you take your shopping home from Costco in, loaded with all this stuff. One box for bags of flour, one for bags of sugar, one for chocolate, etc. 

As an aside, a lot of products that come in “resealable” bags really don’t, because after you’ve poured, say, some brown sugar out of the bag, it just won’t reseal. I know this.

However, yesterday morning I needed to get to the bag of raw sugar that I use by the half-demitasse spoon for my coffee. To do that I had to pull aside one of those mega bags of chocolate chips that you get from Costco. In one of those “resealable” bags. And chocolate chips poured out into the sugar box. To be followed shortly afterward by a bunch of light brown sugar that came out of the other bag I had to move to get to the raw sugar.

So I spent an inordinate amount of time picking chocolate chips out of brown sugar and tossing them back into their bag. (Soon to be superseded by an OXO pop-up canister.) The sugar I dumped.

And now I have my project for Friday’s company-wide mental health day: I’m reorganizing my kitchen.

 

 

End of the road

 I was on my walk yesterday morning and came across this:

 

It made me so sad—someone tossing a Mini, even a toy one.

Too soon

I know I shouldn’t be surprised to find Christmas stuff in Costco—after all, it was all of September when I was in there to buy butter for my new freezer.

But egg nog in Wegman’s the first Sunday in October? That’s just beyond the beyond

 

 

Gratitude Monday: ready to exercise my civic duty

Whee dawgies—Friday was quite the…slice, wasn’t it? And so far it’s lasted clean through the weekend, what with dramatic announcements, conflicting medical “updates” and staged photos purporting to show Cadet Bonespurs at the helm despite falling victim (with a slew of co-morbidities he and his medical staff deny) to the hoax virus. And then there was the drive-by. 

But this is Gratitude Monday, so here’s what I’m thankful for: 

Friday I hauled my butt out to Fairfax County Government Center and registered to vote. You’ll recall that my clever plan to get a Virginia driver’s license so I’d be automatically registered (and also, you know, be a legal driver) came to naught because this former capital of the Confederacy refused to accept my utility bills as proof of residency because my first name on them is three letters different from my name on my passport.

(Don’t even get me started on the SSN requirement.)

And now I’m scheduled to be a supplicant again in…December.

So, my only alternative was registering the old-fashioned way. I could have filled out the form and mailed it in; you’re in as long as your application is postmarked by 13 October. But I have no confidence in the USPS getting a first-class letter 13 miles across NoVa in a week’s time. Ergo the trip.

Well, sportsfans, it took me an hour all told: 20 minutes to drive over; 20 minutes to have the woman at the voter registration office enter my details into the computer; 20 minutes to drive home. It takes a week to percolate all the way through the system. But starting next Monday, when the satellite voting station opens here in the People’s Republic, I can take a good book, stand in line and vote to remove Bonespurs and all his ilk from office. And that’s my gratitude for today.

Also—at the FCGC (currently the only place open in the county for early voting), the line to cast ballots snaked out around the parking lot, back and forth a couple of times. I wanted to walk past all of them, applauding.

This is how we take them out; with the vote. God bless America.