Friday, December 18, 2020

a negative result, a celestial happening, and political and pandemic revelations


The crescent moon Wednesday night with that faint pinpoint of light straight above being the planet Jupiter. Saturn was above and slightly to the left  of Jupiter but too faint for my phone camera to pick up. They're getting closer with the conjunction only 3 days away on the winter solstice when they will be lined up to appear as one big bright star.

I got my test results late Tuesday afternoon...negative.

We went to Costco Wednesday late morning. I figured Tuesday or Wednesday would be the least crowded days. Wrong! It was packed when we got there, long register lines all the way down the aisles but by the time we got our goods and headed that way it had cleared out so only two people ahead of us at the register.

And yesterday was my volunteer day. The guy whose wife was positive was there when I first got there but they must have asked him to leave because not long after he was gone. And then I went over to Pam's all the way across the street! to check out her new Tuff Shed storage building which they delivered and then put together on Tuesday but it got dark before they finished, were supposed to return Wednesday, were supposed to return yesterday, are supposed to be here today to shingle the roof and finish (they were and did). Then off to the grocery store where I spent far too much time for the few items on my list, unorganized going from one side of the store to the other several times, and then walked the dog, did the dishes since they had reached critical mass, shelled nuts for an hour and a half, cleaned up the kitchen again after dinner, went to bed at 9:30 with my book.

Today the big plan is to take the accumulated newspapers to the vet and fill the bird feeder now that I got the giant bag of birdseed from Costco.

Since my days are pretty blah and boring, I guess I'll get political. The nation is continuing to be under attack from the Trump administration. It has now come out that his coronavirus pandemic team's goal was to get as many Americans infected as possible as fast as possible for herd immunity and the 300,000+ and rising death toll was just the price to pay and they have been quite successful as over a million Americans are getting infected every week. Now Governor DeSantis of Florida and a few other republicans have decided that they are smarter and know better than the scientists and doctors who developed the two dose vaccine and are saying that the first shot is sufficient to provide protection and that way twice as many people can be vaccinated, meanwhile millions of doses of the vaccine available to the US sit in a warehouse waiting for the Trump administration to tell Pfizer where to send them and some states have been told they're only getting half the doses promised. Why are they dragging their feet you might ask? Well, Moderna's vaccine is due to be given emergency use by the FDA any day now and guess who has invested in Moderna? So, yeah, it's all about what's best for Trump as always.

As if that's not bad enough, we all know that Trump fired the pandemic response team left behind by Obama and Biden and we are experiencing the result of that, but Trump also decimated the cybersecurity department leaving only the unqualified behind and basically opening the door to Putin's hackers who have been tromping around in our government systems, including the nuclear weapons agency, for 9 months. The few experts left have no idea what all they got into, how far, how deep, how many other back doors they installed, or what national security secrets they got access to. And just like Trump had nothing to say about the revelation of Putin putting bounties on American soldiers in Afghanistan, he has nothing to say about this cyber security attack. It would not surprise me to learn that this was all arranged in one of Trump's secret meetings with Putin. And how did the Defense Department react? They canceled all meetings with Biden's transition team until after the holidays.

Trump himself is quadrupling down, insisting he won because he got more votes than last time, egged on by his advisers who, every time Trump starts to show signs of acceptance, convince him (easily enough as he doesn't seem to grasp the concept that the person who gets the most  votes wins) that he did indeed win, while certain other political hacks are calling for him to declare martial law to remain in office and threatening to object when the EC votes go to Congress for ratification. So this is all he is focused on, fighting to keep a job he hates, doesn't really want, and barely does. In the meantime his neighbors at Mar A Lago have filed suit to prevent him from making it his residence, which legally he can't do.

And the republicans in Georgia have gone bat shit crazy filing more frivolous lawsuits that keep getting thrown out to reverse Biden's win in that state as well as to suppress the vote for the Senate run-off election. They are pissed that the republican in charge of the election there has added more drop boxes and want them removed or at least locked after dark. He's making it too easy for  black people to vote! So while they're fighting to keep control of the Senate, they're busy eating their own.

Later the same day...

Well, I dawdled too long and failed to get the newspapers to the vet which closes at noon on Fridays. I did, however, fill the bird feeder, take the box of books that a neighbor gave us a year ago to the little library across from the post office and they all fit! And as the floors in the lower part of the house had also reached critical mass I swept. Took the staghorn ferns out for a good watering as well as the bird of paradise which has sent up two bloom stalks (it always wants to bloom late fall into winter), watered all the plants inside, walked the dog and that's it for me. I put on my comfy I'm-not-leaving-the-house-again pants, I'm going to grab my book, and occupy the couch for the rest of the night.

I'm behind on reading all your posts and I may or may not try to catch up but I'll be back around tomorrow.

And in case you were wondering, this is what the fire spike looks like after the flowers fall off.



 

15 comments:

  1. DeathSantis is an idiot. The manufacturers called for two doses for a reason. The republican party has descended into lunacy.

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  2. Now all the news about Trump's closing antics comes so fast and thick it's hard to sort it all out. And some of it is dangerous and deadly. Probably most or all of it. How will Biden find enough people to sort it all?

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  3. I hope we still HAVE a country for Biden to be president of by January. And can I tell you that Georgia's runoff election cannot happen soon enough? We live only a few miles from Georgia so when we do watch "regular" TV (my husband has to have his Jeopardy fix every night) they are and have been running the same horrible ads for months now. Over and over and over and over.
    My fire spike is black and shriveled now, everything dead, but I know it will come back in the spring. I need to get out there and cut away the dead along with the bananas, the lilies, the, well- you name it.
    Glad you don't have the covid, Ellen.

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  4. Really glad that your test came back negative. Yay!!
    The Russian hack really has me worried. Biden is inheriting such a huge mess and is being undermined before he even steps into the Oval Office. He has so much work ahead of him. I cannot wait for January 20th to get here, so he can get started and clean up this freakin' mess.

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  5. It's good to hear that your test was negative. Taking time to read a book sounds good to me and I'm doing that too just for something different than reading news on the internet.

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  6. Well, you may not have gotten to the vet but you certainly did enough! Glad the test was negative.

    The legacy of this inept administration will be with us for years. And of course the right-wingers will somehow blame the Democrats, as they always do. These last few weeks will be pretty interesting. I loved that story about Mar-a-Lago. Even Trump's rich neighbors in Palm Beach don't want him around!

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  7. Sounds like you were very busy. So glad your test was negative, Ellen. It is getting more difficult as we feel as if we are getting so close to the end of COVID when we really are NOT! So we start to let our guard down a bit (we're TIRED) but we should not do that. I still wear my mask when I have to go out and I go out rarely.
    Can't wait until January 20th!
    Please stay safe!

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  8. So glad the test was negative.
    Thanks for the note. I too am not a Christian, but I have a lot of fun with the trappings and colors. If anything, I lean toward Buddhism. Perhaps because I have been almost blind most of my life, I am easily sucked in by saturated color.

    We so look forward to the next administration.

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    1. Buddhism, yes. Taoism, spiritualism with a sprinkling of New Age woo woo.

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  9. Glad your test came back negative!! Reading about the 'herd immunity' is just unbelievable, but totally within reason for the way Trump and his cronies think about the virus. And the hacking of our computer systems??? God help us and God help Biden and his people when they finally get into the office. It's going to be a real nightmare for a long, long time. This is how one person can bring our country to its knees -- from WITHIN the borders.

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  10. I saw the two planets together, very close, last night for just a few minutes before the clouds moved in. No photo!

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  11. I'm glad for your negative test! I woke with with a fever this morning (99) & have decided that this is it - I've got the virus. Never mind that my fever has since disappeared & I have no other symptoms. Ha!

    I've done such a good job keeping up with all the lunacy in politics this year (due to reading Heather Richardson, and also a new person I'm following on Instagram, @sharonsaysso), but I think I've hit my saturation point. I might have to go back to head in the sand for a while just to recover my sanity.

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  12. I think I am feeling like burying my head in the sand until January 20, as if this nightmare will be over then. So much has been unleashed we'll be dealing with the fallout for a long time. I'm so glad your result was negative.

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  13. Excellent news about the negative test results. Keep it that way.

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  14. I'm so glad your test came back negative, and I'm glad you were able to see the conjunction. We're supposed to be clear tonight, so I'll make the effort. I won't bother with a photo, since plenty of other people can do a better job of that, but it will be fun to see.

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I opened my big mouth, now it's your turn.