Good morning, and Happy Thanksgiving to you. I hope you have a nice day ahead of you. About all I have going on is maybe plowing the driveway (I think we got a decent – though not overwhelming – bit of snow overnight). If I wasn’t leaving tomorrow, I probably wouldn’t even bother, since they say it’s going to warm up and rain by Sunday.

It’s been very pleasant being able to not go to work and just hang out alone with the varmints, and I really wish I could be here with them for the rest of the weekend. But, as my dad used to say, shit in one hand and wish in the other and see which one fills up faster.

Saw another mouse in a trap at the top of the stairs to the basement this morning, but he was still moving, so I decided to leave him alone until he quit twitching. Then I heard a noise and took another look – he (and the trap) were nowhere to be seen. I reckoned he managed to throw himself off the stairs and is now somewhere near the sump pump under there. Guess I’ll have to put my boots on and do a patrol. I just hope he’s not waiting for me down there with a pack of friends (I just picture a bunch of mice wearing leather jackets and riding motor scooters – Pete Townshend does kinda look like a rodent).

I was supposed to get an Amazon delivery yesterday, but it was shipped FedEx instead of UPS and I guess FedEx is still using the “it snowed in Buffalo” excuse to delay things. So it won’t come until Friday when I won’t be here. It was only mouse deterrent and more traps, but I was hoping to get them in place before leaving.

Oh well.

Anyhow, have a nice day today and a great weekend. I guess I’ll turn “Thanksgiving Alone” radio on Google Play Music, finish my coffee, and then go find my carry-on bag.

I’m sure we’re all shocked that the Grand Jury in Ferguson failed to indict the cop who, through no fault of his own, shot a black kid to death for walking down the middle of the street. Or something. Gee, who coulda seen that one coming?

In other news, it was 72° here yesterday, which is pretty good for the 24th of November. In fact, it was a record. I wish I could say it was going to stay that way for a while but, sadly, it’s not. In fact, they say a Nor’easter is rolling in for tomorrow, though right now it looks as though it will stay to the east of me. You folks on the coast, though…. Well, I just hope there won’t be any flooding from it.

I’m home alone here with the critters, as the wife left yesterday for balmy Minneapolis. She took puking cat to the vet before she left for a shot of cortisone that will hopefully keep her from puking for a while. The tumor is a big bigger, apparently, and the cat has lost some weight. Hopefully she’ll feel better for a while.

In other animal-related news, one dog seems to have a hole in his leg, and the other has a hole next to his eye. I don’t know when all that happened, but I hope whatever they were doing, they knock it off. I don’t need anything more to worry about.

Assuming they (and I) make it through the day without killing or being killed, I’m at least home with them tomorrow and Thursday. After that I’ll really have to worry until I get back (hopefully) Sunday night.

And of course there seems to be no end to the mouse supply around here. I was pleased to find no new ones waiting for me when I got home last night, but I heard the unmistakable “snap – flop” sound twice more before I went to bed, and I saw at least one more waiting for me this morning (I’m waiting for the coffee to kick in before I go harvest the crop).

I ordered some stinky stuff that’s supposed to keep them away (my sister swears by it) to put in my basement and garage. Some kind of pine-smelling potpourri-type stuff. It should at least be easier on my nose (and eyes) that the fox piss/cayenne pepper spray I’ve been using. Hopefully it’ll work (if not, I ordered more traps, too).

Oh well, time to do some rodent disposal.

I don’t know about you, but I order a lot of shit from Amazon (which, I know, I shouldn’t because they treat their warehouse workers like crap but, hey, I’m cheap and lazy and between 2-day shipping, free cloud storage for photos, Amazon Prime video, and really cheap Kindle books, nothing appeals to a slacker quite like Amazon). I am especially fond of the “subscribe and save” items, which is why I am currently stocked to the gills with paper towels, toilet paper, soup, rice, and pretty much anything I can get them to deliver. It’s like having Christmas every month.

Unfortunately, all this snow has put a damper on things. I’ve got a whole bunch of shit just sitting on a truck somewhere near Buffalo, and I don’t think things will be moving again anytime soon. Not before next week, I’m guessing.

I would say that this could put a damper on my Thanksgiving, but of course there will be no Thanksgiving for me this year. I’ll be home alone with the dogs and the cats (and the mice – whose population seems to be rapidly dwindling thanks to all the traps I bought at Amazon), doing little more than packing my bags and charging my portable electronic devices in preparation for being forced to abandon my dogs and fly to Minneapolis early (very early) Friday morning.

I really hate the whole flying thing – especially having to do it alone. I hate having to figure out what to bring and I hate having to figure out what goddamn gate I have to go to (not bad in Syracuse, since our airport aint exactly JFK, but I have to change planes in Detroit on the way out) and I hate using public rest rooms (probably should hold off on the beer and chicken wings the night before) – especially at the Minneapolis airport (thankfully, I have a narrow stance)….

I’ve decided that this is going to have to be the last time I’m ever going to fly anywhere, and if I didn’t actually like my stepdaughter I’d have figured out how to weasel my way out going to her wedding (there’s also the fact that my wife would have done everything in her power to make my life miserable had I not gone, but seeing as she long ago stopped doing all the things she used to for me – taking the dogs to the vet, talking on the phone for me, making appointments for me, etc. – there’s really not much she can do to me).

But this is it for me. If anybody else croaks or gets married, they goddamn well better do it within an hour drive of my house. In fact, fuck it – nobody I know is allowed to get married or die from here on out. That goes for your parents, siblings, in-laws, and children, too. No more weddings, no more funerals. I’ve had enough of both to last until my funeral in a couple of years (or sooner, if the plane crashes).

Oh well, at least today is Friday.

Today, there’s some good news and some bad news. The bad news is that after a brief warm spell (really brief – as in, a few hours yesterday afternoon), it’s pretty darn cold around here, and it’s gonna get colder (and windier). The good news is that while we’re going to get a little snow, folks in Western New York and our friends to the north will be getting “feet” of snow. As in, blizzard conditions “up north.” I just hope that the bad stuff stays up there and away from us.

In other news, I haven’t checked the traps yet so I don’t have the overnight tally, but as of about 9PM last night, we’d bagged seven mice in our storage area. I found a dog food bag nibbled on out there, and we decided to declare war. That doesn’t include the one headless mouse that showed up on the living room floor the other morning or the two from the traps in the drawers in the laundry area.

As I told the cats – it’s Humans 9, Cats 1. If they expect to keep getting fed, they need to up their game. Mouse traps and peanut butter are a lot cheaper.

I’d prefer not to kill the little bastards, and I sprayed a lot of fox urine around the basement and garage areas (which reminds me, I’d better re-treat), but there’s really no reasoning with them and now that it’s cold out, they’re looking for a nice warm comfy spot to shit and piss in while chewing it to pieces.

Oh well, I guess I better go check my traps and see what’s for breakfast.

Well, we got our first measurable snow yesterday. Not a lot, but enough to cover the grass. Looks like about an inch on top of my fake well thing that covers the septic vent. And the forecast for the next few days is snow, snow, snow, and snow. And kinda cold (though this will feel like a thaw in a couple of months). Fortunately, I had the good sense to take today off (really just trying to knock my vacation balance down a bit so that I’m under the max by the end of the year).

After one last bit of drama on Wednesday (I swear, cars know when you’re about to dump them), I finally got rid of my ten year old Hyundai Elantra and now have a Toyota Camry. I’m done with the Koreans, and figured I’d go with the Japs for a while (my Uncle Bill – who was on ships that were sunk not once but twice in the Pacific back during the Big One – is probably rolling in his drawer right now, though to be fair I owned not one but two Dodge-branded Mitsubishi pickups back when he was still alive and I don’t recall him being bothered by that). I think Uncle Bill harbored a certain amount of resentment toward the Japanese until the day he died (I suppose I can’t blame him. The propaganda was back then was rather vicious – as you might have noticed if you’ve ever watched any vintage Popeye cartoons – and they were kinda trying to kill him).

My dad was also on that side of the world during the war, but he never seemed to muscle up any hatred for anybody. Not even the monkey that jumped on his back and bit him in Burma or the mosquitoes that gave him malaria.

Anyhow, I guess I’d better get the chains on the tractor. I’ve been talking about it for quite a while, but it’s getting down to it, now. It’s just always such a struggle.

But then, what isn’t?

Or at least trade them in. While I can’t really afford a car payment right about now (I’ll be needing to break the news to the dogs that they’ll have to start catching their own food – and the cats won’t make much of a meal), I decided that the only way to get peace of mind on my daily commute was to get a new car that I won’t have to worry about for a few years. So if all goes as planned, after ten mostly happy years with my 2004 Hyundai Elantra, I’ll be picking up my new vehicle after work today. Just don’t tell my current car. I once traded in an old junker of a Chevy Impala station wagon that never failed to start – until the day I was to trade it in. I wound up having AAA tow it to the dealer – “here’s your trade-in!”

Speaking of cars and car repair, if you haven’t read Alex Magliozzi’s eulogy for his dad, Tommy, you should.

In other news, apropos of getting a new vehicle, the weather around here is about to head straight into the crapper. Yesterday was gorgeous – sunny and 66°, and by the time I get home tonight, it should be down to 40 – which will look good come Friday, when it isn’t supposed to get above 35. Oh, and did I mention snow? Yeah, snow. They don’t know how much just yet (speculation is that our friends to the north will bear the brunt of it – as they should), but I might have to mount the plow on the tractor and push some snow around this weekend.

It also means I’ll have to think about snow tires, which sucks because I was pricing them out online yesterday, and damn they’re expensive.

Good thing I probably won’t live long enough to retire.

This past weekend was what I would call shitty in pretty much every way imaginable (other than nobody died – or at least nobody I know died). I’m too exhausted, disgusted, tired, stressed, and even nauseated to spell it all out. It involved cars, car repair, and, uh, the reason I should neve actually consider doing anything. Let’s just say shit broke, I had wrong parts, I was so sore and tired from 12 hours worth of grovelling on the garage floor that I couldn’t sleep on Saturday, I found more problems on Sunday which made it impossible to sleep last night, and I was waiting for something terrible to happen on my way in this morning. It didn’t, so now I can spend the ride home anticipating something bad on the way home. I’m just too old and tired and poor for this shit.

It’s decidin’ day here in ‘merica. For instance, I need to decide if I’m gonna go vote before work, or after. Probably before, but I need to get gas, too, and I hate to pack all that activity into a single day. Here in NY, besides the vote for Governor (I’ll vote for Howie Hawkins), we have three ballot propositions. The first one is a “change” to how they draw the voting districts.

By change, I mean the same assholes who draw them now (aka, the State Legislature) will basically keep doing it. Here’s the convoluted change they want to make to the State Constitution: Assholes pick eight members of a “commission” and then two more members get appointed by the eight legislatively-appointed members. These remaining two members cannot, in the preceding five years, have been enrolled in either of the two major political parties in New York State. Oh, and if these ten sub-assholes can’t get a consensus, it goes back to the main assholes.

Sounds like bullshit to me. Just a way to avoid changing anything while pretending they changed something. I vote NO!

Second prop is to allow electronic versions of bills to be presented to the assholes who won’t read them anyway, in lieu of printing copies for every member. Sound good to me. Maybe they’ll save a tree or two (though I’m sure their staffs will just print them out anyway.

The third one is money for schools:

This proposal would allow the State to borrow up to two billion dollars ($2,000,000,000). This money would be expended on capital projects related to the design, planning, site acquisition, demolition, construction, reconstruction, rehabilitation, or acquisition or installation of equipment for the following types of projects:

To acquire learning technology equipment or facilities including, but not limited to,
Interactive whiteboards,
Computer servers, and
Desktop, laptop, and tablet computers;

To install high-speed broadband or wireless internet connectivity for schools and communities;

To construct, enhance, and modernize educational facilities to accommodate pre-kindergarten programs and provide instructional space to replace transportable classroom units; and
To install high-tech security features in school buildings and on school campuses.

I think I oppose this. If it was just for the infrastructure to add decent Internet, I might go for it (though even in the rural areas around here, schools have access to broadband Internet, so I don’t know that this is really needed – let them fund it in the State budget as needed). But, like, $2 billion worth of 20 year bonds to buy laptpos that are gonna be obsolete and in a landfill about 15 years before the bonds are paid off? Doesn’t sound like a good plan to me. And when they start talking about “high-tech security features,” I start thinking about throwing lots of money away to contractors.

I think I’m gonna have to vote no on this one.

Otherwise, for the first time since we moved here, I get a choice of who to vote for for my State Assembly representative. Used to be the old white Republican dude ran unopposed every year, but this year there’s an old white Democratic woman running against him. I’ll have to go with the old broad (one of her slogans was “Albany needs some fresh blood – even if it IS 68 years old). She used to be a nurse, but I’m trying not to hold that against her.

We also have two candidates for Sheriff for the first time in, I think, my lifetime. The current one is retiring, so we get a choice.

I could go on, but I need to get off my ass and get ready to go if I’m gonna vote on the way in. My only regret is that I can’t stick around for the pancake breakfast at the Methodist church. On the bright side, I earn a day off for working today. Yay!

UPDATE: So, since I know you were all wondering, I did vote on the way in to work this morning (got gas, too – now I need a nap). I saw the wife apparently beat me there on her way in. There was a pretty good crowd, all things considered. I was #64 on the scanner that I fed my ballot in to (there were two machines there).

It’s funny, but I guess I don’t really miss the old lever machines as much as I thought I would. FOr one thing, I’ve been taking standardized tests all my life, so filling in the little circle is second nature to me. Plus, you don’t have to stand in line while the person in front of you spends half an hour trying to figure out how to get the curtain back open (though cranking that lever back over was a lot more satisfying than watching you ballot disappear into the little black box).

Instead there are plenty of little privacy stations where you can actually sit down and read the propositions if you want to. All they need to do is put out a carafe of coffee and add a urinal and it would be the perfect setup.

So my civic duty is done for another year, and now I can just sit back, relax, and wait for the Senate to fall into the hands of the Empire.

Ah, November. Cold, dark, grey, bleak, leafless November. Not quite frigid yet, but you can feel winter in the air and you know you’ve got six months of shitty weather to look forward to. God, I love me some November. I trust everybody had a happy Halloween on Friday and an enjoyable game of “Jesus Christ, when did we get all these clocks?” yesterday. This falling back stuff is strange. Yesterday morning, I went through the obligatory, “I can’t believe it’s only <insert time here> – it seems so much later!” Then in the afternoon – around one o’clock or so, I kinda got used to it, and kind of bummed when I found out I was looking at a clock that had already been changed. Then by about 5:00, I was back to thinking it was later than the clock said but by the time I stayed up too late (until nine – aka, the “old” ten), I was feeling as though we set the clocks ahead instead of behind, which kind of how I feel this morning (and what I’ll wish this evening – sunset is 4:53 PM today around here, and that just plain sucks).

Since I was off Friday, I took my sister to Costco to see what was so great. It was big and shiny and new. And they have some nice stuff, I guess. I didn’t really see anything that jumped out at me. There were way too many people, all milling about like “walkers” from the Walking Dead (shuffling around with no apparent regard for moving in a straight line and basically just being in my way). They actually made me produce my membership card just to walk in, and they only accept debit cards or AMEX (I have no desire to get another credit card – fee or no fee).

I greatly preferred my Sunday morning trip to BJs, to be honest. I got there two minutes after they opened, hardly any other people there, and I was in and out and back home in less than an hour.

Otherwise, it was kinda friggin’ cold and windy this weekend. Not much good for doing anything but consuming media. I’m really diggin’ my new Chromecast (why did I ever wait so long?), primarily for “casting” music to my stereo. It’s really kind of nice to be able to control it from my phone of computer or my tablet. And I had no idea, but when I “cast” to it, it actually turns on my receiver and sets it to the appropriate output. Aint that something? Those crafty bastards at Onkyo (OK, it’s not unique to them, it’s HDMI CEC – Consumer Electronic Control – but still)!

It’s supposed to warm up a bit this week, but don’t worry – it’ll be cold again next weekend.