listened to the debate tonight.

Romney: Geeze, get better on masscare/obamacare. If the SCOTUS does not take it out for us, and even if they do you need to get a lot more liberty oriented view on this. I thought you sounded decent otherwise.

Now practice with me:


I know that what works in one state is not the right solution everywhere and Masscare is not perfect.

I want to repeal Obamacare immediately and I want congress to replace it with a bill that allows a broad range of solutions to be applied across 50 states.

The ONE federal solution that makes sense is to allow all citizens to have an HSA and then buy a "major medical" policy across state lines that is exempted from any state regulations that all insurace policies cover the pet health project of that states legislature. Those state insurance rules don't make sense for a major medical, high deductible plan and THIS is a reasonable commerce clause item.

As president I would encourage states to experiment with subsidizing HSA debit cards and major medical policies for medicaid recipients. I do not subscribe to the belief that being poor means bureaucrats can manage your health better than you can.

Come on Mitt, you can do it.

Arghhhh

Just when I have myself almost convinced that Newt is too toxic and Romney is a closet conservative I hear something vague about Mitt saying that Barry's HARP2 sp? plan (2nd round of mortgage bailouts) is "doing it the wrong way" WTH Mitt, do you think there is a right way for the government to keep interfering? This was my fear with Mitt just based on hearsay and when I was hoping Perry could rescue the GOP from the scrubby field of other "not Mitts" and was not digging into who is Mitt myself.

Perry drops out, I go to the wiki page on Mitt, (well figured more objective than his campaign page or some other places) Does not sound all bad. Held line on tax increases (fees increased instead but I don't know if fees were used for revenue or if general budget had subsidized the cost of some things before) and some spending was cut; with a democratic legislature so it wasn't easy to get them to agree to any cuts. And now I hear more stuff that sounds like "oh yes, Mitt thinks gub'mint should solve problems" and that does fit in with the Masscare stuff.

So should I support Santorum? Maybe he does have more charisma than I thought? I have not given him any chance yet, and the MFM is darned good at ignoring candidates that they fear, then they go to ridicule if that fails, then full on attack if ridicule is not taking their feared guy out. Romney is not striking me as having great charisma himself but Santorum lost big in his senate race for a 2nd term and that strikes me as quite bad. Maybe PA was just too corrupt in '06 but geeze, an incumbent should have at least only lost close and he was blown out.

I cannot support the very old, very bigoted guy who spouts conspiracy theories as well as the "return to constitutional principles" stuff I like. I just cant. I guess I should go to Mitt's campaign page. If he is pushing government as an answer than I cannot support him in the primary. I'll sit it out or else push Newt or Santorum. Waah I want Perry back or T-Paw .... and none of that is happening.

**Darn it, I know Rush is often subtle but when he said "If I didn't know better I would think so & so said Romney supported HARP 2 in this interview" I really did take it as Romney saying something like HARP was needed. Doesn't sound like it now.

***Rush is not going to take any sides, I think he is marginally on the "not Mitt" side; but mainly he is about ratings at this point.

**** I understand only too well a sentiment of "these effing establishment GOPers shoot to kill with the conservatives and go easy on the real enemies", I still feel like they cost Buck the senate seat in 2010 and Jane Norton *SHOULD* have run for governor instead of leaving it to the weak field, and why in hell is it NOT the responsibility of the party to run a background check and dis-allow a con man to run in the primary? But they may be right about fearing Newt.

So why did they help shoot down Perry first? Oh yeah, cuz they totally feared the "bumbling TX cowpoke meme from the MFM more than anything. I hope they are prepared for the "CULTIST MORMAN" attacks on Romney if he does win the nomination. Its going to be ugly and panty waists who STLL think they can work with the MFM after all the evidence of the last 3 years are in for a world of hurt.

trying to write a real essay again.

Government sucks at solving problems -- the government workers don't want their reason for employment to go away after all. I feel like this deserves a good write-up. I would guess it has been covered before by really good writers like Sowell or even "Ace" but I haven't read it lately.

Case in point: The EPA. The EPA actually did solve the pollution problems that led to its formation. Problem is that they did not want to shrink into just a small watchdog agency to ensure compliance with the necessary regulations written up to Oh lets just say 1980 since I don't want to research for hours trying to identify the point at which additional regulations became more about finding reasons to expand the agency vs addressing serious pollution.

But the most insidious damage is when a government agency is created to address a social problem like poverty. Now if the Catholic church or the Lutheran Aid society etc decides to take on providing for those who cannot take care of themselves, they would like to be able to eliminate or at least greatly reduce the number of people in need at some point so they can build a nice cathedral or something like that with those dollars, and the volunteers can go fishing or attend bible classes etc instead of spending their time handing out the aid indefinitely. Thus they have incentives to teach life or job skills as needed and to attach some social stigma to capable adults who are taking aid for years on end.


However when the government creates a agency to provide for poor people they hire bureaucrats to staff the agency. These bureaucrats don't want to lose their jobs. Even if the front line staff burn out, the managers at the top want the agency to continue to exist and even to expand. Thus they may offer various life and job skills classes but unless you can earn this much (almost always more than entry level or minimum wage jobs) you are basically working for free since you will lose a dollar of benefits for every dollar you earn. Congress did not set up hard cut-offs when they authorized this or that kind of assistance -- the only reason not to have a sliding scale where your aid is only cut by oh lets say 10 cents per dollar and someone with only the 'aid' be in a situation of being worse off than a median wage earner is to continue the need to have all that staff overseeing all that aid so the middle manager and on up bureaucrats have job security.

I wonder how many people who fear Newt were saying Perry needed to drop out

Did they think Santorum would get Perry's support and hang in tough until Newt imploded again? I suppose some thought Romney would get the support. I checked out the wikepedia on Romney and he doesn't sound awful. I feel like I should get a copy of it so I can see if they change it to highlight negatives later, but solid business executive. Came back and saved original Baen when it was faltering after he had been with Baen Capitol. Masscare is a liability, although if the Supreme court strikes Obomacare down it becomes much less so.

I have not heard any of the debates and everybody has a bias but it doesn't sound like Mitt is selling himself well at all. If he is not proud of being a great CEO and earning lots of money as well as turning around the SLC olympics and reducing spending in Massachusetts he should never have been running IMO. If he thinks he should not toot his own horn he does NOT get politics well enough. I want him to say "I worked with the legislature to stop handing towns and counties money and make them pay for what they wanted to spend out of their own revenues and I will do the same with a federal legislature that wants to bail out spendthrift cities or states"

Newt is a political animal. I don't trust that he truly believes in any conservative principles, but he has picked up on the mood of the primary voters darned well and I do think he is more likely to stick with the Tea Party sentiments in office, he'll know that is his only chance to do something to earn pages in history books and/or get re-elected, not sure which would be higher incentive for him. He scares me as giving the DNC and MFM lots of ammo, but there is plenty of ammo against Mitt as well and w/o actually reading Sowell's article itself, the point that either candidate will be attacked by the MFM and needs to be able to talk to voters over the MFM's heads and sell themselves is a damned good one. If only there was not the fear of Newt going off an a wild tangent and derailing himself or worse derailing the conservative movement along with himself.... I don't know that I can go to the caucus and argue for either of them. Got a couple weeks and I could always go, but focus on local stuff (which I'm totally not aware of what is going on, I'm bad)

I just don't think safe guy Romney is that safe of a choice in terms of general election, unless he can become inspiring. Also doesn't matter how honorable he is, if he is buying into the notion that "government has to solve most of these problems" then he will not be able to reverse our deficit crisis and start shrinking the debt. Government sucks at solving problems -- the government workers don't want their reason for employment to go away after all.

Can I get some cheese to go with my whine?

I'm such a wimp. I have a cold starting up and resorted to disk cleanup at work because I didn't want to to have to focus very hard. I hate the itchy nose and mild sore throat too. Of course I'll hate the runny nose and PND even worse. I do hope all the zinc lozenges are able to shorten the duration and intensity. I did start taking them saturday night when my throat felt sore and was wondering if it was a false alarm yesterday but kept taking some and today woke up with the unmistakable itchy nose.

Sit on fingers, sit on fingers ....

Must not take it personally when someone else believes in "don't let a horse/dog/cat whatever go until they are absolutely in pain, not going to make it, whatever" I still sometimes have regrets with Cindy, but its on the "I wish she could have been spry into her 30's" rather than "did I let her go too soon" I have more regrets with the cats and dogs that the parents clung on to and I did not override them and I saw so much pain in these pet's eyes in their last hours. I know if I contract a terminal illness I'd want to place my critters with folks, that like me might err slightly on the too soon side. I'd put them down perfectly healthy rather than have someone that I KNOW clings on to a hurting critter be in charge of them.

Sort of in denial

Its the last day for my co-worker that is moving on to bigger things. I should have been frantically working all week to get ahead or least robustly caught up to have some clear time to cover the new duties next week. But I've pretty much been just putzing along as usual. There is a card on my desk that is probably from her and I've skipped opening it in case I can't corral emotions. I skipped the farewell lunch with the excuse that I want to go to the farewell FAC and could not afford to be out of the office for both. In truth I did not want to attend a huge luncheon with all the liberals. M is friends with everyone and I am not sure of her politics, somewhat liberal I think, but more in libertarian sense, her dad suffered under commies and she is going to a big corporation.

Now its later afternoon and I'll probably have to force myself to go to the FAC at all or at least to stay for a polite length of time. The web page review says LOUD, ugh, I think I've been to the place once when the last co-worker left but it was summer so we were outside in patio seating. Sounds like they have muzak on fridays, yuck. Perhaps the outdoors lover will have convinced folks to go outside in the warm chinook weather. Oh well if its loud I do have a great excuse not to chat, everyone knows I have terribly wimpy volume and projection and would be inaudible over background noise.

I'm too young and I don't have my own lawn ...

But dang I feel like a cranky old curmudgeon wanting to shout "Get off my lawn" a lot lately. Well I'm still bummed that Perry withdrew, not like he let me down so much as that he had to withdraw because he was not regaining any in the polls. Didn't make a great early impression in first debates and folks would not reconsider in face of the MFM comedians constant drumbeat it seemed like. I think Perry figured Newt was the best hope for the GOP. Newt as the best hope, good lord things are messed up.

Newt resonates with me some because he tells off the MFM. Unfortunately he is not doing it with humor and class like Reagan mostly managed to do, so I'm not sure how Newts 'take downs' play across all voters, many of whom still seem to think these DNC P/R people pretending to be reporters and such are trustworthy. And while I can make the argument that the country has done pretty well with healthy libido guys as POTUS (ie Clinton). I do myself, have a bit of "well it shows pretty poor judgement on Newts part to get hitched with MaryAnne (sp?) if the congressional wives considered her unstable et al even back in the day."

But Romney? I cannot just accept "oh he is really quite conservative, his record reflects being stuck with a Mass. Dem legislature" Mitt would have to make that argument himself and convincingly to mollify me, but he does not. Yeah I have heard the theory is that he's avoiding scaring away the skittish independents that voted for Obama. But is a base that is going "ughhh, we don't trust Mitt but we have to get rid of Barry" really going to convince wobblers who say they wont vote again for Barry to vote for Mitt if Trump or Luap Nor or someone runs 3rd party? If the MFM unleashes full class warfare and "Mormans are a cult" on MItt will the "skittish independents" be scared off him, especially if the GOP voters are going "well he was the best we could get this year, and he is better than Barry" rather than "Mitt will be fantastic for this country, you'd be crazy not to vote for him?"

I don't have a good feeling at all, we are going to be stuck just hoping the 2010 sentiment of "well the GOP doesn't really get it either but we can drag them towards fiscal sanity but there is no hope of sanity with Dems" is enough to prevail; with a side sentiment of "if Mitt -or Newt- disappoints us we can go 3rd party or challenge for the GOP primary or something in 2016, but again this all depends on strong anti Barry/DNC votes and they might thwart that with a 3rd party candidate. Caring about politics and the future of the country sucks. Of course it always has, a lot of the signers of the Declaration of Independence payed high personal prices for giving us the great country we had. What a pisser that we as a nation have so defaced the bedrock principles and may be on the verge of just tossing them in a dumpster instead of restoring them.

Ugh, more propaganda believers.

cripes. Now UNAVCO, who have nothing to gain from climate change hysteria since their science area is GEOPHYSICS is jumping on the pander to the watermelon (green outside commie red inside) environmental movement. Having Naomi Oreskes author of "Merchants of Doubt" as a keynote speaker.

Now a fine book called "Mechants of DOOM" revealing that the nature of science funding leads to doomsday predictions to try to get public funding from a congress running huge deficits and completely incapable of understanding science well enough to tell junk science from sound science could be written. But a "handful of politically connected scientists have blocked action on tobacco smoke, DDT, ... and now climate change" Oh Puh-lease, these are varied fields, how would *a* group of scientists have any involvement across them?

No I am not going to put money in Miss Oreskes pocket to find out how she spins this. But if its already in the library perhaps I
should read it, learn the mind of the enemy -- though I hate to raise my blood pressure, and I have a hard time achieving any kind of clinical detachment with crap like this. Oh and these merchants of Doubt have been horribly ineffective based on those examples, seeing as how the politicians sided with the doomsday voices in all the historical examples given.

YAWN: ABC has tape of ex-wife interview about Newt

Ehhh, whatever. In a world where even the supposedly more in tune primary voters are rejecting Perry -which *I* think this has way more to do with Leno, Fallon et al cracking jokes about Perry being dumb than about direct impressions formed by watching debates or seeking out you-tube of Perry's interviews we are doomed anyway. And Perry was not for sure going to try to shrink government any if elected; and its a big question as to whether he would have been able to convince voters to tune out the MFM and vote to end the 4 years of misery we've had from Barry.

If we are going to continue letting the MarxSpewMedia filter sound bites to make a scoamf like Barry seem likeable and intelligent and tell us --oh heck I already did that rant, but anyway if people won't realize they get heavily filtered news and sound bytes spun to make the most socialist/marxist minded dems sound good and the conservatives sound bad and that the media will also spin during the primary season for the GOP candidate they either want as being easy to beat (ie McCain) or possibly with Romney think will solidify the new government agencies and entitlements as being approved by bi-partisan presidents; then things can not improve by a whole lot or for any length of time. Honestly if the "conservative" part of the public will only go with a candidate that is either getting a pass from the media, or scoring some rounds on the media (who are probably holding back some because he is the #2 choice as easy to beat, or possibly can be manipulated in office although not nearly the safe pick Mittens would be) than so be it.

Most of the media are the enemy of a Republic form of government, with equal justice for all and respect for property rights --if the portion of the public that considers itself conservative cannot get that through their heads then we are doomed to lose the issue at some point.

And if GOP selects Romney as the nominee, even if he wins the election I suspect we will lose on rolling back government intrusion into everybody's lives and we maybe get another 10-15 years before the weight of all the entitlement programs crashes the country as we knew it.

If Barry wins, he appoints some more very bad SCOTUS members, weakens the military, perhaps gets us into a war with Islam if he thinks he has tipped the scales to where we will lose.

Either way we may get a "tea party" with a good candidate in 2016 (maybe 2014 for congress) but I fear it will be too late to salvage the republic as we knew it. Oh well, I enjoyed the fruits of Reaganism beating back the 200 year life cycle for good democratic republics by 30 years and its not like it will be guaranteed universal misery under socialist democracy and it might not collapse before my death. My nephew to be (hopefully born healthy in 5 months) may be ok in spite of the country having chosen, well honestly "national suicide" is a pretty good term, suicide of the nation we had in 2008 and refusing to quit the path of ruin in 2012.

I want my youthful cast iron stomach back.

Last 2 days I have had a sore stomach in the afternoon. Its not like a typical upset feeling stomach, feels more like the muscles in the abdomen are sore but I sure haven't done any marathon sit-up sessions or anything. Did feel better last night after I took gas-X when I got home so I guess I'm getting some kind of bloating/gas from something, and feeling the pressure of the bloating. Not too likely to be from coffee since I don't notice it when I have my morning coffee. Yesterday I made the mistake of trying to munch on various stuff thinking sugar or yogurt or XXX might settle my stomach. Tomorrow I must remember to bring some gas-X to work. Hopefully this is a temporary thing, maybe from the black cohosh capsules I have been taking? I'm not really eating any different foods than my normal.

I'm not going to stop the cohosh right away because I have been feeling less moody. The stomach flora should be able to adjust, if not I guess I'll have to go to either a regular dr or naturopath and get some professional advise on balancing the hormones. I don't feel like I can function at a professional level when I alternate between wanting to rip someone's head off and feeling weepy over some tiny tiny little thing so the hormones have got to be tamed somehow or other. Hopefully in a way that resets my metabolism/appetite as well so I stop gaining weight like I want to become a sumo wrestler.

I should probably try the modified Atkins thing again. Last time I tried to go on it I felt like I couldn't stand not having some carbs at breakfast but before that it really worked pretty well for me, only having carbs at one meal a day and having eggs for breakfast and salad or just veggies and lean meat for lunch. Or perhaps the WW online would work better for me now and not drive me crazy with crashing the web browser and being difficult to look up points etc. I really liked the carb addicts diet though because I didn't have to keep track of points or calories, and I could eat anything as long as it was at the one meal per day with carbs so I only ever had to tell myself "wait", never "no don't eat that"

*postscript -- black cohosh side effect can include weight gain. OK, that + its old and I am having this bloated feeling within a few days of starting to take it. I'm going to toss it. I'll try some of my other old herbs. Maybe I'll try some of the products/herbs that are supposed to stimulate and or balance my own hormone production soon. But I tend to be skeptical of new stuff that has not been being used for ages because it works.

Ahhh, peace and quiet

I came in to the office so I could piddle with some work and make up half the PTO day I took to go to the stock show. Mostly to have complete peace and quiet though. Office is empty being a holiday. Its relatively quiet at home; sis, her SO and their 2 dogs are gone but I wanted a change of scenery as well as total peace and quiet. I detest most daytime TV and it was not miserable out, but was kind of cold for doing anything outside. I could have made use of my new short couch in the upstairs office but preserving PTO for future carried the day. I gave mom the size large blaze orange coat I bought. Gave sis cash with note that it was for cost of out of state elk license. I am going to plan on "only going up on 1 or 2 of the weekends" this fall. There is no reason I should have to burn scads of PTO and stay out there for 9-10 days straight.

I am a tiny bit blue about it, but I just do not enjoy spending time with sis like I used to. Perhaps if it was just us camping and riding like we did annually for a few years I would again, but I suspect not. A) It is never just spending time with her anymore. She is always having to call her SO cuz he worries if he doesn't hear from her regularly and B) I think we have both changed a bit and just don't sync as well as we used to. But on the plus side we are still on good terms with each other and it is not like we live so close together that we should be getting together more often -well perhaps it would be easier for me to meet her 2x/month for dinner or something then spending a block of time under the same roof, but it works ok when she visits here or I visit there, and really it was specifically the riding trips where we ever had really good sync and they are getting a bit of rose-colored memory effect at that.

Sweet little Lady

Lady the Paso Fino. I was *going* to take Ole and sis's dog Buddy for a quick outing. Ole *#@@!! ran off before I got saddled and I had to send dad after him. Sis's SO came out while I was taking off and Buddy decided he had to stay since one of his humans was outside. So it was just Lady and I. I grabbed her because I was not up to deal with Shade if she was all keyed up and Lady hasn't been ridden in about a month and I want her not to be too wild when L can come out again since L is pretty much a rookie. Lady was real good once I pointed her down the road (a bit of circling while I mounted, but Buddy was swirling at the time so Lady has that excuse.)

I spent like a socialist yesterday

.... except I was using my own money. Luckily no big purchases just some carney type food, overpriced beers etc. Now I know what a funnel cake is and I never need to waste my taste buds, let alone over $5 on one again. Yuck. I should have just split one with sis but stupidly thought perhaps other fandamily members might want some. And spent $30 on re-usable lint grabbers. Well the little rubber/plastic pyramids brush part works well to lift up hair from fleece or carpet but I don't think I'll get much use out of the sticky roller things. Not $30 worth for sure. I hardly ever worry any about lint or pet hairs so it was really just buying into a good slick talker's sales pitch to make me buy one when sis got one. She does want to remove dog hair from their pickup interior easily so if the things work, will get some use out of them. Guess I've been such a hermit the last few years that my resistance to live sales pitches has gotten weak.

I did enjoy watching Ranch Horse Classic versatility and dog agility demo. I should make a point of getting some horses to some sorting practice events for cross training and maybe try to play just a bit with reining type moves with Sadie, whom I think could do the lower level moves pretty well if I asked for them correctly. Nice change from Shade and Grey who have been great sports and gone down the trails well but didn't seem suited to try reining. I loff the lazier mindset of trail riding now, but a bit of riding a pattern would be really good for me too I think. The dogs are safe from any agility training though. Its fun to watch and if a life upheaval meant I could not have horses I might try it, but no way I'd try to carve out time for it now. Dog training is limited to the dog sticking with me when I let him come along when I ride the field roads around home.

OH boy even more job security

Software genius found another bug in his software when I asked him to get it working for one more model type where it had been failing. Since he threw me under the bus as why data re re-processing might get delayed because of me taking PTO for the researchers chomping on the bit for data to get caught up from june I replied to that email with his bug report and threw him back under. I am just so sick and tired of this place. Oh on the surface we are so rah rah team, everybody gets along, but trust a group of inconsiderate liberals to pitch a hissy fit whenever they find themselves inconvenienced.

job security, job security

Just think of it as job security rather than "I want to beat up the software genius for screwing up" I am on the verge of re-running two months of data processing AGAIN. Because the "software genius" messed up something, and it didn't show up until the one mission that uses a different model analysis for its comparison plots was processed and plots generated. I had already pushed results to two data servers from the processing cpu and even sent them to a group tape archive and the company-wide archive area.

So I re-ran those months, pushed to the servers and redid the archiving and just today find out that the problem is more widespread than just that one model analysis. Argghhh. I have analyzed why I get so annoyed when "genius" makes a mistake and things have to be re-done before and its is specifically because he is considered a genius/guru, absolutely indispensable to the group yada yada ---and he encourages that view of himself.

If he was just considered an average schmuck among the group I would just feel like "oh well these things happen" and deal with it. Lord knows I've made some of those errors that leave one gulping and having to reprocess huge amounts of data myself; but no one looks upon me as an infallible guru.

Oh and I had better redo everything that was converted with the buggy code, not just the latest type that has been found to be a problem or I'll get to redo more processing at some point. I don't even have the exact dates, I'll just have to redo large amounts of data for safety's sake. Oh and better remember to email the foreign collaborator and let her know that ~ tow months of tar files I sent had buggy data and will need to be replaced too. Love it, just love it /sarc

My sister and her SO are coming down this weekend (might get here tonight). The current weather would have forced that they come directly here and then swing up to see his dad on the way home anyway but OF COURSE they did not even think about stopping there first so that their time here would fall on weekend and holiday monday so I wouldn't have to juggle anything to visit with them. My job is just considered to be "workfare" within the family, although they sure don't mind it when they need money. To be fair, sis has never needed so much as a loan, its the golden family son that gets $ gifts and mom needing months of rent in advance --I must remember that I need to start paying again now too. She would remember at some point when her bank acct was low, but there is never a defined schedule. My family truly puts the fun in dysfunctional. No druggies or absolute sociopaths, just garden variety dysfunction and we do have fun times together but some times I want to figuratively run away from home. I'd be much more appreciated as a prodigal than I am now, hmm I guess I should re-read that bible parable, might provide some needed serenity.

Its like they read my post. doodoo doodoo....

AFTER having paid to replace the parking roof tiles at work in the normal mode they have kept the area off limits to use (don't want us getting hurt ) and yesterday they sent an FYI email that they are going to consult with a structural engineer to come up with some way to support the roof to prevent any more falling panels. Brilliant ... its not like the engineer is going to want to see how the panels attach currently /sarc. I suspect its just gravity like an indoor suspended roof but I didn't ask when they were replacing them or watch the process long enough to know if there is some screws, clamps or something else added.

I have some CDs at my bank. Need to do something with them but the 6 mo rolled over today. (I thought I should do something about it by close of business but they show it already rolled over) SOO frustrating although a tiny bump in the grand scheme of things. Its not like I have a plan what to do instead and I don't think we'll have HYPER inflation; its just that inflation is here already, food package sizes keep shrinking as well as prices going up and the horse feed prices are way up. So annoying to have been too slow and locked in a pitiful 0.4% rate for another 6 months unless I take a penalty.

I bought a loveseat today. Dang seller must have sprayed the cushions with febreeze right before I got there. I had to have the windows cracked driving to work and the dash vent fan on. I dislike febreeze smell rather than it was super overdone but I hope it clears out with all 4 windows cracked 1-2 inches while I'm parked. Cheyenne forecast was light snow overnight so I should probably make dad help me haul it upstairs right away when I get home tonight. Better call and warn him I guess. I really should be working more to figure out my move out options instead of making tiny tweaks, I am just hyper annoyed all the time lately. The parents have not changed, I'm just way more annoyed by their quirks lately. Maybe I need to double my magnesium dosing or take some hormone balancers.

Broncos WIN!

I could not just watch the game. Rode Shade at the start, just stayed in the pasture and rode. I really wanted to work on my seat a bit and have a relaxed horse. I was back in the house before the end of the 1st half. Then I went out and aired up the snow tires I put on my car yesterday. Borrowed dad's air wrench and he even has a hydraulic floor jack, that must be a recent purchase I didn't know we had it but it sure makes things quick and easy. Came back in and had to keep playing my solitaire mahjong game on the laptop rather than really watching the game as the Steelers caught up, tied the game, had the ball with a chance to go ahead but the defense sacked Ben Raplistburger to shut that down. Then must be the fastest OT ever. 80 yard TD pass on the first play. Nice long pass from Tebow to Thomas before the great run for the TD too.

I am not a big football, or any pro sports fan but take a mild interest in the home teams and it has been so fun with Tebow. I get an extra thrill with him doing well just because he wont hide his christianity and it makes the marxists fume. I was raised Luthern (coffee and cookies in the church basement is true) but also at least our preacher it was more slanted towards "pray in a closet" rather than making a show of piety --which really appeals to my shy nature. But in todays world I think its absolutely refreshing to have a Tebow, honoring god and praising Jesus openly and too bad if that makes someone a bit uncomfortable.

Saturday I woke up with a headache and dragged until after 4. Kept thinking I just needed caffeine and didn't take decongestant and alleve(TM) until about 2. But I am going to try to avoid wheat for a week or two just to see if there may be a mild wheat allergy going on. I did feel much better today so its probably not a cold or sinus issue.

Arghhh

I'm about to the point of "BRING IT" you Mayans. I am tired of the world as I know it anyway. I know most sweeping change possibilities would be worse at least in the short term but damn it sucks feeling like a Cassandra anyway. The nation is busy shredding rule of law and other foundations of the Republic of the USA as it was formed. It surely seems that the GOP/electorate cannot get beyond letting the MarxSpewMedia (and mostly the comedian branch --ie effing JESTERS at that) dictate that candidate A is too much of a hick and/or senile at early 60's age. Candidate B was just a skirt chaser with a pizza selling type slogan. Candidate C cheats/cheated on his wives and is too unpredictable, and lets see Candidate D was a beeotch and is a bit looney, and Candidate E who never even got in officially was just a dumb broad from a backwoods state .....

So the choice is supposedly between the former governor of Massachusetts. MA- for petes sake, oooh oooh oooh, liberals were OK with him, at least for ONE ,and I'm pretty sure it was only ONE term, so he'll be electable in the general even though the base does not trust him to roll back much of the government overreach we've had. Oh and he happens to be Morman, which the media elites assure everyone only affects the primaries where the "christian fundamentalists" have more sway. Uh Huh, yeah sure the media won't smear the church of LDS and do their best to make them out to be a freaky cult to improve odds for the marxists in the general. The media would NEVER do that, even though we have recent history showing us how low they stooped to smear Palin.

OR Luap Nor, anti-semitist, truther, tin-foil hat ...... (oh wouldn't the media just LOVE it if this was the nominee) I don't think he has any chance of getting the nom. and the media knows it, they just want him to hobble potentially better candidates, maybe feel like he should run independent.

OR a ONE-TERM senator who was voted out as an incumbent. Who is saying laws should follow what is in the bible. Who may be against robbing Peter via taxes to give money to Leroy, but it seems like he is otherwise quite OK with lots and lots of government. Please please NO NO NO. If its between someone who really seems way too close to actually wanting the "christian theocracy" that the leftists are always worrying or at least pretending to be worrying about and the northeast country club type, former governor of MASS, I would have to go with Mitt.

GAAAA!!!! I am sadly thinking that if I really look into it, I'll find out Canada is even more in sway of liberal brainwashing but I get the impression they already have national healthcare and a system of buying insurance/paying yourself if you want better care (so as their healthcare costs rise beyond what they can afford they CAN and probably will just have to reduce the quality of the government care. Fine, I seriously think people should pay up for extras anyway (like the chiro visits I enjoy that are not covered by insurance --golly gee, being less regulated (for now) my chiro doesn't have to charge so much I cant just pay for it.
+ I don't think Canada forced their banks to make bad loans, so they don't have that looming over their heads .... I'm sure there is lots of negatives that I am just not aware of to being in Canada, but if the U.S. keeps charging as fast as possible towards destruction ..............


And we already pay for health care for everybody in the U.S. its just that employers and self-insured folks are paying for all the under-reimbursed medicaid visits and unpaid "emergency" services that hospitals are required by law to provide. Obamacare has made the situation worse but no one in the GOP is seriously proposing a solution.

Heres a free one they could borrow: Replace the earned Income Tax Credit with a major medical policy and small pre-paid HSA debit card If the filer provides proof of insurance they can have the whole credit into an HSA account

Encourage states to experiment with major medical policies and HSA accounts for medicaid recipients. Gee if they have an HSA that they can preserve and use later for stuff medicaid doesn't normally cover I bet they can reduce their medical expenses vs when they have to work the system to make sure they don't get billed. People are smarter than politicians give them credit for, its just that usually the government penalizes "smarts' and rewards acting clueless. Bureaucrats do love to feel extra important. Make medical malpractice less of a lottery system ............

Its going to get busy at work

One of the team is leaving on Jan 20th. She will be very much missed and we are all going to be filling parts of her job for at least 3 months thanks to the government funded NFP hiring process, + while new person is trained.

I think its a good thing. I was looking at CL housing ads last week and there was something for a room-mate from a gal with a house on a 2.5 acre lot that was pretty tempting but I went "no, I want to stay where I am until Sadie is less green" Similarly with work; I think I want to focus on clearing away clutter at home and with old work loose ends, with the goal that if the country chooses to toss aside the remaining vestiges of being a REPUBLIC with equal rule of law for all in Nov. I am ready to get out. Otherwise I may still try to move to a state that is not running towards marxism while other states are choosing to become more sane, but plan to not make huge life changes in the next 6-10 months, but just be laying the groundwork so that I am ready to move quickly if I feel I must or if a special opportunity arises.

Good start to the week and year, but then

Tuesday came around. Seems like such an innocuous day at first glance, but it is back to grindstone after holiday weekends. When exactly did this trend of moving holidays to monday start anyway? In the UK I believe they call them bank holidays and had them for many decades but I believe in the U.S. we didn't do holidays to make 3 day weekends for banks and government employees until about 30-35 years ago. I remember they moved memorial day to last (or possibly 4th) monday in May when I was a kid, and we used to 'celebrate' Abraham Lincoln and George Washington birthdays in school. Probably the USPS/government offices had day off but kids celebrated in school --then the U.S. moved to MLK day on the 3rd monday in Jan + 'presidents day' on 3rd monday in Feb and teachers take these days off along with the banks and gubmint employees (and us who get most of the gubmint holidays --but not veterans day because they are a bunch of commie hippies here and want 4 paid days at thanksgiving instead. This year is bad since Christmas and NYD fell on sundays so we have extra monday holidays.

And then tuesday is a preferred voting/caucus day and that leads to plenty of evening angst on several election year tuesdays. Darn it, taking an interest in politics is bad for one's mood. Such a depressing thing choosing the candidate you distrust the least rather than really liking any of them most of the time and then stupid people buy phony BS propaganda and make choices you think are even worse than your own 'best option available' or worse you actually liked a candidate but stupid other voters reject them.

Then I bumped into the cupboard door with my mug of hot peppermint tea last night when I went to reach for sugar. OW dammit, splashed right onto the side of my boob. Grabbed the tee away from my skin and ran upstairs and stripped and got some cold water on it and then neosporin + lidocaine and used an ice pack a bit later and it is barely, just barely a first degree burn in the center of the spot that was bright pink last night but it was uncomfortable for about an hour. Who knew there are that many nerve endings on a boob.

Then today, a really NICE sunny warm morning but I choose to grab my snow tires to get them put on and the tire guy talked me out of it. (well not OUT of it --but I didn't have him swap them out) I am so annoyed. Darn it, charge enough for the service that it is worth your while instead of wanting me to wear out your brand name tires faster so that you can sell me the replacements or whatever. I misunderstood when he said $10 to do it, but "its not worth doing it when you'll take them off in 2 months" it is really more like 4 or 4.5 months, they don't have to come off before end of Apr, middle of May; and thought it was $10/tire which seemed so high I didn't care to bother, but they charge $2.50 per tire to rotate on their price board inside and I think it should not be any more to swap my snow tires on their own rims for the tires that were on the car so that would have been $10 total, he was by himself and maybe wanted to be free to make a higher profit sale but it was very irksome. Guess I'll see if the co-op does tire rotations for a reasonable charge, or I'll dig into my mulish side and change them myself this weekend even though it will take me so much longer not having the lift and air wrenches that $10 would be very much worth having got it done. Mebbe the tire store owner is going Galt.

And the eye-roll for today

The new building that they bought at work has a split parking area on what should be the ground floor, with a small central area with some storage, bathrooms, showers, unattended lobby. The parking area does not have walls, it has a dropped panel roof like an interior office space. This city gets chinook wind gusts 2-3 times a year. For the second time since we moved in the covered parking area is closed off for fixing the ceiling panels. But in typical liberal fashion they are ignoring the fact that ceiling tiles just suspended in a framework, even if it more sturdy frames and tiles than the interior ceilings WILL NOT WORK IN THIS AREA.

They will probably replace a good # of the tiles another half a dozen times before they figure out they either need to get windbreaks if not full on walls at least along the one curved arc of the building or come up with different ceiling arrangement -or both.

double monday blahs.

Eh, it happens after the 3-day weekends and I'm still in the winter blahs. I tossed 3 boxes and a garbage bag full of junk in the dumpster this morning but I am getting more resistant to tossing things and I am reluctant to even go through my last shelf in the closet or tackle the stuff on the floor in the other closet. There is just a tiny amount of clutter left in the rooms I have tackled and it is annoying me but I have wanted to just go through other spaces and make the easy decisions to toss junky things that have just been taking space and I was not going to suddenly decide I wanted to spend lots of time to fix them or take them apart to use as materials for some odd craft project.

I had a nice ride on Shade monday. She was on high alert for hunters or target practice but I was right, we were the only ones out there and she did relax a bit by the end of the ride. I think I will have to commit to staying in the paddocks on weekends with her, for a while, or trailer someplace where there is no hunting until the waterfowl season is over.

I rode Sadie on sunday. We saw one pickup and they may have been setting up to hunt geese or retrieving decoys/other hunters as they went down the irrigation ditch road as I was coming to it and then came back in about 5 minutes. Probably a good thing I had just went 100 yds along the ditch and then turned back because it was cold + I was wanting to keep things short since Sadie was being fairly sweet.

Sadie was pretty good, although absolutely not willing to stand when the pickup came back, I had wanted to see if they were going to turn up the abandoned county road or were lost and looking for directions but they didn't try to talk to me and just went straight. I was not in any mood to have any kind of battle of wills; we were having a decent ride and I just wanted to keep things on a good note so I just turned Sadie towards home rather than try to make her stand still or try tiny circles. Sadie can do a reining spin or close to it and I get dizzy with more than a couple tight fast circles so I am limiting circling to taking her head around to my knee if she does any crow-hopping.

Still on the de-cluttering roll

Went through the hall closet yesterday. Have room to put some of my seasonal bedding in there now. Starting on my bedroom now. 1/4 through the shelves in my closet and went through my drawers. Its a nice day and I want to ride but it is very rare that I get in a tossing mood so I do want to make as much progress as possible while I still have any steam. One good thing about the political suckitude is that its giving me this motivation. In the back of my mind I think I may want to emigrate to somewhere else if this country wont wake up and smell the coffee. If the U.S. is determined to go stupid perhaps Canada will become the better choice. Well regardless I'll either have a nicer living space, where I can find stuff easier or it'll be easier to pack up and move since the first pass of tossing junk will have been done already.