captainsblog | Dec. 14th, 2020

Well, strictly speaking, I didn't vote today, but....

... and our 29 in Albany, together with 260-plus others in other places, put our President-Elect on his path to Pennsylvania Avenue that courts nor legislators nor crazy people can stop. Not that the crazy people are taking it well. To which I reply to them as they replied to us four years ago:

I spent part of the midday running errands, including a stop at Barnes and Noble for a couple of books- one Eleanor had asked for, another the newest novel by the last-scheduled speaker at our local novelist lecture series who never made it (and who will be speaking virtually in the spring):

I wound up going in person because our BN membership had gotten messed up, and their customer service phone lines were taking way too long. Turned out it had expired just last week, so I renewed it, along with picking up Marilyn's novel. The other was theoretically in the building someplace, but nobody could find it: their online ordering data includes all kinds of minutiae like the number of pages and cataloging numbers, but not the one little detail that might've helped: What section did you shelve it in?

At least it was nowhere near THIS drek; I didn't even crack the cover, but contaminated it with my snowflake liberal fingers and thus returned it as instructed:

You're gonna need a bigger bleach bottle.

The crazies have also already started on their sideshow effort to destroy the First Lady before she even gets into the Lincoln Bed (presumably they'll be fumigating the master bedroom for months). Their apparent beef with Jill Biden is that she uses the honorific "Doctor" when "all" she has is a doctorate in education; misogynistic MDs and snarky college professors have made fun of her dissertation topic and equated use of the title with mandatory training in baby-delivering skills.

Apparently the 21st century red hat is a predecessor of the 23rd century red shirt:

Illogical.

(Btw, I looked up the current ethical state of lawyers slinging our own three-year "doctorates" around. TL;DR: we can use the title if we want; we just generally don't. All of my high school teachers with doctorates used the title, most of them Ed Ds. When I got to Cornell, which had Nobel winners among the PhDs on faculty, even the star full professors generally went by "Mr. Kramnick" and "Mr. Williams." Any of them were far worthier of the honorific than any of these jamoches.)

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Suppose I should back up a few days:

Friday night, when we got home, things were a little verklempt. Zoomklempt, to begin with. I knew there was an online happy hour for the alumni of my college paper, but I forgot how early it started, and so I was again without my camera transmitting my ~~ugly~~ smiling face. That first turned up during the Bob Costas session a few nights before; I thought it was just a setting on their end (I knew hosts could mute audio, so I guessed a tv star Star STAR like him could do video, too), but the Sun meeting was still showing me with no more than a slash through a grey camera icon.

I troubleshot. Zoom's first suggestion, in order, were to: update the software. Nope. Reboot the computer. Nah. Uninstall and then reinstall from the website. Non. (Pro tip: if you do this, be sure to note the email and password you signed up with, because your computer and browser will not remember.)

Finally, I checked something specific to my laptop's model. First thing THERE was to check that the F8 camera toggle hadn't been reset to disable the camera. Almost three years and dozens of Zoom meetings with this laptop and I had no idea it had a function key to disable the camera. It does; it was.

Now who do ya think might've stepped on THAT key?

(Before and after photos from that very webcam:)

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Zini's definitely the more adventurous of the two, but his littler orange bro Boz is turning into the bigger lovebug. Eleanor had been hurting a bit from working most of Saturday on their kitty “castle,” so Mommy came up with this solution for cuddles with him.

Then, after he got a little antsy, Boz decided to ascend to the throne of the Evil Queen. No hisses, no fights, but the old broad’s not sure what to do with him;)

What we have been getting from Evil Cat, unfortunately, is pee- in all the wrong places. The big wooden worktable in the kitchen, mostly. The most recent bombing over the weekend produced a crop that was almost water-like in smell and color, suggesting that her almost 20 years of days may be approaching their end. Not to be cruel, but we are not going to resort to dialysis or other extraordinary measures for this cat; we've tolerated her misanthropy for years and keeping her comfortable is as far as we'll go.

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As for the dog, another Sunday, another park:

It's fairly close to our homes and not well known- couldn't even tag it on Facebook- but there are trails behind it connecting to the Catholic church's parking lot in the background there.

Another friend who came with, carrying her older pup around Lake Saint Leo. Behind there, a real waterway- creek, culvert or ditch, we weren't sure which- holding some unexpected treasure from the nearby Wegmans:

Now THAT's a wet cleanup in Aisle Three;)

We headed home after that for a quieter than usual Sunday. No Bills game until past bedtime (they won!), so we watched SNL from the night before. We don’t watch it every week, but I’m still a sucker for it when I do. Even the stupid bits like Tiny Horse worked. But it’s a sign of how old I’m getting that they did a full length Dionne Warwick sketch without a single Psychic Friends Network reference. Their damn whippersnapper writers probably don’t even know what a 900 number WAS.

As for Bruuuce? Such joy- hearing him and clearly from him and the band. For a minute until Jake picked his uncle Clarence’s sax up, I thought that was Al Franken back there.

But I still miss Don Pardo at the end during the closing Waltz in A- the one constant in 46 seasons. In his stead, then, I'll be the one to say....

Goodnighhhhhht!