Instead... Babylon Five?

Too much politics. I'm talking about the lies, lies, history rewrites, hypocrisy, lies, flag humping, hate and fear spreading,  ad infinitum. Even a hurricane seems to be a respite right now. Been following an online thread about what people are doing instead of watching the RNC  covid-spreading party on the White House lawn.

I'd really rather watch Rachel Maddow in this time slot. Unfortunately she's busy watching the convention herself, letting us know - in case we've forgotten - just what's true and what's not. I pity her, but at least she gets paid for it. I don't. And I'm not watching. I do really resent, however, not having Rachel until tomorrow. Well, I hope she'll still be on tomorrow. She might need a brain bleaching after these four days.

Since I can't have Rachel, and Steve's "Deadliest Catch" current favorite is getting old, I've been musing on what I'd actually like to watch. DVDs have come up in conversations a couple times today, once in the context of selling some off. I happen to have collected a couple hundred movies, now all sitting in albums to ease storage needs for space. They've been there since we moved down. A couple have actually been watched.

So, knowing roughly what I have there, what would I really like to watch? Really, what would I like to watch once  more before deciding to try to sell them off myself? One thing presented itself. Only one.  "Babylon Five". I have the full five years of it. Nobody's replaying it on cable TV, a great of a series as it is. I kinda get that: it's complicated and takes some time and patience to pull the characters and plot lines together. Even watching (some) episodes after seeing it all once, new details fit into place, and knowing the resolution lets you hunt for the clues which didn't seem important the first time through. (So that's why Sinclair....) And Ivanova never fails to come up with the best line in every episode. Like Jessica Rabbit, she was written that way.

OK, I recognize the irony of watching a series about politics to avoid watching politics, but it's some of the best ever science fiction. And it was the intricacy of the politics in "Dune" that turned me on to science fiction after high school samples of must-read-tripe turned me off of it for, I thought, life. I gave my 1st husband one chance to find me a book to change my mind, or get off my case about reading the stuff.  He at least got one thing right!

Tomorrow seems like a great time to go dig the "Babylon Five" out for one last good immersion.

How Are The Mails?

First, a disclaimer. We are completely satisfied with our mail carriers. That's plural because they seem to rotate two or three through the neighborhood on a regular basis. The mail always gets where it's supposed to go, the outgoing mail gets picked up, they knock o the door to let us know a package awaits, and they are unfailingly polite and informative those (rarer now) times when we address them.

However....

I mentioned days ago about a letter that took 3 days to travel across Sun City.

Rich is still waiting for a paycheck which was due to be handed to him on Friday, but accidentally got mailed instead, from3 miles away. His wait is something a little bit less than patient.

I ordered a pair of 3M's extra large window insulating film after the previous packages contained something smaller than advertised, back on August 12. The order shipped the 14th, from some little town in northern Florida. Tracking information held steady with "in transit" until this morning. Now, on the 26th, with Hurricane Laura about to wreak havoc along it's travel path, tracking has informed me that the package has ... wait for it ... left Jacksonville!

Two weeks to get out of Florida!

The next usual spot for a Florida package to show up in tracking information is Dallas.

(Checks weather forecast map.)

Yep, optimism reigns. I'm absolutely positive... that fall will arrive before I have a chance to keep the summer heat out with another layer on the windows!

I wonder if those things float. Or maybe they can get opened up, turned into sails, and fly here on their own?

*    *    *    *    *

By the way, not hearing from our granddaughter with covid. Hope she's not too sick. Heard an expert on virus numbers quoted as saying with the few tests being taken these days, the daily reported increase of around 40,000 new cases is much more likely to be 200,000! Schools are shutting back down, colleges are kicking students out after large parties, and reported numbers are starting to get squirrely, bouncing up and down. Sturgis is over, and because apparently nobody can bother to stay home or follow precautions, 350,000 more spreaders will reinfiltrate the country with another surge as well.

But, but. but Trump says........ Please, all those fans of his out there, take him at his word that it's all over and go shake his hand in thanks, give him a good hug, and with all your enthusiasm, share the last breaths in your deluded bodies. After all, he's got hydroxychloroquine, oleandrin, miracle untried vaccines, and Putin to keep him safe. Right?

An Excursion And A Chewing Out

The day finally came: Steve and I decided to plan a short trip north on I-17 up to the Sunset Point rest stop, and then back home. Nevermind the 114 degree temperatures, the nasty air, and the fact that my car AC is finally getting serious about announcing it needs a recharge. You know, every couple minutes it pops itself off so the fluid that remains can pool in its reservoir again so there's enough to work again. (Memo to self....)

A simple trip always, it seems, turns into something more complicated. No exception here. We started with breakfast at Mickey D's, then a trip to the post office. Steve had ordered online a printer compatible with his laptop, as well as a toner cartridge. The (refurbished) printer wouldn't recognize that such a thing as a toner cartridge existed within a block of it. Advice from a pro - after Richard gave up in frustration - was to buy a new brand name toner cartridge rather than a "compatible with" version. Was the fault the toner or the printer? Saturday was a trip to an office supply store for that. Result: 2 presumably perfectly fine cartridges, 1 non-responsive printer.  After a little back and forth with eBay, and much juggling of ways to get the printable return label they sent to his computer to be recognized by my printer, the printer got repacked, thoroughly taped, and put in the car, heading to the post office.

Heavy sucker. Lot of pushing across the floor in 6 foot increments as the line moved. Free return though.

On to the freeway to head north, both of us, at various times during this trip, found that we were unable to breathe enough to be able to converse during the trip. I think we were inhaling the O2-depleted air downwind of California's fires.

Along the way, we noticed spots where rain had actually fallen recently, and green abounded. Later we also noted that miles and miles of prickly pears, while still green, were cardboard thin and often the pads were floppy. Somehow the rain hadn't gotten the message. Kinda like at our house.

Upon arrival, we turned east rather than west at the bottom of the hill at the exit. An earlier fire, the Bumblebee Fire, had wiped out nearly everything in view up to the road on the east side, and possibly extended past the tops of the mountains. We'd brought cameras, and wanted pictures. Nothing survived except at the very edges. Prickly pears were brown, flat, and stacked, pad collapsed on pad upon pad along the ground. Trees were gone. It was so bad that the very ground had holes in it all over, presumably where whatever roots had been spread under it had all but vaporized. We had to watch our steps.

Five minutes was more than enough. This far up and away from the city was still not far enough to cool down. We crossed under the freeway and took the ramp up to the rest stop. Steve was exhausted and his knee in pain from his walk, so I was the only one getting out for shots from the other, untouched side.

By the time I'd taken three shots, I was ready for a confrontation. There was a cluster of 4 covidiots taking up lots of space for their photo ops with each other, all female, all about my age, all more expensively dressed, and none with a mask. Sure, they were outside, but the walks are narrow enough it's difficult to space 6' from another person, much less a clump.

Let me add what helped contribute to my ire at this point. The morning news had another! story of cops killing a black man, 7 shots, in Wisconsin, while his back was turned, he was getting into his car, with his 3 kids in the back seat watching the whole thing. More details were added later, that he had  been stepping in to try to intervene to stop two women in an altercation. When the cops showed up, he - possibly believing they were better equipped to deal with them - turned away to go to his car. Latest info is he is in the ICU. Of course a cell phone caught the event. Rioting ensued during the resulting protest. Nothing at all good there.

It has now been determined that those worst hit by the virus are what "Trumpanzees" feel are the "right people." A deplorable segment of RepubliKKKans think that the number of deaths (somewhere between 176,000 and 180,000+) is just fine, thank you. Those "right people" are living in blue states, and mostly black and latino. Newest leaking news is that Jared and Trump Co. decided to halt testing and whatever else would help slow the virus just to try to win this fall's election. Kill the Democrats!

Can I throw up now, please? Can we arrest them soon, please? Looking back, I see that I suspected this was planned way back in my May 3oth post this year. Not quite 3 months ago. I'm not patting myself on the back. It was too predictable. But the knowledge left me even less tolerant this morning of the covidiots I was watching. 

On top of that, as if that wasn't already enough, was the recent news that world scientists have determined that 80% of ALL people who survive Covid 19 wind up with cardiac damage. 80%! We don't know yet how long lasting it is, and they haven't released data on some of the other organ damage we know the virus inflicts. We do know it happens regardless of how ill one was from the virus. If they caught it, even without symptoms, 80% have heart damage detectable after 60 days.

All in all, pleasant though the outing was, I didn't need much to flip my switch. First, I overheard enough to know that these women were not traveling together. One had to ask where another was from. Phoenix.  Oh-ho, home of a county-wide mask requirement. True, we weren't in Maricopa County now, but wouldn't you think....? Apparently not.  Approaching within 20 feet, I raised my voice (to be heard, not with attitude - yet! Well, not that much yet, anyway) to ask didn't they have masks?

The nearest woman turned around and stalked to within 4 feet of me before I turned away and told her to keep away from me. Yep, attitude began happening. Another woman made shooing away motions with her hands to me. Now that I was far enough away from the first, I stopped and stared at the 2nd of the 4. I was trying to squelch my strong impulse to  yell at her "you must all be Republicans, eh?" but decided that wouldn't gain anything. It didn't need to become political, much as I still believe it was already. I settled for saying to the shooing-hands woman, "You're an asshole," before walking away.

After a brief but very pleasant conversation with a masked gentleman who was walking his adorable black and white shi tzu, had overheard the exchange, and totally agreed with me, it was time to head home. Well, nearly. There was still one stop - nope, two - before the carport.

Steve had to return some shirts he'd also ordered online. The size is the same as every other shirt he's gotten in the last couple years. Unfortunately, these shirts, button down rather than knit, overlapped in the front by over a foot! Before we'd left the house he was on the phone with the company requesting a trade for the same 3 shirts in one size smaller. The company has a local store, not too far out of our way. We picked the drive home for dropping them off, as they opened at 11, not 9 like the post office. The replacement shirts will be here in "a week".  We'll see.

Now that it was going to be noon by the time we got home, a stop at BK was also in order. Pleasant surprise: the price of a pair of Whoppers had dropped by a buck! And still just as yummy.

Maybe we should go somewhere next week....

Oh yeah, the car dealership for recharging the Ac.

Downturns

I realize many of them have been coming on for a while. But it seems that all of a sudden they're here!

Take the trees. It's been a long, record setting hot summer. Still is. Climate change is not kind. We've been watching a lemon tree across the fence. Early summer it was showing a generous sprinkling of yellow leaves. I even contacted somebody who know how to contact the property owner to inquire if their irrigation system had gotten shut off due to a recent power outage. A week and a half ago I noticed the top of the tree was bare while the bottom 2/3 was green, no yellow left on the tree. A couple days ago it stood bare.

This morning I noted that our backyard pine tree, the one that shades our patio so well, One of the main reasons we bought this particular home, is tinting yellow. Its color is just about where the front yard pine was when we had it taken out before it fell into the street, avoiding it crushing any of the variety of vehicles who fought for the only shady parking spot for blocks around outside of garages and car ports. Looks like the backyard tree one will go on the fall to-do list. $$$$

Steve, Rich and I ran some errands this afternoon, giving us an opportunity to observe several miles worth of trees. Almost all the pines are yellowing. Somebody will have lucrative employment this fall and winter, while the area has fewer trees to shade and cool us all against whatever next year throws our way. It's not just the pines, though. Palms are getting hit, just starting to show it. One, a low spreading type like a sago perhaps, had over half of its fronds turned a bright orange! Orange! I've never seen orange palm fronds. They're green. Then they brown. Then their fronds go away in trucks while their remaining tops look like something strangled them while they bush out green again.

Shorter desert plants are suffering, even the ones which should be hale and heartily tucked in against the heat and dryness. A saguaro fell over into the street a couple blocks away - though that's not exactly short. Agaves are browning. Aloes have swapped green for pale reddish brown. Bushes often have just a few green/brown leaves crowning the top.

Ironically, it's been raining. Everywhere else. We had a second night of almost enough falling to coat the driveway before evaporating. The local news shows trees with broken branches dangling, trees toppled into apartment buildings and across power lines, leaving people without AC and no place to go in a pandemic to avoid the heat. We get the leading front of high winds for a tease, but little actual rain to make up for their damage. California had over 650 fires raging from 12,000 - yes, thousand - lightning strikes, now merged into many fewer but larger ones. Our last storm produced 19,000 strikes, leaving us with nothing more than wondering who had the job of counting them all. To be sure, an improvement over forest fires.

I received a letter this week from the homeowners association, a First Notice that I need to remove the weeds from my yard. The only ones left are the patches of spreading spurges, now a sunrise feast for the doves, pigeons, and finches looking for seeds. The spurges are doing just fine, thank you, enough that I was contemplating letting them completely fill the yard as if they were a planned ground cover. Apparently the HOA only recognizes rocks in that role.

Then there is the virus. We're hale and hearty here, so far, taking all the precautions we can to stay home. Mail deliveries... well, they're much slower. I'm still waiting for an order of plastic film for the last two giant windows. When I check the tracking, it's... in transit, no location noted, with the estimated delivery date pushed back another couple days each time I check. Our all getting out today was an anomaly, and half of the stops were to drive up to pick up. The "official" numbers say we are slowing down cases here, but Arizona is still the 7th worst state in the worst country in the world, so we're not letting our guard down.

We now know two people with the virus. Steve keeps in touch with somebody from Minnesota whom I've not met, a woman he worked with years ago. She's now in some variety of nursing home. She is recovering slowly from the virus, but just lost 4 of her best friends to it. At least for her we are hopeful, despite all the latest news about long term disabilities from it.

The second case is much too close to home, one of our granddaughters on Steve's side. Recently graduated - 1 year? 2? - she's working in healthcare, and living with her boyfriend and his family. His mom is a nurse, thankfully. The granddaughter posted on Facebook that she's tested positive and is feeling sick. I decided to reach out to her and offer support as well as getting much better acquainted, so we've been emailing. She has three co-morbidities, including asthma, so we really worry. She describes a constant elephant on her chest, or rubber bands. It hurts to breathe and her inhaler doesn't really help. Plus, no health insurance: missed one signup deadline, next not for a couple months, and just a bit too much income for their state program. Her boyfriend's family assures her that she shouldn't avoid the hospital if/when she needs it, because they will find some way to take care of the finances. I sign off my emails to her with:

"Breathe.

Breathe.

Breathe."

And I hope and worry.

It's nearly impossible not to wonder how many of the people I know but have temporarily - or longer - lost touch with are now either fighting off the virus or have lost that battle, and how that will change by next year. I used to see dozens of people regularly in the club, and only know that some of them have survived thus far because I'm on a few email chains of funny animals or signs or kids' antics that go around and recognize that whoever is sending me things is also still sending them the same ones. It doesn't tell me where they are or how well they are doing or whom they've lost, just that somebody is still sending them things and hasn't heard not to do so. Do we count that as hope? Or think maybe we can get along a little easier with all the other stresses by not thinking about it at all?

Breathe.

Breathe.

Breathe.

Rain?

They haven't started calling this season a "nonsoon"  yet. I understand why. There's been rain north, south, east, west, and all the compas points in between. There's been hail. Lightning. Impressive clouds building up over most of the horizons. Dust storms almost qualifying as haboobs. Something actually measurable fell once at Sky Harbor. Even a precautionary warning or two, though no actual flooding I'm aware of. All variety of warn wet stuff and promises all over the place. Just not here. Only dust for us.

Until last night, that is. I walked out to witness, see if it was really rain and not just more pigeon turds blowing down off the roof, needing to be swept off the sidewalk and driveway. Those hard little round pebbles really hurt under bare feet! But it was really, really rain.

About 50 drops worth!

Plus a little good old rain smell. So we were close.

If only the smell helped the plants survive. Even the agaves - the well established ones - are showing yellow spots on the leaves. Bushes native to these parts are struggling, yuccas d(r)ying back from their tips. The older trees in the back yard are doing OK so far, but I am having to water the recently planted mesquite. Palo verde and desert willow are thriving, and the big pine at least isn't yet turning yellow, the sign the one in the front yard gave a few years back to warn us we needed a tree service. Funeral service.

Nothing more in sight for a while except dirty skies from California fires. Maybe that qualifies as counting your blessings that those aren't close around here, but color me greedy. I was hoping for something wetter along the line of blessings.

Of course the forcast claims we're not seeing any more 115 degree highs for a bit, certainly a good thing. They said that after Monday's high of 115 about Tuesday, too. Also Tuesday about today.

Sigh....

Something Hinky Goin On

If you've been following, you recall that I've been following covid case numbers pretty closely. You probably appreciate that I'm not shoving them at you lately with equal fervor. You're welcome.

Problem is, lately there has been something hinky going on, and not just in certain (red) states under reporting numbers, doing less testing even as numbers are scooting way up, and anybody at all relying on numbers that get covid-laundered by the administration pet liars, totally bypassing the CDC. If you've been paying attention, none of this is news.

I gave myself a project a few months back. I started keeping daily track of certain numbers. These - coming from, Worldometer, Minnesota's own website, and Arizona's own website - have been taken down daily. I started with just US figures, cases and deaths.

Then when the BLM protests started in Minneapolis, I wondered what that would do to caseloads in Minneapolis. This is the city my daughter and son in law live in. Not finding those, I settled for Hennepin County's case and death numbers. I also keep track of cases in the county I have an offspring living in, just because I worry and hope he's OK, as well as where my brother lives. Hennepin's I write down, the other two I just note daily. It's reassuring to see only one death where my son lives, and none where my brother is.

When the Tulsa rally was held, when a million people signed up to attend and just over 6,000 actually showed up, not socially distancing nor wearing masks, and with several of the president's advance team testing positive, my interest was peaked and I added OK to my list... for a while. Florida and Georgia and Texas and we were all skyrocketing, and it got to be a bit much. I settled for watching those numbers but not writing them down. It was interesting to see New York and New Jersey slide down the list out of their #1 and #2 worst positions, and watch Arizona bounce from 10th to 8th to 7th and back to 8th again. We're getting close to 7th again. Maybe another week or two?

I have been tracking another metric. Arizona posts cases - not deaths, just cases - by zip code. I started tracking mine, then a nearby friend's, then observing those around us for a couple tiers out. When I started, my zip code had 23 cases. It's slowly climbed, relatively speaking. Perhaps so many of our residents are up north these days, relative to neighboring areas. I know this neighborhood is pretty sparsely occupied, if one can go by houses lit in the early evenings. (I've noticed since I've been driving Rich to his job recently: he has split shifts.) On July 7th I started writing our numbers down as well.

Normally they would rise a few cases a day. Once they climbed by 10, once 12, another time by 20. These were outliers, possibly a catching up in reporting, possibly accurate. Then as things ramped up, jumps of 10 or more became common for a bit, until the pattern slowed again. Since those numbers fairly well matched state numbers, the levels seemed pretty believable. Slowing back down seemed normal as well. Our hospitals have some space again, one reliable metric.

It's just lately the numbers got hinky. Not just once, but it's repeating. Starting August 8th, the number of daily total cases in my zip code have gone:  429, 428, 427, 428, 430, 427.

Somebody's fiddling with the numbers! It hasn't happened in any other set of numbers I've been writing down. Cases only keep rising, sometimes faster or slower, and in an area as small as my zip code they might even flatten for a day, though that hasn't happened since very early on. But NEVER DO THEY BOUNCE UP AND DOWN, UP AND DOWN!

NEVER!

Bike Seats and Summer Heat

Rich was given a bicycle. A working bike. This is after him bringing home two carcasses of old "nearly bikes," missing essential parts here and there, but worth the effort of mixing and matching, filling in a few parts, and making himself a "Franken-Bike." That project was nearly complete Monday, awaiting a couple things that everybody in the wide area was sold out of.

His frustration was rising, when a friend of his from back in homeless shelter days called. Come meet him right now at a certain Walmart, because his dream bike was ready for pickup, and he'd give Rich the bike he rode to the store on. Free. Luckily Rich's work schedule and my availability (I'm always available these days) matched, and over we went. The new-to-him bike is perfect, just needing head and tail lights. Of course that's something the franken-bike needed also, on the list of "nobody's got one" parts. Fortunately eBay will ship him a great set in about a week. Meanwhile he's good for daytime hours. I still shuttle him for evening hours.

There was a bit of a delay picking the bike up, during which I sat in the 110 degree sunny parking lot with the AC going, watching my gas gauge drop since we left in too much of a hurry to fill the tank. I finally left the car and walked over to see what the problem was. Perhaps just reconnecting after a few months? Nope, at least not then. They were swapping seats between the two bikes, so the brand new bike had the nice replacement seat he'd bought for the previous bike, leaving Rich with the "wedgie seat." But hey, free bike, right? And two more seats at home to pick from once we got it back.

Rich rode the new bike to work this morning. One obvious conclusion you can draw is that the MRSA is all healed, no residual swelling or anything.

I've been keeping Rich busy at home too, an exchange for rent until his income gets in more normal levels. The latest project is a result of my shock at the latest electric bill. I figured it'd be high, due to AC and washer-dryer use elevations due to fighting the bed bugs. Just not that blanking high! Fortunately, I could squeak it into the budget. I also went back on eBay - just after last month's slightly higher bill - and ordered a bunch of 3M's tape-on insulating window film.

Turned out to be a bigger project than I'm used to from back in Minnesota winters. The room most needing them is the lanai, an enclosed porch extension with wall-to-wall single pane windows. They don't open, just let heat transfer. Not only are the sizes weird, an easy fix with scissors to the plastic, but the walls are painted concrete block, difficult for tape to adhere to. He dug out some remaining painted trim strips from previous projects in the house, cut them to length, and glued them in place with silicone in a caulking gun. (Hey, I try to be prepared, even to getting the tools in the divorce in '81.) Since it was only the bottoms which had no trim, it was easy to weight them down overnight while they set. Then it took a rag with alcohol (also difficult to locate these days) to wipe the older trim to clean it for taping before getting to the point where I would have started the job back in Minnesota on "regular" windows. Add in the fact that he started in a corner with windows on both sides, both in sun, and the hottest corner of the house!

I can attest from being out there this morning that those first two windows have already made a big difference. I figure the film can stay up there till it rots, when we'll get new stuff.

Those aren't the only way to deal with summer down here. The solar panels make their bit of difference too, both in covering cost and shading the parts of the roof they cover. While I was watching TV this morning, the following happened:

Knock on the door. ?? Nobody needs signatures any more, can't be a delivery. I head that way.

Knock again. Opening it, I find a 30-ish man with no mask. I keep my distance inside.

Was I the homeowner? Yes I am.

Did I know about the new federal mandate on solar panels? Ahh, a salesman. My turn for a question.

Did you look at our roof? No he hadn't.

I wished him good luck with the neighbors.