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I went to see Melissa last night. She found Country Time
lemonade in West Memphis. I think they've discontinued
the two-liters. She got the two-quarts. And she got
both pink and regular. I had the pink. It kind of
ran out early, but I nursed it. I didn't want to open
the second one. And I didn't have to bring in mine
from the car. Melissa is so sweet. We don't kiss, though.
Maybe that's sad. It's the second day of Christmas, and it's 77 degrees outside. I had a pretty good Christmas. I didn't spend as much as usual. Maybe $200+ on Amazon, and about $100 at Target. I got everyone two gifts, except Nathan for whom I sprung like $130 for a fitbit something or other. I received 100 one dollar bills. Consecutive serial numbers. That was different Some clothes. Some candy. Mom got me some memory foam slippers. The were medium, and the size number was right, but it was women's size, so it was too small. I don't know if we'll find my size now, after it's picked over. I also got four Kindle books. Non-fiction. I didn't play Christmas music on piano this year. I usually play it from a fake book, which has just the melody and chords. It's pretty simple. But this year, nothing. Just being lazy, I guess. It's Christmas Eve. Looks like I took another break from blogging. My brother Freddie and his family are here from California. Mom has been bossing me around, telling me I can't wear what I usually wear, and getting me up early to make the devilled eggs. I shouldn't complain, though. It's a happy occasion. But it's been a miserable year. Well, the election happened, and Trump won. It was a surprise because the polls mostly said Hillary would win. Maybe they didn't weight things right, like rural people, or they didn't know about the new voters that showed up. Something happened. He's a sociopath and a narcissist. I think he might be impeached because he's bound to screw up somehow. Just changed a toilet seat. It was easier than I was thinking it would be. Happy Halloween! I went to see Melissa at Bardog last night. The jukebox wasn't working, so they played requests on Spotify. The best was Bohemian Rhapsody where everyone sang along. There were a lot of songs I never heard before. And I didn't have any of my songs played. Except at first, when I didn't have anything, they didn't ask me. Melissa was sweet as usual. She has plans to sell her house abd buy an Airstream trailer and in August go driving west until she finds a place she wants to stay. I ran out of candy before running out of trick or treaters. Same as last year. Actually, I have a little left and I just closed the door and turned off the light. Rough week for Hillary. Obamacare premium increased. Reopening the emails because of some guy's laptop. And something else, I forget. But she had a five point lead, so probably not a changed game. My kung fu class has moved locations, from its own office space on Sycamore View to a place east of Germantown Rd on Trinity. It's a community center. We can't leave equipment there. And it's an hour earlier. We have to go at the same time as the advances taiji class. I don't know if it's going to be the end of the class, but maybe. We lost one of the bagua students, so there's only three of us in class. We had maybe seven years at the last place. It was a good run. I'm eating tomatoes. Our garden here has three tomato plants, and this year, I guess we've taken better care of them because I'm getting tomatoes. Also, we cut down the big elm tree in the backyard, so there is more sunlight. That may have been why the air conditioner went out and we had to replace it. It's been an expensive year. But at least we're getting tomatoes. One of the tomato plants is huge. It has spread out along the ground, maybe 4 square yards of tomato plant. Mom was good about catching the tomator worms, but I tried and never saw any. Maybe their season was over when I started checking. Two more weeks until the election. Some of the polls have Hillart up double digits. Not all of them, but some. We'll see how it goes. I went to Kroger on Tuesday, but they didn't give me a survey. I bought ice-cream and milk, because I drink a lot of milk shakes. I had to go again on Thursday to get a survey. Luckily they gave me one. I bought some chicken from the deli. They didn't have any fried chicken, so I got the baked pieces. I'm lucky too that it's so close. There was the third debate, which I didn't watch. Apparently, Hillary won on points. I guess that's comforting. So the election is pretty much in the bag. Lot's of whining from Trump. Make me cry. I unfollowed a couple of people on facebook who were just posting too much. A lot of pro-Trump stuff, which I got tired of seeing, but just generally too much, and nothing I really wanted to see. Decluttering. So my facebook wall is more manageable. Yeah, that's it. I just listened to a two-hour podcast with Sam Harris and Peter Singer. Sam Harris is an atheist neuroscientist who wrote a book about morality claiming that it could all be based on the neuroscience of suffering. Peter Singer is probably the most famous philosopher of ethics, and is big on animal rights. He's a consequentialist, though. I think he would push the fat man onto the tracks to save the five people. Maybe not, I don't know for sure. I imagine he might trade one person for some number of animals. He mentioned that maybe the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were balanced out because no one has used nukes since. He has a definite creepy factor, maybe because he doesn't get enough proteins. I think he must be a vegan. He definitely said dairy farming is cruel because it requires the cows to have calves which are killed. OK. That's pretty sad. Sam was asking if there could be happy cows which might make keeping them worth it. But he said the methane production would harm the environment enough to even offset that. OK, buddy. Dang it! I upgraded my ftp program FileZilla and now I can't upload my blog. Just couldn't leave it alone. The upgrade must have added encryption, which didn't work. I turned it off and i'm back in business. I went to Kroger to get a survey. I get 50 fuel points for a survey, and each hundred fuel points is worth ten cents off gasoline. I looked at the roasts, and was tempted, but I got some fried chicken. Eight pieces should last me three days. Trump bragged about sexual abuse, but called it "just talk". Now accusers come forward and he just lies and says they're all lying. We already established he's a liar. Now it's just a matter of when he's lying. Which is most of the time. Went to the eye doctor today. He said I'm doing fine. My eyes are stable. I don't need to see him again for a year. Last week I saw my general doctor, Dr. Sheetal Patel. Again, pretty much fine. She would have been OK to see me again in a year, but I prefer six months, and that's fine. I don't eat much when Mom is out of town. Today I had a hamburger, a bowl of potato chips, and a milkshake. Yesterday I had a chicken leg quarter with crackers, a bowl of chips, a milkshake, and an orange. Last week I made a beef chuck roast, and I ate just that for a few days. I have to lose weight when Mom is gone because she makes a lot and I gain weight when she's here. Took another blog break, I guess. I don't have too much to say these days. I did get back to Memphis fine after visiting Mom last weekend. There's the second presidential debate going on, but I don't want to watch it. Sixty Minutes did a special segment on AI. Watson is doing cancer treatment recommendations by reading the 6,000 journal articles, I think it's a month. That's a lot of reading. But it's just a fancy data processor with not much understanding. And they had this chatbot hooked into a mannequin. I think AI is possible, but we're not very close despite the "billions" being invested. I did the gutters for both the house and the cottage by the lake. It would be better to do them in the spring, but at least we did them. I think it must have been a year. There were plants growing in the gutters at the cottage. It was like thick dirt. I have facebook and youtube here on my iphone. So it's much like being in Memphis, but quieter. I brought Mom's mail here. In it was a citation from the city of Memphis to remove the refrigerator sitting in our driveway. Over the summer, our refrigerator went out. It was quite an ordeal to get it replaced, because we have an extra small space for it, and our doorways are pretty small for it to fit through. First we went to Home Depot and had one ordered, but when we went home and read about it, it said it was too tall. That may have been with the hinges. We went right back to cancel it, but it was the weekend and you can't cancel it on the weekend. But they canceled it on Monday without us needing to go in. Then we went to the only Sears around which was 15 miles away in Collierville. We found one that would fit, but it was on backorder. Took a month to get in. Luckily, they gave us a loaner one to tide us over. Mom thought she wanted french doors, but now she isn't so sure. It doesn't fit as much stuff in it. Maybe she will get used to it. And the air-conditioner went out and we had to replace it. It happened on Friday evening, so it was Wednesday before it was done. It was in the 90s. Edgar gave us a room unit, which helped, though the vent hose keep coming off. At this time, my mom's sister Hildegard was visiting from Germany. She liked the heat. But my mom just couldn't take the heat, so she really suffered. I am aa the farm visiting my mom. It's very peaceful here. I watched _Horace and Pete's_. It's a kind of depressing series of 10 episodes about a bar with day drinkers. Louis CK has it on his website for about 30 dollars, but I watched it on youtube for nothing. I didn't think I would like it at all, but I did watch it. Not great. Worth watching for free. I saw our new road down to the cottage. We took the gator--a little utility vehicle-- but it's a good enough road to take a regular car. Below the ccttage, there is a much rougher logging road. I haven't joined them yet, but I watch a lot of The Young Turks. They have a daily show about #LoserDonald, all the ways he has demonstrated how incompetent he is. And he's not as rich as he says. Basically he's a con man. With tiny hands. I've slowed down playing Sudoku a lot. I used to play it all the time, trying to get through my books of puzzles, but I finished all of mine. My mom has a couple of big books. I did all the hard puzzles in one. Mom does the easier ones. Now I have another one, but I am not working hard to finish it, like I did the other one. Too much computers, I guess. I haven't gone to any meetups in at least a year. I think maybe the website deleted my account because I couldn't log in any more. So I had to log in with my Facebook account, and I lost all my old groups. Oh well. Well, I try to be happy for Melissa. She's partying in New Orleans. And we're not each other's type anyway. I didn't watch the debate, but I watched the commentaries and analysis. Maybe Hillary won on points, but who cares. It's already the end of September. I haven't updated my blog all year. So I'm one of those people who abandon their blogs. Ick. And double ick because the left shift key on this computer doesn't work right. Oh well. Better late than never. I went to see Melissa yesterday. I'm kind of bummed that she has a boyfriend again. Her last boyfriend died a couple years ago, so there might have been a chance for us to get together. But I guess not. The current one got shot when her car was carjacked a month ago. He pulled through. She's pretty hard on men, I guess. Just as well. So I play a lot of solitaire and Freecell. Kind of a boring life. I haven't been out to the farm in a year. My mom is out there now. I'm planning to go out there this weekend. The presidential race is pretty horrifying. People don't trust Hillary. And some people do trust Trump even though he's a narcissistic con man. The big first debate is tonight. I hope I miss it.
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