@Lookout Glad you had a visit with your pals, and glad I am not downwind from your horse shitty garden!
Everything that comes to a store of any kind, or any pharmacy or hospital, is hauled in by a diesel. truck. The huge rise in prices of everything is coming, if not shortages. We can expect store closures. Hospital closures around the country are already happening. If you all are contemplating some elective surgery, now's the time to schedule it. I am going to schedule the eyelid lift surgery soon. Gravity has eliminated my wide eyed view of the world.
Vinnie has started to explore different parts of the property. He watches us and comes near if we are outside working. He was visited by his mates once. They made no attempt to eat his food. I watched him fly up about 4 ft. to sit on a stump. Sadly, he stretched his wings. The left wing was straight, but the right wing is crooked right at the middle, taking a downward bend at a 45 deg. angle, like an inverted V. He will never resume his normal life. Looks like we will be his caretakers from now on. At least he can fly just enough for his safety.
This comment was interrupted by 2 hysterical deer racing across the field, and then came a red fox racing across it, being chased by 3 crows on it's tail. What will entertain me for my 3rd cup of coffee?
Enjoy your weekend, dear friend!

A lovely morning stroll through a thin Trade Day. Saw several buddies and got caught up with a few.

Spent yesterday shoveling horse shit onto the garden. Still need to mulch, but then it will hold through the winter, ready to plant into next spring.

How's Vinnie? Healed and gone?

Gas dropped to $3.30. Larry Johnson says Trump is emptying the reserves to a point where the salt cavern storage is at risk.
Full Refineries, Empty Tanks
Here is a number the White House would prefer you not memorize: 99.259 million barrels. That is how much distillate, meaning diesel, heating oil and the like, the United States had in storage at the end of October. It is the lowest weekly level since May 2003. Diesel inventories are now 17.8 percent below where they stood on February 27, the day before Operation Epic Fury, and roughly 13 percent below the five-year seasonal average.
If you drive a truck, farm a field or heat a house in New England, that number already shows up in your bills. The national average for diesel was $6.29 a gallon on November 2. Diesel futures closed at $4.39 a gallon on Friday. And winter, as one market analyst I rely on dryly noted, “has not yet fully joined the bidding.”

Hope everyone has a good weekend, and thanks for the OT!

@QMS @QMS I hope to go all weekend without hearing an automated voice. When they asked for info I couldn't provide, they switched me to a real person who helped complete the process, and the info needed by AI was not needed by the real person.
I used to block emails that were obviously fakes, but all that did was verify my email address. I never called them, which verifies my phone number. All I do now is simply delete those trash messages. None of those phony billings ever get reported to my bank and they do not affect my credit score.
I also put my cursor on their email addresses and they com from odd sources, like etrs!kpov#Ikl. Not taken seriously.
Check my reply above to Lo in re Vinnie. Some good news, some sad news. The broken wing mended in a permanently bent way.
Enjoy your weekend, friend!

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darn complicated. But when you have to deal with an automated,
menu driven customer service, a lot gets lost in the process.
Especially now that AI is mucking everything up. Sheesh.
Yesterday I had to practically scream at the phone to get a
friggen' human on the line to resolve a Paypal charge which I
did not make. I don't even have a Paypal account. Welcome to the
world of botched reality. It is frustrating to say the least.

So,the weekend window is now open for trumpet to start WW3 before
the markets open on Monday. Woohoo! What an idjit. Not a fan.

Enjoy your beers. You've earned a couple more. Is Vinnie still
hanging around?

@soryang I thought of you as I wrote about the ridiculous address change episode.
At every step, I was encouraged to hang up and do the change online. Well, that requires setting up accounts, new passwords, and then just hope for the best.
Your accusatory interview with the medical guy was so insulting, as if the bastard hadn't heard about the natural disasters that spurred many Floridians to relocate.
I need to call my local doctor's office and let them know about my address change. It's always something, ain't it?
That murderer at the bank seems to be a one off mental case. Yet, it is a crazy here, a crazy there, that gives government a green light to void the 2nd Am. The globalists cannot take every cent we have if we are armed. Just today, I read that Ursula Van der Leyen is demanding EU member populations have their savings taken for government use and be re-issued as bonds. Requesting money from a savings account will require a private citizen to get government approval to receive their own money! They are a disarmed population.
I hope I am not coming off as a gun nut. Rather, it is my academic study of history that forms my opinion.
Well, soryang, try to do your banking at the drive thru window!
Stay safe and enjoy your weekend, friend!

I moved a few times since fall 2022. I considered those moves temporary while restoring the house from the two apocalyptic floods. So I visited our old home virtually every day to monitor the construction workers progress or lack thereof. We moved back in for awhile. Then we made the permanent move to the Gulf of America coastal area. The experience you describe of changing all the addresses for services, utilities, insurance, etc., was made infinitely worse by the AI intermediary between the customer, citizen, beneficiary, patient, etc., and the corporate/tax extraction machinery.

When I moved to the regional medical system here, in the intake process (which I guess they can't read their own digital records from the Orlando region) it was like starting from scratch. So a clinical counselor asked, what's the big deal in having to move four times in forty months? It's over now right? The person has absolutely zero insight. Due to this experience which was so disruptive, I now have some idea of what it must be like for victims of war, genocide etc., who survive. "What are you goals at this point? My answer "survival." ??????? I've already talked about their rationing of medical services.

I understand your frustration with the unnecessary additional difficulty of moving your official address created by bs digital world. The post office refused to change my address by filling out the form at the local office.

My take on Florida being the relative standout in the so called democratic wave, is that the property tax relief measures such as they were, brought out the voters who own real property, and state and local employees to vote (against it?). The state capital region was basically one of the only areas to vote against prop 3 which saves homesteaders only one grand the first year, and two grand the second. So DeMentis at minimal cost got to preserve the image as a populist of some kind.
Most voters don't even know who the other officials are on the ballot. So repukes maintained total dominance in FL.

Man who owed Citibank $2,500 carried out fatal shooting at bank complex near Tampa, authorities say

Scary local story captured headlines here a few days ago. Feel sorry for the victim and her family. Good thing his semi-auto rifle jammed, giving the bank official who had the guard role some time to react before anyone else was killed. I was surprised at the report the murderer had no priors. His body type large frame, muscular, overweight actually has been shown to be at least in one large criminology study, the most common among chronic felony offenders. I hope this is a one off, black swan type event. Wonder if he had a 25 percent interest rate. Over 300 LEOs were mobilized to respond but the guard stopped him by shooting him.

edit- typos

@QMS I am glad he also brought up the extrajudicial murders in the Caribbean. For those deaths alone, Hegseth deserves to be arrested and brought to trial.
Maybe Trump was fascinated by Hegseth's ass, but he damn sure didn't appoint him because he was qualified.

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For good reason. If you can stomach the arrogant
pistol Pete, Davis tears him a new one.