Calvada

"the blond one" - hee Rachel, sometimes you scare the shit out of me, sometimes you make me cry, sometimes you cause my blood pressure to hit scary levels, but then you make me laugh at a time when laughs are increasingly hard to find.

Thank you. I have good days and bad days, as we all do. The abuse of children and violence against women (which is how I interpret forced hysterectomies) makes me almost physically ill. A lot of the other stuff just makes me angry, but kids in cages etc. sickens me. I'll probably still watch Rachel if only to have one small bit of intelligent discussion in my life. I sure as hell don't get that during the day at my job. But some nights I have to turn it off after the first 20 minutes of so.

Some of the masks I have came without a nose piece. But I quickly realized that my glasses fog up while wearing a mask so I found some aluminum strips at Amazon. They came on a sheet, like labels. I peel one off and it adheres to my mask. It's still not perfect, but it's better than it was. I've used 2 of them at a time for a firmer hold. It depends on the mask. I could probably sew them into a mask if I had any ability to make a mask. I tried that early on, and it was a total failure. I have no skills in this area, so I'm afraid of trying to open up the masks I have to put a nose piece into them or sewing on some small pockets containing the strips. I fear I would ruin my masks. @SuprSuprElevated, did you have side effect(s) from the shingles vaccine? My sister had the first shot a month ago and she said for the next 24 hours she had trouble staying awake. Just overwhelming fatigue. She said if she had realized that would happen, she would have scheduled it for a Friday afternoon when she could sleep all day Saturday.

What was the doctor's name? Was it Mengele? FFS! The uterus collector? What has this country become? I may have to stop watching Rachel, because I really think I'm becoming clinically depressed. I can't even summon up anger anymore. I find myself weeping on an almost daily basis.

Yes, if I ever had a large and expensive cake in my car, I know that would be the day someone would do something stupid causing me to slam on the brakes. I get nervous enough transporting a pie and a large salad bowl to my sister's house on the holidays.

At least in the Packers/Vikings game they didn't have that horn blowing every other minute. One of the local writers tweeted that when the cart came out after one of the Pack's offensive lineman suffered what appeared to be a serious knee injury, they turned off the crowd noise and he said you could have heard a pin drop in the stadium. A friend texted me during the game asking why the coach with the play sheet was using it to cover his mouth as he called the play, since he had a mask on and his lips couldn't be read! I said perhaps to muffle the sound? More likely it was habit. Skip Bayless is an asshole. As a Packers fan, I know that Bayless despises Aaron Rodgers and takes every opportunity to run him down, even when he plays well, leading the Pack to a win. As an example, several years ago the Packers were playing at the Giants, the Packers got the ball on their 20 with just under a minute to go and the game tied. Rodgers efficiently completes a series of passes that gets them to about the Giants' 20, calls time out with seconds remaining, Crosby kicks a field goal and the Pack wins. Bayless said a "good" quarterback would have gotten the ball in the end zone. But what he said about Dak Prescott is despicable. I'd like to do my best Joseph Welch impression and ask him, "Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?" Sadly, we all know the answer is no.

I too have been going into the office the past few weeks. For a variety of reasons, my job is much easier to do at the office rather than from home. But there are very few people there, we're in masks in the common areas, so I feel OK about it. But I agree, if more people were there, I wouldn't feel comfortable. I know there are those in my office who think the risk is exaggerated and I don't want to be around those people, since I don't think they are as careful as I am. And yes, those are the people I didn't spend much time with in pre-COVID times! Has anyone ever gotten their flu shot from Costco? Who is it who actually administers the shot? Do they have a nurse there? My health plan will reimburse for shots gotten at Costco, if we don't want to make a appointment and go to a flu shot clinic at one of the two places they are offering them. The clinics are taking place every Saturday from Sept. 26 through Oct. 31.

My sister's wedding was 35 years ago, when more adventurous types of cake was just becoming a thing. I haven't been to a wedding in the past 2+ decades that didn't have cake with something like lemon or raspberry or chocolate mousse filling - usually more than 1 option within a 2 or 3-tiered cake. But here in Wisconsin, often there is still a groom's cake. At my nephew's wedding, there was a platter of chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter frosting, each garnished with a mini Reese's peanut butter cup, as an acknowledgement of his love of Reese's peanut butter cups. They didn't want to have that as a tier in the cake in case of allergies. Speaking of taking cake home makes me remember a wedding many years ago, when after the ceremonial cutting of the cake by the couple, the catering staff cut the rest of the cake, put pieces into little white boxes printed with the names of of the bride & groom, and then distributed the boxes to the tables. A little boy, probably about age 5, was at the table next to me. He asked what it was, his mother said it was his piece of cake, he asked why it was in a box, and she said it was so he could take it home. Total and immediate meltdown! "NOOOO, I WANT TO EAT MY CAKE NOOOOOOWWWWWW!"

Getting back to groom's cake at a wedding - that's the norm at most weddings I've been to in Wisconsin. When one of my sisters got married in the mid-80's, she wanted her wedding cake to be a flavored cake that was her favorite (won't say what it was because inevitably numerous posts will follow about how much that flavor is hated!) and her MIL to be threw a conniption, saying it was just NOT DONE to have a flavored cake, that a wedding cake MUST be a white cake with white icing. To appease the MIL, they got the white wedding cake, but also a groom's cake that was my sister's favorite flavor. It will not be a surprise to anyone that the groom's cake was gone in a flash and there was most of the blah white cake remaining. Pet peeve this time of year: people who do not turn on their headlights at dawn or dusk. Hey morons, you may be able to see me but I cannot see you.

Nixon taped himself. When that became public knowledge, everyone was gobsmacked. (And there was an expectation by many that Nixon would destroy the tapes before they could be made public.) But Trump went to a reporter (Woodward of all people!) and allowed himself to be taped. Everyone is more than gobsmacked, especially Trump's staffers I suspect.

And that money would be shifting around as the paintings were moved from where they were seized, into an evidence room, into Perez's car, etc. At some point someone should have thought hey, there's something inside this backing. It took me a long time to get through this season; in this time of pandemic I find myself filled with anger so often that there were periods of time I just couldn't watch Jen and her rage. I thought a better ending would have been to leave us wondering whether one or both of them were dead or not.

A friend and I were talking yesterday about what would have to happen to cause Rachel to open her show being silent for a few seconds, taking a deep breath and saying, "What the fuck???" I thought we might see that today.

I don't touch another person's cart, since in a similar situation a few weeks ago I used my foot to push a cart about 18 inches so I could reach something on a lower shelf and the woman who had left the cart came running from around the corner (she was in the next aisle) yelling at me. I made sure I didn't touch the handle, but just pushed against a wheel. And she wasn't in the aisle, so I had no idea whose cart it was. I understand leaving a cart for a short time to go down an aisle and get something, especially when there is an employee stocking the shelves who may be blocking the aisle. I've done that myself. But I've never left a cart for several minutes to go to different aisles to get multiple items, one by one, as the guy I mentioned in my earlier post was doing. Why does there always seem to be one other shopper who has the same list I do? We're in the same aisles in the same spot at the same time. And then I had the fun experience a couple weeks ago when an elderly man came up to me asking where tapioca pudding was. Gosh, I don't work here, but perhaps it's a couple aisles over with all the pudding? No, he couldn't find it there and he thinks the store moved it, so where is it? Again sir, I do NOT work here. There was an employee at the end of the aisle, stocking something, so I went to her and said this gentleman is looking for tapioca pudding but couldn't find it with the other pudding. She told him that is where it would be, except it was out of stock. I moved away as he started to gripe at her about that, but a few minutes later I turned down the aisle with the yogurt and there he was, hunched over with his face about 6 inches from the various yogurts, trying to read labels and muttering to himself. I quickly decided I didn't need my usual brand of yogurt, and ran by him, grabbing another kind of yogurt down the aisle.

I don't think it's news that Trump has said awful, indefensible things about military service, McCain, etc. But I do think some of these statements were new, at least they were to me. The "losers and suckers" comment about those buried in the military cemetery in France was not something I had heard before. I remember him canceling on going to that ceremony, using the excuse that the helicopter couldn't fly in the rain, and him being mocked because he didn't want his hair to get wet, but I don't remember "losers and suckers" at that time. I also didn't remember him saying that George H.W. Bush was a loser because he was shot down. I did find it interesting that Rachel thought it necessary to address how quickly the ad with the parents came out, that it was not a collusion/conspiracy set up before the story came out. Does it have to be explained that political ads do come out very quickly? If Biden made some gaffe today, there would be an ad about it within 24 hours. I agree that this particular ad with the family members is very powerful. I remember thinking at the time Trump said about McCain that he liked people who didn't get captured that it would destroy his campaign, that no one who disparaged someone's military service, especially a person who was held prisoner for over 5 years and tortured repeatedly, could be elected. I was flabbergasted that he got away with saying that and so I'm not sure why Trump's remarks are such a huge deal now, unless it's the totality of the comments over the years. After all, almost every American has a family member or friend who has served, or is serving currently, even if they haven't served themselves. My dad served in WWII, I have several friends and co-workers who served in Vietnam, the Gulf War, Iraq, Afghanistan, and my niece is married to an active duty Army officer. One of my favorite teachers from high school was a man who lost the use of an arm when he was shot down over Italy in 1944. But in a way this is similar to what they did to the Postal Service - they didn't understand how deeply ingrained it is in the lives of Americans. Just as military service is, and the respect for those who served, especially those who gave their lives wearing the uniform of our country. I flipped it off last night when they started replaying the Mary Trump interview. I didn't think it was a great interview the first time I saw it! I assume Rachel will be off on Monday. My listings show 2 hours of Chris Hayes.

I keep imagining what a pandemic would have been like 40 or so years ago, without cell phones, computers, the internet. But all those things also make so many of us tied to our jobs. We never get a break, "on call" 24/7. I remember when my new boss started almost 3 years ago, he was upset that I didn't immediately reply to an email he sent me at 7:00 am on a Sunday. Dude - it's Sunday! at 7:00 am! I was in bed asleep, not up and compulsively checking my email every 2 minutes. I politely suggested that if he urgently needed to reach me in non-work hours perhaps a text or phone call would be a better option. Of course, the email was nonsense, nothing that could not have waited until Monday morning, which is probably not a shock to many of you. People who do not wear a mask or wear one incorrectly drive me nuts. I was in the grocery store recently, and an employee came out of the back with his mask down around his neck just as I was pushing my cart along. I veered away from him so abruptly I nearly caused a display of English muffins to topple over. I didn't have to say anything as he immediately pulled the mask up, but c'mon, this rule has been in place for a long time. Then there was the guy in the dairy section who parked his cart in front of the one section I wanted to open as he went up and down the aisles around us getting about 5 different items and bringing them back one by one to his cart. Usually you just have to wait 30 seconds or so and then people move their carts, but not this guy. I ended up going down an aisle, getting my quart of milk and dozen eggs, then returning to wait him out. It seemed to be a very inefficient way to shop. Isn't that why they give us wheeled carts? So we can take them along with us as we go up and down the aisles? At least he had a mask on and was wearing it correctly.