It ain’t a dump, and it ain’t closed on Thanksgiving, and you can’t get anything you want.
Still, it’d be a friendly gesture if you took all the garbage down to the city dump, starting with that big orange sack of shit that keeps stinking up the church, downstairs where the pews used to be in.
No, I haven’t started cooking yet. But this is what it should look like.
Must be Thanksgiving or something.
Many a comrade has been checking in with Your Humble Narrator. There’s Charles Pelkey, who is now (a) a retired shyster and (2) with wife Diana, an empty nester; their kids, Philip and Annika, have fled Wyoming for the libtard swamps of Oregon. And Matt Wiebe, the renowned former tech editor, university-professor emeritus, and boat-breaking salmon fisherman, whose offspring are scattered far and wide; at least two of them, Willie and Esti, will be spending the holiday in Fanta Se with their ould fella and mom Lori.
Also billing in were Chris Coursey and Merrill Oliver, two of my oldest bros (oy, are they ever old). Especially Chris, a.k.a. The Supervisor, who yesterday in the Sonoma Whine Country marked the latest in a long string of birthdays. I expect he gummed down a little strawberry Jell-O with some chocolate frosting on top, wet himself, and fell asleep in the puddle as Merrill took a few snaps for posterity and/or The New York Times (“Notorious Santa Rosa Supervisor Drunk On Job (Again)”).
Actually, Chris, Merrill, and a few thousand of their closest friends plan a “birthday units” ride on Friday. Could be miles, could be millimeters. More as I hear it.
Bike-industry refugee Tim Campen chimed in from South Carolina with a few piquant observations about the good times in Gaza. He and wife Jill recently welcomed their Blue Zoomie son Ellis home after a tour in Saudi Arabia, and they must be relieved to have him back in the Land of The Big BX.
And Hal Walter filed a dispatch from Weirdcliffe, where some psycho was exercising his Second Amendment and Castle Doctrine rights just a few miles as the crow flies from our old hillside fortress off Brush Hollow Road.
Hal was trying to track developments as he, Mary, and Harrison prepared for their traditional Thanksgiving trip to Taos, where other people will do the cooking and washing up for a small (well, maybe not so small) consideration.
Alas, while there is said to be a “newspaper war” raging in Weirdcliffe, neither “newspaper” was engaging with the story, and Hal and his neighbors were getting most of their “information” from Facebutt.
We spent a little time nosing around on the Innertubes, and learned that shortly after being spotted in Salida the suspect was found to be hightailing it through — wait for it — New Mexico.
With three in the bag and one in the hospital I can only assume our man felt he was ready to step up from the farm club to The Show, where middle-schoolers routinely cap their classmates over a bit of the old side-eye.
But our Juan Laws said nope, thanks all the same, we got all the local talent we can handle. And they took him into custody just outside The Duck! City. So near, and yet, so far. Will he have to pay $50 and pick up the garbage? Stay tuned.
Meanwhile, the gendarmes have not popped round to invite me to assist them with their inquiries. I met a few psychos during our stint in Weirdcliffe but this dude wasn’t one of them. In my day property disputes were generally restricted to questions like: “Shit, was this your beer? Sorry, thought it was mine. Get another’n from the cooler. Whaddaya mean we’re out?”
I happened to glance at The New York Times homepage about 90 seconds before launch, saw the live coverage from the X-Man’s spin doctors, and stuck around to see what happened.
Boom, is what. Actually, more like boom boom.
How long before Wile E. blames this latest “rapid unscheduled disassembly” on the Jewish space lasers?
Meanwhile, who’s ready to go to Mars? Show of hands? Anybody?
This is what the iPhone said yesterday’s sunrise looked like.
I’m not sure it was quite that garish, but it was an eye-popper, for sure.
High clouds and a hint of drizzle.
Today showed a tad more restraint. There’s a hint of sprinkles in the weekend forecast, and I felt a brief preview this morning while snapping the pic.
A couple of my riding buddies are leaving for Tucson today to tackle El Tour on Saturday. I was invited to tag along but in my accelerating decrepitude I’m less excited than I once was about rolling around with a few thousand strangers on an unfamiliar course.
Back in the Day® I was a fiend for centuries, especially if it involved climbing. My favorite was the hilly Hardscrabble Century out of Florence, which climbed past Wetmore and McKenzie Junction to Weirdcliffe, swung over to Texas Creek, then segued into a fast roll along Highway 50 to Canon City before taking a back road into the finish at Florence.
The Santa Fe Century was another good one. South into the Ortiz Mountains and up Heartbreak Hill before jinking over to Highways 41 and 285 before the finale along Old Las Vegas Highway.
When I was a man instead of whatever it is I am now I could do both of ’em in under five hours. I might be able to drive them that fast now, if the old Subie kept it together and we didn’t count pee stops.
Speaking of time, it seems that the utterly shameless George Santos may have finally run out of same. The question now is whether the gutless House will boot him before he leaves under his own power.
It’s quiet around El Rancho Pendejo. Herself races off to the Lab at 5:30 in the a.m. and it’s just Your Humble Narrator and Miss Mia Sopaipilla manning the battlements. Cat’lments. Whatevs.
Sometimes I’m up before The Boss hits the door running, sometimes not. This morning I managed to see her off and then got down to brass tacks, as the kids don’t say anymore.
Miss Mia must be greeted, loved up on, given a second round of food and drink, and her litter box unburdened of its dark freight.
Then the Winter Palace is to be prepared for Her Majesty, after which I may offer myself a little sumpin’-sumpin’: coffee; toast with butter and jam; either oatmeal with dried fruit and nuts or yogurt with granola; an apple or mandarine; a scoop of crunchy almond butter; maybe a mug of tea.
The news is to be scanned but not dwelt upon lest it hamper the digestion.
OK, so I missed a few needles. I blame management.
This morning saw the last slice of bread slide down the rathole so a new loaf was in order, and I set that machinery in motion.
Next I congratulated myself for taking a moment yesterday to rake up the pine needles scattered across the lawn by last Thursday’s window-rattler, with the goal of restarting the irrigation system for a quick spritz this morning, when I noticed our bird feeders were getting low. So I filled those up. From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.
This short detour threw a slight hitch into my gitalong. The next items on the schedule were exercise and grocery shopping. If I hadn’t stopped to pat myself on the back I could’ve squeezed in a quick trail run before the sprinklers came on (I wanted to be around to make sure nothing had frozen up during our short cold snap).
Running afterward would put me at the grocery noonish, which is not optimal; the amateurs scuttle out of their holes and get in everyone’s way at noon and 5 p.m. I like to do my shopping between 9 and 10, or sometime after 1, when only pro hunter-gatherers are working the aisles and the registers don’t look like The Big I at rush hour.
Thing is, the meal I have planned for tonight is a slow-cooker deal that wants four hours in the pot.
So, yeah. Here I sit, muttering to myself (and to you) while I update my grocery list, avoid the news, and wait to see whether the irrigation system erupts like Vesuvius.
Mad Blog Media 