Spring pictures....

I played with the camera some.  If I keep putting the pages together as I go along, I might actually finish an album this year.....
If you click on the first Picture, it expands into a nifty little slide show.

Am I the only one....

I'm getting a weird, universe shifting kinda vibe off this election cycle.
Maybe the talk of a collective awakening has some serious weight....
Well I just took a minor sidetrack trying to find the article.  I got lost.  First on YouTube, looking for, of all things, a Donald Trump clip, and then I wondered over to FaceBook, and well....
I've given up on finding the article, for now.  I've already wasted too much time.
What sparked this whole boil over of thought, was an article I saw on FaceBook.  It was the results of a poll showing that Bernie Sanders would beat Trump.
And it suddenly struck me that this election was shaping up to be a major showdown of negative vs positive.  Good vs evil, to raise it to the level of melodrama.
And then I have to stop and consider, this is a turning of a millennium.  Big things happen in the years following century shifts.  You can expect them to be bigger things with a bigger shift.
So thinks my demented brain....
But, first I got Bernie Sanders, a man I can truly respect, based on what he says and his history.
Add this....

Let's face it people, this is not natural.  For me, there's something 'beyond' about this incident.  Birds don't do that.
Type in 'bird at rally' over on YouTube and see what you get...
And, watch the video closely.  Note, Sanders has his hand in the air gesturing at the sign, and the bird still lands on it and sits calmly staring at him.
Birds don't do that...
Then factor in the footage and events from Trump rallies...
Well that set the mind to wondering and I went over to YouTube to find clips of Trump.  You know, Trump talking about his plans, his values, etc....
I didn't find much.  Specially not much on plans, policies, or ideas.
And, yes, I did find the event videos.  But, I'm sorry, I don't have all the time in the world, and I'm not sitting through the tedious Rah Rah shows just to get to Trump saying something of little substance.  I've heard him before.  I know his rhetoric.
And I didn't find much substance.  I found 'fun' in the American tradition of violence,  American humor is rooted in pain.  I found hate and fear and ignorance.
Are we really so wimpy and fearful that we have to build walls to keep the neighbors out?  Seriously?  Can't we think of anything better?
I did a side by side survey of Trump and Sanders videos.
There's not much of Trump speaking for himself.  There are the aforementioned full event videos.  With Trump supported by a cast of characters.  There are ads that feature people talking about Trump.  But there's not much of Trump talking for himself.
Sanders has a plethora of interviews and speeches.
It was interesting to get the side by side comparison.
I come away with this....

And I have to ask, do we really want to spend the next century cowering behind our walls, clutching our guns?  Living in fear?  Fighting perpetual war?
Are empty slogans and violence really what we want to kick the new millennium off with?
Or would you rather acknowledge, and honer, the dignity of your fellow man, care for the weak, and pull together to build something truly awesome?

And that's where I'm gonna leave you, cuz it's 1:45am and I still have shit to do.....

More from FB.....

March 17, 2016 

 

Sanders hopes to lure superdelegates with electability argument

 OK, it's time for the western states to really push and save our collective asses. Please.

 

March 20, 2016 

 

 

How can anybody think Trump is not part of the system? The man makes his living from 'reality' entertainment. Which is the ultimate corporate corruption of the media. He's been to the Bilderberg meetings.
Trump is not an outsider, he's a shill.
He's a major mover for the deep state.

Leonard

 Leonard looking for snacks.....

March 24, 2016

 

New Details Reveal Possible Voter Suppression in Illinois Primary

 I've been reading article after article and seeing post upon post about voter fraud and suppression, and how the whole system is rigged
And I have no doubt that it is rigged. The whole process has been corrupted and is thrown into doubt. From hanging chads, gerrymandered districts, and all the forms of voter suppression that have come slithering out of the shadows, the whole thing stinks.
And this is an important election. This is a pivot point in history, a make or break moment. This is the moment we stand up and take our country back to the home of the free and compassionate and sane, or we march like zombies into the century of world wide corporate fascists dominance. This is the end game, and from what I'm seeing, I assume they don't give a shit who knows it.
Or they really believe that we're all too stupid to see what is happening.
But we're not all that stupid. Not all of us.
Bernie Sanders is not just a candidate for president. He's a leader trying to build a movement. He's fighting to make this country a decent place to live for everybody. He's trying to get us to move and make that a reality.
If everybody that has contributed to his campaign, attended a rally, reposted his stuff on FaceBook, if we all wrote him in, he would win. He has the numbers, despite what the corporate media and the DNC are telling us.
If we could all get coordinated enough to write him in, and then show up on the White House steps when they tell us he didn't win and demand a recount, we could take our country back and stop the war mongering corporate overlords in their tracks.
Is there a way you can personally record your vote? Some way of recording your vote independent of the system? Anybody know?

 March 25, 2016

 

Our democracy has died a slow death over the last 50 years....

March 27, 2016

 I didn't comment on this at the time, but the moment is so magical and uplifting I can't let it slide...


 

April 2, 2016

Governments Admit that Much of Modern History Has Been Manipulated By False Flag Attacks

False flags have a long and dirty history. Makes you wonder if any of the terrorism in the world is real or just the powerful staging things to get their way....

BREAKING: ELIZABETH WARREN ENDORSES BERNIE SANDERS FOR PRESIDENT!

Sanders/Warren There's the ticket!!

How Hillary Clinton Bought the Loyalty of 33 State Democratic Parties

'None of these are awful people; they are simply awfully rich. And they like their friend Hillary and want her to be the president. And if some of their millions will buy her way into the White House then so be it. None of this is illegal. But it makes a mockery of Ms. Clinton’s pledge to further the cause of campaign finance reform.'

The only candidate who is serious about finance reform is Bernie Sanders.

Deeply Moving Message from Bernie Sanders

Catching up....

March 15, 2016

Maybe.
I'm kinda aimless today.
The last 3 days I've had hard deadlines to meet with work, things that had to be done that day.  My next job isn't due till Sunday, so there's only a little pressure there.
Of course, I've got a ton of things to do here, at home.  But, the motivation has not crept upon me yet.
So I'm sitting here wasting time on the internet....
And thinking....
It's spring in the middle of the U.S.  Yesterday was 80 degrees.  There's a possibility of snow on Saturday.  So things are still a bit in limbo.  Not in too much of a hurry to plant stuff.  But I'm thinking next week is a good time for planting the cold weather stuff.  It's time to think about pulling out the duck pools.  All the little song birds are back already, so I don't think we've got much more winter left this year...

That was yesterday,

March 16, 2016.

It continued to be a rather aimless day.  I got some stuff done around the house.  But I wasn't focused on anything in particular and time kept catching me up.  The effort was rather scattered.  I got organic material, AKA leaves and old clippings from the yard, into a couple of the onion planters.  I'm waiting till next week to do any planting.  I got some of the laundry done.  I thoroughly cleaned one corner of my room.  I cleaned the window and wiped down the shade, wiped down the wood work and everything.  I built a cat barrier for the top of the bookcases.

Those cubes are about 17 years old.  Steve and I bought them back in the early 90s at Sam's.  We figured they'd be a good option on a limited budget.
We figured right.  These things were some of the best money we ever spent.  They've been used inside and outside as shelves, tables, planters, and barricades.
Which is the present purpose.  I need something to keep Giles:

 Off the top of the bookshelves.  When I moved the room around he discovered that he could jump from the dresser to the top of the bookshelves.  Since I use that space, he was becoming an annoyance.  We're waiting to see if this keeps him down.  Waiting to see how long it survives.
Could all be on the floor tomorrow...



I wiped down the washer & dryer, and cleaned all the gunk out of the bleach thingy.  I uploaded a post, took some pictures, figured a work around for the graphics.....
And wasted time.

So far today, I've finished cleaning out the garden, moved a corner shelf from the out building, cleaned it up, and put it in the pantry for the big pots and pans, and finished another load of laundry.
And now it's later...
I went and did the one job I had outstanding.  That was about four hours out of the day.  The next few jobs don't open till Sunday.  Next week will be busier than this week.  I've gotten a few things done  I've got a couple of planters for onions started.  It's been a little windy the last few days so they're sitting out on the table waiting for dirt.  The weekend is not looking good for outdoor pursuits, so they'll sit there till next week.  I cleaned out the window box in the garden.  It needs more dirt too.  We're getting things prepped for the season.  Kathy started cleaning the garden out, I finished that this morning.  Her Pop came out and got the old tiller started.  So we're ahead of where we were this time last year.
The current roster of inmates is:

5 people

5 dogs

4 horses

I'm too tired to try to figure out how many cats

or chickens

3 ducks

2 rabbits

1 turkey

1 pea hen

1 rat

I think that's everybody.

This is, of course, subject to change.  Every other weekend the human count goes up to 6.  One of the reason I'm not even attempting to figure out how many chickens there are, is, we've got new ones upstairs.  There will probably be more.  We are planning on getting some turkeys...

March 23, 2016

It's been an odd week....

Who says holding a treat with the camera works?  Not with our pack.  I'd hold the treat up, they'd all settle and then, just as the camera was going off, Juno moved, then Luna lost focus, Perdy tried to grab the treat, Doeman wandered off...
Dusty was the only one who stayed where she was through the whole thing.
They're lucky they all still have a happy home.
Couple weeks back I was in the kitchen one night, washing grapes, and I hear...

Perdy

Perdy- The Great Dane

And Juno- The little, brown Bullshit....

Juno

She really is a Bullshit. Part Pitbull, part Shih tuz.
She and Perdy have a thing.  They get along really well.

But, on occasion, they have had some serious discussions on the concept of personal boundaries.
They started one while I was washing grapes.
I yelled at them and scrambled to shut off  the water, grabbed a towel, yelled at them again as I headed towards the living room.  I rounded the corner of the counter and heard a thud, and then silence.  Got to the living room, and the only dog in sight was...

Doeman

Doeman laying in the bedroom doorway wagging his tail, where he'd been the entire time, I'm sure.  He's too lazy to start, or participate in, any malarkey.
The room was in what we call theater lighting.
Long ago, Steve and I discovered that a few strings of colored Christmas tree lights are perfect for watching TV at night.  They give you enough light to see what yer doing without the glare of room lights.
So it was kinda of dim and it took me a second to see the big screen TV face down on the carpet.
Dam Dogs.
Everybody, But Doeman, was cowering in the bedroom.  I could tell by the degree of head hang and the velocity of tail wagging exactly who had been involved in the incident.
Dusty...

Dusty

 

Was in her usual place on the bed.  Head up, tail still.

Luna

 

Luna had her tail between her legs, but she met me at the door her head was down, but not hanging.













 Perdy was trying to hide behind the bed, head hanging low and the tail wagging a mile a minute.  Juno had opted to go sit in the cage.
Which was a good choice at that moment.  Lucky for the two of them, the big screen is fine.
That's the first time, and probably the last, that I've been thankful we have the ill-fated light blue carpet, and not hardwood floors.

I worked today.  So I've been out and back.

Things are kinda rough right now here at HappyDale.  We lost Enos the turkey on Monday.  He ate something that really didn't agree.  He's buried under a straw bale out behind the garden.  He was a good boy, not too territorial.  He'd posture and puff his feathers, but that was as aggressive as he got.  I think he thought my car was some sort of mutant turkey.  If he was out when I left he'd chase my car.  We had hopes of breeding him, but it just wasn't meant to be.
The rest of the birds seem to be doing pretty well.
They were out enjoying the weather the other day.

Egg production is way up.  Which is a good thing.
We're facing the end of winter squeeze of big heating bills and the fall out of my slowdown at work.  Money's tight and things are a bit unsettled right now.  We're hanging in there.  We've got a start on the garden,  We've got a batch of new chicks.  The weather is getting warmer.  I've thoroughly cleaned a bit more of my room.  The cat barrier is still on top of the bookshelves.
And the daffodils bloomed really nicely this year.  So, it's not all bad.

Arghrrr!!!!!

In traffic, on hold.

That's what this morning is feeling like.

That's what my life feels like....

We've exceeded our data limit for the month.

See, even though there's major subdivisions just up the road in both directions, we live just outside the coverage zone for all the cable providers. Charter doesn't come here and neither does AT&T. So, internet connection is problematic.

I think there's at least one rant on Hughes Net in the archives of this blog. We started out with Hughes Net, cuz that's who Direct referred us to. They held us captive for 2 years with a contract that was too expensive to cancel. When we could see an end in sight with them I went looking for alternatives and, after long hours of research and calling around, I settled on mobile internet as an option to satellite. T-Mobile had the best bang for the buck with, at the time, 13gigs for $80 a month. Which was a better deal than we got with Hughes.

And all was well. We had to be careful about the data use, but we were making it through most months without being throttled.

And then they introduced Binge on, and well, that's a long story of 'in traffic on hold'. But, we got it all ironed out in the end, and T-Mobile was all I wanted with the ability to stream Netflix, Hulu, and now Amazon. For the $80 a month we get unlimited streaming with the aforementioned sites and 18gigs a month. For the past several months we've been coming in under the data usage and all was well again.

Now, suddenly we've exceeded the data limit by 13gigs and there's a week to go before the account resets. So, we're throttled.

And believe me, that's what it feels like....

Yes, I admit, I'm suffering withdraw.

I have a routine. I get up, hit the bathroom, make coffee, take the dogs out, refill the water dish, and then I sit with the first cup of coffee, surf FaceBook, and feed my zoo. That's the present progression. Disruption to the routine is irksome. Leaves me all flummoxed for the day.

So, here I am all flummoxed.

It's gonna take me all day to feed the zoo.

And it's gonna be like this for the next week.

I can't feed my zoo.

I can't stream anything.

Trying to research anything takes forever.

I've got a draft in process online that I'm going to have to cut, paste, and finish off line. So I don't know if that will ever get done...

In traffic on hold.

This is a symptom of adaptation. I'm sipping my second cup of coffee and typing this off line.

See, while I have a routine and messing with that gets me all flummoxed, I'm not totally inflexible. The morning routine has existed since Steve and I first moved in together, but it has changed drastically over time.

And it can change to accommodate these glitches in the system.

This glitch is feeling like a long, strung out 'Come to Jeebus' moment.

Wow, Jeebus moves in mysterious ways.

And this will consume the other draft sitting in the blog list....

 Jeebus's origins are shrouded in mystery. While some claim Homer Simpson as the first, and only, profit of Jeebus others argue that Jeebus has been with us since the dawn of time.

I have no opinion on that debate.

In my experience, Jeebus is synonymous with a sudden, forceful understanding of an unpleasant fact or situation.

My present forceful understanding is of the unpleasant fact that it costs more to be poor in this country.

At present, I share space, rent, and expenses with 3 other adults and a newborn. 3 of us work slightly better than minimum wage jobs. We're lucky that our rent is way below the average of what most people are paying, and we're still struggling.

We're getting the bills paid, but food has been in scarce supply for the past few months. We had to get propane this month and that has put a severe kink in my life. We came up short for the propane payment and I used the money for the internet bill to make up the difference.

I'm in the middle of a seasonal slow down with work, so my next check isn't going to cover everything I have to pay out of it.

I just paid off a loan with an outrageous percentage rate. (That sparked the 'Come to Jeebus' thread, if you will recall.) The loan company has been calling me since the day after I paid them off, wanting to know if I want another loan.

See, they know I don't have any money, cuz they just took a really, really big chunk of the money I got, and they're looking to get another big chunk.

And it's looking like they, or some other predatory lending company, are gonna get what they want.

Cuz, I don't have the money to pay the bills, put gas in the car, and feed the animals in this check.

If I don't pay the electric bill, they're gonna shut us off. If thy shut us off, I don't work.

I have to pay the internet bill, if I don't, I don't work.

I have to have gas to get to my jobs, and I have to pay insurance on the car.

I'd really rather not have the dogs nibbling at my toes next week.

So, in order to keep everything going and everybody fed, looks like I'm going to have to take out another loan, and the bills will cost me 3 times more than they would have if I had money....

 

Even with a newborn in the house, we made too much to qualify for heating assistance.  With 3 people working slightly better than minimum wage jobs and a low rent payment, we're still having trouble making ends meet.  We've been subsisting on dollar pizzas, ramen noodles, peanut butter, and Mac'n cheese for a while now.  We've cut back on pretty much everything we can and all we're getting is, deeper in debt.

And now, I'm throttled....

This is gonna take a while to upload, assemble, and post.  So, that's all for now cuz,  I've got stuff to do so I can go work a job that doesn't pay enough to live on....

New echoes....

I started the stream of FaceBook echos for easy content.  But I was going about it all wrong, so it wasn't really easy.  Well, I had a thought.  Yes, it is a lonely thing. :)  But, it has grown into an action.  Instead of sifting back through the months and trying to pull, old dubious pearls of wisdom to copy and paste, I'm going to start fresh right now, Saturday, March 5, 2016.  I'm going to keep this draft open and try to remember (Yeah, right) to copy any post of content to here when I write it.
Yes, I know that it is an ultimate act of conceit to think that I have anything to say that anyone should or will listen too.  But. ya never know.....

March 10, 2016:

Thousands Of ISIS Documents Apparently Leaked To British Media

 "It's far from Islam," the man tells Sky News' Stuart Ramsay, during an interview in Turkey in which he wore a scarf to obscure his face.'

I know a few who are of the mindset that Islam = evil.  Remember ISIS is a slightly more violent KKK.  Imagine if the folks from Westboro Baptist church had grown up in a war zone, where guns were everywhere and people around them were dying daily. I don't think it would take much and they'd be lopping people's heads off. Timothy McVeigh was a white American....

There's a lot of thoughts brewing here.  Just have to wait and see if they boil over....

Hey! I remembered one!!
 

Should Kids Be Able to Sue For a Safe Climate? This Federal Court is About to Decide

 Hell, yes they should.
Maybe that's the way to take down the corporate overlords. Take the battle to their field with a global class action suite....

 Two in one day, I'm on a roll!

We need to take steps to bring common decency back to the fore front of our national conscious. It really wouldn't cost that much to ensure that everyone in this country, and across the world, had a decent healthy life. Sanders is the one talking about the golden rule and solidarity. Equality is lost in this country. The free and the brave are almost out of ground. We need to bring an end to the corporate state now, before it's too late.

Wow!  Can ya tell I got some time off?  Three in a row.
That last was a response to Meme about Bernie Sanders.
And that ties back to Jeebus....

But, the Jeebus meeting is on hold for the moment.  I've lost the registration code for my graphics program and it's looking like I'll have to update the program.  I'm not complaining about having to update the program, don't get me wrong.  I like the program, I'm willing to pay for it, but I don't have the money right now.
That's put a damper on the Come to Jeebus movement for now....

March 14, 2016:

The majority of our money now goes to bombing the middle east.
I'd rather have more classrooms and more teachers. I'd rather plant community vegetable gardens, build tiny homes for the homeless, and provide adequate food, shelter, medical care to everybody.

Wall Street expert shocks CNBC as he states Bernie Sanders is best for economy (VIDEO)

March 11, 2016 By Egberto Willies

This one still amazes me. The inspiration for Mr. Greed speaking bare facts and sense, I did not expect this.
And neither did the other panelists.....

March 16, 2016

The last is just cool.....