The trusty Ram 1500 has been undercoated, the driveway markers have been put in place, the last of the leaves have been removed from around the mudroom entryway, the lawnmower has been stored away and the snowblower moved within the garage to its winter location. Snow shovels have pulled down from storage and the sand buckets have been moved and filled. All of the outdoor lights work (needed for snowblowing and shoveling at night), and the gas can for the snowblower has been filled.
The Weather GuysTM have been saying it's likely we'll get some snow come next weekend, so rather than waiting until the last minute I made sure just about everything has been squared away. (There are a few other chores that need doing but they'll be taken care of this coming week.)
And so it goes in small town New Hampshire.
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Speaking of small town New Hampshire, we are going through out budgeting process for both the town and school. It can be a time-consuming effort, with some wanting a lot more money this coming year and others making do with the same amount they spent this year. One of the biggest parts of the budget for our town is the school system which takes up over 68% of the money the town spends.
The town side of the budget has managed to keep spending in check, with most budget increases coming in at approximately 1% or less (this coming year's is no different). But there have been times when the school side has seen huge increase, both as a percentage and in actual dollars. Of course the reasoning we always hear for those increases are the usual “But it's for the children!”
It's funny how all that money “for the children” ends up paying rather high salaries for teachers, supervisory staff, and paraprofessionals. I would say it would be worth it if we had the best schools in the state and out kids performed at the top. However the reality is that our school system is really slightly above average. We spend a lot of money for 'slightly above average'.
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Ladies, ignore all of the crap you read about what men think or want in the various magazines or women's websites. Here are 12 things you really don't know about us.
The most amusing (and ironic) one was the one that dealt with the “media portrayal of certain manliness tropes,” specifically those about military men.
I served 10 years in the military and once watched a roomful of females go a bit starry-eyed at an actor on TV in army uniform. One of them blurted out “That’s a real man” whilst the other soldiers and Marines looked over in confusion.It's simple – he gets paid a ton of money to portray a military man. That alone makes him more attractive to women. The real military guys tend to be invisible, even to some women in the military.
We were all in Iraq at the time.
Explain how an actor on TV portraying manly military service is more manly than an actual military serviceperson overseas serving?
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The length of the list of MSM-DNC personalities being fired for sexual harassment and or sexual assault keeps growing. One has been suspended for reporting egregiously fake news.
To quote Perfessor Reynolds, “Why are Democrat run organizations/companies/media outlets such cesspools of sexism and misogyny?”
Because those in power, whether they really are or think they are, believe that the rules don't apply to them...until they do. Then everyone is so surprised.
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At least some gets it.
A former student at a private college prep school has hi the nail on the head when it comes to the decline in the school he so loved. It boiled down to one simple thing: his alma mater's “new emphasis on race, gender, and privilege created fissures between students and kindled resentment.”
All of the crap about 'diversity”, be it cultural/racial/sexual and the whole list of other 'diverse' pigeonholes the Progressives have created, has been pushed so hard as a means of tearing people apart by making everyone a victim, except for white heterosexual males of course. We are the eternal oppressors, the boogeyman that the Progressives need to stir up divisiveness and, dare I say, hatred among the various newly defined victim groups.
How any of this is supposed to make things better totally escapes me. It doesn't. It merely creates more suspicion, more prejudice, more hatred, all in the name of fixing some problem that hasn't really existed except in small pockets here and there. Now it's everywhere.
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Listening to the hew and cry about the FCC's move to repeal Net Neutrality, very few have bothered to ask what was lost when the Internet was brought under the auspices of the much hated and woefully out of date Title II. While people thought Net Neutrality fixed problems, problems that did not yet exist, a lot of enforcement tools that did exist in regards to preventing ISPs from doing the very things Net Neutrality was supposed to prevent (but doesn't) were taken away. But no one mentions that.
What Net Neutrality also killed was competition because in effect the FCC would be choosing the winners and losers, something that always ends up costing the American consumer more money.
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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where winter is approaching, fall is fading away, and where we still haven't started our Christmas shopping.