Last year I left two weeks of vacation on the books due solely to Covid. Everyone in my engineering department was working from home most of the time. (Some of us did have to go into our labs from time to time to build and test prototypes of new products and evaluate parts or assemblies that would be used in other products.) Vacation was not on anyone’s mind as there was no place to go since everything was shut down. Work gave us something to do since there was nothing else going on and no place to go.
This year I have used much more of my vacation time, being on vacation this week and being on vacation again the week before Christmas and the week before New Year’s. I’ll still be leaving a couple days on the books because, quite frankly, I can’t squeeze them in before the end of the year and still be able to stay on schedule with the projects I’m working on.
At least this year I have plenty of things to do and places to go. This week I am working around The Gulch getting the last of the summer gear cleaned and stored away, removing some items from rental storage and bringing them to The Gulch. There is also Thanksgiving dinner at one of the WP Sisters’ homes on Thursday, being the first gathering of a good portion the WP Clan in a year.
I am hoping to be able to spend some time with Katy around the Christmas holiday weeks, too, as we aren’t able to spend nearly as much time together as we’d like.
And so it goes.
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My phone rang at a little past midnight early this morning. My first thought was ‘Uh-oh. No one calls this late unless there’s trouble.’ When I saw who was calling I got a bit of a chill, wondering if something had happened to a family member.
It was my ex.
Her first words had me both relieved and puzzled at the same time.
“I’m in Portland. I got on the wrong damned bus!”
My ex had been away, visiting Texas. She left Dallas yesterday afternoon and arrived in Boston last night. She then caught a bus that was supposed to take her to Concord, New Hampshire. But she got on the wrong bus (which was apparently parked just in front of the bus she was supposed to be taking) and ended up in Portland, Maine. Hence the phone call.
Yes, I got up, got dressed, and drove the 2 hours from Lake Winnipesaukee to downtown Portland, picked her up, drove the 2 hours from Portland to Concord so she could get her car, and then the 45 minutes home. I rolled in back at The Gulch at just past 5 this morning.
Am I tired? Yes, of course.
Would I do something like this for just anybody? Hmm. I don’t know. However, I will admit I’d be willing to drive 4 hours...or more...for Katy. (But don’t tell her that!)
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In my previous post I mentioned some of the intentional misportrayal of what happened during the Kenosha riots, and specifically what happened to Kyle Rittenhouse. The media certainly did their best to push the narrative that Rittenhouse was a cold-blooded killer who turned Kenosha into a hunting ground to support white supremacy.
Now that the trial is over, verdict rendered, and the true story has been exposed, some of the media still gets it wrong. In this case, they can’t even get the race of the miscreants who assaulted Rittenhouse correct.
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Matt Margolis asks “Are Liberals Even Human?”
Yes, I understand that they are (technically) part of the human race, but have you noticed how they seem driven by issues that defy human nature?I have always thought that liberals, in the modern definition of the term (socialists), had no understanding of human nature. It certainly explains why they keep trying the same experiment over and over again even though the results are always the same: abject failure because they ignore human nature. It also explains why they cannot seem to grasp the two important aspects of human nature mentioned by Matt above: self-preservation and protecting our young. Without those two things society will not survive.
I certainly have. Recent weeks have made it clear that the left doesn’t possess two basic human instincts: self-preservation and protecting our young. And two key events have demonstrated this clearer than ever before.
The first is the Virginia gubernatorial election.
As much as I was thrilled about Youngkin’s victory over Terry McAuliffe, it was hard not to be disturbed by how that election exposed the alarming number of liberals in the state who don’t believe in parental rights.
“I’m not going to let parents come into schools and actually take books out and make their own decision,” McAuliffe said during a debate with Youngkin in September. “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”
--snip--
And then there’s the Kyle Rittenhouse trial.
I understand that people have strong opinions about Kyle Rittenhouse. Still, anyone who took the time to watch the trial or review some of the evidence presented would have concluded quite easily that Rittenhouse was acting in self-defense.
Yet, the trial revealed the shocking truth that the left also doesn’t appear to believe people have the right to defend themselves.
Or maybe only white people, who knows? What we do know is that people on the left in the media, Hollywood, and our own neighborhoods took the side of rioters, looters, and even a child molester, because they fell for the idea that Rittenhouse was a white supremacist (thanks, Joe Biden) and that he was in Kenosha looking for trouble. Nothing, not even the evidence, was going to change that.
Does this mean that liberals aren’t human? No, not in the least. But it does point to them being mentally ill.
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I keep seeing ads about how awful it is that New Hampshire’s Governor Sununu signed legislation that banned late term abortions. The ban was part of the the state’s budget bill, signed this past June.
To hear the ads, one would think the bill banned all abortions, more restrictive then even Texas’s abortion bill and how awful it is and that women in New Hampshire would be relegated to having to have back alley abortions.
But the bill bans late-term abortions, something that even has the support of many pro-choice advocates. Governor Sununu, a Republican, is pro-choice. Yet he had no problem with supporting this ban.
At a time when other states are legalizing abortion up to birth, the Granite State has boldly gone in the opposite direction and rejected its longstanding commitment to pro-abortion absolutism. In fact, New Hampshire has just become the first state in the country to go from allowing abortion up to birth to passing a late-term abortion ban.I have never liked the idea of abortion, specifically as a means of birth control. Late-term abortion seems absolutely barbaric to me when used as a means of birth control. We should be better than that.
Stated NH House Democrat Leader Renny Cushing, the ban was “forcing right-wing ideology on the people of New Hampshire.” So forcing left-wing ideology on the people of New Hampshire is perfectly fine?
Yet another double standard being imposed on the people of New Hampshire.
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And the hits keep coming.
It is necessary to heap even more well deserved abuse on the Left.
One of our local state reps felt she had to add her woefully (willfully?) uninformed opinion to the myriad of others out on the Intertubes regarding the Rittenhouse verdict. Her understanding of the trial, the evidence, and the testimony of eyewitnesses is apparently as close to zero as one can get without being zero.
Then again, she is nothing a but a drone, incapable of having her own thoughts. She only thinks and says what she’s told to think or say.
How pathetic.
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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the temperatures have gotten colder, preparations for winter continue, and where I won’t have to go back to work for another week.