Thoughts On A Sunday

I can say winter has definitely settled in here at the lake. With very few exceptions, mostly pressure ridges and water inflows, the lake is frozen over. Bob houses have appeared on the ice and the ice runway in Alton Bay has opened with almost 200 aircraft having visited since it opened a few days ago. The four evenings this past week where temperatures were just above or just below zero and daytime temps barely reached the 20’s certainly helped the ice thicken to the point where it’s safe to be out on the ice.

We might see a little snow later today and the Weather Guys^TM are saying we’ll have some snow on Wednesday as well.

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Now we know we’re doomed, DOOMED I say. (Actually it’s not me, it’s the NYT saying we’re doomed.)

NYT Writer Relays Inaugural Plea from Birds: Trump Spells Doom for Climate Change.

Umm, no.

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The Oscars are still on TV?

Not that I really care, particularly in light of the fact that I don’t go to the movies anymore. I tend to watch them on Prime or Netflix, and then not when they are first available on those services.

Just for grins I checked the list of nominees and I recognized very few of them. I don’t know if that means I’m old or if I am smart enough to stay far away from the drivel coming out of Hollywood these days. It’s probably both, but with the latter being the most prominent. Frankly, I have better things to do than waste my time dealing with anything coming out of Hollywood.

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Yesterday I mentioned a number of Executive Orders issued by Trump since his inauguration that rescinded some of Biden’s Executive Orders and mandates. One I should have included in my abbreviated list rescinded Biden’s ill-advised Energy Standards for Household Appliances, something I’ve thought was based more on feelz and less on actual science. It appears Trump agrees with me.

Among the flurry of executive orders handed down by President Trump related to the energy sector, he not only put the brakes on funding Joe Biden’s so-called Inflation Reduction Act, but also sacked Creepy Joe’s household appliance regulations.

Trump’s executive order requires the EPA to use real science for its rulemaking.

How many times have we seen EPA regulations overturned by federal courts, including SCOTUS, for their overreach?

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Hmm, this sounds interesting.

It looks like California Leftists are taking yet another step to ensure that it becomes a failed state, that step being a ballot initiative to seceded from the Union and become its own country.

If only.

A California ballot initiative proposing that the state become its own country and secede from the United States has been filed and cleared for signature gathering.

If the measure makes it onto the November 2028 ballot, it would ask voters: “Should California leave the United States and become a free and independent country?” local news outlet KCRA3 reported on Friday.

The guidelines would require 50 percent of registered voters to participate and a “yes” vote from 55 percent of voters, which would indicate “a vote of no confidence in the United States of America,” according to the report. The measure would further show that the “will of the people of California” is to become a country.

I think there should be a separate ballot initiative that would separate Left California from Right California, or more accurately, the Blue coastal areas (except San Diego but including Sacramento) from the Red and Purple areas. I doubt the non-Blue areas would want to be part of a socialist ‘utopia’ that will in actuality be a living hell in the tradition of the old and long defunct Soviet Union. After all, I think we would see constitutionally enumerated rights disappear. Property rights will also likely disappear, though not all at once. Somehow I think electricity will end up being rationed since California’s power grid and generation capacity have been in decline for years.

Should the partition ballot initiative pass and the secession initiative fail, the folks in Right California still win because they will no longer be under the thumb of the Progressive government in Sacramento.

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On a personal note, early this morning one of the WP Feline Contingent passed away unexpectedly. Bailey, who we adopted from the local Humane Society almost a year-and-a-half ago, wasn’t his usual self Friday evening. He wasn’t really hungry and he didn’t hang around in his usual haunts. However, he seemed to be a bit better yesterday morning. But, then in the late afternoon it was obvious he wasn’t really feeling well. By late evening it he was now in distress, his breathing labored and shallow.

A phone call and a trip to the emergency veterinarian at 1am this morning and my worst fears were confirmed: Bailey was very ill and there was little they could do other than make him comfortable. I held him in my arms, talking to him, telling him that he was loved and that Pip, my mother and I would miss him because he was such a Good Boy. At 1:50am Bailey departed this world and crossed the Rainbow Bridge.

This isn’t the first time I’ve lost a furry family member. It won’t be the last. But for some reason this time it bothered me much more than it ever has before.

Pip knows something is amiss, but I don’t think she realizes that Bailey is gone, at least not yet. I think she’ll realize it soon enough when he doesn’t show up for dinner and she can’t find him. I know I felt it the most when I was getting ready for breakfast and pulled out a couple of bowls to feed the cats.

Two bowls.

Obviously it was habit because I always pulled out two bowls. But I only needed one...and would need only one from now on. That’s when I knew he was really gone and that it hadn’t been just a bad dream.

I’m going to miss you, Bailey. Until I see you again on the other side of the Rainbow Bridge…

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the ice fishing is great, the temperature has actually gotten above freezing today, and where more snow is on the way later this week,