Back into the deep freeze
Jan. 26th, 2010 07:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
altivoHeading down toward the single digits again, which is quite a wrench after the warm weather we had for the last few days. No heavy snow, but all the melt and spongy stuff from the weekend is now hard as iron again. I'm trying to get the woodstove going after it has set cold for a week, which is sometimes a challenge if there's not enough breeze outside to promote the draft.
Hurrying to meet a spinning deadline, even though the lace cap has been submitted and the jury in Colorado has notified me that they received it. Thursday is a study group meeting, and I need more samples to present for that. Shouldn't be a problem except that I have to push some other things down in priority. I've got an itch to get my paints out and try a couple of things, and I used some of my Christmas cash to buy supplies for a new medium I want to experiment with, but that will have to wait until the weekend probably.
Junk mail is absurd. I drove a Jeep for nine years. During that time, no one ever offered me "special" auto insurance available only to Jeep owners. Three years ago I traded the Jeep in on a Ford Escape, and now I keep getting the "special for Jeep drivers only" ads. Likewise, Dish Network just won't leave me in peace. They send at least two letters a week trying to get me to sign up for their television service, which I don't want. I've browsed through their offerings and there's nothing there worth the price they ask, no to mention the $2000 for installation since the dish would have to be remote from the house. I guess television is that important to some people, but it sure isn't to us. Then there are the nutty animal "charities" like the one dedicated to making life more comfortable for pigs who are destined to become pork chops and bacon. How about we just quit eating them? It would be cheaper and much more responsible. Because I occasionally donate small sums to horse rescue groups I get a constant barrage of mail from every animal welfare group in the country I swear. Even PETA (a group I consider to be nuttier than a truckload of fruitcakes and utterly unaware of what they are demanding) keeps at me year after year, despite the fact that I have not and will not ever give them a penny.
Politics is just as stupid. Primary election is a week away. The mailbox and papers are full of claims and announcements from hopeful candidates who promise they will "hold the line on taxes" while "bringing more industry and business to the county" by "expanding our transportation and road services" while "preserving our farmland and open spaces." Right. So you're going to dye yourself blue all the while claiming that you are really orange, huh? And you'll expect me to pay for the dye as well. Expanding the roads will cost money you haven't got, and can only be justified by increasing development of farmland and wetlands into subdivisions to get more tax revenue. Double-think much? I'm afraid so, you idiots. And then there's the county sheriff, who campaigns on the grounds that he has been sheriff for 28 years or something. Yeah, and look how bad the law enforcement is in the county. Good ol' boys can do whatever they want without fear of reprisal, as long as they're known Republican voters. However, woe betide any black or hispanic citizen who just might be guilty of something, because he'll be detained and taken to pieces looking for "evidence" of any possible offense. The Green Party has as many candidates on the ballot as the Democrats do, though the truth is, the Dems make a pretty weak showing here because they are so badly outnumbered and outvoted that it's a waste of their time. The Greens make nice promises but the truth is, none of their candidates has any qualifications at all. Even if elected, I expect they'd crumple under the snow job and threats that would be made against them when they tried to change any part of the status quo.
I just wish I had a whole lot of that hot gas to heat my house with. At least I'd get some use out of it before it pollutes the atmosphere, which is all it does in the end anyway.
Hurrying to meet a spinning deadline, even though the lace cap has been submitted and the jury in Colorado has notified me that they received it. Thursday is a study group meeting, and I need more samples to present for that. Shouldn't be a problem except that I have to push some other things down in priority. I've got an itch to get my paints out and try a couple of things, and I used some of my Christmas cash to buy supplies for a new medium I want to experiment with, but that will have to wait until the weekend probably.
Junk mail is absurd. I drove a Jeep for nine years. During that time, no one ever offered me "special" auto insurance available only to Jeep owners. Three years ago I traded the Jeep in on a Ford Escape, and now I keep getting the "special for Jeep drivers only" ads. Likewise, Dish Network just won't leave me in peace. They send at least two letters a week trying to get me to sign up for their television service, which I don't want. I've browsed through their offerings and there's nothing there worth the price they ask, no to mention the $2000 for installation since the dish would have to be remote from the house. I guess television is that important to some people, but it sure isn't to us. Then there are the nutty animal "charities" like the one dedicated to making life more comfortable for pigs who are destined to become pork chops and bacon. How about we just quit eating them? It would be cheaper and much more responsible. Because I occasionally donate small sums to horse rescue groups I get a constant barrage of mail from every animal welfare group in the country I swear. Even PETA (a group I consider to be nuttier than a truckload of fruitcakes and utterly unaware of what they are demanding) keeps at me year after year, despite the fact that I have not and will not ever give them a penny.
Politics is just as stupid. Primary election is a week away. The mailbox and papers are full of claims and announcements from hopeful candidates who promise they will "hold the line on taxes" while "bringing more industry and business to the county" by "expanding our transportation and road services" while "preserving our farmland and open spaces." Right. So you're going to dye yourself blue all the while claiming that you are really orange, huh? And you'll expect me to pay for the dye as well. Expanding the roads will cost money you haven't got, and can only be justified by increasing development of farmland and wetlands into subdivisions to get more tax revenue. Double-think much? I'm afraid so, you idiots. And then there's the county sheriff, who campaigns on the grounds that he has been sheriff for 28 years or something. Yeah, and look how bad the law enforcement is in the county. Good ol' boys can do whatever they want without fear of reprisal, as long as they're known Republican voters. However, woe betide any black or hispanic citizen who just might be guilty of something, because he'll be detained and taken to pieces looking for "evidence" of any possible offense. The Green Party has as many candidates on the ballot as the Democrats do, though the truth is, the Dems make a pretty weak showing here because they are so badly outnumbered and outvoted that it's a waste of their time. The Greens make nice promises but the truth is, none of their candidates has any qualifications at all. Even if elected, I expect they'd crumple under the snow job and threats that would be made against them when they tried to change any part of the status quo.
I just wish I had a whole lot of that hot gas to heat my house with. At least I'd get some use out of it before it pollutes the atmosphere, which is all it does in the end anyway.
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no subject
Date: 2010-01-27 10:59 am (UTC)The insurance thing is a scam I suspect, just like the multiple offers I keep getting to "renew" my extended warranty on every car I've ever owned. As for the satellite TV people, they're just idiots. They have no competition to speak of. Do they really think I wouldn't have already contacted them if I actually wanted their service?
no subject
Date: 2010-01-27 11:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-27 02:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-27 02:31 pm (UTC)Those scamsters quit sending me stuff some years ago, though it took them a long time to give up.
The only time I've ever used Form 1500 was to stop the alumni association at my undergraduate college from trying to get me to donate money to the football team. They kept insisting that they couldn't stop harrassing me "because they had no way to remove me from the mailing and phone lists." Oddly, they stopped once I did that.
Of course, now, 35 years later, they've found my e-mail and started again. Like any good spammer, their messages contain a "link" to follow to have yourself removed, but invariably the link leads to a 404 error or an access violation.