Hi,
I hate living in Pittsburgh in the winter because of the cold and I hate living in Pittsburgh in the summer because of all the road construction. It took me almost and hour to travel from my house last August to Miller Hardware in Mt Oliver (normally a 15-20 minute trip because of all the road closures from repaving ), PWSA waterline replacement and gas line replacements. My first house was on Southside slopes so I know Mt. Oliver well and every time I tried a new route to by pass construction I ran into other construction. Just kidding about living in Pittsburgh, but the construction is necessary when the weather permits.
Well, the election is over, but apparently DJT isn’t leaving quietly. What a total fool he is. What scares me is I think he may have set the new norm for the Republican party. Lies and deceit seems to be the new normal for some of them. I like Connor Lamb a lot, being a vet (and Happy belated Veteran’s Day to all my fellow vets). Connor went to Washington to be a public servant I believe. His opponent in this year’s race Parnell ran a very negative campaign and filled it with many outright lies. Lamb ran his campaign on his record and a positive campaign and Parnell ran one of the most negative campaigns I’ve seen. So glad he lost. Although DJT didn’t get the resounding defeat I wanted, I think it may have been enough to have caught the attention of many of the Republicans. Some fairly powerful ones are currently distancing themselves from his foolishness. I would love America to have more than two parties and don’t want either side to unfettered control. I personally don’t care for Mr. Biden much, but willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. I’ve heard many very negative things about what he was going to do with taxes, etc. and I assume most of it is fake news being circulated. See my next paragraph.
Speaking of unfettered control, I saw a very interesting series on PBS Hacking Your Mind and caught many of them. It was a very interesting series about how the big players in the internet are controlling us. I had never discussed this with my sister. Out of the blue last night she sent me and email suggesting I find a program she saw on Netflix on Social Dilemma about how the big guys are mining our personal data. This is very scary, her email NEVER has been put in my spam filter. and I saw it there this morning. She didn’t have any hyperlinks in it, just the suggestion I should find the show.
No big projects this year, so I’ve had this handyman over (he took offense at that name and told me he was a “contractor”). 🙂 I got several doors fixed that were causing me problems, I have at least duplex plugs (2 plugs )on either side of the beds and invariantly someone unplugs the alarm clock and plugs their phone in that so I wanted quad boxes (4 plugs) hopefully to end this. So we’ll see if this cures that. He also repaired a closet ceiling problem caused when they installed the new A/C in the attic late this summer (carpentry is not one of my strong suites). 🙂 He’s also the guy that fixed my front fence. When they installed the new parking lot two years ago, the roller they used to pack the graduated gravel down before paving caused a lot of vibrations and a crack in the sandstone actually broke. I was thinking of adding a support rail to it to stabilize it before I had more serious problems with the iron fence. He said no, he wanted to make a form, pour concrete in it and then he did a faux work with black paint to make it look like the original sandstone. It worked great.
Reggae is famous for one run albums. I have a number of Reggae CDs and was trying to find an album by Ibiza when I lived in Florida. I found a site Reggae Express on line and started buying albums from him. We became friends with my questions on different groups and albums. One email he complained about being cold. I’m thinking how can you be cold in Jamaica? So I asked him assuming he was out of Jamaica, he laughed and said no, not Jamaica but Maine. The reason I bring that up, is a guest turned me on to the group Midnite, which I hadn’t heard before. Their best album is Unpolished, I can only fine one on Amazon used for $870, I’m not paying that for a CD, if anyone knows another way to grab that album, I’d appreciate the info. Speaking of Amazon, I am ashamed to admit I was l bought Gingko Biloba through them and they automatically added Carmela Caberra’s album I had purchased in the past from them. I clicked cancel but apparently it didn’t take. When the album arrived last week I called my credit card company to dispute the bill (they didn’t include a return shipping label).
I’m up to 115 followers on Instagram and over a thousand on Fb. I’m becoming quite the social media mogul.
Just finished deep cleaning the dining rooms and paste waxing the floors. It was such a pleasure this year, because it was so warm I could store the furniture out on the veranda instead of squeezing it in the pantry and I could keep the doors open to air out the smell of the paste wax.. Slow this weekend so I hope to get my outside decorations up. Even though they canceled Light Up Night, I would still like to have it finished before Thanksgiving.
I’m massive into recycling and keeping all I can out of the trash stream. With as busy as I can be sometimes (not recently though) I only put one trash can out per week. I compost, feed the birds left over bread (not the best for them, but I also sometimes eat something that’s not best for me) :), I separate cellulose cardboard, newspapers, office papers from other recyclables (because broken glass ruins it’s value) and drop it off in the Strip’s recycling center that has a bin dedicated to paper only and just put out glass, plastic for the biweekly city collection. I get a lot of Styrofoam from guests getting take out. I clean out the left over food (makes the recycling better and keeps me from getting fruit flies in my basement-where I store the Styrofoam until I get enough to take it down to Appliance Warehouse in the Southside. I have a cardboard box in the basement where I store metal (I get a lot of those dry cleaning metal hangers from guests) and metal from my projects. There’s a dumpster out at Construction Junction that you can put clean metal in (not mainly metal with plastic things attached to it for example). A great resource on recycling is the PA Department of Environmental Protection. Batteries you can drop off at Construction Junction, there is a fee for this or Batteries Plus does the same, there’s one on McKnight Road I drive past frequently and it’s more convenient than CJ out by Frick Park. Something I used to recycle but no longer do is pizza boxes, I used to put them in with my cardboard, but the grease from the pizza ruins the recyclability of these and I now put them in with regular trash.
A funny story about my composting, OCD and Rayzette was two years ago, I had my mulch scheduled to be delivered, I had my plastic tubs I put the compost in position in the areas I was adding it to for the year (I add it to different areas of the gardens each year). I heard he truck backing into my parking lot so I dumped the first two tubs in the garden and went out to get the mulch to cover it. Da Gerl discovered this tasty treat and was eating some of it when I wheeled the first wheel barrel full of mulch into the courtyard. I covered it with mulch, but now she knew there was tasty treats under the mulch and I kept finding spots where the mulch was pulled away. I know it’s disgusting, sorry for embarrassing you Gerl (she reads my blogs).
That’s it for today, Stay healthy, wear a mask, practice social distancing and keep us all safe,
ed
