Overslept this morning, so I didn't walk. I did go outside and do some yard work for Mitzi. "Yard work," isn't normally in my job description. Part of our agreement when we sold the condo and bought this place was that I wouldn't be responsible for "yard work." But this gave me an opportunity to try the new Makita reciprocating saw I bought.
Took down a bunch of shoots and limbs that were overhanging the backyard from the preserve. They were also beginning to host vines and obscuring our view back into the swamp. ("Preserve" sounds so much more upscale, don't you think?) Today is the day the county picks up yard waste, so it was a good time to get it done. Saw worked great, but I don't have much experience with reciprocating saws so I can't compare it with anything.
Since I was outside and already sweaty, and since I'd started this particular task yesterday, I spent the other part of the morning pulling up these tiny nuisance weeds that grow in between the pavers on the back patio. They'd really gotten out of control after we'd been gone for a month. It was relatively pleasant yesterday afternoon, so I sat outside and started pulling them. A smarter person would use some kind of herbicide, or vinegar or something. The tips of my thumbs and forefingers and pretty raw now, but the patio looks nice.
Our trailer of stuff is now in Georgia, and the AirTag concurs with the shipper's reported location. It's amazing to me how those AirTags work. It's in a plastic toolbox, surrounded by, you know, tools, inside a semi-trailer, parked at a warehouse. How the hell does enough rf get out of there to allow itself to be tracked? Pure frickin' magic.
Been watching Bad Monkey on Apple TV+ and it's pretty entertaining. South Florida is very different from northeast Florida. We're more like southeast Georgia than Miami or even Orlando. Vince Vaughn is good in this. I can usually take him or leave him, sometimes I find him annoying though he has played some memorable roles. He's looking older now, and that just makes me feel older too. The clock keeps ticking.
It looks like Ron DeSantis's star is in decline. A lot of his endorsed candidates lost in the August primaries. Primaries are important in Florida because we believe in sort of a bastardized version of democracy. In a gerrymandered district, only one party will win in the general, so the primary is where the actual winner is decided. We don't have open primaries here. If no candidate files for the general election outside the Republican Party, then it's theoretically an "open" primary. But they always find a tool to file as a "write-in" candidate, which doesn't cost the candidate any money or require them to file any paperwork, but it has the effect of closing the primary to non-party members, because we can vote for the write-in candidate in the general!
Right now, school board seats are non-partisan elections, and those elections are held as part of the primary. If no candidate receives more than 50% of the vote, the two highest vote-getters will move on to the general election, where the winner will be decided. Florida Republicans want to make school board elections partisan elections, so they can be decided by Republicans in the primaries, disenfranchising all non-Republicans.
Fuckers.
This is a horrible state. It really is. An absolutely horrible state.
DeSantis's Department of Environmental Protection announced this plan to build hotels, golf courses, pickle-ball courts and frisbee golf courses in some state parks, including our local Anastasia Island state park. The idea has been condemned and ridiculed and it looks like it's going to crawl back under the rock where it came from. Apparently they can't read the room.
Apparently, we've got money to do that, but we can't afford to expand Medicaid.
It's a horrible state. It's cruel and mismanaged and corrupt.
But hey, we're the third largest state in the country! So we got that goin' for us.
Originally posted at Nice Marmot 10:48 Monday, 26 August 2024