Attribute to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise

Dateline Friday February 12- 2021 going into the weekend

Helluva day.

Helluva week.

Started writing this from the vacant X-ray waiting room after a long though not so bad 12 hour shift that ended an hour and a half early because of low patient census. Ended up finishing it at home because I was too tired to linger for the sake of being able to use the hospital WiFi to send it out. The ugliest aspect of my day began with a problem with my email this morning that was not loading new messages. I ended up deleting the account with intent to re-enter it like I often do when the email account on the phone gets corrupted. Only to discover that I had forgotten the password and the action was totally unnecessary because my service was suspended for lack of payment.

YIKES AGAIN!

So much for ordering more firewood—which I am burning through faster than expected due to the colder weather. It’s been a somewhat rough one this year in contrast to last year which was milder overall up until the advent of the “Coronavirus Winter” that hit in March and April.

With fear and loathing of the GND on top of Norseman’s Hell as the new administration makes good on its promise shut down the Keystone Pipeline and force more costly and unproven energy sources on us. More hardship for those living on the edge during a pandemic and a depressed economy. In their sad, slavish devotion to the cargo cult of FDR and the Old New Deal , traditional democrats in the Rust Belt—the older generations in particular—will have brought it upon themselves if their cost of living and getting around “necessarily” skyrockets.

Gasoline is starting to creep upward again and I hope I can get more heating oil to fill my tanks before it goes to $4 a gallon like a prediction I heard earlier in the day Friday. The picture above was snapped on the way into work that morning.

Propane was ordered midweek and arrived Saturday morning as I was having breakfast. So the greenhouse which was getting down to 10 percent fuel reserve is saved. For now anyway. I’m contemplating setting the thermostat down to minimal setting just to keep the place from freezing and grow only subtropical and temperate plants that can handle lower temperatures and an occasional frost or freeze. Like the dwarf palmettos and Mexican palms and Cycads that still make for a tropical look—and many of the other plants I have are the ones that can be grown as outside plants in the Deep South; these will be just fine. Makes better sense now that I have the Florida Room where more cold sensitive plants can prosper. And those along with the turtles can go the the greenhouse for the summer and that will allow me to turn off some of the grow lights and save on operating expense.

In the past two months I’ve been busy down there finishing the cage builds and doing various hardscaping projects to enhance the jungle like atmosphere of the area around the Turtle Table and tub. These include an Epiweb background on the back side of the 29 gallon aquarium which faces the tub.

I also moved the bourgeoning Peace Lily out of the tub to an ice cream bucket to free up the view of the water more and the new background that I’m looking to cover with creeping fig vines to make a nice lush green wall.

Also the installation of an appropriate sized cork bark log I finally found to cover the metal column by the window and turn it into a “tree trunk” as it was in the original Florida Room of the 1990s.

The tall tank / front opening cage conversions are now mostly finished and a couple nights ago I enabled the built in Bluetooth speakers of the new shop light that illuminates the duo on top of the big metal frame vivarium and played some music and streamed talk radio from my phone.

That Pat Benatar song “Love is a Battlefield” and then “Lorelei” by Styx in honor of a really swell gal who’s “gentle as a butterfly and can move without a sound”! And a few minutes of a Michael Savage podcast from earlier in the week that was ironically about finding happiness in bad times. Which is what the Florida Room is all about. I’ve come to see it as a work of art combining passion, creativity and ingenuity to create something of beauty and awe which inspires admiration and enchantment. Things that are sorely needed in these dark times of hardship and civil strife to heal broken souls. I’m going to do a more in-depth special on it in the near future.

Played one more song that is appropriate for the Florida Room. “Ventura Highway” by America.

Mainly for the verses about “Alligator Lizards” in the Air! ” which fits well with the Mexican Arboreal Alligator Lizards—Abronia graminea—that I’m looking to put into these setups in a couple months when I’ve gotten through the current financial juggling act of replacing a broken hot water heater, spring property taxes and the current drain of Norseman’s Hell. By then the weather will be safer for shipping live animals too.

It’s Saturday afternoon and time to get out to do some shopping and visit the phone store and see if I can get my phone service fully restored so I can send this out for this weekend’s edition. I made another payment by phone in addition to the past due last weekend and got a text with a confirmation but still can’t call out or access the internet and email. Going to probably need someone to make a phone call and get some tech support to fix it.

 

Hallelujah—Problem solved!

Got my phone service restored around 4 PM and a new PIN number which I’ll cherish forever and keep recorded in a safe place. It’s also something that will be easy to remember.

I should be able to recover my Yahoo account now that I have phone service restored. But I’m wondering if I might just keep this one as my primary account since it was what I wanted to do anyway when I set up this phone almost a year ago and ended up defaulting to a new yahoo I set up that day because for some crazy reason on that wild and crazy day in March when COVid19 was starting to be felt—the Google account was having security hissy fits and would not recognize my new device. For some other crazy reason it did accept it when I tried it via the hospital WiFi on dinner break yesterday evening.

The first newsfeed that popped up after I mailed off my article was that the Senate failed to get the 67 votes needed to convict Donald Trump in the impeachment circus trial! If the Republicans or the Libertarian Party fail to present respectable candidates who will stand for Freedom and Prosperity—I’ll vote for him again in a heartbeat!

Have been following the show trial only sporadically through the week. Caught some clips yesterday of democrats—Charles Schumer, Maxine Walters and the usual Plebeian tyrants and wannabe tin horn dictators throwing their incendiary hateful rhetoric like gasoline when cities were burning last summer. It was probably better for the democrats that this thing did not drag on least people be reminded of the trouble they were stirring up before the election—causing far more destruction of human life and infrastructure than that piss poor riot on Capital Hill with the “Buffalo Man” they’re trying to call an “insurrection”.

Kudos for the majority of Senate Republicans who stood to vote against this naked attempt at political theater.

Maybe there’s hope for the country yet.

Also the big SOB vortex that was supposed to be coming this weekend keeps getting pushed back—to Tuesday now with a high of 28 that day and low of 10 that night. And highs and lows of 30s and 20s and one 13 degree night through the remainder of the week which I can live with.

Hooray for Global Warming / Hallelujah!