COF 109 - dfs-archiver/dfs-archive GitHub Wiki
Asleep in my recliner, I dreamt that my wife was was at work, and she'd be home any minute now. I don't remember anything else about the dream. Not sure there was anything else in the dream, only the anticipation.
When I woke up, I was still looking forward to her arrival, any minute now. It took perhaps thirty seconds to remember that she wasn't coming. Best damned thirty seconds of the day, though.
When I leave this apartment, I hope Stephanie still comes home in my dreams, wherever home is.
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In an uncharacteristic fit of concern for my health 2-3 years ago, I spent $25 buying a very old, very large, very heavy exercise bicycle. Since then, I've put perhaps five miles on it — and always yesterday's mail and last week's magazines.
I'm certainly not packing the exercycle, Goodwill says they don't want it, and it's not worth the hassle of selling it, so hauling it to the trash was a scary huge amount of exercise for me. The damn thing is eight feet long, weighs at least two hundred pounds, and has no wheels. Somehow I got it down the hall without ripping the carpet along the way, and without dragging scars into the sidewalk outside. Hell of a workout, though, and I'm fearful that my back will protest later.
And someone wanted an exercycle. It was gone the next time I carried a load to the dumpster.
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Behind Steph's collapsible wardrobe, what to my wondering eyes should appear but an oversized pizza pan, brand new. She'd bought it perhaps ten years ago, when she'd wanted to try making a pizza from scratch. She never got around to using it.
And it occurred to me, pizza was a staple of my life from adolescence, but I haven't had even a slice since Stephanie died. Frozen pizza generally sucks, and if I'm calling for delivery I'd generally rather have a sub sandwich or Chinese. But I didn't want to toss out the pizza pan before it lost its virginity, so I bought a pepperoni & veggies bake-at-home pizza from Aldi.
Ate the whole thing for lunch. As expected, it was disappointing. And the brand new pizza pan was permanently stained.
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Putin made the threat more explicit on Feb. 27, announcing that he was putting Russia’s nuclear forces on high alert, citing new economic sanctions slapped on his government and “aggressive statements” by NATO leaders. According to Defense One, it was the first time either Russia or the United States had raised its nuclear alert level since Washington did so during the Arab-Israeli Yom Kippur War, nearly a half century ago.
• How Joseph Stalin starved millions in the Ukrainian famine
The word 'famine' sounds like a force of nature, like a flood or fire, but of course, it was on purpose. Ukrainians call it the Holodomor, combining the Ukrainian words for 'starvation' and 'murder'."
• While the world watches Ukraine, Moscow is making moves in neighboring Belarus, too.
Putin has had several publicity photos snapped at a curiously loooong table, where he sits alone at the head, and men billed as his "advisors" sit in a clump at the very distant other end of the table.
My half-assed opinion is that the distance suggests mental instability, but everything Putin says and does shouts bonkers, doesn't it?
• "Go fuck yourself back to Russia."
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In a few weeks, I expect, America's leadership will say "Oops, please put your masks on again." I'm beating the rush, and leaving my mask on, whenever I'm in public.
Relaxing the mask rule baffles me, honestly. Even if COVID-19 has run its course, the pandemic is over, and the bug doesn't mutate into something horrendously deadly — which seems mighty optimistic for the 2020s — so what? The tiny inconvenience of wearing a mask still helps prevent catching the flu or a cold, or measles, tuberculosis, whooping cough, or the next dratted disease from a bat.
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Why Sesame Street dropped Roosevelt Franklin
He was my favorite Muppet, man. I was still watching Sesame Street at an age well past the target demographic, but lost interest about the time Roosevelt Franklin was fired.
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Doc Bronner's Soap supports ketamine therapy for workers, and an end to the war on drugs
It's good soap, from a good company.
Since 2015, Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps — yes, that’s its official name — has donated more than $23 million to drug advocacy and research organizations, according to corporate documents. They include scientists researching the healing properties of the club drug Ecstasy, activist groups that helped decriminalize psilocybin “magic mushrooms” in Oregon and Washington, D.C., and a small nonprofit working to preserve habitat for peyote, the hallucinogenic cactus central to some Native American spiritual traditions.
Over the years, the company has also spent millions on efforts toward cannabis legalization, including litigation that in 2018 helped reverse a federal prohibition on the cultivation of industrial hemp.
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An Iowa farm girl’s pen pal was Anne Frank. A tiny museum remembers their brief correspondence.
Only when Otto Frank replied in October 1945 did Juanita and Betty learn that 15-year-old Anne had died in Bergen-Belsen in February, after contracting typhus, and that Margot also died there that month, shortly before or after her 19th birthday. Otto survived Auschwitz, but his wife Edith died in January, likely of starvation.
And not until Otto's letter did the Wagners learn that their pen-pals were Jewish.
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One-word newscast, because it's the same news every time...
• climate
• cops
• Fox News
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Mystery links — Like life itself, there’s no knowing where you’re going:
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♫♬ Sing along with Doug ♫
"These Boots are Made for Walking" — Eileen
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The End
3/1/2022
Tip 'o the hat to All Hat No Cattle, Linden Arden, ye olde AVA, BoingBoing, Breakfast at Ralf's, Captain Hampockets, CaptCreate's Log, John the Basket, LiarTownUSA, National Zero, Ran Prieur, Voenix Rising, and anyone else whose work I've stolen without saying thanks.
Extra special thanks to Becky Jo, Name Withheld, Dave S., and always Stephanie...
Cranky Old Man