@Bernard thank you! Fortunately we both got the flu and Covid vaccines already (in mid-Sept I believe). I am supposed to go to a conference on Friday, Thursday and Saturday are to be the travel days, my colleague is driving. I’ll contact him today to consult. As I see it, the options are: 1) don’t go. 2) go and wear a mask in the car. 3) go and we both wear a mask in the car (if I go, this would be my preference). Presuming I don’t get sick of course. Ugh, what a hassle, this is kind of an important trip. I really do not want to miss it, but I would hate to make him sick, or get sick while there, or have Mr SK get worse while I’m away… This is why I’ve spent 6 years masking, is to avoid situations like this. Phooey.

@Rontuner So presumably it’s connected to… the internet? what year is it?

I'll be a killjoy. They explode the way old steam engines exploded. No warning. Explosion. You're incenerated. The general public seems to be in the dark about the fact EV's explode like bombs. It's not a bad production run. It's not one issue or another. It's the nature of the beast. The media can take its shilling and shove it up its ass.

Brother

McDonald's used to be good. They were all good. Now they're all disgusting.

@kluurs @bernard I see bigotry here. I'm glad the state Democratic Party has kicked her out. I don't want to be associated with people who think and act like her.

@mik I agree with much of what you say, in substance, but I think a medical diagnosis should be given when it's clearly applicable. Children and adults can't get the healthcare they need, nor have access to the educational and social resources they need, without a diagnosis. It's just the way our society is... Having said that, our society's insistentance on "normalcy" sucks.

@wtg Yes, ours are tracked too, from when they send them, to when they receive them, to when they count them. I really appreciate it. I think you have to opt in for notifications, and we do. and then you get this! [image: IMG_3317.jpeg]

@jon-nyc said: @Steve-Miller said: … and go stay somewhere else. That was always my plan. The problem is when there’s a huge power outage everyone else has that plan and the nearby hotels fill up. Once I spent a week hopping between hotels every night or two for a week. You’d believe the reports that power will be restored tomorrow, then when it isn’t, and you call to extend, they say no because the room has been rented out. So I find another hotel. Then the same thing happens again. The next month I bought the generator. We have the same problem with hurricanes. By the time you need to rent a room there are none- zero. It's a fictional option. The y say conditions in shelters (I've been told) during hurricanes aren't ideal. In the case of my acquaintance his experience included backed up toilets and no toilet paper. The authorities come through with cars with sirens and bullhorns telling us to leave. I spent Helene at a friend's house in Pasco. I stayed home for Milton. Milton was the one they thought might hit Tampa directly. It wiped out much of Ft. Meyers instead Btw, Our power is underground. The power in HI isn't underground for residential. Drilling tunnels through volcanic rock- not happening. The privatized utility charges a fortune (I mean an astronomical amount) but never keeps the lines properly maintained vis a vis trees and underbrush. Better to give the money to the shareholders. Bog stand routine there. So in a storm, the poles fall over, the broken lines start fires, and towns burn to the ground. Oh, and if there's a hurricane in HI, there's really nowhere to go. You're ****ed.

@andyd I'll take #1. Stunning views and very private. I like #2 a lot. I would usually choose a house with land, but I'll take the villa. Love the view. Also that the property is enclosed the way it is- I think it would be like a castle. No need to tell strangers to get off your lawn. Interesting two choices. @bernard Really? I've never paid any attention to him. I know next to nothing about fashion designers. I love the setting. It is a little severe. I admit. @shirokuro I watch videos about houses, gardens, and architecture pretty much daily. I'd have to ignore my phone all day if I wanted to avoid the temptation.

Just one?

@kluurs holy cow! That’s a crazy huge number! also sounds like fun. In the end, we only had the two groups. There are some families with kids in the neighborhood, but we are at the end of our street. And we didn’t have decorations up earlier, so those factors might be part of it. Oh, and our immediate neighbors next door have two daughters but they are away, and our across-the-street neighbors don’t have kids. So maybe I could have predicted this, but we had more last year so I wasn’t expecting our turn out to be this low. There are two places in town (not our neighborhood but along the commute to work) that do amazing Halloween displays, one with a huge selection of those massive balloon characters, very very cute, young kid-friendly. The other is the scary kind, with giant skeletons, a skeleton dinosaur, a scarecrow man that looks like its must be 10 feet tall. I wonder how many visitors those places get.

California update. More than 4 in 10 names flagged as possible noncitizen voters in California by the Trump administration cannot be found on the state’s voter rolls, according to a legal filing Saturday by an immigrant-rights group. It’s the first outside analysis of a list that the Department of Justice has used to threaten prosecution of election officials. The analysis also found that thousands of U.S. citizens appear to be flagged as ineligible to vote on the government’s list. The contention was made in a filing by two data analysts at the University of California, Los Angeles. They analyzed the 20,930 names that the department demanded that California election officials treat as possible illegal voters by separating their ballots during the vote count on Election Day. https://apnews.com/article/california-justice-department-noncitizen-voters-midterms-45b31d5aefb03723f0e59f6084e918d4

We’ve had two groups so far, and one of them was three boys not in costumes (they looked to be maybe 13 y/o and seemed sheepish!) There’s only 10 minutes left. Phooey!

Nevada and Connecticut won't for long. Link to video We get an extra hour of sleep tonight. Yeah.

@Steve-Miller said: Absolutely not. You must have the jawline. Or be a female pop star if some rumors are to be believed. What a circus.

Link to video