Houses closed today. I have contractors lined up for tomorrow to start the renovation. Previous owners came back and cleaned up the leaves/grass. It looks a lot better than I expected - Yahoo! I’ll get a picture when the rain lets up. Meanwhile, the fun part! Picking paint colors, flooring, wallpaper, curtains. I like where she is going with it. https://share.icloud.com/photos/088apTpWlwZCJOraJXDz3ANIw

Blooms all gone now but the buds on magnolia tree gives me hope for Spring! https://share.icloud.com/photos/05e1aY_SIaOg67CCs3dXKqvjw

@Daniel said in Love this show: I can only watch clips, out of chronological order, as usua Is this the series? https://pluto.tv/us/on-demand/series/6914d2b469032f4edfba7d0f/season/1 Pluto is free, but there are occasional ads. You don't even have to register for an account, but then you can't keep a watch list of favorites and it won't keep track of where you left off.

Oi, the world doesn't make sense any more. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Rand Paul aren't spouting nonsense 100% of the time ... https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3m5vws7zun72j

@Daniel said in James Comey: ... if you have nothing nice to say then say nothing at all. We can argue that speaking up against injustice is "nice" for the victims. Keep these in the back pocket: "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do [say] nothing." — Edmund Burke "We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented." — Elie Wiesel "The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people, but the silence over that by the good people." — Martin Luther King Jr. "We will have to repent in this generation, not only for the evil words and deeds of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people." — Martin Luther King Jr. "Silence in the face of injustice is the voice of complicity." — Noam Chomsky

thanks everyone!! @wtg I definitely want to look into acupuncture now! I had it in mind, but since things were sort of improving, I thought I might wait. But now I need an extra healing burst! I think I may have written that I had acupuncture once, while in Japan, and it was like a miracle cure (this was for a shoulder injury that became a chronic problem. After several months of getting worse and worse, one visit with the acupuncturist and I was healed!) @Piano-Dad said in Just my luck…(health update): "Well, Jane, it just goes to show you, it's always something — if it's not one thing, it's another." it certainly is!! Wondering why the buddy-taping thing was so problematic. I thought it was just because 1) that whole area is super swollen, and 2) my pinkie toe is so much shorter than the fourth toe, it was impossible to get it aligned in a way that was both useful and that didn't make the pain go through the roof. I'm not convinced that buddy taping would make a difference anyway, because I'm not walk-walking and the way I'm moving my foot, I'm making sure to avoid flexing/bending the toe area at all. Maybe once the swelling goes down and I'm closer to actual walking, I'll try it again. That suggests some damage to the joint rather than just a simple break. This is my concern. The walk-in doc didn't say to schedule a follow up, but I will do so anyway!

Indeed. It's sadistic.

More on the pasta tariff. https://www.arlnow.com/2025/11/17/italian-store-aims-to-hold-pasta-prices-steady-amid-107-tariff-threat/

We watched the first hour of last night's episode this morning while we were having breakfast. Good stuff.

@Piano-Dad said in Pete’s take: Increase the supply of housing FTW. +1 I'd add, imho, there should be many well made smaller houses being built, similar in quality to the housing stock built from concrete block in Florida in the '40's, '50's, and '60's, suitable to local climates. My grandfather bought his family's house in Tampa in '63 for less than $15,000. My father built his family's house (he was an electrician; his friends were carpenters, plumbers, etc.), the same I posted pictures of, in NYS in '73 for less than $25,000. $400,000 for a starter home, many of them new construction and poor build quality? It's the reality of the worsening homeless crisis in the US affecting people of all ages, in all states, from family's with children to people in their '90's, that is unnecessary and galling.

Good links, wtg. I copied them to my email.

Knew a florist who said she sold more roses on the full moon to men with apologies to make.

@ShiroKuro said in Virtual staging: The line between presenting possibilities ("look how nice it would be if you did this!") and deception is tricky, but this one is too close to deception IMO. Yes indeed. But I understand the appeal of virtual staging in a nice home whose furniture has been removed. Staging a home with real furniture adds thousands to the cost of selling your home while putting virtual furniture in place costs a few hundred.

@wtg said in This month's piano recording: Your Zoom H My Zoom H is fine (as far as I know, I haven't taken it out of the box in a while! But it doesn't have a lot of rubber-y plastic IIRC, so I think it's ok) I have several mechanical pencils that have those rubber-y grips that have gone sticky. I didn't throw them out because they're my favorite kind of pencil and apparently not made any more. So if I can find them (I think I know where they are) I'll try this!

Wow! Talk about taking "pay it forward" to heart!!

Am adding this to my list of books to read. Watched an interview with the author on Fareed Zakaria GPS this morning. Nicholas Thompson, 49, isn’t wanting for accomplishments—personal nor professional. The CEO of The Atlantic ran a 2:29 marathon at 44 years old, shattering his years-long plateau of 2:43s. Thompson is a former editor for The New Yorker, where he covered the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, and the former editor-in-chief for Wired, for which he wrote about trying out the recently launched Nike Zoom Vaporfly 4% super shoes. Thompson holds the American record in the 50K for the 45-49 age group (3:04:36), which he ran a few minutes behind his friend, Des Linden, who set the world record in 2:59:54. The father of three prides himself on a close relationship with his wife and his sons, always prioritizing them, but still finding a way to be on top of his work and running games. For example, Thompson, who lives in Brooklyn, never rides the subway to his lower Manhattan office. He runs to and from work, logging eight miles while listening to podcasts and audiobooks. He tries to be as efficient as possible, which is, perhaps, how he managed to write his second book: The Running Ground: A Father, a Son, and the Simplest of Sports (October 2025). https://www.runnersworld.com/runners-stories/a65058548/nicholas-thompson-the-running-ground/ Fareed made the observation that you don't have to be a runner to find value in the book, but I imagine it would be of special interest to runners. @kluurs - have you read it?

@wtg said in Biocomputers: The computers that run on human brain cells It's just a matter of time before we're all connected into the Matrix, I guess.