October 26

Sunny but cool today. I got out on the patio and pulled the marigolds which looked very sad. We haven't had a frost yet but they obviously don't like how chilly the nights have been. They also didn't like the wet weather of the last several days. We had rain, sometimes heavy, for three days from late Saturday through late yesterday. The soil in the pots I emptied was very wet. I still have the geranium, the sunpatiens, and the last dahlia to pull soon.

The covid boosters are rolling out. The clinic where we got our vaccinations back in March sent an e-mail telling us we could get our appointments. Mom called and set us up for Thursday. They have all three booster varieties--Pfizer, Moderna, and J&J. We got the J&J vaccine originally so we are staying with the J&J for the booster.

This post on TomDispatch this morning makes one ask if Jan 6 was a dress rehearsal. A supposed quote from Benjamin Franklin has made the rounds over the past months. Asked what kind of government we were setting up he allegedly replied "A republic, if you can keep it." Keeping it requires people have faith in the system and I wonder how many of us have that faith any more.

October 27

I didn't get back to post this yesterday--obviously. I don't know yet what the weather will be because the sun isn't yet up. I take the weather forecasts with a big dose of salt.

Well when the sun came up we saw frost on cars, roofs and grass.

I haven't had much to say about the politics because the whole mess makes me feel we are on a treadmill--getting no where not very fast. The notion that they are "close" to an agreement on that very stripped down reconciliation bill is getting to be as much of a joke as the Former Guy's "infrastructure week." Given the lack of movement the various poll results that show broad dissatisfaction with President Biden, dissatisfaction with and lack of trust in the election process, and a feeling that the economy isn't really as good as the so-called experts say it is.

On that last point--we did our shopping on Sunday morning. We don't usually shop on Sunday but we normally do shop early. We like to avoid crowds (even before the pandemic) and were surprised at the number of shoppers also out. Most of them had heavily loaded carts. Hadn't seen that since the first three or four months of the pandemic. We needed dish soap and saw big gaps on the shelves with signs limiting individual customers to two items posted. More big gaps in the juice aisle in the cat food. At times over the last year we have noted bare shelves for certain brands of cat food but never were two major brands almost completely missing. Stopping to fill up the gas tank our total $30+--one third more than we have ever paid before with our current car. The "experts" tell us that the shortages and the inflation we see are only temporary. I don't know about the shortages but I have never seen price increases that were ever temporary.