Locally ~ It's 50º F outside and raining. So I just parked my lightly icky looking car outside in my driveway to wash some of the road salt off. Our weather has been up and down all winter. This is my attempt to rinse off some road salt and avoid my local touch-free car wash for a few days. Sometimes this works, sometimes not. Follow me for more Midwestern #cheapskatery. <cheep>

It's 1º F outside, 20 MPH winds and snowing. It's also garbage day and all the bins are curb-side on the lane. But the wind has blown them over hither and yon. So just GUESS which geezer donned boots and a jacket before a cup of coffee, to set them upright in front of their addresses. All roads lead to home.

It's 4 º F here but feels colder with a stiff wind from the NW. I made instant Cream of Wheat for breakfast in my microinuker and stepped away to let it cool down. When I returned to the bowl only to discover it had congealed into wallpaper paste or maybe mortar. I added a touch of milk, choked it down and had another cup of coffee to spare my innards. Winter, hmph.

Jan Matulka painted in 1925 - Bohemian-American

"New York Harbor"

Mad Cow Greg Bovino has pulled out of the Great Lakes Naval Base. I'm sure there are ICE people still in the metro area but their court defying sadistic leader has been sent elsewhere. Chicago Tribune 11/15/25

(www.chicagotribune.com)

The people in the Epstein communications are captains of industry, across all sectors. Their fatal flaw is molesting children. I'm wondering if their names are released, how their stockholders and corporate boards might feel about their pay and retirement packages now? Hmmmm.

It occurs to me that the only coin guaranteed to increase in value over the coming years will be the one cent coin, a US penny. Suck it, crypto .

The postcards from Seville and Granada, Spain from my friend who traveled there in mid-September, arrived today. Nearly 2 months later, but they have assumed their rightful place under an artful magnet on my refrigerator door. The stamps are beautiful.

@GustavinoBevilacqua Re: Owner's Manuals ~ I wish you all the best in your endeavor to change the time on your car's clock. We need time honored heroes! Respect.

Only took me about 6 minutes to re-read the owner's manual and change the goddamn clock on my car that I've owned for a decade. But I'll take the win.

Today, I had to work outside on a windy day, on a ladder, over my head, with a tiny trim brush. The task is completed. I did not fall off the ladder, spill any paint or die. Clearly, this is a "Welcome to Lourdes" miracle. Prepared to grant plenary indulgences.

Congratulation to Uganda's Jacob Kiplimo for winning the Chicago Marathon. Race well run and very fast. He won with a time of 2:02.23.

Driving off to have some people way smarter than I am help me set up my reconditioned, new laptop. As much as I appreciate and like tech, I have to admit that I am not particularly good at it. It's because I'm ancient and learned most of my skills in the old, analogue era. But I can quote poets and have read thousands of books which now is seemed as quaint.

Greg Bovino in Chicago ~ "Bovino told The Associated Press that agents will go after “anyone who is here illegally,” an approach that fell under immigration authority, known as Title 8. He told the Chicago Sun-Times that a person’s appearance goes into the calculation.

“It would be agent experience, intelligence that indicates there’s illegal aliens in a particular place or location,” he told the newspaper. “Then, obviously, the particular characteristics of an individual, how they look.”

It's racial profiling and discrimination.

@GustavinoBevilacqua Re: Halibut ~ That's hilarious. They're the same shape! Quite round.

@GustavinoBevilacqua Re: Fish Yow, when I think of it that way you could be a billionaire halibut smuggler here. Avast, Matey

So much winning ~

Because I'm a fishist, I treated myself to a small piece of wild caught halibut. In the Midwest, this fish is hard to find and was priced at $29.98 a pound. TWENTY NINE DOLLARS AND NINETY EIGHT CENTS a pound for a wild caught fish. Mother of Zod,

From the center - the Chicago Sun Times
9/5/25
https://chicago.suntimes.com/entertainment-culture/2025/09/04/el-grito-festival-postponed-ice-national-guard-deployment-mexican-independence-day

Spending my day doing the delayed Sunday cleaning, monitoring Frank, my garage spider and arguing with the batshit racists, xenophobes, sadists and pro-ICE lobby who have emerged from their behind their gated communities and broad-lawns to write about their Mayflower lineage on Nextdoor. Also constructing run-on sentences between vacuuming wood floors and wool rugs. Been a fruitful morning.

Yesterday, I swept out my garage and unfortunately, the web of my large, non-lethal spider, Frank. Frank took refuge in the upper left corner of the garage and I kept an eye on him over the evening. Before I went to bed, I checked one last time and he had moved to Zod knows where. Now, I'm pretty sure Frank is plotting to kill me.