I’m starting a new semi-regular feature on the birds of Ward Manor. The Wife and I set out bird feeders around the house to attract some of the local birds. Mainly for our viewing pleasure, although we have a couple that are primarily for the cats’ viewing/hunting pleasure.
This installment is on the flock of glossy ibis we have roaming around. Here’s the Wikipedia article. I like them because they’re like mini-plague doctors. Sometimes we have a few, but then are the days we have a flock of couple dozen. I managed to snap a couple of pics when the flock was between the two extremes.
I’ll probably do a links post either later this week or next week. Everything is kinda being dominated by everyone dissecting the election results. And the results are a freaking Rorschach test for people’s priors. But here are my reflections after most of a week of listening/reading various punditry.
Am I happy Trump won? No, but to be fair, I wouldn’t have been happy with a Harris victory either. Both of them were in extremely different quadrants than me. I’m not a populist, nor a protectionist, nor a statist. I voted for Chase Oliver, but that was mostly for ballot access. If we had more open ballots, I would have been sorely tempted to just leave it blank.
What am I happy about? First, I’m happy that Trump clearly won both the Electoral College and the popular vote. Not that I find the popular vote a helpful metric. It’s kind of like wealth disparity – it’s a useless measure that’s used to gin up a desired political outcome. At least by winning both, it lessens the “stolen election” rhetoric. Also, it magically makes the election legitimate in so many of my MAGA friends and acquaintances.
Second, I am happy to see the demographics shifting. Jonah Goldberg said it best – “In a multi-racial society, it’s good when both parties are multi-racial.” Hopefully, this will be a nail in the coffin for the idea the demography is destiny. That every other race – except whites – vote in lockstep with one party or another. That mindset leads down a dark road.
I am sure there will be actions the Trump administration takes that I will support. There will be others I will oppose. I worry about the new administration’s positions on Ukraine, Israel/Iran, and guns (I don’t trust Trump on guns).
Finally, let’s reflect on how truly bizarre this election has been. I’m hoping that it’s one of those highlighted in future history books, more because it’s an outlier than a harbinger of more turbulence.
Halloween Happenings – Ward Manor was invaded by the great niece so she could trick or treat in our neighborhood. This year, she decided to be a police officer. We set up our table at the end of the driveway and handed out little trinkets. We avoided handing out candy because, well, that means having candy in the house. I will say the best costume goes to the next door neighbors. Not because they dressed up their 13-month-old as an Ewok, but because they turned his stroller into an Imperial Speederbike.
Orlando Happenings – The Wife and I spent the last few days in Orlando so that I could go to the Babymetal concert.
Sunday, The Wife and I traveled over to Disney Springs. We got there shortly before everything opened up and made a beeline to the Lego store. Because, if you’ve never been, they limit the number of folks into the store. The line gets long the later in the day. From there, we meandered through the different stores. They closed their big Star Wars shop and enlarged the smaller one. Not sure if that’s permanent or what. From there, we went up to get some groceries. Much to our surprise, there was a hot pot place advertising boba tea next to the Publix. So, we enjoyed boba while we picked up groceries. From there, we trekked over to the Airbnb. Which was in a place that was kind of like a hotel/apartment thing? I dunno. We had some fun with the door lock, but got all of the stuff dragged in. Then came setting up the workstations. I found some portable monitor/laptop stands. These improve the workstations a lot more. The Wife got the small dining table, while I got the much smaller desk in the bedroom.
Monday was a work day. I will say using laptop stands improved working remotely. Which was good because the day job threw me a quick turnaround – as in same-day – analysis. The internet at the AirBnB wasn’t the best, but it wasn’t the worst we’ve had to deal with on our travels. The chairs were in the same vein – not great, not the worst. We ordered dinner in from Carrabba’s – which neither of us had eaten from in quite a long time. Tuesday work day was similar, with the exception of my work headphones acting up.
Concert Happenings – There was some discussion on whether I should bring my sling bag or not. I ended up deciding against it because it would be one more thing going through security. Plus, I’ve never been to the Hard Rock at Universal – and I always get a bit anxious with new places. When I arrived the line was – shall we say long? I will give them credit, once the doors opened, the line moved pretty smoothly.
The good news was that I had a seat in the center of the stage. The bad news was that the seat was probably in the top row.
The opening act was Scene Queen. Grindcore with a female lead. Kind of like Letters From The Fire meets Bloodhound Gang. Not my cup of tea. At least the singer’s voice didn’t hurt my head like the lead singer from Edge of Paradise.
Babymetal puts on a good show. The girls are very energetic and played a lot of their hits. I will say that through my AirPods Pro I was using as earpro, you could definitely tell how produced they are. Still, even with that, I really enjoyed it.
Plus when the concert was over and the house sound came back on, I got to hear a couple of thousand metalheads sing the refrain from “Take Me Home, Country Roads.” I may have joined in the festivities.
Day Job Happenings – I am now firmly ensconced in the old/new job. We have a new supervisor who was hired during my interregnum from the team. It’s fun when he explains something the team does that I helped start up before I left.
The other fun was I put in an IT ticket because a piece of software was having an issue. In return I was told my laptop was out of warranty and I needed to come in to swap it out. Grumble. My team uses some non-standard software. Plus, getting everything back would be a pain. On top of that, the day job is about fifty miles north of Ward Manor. Anywhoo, I went up, found a place to work for an hour until I could go down to IT, and at the appointed time went down – to be told there were no laptops to be had. Oh, and do you need yours to work? So, I guess I need to make the 100 mile round trip again at some point.
Drink Happenings – The Wife and I picked up bottles of the new Oreo flavored Coke Zero. Okay, not horrible, not great. Also, not something I would go out of my way to get again. I think that kind of sums up the experience.
Cat Tree Happenings – The cat tree we kept out on the back porch was finally deteriorated enough to toss out. After much deliberation, The Wife found one on Amazon that was wood and rope – perfect for outdoors. When it arrived, the wood was, shall we say, very naked. Dang. Run up to Lowe’s for stain and assorted items. I was told by The Wife to stick to staining the small pieces. Assembly didn’t go too bad. A couple of frustrations. Then some rearranging the back porch.
Voting Happenings – The Wife and I did our early voting. There was a small hiccup but went relatively smoothly.
Grill Happenings – It looks like I’m going to get a new grill. The Wife’s nephew is looking to offload some floor models from his day job. Plus, the old grill was getting a bit “dilapidated.”
The Wife loves her TikTok. The algorithm fed her up a guy named Caleb Hammer, who is kind of like a foul-mouthed, very confrontational Dave Ramsey. Not my cup of tea, but i can see why he would be popular.
Anywhoo, it led to a discussion between The Wife and me about how glad we are that we agreed early on money, spending, and budgeting. It also got me thinking on some of the financial reps – the financial muscles I had to build.
The beginning exercise was to pay cash for stuff. I really believe this was such a foundational financial rep. Because when I got used to paying cash for everything, I learned to pay for only what I could afford and budgeted to spend. This was the strength I needed to go to using a debit card. I could spend in more areas, but I still was doing the financial reps of staying within budget and keeping with what was in my account. This meant I had that discipline when The Wife and I went to a credit card. We already had those financial reps to treat the credit card like cash.
