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Click on image for a larger version. Real snow, but the rest is tinsel. Tinsel shaded with smoke and mirrors might be appropriate considering results of recent Presidential Election, but that is politics. No politics in our wishes to all readers here for a joyous and Merry Christmas and a Happy and Healthy New Year.
***Stay tuned, but no more Christmas gifts from here this year--- Doug Wiken
My deceased mother-in-law abhorred change of almost any kind. Daylight savings time was anathema to her and outrage against God himself. She referred to standard time as "God's time" and daylight savings time to "galloping time".
It does seem however that the time changes minor as they seem do seem to raise hell with our physical and mental systems. I now sort of think that businesses should adjust their starting and closing times to reflect the length of the day and timing of sunrise and sunset rather than shifting our time of day. My guess is that when it is dark in the morning, getting to an office and working is not the most productive for either the employee or employer. Same is true for driving home in the dark. My guess is the same amount of work would be accomplished if the work "days" more closely followed light.
But, of course, some people have to work nights anyway, and medical services know no time. Emergencies and care needs can arise anytime of day.
But, for awhile, it will be light at 8 AM around here and it will also be dark sometime between 5PM and 6PM. And we may fall asleep an hour "late"and still wake up an hour "early".
*** Stay tuned even if Trump's irrelevance is more interesting to you than this irrelevance---- Doug Wiken
About once a year, I find some coffee cups I like more than my old collection. I rounded up the cup in the following photo at Dollar General for $1 a piece. They also had the cookies. The cookies have a good simple taste probably helped by a lot of butter and vanilla. The Danish butter cookies seem to available only about this time of year. Probably a good thing for waistlines around the world. Happy New Year to all and the year will be better if you limit your drinking to good water and good coffee.
***Stay tuned even if this makes you, as well as me, hungry and coffee-thirsty--- Doug Wiken
We are getting snow after freezing rain, frost on trees, etc. Yesterday I drove from Rapid City to Winner, SD. I drove through about 100 miles of fog. I got behind a semi and trailer and could see the tail end of that and figured if I could see him moving, the road was still OK. Strangely, there was no fog and river bottom low ground near Wasta. Worse fog on the higher ground. Must have been a cloud sitting low rather than ground fog. Now at about 3:30 CST, we are getting heavy snow. Prediction if for 6 to 9 inches.
Yesterday, I saw the results of one highway crash someplace between Rapid City and Wall, SD. A semi truck/trailer was on its side with cab to east and next to the west bound lanes in the medium. Several trucks with flashing lights around it.
I was happy to be home before dark.
Gotta feed my dogs. The cats are fed. Renters cows are unhappy.
*** Stay tuned but check your weather and road reports before unnecessary travel---- Doug Wiken
President Obama spoke this evening on the San Bernardino murders and terrorism. I found a transcript after listening to him this evening. I plan to plow through that later, but as usual, Obama talks and talks and even when he says we have three points, not one of his three points is a single sentence without a dozen extra words. As I have written here before, it is terribly hard for me to remember anything he has said in a speech even minutes after. He needs to read Lincoln's Gettysburg address and seriously consider hiring a word surgeon to shorten his speeches and make each sentence with some punch.
I don't remember anything he said that I disagreed with, but I also don't remember anything he said which is likely to cause me to do a whole hell of a lot either. If he wants us to get behind the program on destroying ISIS or ISIL, he better first persuade all the Muslims in this country to get behind the attack.
New aliens coming into the US should first go to something resembling a detention center where they can be evaluated over a period of days to determine their ability to speak English and their knowledge of American morals, customs, and ethics. It should be up to the federal government to teach these aliens rather than dumping them onto local taxpayers as another huge unfunded federal mandate.
Maybe I will add more to this tomorrow after I attack the text with a pencil and notes. Obama is both blessed and cursed with a collection of crazy Republican politicians mad ravings make him look good by comparison as they attack him as if he is the tar baby.
***Stay tuned anyway---- Doug Wiken
Sometimes KELO's weather warnings seem a bit overplayed, but the prediction for the Winner area and Tripp County was more or less dead-on. We got something between 6 and 10 inches of heavy wet snow. Now the wind is strong enough to blow it around into drifts. If I remember my camera tomorrow, I will add a photo or two below.
A little shoveling of this goes a long way. The city pushed a couple feet of snow into our driveway, but a neighbor got his snow blower running and cut a path through the city pile. The city trucks come up over a hill with a lot of snow in front of them which then gets dumped on our sidewalks and driveway because of the slope of the street. Now I hope KELO's weather news of a warm front moving in is also correct.
*** Stay tuned even if you are basking in tropical heat somewhere or in somewhere--- Doug Wiken
I happened to see Dr. Oz oozing this morning about Thanksgiving cooking safety. Most likely you have heard all this before, but, the best way to thaw a frozen turkey is to put it in a refrigerator a week or so before you plan to cook. For those of us who can't seem to plan that far ahead, put the frozen turkey in cold water completely submerging it about a day before planning to cook. We have done this and it works. The best container we found was an insulated cold chest or picnic chest. Something heavy may need to be put atop the turkey to keep from floating out of the water.
The next bit of everyday wisdom was that it is better to cook stuffing outside the turkey instead of inside the turkey. It is possible but a bit tricky to get the stuffing and the turkey both up to 160F degrees or. They did do it, but turkey was up to 175F and stuffing was still not 160F, but putting it under an aluminum foil tent for a time got the stuffing temp up. It seems like cooking the stuffing separately makes a whole lot more sense for safety and requires a whole lot fussing and fiddling.
And, just a little note about Thanksgiving spirit. I bought vehicle license stickers today. While I was writing the check, the woman behind the counter said she had to get cooking after she got out of work. Her mother had taught her how to bake a good pie, and she planned to get that done. Then she mentioned that her mother had died, but her father still wanted pies. So the daughter taught her father how to make and bake the pies himself. I thought that was kind of interesting and reminded me that my own mother pretty much taught my wife how to cook, which means, I can never gripe about how her cooking is not as good as my mother's.
Well, so much for that. Good luck on your thanksgiving dinner. Maybe the best idea is to skip the stuffing and the turkey and just cook a ham. According to an ag report early Sunday morning, farm prices are down for chickens, turkey, and cattle. Don't eat too much anyway, just have fun and don't make the affair a test of wills and perseverance just short of a complete nervous breakdown.
I gotta get those license stickers on while the temperature is still above freezing.
***Stay tuned and watch the weather reports before traveling--- Doug Wiken.
We have a taste of white winter in the Winner area. Probably about 3 inches depending on where you are in Tripp County. More or less here and there. Heavy wet snow. Good thing it did not come with the 50mph winds of a day or two ago. We would have had some huge drifts.
City of Winner has sort of cleaned up streets, but as usual are mostly waiting for God to do the work. Streets weren't cleaned enough, so now the melted snow is slick ice. North-south highway appears to have at least partially blown clear and county and state have been working. The first snow always looks like it is something they have never seen before. But, in the past it has at times been much worse.
Hope the sun shines and it warms up a bit. NOTE: I woke up about 3 AM last night and outdoor thermometer showed 11F degrees. At 8:30 AM, temperature was still only about 11F degrees. Probably about 25 at noon. I am not welcoming frigid weather very well.
***Stay tuned, the sun will shine tomorrow...I hope--- Doug Wiken
In a previous post I posted an image of something related to Goldilocks and the three bears. Nobody has yet suggested what that might be. Below is an image of some tiny tin? tea cups we found in the same dirt. Again, if you have any idea what these were sold as or if originally painted or whatever, please let me know. They are only about an inch in diameter and an inch high. Saucers or plates are about 3 inches in diameter.
Two of the cups hold water, one has corroded and leaks, In the rear is apparently a creamer or something similar. We may scratch around in the area again soon. It took a bit of scrubbing with an old toothbrush to get them cleaned up even as much as the photo indicates.
***Stay tuned even if you only use 16 oz mugs for your tea and coffee--- Doug Wiken
I watched the Democratic "Debate" from Iowa on CBS last night. Ended up liking Hillary less, Martin O'Malley a bit more, and Bernie Sanders a lot more. This morning, Peggy Noonan took after Sanders with another bit showing her ignorance. Peggy Noonan who years ago thought dolphins saved a Cuban immigrant at sea, thought Sanders relating problems in mid-east and likely increase in problems to global warming was daft and just an appeal to liberal greens.
The problem in Syria started with drought that caused rural farmers to move from new "deserts" to Syrian cities. We might wonder if this is merely a weather event or a consequence of global warming, but it suggests that Sanders was not off base in linking Syrian problems to global warming. Why CBS, ABC or NBC brings this cow Noonan out of the weeds is a mystery to me. Other links related to climate change and terrorism, war, refugees, etc. Mother Jones--Sanders hits it out of the park, National Geographic--Climate Change sparks rebellion.
The Sabbath gasbags were also hammering all Democratic candidates for not having worked out new programs to stop ISIS pigs from causing more horror and carnage. Of course, nobody else (especially Sabbath Gasbags) has developed a whole new program in the few hours since the Paris murders and global war on western civilization by ISIS pigs.
It might seem that Democratic candidates might look at the support Trump is getting and think that perhaps building two walls across our US southern borders with a 1500 foot wide kill zone between them might put a near instantaneous stop to illegal immigration which is now an obvious threat to peace and prosperity to the US.
Expecting our immigration system to speedily and effectively control immigration or allow it from places like Syria is absurd without also committing huge sums of money and personnel to the sorting task.
But, in short, no matter the problems of Hillary and her Wall Street connections claiming no relation between huge contributions and policy right after she opposed a $15 minimum wage, the three Democratic candidates all made the Republican Clown candidates look like irrelevancy in the real world of policy and politics.
*** Stay tuned for more inevitably worse atrocity and terrorism--- Doug Wiken
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