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      Thursday, June 21, 2018


otherstuff
01:00 PM - 06/21/2018

The topic: Stuff stuff

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So, pretty upset with what this administration is doing to our country right now, the first lady's choice of outerwear pretty much just takes the cake. I only used to loathe animal abusers like I do this family, but who knew there was always room for more hate?  Yeah, I'm a hater. I admit it. Raised democrat, I have voted republican in the past. Probably won't ever do that again.

I married a republican. He made a good living and followed the party line. And rhetoric. The business tanked. The economy hurt his company badly. People weren't spending so much on specialty, artisan work like he did. So, he let that go and started his current company. There's not near the money coming in that had been, but not having that money changed the way he looks at life. I think the turning point was when Romney said what he said about the 47% of Americans who paid no income tax, like they were all entitled deadbeats. Brian agreed with him.

I do the taxes. I know what we pay. I said "I've got news for you. We're in that 47%. We paid no taxes last year. After the deductions, we owed nothing. We paid no taxes."  I left it at that.

The point being, he was still working his ass off and we were barely getting by.  He learned the hard way that just because people don't owe on taxes, doesn't mean they don't work hard.

And he started paying attention. Since he wasn't out and about, listening to angry, white man, hate radio, having it drummed into his head hour after hour (he did a lot of driving to get to job sites), he started to lighten up. It was nice.

He wasn't raised on religion. Religion caused problems with his parents relationship. His mom wasn't religious. His dad was. And his father spent much of his extra time helping others, not helping at home while his mom worked full time and had five kids of her own, as well as a foster child. So in the 2016 campaign and all of these people came out saying "God chose me to run", Brian was "huh uh, nope, nope".  And then there was trump.

Remember Brian had a successful company until the last recession? Well, during his time with that company, he dealt with people like Trump.  Contractors who filed bankruptcy and left their sub-contractors holding the bag (a general hires subs, who pay their own employees, pay the payroll taxes, pay the material suppliers, etc). When the general declared bankruptcy, someone has to pay the employees and the suppliers. Way back when, Brian and his cousin did a big job for a big company. The company was happy with the job. But when it came time to pay, they balked.

Lawyers were involved. The big company lawyers told the little company "sure, you can sue us and take us to court. You'd most likely win. But we have lawyers on staff and can drag this out for years. Can you afford to do that?"

Nope. The little company couldn't and was paid $200,000.00 less than the contract was for.

And that's how Trump works. He's NOT a good businessman, he's a con man. And that was enough. Brian left the republican party after forty one years. And watching this shitshow of an administration is just hard to do.  Melania's big f*ck you jacket this morning, the one she wore to visit the children ripped from their parents' arms, was just the icing on the cake. Just when I think I can't hate these people anymore than I already do, they do something like this.

So, to take my mind off of it (and this is probably the last you'll hear of this subject from me) I've been checking out other things to do with my Silhouette.

Like etching metal!  I did a little bracelet last week, with a trail of tiny dinosaurs. Problem was, it was just the outline and the etching was done into silver aluminum. You can barely see the dinos. So, I did my Google searching and tried a couple of different things. Like Sharpies. Nope, didn't work. Acrylic paint. Nope, didn't work. Boo! I checked out different types of supplies, found some called Alumamark, that when the top layer is etched, is black underneath. I ordered about eight bucks of those, to play with. And I found some anodized aluminum samples for around fifteen dollars, to play with. The day after I set up an account with them, I got an email saying that all I had to do to be approved for up to $150,000 was fill out a form on their website. Just damn. I'm pinching pennies to get this twenty-five dollars up. It just made me laugh.

I also found some tutorials on filling in text with the Silhouette, which would make the designs much more easily seen. I spent hours watching videos this past week. And wouldn't you know it, just when I think I've got it down (I did some testing yesterday, not with actually running the Silhouette, but working with the software), today, there was a link to a Silhouette tutorial on using the fill options with the sketch pen. lol! 

I've been keeping up with the paperwork. Well, kind of. Invoicing and new accounts have been done, but the statement reconciliations are falling behind again. I blame my bad hip. lol

The pool is finally clean! Yay! It got a little hairy there for a while. (I have before and after pictures I need to upload.) The water wasn't getting as clear as it should have and algae kept growing. Brian added liquid chlorine and realized the inline auto-chlorinator needed more chlorine. For some reason, the big filter kept blowing amounts of diatomaceous earth back into the pool, which indicates a hole or opening somewhere in the filters, but that resolved after a week or so. Brian was actually so upset, he started looking for a different type of filter, but the cost of a new one (a grand) got him to back off of that idea.

I'd love to go swimming, but the water is still in the 70°s. The weather has been fairly mild, the afternoons get pretty warm, but so far, the pool hasn't warmed up much. The surgeon (for my hip) said exercising in the pool is good because it's not weight bearing. Not yet.

The Ranger was having problems with the brakes. Not something you can put off until you have more money. Too dangerous. He took it to a local shop and it ended up costing close to a thousand dollars. One of the rotors was split (which means absolutely nothing to me) and needed to be replaced. Luckily, he still had some funds left from the sale of his Bronco back in January. Worth the piece of mind.

Cats are doing okay, getting old. Deaf Sammy stands in the bedroom, yowling his head off and you go in to make sure he's okay, he sees you and just mouths the word "meow" with no sound. It's really sweet. Opie's abscess has cleared up nicely. Rocky runs when he sees us coming again, because meds.

My replacement range extender got here. It's up and running. I'm not returning the other one. Since the final straw, I'm returning it, moment, it hasn't had to be reset once and amazingly, finally started seeing the NAS drives. Since it sends both 5G and 2.4G signals, and 5G is better and faster, I'll go ahead and keep it. The other one is set up here in the family room and the service to the Roku is always "excellent". No buffering or losing the connection during a show. Yay!

I've washed three windows this week. Before hip problems, I'd have the entire house done in one day. Just can't do it. I haven't cleaned the windows in over a year and it's been making me crazy. So, one day I did the dining room windows (actually, a bay window, with three windows). Huge difference. A couple of days later, I did the family room windows (another bay window, with a big pillow for the cats to lay on; that window had lots of kitty noseprints and old kitty sneeze juice). Then I set my sights on my favorite window in the house, the one in the laundry room. I needed a stool to do that one. Brian cleaned the screen for me while I washed the window. I love that window.

I have more windows to do, but I'm shower fresh right now. Maybe I'll get the other windows and sliding glass doors done this weekend. I love it when the windows are clean, it really helps my mood.

So, that's about it for now.

silhouette    rocky    pool work    opie    geekstuff    craftstuff    catstuff   


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lisaviolet is seventy something, married with no kids, takes care of lots of cats, likes taking photographs, loves Southern California weather and spends altogether too much time avoiding her responsibilities.

In her spare time, she makes pretty things to sell in her store.

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