An All-Time Low?

We had a bit of veggie-prep and preservation to do after our trip out to Gettysburg and our visit to my aunt and uncle's farm.

So last Sunday, we spent a few hours knocking that out...

Later that day I was vacuuming the apartment and was doing around my desk, and a little loop of the cable connecting my subwoofer to my computer was sticking out from under my desk just a bit.

I guess I've just never used a decent vacuum in all my life... because, in my head, there was a 0% chance that the vacuum would even try to suck that thing in—let alone swallow it.

But not only did the vacuum pick up that little bit: It full-on ripped both ends of the cable out of the woofer and my PC, devoured the entire cord, and chomped the heads off both 3.5mm jacks on the way in!

On Monday we caved and picked up Domino's for dinner—hardly noteworthy on its own, except that Kitten snapped this picture of the sunset when we got home...

Then Tuesday was election day.

Neither of us voted—nor have we ever even bothered to register—because freedom can never logically begin with choosing a master.

But we got a shameless chuckle as the evening drew on and Trump continued to dominate in the polls: This election, like every election, was a choice between brain cancer and throat cancer...

Contrary to what college-aged know-nothings, Hollywood celebrities, and pundits from the disposable legacy media had all been insisting for the past two years about the certainty of Qué mala Harris's victory, Kitten and I had our suspicions that Tronald Dump was going to prevail:

I had seen firsthand from having visited my friend Richard up in Pipersville back in the summer—and from our trip out to farm country just a few days prior—that most people with actual livelihoods and large tracts of land to protect... actually didn't want brain cancer.

They don't care about woke horseshit like LGBTQXPCF6+ and arbitrary pronouns from the land of rainbows and unicorns: They want to be left alone—by government goons, lowlife thugs, and ideological warriors of the Perpetually Offended whiny-wannabe-victim class that seems to grow exponentially with each passing day.

So, final summation? <shrug>

We were thoroughly unsurprised to wake up the next day and see that Dump had won... and equally unsurprised to see that many people's lives that already had virtually no meaning to begin with had come to a complete stand-still.

Whatever. Some dumb election result was hardly the focus of our Wednesday:

Kitten had already called out of work the day before, and we headed over to my parents' house that afternoon for a quick visit that turned into me doing three hours of yard work so I could replenish our compost pile with an industrial supply of fallen leaves.

Then we grabbed dinner from Popeyes—where I (100% inadvertently, mind you) managed to trick the guy into giving me five extra pieces of chicken.

Thursday the 7^th would have been my dad's 73^rd birthday—which is crazy to try to wrap my head around.

To celebrate, we made tacos for dinner... with the chuck roast from Aunt Jill and Uncle Terry's farm.

Dinner was absolutely incredible—albeit a personal all-time low for me, as I got bested by the jalapeños I put on my first taco...

I know neither how nor why; but, halfway through, my nose had cranked snot production into high gear, and Kitten and the Molerat told me my entire face was red and my lips looked like I had been stung by wasps all around my mouth.

On Saturday we had dinner plans at my parents'; but I wanted to stop at Playwicki Park on our way over, since we haven't had rain here since 1963 and I knew the creek must be wild-looking right now.

I was right: an all-time low for sure!

There's more beach than water at this point...

If we hadn't been headed to dinner, I probably could've walked just about all the way out to the bridge!

My dad—and this is of course my other dad now, keep up!—made beef stew for dinner, and Kitten made an apple crisp with a few dozen apples from the six metric tons Jill and Terry gave us...

It was a delicious meal all around. Hannah gave it two enthusiastic thumbs up...

After dinner, my mom played with Liv...

And Kitten... played with Hannah...

Just before bed on Sunday night, something weird happened...

After about 10 straight Julys of no rain and 90-degree temperatures, we had some kind of weird reprieve...

I spent pretty much all of Monday and Tuesday writing code; and then on Wednesday morning I got interrupted by some commotion outside...

Five cops showed up at the guardrail and sprinted three houses down the street. No idea what happened after that—and the police blotter never made any mention—so, <shrug>

Later that afternoon I went over to my parents' house. My mom and I took a walk in Warminster Community Park to see whether the rumors were true about all the derelict housing from the old air base finally being demolished.

Spoiler alert: Yep.

I did a bit of yardwork, and my mom and I watched a few episodes of Just Shoot Me! together; and then Kitten swung by on her way home from work to pick me up.

We barely even got around the corner before we encountered this gem of a human being...

We'd been sitting at the red light on Bristol Road at 2nd Street Pike—which, for those not in the know, looks like this...

You'll notice how Corner-House Curtis had to dangle some nifty little crow's nest window off his kitchen so that nobody on the road can really even come up in the shoulder to turn right here until after they've cleared the back of his house.

So, Kitten and I were first in line to go straight; and at some point, I became aware of two people in the shoulder to our right...

The first guy had his signal on and turned at the first available break in traffic.

The second guy? No turn signal whatsoever, and he just sat there—even as numerous opportunities to make a right came and went.

I had literally just started to say, "This assclown doesn't have his blinker on: I hope he doesn't think he's gonna cut in front—"

And then the light turned green and he did.

Needless to say, Kitten laid on her horn for a good 30 seconds as we continued onward behind him (naturally with him still just as stuck in traffic anyway).

A few blocks later he flicked on his turn signal to make a right onto Knowles once we got our green; and I said to Kitten, "I hope you're blast him on the horn the entire time he's turning."

"Oh, I am!" she assured me—but then I guess she decided she didn't feel like waiting. And she just laid on her horn again for about another 30 seconds.

At this point, I saw the driver's-side door open, and some gray-haired 50-something stepped out and started back towards Kitten's door!

He shrugged a "Waaaaah, what're you beepin' at me for?" But the entitled smirk on his face assured us that he knew exactly what he'd done and why we were annoyed at him. So, there was no need for sympathy and no need to entertain his bullshit in any capacity.

I ripped off my seatbelt, leaned over Kitten's lap to get my head as close to her open window as I could, and screamed at him:

I'm not sure whether he somehow hadn't noticed me until right then (though I had already seen that there were three other people in his vehicle), or whether I simply convinced him that I was crazier than he was.

But, for whatever reason, he did decide to get back in his car. And then he f--ked off onto Knowles and got out of our way, and that was the end of it.

I expect this kind of crap on an hourly basis here in L'il Trenton. But, to have to put up with it over by my parents'?