Well, as expected, the bought-and-paid-for representatives in The House have voted with the bought-and-paid-for senators in The Senate to strip away privacy protections for internet access. Now the legislation will be passed to President Trump so he can sign off on it.

Everything you are online will soon be in the hands of your Internet Service Provider.

Who will sell everything from your browser history to your location data to whomever will pay for it. And, believe me folks, they will.

Read it and weep.

The Republican spin about how this is a Good Thing is total bullshit. There is nothing more important than your privacy when it comes to the internet. There cannot be enough protections to ensure your privacy on the internet. Any claims to the contrary can be nothing but bullshit.

So... be sure to look into a VPN if you plan on browsing the internet in the future.

Also... please pardon the mess at Blogography for a while. I'm switching the entire site over to an SSL security certificate, so images, videos, and such will probably be messed up until I get everything sorted. If you check the URL in your browser address bar, you'll see that Blogography is now HTTPS secure. You can hover over the badge at the bottom of my sidebar to verify it.

Next up? Killing off net neutrality, I'm sure.

UPDATE: Here's a handy list of how much your senators and representatives were paid to sell out your privacy. Pig fuckers, every one of them. But especially The Right Dishonorable Cathy McMorris-Rogers and the Right Dishonorable Daniel Newhouse, Representatives from my Great State of Washington. Enjoy the tens of thousands of dollars you took in betrayal of your fellow Washingtonians and their privacy, assholes.

I found out that my long-time blogging friend Anissa died this morning.

Words completely escape me. There's nothing I can say that could encapsulate just how painful this is. And yet... I'm going to give it a try, because powering through life in the face of tragedy is what she was all about.

Anissa is joy to all those who knew her. No matter what she was going through... no matter what hardship she was facing... no matter how much she was struggling... you would never know it because her grace, humor, wit, and spirit always made you feel as though she hadn't a care in the world. Life, such as it is, was her bitch.

The irony of my last interaction with her on Facebook is not lost on me...

Tacos.

And here's where we go back to the start.

Though I had known her online for years prior, the first time I met Anissa in person was at Davelanta 3 in 2009...

Kevin, Beth, Diana, Kim, Val, Mr. & Mrs. Muskrat, Heather, and Anissa... not pictured is Julie, who ditched our sorry asses so she could go to a much better party with a group of much classier people!

   
I fell in love with her that night.

Which is not at all unusual, because everybody who met Anissa fell in love with her. She's STD-level infectious like that.

I sat next to her at dinner and remember it like it was yesterday. We were at The Cheesecake Factory, and a lot of our discussion revolved around their Deep-Fried Macaroni and Cheese Balls. We had much to discuss on the topic. Mostly because she was nibbling on my balls the whole time.

And then...

Not long after that infamous first meeting, Anissa had a stroke and her whole world changed.

Not that you would know it because, despite being confined to a wheelchair, Anissa herself did not change. She was still the same brilliant, beautiful, snarky, and entirely inappropriate person she had always been. Just slowed down a bit.

We finally met up again at another blogger meet in 2011...

Mr. Muskrat, Tyler, Heather, Adam, Anissa, Anissa's Friend(?), Beth, Kevin, and Mrs. Muskrat!

   
Seeing how Anissa was struggling was not easy.

Seeing how she was overcoming adversity was truly inspiring.

And she continued to inspire everybody she encountered for almost 6 years to the day I last saw her.

My heart is broken. What's left of it goes out to her husband and three children, all of whom were Anissa's everything. That she had a heart big enough to share with the rest of the world too is everything you need to know about her.

Well, that... and the fact that she really couldn't keep her hands off my balls that night. Not that I can blame her... they were delicious. If there were a Cheesecake Factory anywhere near me, that's where I'd be. With a Long Island ice tea and big ol' plate of deep-fried macaroni and cheese balls in her honor.

Rest in peace, my dear friend. You were loved so much by so many, and your having to leave us hasn't changed that.

Can you believe I was supposed to be on vacation this week?

I went into work for a couple hours and ended up being there half the day. The rest of my day was spent running back and forth to Sherwin-Williams for paint samples. By the time all that was over, my day was pretty much done.

If only Glacier National Park wasn't on fire, I could have been living an entirely different life right now... if just for a while. Instead, my mind is all over the place...

1. Does a tablespoon of peanut butter count as "food" when taking a pill that needs to be taken with food? It's all that sounded good.
2. Have my cats totally figured me out? Whenever Jake see's me walking upstairs now, he dashes up ahead of me and stops half-way because he knows I will always stop to pet him. Jenny knows exactly how to curtail my morning routine in order to get petted. They know exactly what to do to get exactly what they want, and I'm starting to feel programmed!
3. How does one walk into Home Depot and spend less than $100, even when they don't need anything and just wanted to look at something real quick? Asking for a friend.
4. I am building new cabinet doors, which requires a pocket screw jig, a concealed hinge jig, and a cabinet hardware jig to do a good job. Am I EVER going to run out of tools to buy? Because every time I start a new project, there's something new I have to get. I honestly thought that my biscuit cutter would be the end of it, but here we are.
5. Is it just me, or has "Younger" jumped the shark? I really liked the first two seasons... but now I'm only watching because I like Debi Mazar.
6. I have a web browser shortcut to Facebook which takes me directly to "Most recent stories"... where Facebook ALWAYS gives me a link which says "Back to top stories." Why in the hell is Facebook forever trying to make me look at Top Stories? Do they get more money? What the fuck do they care how I order my stories? Why not let me set Facebook to ALWAYS show "Most recent stories," which is what I want?
7. And, while we're at it... why the fuck does Facebook put OLD stories in "Most recent stories" just because somebody commented on them? A comment doesn't make an old story "new" again, dumbasses. If I want to look at a new comment on an old story, I'll click on it in the Notifications drop-down.
8. I loathe Pillsbury canned biscuits... they have an acidic/burnt oil residual taste that grosses me out. But then I bought the Pillsbury frozen biscuits on a whim, and love them. Not only do they taste amazing, but I can bake only as many as I want instead of a whole batch! Will I ever make homemade biscuits again? I honestly don't know... because the frozen biscuits are kinda expensive. But so easy. And yummy.
9. Why am I fascinated by absolutely everything my cats do? I love watching them do simple stuff like eat, sit, walk, sleep, and give themselves a bath even. I thought it would get old after a year-and-a-half, but it hasn't. I'm as obsessed as I ever was.
10. How do I fit more hours in the day? Because I've got a stack of new LEGO Dimensions expansion packs sitting on my dresser, and they aren't going to play themselves. With all the work and projects on my plate, I have no idea when I'll ever get to them. IF I'll ever get to them.

And now? Time to put away all my guest room furnishings since my friends didn't have to evacuate their home and crash at my place after all. So grateful. I mean, I love having company over... but not like this.

Stay safe, everybody.

Hmmm... I wrote a long blog entry for today, but think I need to take a minute.

Not the kind of consideration you're used to seeing when it comes to me sharing my opinions on Blogography, but this time I think I need to sleep on it.

Well, I should probably "sleep on it" all the times I get fired up about something. But what fun is that?

For those who only read one of my posts each year... or anybody wanting a recap of the past year here at Blogography... this post is for you! As customary, I've jettisoned loads of the usual junk so this entry is "mostly crap" instead of the "total crap" they usually are.

2017 was far from ideal. And yet... compared to the bucket of never-ending suck that was 2016, it was a vast improvement. So I can't really complain.

JANUARY

• Said goodbye to President Obama, a president that I never learned to truly appreciate until the total disaster that's now occupying The White House moved in...

Official White House Photo by Pete Souza

   
FEBRUARY

• Took my cats to the vet for the first time, something I am definitely not looking forward to doing again in the New Year...

   
MARCH

• Went to Disneyland for work, then ranked my all-time favorite Disney attractions.

   
• Yesterday I listed my favorite albums of 2017. Last March I listed my all-time most hated songs that everybody else seems to love.

   
• Flew to San Francisco to see one of my favorite new musical artists, Wrabel, with my (literal) rockstar friend Aaron.

   
• Headed to Las Vegas, where I finally ziplined down Fremont Street, among other things.

   
APRIL

• Said goodbye to Lil' Spicey...

   
• Built a built-in desk... for my cats, apparently.

   
MAY

• Flew to Denver to celebrate my good friend Howard's 50th birthday with the Guardians of the Galaxy: Volume 2!

   
JUNE

• Built new built-ins for my bedroom closet, which turned out amazing...

   
• Had one of the biggest scares of my life during The Great Jake Escape...

   
• Back to Vegas again (for work this time).

   
JULY

• Said goodbye to my long-time blogging friend, Anissa.

   
• Welcomed Carl the RoboVac to my family...

   
• Flew to Maine for blueberries (and for work).

   
AUGUST

• Said a painful goodbye to my good friend and long-time blogging buddy, Howard.

   
• Lived through Raccoonageddon.

   
• Live-blogged my photographing the eclipse (with my cats).

   
• Read The Nashville Statement so you don’t have to.

   
SEPTEMBER

• Lived through another round of wildfires in my neck of the woods.

   
• Built a tunnel for a bird to escape my home before my cats could murder it...

   
OCTOBER

• Wrote "Second Amendments and Horse Shit" which surprised some people, I'm sure.

   
• Had some extra money that came my way and wrote about what I did with it... which included getting some old negatives scanned...

   
• Added Joy the Mopping Robot to Carl the RoboVac and my growing family.

   
• Got my cats into the Halloween spirit...

   
NOVEMBER

• Had a colonoscopy... and posted photos of my beautiful colon (you're welcome!).

   
• Flew to Maine and finally visited Acadia National Park...

   
• Visited the Eastern-Most Point in the USA at West Quoddy Head Light on a bad weather day...

   
• Was first in the USA to see the sun rise at Cadillac Mountain...

   
DECEMBER

• Flew to Buenos Aires and visited Evita at Recoleta Cemetery...

   
• Took in the view at The End of the World...

   
• Headed out across The Drake Passage in some of the roughest seas on earth...

   
• Fulfilled a life-long dream when I finally set foot on Antarctica for the first time...

   
• Photographed Antarctica icebergs at "night"...

   
• Explored the lives of penguins...

   
• Had one of the most amazing days of my life when I stepped foot on the seventh continent...

   
• Got up-close-and-personal with some whales...

   
• More penguin photography at Half Moon Island in Antarctica...

   
• Used Apple's new "iPhone Update Plan" so I could buy an iPhone X and post my thoughts on the astoundingly expensive thing.

   
And there you have it, the year that was the major events in my 2017.

Well, the ones I shared on my blog, anyway.

Thanks once again to my cats, family, and friends for making life bearable through the not-so-great times. Though, I have to say, closing out the year with my bucket-list trip to Antarctica certainly had it ending on a high note.

Here's to a good 2018, everybody.