For the longest time, Halloween was my favorite holiday.

But then I got cats. And not just any cats, but cats who are terrified of other people. And noise. So a day where people are coming to the door screaming TRICK-OR-TREAT is pretty much their nightmare scenario. To Jake and Jenny, it's the scariest day of the year for realsies.

And it's no picnic for me, I gotta say.

My home has the living room in the back, kitchen and dining room at the front. So every time somebody comes to the door, I have to go running across my house to get there. I usually deep-clean my kitchen on Halloween because of this, but this year it wasn't in me after the rough day I had.

Fortunately, my home is covered by a full array of security cameras, so I just have the camera at my front door running on my televison so I can see people coming before they knock or ring.

But that doesn't save me from having to run to the door fifty times.

Though I should welcome the excersise given that I bought too much candy again this year and will have to eat it myself, darnit.

=sigh=

It's really telling when you get some bad news... but because of what you've been through in the past, you have no idea what your reaction should be. Or even if the bad news is, in fact, fake news.

I was so naïve for so long. Now I'm just numb.

After work yesterday I went to the grocery store to pick up... stuff.

I didn't know what I wanted. Nothing sounded good. I just knew that I was out of just about everything and I needed to go to the store. I guessed that I'd just figure out what I should be buying when I got there. Except that wasn't the case. I just kind of meandered down the aisles aimlessly.

And I wasn't alone.

There was a bird hopping around who looked equally confused as to what they should be buying...

It was tough to sleep wondering what happened to the bird.

What do stores do when a bird gets trapped in their shop?

Hopefully at least make a little effort to help it find its way back outside.

The last time the Aurora Borealis was a thing back in May, I dragged out my camera and tripod and was disappointed with the shots I got compared to what others were getting. So when I heard that she would be making a repeat performance last night, I thought I'd study up how to take better photos this time around. Then ultimately decided I didn't care enough to do that. I'll just look at other people's photos and stay inside where it's warm

But then I remembered that I have a new iPhone and decided to throw on a jacket to see what happens when I used it to snap some photos...

What people are not saying is that you don't just walk out your door and see this. It's barely visible until you pull out your phone or camera and make a long exposure. To actually walk outside and see this you need to go to Norway. Or Alaska (which is where I saw it for realsies). Or somewhere way north. Still... it's pretty to look at through my iPhone.

I kept looking through my bedroom window and waited to see if the pink/red got stronger before going outside, because at the start it was mostly green like last time. And yes, before you ask, I changed the photo style in iPhone Camera from my new go-to "Amber" undertone to the "Vivid" filter setting (which was my former happy place in the app before we got "Amber")...

Some interesting things to note...

First, all of the above photos were shot with the wide-angle lens. I was really hoping to get something cool out of the new 48MP ultra-wide lens, but the results were terrible. It's as if the shake reduction is not working and the "Vivid" setting wasn't doing anything to help. All I could get without a tripod were grim, blurry photos. So disappointing...

Second, I shot a couple videos to capture the shifting lights, but that turned out even worse. I think if I got my tripod that I could have gotten something worthwhile, but my cats were already pissed off enough that I had left them.

Third, when I looked through my photos more carefully this morning, I found that what I really liked was when the stars shined through the aurora. Now I really wish I had grabbed my tripod, because I would have liked to have gotten a crisper take of that. But still, the iPhone's shake reduction is darn good. Considering how small the stars are, I expected a lot more blur than what I got. This is a 100% pixel crop of how iPhone did with the wide-angle lens...

Fourth, I opened my laptop this morning and of course social media is overflowing with "tHIs iS nOt NORmal! ThIS IS The hEAVy metaLs ThAT thE GuberMINt aRE putTing InTO The air to CREaTE hURRICaNes!" Because of course. We can't have nice things any more because despite explanations by scientists and astronomers as to what's happening, everything has to fit into some nonsensical confirmation bias narrative. Everything. It must be fucking exhausting spending so much time trying to sus out what the latest conspiracies are and how they can sandwich into the demented fantasies that people are building to explain the world around them. Fantasies which don't rely on empirical evidence, rational thought, or all the evil lying scientists around the world who have been paid by NASA to deceive us from the truth. It's absolutely bonkers that we've regressed back to the Stone Age, and everything humanity has learned is being tossed out the window in favor of absolute bullshit. But that could just be my eight COVID boosters talking. I get vaccinated because I have respiratory issues and getting COVID could kill me, so I guess I'll just keep believing in science so I can survive even though it means that I am crazy-stupid for believing in science? Who the fuck knows any more.

And there you have it. A pretty nice display of this cool consequence of stronger-than-usual solar storms hitting earth's magnetic field and interacting with gasses in the upper atmosphere which is visible further south than usual.

Or it's Obama and the Deep State using unicorn blood as a sacrifice to satan for summing death and destruction upon the earth which our prayers to Jesus combated, thus creating pretty lights. Or what the fuck ever you want to believe. I give up.

   
Today I spent 20 minutes trying to explain that a photo was not real but AI-generated. FML.

It's Friday again, which would usually have me excited about having time off for the weekend. Except Summer ends on Sunday, so I've got a rapidly dwindling amount of time to get my home and yard ready for winter. My garage wood shop has been dismantled. My HVAC inspection has been made. I've replaced my air filter. I'm down to the home stretch.

Which largely involves taking out my Fall/Winter clothes, bedding, and such... then storing away my Spring/Summer stuff.

Which is to say that there's going to be a lot of washing and packing.

How can I look forward to that?

Long before the candle parties, makeup parties, sex toy parties, and home decor parties, were Tupperware parties. I remember them very well. Every other month or so one of the moms on the block would host a party where the neighborhood would gather to see all the latest wares from a goliath plastic food container company so they could order stuff to make their lives easier (and keep their foods fresher).

Personally I hated Tupperware because the containers would easily warp and stain... and the soft plastic would scratch with little effort, always making me wonder how much plastic was ending up in our food. My mom still had a bunch of the stuff when I cleaned out here cupboards... all of it warped, stained, and scratched.

With the exception of this thing, which I kept and still use from time to time...

Guaranteed delicious microplastics in every bite!

Today it was announced that Tupperware is bankrupt.

Which isn't too shocking. Who has time for food storage parties when you can just order cheap crap from Amazon and get on with your life? Or, if you're me, replace as much kitchen stuff as possible with glass and metal (well, except for stuff that sits out on the counter because I have cats).

Still... I do have some fond Tupperware memories too. It would be tough growing up in 1970's rural America and not have fond memories.

There were the Tupperware popcicle molds which you could fill with Kool-Aid (or Jell-O or Jell-O Pudding, if you were bougie). There was the Tupperware cereal keeper containers which made it so that your Fruit Loops didn't go stale as fast. There was that famous Tupperware cake taker that got pulled out when grandma was taking a cake somewhere and you got excited for a slice.

But then there was everything else, which usually meant you were getting gross leftovers instead of new deliciousness. That's the darker side of my childhood that most people don't want to discuss. Though, as an adult who has to actually pay for my own food, I'm thrilled to have modern food storage technology!

I'd just prefer that my food not be stored in plastic and cost a fortune, so I guess childhood memories are all the Tupperware I need.

Time to say good bye to Summer.

My air conditioning hasn't come on since I've gotten back from vacation. My outdoor plants are starting to keel over, turn brown, and die. And the mornings and evenings are noticeably cool now. Fall is totally going to be here any minute now (well, okay, it'll officially be here in three days), so I've been doing what I can to clean up the yard, get my wood shop torn down so I have a garage, and do all the other things that one does while the weather is still accommodating to it.

Like clean out my flower beds.

There's this tree-thing that grows back every year. I chop it down, it grows back almost immediately. I thought that having my flower beds completely gutted last year would finally kill it, but NOPE!

This year I actually just let it be. I never had time to replant the very front of my house, and it was green and tall and helped fill up space. But now that everything needs to be cleaned out, I chopped it down...

I posted about it on Facebook, and somebody told me... "Yeah, that's a Tree of Heaven, and they're almost impossible to get rid of." And so I had to research that. "Tree of Heaven" (AKA Ailanthus Altissima) is something that totally IS tough to get rid of because the root system is extensive and can survive almost anything. Regular poisons won't work (there goes my plan to drill into the cut edges and put herbicide on it), and may actually encourage it to spread further because it will try to escape the poison.

And so... next year I will probably hire a company who knows what to do to try and get rid of it for good.

I hope their solution isn't to light my yard and home on fire.

I am sure there are people who go their entire lives without physical agony but, alas, I am not one of them. Kidney stones have seen to that.

And, as it turns out, food poisoning gets me there too.

I should preface this by saying that I've had a cast-iron stomache for as long as I've been alive. I don't get food poisoning. I've been around the world a dozen times and have eaten all kinds of questionable things without any ill-effects. Everything from the horrors of Nattō (fermented soybeans from Japan) to suspect cheeses of every kind... didn't affect me in the least. Any time I do get affected by something I'm not accustomed to eating, it's mild. Maybe an upset stomach for an hour or two... or a mild case of diarrhea.

But recently? Disaster.

A couple months ago I had a rice dish that made me so sick I thought that I would never be able to eat again. I was vomiting for days. A sip of water was enough to send me into painful convulsions.

And last night (or rather, tonight since I am writing this on Friday about last night)... I had food poisoning so bad that I was praying for death.

It all started when I grabbed a slice of leftover pizza as I was headed out the door. I felt a knot in my stomache within a half hour. That should have been a sign to go force myself to puke it up. But I endured. By the time I got home from work I was sweating and starting to have cramping.

Two hours after that I was rolling around in bed screaming my head off.

Around 8:00pm I swallowed an old Oxycodone I had found in my travel bag. I swallowed it dry because I had already been puking all night. Somehow I managed to keep it down and fell asleep. Or passed out. Or something.

When I woke up at 10:15pm I was still in pain, but knew the minute my pill wore off that I'd be in agony again. So I took the last decade-old Oxycodone I had and went back to sleep.

And managed to sleep through the night, not waking up until 5:30am.

My pain was still there, but dulled enough that I could go to work. Which I really, really didn't want to do... but really, really needed to do.

Now the agony is but a memory. Though a foggy one. I remember wanting to die. I know I was in pain. I'm just so far detatched from it as to wonder if maybe it was a dream. But then I found the empty bottle from my pills which expired 9 years ago and know it was all too real.

I don't get a lot of checks in the mail, but I get enough that I am adept at spotting them when I clear out my mailbox every week. Most of them are tiny residual checks or usage checks or clearance negotiation checks and what not. Seriously tiny. My favorites are those for pennies which cost more to mail than to pay out. A lot of the time I just toss them if they're less than $1, because they're just not worth the effort to cash. I doubt they add up to $20. And it's like... hey... $20 is $20, but if it takes signing and processing 40 checks to get it... well...

All of these checks are machine-generated into those oragami-folded nightmares where you have to fold and tear it on both sides (sometimes three sides) to even open it. Then risk a paper-cut to try to break the glue seal to unfold it. They're called "snap-pack checks," and I loathe them.

But it gets worse!

Now scum-sucking asshole companies are sending ads that look like checks. So if you are used to getting these kind of snap-packs in the mail, you go to the effort to open it to see if it's more than a dollar only to find it's not even a check at all!

But it gets worse!

Some companie DO include a real check... but it's a trap. Because if you cash it (even if it's by accident because you get a lot of these things and don't look carefully) then you've committed yourself to some kind of service or product you don't even want...

The above sample is a check for $20,000, which most people would investigate before cashing. But a check for $4.58 or whatever?

This kind of deceptive bullshit should be illegal.

But it's not because politicians get paid big money to look the other way when it comes to Americans getting scammed.

If there's an "American Way" anymore, that would be it.