As I mentioned yesterday, I was mad that the new faucet I bought was opposite in operation from the faucet that it replaced... despite being the same brand, Kohler! It was also opposite of every other single-handle faucet I've ever used where the HOT water is away from you and the COLD water is nearest to you. Which only makes psychological sense, because you'd want the more dangerous option to be the furthest away.

I thought I might be crazy in my expectations, so I posted the following photos to Facebook and asked which they would expect to dispense hot water. The overwhelming majority said that the left photo was the correct photo.

Except when it comes to the dipshits at fucking Kohler, where it's not.

A part of me wonders how shit like this happens. Is there like one designer guy who makes all the decisions and just doesn't give a shit? There's no quality assurance person there to say "Whoa! All our other faucets have the hot water dispensed when the handle is away from you! Let's fix that!"

I still don't know if I will swap the lines to the opposite way that they've been marked on the hoses. I'll wait until my ribs are mostly healed again to decide. Though I suppose I should ask fucking Kohler if there's some ramification from correcting their stupid fucking mistake by switching things up. Could be that there's a special gasket for the hot water and running it through the cold water part will void your warranty or some such stupid bullshit.

And now I'm fucking furious all over again.

This is bullshit.

I miss my mom most days... but her birthday, Mother's Day, and Veterans Day are probably the hardest. Veterans Day because that's when I'd take her to Applebee's Grill every year for her free dinner. It's a really nice thing they do, and I miss it.

Ten years ago I got ran over by a van at the Marseilles airport and ended up with a cracked rib. It was really, really painful. So painful that I thought for sure I had fully-broken ribs but, no. Apparently even a small fracture is enough to put you in agony if you breathe too deep or cough or bend wrong. I don't think it ever truly healed, because there's been a handful of times that I've banged my side or run into something where the pain comes right back.

As I was crawling under the sink yesterday to install my replacement faucet, I fell on the side with my once-fractured rib and... pop. Here we go again. Agonizing pain. I had to take a handful of Advil so I could sleep.

When I woke up this morning, I was groggy and not thinking clearly and rolled over on my side. At which point I terrorized the cats because I let out a yelp. Yep. Still in pain. But that was nothing compared to the pain of what I discovered when I was cooking dinner tonight.

My new faucet either A) Had the cold line label on the wrong line... or B) the temperature handle on this new faucet is the opposite of how every faucet I've ever used operates (including my previous Kohler faucet that this Kohler faucet is replacing). When I pull forward, it's hot instead of cold.

And, yes, I know which lines are which. Not only does the hot line have the dishwasher water supply coming off it it, I made sure that I had the right line by running hot water through it and feeling the pipe. I am nothing if not cautious and thorough when it comes to stuff like this.

I am understandably outraged.

Once I'm able to climb back under the sink without my ribs making me want to cry, I'll have to switch the lines. If I hadn't gotten used to having it backwards by then.

=sigh=

It's always something.

In the anxiety-riddled night before today's election, I decided to bask in the glow of a little retail therapy. Which is tough to do when you don't have extra money to spare but, hey, it's the little things in life, amirite? Just because you're web-shopping doesn't mean that you actually have to buy something.

Except when you do.

As I mentioned on Sunday, I've not had a working oven for months. Since the end of June, I think. I've always had it in my head that I'll make do with my air fryer and toaster oven until a compelling enough deal on an oven comes along. In other words, I want a good-quality mid-priced oven at a low-priced cost. And that usually means snagging a Black Friday deal, though I think I've historically gotten my best appliance deals on President's Day for some reason.

So while I had no plan to purchase anything, I started looking at various sites to see what model I might want to get if it ended up on sale.

And lo-and-behold, Home Depot had a "Special Buy" price of $750 on a $1,100 model that I would never purchase if not for the fact that the sale price was only $50 over than the high end of my $650-$700 budget (which ain't all that much given the cheapest models hover around $500).

And so... money be damned, I bought it. They're bringing it on Thursday.

Never mind that I had to spend an additional $40 for a new power cable to get my "free" installation, plus another $50 to have my junked oven hauled away... I'll be able to bake again, and that's what matters.

To be honest, I don't think oven I bought is worth $1,099 because it's pretty basic. I think they priced it that high just so they could create a "Special Buy" to get people to think it's this massive bargain they can't pass up. It does have "Air Fry" and "Air Baking" modes (like most ovens do now-a-days), which is nice I guess. But the big feature they tout is "No Preheat" technology, which is kind of silly because I've never preheated an oven in my entire life, and my air fryer already did this (an air fryer I'll probably still use because it's small, gives perfect results, and uses less energy than an oven). But other than that? Eh. I can cook stuff with it.

My old oven (which is comparable to this one and cost $600) lasted 8-1/2 years.

Which, to be honest, is 3-1/2 years longer than I expected, given how everything is built to be replaceable instead of being built to last any more.

I had toyed with the idea of getting it repaired because it's probably just an element gone bad, but the oven suffered some major damage almost immediately when my mom with dementia got confused and cooked plastic in it. I managed to eventually get it all scraped and scrubbed off, but doing so destroyed the finish of the oven box which made it impossible to keep clean. Spills never wiped off... they fused to the metal interior no matter how quickly you tried to remove them. Which hasn't been a fun way to cook for all these years. I lived in fear of grease spatter and drips. Hopefully my new oven will manage to stay cleaner longer.

And so... now I'm poor.

But at least I'll be able to bake bread again, because trying to do that in a toaster oven hasn't been great.

Lies and betrayal are very hard to get past.

Because it can be hard to break away from what you get latched onto.

Just like the octopus in this adorable video, some people are content to stick with trash they've somehow picked up along the way... passing up on something much better because they're waiting for something absolutely perfect to come along. Sometimes you're lucky, like this octopus, and perfect gets served up to you and you're able to leave your trash behind for greener pastures...

But what if perfect never arrives? Then you've just saddled yourself to garbage for the rest of your life.

I've worked very hard to let go of the things (and people) who have screwed me over, made my life worse, and had essentially became unhealthy trash I was stuck to. But throwing your trash in a garbage bin doesn't mean that you're entirely rid of it. You have to then take the trash out, which can be a messy task. So you might end up delaying and delaying and delaying, because you don't want to get messy. In which case it's still around, making you aware of it occasionally when the bad smell wafts your way.

Then hopefully one day when you've finally gotten tired of the smell, you take the trash out.

At which time you hope it stays wherever it gets hauls away to, all while secretly fearing it will come crawling back into your life one day.

Then the news comes that it got buried in a landfill a while back.

At which time you might be conflicted about your feelings. So you choose to drop the negative and focus on the positive. You try to be thankful for the happy times you once had. The times when you were blissfully unaware that you had become attached to trash that would eventually unleash an avalanche of garbage on your life.

What else can you do, really?

Clinging to bitterness and hatred turns you into the garbage you managed to escape from.

And do you really want to be the trash in somebody else's life?

I may have finally turned the heat on to make my cats happy, but never fear, I still have money left to blog... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Bread! Yesterday I baked a loaf of bread for a neighbor, but since my oven is broke I had to make it one of those flat loaves and bake it in my toaster over. It turns out pretty great, all things considered. But then all I could think of was freshly-baked bread, so I checked to see if my starter was good to go, and...

Bread for me today. Except I actually made rolls, because I figured it would be easier to make sliders or little sandwiches that way. =sigh= I sure hope that there's some really good deals on ovens for Black Friday... or, more likely, for President's Day. I want to be able to bake stuff again.

   
• Winner Winner! My favorite game show is Pyramid (which started as The $10,000 Pyramid). I remember watching it with my mom when I was a kid, though I think by then it was The $25,000 Pyramid

What's surprising to me is that even though you know all of these runs are winning runs, it's still stressful! There's some great players on here. Noticeably missing is Rachel Dratch, who is spooky-good at the game...

I kinda wish there was a way to play that game for everyday people. I mean, sure, they've made home versions over the years, but it's not the same experience as pairing up with a celebrity on a show stage with an audience and playing. Guess I'll just have to apply one day or something.

   
• And Speaking of Game Shows... There's loads of game shows out of the UK that I obsess over. The two most notable being Taskmaster and 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown. Absolutely nobody does game shows like the Brits when they are celebrity competitions. Nobody. Since there's no real contestants and just famous people having a laugh, it gets absolutely bonkers, and is so much fun to watch. Take for example...

I don't know why we don't do more of this kind of thing on our side of the pond.

   
• Early Days! Somebody shared this video of gymnast Ian Gunther asking other gymnasts he's performing with to sign a photo for him... but it's not a current photo, it's a photo of them when they were young...

The reactions are priceless. I love stuff like this.

   
• Stranger Things! Doctor Strange: The Multiverse of Madness grossed nearly a billion dollars worldwide and had a brilliant teaser for a sequel when Clea showed up in the post-credits scene. But the most exciting part? Somehow they got frickin' Charlize Theron to play Clea!

So where is Doctor Strange 3 on the development slate? We keep hearing about new Avengers movies, new Spider-Man movies and the like... but no sequel to a near-billion dollar film that people are dying to see? Is Kevin Feige still in charge at Marvel Studios? What's going on there?

   
• And speaking of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Doctor Strage... You can't put this much thought into super-hero movies...

Wanda was done pretty dirty. I mean, yeah, I get it... kinda compelling to have an innocent hero get corrupted in a way that makes them become a villain. And Wanda did turning to The Darkhold would only speed up that process. But come on! The Scarlet Witch has been abused to death in the MCU, and it's beyond bizarre that they don't seem to be interested in redemption for the character. I keep hoping that this will be rectified... maybe it will happen in the Vision Quest mini-series... but the longer they wait the more it seems like nobody cares.

   
• NEWS: A Pregnant Teenager Died After Trying to Get Care in Three Visits to Texas Emergency Rooms! So much blood on these asshole's hands, and yet NONE OF THEIR SUPPORTERS GIVE A SHIT! This country hates women. HATES them. Their only purpose is breeding stock to make more labor and more cult members. Other than that? Oh it's always "Oh well" and moving on to more death.

As I'm typing this, somebody on Facebook just commented "...if women die because of a problem with the baby, that's God's will." And I am like, if absolutely everything that happens is God's will and He's an all-powerful being Who can make anything a reality, then why didn't God just design it so that terminating a pregnancy for any reason results in immediate death? If He's God, then He could absolutely have designed it to work that way, right? — Then the conversation spiraled into "the devil" and "temptation" and "God's wrath" and every other bullshit thing you can think of from a person with no critical thinking skills who hasn't studied the Bible even a little bit. I am so fucking tired of this shit.

   
And now back to my toasty 72° homestead.

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.