The View from the Hermitage, Day 237

I popped the cork on the first bottle of champagne (the second one may wait until January 20, 2021) late this morning when Pennsylvania's 20 electoral votes gave Uncle Joe a compelling lead. The Professor was dallying in his home office until I told him I couldn't wait any longer. Nevada was added to Uncle Joe's total a bit later, giving a nice cushion. I expect that Arizona will be put in Uncle Joe's total soon if it has not already. Georgia is going to a deserved recount. Anything that close given the number of people casting votes has to be recounted; it doesn't matter if the apparent winner is your person or the opponent. The Orange Foolius is, as expected, saying the Pennsylvania result is bogus and he lost only because of illegally cast votes. I read this morning that no one on his staff wants to be the person to tell him he really did lose, and that's not going to change.  

So how will the next two months play out? I liked the suggestion I saw on Twitter that The Foolius would go to Mar-a-Lago for a getaway and just not come back. No greeting the President-Elect on the steps of the White House on the morning of the inauguration. Do you remember how The Foolius left Melania hanging, not waiting for her to walk around from her side of the limo but bounding up the front steps without her? I can't remember and am too lazy to check for video, but she may have even had to open the door of the limo herself. Melania and Barron stayed in New York City in 2017 so that he could finish the year at the school he was attending. Do you think that will happen now? Will they stay in Washington so he can finish the school year at his school there? The sooner Melania and The Foolius are no longer living together, the quicker a divorce might go through. I wonder if the British bookies are taking bets on that already. 

Should I be more respectful now in what I call Uncle Joe? Would Uncle President carry an appropriate amount of respect? Nope. Too long to type. I'm sticking with Uncle Joe for now. Whatever he is called, he is going to have his work cut out for him on the novel coronavirus front. Mark Meadows, chief of staff to The Foolius, has tested positive along with four other White House aides. He's the one who said the White House wasn't going to deal with the pandemic. I guess he can deal with it on this own then. Meanwhile, the US new covid-19 case count went over 130,000 yesterday. Given the 120,000-plus the day before, that's a quarter of a million cases in two days. We are going down the toilet fast here, people.

When I checked the Virginia covid-19 case count this morning, the first words leaving my mouth were "holy" and "shit." The number of new cases yesterday was a new record, 2,103. Th seven-day rolling average also set a record, at 1,383. The governor may be ignoring this because one-third of the cases are in Southwest Virginia, and he figures new restrictions there will fix things all over the state, but that ain't gonna happen. Maybe I should email or Facebook him and tell him that we're fucked. Now, that may be the champagne talking, but then again, it may be the cup of coffee sitting next to the empty wine glass. (At one point we had "real" champagne flutes. If we still have them, they are in a box in the garage that may not be excavated until The Sons are clearing out after we've sailed on that ship with Gandalf and Frodo.)

A letter to the editor in this morning's Washington Post suggested that they should go back to putting covid-19 case numbers on the front page. Right now, they could easily replace the electoral vote tables that may no longer be needed. If that would help people focus on the fact that the novel coronavirus is not going anywhere around a corner or elsewhere and realize that mitigation measures such as mask-wearing are indeed necessary. 

Speaking of mask-wearing, will The Orange Foolius now fire Dr. Fauci just for yucks or out of spite? If so, will Uncle Joe call Dr. Fauci and offer him his position back as of January 20, 2021? Who knows? I wonder if the British bookmakers are taking bets on that one as well.

Having decided that the problem with my lower back in all probability came from moving heavy boxes on my own rather than interrupt The Professor's workday to move them for me, I spent much of the morning finishing the first pass through my earrings. I actually managed to re-unite several pairs of which I thought I had lost one. I had just managed to separate the two into different boxes or cases. I wrestle now with the question of whether I should count the number of pairs. Part of me wants to, and part of me is embarrassed to. I'll report here on what I finally decide.