On the news front, someone who for now is unknown mailed HWSNBN a package containing ricin. If you watched Breaking Bad, you know as much about ricin as you need to. It is nasty stuff. As CNN puts it, "If ingested, it causes nausea, vomiting and internal bleeding of the stomach and intestines, followed by failure of the liver, spleen and kidneys, and death by collapse of the circulatory system." As much as I dislike HWSNBN, I would not wish that death on anyone.
And in the how can 2020 suck even more category, Ruth Bader Ginsburg died last night, and HWSNBN and the Republicans in the Senate are already moving to name a replacement. It appears that a conservative female federal judge is at the top of the list. These are the same Republican senators who refused to even consider Obama's nomination of a replacement justice and held up the process for a year or more. Remind them of all their high-falutin' language then about how a justice should not be chosen until after an election so that the will of the people can be represented, and, well, things are different now. I am sure that it has occurred to HWSNBN's advisors that Senate Judiciary Committee hearings have the potential to pull Kamala Harris off the campaign trail.
Covid-19 cases continue to increase at the local university. They have now found them in four of the first-year dorms, meaning that 19 percent of the quarantine rooms are occupied. So far there has been no discussion of putting in-person classes on hold or sending students home. I'm starting to think that they would not send students home but instead might try the Notre Dame solution of confining kids to dorms for virtual learning only for a couple of weeks. It does keep the local news feed interesting.
On the home front, we put down the rug tiles in the dining area. It's not a great photo, but here it is.
It's on the neutral side which I hope will make choosing curtains or drapes a bit easier. First, though, I have to read up on how to measure for them. We have not yet adhered the kitchen rug tiles to the floor but so far this arrangement is the one we like the best. I had thought about two up against the under-cabinet wall in front of the sink and another two in front of the stove, places where I might stand for some minutes, but that looked too disjointed. I'm voting for this arrangement instead.
The nights are getting cooler, and there's actually an overnight low in the 30s Fahrenheit forecast for later in the week. As a result, we moved the plants in from the deck today. We cut a couple back and re-potted two others in the process. I hope the Christmas cacti were out there long enough to stimulate blooming. I have never managed to get them to bloom at Christmas, so I've given up and take them when I can get them.
I've been moving things around as I move us back into the master bedroom. Cleaning out a couple of drawers in my dresser was a priority. We have two many sweaters, many made by yours truly, for the chest in which I was keeping them. Last year, I kept the extras on shelves in the closet, but they kept getting hit and unfolding, and it just got to be a pain. I hope I cleared enough drawers to hold the surplus. I also have two not-large boxes of clothes to donate. I think my t-shirts have been engaged in hanky-panky and given birth to more t-shirts. There are a couple that I just could not bring myself to donate ... yet.
And now to go see if today's mail has arrived. I think it's going to contain, yes, two t-shirts. I ordered one for younger son's spouse equivalent and decided as I did so to get one for myself. I am my own worst enemy.
