Exceptional Political Timing

Just curious to see if anyone else notices this.

In case you can't read my henscratches:

The dotted line I call "teh funny," which represents my Facebook friends who primarily use the 'book to joke around. They are early risers,or at least early on social media. They make up the majority of my Facebook friends.

The hash line I call the "political loons." They're the ones who are all SHOUTY politics about 95 percent of the time. They represent all shades of the political spectrum, and are about a quarter of my Facebook friends.

Why is six to ten pm their social media prime time? I don't mind, as it gives me a great excuse to avoid Facebook most evenings. Also, their presence is most heavily felt Saturday through Tuesday, for some reason, but that's for another chart.

Does anyone else see this, or is it just me?

I'll head off some of the most obvious knee-jerks:

1. Most everyone I know on Facebook has a jerb, so don't tell me "teh funny" is the jerbless ones. They may be layabouts and dreamers, but they've obviously convinced someone they're employable.

2. I'll mention this again: The political loons are all over the spectrum, from left to right to Libertarian to a few who are borderline anarcho-communists (you know who you are and I love you). Yet they all appear with striking regularity in their allotted time slots. Maybe that's when they take their tinfoil hats off or something.

3. Don't tell me about Facebook algorithms or other such stuff. I have noticed this pattern for years.

A Venn diagram of these groups would show some overlap. And I don't mind if people occasionally discuss politics. They're the ones who tend to, shall we say, sag in the middle like I do.

Anyhoo, it's just one of those things.

Then ironically this comes up on Facebook just after I posted.

More Home-Wrecking

 A new home wrecking/improvement project: Garage shelves.

Though as is familiar with a lot of projects, there's a lot of stuff that has to happen first before the shelves go up.

What you're seeing here is the end result of removing the single garage window and walling up the space. It maybe looks stupid on the outside, but the good thing is I still have siding to do on the house, so it'll be covered up before winter. (That's my goal, anyway, to finish the siding on the lower part of the house before winter.)

Funny thing is this morning I had convinced myself to leave the window in place. Then I went out to the garage and looked and figured this sixteen square feet of space would be much better used as shelves for storage than as a window. There are plenty of opportunities to introduce natural light, through the doors. And I'm hoping that once we're done with the shelves, I'll be able to use and open the side door to let more light in.

We have, shall we say, accumulated over the years since we moved in. I have moved a bunch of stuff to the crawlspace, but that's not a solution that's going to keep on working. Plus we've got a lot of camping equipment, for us and for Troop 1010, that needs to go somewhere. And I'd like an easier-to-access (and keep clean) work bench. So the work bench is being moved to the back wall of the garage, and floor-to ceiling shelves are going up on the north wall. We've had some shelving there, but it's hodge-podge and not really all that sturdy. Hoping this will lead us into a new era of storage. And probably more work when we look at the south wall with its sagging shelving and decide we need to do something to make that a bit better too.

One of the things I want to do with this current project is to find a space on the north wall to put Christmas trees, so the spot where the trees are now can be reconfigured to become home to the freezer and other tall things, like tables and such. Hoping that happens, but I have to find spots for the trees first or that project won't go anywhere fast.

And while this is again delaying the siding, it's at least getting a bit of exterior remodel done so when it's time for siding, I'm not worried about whether to cover up that window or not. That choice has already been made.

I can't complete the interior yet, though. we need to get some outlets put in before I get too far along. But we can't delay forever because the back porch has become a garage junk staging area.

What I'm undecided on is where my drawers are going to go. I brought a six-drawer dresser that was in our shed in Sugar City, and it's handy beyond all reason for bits from plumbing to painting. I may get rid of the shell and stack the drawers in a custom built-in by the workbench, if I can manage it.

"These Uncertain Times"

So I'm plowing through more than 2,000 emails, finding those I need to keep and deleting the rest. They extend from August through late winter 2019, and it's been an interesting voyage through the covid-19 pandemic.

Going backwards through the emails, I saw conspiracies, delayed returns to church, plans for school to recommence, debates over masks, preaching about social distancing, talk of government stimulus, Zoom meeting links for the Scout meetings we held remotely, temples closing and church being cancelled, defiance of stay-at-home orders, a drive-through high school graduation for our daughter, companies letting me know "We're In this Together" and the initial uncertainties about stay-at-home orders, school being cancelled, working from home and every other little thing you could think of.

I also have emails from a friend who passed on, and link to his obituary.

I'm now into the pre-covid emails, marveling at how much simpler it was only a few short months ago.

And yet it's the message that contained the link to this video that means the most to me.

That "I love you" still pierces my heart. But in a good way.

But I came across a lot of blessings too.

Our son, on a local service mission, has been able to continue, with minimal interruption. Our daughter only had to pay $350 plus books for her first semester at Idaho State, thanks to scholarships that came in when needed. Our youngest has been able to use his budding leadership skills to help guide the Order of the Arrow lodge through covid times. And my wife and I have remained employed the whole time. These are blessings, temporal and spiritual. And for those, I thank God.

Hunnicutt, You're to Blame for This . . .

 For an earthquake in or near Bloomington, Illinois, to register on the seismographs at Fordham University in The Bronx, New York, the temblor would have to be at least a 6.3 on the Richter scale, according to #scienk

And this is the kind of thing you do when:

1. You’re a MASH fanatic

2. A friend comments on Facebook about the sadness that is Sam’s Club take ‘n’ bake pizza

3. You recall your own farty experiences with said pizza

4. You have Internet.

First, some of the basics.

In the MASH episode “Crisis,” one of my personal favorites, personnel at the 4077th are forced to share tents after the Chinese cut their supply lines and they run out of everything, including fuel oil, firewood, and shuttlecocks. Col. Blake, Radar, Klinger, and Father Mulchahy are forced to sleep in the Swamp, where Henry announces he snores, with the following exchange:

Henry Blake lives in Bloomington, Illinois. The Fordham he refers to is Fordham University in The Bronx, New York, home of the William Spain Seismic Observatory, one of the oldest such observatories in the United States.

Google Maps tells me that Bloomington, Illinois, and The Bronx are roughly 850 miles apart, as the crow flies. That’s a rough estimate, but good enough for the #scienk part of this idiocy.

The United States Geological Survey appears to be anti-#scienk, saying that it’s virtually impossible for earthquakes to travel long distances through the earth’s crust, given the crust isn’t as rigid as we might think (keep this in mind when we get to the Sam’s Club take ‘n’ bake pizza).

However, the folks at livescience.com tell me in what I’m sure is an exhaustively scientific article that this same USGS says earthquake tremors are known to travel much further east of the Rocky Mountains than they are in the mountains themselves or to the west. They cite as an example a 5.0-magnitude earthquake that struck near the Ontario-Quebec border in June of 2010, which was felt as far away as Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Masssachusetts. A USGS expert quoted for the article says a 5.5-magnitude quake could likely be felt as far away as 300 miles east of the Rockies.

So using the USGS’s own “How Much Bigger” earthquake calculator, I figured that a 6.3-magnitude earthquake, which is 3.162 times bigger than a 5.5-magnitude earthquake, theoretically has the power to travel the 850-or-so miles between Bloomington, Illinois, and The Bronx.

So Henry Blake, by his own admission, snores as powerfully as a 6.3-magnitude earthquake, or stronger as the earthquakes felt in Utah and Idaho earlier this year. Utah’s was a 5.7, while Idaho’s was a 6.5.

That’s some snoring.

Now, moving on from snoring to farting and the aforementioned Sam’s Club take ‘n’ bake pizza.

We got a few such pizzas a few months ago. And as I recall, they gave me some pretty good gas. Or bad gas. Significant gas, at any rate.

Then a friend today posted on Facebook about his lamentable experience, taste-wise, with said pizza. Which helped me recall my own experiences. And the MASH quote.

So to conclude: A person in Bloomington, Illinois, would have to experience a magnitude 6.3 earthquake for it to be strong enough to be felt by seismographs in The Bronx.

I’ll leave the fart #scienk to someone else. Until then, this is going to peer review.