Before we left for New Orleans, I told some people I work out with that I wasn’t going to do the thing everyone does at Mardi Gras, i.e. get wasted and stumble around town like a roaring idiot.
And I didn’t. We stopped into the Hermes Bar yesterday, aka the Antoine’s Annex. because I thought a snack would be nice before our late brunch reservation, and also I needed to use the bathroom, and it was one place that wasn’t blaring hip-hop at a bazillion decibels. I ordered a Bloody Mary, and struck up a conversation with a nice gentleman, a local. He was there with his gang of fiftysomething friends, also locals, because it’s what you do, and he was a great ambassador for his city, introducing us around as “my aunt and uncle, up from Dee-troit.” He told us they were leaving shortly, and we should claim their table, as we’d been standing at the bar.
They left, with many good wishes to have a good time and tell the folks back in Dee-troit how great the city was, and we took the table. We ordered truffle fries and what the hell, by now it was noon, let’s have the signature cocktail, a sazerac.
The sazerac made the world a little sparkly and magical, and we left after a while, buying and drinking a bottle of water to be responsible. Everyone is always telling us how important it is to stay hydrated. Wandered the Quarter, saw this, saw that. Got to our brunch, which featured bottomless mimosas, but all I did was sip, honest. We left after the crab cakes Benedict (me) and the chicken and waffles (Alan). I’d describe my state of inebriation as gently tipsy, like my mother when she’d tell what she considered to be a dirty joke. And we were wandering back home when I tripped over a pipe or some fucking thing sticking up from the tree cutout that I’d stepped into to avoid some other bad thing on the sidewalk, and I fell, hard, whacking my eye, but not, amazingly, breaking my glasses.
And now I have a shiner. A very big one, like Rocky when he’s moaning CUT ME to Burgess Meredith. And I will not have more than two drinks at a time until the day I die. As I told my friend when I said I wasn’t going to get drunk, moderation tends to impose itself when your hangovers progress from feeling blah to feeling nauseous to throwing up to requiring a good 48 hours to recover and now, apparently, to falling down and getting a black eye. I’ve always been clumsy; I don’t need this shit. Next time it’ll be a tooth, or my hip. This was last night:
It’s worse this morning. I’ll spare you.
But! It’s been a great trip so far, other than the injury. We arrived Saturday night and found, to our delight, that the Endymion parade was passing right in front of our hotel. Endymion is a so-called “super krewe,” and what that means is, the parade is insanely big and insanely long — band after band after band, float after float after float. So many throws. I got some beads, and we decided to go into the hotel and have a drink at the lobby bar, which we did. You had to have a wristband to even get into our hotel because of the crowds outside. The parade kept going by, and suddenly about 30 or 40 people from outside came rushing in, with the facial expressions that say “some shit is going down outside,” and not “we all need to use the bathroom.”
Alan immediately ducked down. I did not. And then I heard him call out, “Nancy! Only the white people are standing up!” Which is kind of our family joke about how black and white people process violence in our violent world, and so I ducked down, too. After a few minutes, the front desk clerk began checking wristbands and the crisis was over. Apparently there was a scuffle across the street, and one of the scufflers yelled, “I have a gun,” and that’s what started the panic. No gun was ever brandished, and the bartenders all thought Alan’s warning about not being the dumb white person who doesn’t have the sense to get down was very funny. There was a Scottish couple sitting next to us, and this was quite a welcome-to-America kind of initiation. “We’ve only been here an hour,” the man marveled in his thick accent. Well, now you know: Don’t stand up.
Anyway, Endymion:
In the Quarter, Louisiana National Guard and hard barriers everywhere:
This is what terrorism gets you: A police state.
Finally, my sazerac:
Today we have a quieter day planned — the New Orleans Museum of Art, etc. I will step very carefully, wherever I go.
alex said on March 3, 2025 at 10:51 am
Hoping to make it to the Munchie Emporium (now known as Mad Anthony’s Tap Room) tomorrow before they sell out of their Fat Tuesday features. It’s the one day of the year that hubs and I don’t find their menu absolutely boring as hell anymore. But you’ve gotta get there early.
I just blew $2K this morning on garage door repairs. Evidently the door had been installed crooked when we bought it seven years ago from a company no longer in business, which led to abnormal wear on the wheels, springs and cables, all of which needed to be replaced, and a reinforcing bracket had to be placed where the garage opener connects with the door as this area had been subject to undue stress and tears were appearing in the sheet metal. The door never sealed properly along the floor, and I had assumed that it was a problem in the concrete being unlevel, but no, it was a crooked fucking door installed by some crooked fucking contractors.
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Courtney McCrimmon said on March 3, 2025 at 10:53 am
Oh my goodness! I love NOLA and have been a few times and always end up with some…adventure. I don’t know if you’ve ever watched the show Better Things with Pamela Adlon – it’s so amazing at capture the never ending shit show that seems to be mid-life in America but if you watch one episode, the main character’s visit to NOLA is a perfect episode of television, I think.
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Heather said on March 3, 2025 at 11:01 am
Glad you were not more seriously hurt. I’ve noticed that my balance is worse lately in exercise classes, and I almost fell on a narrow spiral staircase at a restaurant over the weekend. I’ll be in New Orleans by myself so even more important not to get absolutely sozzled.
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JodiP said on March 3, 2025 at 11:18 am
I am glad you weren’t more seriously injured. I love the sazerac shot.
I found my yoga routine has helped with balance. I am 100% certain I’ll never do a full dancer’s or tree pose, but I have really seen an improvement. I do a 10 minute routine from YouTube every day, and take an hour-long class on Saturdays.
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nancy said on March 3, 2025 at 11:22 am
Yeah, yoga is again in my future. I do squats on the flat side of the Bosu ball, but clearly I could use a little deeper instruction.
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Peter said on March 3, 2025 at 12:06 pm
There’s always a silver lining – you should leave that shiner alone. If anyone asks, just say “you should see the other woman”; you will be the Woman You Don’t Mess With and have free rein in that town.
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Jenine said on March 3, 2025 at 12:51 pm
What a souvenir! Happy pancake day to all.
@Alex, I just paid a bit less than $300 to a garage door repair-er. A first company fixed the mechanism when it broke last summer. And it worked great, except for when the power went out (which it did several times this winter) and we could not get the door to open manually. Pulling on the string did nothing and that first company wouldn’t return my calls.
Second company made it work and I am grateful.
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Dorothy said on March 3, 2025 at 1:09 pm
I’ll let you use your imagination what words I said as I scrolled down and saw that picture. Jiminy Christmas! (those weren’t the words). I’m glad your glasses didn’t break but not glad that you fell. And I’m glad there were no gunshots. Holy cow that’s quite some action for just a few days in Big Easy so far.
We had excitement here last Thursday when a house under construction, same side of the street as our house, had an explosion in the basement and did extensive structural damage. Two workers had to go to the hospital, it was briefly on the news and I’m hoping we don’t have three fire trucks, six ambulances and three police cars whiz by our house again any time soon.
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David C said on March 3, 2025 at 1:47 pm
Mary was dusting and knocked a ceramic owl off a shelf and bounced it off her eye. It gave her a black eye. She said any time we’d go out together she felt like she needed to tell everyone “He didn’t hit me”.
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Pam H said on March 3, 2025 at 2:56 pm
Falling down is a genetic inheritance from mom. I swear all the women in our family are victims. Watch out Kate! At least you didn’t break a bone.
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Dexter Friend said on March 3, 2025 at 4:35 pm
My VA doctor didn’t like me using my canes and rollator like I do so she sent me to a chiropractor. I just got back from appointment number one and my back hurts like hell from the treatment. This is just my first big step into geriatric living. In a few weeks I’ll be in Ann Arbor getting scanned and likely probed.
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Sherri said on March 3, 2025 at 6:01 pm
Trump seems determined to put the economy into recession. Between the arbitrary and capricious Musk shit and now tariffs, employment is going down and prices up, and consumer confidence is already low. The treasury secretary is already talking about redefining GDP to exclude federal government spending, to try to hide the hit of the Muskcession.
I guess it’s one way to force the Fed to lower interest rates…
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Sherri said on March 3, 2025 at 6:17 pm
Here’s what I don’t get about our oligarchs trying to destroy our government: who do they think is going to buy their products? I know, I’m silly, they don’t really sell products anymore, they sell hype to drive up their stock price, but even so, the money has to come from somewhere. Do they think they can get rich just trading it among themselves? Do they think they won’t need any good and services? Do they plan to live in the metaverse, where they’ll have no physical needs?
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Dave said on March 3, 2025 at 7:40 pm
I had a big flashlight setting on a shelf in our garage a good forty years ago. My wife was out in the garage, she jostled the shelf somehow and the flashlight fell off and hit her right between the eyes, truly, I take blame for having it too close to the edge but nonetheless, she had two black eyes, somehow, luckily, it didn’t break her nose but she looked terrible. No, we never or I never got accused of any domestic abuse but she looked like a victim.
My neighbor told me today he wrote a letter to Indiana Senator Young and told him that he doubted he was a real Marine because he served with Marines (he was in the Coast Guard) and they had spines. He doesn’t expect an answer. I see that the senator in Kansas had a town meeting but left because he thought the constituents were being disrespectful.
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Deborah said on March 3, 2025 at 7:54 pm
Ouch, that looks painful. I managed to fall and hit my head on the base of the Aeron chair by the desk in our bedroom in Santa Fe a couple of weeks ago, all I was doing was taking off a turtleneck shirt while sitting on the bed next to the chair. Because of my bunged up shoulder I have to lean way forward to pull a shirt over my head and even from a sitting position I lost my balance. It was fine, no injury but it scared me.
Also a few years ago (before the pandemic)one morning I tripped on Michigan Ave and landed on my face, broke my sun glasses, needed some stitches in my lip and eyebrow but surprisingly didn’t break my nose. I was with my husband and he helped me walk over a few blocks to Northwestern Hospital emergency, they gave me a CAT scan to make sure I didn’t have a concussion. I tripped on one of those thick steel panels they put down when there is a construction hole in the the street. I had a black eye and visible stitches for a while and when my husband and I were in the elevator in our building I too felt like I need to say that my husband didn’t cause it.
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Sherri said on March 3, 2025 at 8:06 pm
My most recent black eye was caused by my coughing thanks to pneumonia so hard I passed out and hit my eye on something when I fell, breaking the orbital floor under my eye. I’m not sure what I hit because I was unconscious, I just came to on the floor wondering why I was there and why my eye hurt.
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Dave said on March 3, 2025 at 8:19 pm
Too late to edit my above remark but today’s Fresh Air on NPR was an interview with a novelist and screenwriter, Hanif Kureishi, who suffered a fall in 2022 and broke his neck. He states he was feeling lightheaded, stood up and fell over on his face. Just one instant changed everything for him, he’s written a book, “Shattered”, about the experience.
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Jason T. said on March 3, 2025 at 9:48 pm
Egad, Nancy. I’m glad you’re OK.
When we were in Manhattan a few years ago, somewhere near the Strand, I walked right into a very low bench and fell over. I have never seen my wife laugh so hard in her life.
To this day, to send her into a fit of giggles, all you have to do is show her a similar bench.
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Mark P said on March 4, 2025 at 1:38 am
I don’t know why the eye bruises so easily, but it sure does. My wife fell (not an uncommon occurrence these days) about a month ago, and the next day she had a classic shiner. It was so theatrical it didn’t even look real. About a year ago I tripped over one of those concrete bumpers they put in parking lots to keep you from driving too far forward. I just turned around, took a step forward, and fell flat on my face. No injuries, thank dog.
No one can deny any more that Donald Trump is a literal Russian asset, a puppet. I hope one day we find out why, but that is irrelevant. Even the most rabid MAGAt has to know it, whatever they say in his defense. Think about that for a moment: the president of the United States is a Russian asset, a man working for an adversary of the United States — the Manchurian candidate come true. We are living in the end times for our country. No one on Earth will ever look at us the same.
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alex said on March 4, 2025 at 8:30 am
Years ago I had a coughing fit so bad that it made me pass out and fall out of a kitchen chair face first into the tile floor. I had a huge laceration on my forehead and two shiners.
Trump’s ties to Russia have been known for some time now. That’s where he turned for financing when banks wouldn’t lend him money anymore. The KGB identified him as a useful idiot way back in the 1980s and had its agents play up to his vanity and plant the idea in his head that he should run for president.
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Pam H said on March 4, 2025 at 10:04 am
No one can deny any more that Donald Trump is a literal Russian asset, a puppet. I hope one day we find out why, but that is irrelevant.
Mark P, I’ve felt that way for years. Thinking about it all this time, I believe it goes back to the days of his Jersey Hotel/Casino fuck up and rather than declare bankruptcy, he borrowed money from the Russian Oligarchs because no bank in the US would loan him a quarter due to his bad behavior. You know how he holds grudges and insists on getting even? That’s what he’s doing. Also, borrowing from oligarchs is very like borrowing from Tony Soprano. When you’re in, you’re always in, never out of their debt. That’s how it works.
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Jeff Gill said on March 4, 2025 at 10:11 am
Happy Paczki Day everyone!
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Sherri said on March 4, 2025 at 10:41 am
Now Bobby Brain Worm has the CDC web site advocating vitamin A for measles. There have been some studies showing some benefits to vitamin A for measles in *children who are malnourished*, i.e. likely suffering from vitamin A deficiency. Much less likely than the unvaxxed child here is suffering vitamin A deficiency, and in any event, the child would be better off with vaccination.
Plus, vitamin A is fat soluble, which means you don’t just pee out excess in your urine, so vitamin A overdose is a real thing.
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Mark P said on March 4, 2025 at 10:48 am
It’s amazing how many stooges our Russian puppet has found to help Putin destroy the country.
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Dexter Friend said on March 4, 2025 at 10:51 am
I had this planned since December when I went on a new dietary regimen, eliminating John’s Sons’ Donuts altogether. If I could pull this off, I could have 2 Paczki on Shrove Tuesday.
And they made the best Paczki I ever bit into.
I had a lemon and a raspberry and a home-brewed travel cup of Peet’s Major Dickason.
No doubt I will not revert to regular donut habits. I weighed today…since I was on the wrong medicines in 2006 and ballooned for a short time to 371, I have lost 150 pounds. How the hell? Dunno, but scales don’t lie.
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Dexter Friend said on March 4, 2025 at 12:37 pm
Big Indian Chief, a year ago, Mardi Gras.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNoRRreFdeM
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Heather said on March 4, 2025 at 1:44 pm
Happy paczki day! My friend brought me a strawberry and Bavarian cream beauty from a neighborhood bakery.
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Jakash said on March 4, 2025 at 1:46 pm
Happy Paczki Day, indeed! We’ve skipped it for at least a couple years, but yesterday we visited a small local bakery to pick up a couple for yesterday and a couple for today. Yes, the proprietress has insisted in the past that they’re no big deal – just jelly donuts. But some of us like a jelly donut now and again and don’t have them often (er… pretty much ever, these days.) Plus, two of ours are chocolate-covered custard versions. Woo-hoo!
Among the orange felon’s most-repeated “big lies” has been that the Russia investigation was a hoax. According to Wikipedia, “the investigation resulted in charges against 34 individuals and 3 companies, 8 guilty pleas, and a conviction at trial.” Pretty significant results for a “witch hunt.”
“The report writes that the investigation ‘identified numerous links between the Russian government and the Trump campaign’, found that Russia ‘perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency’ and that the 2016 Trump presidential campaign ‘expected it would benefit electorally’ from Russian hacking efforts. However, ultimately ‘the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities’. The evidence was not necessarily complete due to encrypted, deleted, or unsaved communications as well as false, incomplete, or declined testimony.”
It’s always been really hard to pin something specific on a mob boss. Al Capone’s biggest crime wasn’t tax evasion, for instance. Bill Clinton had to testify under oath about getting a blow job, but, due to foot-dragging by the Justice Department and being declared above the law by the Supreme Court, the orange guy hasn’t been rigorously questioned about many of his crimes. “Deny, deny, deny,” which he learned from Roy Cohn, has been all he’s had to do. “Incomplete, or declined testimony,” were it forthcoming, could fill 3 volumes of a biography.
Despite that, as he would say, “everybody knows” that he’s Putin’s toady, and has been for quite a long while. In case there was a shred of doubt before, he’s been quick to make it crystal clear this time around.
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Sherri said on March 4, 2025 at 2:24 pm
I don’t think the Trump administration has any intention of obeying any court orders (or laws, or the Constitution, for that matter.) I wish Dem leadership agreed with me.
https://open.substack.com/pub/popularinformation/p/email-shows-trump-officials-are-lying?r=2h24&utm_medium=ios
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Sherri said on March 4, 2025 at 2:30 pm
Another question for Dem leadership. Watch the video of Trump in the meeting with Zelensky again. Pay special attention to Trump’s comments about what Putin has gone through for him.
Now ask yourself: do you think Trump regards Democrats as important as Putin? Whose interests do you think he serves, those of US citizens who are Democrats, or Putin’s? Do you think he will work with you in any way after two impeachments?
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Jeff Gill said on March 4, 2025 at 3:15 pm
Well, to go back seven years, Trump likely is going to say Democrats are treasonous & un-American.
Because that’s what he said before after getting flamed over a joint session of Congress speech:
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-42954829
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Jakash said on March 4, 2025 at 3:41 pm
Congrats on the impressive weight loss, Dexter. A couple carefully-planned paczki sound like a fine reward! We’re enjoying some “home-brewed Peet’s Major Dickason” (decaf) with our paczki as we speak, so to speak…
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Sherri said on March 4, 2025 at 5:51 pm
Exactly, Jeff.
But the Dems don’t seem to be acting like Trump regards them as treasonous and un-American. My representative is Suzan DelBene, chair of the DCCC. I listened to her telephone town hall last week and the message was mostly let’s wait and see. Let’s wait and see how these court cases play out. Let’s wait and see if these Trump administration defies court orders.
I think by the time we wait and see if the administration ignores court orders (hint, they already are) irreversible damage will have been done. I understand that Dems are in the minority, but they could do a lot more to make life uncomfortable for their Republican counterparts, but they don’t seem to want to do that. Maybe they’re right and I’m wrong, but I think that’s stupid. They’re all going to sit there politely tonight while Trump delivers a bunch of lies in the SOTU, like everything is normal, and I think they should be demonstrating in every way possible that nothing is normal. They should pretend that Putin himself is up there delivering the SOTU, and walk out.
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Sherri said on March 4, 2025 at 6:37 pm
By the standards of this administration, the Apollo program was woke and full of DEI.
Why? Because to go the moon, they had to do something called TransLunar Injection. Bet you didn’t know that all the astronauts were really women until they went to the moon and got their translunar injections…
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Deborah said on March 4, 2025 at 6:57 pm
Busy day here in Santa Fe, after a 3 hour design zoom call we went to another protest at the capitol. This one wasn’t as well attended as the one on Presidents Day but what can you expect on a midweek work day? Maybe 250-300 people at the most. Mostly old folks of course, one of the chants was “Grannies Rock” for heaven’s sake.
There’s another protest on Friday in support of science, again a work day lunch hour. With the Santa Fe Institute here and Los Alamos Labs nearby perhaps it will have better attendance? For that one I bought a piece of bright pink poster board that I’m going to cut into a brain shape, and a green pool noodle to fashion into a 3D worm weaving through the poster board. Then I have to think up a pithy, simple message about stupid Brain Worm Bobby. Another sign will have a blue poster board which I’m going to paint fluffy white clouds on with a message about climate science. I’m having fun making this stuff.
For todays’s protest we had been fashioning some give aways for people to hang around places in the city. They consisted of some wooden disks that I used a woodburning tool to draw a creepy rat on each one with the name Musk in cursive occurring as an extension of the rat’s tail, like the sign I had made that I used for this protest again. Those disks hung on a beaded strand with a loop on the end for hanging. The idea was for the people we gave them to, to hang in public spaces so other people would encounter them and maybe take notice. We also made some smaller circular wooden disks, that I burned a sunflower on one side and the other side painted with the colors of the Ukrainian flag. Again the idea was that people would scatter them about and strangers might see one sitting on a park bench or something. We got the idea from someone a while ago in the city who made these cool little beaded strands with a disk that had a simple message and left them all around the city, so you would walk down the sidewalk and there one would be hanging from a tree next to a park or something. You could leave them be for someone else to find or take them if you wanted. It was always quite delightful to us to find them here and there as we walked around the city.
We had a lot of this stuff already to make these things and what we didn’t have we purchased at Dollar Tree for next to nothing.
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Suzanne said on March 4, 2025 at 9:33 pm
I once wiped out in Chicago, right in front of Holy Name Cathedral. Cell phone went flying one way, purse the other. Fortunately, there weren’t that many people around to see me and if I had done myself in, I guess it would have been easy to find a priest to pray for me.
I also wiped out on a sidewalk in Queens, NY a few years ago. Just to show you how many of our assumptions are wrong, after middle aged white me fell, a nice young black man who was walking behind me and my daughter, helped me up and asked if I was ok. After I assured him that I was fine, just embarrassed, we all went on our way. Guess how many times have I told this story and how many times I have answered the question, “Weren’t you afraid he was going to rob you?”
Not watching the idiot’s speech tonight. Recovering from the norovirus and trying to imagine how horrible my final years are going to be with the country willingly electing a lunatic who plans to destroy all that we know and love.
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Mark P said on March 4, 2025 at 9:41 pm
I just couldn’t. I watched the first few minutes of Trump’s address to Congress, but it was too much. The Republicans applauded and shouted like he was a combination of Jesus, a rock star, and Hitler, this criminal, this traitor, this puppet of Putin. I think the Democrats should have stood as one and walked out rather than listen to this illegitimate lapdog of dictators. The Republicans are beneath contempt, cheering the man who is destroying the country.
Every so often I have to stop and ask myself whether I’m succumbing to the same kind of conspiracy theories that infect MAGAts. But then I look around and see what’s happening, and I realize it’s even worse than I think.
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Julie Robinson said on March 4, 2025 at 10:58 pm
D was looking for the IU game, to begin at 9pm, on something called FS1, which I guess comes from Fox. He landed on Fox. Of course the volume was way up from the game he’d just been watching, and I had to put my fingers in my ears and yell lalalala to avoid hearing anything.
I’m around oldsters all the time now, and I’m here to tell you that everyone of us here needs to be working on their balance. I’ve seen the awful consequences of falls, and what a risk you take when you sit and sit without movement. I’ve seen year-long absences from home, the hospitalizations that lead to infection and death, the surgeries where recovery never happens.
I see my mother shuffling around the house from bed to chair, afraid of showering, and exhausted by a brief trip to the store. And that’s on her good days.
Use it or lose it, mentally and physically. This may be the most important thing I’ve learned.
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Mark P said on March 4, 2025 at 11:28 pm
Julie, your next-to-last paragraph hits home. My wife spends most of the day in bed, and sometimes goes weeks without showering. I tell her lying in bed all day is probably the worst thing she can do. Her cognitive problems are getting worse, and I tell her staying in bed almost certainly makes that worse, too. But you can’t argue with someone with that type of problem.
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Julie Robinson said on March 4, 2025 at 11:48 pm
Mark P, I’m so sorry. Is she cold all the time too? Mom’s mini-split is set at 86°, she’s got flannel sheets and an electric blanket, and when she’s in the rest of the house she complains like it’s the arctic. It is not the arctic. The rest of are too warm.
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alex said on March 4, 2025 at 11:50 pm
When the Republican side of the aisle chanted “USA, USA,” the Dems should have been countering by pointing fingers at them chanting “KGB, KGB!” By remaining silent they set themselves up for Trump pointing at them all evening calling them unpatriotic and evil and any other epithet he could pull out of his ass.
The whole thing was nothing but the usual firehose of lies and gratuitously nasty and false attacks on Biden, Harris and the Dems, while he took credit for the “best economy ever” and the “safest border ever” and billions of imaginary dollars saved and bullshit out the wazoo. Most notable was when the cameras panned the military brass. They weren’t applauding along with the Republicans but looked absolutely horrified, as well they should.
As for the Republicans, they know as well as we do that they were applauding lies, quite extravagantly for that matter, and looked like fools except to the MAGA crowd.
I’m afraid they’re going to steer us into a ditch before they become more afraid of constituents than they are of this combed-over fake-tanned monster performing his theatrics. And I’m frankly appalled by the PBS coverage, which largely papered over the horrors and treated this like a perfectly normal address.
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Sherri said on March 4, 2025 at 11:59 pm
Best move for the Dems would have been not to attend at all, and to counter-program against Trump with live music and stories of people harmed by Musk’s cuts.
Second best move would have been to interrupt Trump and be removed from the chamber, one by one, each member shouting the name of someone they represent who has been harmed by Musks’s cuts.
They could have had those ideas for free. Instead, they’ll pay big bucks to the usual consultants, who will tell them to do nothing, or listen to fucking Rahm Emanuel, who should disappear under a rock.
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Sherri said on March 5, 2025 at 12:16 am
https://open.substack.com/pub/michaelharriot/p/the-2025-wypipo-awards?r=2h24&utm_medium=ios
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Jeff Gill said on March 5, 2025 at 6:55 am
Julie — amen: balance is key. Maintaining some core strength is second, and keeping up a bit of muscle mass third. But without balance work, you’ll never get to the other two.
It was worse & not worse than I expected last night. It was his rally schtick, but with giveaways (sweet kid getting a Secret Service honorary membership was nice, the West Point announcement was IMHO cringe), and no walkoff music. But I swear you could hear YMCA playing in the aether as Trump left the podium.
Oh, and “Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” +
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Colleen said on March 5, 2025 at 9:11 am
My husband’s balance and strength have gone to hell. Two falls in the past year. Since he’s no longer working, he spends his days watching TV and not moving. I got him a chair yoga exercise book as a not so gentle hint, but so far he hasn’t used it. I know he’s a good amount older than I am, but I am not happy about him being this old this soon, with absolutely no desire for improvement. Use it or lose it indeed.
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LindaG said on March 5, 2025 at 9:57 am
At age 82, I missed a step in Chaminix, France, and fell. Had a bloody knee and sore finger, but got up and continued on. Only told the tour leader two days later. I keep active with walking, swimming, exercise class and golf. It also keeps your mind clear. Turning 84 this month and have few aches or pains and no joint replacements. Feeling fortunate, but I do try to be careful about falling. Mother and sister both died at age 83, but I’m planning on a few more years than that.
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Mark P said on March 5, 2025 at 10:31 am
Julie — Sometimes my wife is cold, and sometimes she is hot, and all at the same temperature. She generally wants the house at a higher temperature than I really want, but fortunately I take after my father. I can be OK in a reasonable range of temperatures.
I am currently using my phone as a hotspot and charging my phone with our generator. We had strong winds last night, and the power went out at 1 am. The house has cooled to around 68, so not too bad, but we are on a well and so have no water. I can pull our freezer away from the wall far enough to plug into an extension cord from the generator, but our refrigerator is so tightly fitted into the cabinets that I can’t get it out to reach the cord. So we also have a cooler in the middle of the kitchen floor. Georgia Power estimates we’ll have our power back by 7 pm. I’ll almost certainly have to go into town for more gas if Ga Power’s estimate is right.
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