Although the snow we’ve had almost all melted in the last couple of days, it’s still winter (almost), and hence, bird-feeding season. Alan has set up the suet feeder for the woodpeckers, the thistle seed feeder for the goldfinches, and the gen-pop feeder for the rest.
And now, the war with the squirrels begins.
Sometimes I’ll be upstairs and Alan down, and I’ll hear GODDAMNIT accompanied by a sharp rap on the window, and I know that, once again, some crafty squirrel has figured out how to leap from the fence onto the finch feeder, and use its sharp little teeth to rip big holes in the screen. Alan added another piece to the pole, raising the height, which would (he thought), not be reachable, but that didn’t last. Turns out squirrels are good jumpers. Now he’s talking about adding a length of wire to the takeoff zone, to foil a clean leap.
He’s been making noises about electrifying it, but I’m pretty sure he’s kidding.
As for the rest of the week, let’s just forget it, shall we? Between the Reiner murders, and President Shit-for-braiins’ reaction to it, to the renaming of the Kennedy Center (which will forever be the Kennedy Center, sorry), to yet another utter disgrace at the White House, I just want this week to be over. Soon it will be.
Watch out, squirrels.
Deborah said on December 18, 2025 at 8:59 pm
You’ve probably seen this before, it’s been out for a while. A squirrel obstacle course a guy built in his back yard https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFZFjoX2cGg
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Dorothy said on December 18, 2025 at 9:04 pm
I just filled my two birdfeeders this afternoon. We have no squirrels around here because it’s such a new subdivision, and we have barely any trees. Rabbits are here, and the geese population is a pain in my a**. I’m glad the birds here don’t have to compete with squirrels.
This might be nothing but I just read on social media that a helicopter was seen leaving the White House and headed to a nearby hospital. Is that a glimmer of hope I see?
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alex said on December 19, 2025 at 3:07 am
Yay helicopter!
We’re overpopulated with squirrels around here, and we found some squirrel-proof bird feeders and lemme tell ya they’re even more entertaining to watch than the regular variety. The varmints don’t give up, no matter how many times they’re flung across the yard. Under the weight of birds they remain stationary but under the weight of squirrels they spin. So we see a lot of flying squirrels even if they’re not of the flying variety.
We haven’t been too regular about filling the feeders, though, because our feral outdoor cat kills the birds that are attracted to the feeders and that’s not fun to watch.
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David C said on December 19, 2025 at 5:35 am
Our bird population seems to be just three juncos. We put up feeders, but they’re ground feeders, so we scatter seed on the patio. No squirrels though, so I guess that’s good. We’ve never lived in a place so devoid of animal life. We have a nature reserve just around the corner and we figure why would a critter choose to live in a suburban condo development when they have a whole nature reserve to live in.
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Jeff Gill said on December 19, 2025 at 7:26 am
“Aw, Bullwinkle, that trick never works…”
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alex said on December 19, 2025 at 10:59 am
Social media are rife with talk about the White House helicopter flying to Walter Reed last night but absolutely zilch in the regular news media so far. Here’s hoping that our fondest Christmas wishes come true.
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Deborah said on December 19, 2025 at 11:10 am
Lots of people are complaining about today’s Wordle word. I got it in 4, I didn’t think it was so hard because of my upbringing and (spoiler alert) the season.
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Icarus said on December 19, 2025 at 11:43 am
many of my neighbors have ponds in their front or back yards so we have a lot of geese. I’ve started giving them the end pieces of bread that my kids won’t eat anymore (they actually use to eat them). It might be my wishful thinking but I feel like since I started paying tribute to my Widgeon Overlords, there is less goose shit on my driveway.
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alex said on December 19, 2025 at 12:10 pm
I figured Wordle out in four after eliminating all of the vowels on my first three tries. Sorry if that’s a spoiler.
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Icarus said on December 19, 2025 at 1:05 pm
A programmer/software developer/code monkey* friend of mine opened up the source file for Wordle and determined that the following three words would help solve most of the puzzles by turn four:
Soare
Clint
Pudgy
it uses half the English alphabet and all the vowels.
* we keep changing the name for the person who write computer code.
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Dexter Friend said on December 19, 2025 at 3:11 pm
Today , by law, all Epstein files must be released. But, of course, we knew better. Todd Blanche said hundreds of thousands of files will be released today, and many more will be released when they feel like it, basically.
A friend said Trump has stated today that no files will be released today. I can’t verify this.
Also, there are no provisions or past cases in which a national institution like The Kennedy Center can be re-named by a sitting President, and never has such an occurrence in American history until a President is long-dead, except in the case of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy many moons ago.
And I still want to call him “Mandami”. It’s Mamdani. I will learn; this dog learns new tricks.
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Dorothy said on December 19, 2025 at 7:49 pm
Alex – same. When you run out of the 5 usual vowels there’s really only one choice left. Got it in four, too.
I’m friends with lots of you on Facebook or IG, but some of you I am not. So because of that I wanted to share that we found out today that my husband is cancer free! It’s the best possible news we could have hoped for. He had some slivers of his left vocal cord removed two days before Thanksgiving. The pathology shows NO cancer now. What an amazing thing to learn after so much hard news since August! Now that crazy guy is celebrating by getting a knee replacement on New Year’s Eve. We know how to party big-time in this house.
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Suzanne said on December 19, 2025 at 8:01 pm
Oh Dorothy! What a perfect Christmas gift to find no cancer! Let the celebration begin!
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Deborah said on December 19, 2025 at 8:23 pm
So glad to hear your good news Dorothy. May you all have the best holiday ever, knee replacement or not.
We got out in the 11° windchill this afternoon after having the high be 47° yesterday. Weather gone wild.
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Julie Robinson said on December 19, 2025 at 8:57 pm
So glad for Mike, and for you, too, Dorothy. Another surgery so soon? Or is it better to get it in 2025 for insurance coverage?
Dennis is on a bunch of pricey drugs now, and all of a sudden one was zero. The pharmacist helpfully told us they would all be free for the rest of the year, because we reached the maximum. So I got 90 day supplies of all the rest.
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Peter said on December 19, 2025 at 9:52 pm
Dorothy, I am so happy to hear the good news. It’s a timely reminder that even when the news is one dumpster fire after another, there are positive and good things that keep hope alive.
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Mark P said on December 19, 2025 at 11:09 pm
My fellow Americans, it gives me great pain to report that Snopes rates the helicopter hospital flight story as false.
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Jeff Gill said on December 20, 2025 at 8:04 am
At the end of a year with some real twists & turns on the personal front, I am still amazed that as Friday ended, my doctor visit which I frankly dreaded resulted in a blood pressure reading below 130/90. I actually had the nurse re-take it, I was so amazed. Three long walks a week are doing more than I thought. My cholesterol and PSA are all fine, and my medically managed thyroid is in the happy range.
I still say I-70 across Ohio & Indiana is bad for anyone’s blood pressure, but mine is better than it was this time last year. My mother’s money runs out in two months, and my sister & I have a plan, but we all know what having a plan means (cue laughter out of heaven).
My heartiest holiday season best wishes to all of you; this continues to be an oasis of relative sanity in a mad, mad, mad, mad world. Was that the right number of “mads”?
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Dave said on December 20, 2025 at 8:44 am
That’s how many “mads” the movie had, Jeff, but those folks in that sixty-plus year old movie had no idea how mad things would get.
Dorothy, that’s wonderful news, good wishes on the knee replacement, my wife had minor knee surgery yesterday for a torn meniscus that she had been suffering from since March, when she fell. We can only hope and pray that fixes her ongoing knee pain.
I got Wordle in five yesterday because myrrh didn’t occur to me, even though I’d run out of vowels, sometimes I tend to be a little slow on the uptake. RHYME was my fourth guess, even though I knew E was incorrect and THEN it became clear. Duh.
The Wordle bot thinks SLATE is the best opening word, I read somewhere that I can’t give credit for that THEIR is the best opening word, I’ve never seen SOARE spelled that way and CLINT I’ve always thought of as strictly a name.
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Dave said on December 20, 2025 at 8:58 am
So, I started with SOARE today and it still took me four, the answer is also my last name, which I don’t think any of you know, so I feel free to write that. But now you will.
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Jeff Borden said on December 20, 2025 at 3:09 pm
There’s a real investment opportunity coming up soon. Companies that specialize in the removal of names, gold-painted gimcracks and wall-mounted plaques will be in heavy demand once the Orange King is gone. Seeing his name on the premier cultural venue in D.C. turns my stomach. The only culture involving tRump is whatever creepy organisms are living in that bloated body.
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Julie Robinson said on December 20, 2025 at 3:26 pm
They drilled into the Kennedy Center building to put up that abomination. Can it be repaired so that you can’t see the patches where the holes have been?
Our 87 yo next door neighbor is in the hospital again, second time in two weeks. She shouldn’t be living by herself any longer, and we intend to have that conversation when her out-of-town son is here for Christmas. The in-town son? She broke my heart last night when she said “I just can’t depend on him”.
She’s limping along depending on us and one other friend, and it’s more than we can do. Last week she called at 9:30 one night, asking for help bandaging up some wounds–because her skin is very thin and she’s on anti-platelet therapy, she gets some horrific skin punctures. One look and we said this is beyond us, you have to go to the ER. So my daughter drove her to the ER, and when she got admitted she took her clothes and her phone charger. Then we are feeding the cat twice a day too.
Has anyone else gotten in such a situation with a neighbor? This weekend is our absolute busiest and I would like to shake her son.
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Deborah said on December 20, 2025 at 4:08 pm
Has anyone else noticed this? We can see into the apartments in the building across the side street form us where we used to live before we moved in 2016. So I noticed lately that usually I see lots and lots of Christmas trees in the windows of the units. Last night I counted maybe 6-10 units had trees, we can clearly see into the living rooms of maybe as many as 50 units or so (Rear Window much?). Also my niece who lives in a suburb of Minneapolis said she has noticed that she sees very few trees through people’s front windows in houses she drives by. Is it a real thing? If so why? I know cut Christmas trees for sale are more expensive now but lots of people have fake ones or at least they used to. Are people just tired of the hoopla these days? Same with Christmas lights on the windows of units across the way, I used to see a lot more, now hardly any. Odd.
Getting a tree up in a highrise building is the biggest pain, we did it once and never again, that was 30 years ago. I’m not a fan of fake trees and also there’s the storage issue, the disassembled tree in a big box and all of the ornaments etc, we have very little space for anything like that. So I get it that people in highrise buildings around are not doing that much (but I used to see it more as I said) but in houses in the burbs like my niece noticed that’s new to me.
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David C said on December 20, 2025 at 4:14 pm
I saw some fix-it show where they repaired a chip in white marble with epoxy and marble dust. I assume the facade is marble. When it was finished you couldn’t see it.
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Jeff Gill said on December 20, 2025 at 4:21 pm
Looking back to those thrilling days of yesteryear…
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Suzanne said on December 20, 2025 at 5:01 pm
I see quite a few trees in our neighborhood but not a lot of outdoor lights. We haven’t put up a Christmas tree since 2021 when we got our crazy cat. She would undoubtedly attack it so we just didn’t put it up. Then in 2022, I battled cancer, 2023 we moved to a house with very little storage so many holiday decorations were tossed, 2024 my sister passed away from quick and nasty fight with cancer right before Christmas, and this year, we are traveling for the holiday. So, maybe more people are like us and discovered that the world didn’t end if they didn’t do the tree thing anymore. I can’t imagine us ever putting up one again.
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Peter said on December 20, 2025 at 5:36 pm
Deborah, I would think getting a live tree OUT of a high rise building would be a bigger challenge than getting it it – even when we use a bag it seems there are a lot of needles that don’t want to leave and will escape by any means necessary.
We have a real small tree on a stand this year – we’re having the family over for Christmas, which means two dogs. They both take after our dearly departed dog : Christmas Tree = Indoor Plumbing! so we decided to go small and remote and see what happens. Maybe they’ll offer up a Yule Log in front of the table.
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alex said on December 20, 2025 at 6:05 pm
Yay Dorothy! I’m happy for you and Mike.
Not a lot of lights up around here except for the few people who decorated for Christmas before the foot-plus of November snow landed on top of everyone’s bushes and didn’t melt until this past week. I managed to throw a couple of net lights on our front shrubbery on Thursday between rain storms and that’s all I plan to do this year.
We haven’t put up an indoor tree in many years. We used to love fresh ones, but not the sap and needles, and then we inherited a schmancy fake one but it’s an enormous effort to take it down from the attic and then to put it back, and it takes up too much of our living space to be truly enjoyable. If we were doing a lot of entertaining I suppose it might be worth the hassle, but otherwise it’s a relief not having to be bothered with it. And I’m not feeling all that celebratory anyway, what with the state of the world and the nasty presents our former tenant left behind when she vacated on November 30. I’m so infuriated every time I look at the place that it just saps whatever energy I need to get it turned around.
This week I’m focused on hosting a Christmas Eve dinner for my dad, my brother and my brother’s kids who will be in town for a few days. The menu will include tenderloin of beef a la Nigella Lawson, seared in sugar and briefly braised in brandy and red wine and served on a bed of arugula.
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Colleen said on December 20, 2025 at 7:04 pm
Such good news Dorothy! Head and neck cancers can be tricky…so glad he has the all clear!
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basset said on December 20, 2025 at 10:11 pm
Been looking all over the city for an English plum pudding to replace the one I made a few summers ago and nobody would touch but me. At this point I’m about ready to handle the next few days like a Russian… eat a big, greasy, and starchy meal to line the stomach, then start pounding hard liquor, the goal being to drink enough to make the day bearable but not so much that you cause a scene.
I usually prepare a traditional English-style roast at Christmas, at home with no help and all the usual extras, Yorkshire pudding being the most important, but I’ve been feeling it even less than usual these past few Christmases. Guess I’ll just fix the big meal, call em to the table, and see who acts interested and for how long.
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Julie Robinson said on December 21, 2025 at 4:34 pm
basset, sounds like the seasonal affective disorder has kicked in for you. Remember the days will be longer starting tomorrow.
Our son and DIL are heading to Phoenix to visit her family, so we had Christmas today. But we’ve had church activities the whole weekend with no time to prep anything. The whole meal came from Costco, where we bought the makings for charcuterie board, veggie tray, grapes, cookie platter, etc. Everyone had plenty to eat and we enjoyed being together instead of running back and forth to the kitchen. Didn’t buy a single gift either. I heartily endorse this type of celebration.
Has Alan read Amy Tan’s Backyard Bird Chronicles? She has several amusing squirrel stories.
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Carter Cleland said on December 21, 2025 at 5:39 pm
I can’t recommend enough the Droll Yankee tube feeders. I have two of the large variety, under separate domes, hanging from a tree branch, tho any wire you can rig-up across your yard will suffice. Squirrels cannot get to them. I use ONLY Black-Oil Sunflower seeds, which all birds prefer. No need for thistle, or the junky commercial “bird seed” which is largely Red Milo that the birds throw aside in their quest for the sunflower seeds in the mix. I took the pegs off my tubes to keep the too-chunky sparrows away in favor of the more-slender finches, but the sparrows have adapted and raid the feeders. Purple- and House Finches, Woodpeckers, Black-capped Chickadees, Rose-breasted Grosbeaks, and Goldfinches all stop by. I’ve gone through 100# of seed so far this year, and my tubes are empty by 12:00/noon each day. Because the hulls are so plentiful, I’ve got snow saucers under the feeders to catch the mess AND give the squirrels and ground-feeding birds something to pillage. Because I’ve also got a mini-water feature in my yard, my yard is VERY popular with the well-fed, and non-thirsty, fauna!
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tajalli said on December 21, 2025 at 6:25 pm
No Christmas lights up this year – really stunning. Many of the folks in my apartment complex used to string lights along their balcony rails, but just nothing this year. The apartments across usually have two or three with windows full of the horizontal strings that switch colors and flashing speeds with one additional apartment that would put out an inflatable Santa, nothing there either. Not even hearing much Christmas music in the grocery stores. My thought is that besides the huge electric bill involved, the lousy economy, and ICE raids, celebrating could seem just downright tacky.
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basset said on December 21, 2025 at 10:16 pm
Thanks, Julie, but I’m like that pretty much all the time. found a little steamed pudding at World Market, that was good.
Meanwhile… no outdoor Christmas lights here, but one of my neighbors just down the street has a display which had to be explained to me. Inflatable van, inflatable guy in a bathrobe holding a hose which runs back to the van… turns out it was from one of the National Lampoon road trip movies, someone shows up at someone else’s house, says “the shitter’s full” or something like that and it goes from there. Seemed appropriate.
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alex said on December 22, 2025 at 9:24 am
White House media watchdog Bari Weiss is as eager as ever to please her new boss:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/21/business/60-minutes-trump-bari-weiss.html?unlocked_article_code=1.-k8.xpao.JZcL17fk87_n&smid=url-share
Gift article
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Dexter Friend said on December 22, 2025 at 1:46 pm
Listening to a survivor an hour ago, I am thoroughly disgusted with Todd Blanche’s horseshit about the government fully complying in releasing all the files. This victim/survivor was taken to Epstein as a young girl, and subjected to horrible abuse by Epstein and an unstated number of rich sex offenders.
She tried to find information about her revelations to the FBI in 2008 and also 2019…missing, and the FBI agent who interrogated her? Yeah. Never existed . Not in any search, nor any documents.
These women who were raped and passed around and raped again and again are being erased. The government wants to vanish them.
We want the truth. Starting with the President, the adjudicated rapist and pussy-grabber by admission. We want to know what he did with these young high school girls. This is a national disgrace.
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Sherri said on December 22, 2025 at 4:14 pm
Everyone who tried to paint Bari Weiss as a brave free speech warrior should apologize now, but they won’t, because most of them are perfectly fine with shutting down speech that points out torture.
And most of those same people aren’t too bothered that JD Vance is pretty much indistinguishable from David Duke these days.
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susan said on December 22, 2025 at 5:09 pm
I’ve wondered what JD thinks about his own miscegenational marriage that bore two mixed-race children…. He is such a nasty-ass gasbag, expelling multi-directional foul air that has no substance.
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Julie Robinson said on December 22, 2025 at 6:50 pm
Three, actually.
All you mamas out there, imagine being four months pregnant and having severe gall bladder issues, and now you learn you need surgery. This is what a friend is facing; she can’t keep anything down, and this is what all the tests indicate. It will be done with a laparascope, but she’s understandably terrified.
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Sherri said on December 22, 2025 at 8:15 pm
Organ tuning records shed light on climate change:
https://www.thereengineer.pro/p/church-organ-tuning-records-mirror
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susan said on December 22, 2025 at 8:20 pm
Watch the 60 Minutes report here:
https://www.muellershewrote.com/p/watch-the-60-minutes-cecot-segment/comments
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Mark P said on December 22, 2025 at 9:39 pm
Have you all seen the news reports where Trump is going to name a new class of “battleship” for himself? What’s next? The District of Trump?
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alex said on December 22, 2025 at 9:47 pm
That 60 Minutes segment needs to be seen far and wide. I don’t know what Bari Weiss intends to do to sanitize it short of cutting most of the footage and giving a softball interview to Stephen Miller, but good on Alfonsi for speaking out and I hope her colleagues are courageous enough to do likewise.
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tajalli said on December 22, 2025 at 9:59 pm
Mark, what I’d read was that he was having an antiquated battleship design used to make a ship he could name after himself.
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Little Bird said on December 23, 2025 at 12:04 am
Something has been bothering me more and more lately concerning the Epstein files.
How many women have come forward so far? Why can’t we believe them? Why do we need the files of a dead man for proof? If this was just a regular guy, it wouldn’t take this long to convict him.
I feel like if ONE man stepped up and said “yeah, it happened I was there, I saw it” everyone would suddenly believe him.
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