Helova Fine Christmas

All three of my children came home for this one, along with a son-in-law, a daughter-in-law and a very nice girlfriend.  We had a trim the tree party, we had a massive Christmas dinner (20 people, two tables, three ovens). We had a show-old-home-movies party. We did a lot of sitting up late around the fireplace, drinking, and telling stories.  I put the last children on planes home Sunday. 
  It was a trying time for Stupid Beast.  She is a fraidy cat, used to having the house to herself and just one trusted human (me) around.  Having a house full of medium strangers, who petted her, and even picked her up, was hard for her to bear.  I gotta word for you, cat.  Get used to it.
   Lotta drivers never did learn about dimming headlights.  They come up behind you, hi beams full on shining in the rear window.  PITA.  I would click on my hi beams after they passed me in the rain. Just to let 'em know.
   Today I did a bit of recovery. Ran a wash, washed the last dishes, vacuumed the living room, make up a bed with fresh sheets. made a dump run.  Between the empty bottles, and the Christmas wrappings, and stuff, it filled up the trunk of the Buick. And when I got down there, the town dump was pretty full.  Santa brought a lotta stuff to Franconia.  The glass recycle bin was as full as I have ever seen it, all beer and wine bottles.  Whiskey mostly comes in plastic bottles these days   Merry Christmas. 
    Dunno if I have the energy to deal with New Years on Friday.

We saw the new Star Wars movie last night

Went to the Jax Jr in Littleton.  Theater was full by the time the movie started, every seat filled.  It was 3D which I am only luke warm about.  It was much better than the previous three Star Wars flicks.  New characters, played well by new actors, some old characters, played well by some familiar actors.  Costumes and sets were good, the soundman did his job, all the dialogue was audible.  Lots of action, light saber duels, gun fights, TIE fighter air combat.  The special effects were spectacular.  Good show. 

JEB comes to :Littleton NH

JEB came to Littleton last night.  Spoke at the VFW.  Place was pretty full, lots of professional video cameras, the kind with tripods and lenses a foot long.  Bush turned up right on time, he spoke well, spoke from the heart.  He wants to destroy ISIS, cut red tape, reform immigration making it easier to let in working age adults rather than everyone's retired parents, wants more charter schools, is luke warm on legalizing pot butr says it is a state affair, wants to tighten border security.  He took questions for an hour and handled this well. 

The only polls worth watching

Are the polls for New Hampshire and Iowa.  Because, after New Hampshire and Iowa everything will change.  Losers will be gone, and the loser's voters will go somewhere else, where, no body can tell.  And the winners, and even the runners up will be immensely strengthened, which again changes everything.  The nation wide polls right now, before New Hampshire and Iowa don't mean anything, because the results of New Hampshire and Iowa will change everything.
  The newsies don't seem to understand this, they keep reporting the nationwide poll numbers.

Strange Lament

I'm reading today's Wall St Journal.  In the letters to the editor, we have an old NASA hand, so old he joined the outfil before it was NASA.  He talks about the old old days when we all kept engineering notebooks, in which we recorded the results of lab work.  Then he explains how like everyone else, we started keeping records like that on personal computers. 
  Then he veers off on a strange track.  He claims that his new laptop cannot real his old files anymore.  Obsolescence he claims.  This never happened to me.  In the early days I kept my records in plain ASCII text files on MS-DOS.  I have stuff going back to the 80's that Windows 8 has no trouble reading.  Later when Windows 3.1 cam in, I used Word.  My current Word has no trouble reading my oldest Word documents. 
  Either this guy was using a strange OS, or some strange word processor.  Or he gives up easily.  Wanna bet you can download just about any old obsolete word processing program from somewhere if you do some looking?

Feeling the Bern. Hillary kisses and makes up

We watched the Democratic debate last night.  It's still Bernie, Hillary, and that O'Malley troop from Maryland.  They opened up with Hillary and Bernie kissing and making up over the DNC database kerfuffle. No real explaination as to what went down, but they pledged to stop what ever it was, and Bernie regains access to the data. 
   All three of 'em are four square for tax hikes.

No Creditable Threat

Yeah, Right.  There was no threat, creditable or otherwise,  before San Bernardino.  I figure ISIS will try that again, just as soon as they can find the shooters to do it. The San Brnardino shooters were unusual in that they gave no warning, aroused no suspicion of them selves before they struck, and were willing to give up their lives for their cause.  You don't find shooters like that just everyday.  But I figure ISIS will come up with some and send them out to kill, any day now.  
   Hold onto your hats, the party is gonna get rough.