I love the shocked face he makes; Pitt did pretty well

It's kind of wrong

When the Saturday Night Live skits, which traditionally make fun of various aspects of the Presidents' lives, even exaggerating such things as Ford's tripping or Bush's lack of elocution, are instead reduced to commentary on how bizarre, ridiculous, and scary this Presidency is and how nothing matters in terms of crossing lines and having any real import, in terms of public opinion, or in terms of legal or diplomatic consequences. And in the end, it seems this Presidency is such a joke (although a truly cruel one) that even SNL has issues with making it all funny. Basically, in this skit, the President's base and Fox News will continue to put some sort of spin on things and look away, and the ones who are appalled with it are left to drink and curl up into a little ball.

I hope that the fatalism does not mean that change is unattainable. I hope people vote this year and make a difference in the legislative branch, at least. We'll see.

A good day

Today was pretty decent. Unlike Friday, when I overslept and ran out of the door without bothering to even comb my hair (I noticed in the rearview mirror on the way, at least), I was up a little early, got to work right on time, and had a busy and fairly productive day, which was pretty decent considering I spent most of the weekend over at a friend's helping him cook and cleaning his house. I got to eat some of what we cooked last night, and it was great. The butternut squash which I'd groused about because I hate peeling winter squash, and there were five of them, was wonderful, with sauteed garlic and onions mixed in. There was escarole surprise soup--the surprise being that it was actually spinach, as the store didn't have escarole. :) I went over after work today to finish the floors (I'd put off mopping since I figured I'd get potato skins on the floor anyway, as yesterday was a potato broccoli cheddar casserole.) But he was expecting company, and I'd forgotten, so I took my groceries (I'd stopped by to get a decent container for soup, and got a few things for dinner), and came home--which works out perfectly, because I have to 1) finish a book review for The Journal of Hospital Librarianship that's due today and 2) I need to at least do the dishes (yes, I didn't manage that Sunday), and I plan to work on the kitchen and the bathroom. Because I was bringing in groceries, the first thing I did upon getting home was clean out the refrigerator and put it in order. I found some Greek Gods yoghurt at Kroger that I'd tried, it was a new flavour--chocolate cherry--and there was some marked down. I also got salad makings and the spring mix with herbs was marked down. Oh, and sourdough bread, the Goldminer's brand I like, was in the bargain area, so I got it and I had some for dinner with havarti cheese and dressing.

I also want to sit down and do some reading about hoarding, and prepare for my next session (which isn't until the 11th, but hey, it's something that I need to do). I fixed the notebook yesterday, of course, with tabs for each chapter. But I haven't really read through any of it yet; I've just taken the assessment.

One of my co-workers showed me the 'Saturday Night Live' sketch with Alec Baldwin as Donald Trump. He did such a good job. I really enjoyed it. You should watch it.

Okay, I've got Pandora on, the Bastille channel, and I'm going to work on the kitchen. I think I'll switch from the TV to my headphones and phone, so I can move about. I'll probably write later.

Well, apparently Hell has frozen over...

Or perhaps the opposite has occurred. I came home tonight and it appears (at least as far as I could see) that my street has, indeed, been ploughed. Kudos to Lexington for adding contractors to help this year. It was a very pleasant surprise, anyway.

It was nice to be back at work today, and I caught up pretty quickly. One of the ladies at work who is subbing for a co-worker out on maternity leave came in and asked me if I’d seen the Sarah Palin endorsement of Donald Trump. I’d seen the ‘Saturday Night Live’ skit, but she told me that the original was far more surreal. So on my break I watched that and the Stephen Colbert take on it. Oh, my goodness. It was worse than I thought. What scares me? Americans actually pay attention to these two self-absorbed egomaniac blowhards. Only Sarah Palin would make a political endorsement in a showy blouse and talk a lot about herself, rambling on and on saying crude things about the current President and looking like she’s laughing at the very people she’s talking to at the same time. Both she and Trump sicken me.

Granted, I’m the one with a Bernie Sanders sticker on her car, but the man has something these people don’t have (or Hillary Clinton either, in my opinion)—integrity and consistency. The only thing that I have any doubts on Bernie about is foreign policy, but on the one thing, he’s smart enough, as my co-worker said, to surround himself with experts on it, and compared to people like Trump—who has the capability to pretty much undermine any foreign policy and alienate virtually any sane country on the planet, and who has been the subject of a debate in the UK Parliament concerning a ban on his visiting, Bernie looks damn good in comparison. It’s horrible that he’s making gains on fear-mongering, as well. On the other hand, I don’t trust Hillary Clinton one bit, and the whole e-mail server thing frankly causes me to question her intelligence. It’s simply common sense to handle sensitive material—of importance to governmental operations—on secure government servers. I don’t transact my company’s business on my personal e-mail—and I work for a non-profit with no real trade secrets, much less government security secrets. Even if there were no real sensitive information—and it does not look like that’s the case—it was colossally dumb, and even if she were that naïve, someone on her staff should have had a clue. That’s my opinion, anyway.

I thought that it was horrible that the stupid in our country actually elected George W. Bush twice. Now I’m beginning to think that it’s going to be far worse.

Okay, I’ll leave my political musings to that for now. I think I’m going to go find something fun to do, now that I’m home, and take some of my medicine. Good night, just in case I don’t write any more tonight.

There was this skit on 'Saturday Night Live' tonight

With Tina Fey reprising her role as Sarah Palin giving a speech in support of Donald Trump,  making fun of the actual one given in Iowa. The guy playing Trump says,  'She's about two Corinthians short of a Bible.' I love that.  I'm going to keep that in mind for decribing crazy Bible-thumpers in the future,  since, of course,  one of the most quoted passages (but not by them,  when expressing their vitriol) on love is found in II Corinthians.  :)  Real Christians tend to focus on the love in the Bible,  not the hate.

Well

I had a decent day at work today, although it was a little hard to go back after having five days off, and I can’t say I was fully into it, although I was productive and such. It wasn’t horribly busy in scheduling, and everyone who isn’t on maternity leave was there, so we didn’t really get behind like a couple of weeks ago. I managed to get my charges in, but I still have some work to do on the referrals and reconciliation of surgery charges to catch up on from being off Friday, but I should be able to do that tomorrow. I checked my personal time off and once Christmas Eve, Christmas, the 26th, and New Year’s are accounted for, I should still have about two-and-a-half days left, and I’ll get about 10 hours on this next cheque in addition, so almost four days. I’m tempted to take January 2nd off, but I really should try to keep building up time and do something other than using it for doctors’ appointments.

I also tried to figure out exactly what was going on with that cheque I sent the other day through overnight (excuse me, it’s now called priority express) mail. Turns out it made it to New York but they just left a notice on Saturday because no one was there to receive it, even though I’d asked the postal clerk who waited on me if they would leave it since I hadn’t requested a signature and he said they would. It hadn’t been re-delivered as of 4 pm. I checked with the post office, and the recipient has to request re-delivery, it looks like, so it’s possible that the letter I spent $20 to get there as soon as possible might be delayed further. It has to be there by sometime on the 31st. So I called the company I was sending it to and spent 35 minutes on hold between two extensions to be told that if for some reason the letter does not reach them by the 31st, the loan I’m trying to pay on will not automatically default as of January 1st, most likely, anyway, and she noted on my account that I had sent it Friday by priority express mail. I feel a little better, but I’m pretty darn frustrated. While tracking is a wonderful thing, it seems to mess up any of my dealings with the post office. For example, if I order an item from Amazon or somewhere like that and they send it with tracking—even with something on the outside saying the carrier should leave the package if no answer—I simply cannot get it at my apartment, even though we have four postal containers for packages. Instead, I have to have it sent to work, and I don’t know exactly what to do when I no longer have a job there, as the main mail stores around here aren’t open late, such as after normal business hours, and if I have to go over to someplace near the post office, well, I might as well get a PO box at the actual post office, the nearest of which is a quarter of the way around town.

I tried to get some medication for some friends and myself today, but unfortunately wasn’t able to get to their house and then over to the pharmacy before they closed, so I’ll be going directly from work tomorrow in the hopes of getting it. YKWIA and I are also going to make a promised cake for someone whose birthday was back in October, but we had some issues (I was sick, for example) during that time and we weren’t able to make it. The goal is to get it done before the end of the year, so tomorrow I’m going to the grocery and get a few dairy items so we can do that. Tonight I fixed some fish and rice for a friend and we watched another episode of ‘Hart of Dixie’ on Netflix. I must admit, the show is really growing on me.

Now I’m home, the Christmas lights are on, and I’m trying to catch up on writing on this blog. I also need to finish a book review and work on the game notes in the next few days.

YKWIA found a video earlier that was just hilarious, by ‘Saturday Night Live’. Trust them to take the whole torture report and make things actually funny. I especially like the jab at Time Warner Cable:



I laughed myself silly. Okay, I should probably sign off for the night. Hope you have a great new year!

Very beautiful

'SNL' Opens With a Children's Choir Singing 'Silent Night': Martin Short–hosted episode begins with a tribute to Newtown shooting victims

Just a few days ago, an awful, incomprehensible tragedy took place in Newtown, Connecticut, when a disturbed gunman stole the lives of 20 innocent children and six heroic elementary school employees. The nation learned of the news almost immediately via each and every social network, and television stations subsequently devoted all of Friday and Saturday to coverage of the heartbreaking situation.

There’s never an easy way for Americans who are hurting – even those who may not be directly affected – to segue into watching or performing on less-critical material, whether that’s SportsCenter or The Daily Show. David Letterman gently and perfectly held our hands after September 11th, and Saturday Night Live executive producer Lorne Michaels famously asked then-NYC mayor Rudy Guiliani for permission to be funny. Guiliani responded, "Why start now?"

Last night’s episode of SNL opened without introduction on the smiling faces of The New York Children’s Chorus singing a stunning, beautiful rendition of "Silent Night." Regardless of whether the performance was written as a last-minute salute to the youngsters lost on Friday, or a pre-planned bit meant to bring cheer to the show’s Christmas episode, the tone was pitch perfect.

I got home around sunset

with a great big, lovely moon rising in the east. It never fails to absolutely impress me. So now I'm home, I'm caught up on the news, and I'm considering watching a movie (finally) that I've had out for awhile. :)

Today I got the results of the nerve biopsy I had done last month. It looks good, I've got the requisite number per millimetre, that sort of thing, although there's a little degradation that they're going to keep an eye on by checking once a year. I told the lady I talked to that the pain is responding to the medicine, and she said she'd pass that on to my doctor. I have another appointment later this month.

Not so great is that the computer system at the pharmacy I use may be incompatible with my flexible spending account card. We're still working on it. I'd like to be able to use them--they're a small, independent business and I know someone who works there. But I can't afford to put out the money each month for my medicines and then get reimbursed--that's the point of having the debit card loaded with my elected funds. Still, we'll see--maybe it will work out. They use other FSA cards with no trouble, so maybe it was a glitch.

I got several books catalogued. When I finish with that batch, there will be over 500 books in the system and one whole continuous shelving unit in. I also did some interlibrary loans.

I just spent a few minutes figuring out how to get music and other files onto a new gadget, with success. Yay! As a treat I think I'll play a game of Plants vs. Zombies.

Oh, and have you seen the Saturday Night Live skit for Downton Abbey? It's as if it were described for the (shall we say unsophisticated) viewers of Spike TV. Not sure I like it or not. And although I adore Maggie Smith, well, they describe her in an interesting yet unflattering manner, but I can't argue with it, at least when she's in a feathered hat. Check it out.

Hilarious, as a grande dame takes the stage at SNL

YKWIA showed me clips from Saturday Night Live's show Saturday with Betty White, hosting. Betty, at 88 1/2, you've still got it. In her monologue, she takes on Facebook, which was instrumental in getting her there.



--'People tell me Betty, it's a great way to connect with old friends'
--'Well at my age if I want to connect with old friends, I need a Ouija board.'

She's great. Be sure to check out more 'muffins' clip and the 'census' sketch as well. They're great. Thanks YKWIA for showing them to me.

I didn't get to see the actual debate because I was at work

but this is probably funnier...

I'm getting a late start on my first day of vacation

but since I got two hours' sleep on Saturday night, I'm cool with that. I just ate breakfast I think today will be relax day as a transition into working on projects, since there's not much time to work on notes or clean this afternoon. I have an appointment with my counselor at 3 pm, and I'm working an extra shift for my boss from 4-8. Then there's Heroes! I didn't have my Internet connexion when it premiered, so I didn't blog, but let me tell you, I was very excited. And Mohinder has gone down the much-travelled road of comic book mad scientist geniuses who inject themselves with untested serums. Agh! I'm not sure what he's transforming into (insectoid, perhaps), but it's no doubt going to be very, very bad, and hard to hide. I hope I can do an hour or so of notes tonight.

I spent part of my time last night on the site for the newest Saturday Night Live's Palin sketch (with Amy Poehler as Katie Couric interviewing Tina Fey as Sarah Palin). It's not as funny as last week, but the comments were very intersting. A person writing under the name CristinaMariaV refers to Obama as the anti-Christ and makes several racist comments about Jews and Blacks. I went ahead and flagged the racist comments because, well, although I believe in free speech, it doesn't really apply to hate speech. It was good to see that several other comments were people writing against such racist remarks. You can't take anything on the Internet at face value, but this person (who I assume is female, but have no proof) left remarks that give a particularly nasty look at an ignorant and racist mind.

Okay, I'm going to go for now. Have a great day!

This is absolutely hilarious!

It's a Hilllary Clinton and Sarah Palin sketch from Saturday Night Live. Thanks to YKWIA for sharing it with me.