Just got back from my annual eye exam, with its usual consequences to my vision:
Of course, there’s that “cataract” thing in my right eye that’ll need attention at some point… but as I’m almost completely blind in my left eye, I’m kinda nervous about it.
AND I have a “routine” colonoscopy scheduled for next month.
This “getting old” thing isn’t for young people, lemme tell ya.
Amidst all the tales of woe emanating from storm-battered Florida at the moment, few can be more tragic than this one:
Brand new McLaren hypercar worth over $1 MILLION is washed from Florida garage by floodwater from Hurricane Ian
Before:
After:
I mean, the poor guy’s going to be left with only his Rolls to fetch groceries… talk about suffering.
(Afterthought: his insurance agent is probably going to commit suicide — I bet that when he included a “we’ll pay if your McLaren is washed away in a storm” rider in the coverage, he thought he was onto a sure thing.)
I’m the grocery shopper in our household, not just because New Wife still hasn’t got used to the different brands and such in the U.S., but because as I’ve said before, there’s not much goes on in a Kroger or whatever that I don’t know about.
So you certainly don’t have to tell ME that grocery prices are going through the roof thanks to Bidenflation.
My average spend, or “ring” per visit has typically been around $40 – $70 each week (the upper end if I’m buying a little meat or deli), and it’s been in that ballpark for about the past five years. The only time it would be higher than that was if we were buying for company, i.e. when family or friends were coming round for dinner.
Now?
Since the beginning of the year, I can count on one hand the number of times that my ring has been less than $100 — and that’s after cutting back severely on quantities, buying smaller packs and / or cheaper, buying certain items (e.g. deli or frozen foods) less frequently, using all the tricks of the trade I know from my four decades in the supermarket business to make my grocery dollar stretch further. I probably buy, in item count, about 25% less than I used to buy; and still the average basket ring is over $100.
Now too, I drive about twice a week less frequently than I used to — combining trips to the bank, say, with trips to the supermarket or farmers’ market, trying to stretch the fuel as much as I can, and over a month, I’m probably in the car about a dozen times less than my old average.
Here’s the thing, though: gas prices go up and down, and we’re all used to seeing that. When it comes to grocery prices, however, they never come down. It’s just a fact of life.
Thank you Biden, you motherfucker, you and all your foul little government apparatchiks who have pooled their efforts to make America unaffordable in the Great Reset.
Apparently, every ailment now means you have caught the ‘Rona:
Body aches, a runny nose and diarrhoea are among the nine new signs of Covid that have been added to the NHS symptom list.
The health service quietly expanded its list of all the tell-tale signs of the virus to also include a loss of appetite, feeling or being sick and a headache.
So now basically Covid has become the trawling net for all sickness, ergo the means whereby we could be isolated, locked down or similarly oppressed for having a cold, the flu, an upset stomach or being hung over.
I have sometimes, I think, referred to my “adopted” daughter — the quotes because she isn’t legally adopted, but I treat her as my second daughter for all sorts of reasons: difficult parents, occasional bad health and so on.
It all started when she went on our last great overseas adventure, the “Great Catholic Trip” wherein we visited several of Europe’s great cathedrals, basically as an excuse to go to Vienna (Stephansdom), Rome (Vatican) and Paris (Notre Dame v.1). Here are a couple of pictures of the family in those cities — Lily is the short redhead:
Heidelberg (our start-off city)
Paris
Rome
Paris
Since then (over a dozen years ago), Lily has been as close as a daughter can be without actually being one. She found the guy of her dreams (a mechanical engineer, gawd help us), and they set about building their lives together: working hard, building careers, saving money, buying a little house and so on.
Let me say that in the past three months, all that has come crashing down, leaving her and David in a deep pit.
Read all about it here, and please help her if you can. Her needs are modest, but critical.
I would regard it as a personal favor from my Loyal Readers.
At the ever-current Daily Mail, Sarah Vine asks the question:
Why are this season’s shoes hideously ugly and expensive? If I didn’t know better, I’d say it’s like the designers are laughing at us.
You don’t know better, and they are laughing at you.
I have long held the opinion that most fashion designers, being homosexualists, really hate and despise women. So they design ugly clothing and shoes, and over-charge for these foul things in the certain knowledge that brainless wealthy women and celebrities will buy them just to have the over-hyped brand name on their bodies.
So much do I despise this whole business that I can safely say this: if I arrived to pick up a date and she was wearing any — and I mean any — of the shoes pictured in the article, I’d ask her to go back and change into something prettier and more flattering; because if I know anything at all, it’s that there is no woman alive whose feet and legs would be flattered by wearing these excrescences.
And Mrs. Vine knows this, as her final words reveal:
But really, the truth is it’s laziness, greed and a lack of imagination. These kinds of styles are cheap and easy to mass-produce.
They require zero skill or craftsmanship.
And they appeal to the only people who seem to matter to designers these days — that is to say celebrities, influencers and pop stars who don’t care what they wear, so long as it gets them noticed.
Quite right. Here are some classics:
Nothing to be ashamed of, in any of them.