Happy Leap Day!

I know this is old, but this is me every single morning.

     A dog in Hong Kong tests positive for the coronavirus according to the WHO.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/28/a-dog-in-hong-kong-tests-positive-for-the-coronavirus-who-confirms.html?__source=facebook%7Cmain&fbclid=IwAR0hTSkStXz8e1QXR7o6PiEarTWh3q1DYX_-_eZqtJLCm_a_2onRWe2S4ec&fbclid=IwAR1Tsi8MXtt5TKJ9Ldi2LqL8NEzSKI9IzVCbYw-xf4k5zuaIWoDrTyGw04Q

     And speaking of dogs, mine is as bored by my treadmill as I am.

I have the eating habits of a hobbit.....

"Aragorn: Gentlemen, we do not stop till nightfall. Pippin: What about breakfast? Aragorn: You've already had it. Pippin: We've had one, yes. What about second breakfast? Merry: I don't think he knows about second breakfast, Pip. Pippin: What about elevenses? Luncheon? Afternoon tea? Dinner? Supper? He knows about them, doesn't he?" -Lord of the Rings.

     I entered the lottery for the NYC marathon again this year, and again was NOT picked.  Only 2.4% of lottery entrants got through......185,000 entrants vying for 4500 bibs. This year is their 50th Anniversary.  Maybe 2021 will be my year. 

This took me a sec...

And trump is proposing cuts to the CDC budget....

(shared)
In 2018, the Trump administration fired the government’s entire pandemic response chain of command, including the White House management infrastructure.

In May 2018, Trump ordered the NSC’s entire global health security unit shut down, calling for reassignment of Rear Adm. Timothy Ziemer and dissolution of his team inside the agency. The month before, then-White House National Security Advisor John Bolton pressured Ziemer’s DHS counterpart, Tom Bossert, to resign along with his team. Neither the NSC nor DHS epidemic teams have been replaced. The global health section of the CDC was so drastically cut in 2018 that much of its staff was laid off and the number of countries it was working in was reduced from 49 to merely 10.
Meanwhile, throughout 2018, the U.S. Agency for International Development and its director, Mark Green, came repeatedly under fire from both the White House and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. And though Congress has so far managed to block Trump administration plans to cut the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps by 40 percent, the disease-fighting cadres have steadily eroded as retiring officers go unreplaced
            

Smile.

If I had 2 dogs instead of one.....

This one is running related:

     I googled this and it is true!  Amazing.

Oh we are, Sir; deeply afraid

“As Americans, we should be frightened — deeply afraid for the future of the nation. When good men and women can’t speak the truth, when facts are inconvenient, when integrity and character no longer matter, when presidential ego and self-preservation are more important than national security — then there is nothing left to stop the triumph of evil.”
                            Retired Admiral William McRaven in the Washington Post

This has always been my motto

Interesting. Humans got the common cold virus from camels.

     I got this info from Trivia Genius (https://www.triviagenius.com/) which sends me trivia emails each day.

The dawn of human civilization was a boon for many pathogens, which thrived thanks to the close proximity of so many potential hosts. It's not simply that humans started gathering in towns and cities; it's that they began domesticating animals. Influenza is believed to have originated in birds, HIV in chimps, Ebola in bats, and new research indicates that the common cold came from camels. Scientists figured this out while researching Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS). Scientists tested 1,000 camels to confirm that they were the source of the outbreak and found cold virus pathogens that can infect humans in several subjects. Although the human immune system has developed protections against the cold, making it relatively harmless, the same is not the case for MERS, which is in its early stages of evolving to be able to infect humans. This means that it is not always easy for it to pass from a camel to human, but when it does there's a high mortality rate because our immune systems are not primed to fight it off.

A Yale study showed that Medicare for all would save U.S. $450 billion, prevent nearly 70,000 deaths YEARLY.

     VOTE

     It may be an interesting day.  My neighbors 2 doors down must have had a leak of some type in their front yard as some utility co. was digging a big hole and ruptured the gas line.  The smell is really strong out there.  The fire dept. just arrived.  Hope they can shut it off without the rest of us having to evacuate or do without heat today.  (It is cold and snowing again).
     My dog is loving all the activity she can watch from our front window....doggy live-action television.
   
     An hour and a half later, the fire dept.  just rolled up their hoses and pulled out.  The gas company is here doing repairs and has shut off everyone's gas.  I hope their repairs don't take more than a few hours as it has gotten down to 58 Deg and falling in my house.  But no evacuation needed. I wasn't quite sure where I would go with my dog, anyway.

     At the suggestion of a friend, I am using the self-clean feature on my oven.  The oven needed cleaning anyway and it will help keep the house a bit warmer.

     Update:  after 4 hours, furnace and water heater are on, and I'm going to have a clean oven.  I'm glad I was home when this happened to make sure pilot lights relit.  A good, safe outcome.

   



   

Today's reminder......

Excellent Podcast by Rich Roll on diabetes

  This is an excellent 2 hour podcast and well worth your time if you or anyone you know have any type of diabetes, which 1 in 3 persons in America  have. Listen/watch when you have the time to really pay attention. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enIvfC985U8

 

                                       

Wild Woman Sisterhood

Are you kind to animals?

Oh that sunshine and beach look awesome!

Race photo of our finish yesterday.

          7 more inches predicted overnight.  Sorry about the language but.......

Valentine's Day 4 miler

     Snowing again, still.  4 inches of new snow.  Walked this one.  Cold and wet.  I refuse to scoop snow until later tomorrow when it may stop accumulating.

So true

                                                  Denver's Best

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. - Mark Twain

   This was the quote that they used to start the Freeze Your Buns Off 5K today.
    It was snowy and icy.  We had a foot of snow yesterday.  (My car got stuck this morning leaving my residential street which the county Never plows, luckily I carry a shovel with me).
     It was slow going but we all finished with lots of other crazies.

Moonset this morning

I spent a lot of time scooping snow yesterday, but it was worth this beautiful moonset early this morning. It looks like daylight, but was actually taken at 5 AM.

     My cousin reminded me of this song and it will be stuck in my mind all day. I'm being followed by a moonshadow.

                                        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8L56rAG5aK0


     However the snow reminded me of this.....

The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow,

Gave a lustre of midday to objects below,

Ho Ho Ho

Reminder note to self.....

The American Life is Killing You

As the great social psychologist and philosopher, Erich Fromm observed: “The fact that millions of people share the same vices does not make these vices virtues, the fact that they share so many errors does not make the errors to be truths, and the fact that millions of people share the same forms of mental pathology does not make these people sane.”

As the great Tom Robbins once wrote: “If civilization is ever going to be anything but a grandiose pratfall, anything more than a can of deodorizer in the shithouse of existence, the people are going to have to concern themselves with magic and poetry.”

"You have to unplug from the machine and take back your life and learn to live with less and sit under trees and read the great minds and create art and listen to music and sound your “barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.”


Below is the link to the really good read on why the American life is killing us all.

https://medium.com/@erikrittenberry/the-american-life-is-killing-you-9e7e68135f4a

“I sound my barbaric yawp over the rooftops of the world.”

― Walt Whitman

“There are years that ask questions and years that answer.” ― Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

     This seems to be the quote of the moment.  I hope next year provides answers and solutions to this monstrous problem.....the loss of democracy from a bought and paid for political party.


     And, the truth will continue to come out!

There's no such thing as bad weather.....only the wrong clothes

My cross training today was shoveling 10 inches of snow.  It was 11 degrees out. I felt accomplished.  But darn, it is snowing again this afternoon.  And will snow Thurs, Friday, Sunday and the middle of next week.  My patience will be tested.

"Don’t ask yourself what the world needs... Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive." -Howard Thurman

     It is winter again.  We only managed to walk from backyard to front before turning around.  It is treacherously icy out.  I'll maybe try again after the ice is covered with a few inches of snow. Total indoor days are the worst.  I hope your Monday is wonderful.

Baby Buck outside my front window

    A winter storm is coming in tomorrow so the deer are coming down into the residential areas to eat. He's so skinny.

02/02/2020 Happy Palindrome day

Able was I ere I saw Elba.

Dammit, I'm mad!

Do geese see God?

Never odd or even.


     Also happy Superbowl Sunday.  I'm not a football follower, but ran a superbowl 5k today.  We had beautiful weather and it was really fun. Winter returns this week.