California, too, may have lost enough population to lose a representative. Wouldn't that be something--but Illinois is beaten only by New York.
* * *
So, is yesterday's Day By Day true? Are there really pictures of Justice Roberts cavorting at Epstein's Pedo-Island Adventure Land? Because if there are, that certainly explains why he declared Obamacare to be a tax, and why he decided unilaterally that the court would not hear Texas' lawsuit against the traitor states even though the Constitution explicitly says it's the Supreme Court's job.
* * *
Very windy, intermittent rain, temps in the fifties. Projected low for tonight: 18°. NO bleeding snow, of course, not until a week from today when they say we're supposed to get about five inches.
*sigh*
* * *
So, the Pfizer vaccine is about $20 a dose, which is actually reasonable. Of course it's being produced in bulk and the government is buying them by the tens of millions (latest deal is for 100 million doses, which doubles the total order so far) and I bet Pfizer is not selling them at a loss; they're just taking less of a profit than they normally would for a brand new pharmaceutical.
You know, instead of charging $2,500 a shot, as they would if the government weren't pushing the story that everyone in the world needs it.
Turns out that if you vaccinate just the oldest 5% of the population, though, you cut deaths by a significant percentage--much more significant than 5%--so of course the CDC&P is recommending that young blacks get vaccinated before old white people do, because that's "fair".
I say "CDC&P" because the agency's name is "Centers for Disease Control and Prevention", though everyone leaves that last bit out all the time. "Prevention" is what vaccinations are all about; but I suppose we might as well just cut that bit off entirely from the official name, since it appears that political correctness is more important now than, I don't know, actually saving peoples' lives or something.
* * *
Well, my workweek is over. Now I just have to do everything else:
1) make pecan tarts
2) make pumpkin pie
3) make apple crisp since I FORGOT TO GET MYSELF ANY DESSERT and I don't like pumpkin pie
4) make a batch of brine for the turkey
5) wrap presents
That really sounds like a lot more than it is. Making brine is a matter of dumping ingredients into a pot, then bringing it to a boil, stirring it, and shutting the heat off. Pumpkin pie: mix ingredients in mixer, then dump into frozen pie shell and bake. Apple crisp: easy enough.
Pecan tarts, however--you have to divide the crust dough into 32 parts and then smooge it into the mini-muffin tins with your finger, being careful to get it just thin enough. I fell asleep the other night trying to figure out how to make a tool that you'd use just to press the dough into that shape: drop the wad in, stuff the end of that tool in after it, and presto! Instant shell! They do this on an industrial scale all the time, and with much stiffer things than pastry dough; if you've ever seen shows about how they make SCUBA tanks, they take a piece of aluminum about the size and shape of an oversized hockey puck, drop it in a die, and a precisely-shaped ram just presses against the aluminum puck and extrudes it around itself. When the ram withdraws, you have the beginning of a SCUBA bottle that is kicked off the ram by an extractor. The aluminum is smoking hot, of course. They do the same thing, in miniature, to make aluminum cans, though they use a disk that's die-cut from aluminum sheetmetal instead of a solid billet.
...of course, engineering a labor-saving device like this for the one time of the year I make pecan tarts would be too much effort for too little gain, so naturally I'm going to do it the tedious way. But a man can dream.
* * *
Anyway, tomorrow is Christmas Eve. Hard to believe it; and I'm starting to get a little excited. Perhaps I'm not quite as jaded as I let on; and maybe I just crave a festive holiday where I can forget about all the damned nonsense and just enjoy myself, celebrating the birth of our Lord and Savior.