bierkergaard

Last week I wrote of the halfway feral cat who takes refuge in my fenced in backyard where he can catch a nap while letting down his guard inside the fencing. My townhouse was built in 1989 and the wood fencing looks like an original install. It is weathered and worn, just like me.  A few years ago a neighbor down the way had a full-size trampoline for his daughter go airborne in a storm, crash through my fencing, and come to rest upside down in my backyard. At 5:00 AM before work looking through my kitchen window, I saw something that looked like a crashed UFO in my backyard. East Coast Roswell I was thinking. I was like, "What the hell is that?" The owner of the trampoline came over that afternoon to make amends and restitution. He had a friend make the repairs so it worked out fine. I appreciated his active ownership and taking steps to remediate. It wasn't a pretty repair but again the fencing is hardly in pristine shape. I like living in a neighborhood that is showin...

When I moved back to my townhouse after the divorce, one could say I was suffering from low self-esteem. No one marries planning to get divorced. So, it was jarring. In the end, I could have done better but a decent amount of the problems were just the confluence of events. Life ain't so black and white sometimes. Nonetheless, I wasn't feeling good about myself and the ignominious return to my prior Bachelor Pad. BPII.   My first two guests were the two cats above. Siblings I assume. Not sure of the gender. I had left the back sliding door open looking to put something in the backyard and they waltzed in, presumably wanting breakfast. They looked very much at home as they peered at me with a "Well?'  look in their eyes. I assume the previous tenants had run a feline soup kitchen. This pic was after I had booted them I believe.   After I escorted them out, I soon heard a neighbor down the row calling for them in Spanish to come get their vittles. I was like, "Hey...

Well, what a week. A fine end to the sordid and soiled presidency of Donald Trump. All of his reckless, insulting, and inflammatory rhetoric has finally come home to roost. in one final climax like an exploding diaper full of doots. The image that encapsulates it all best in the man crossing the Capitol floor with a Confederate Flag. Sedition inflamed and egged on by the sitting President of the United States. Vlad Putin had a great day I am sure. The Confederate lover should have been tackled and thrown in the dungeon.   Watching Republicans scurry like scared rats off the sinking SS Trump is a case of too little, too late. Self-preservation for their political lives is the motive. No higher ideal. Except for the detestable Ted Cruz and that Hawley Himmler wannabe from Missouri. I condemned the Leftist riots this summer. I try to call it as I see it. So, please take your equivocation card and stick it where the sun don't shine.  Evangelicals in particular have to own thi...

I plowed through one page of Brothers Karamazov . These Russian Winter Novels stop another invader in his tracks. I may resume it after I finish off Walden by Thoreau. I adopted my iPhone Kindle app to read it, a book that most people read when younger.  Usually, as I have noted before, I read classic novels this way. No hurry, no speed reading, take time to smell the word roses. Walden is of course somewhat non-fiction although it has novel-like qualities. Thoreau is liberal in his chronology, parsing and copying and pasting events into a pond of consciousness.  His reflections are quite narcissistic yet also insightful.   There is much to commend in the book of course. His insistence on simplicity, the joy of nature, working to live not living to work (or not work in his case), and just sheer good writing.  I suppose I knew this before from my infrequent sips of the prose but one thing impressed upon me is that Thoreau out-Puritans the most joyless Calvinist...

One of my go-to foods from childhood is peanut butter. I am saddened that many children these days have a deadly allergic reaction to this humble and oily legume. I cannot imagine childhood without peanut butter. If George Washington Carver were alive today, he would no doubt be sued to bankruptcy like an opiod manufacturer. The Humble Peanut: Death In A Shell. Yesterday, I opened a new jar of my Costco Brand Creamy Peanut Butter. Two ingredients: Peanuts and Sea Salt. That is it. I wish I could get a Crunchy version of it but it is not available at the local store. People usually are strongly in the Creamy or Crunchy camp. I am pro-Crunchy and only eat the Creamy because it is difficult to find the non-hydrogenated option, as I think  most consumers prefer the Creamy version.  About twenty years ago, I started buying non-hydrogenated peanut butter when I read that hydrogenated fat is bad for the body. It makes sense. The same quality that makes it shelf-stable makes it hard f...

Back trying again on the Chromebook. I have decided to just type and clean up the spelling errors from typing and the double-spacing at the end. Nothing ever works as planned. I was hoping that my fingers would adjust and become attuned to the overly sensitive keyboard. Nope. I am drinking an ice cold Perpetual IPA as pain killer as I type. What a pain in the ass.  As it is, I think I will be able to understand what I had attempted to type. A macro-clean-up sounds like the way to go. We shall see. Thank the Lord for IPAs. This Christmas Vacation, I like most everybody (besides the anti-masker crowd) am not driving or jetting away to a cool location, No,  I am  uncharacteristically home for the holidays which is probably only the second time in a decade.  Truth be told, I am really a homebody. I just  realize that there are some cool things out beyond  the horizon so I pretty much  force myself away, like an old school parent tells his kid  to go o...

I learned this week that my mentor and good friend Walter Williams passed away a few days ago. He was a world-renowned economist, advisor to presidents, and a weekly columnist and an author of many books. He combined Philly street smarts with academia. An oil and water combination if there ever was one. He made it work.  He also subbed for Rush Limbaugh in what he titled "The Atilla the Hun Chair." Walt had a wicked and mischievous sense of humor. He loved being antagonistic, individualistic, and counter to Liberal groupthink. He was Libertarian and not Conservative. There is quite a difference. A true Libertarian essentially believes that do what you will within the constraints of protecting property and persons, just don't make another person pay for it. As a political philosophy, it is the only way I see out of gridlock.      We were friends basically because I grew up on the same street where he lived with his wife and daughter. We spent many a summer morning on...