I meant to take more photos Thursday. The one I did take, though, is a keeper:
That’s our Gang of Three, Fritzi, Lulu, and Mr. B, with Mary Anne’s dog Anthony, not being pests at the table and proving Robert Frost’s point about good fences making good neighbors (never fear … we made sure they got bites of turkey and brisket later).
It’s time to start getting serious about Christmas. I have nothing for Donna, nor any ideas. The annual letter to friends and family is stalled. “Dear Friends and Family, greetings from Paul and Donna Woodford. We hope you’re well and happy, rested from the holidays, and ready for the new year.” I wrote those lines four days ago and haven’t thought of a thing to say since then. We don’t know who’s going to watch our dogs while we’re in Las Vegas over the holidays.
Friends are throwing their first soiree since pandemic lockdowns began in March, 2020. They’ve invited us to a New Year’s Eve murder mystery party, along with eight other couples. All 18 of us will have individual roles to play, and will participate in figuring out who the murderer is. Yes, it sounds like fun, and we were all ready to party again, but then the hostess called to inform us that every guest is vaccinated and boosted, which rather than reassuring us made us remember Covid and the unknown level of risk we’ll be exposing ourselves to. But we’re going. It’s time. And we’re not planning on masking at the party … unless, that is, other guests are, in which case we’ll run out to the car to fetch ours.
I still check into Twitter, but everyone I follow there, journalists mostly, is talking about Elon Musk, Donald Trump, and Kanye West. It’s no fun at all, so I also check into Mastodon, which so far at least is a place to talk about other things, some of them actually interesting, but damn, the folks there are woke with a capital W.
Like, for example, this guy who posted about preparing Thanksgiving dinner and included a photo, which was blacked out as “sensitive content.” You had to click a button to see it, which turned out to be a bowl of stuffing he was getting ready to put in the oven. I engaged the guy to ask if he knew why Mastodon flagged the photo as sensitive, and he wrote back to tell me he’d done it himself out of concern for those with eating disorders. Then he blocked me.
This morning another Mastodon poster’s photo was blacked out, ditto marked sensitive, and that one turned out to be … well, how about I show you?
Here’s the before:
And here’s the after:
I don’t want to be blocked again, so I won’t ask. But there must be a reason he, or the content moderators at Mastodon, thought the photo might upset someone. I just can’t imagine what that reason could be.
Well, that’s enough bloggage for a beautiful morning. It’s time to restock the bird feeders … hungry customers are lining up on the branches of the palo verde out front. Stay fresh, cheese bags!