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Featured Editorials

Saturday Open Thread - 12/20/25: Odds and Ends

Good morning, good people! I hope you are all enjoying your weekend and reading The Epstein Files!

I have promised a lawyer from Bryan-College Station that I would let him know if his 78 yr old cancer stricken, bad knees, bad bladder, almost deaf, lawyer Dad was making an ass of himself and maybe setting himself up for a malpractice suit. So, after 10 minutes of watching the man conducting a direct examination of an expert witness, I felt good about him. Later that ay, I asked the attending court clerk how it went, and she said my old, esteemed friend twisted a knife in the back of his young opposing counsel. (Court-speak for getting a win so decisive that appeals would be a waste of time and money.)

Friday Night Photos On The Wing Edition

Happy Friday everyone. Welcome to Friday Night Photos your once a week escape from the day to day insanity of the world we live in. Post any photos, memes, music or whatever else you find of interest that helps tune out the madness.

(In my best Andy Rooney voice) Do you ever wonder why we say "I caught a cold"? There are a lot of things I would like to catch (your mileage may very}, an award winning photo, the game winning touchdown pass in a football game, the buxom redhead that works at the bank. Hell, I'm even good with catching a 2 for 1 deal on a dozen extra large eggs at the grocery store. What I'm not good with is catching a cold. Coughing, sneezing, body aches and pains, chills, lack of energy, loss of apatite. Snot to mention hacking up all that mucus and phlegm. These are not things anybody I know wants to "catch" So why do we use that term. I propose a change. Instead of saying "I caught a cold" I think we should say "a cold caught me". After all, nobody tries to catch a cold.

If the above rant wasn't a dead giveaway, I have a cold. Symptoms started last Friday with a sore scratchy throat. Things stayed that way through Tuesday. When I woke up Wednesday morning the sore throat was gone. Yippee! Colds gone! Nope. No such luck. A few hours after getting up the cold kicked into high gear with all the nasty symptoms mentioned above. No fun but better this week than next week.

Snowy Egret
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Open Thread - Thurs - 18 Dec 2025 - Weather Comes, Weather Goes - Hopefully

Weather Comes, Weather Goes - Hopefully
It's been kinda insane where I live, recently. The Wind! The Rain! The Floods! We lost access to the internet a few times, and lost power as well. Monday afternoon/night, after we lost power, our weather station (which has battery backup and can store data without mains power for about 24 hours or more) recorded wind gusts of 42 mph. And that is basically a record at the farm. Even the neighbor's cows don't make wind gusts that strong! Smile Smile

So, I'm posting this quickly, because the forecasters say we are going to get another round of wind and rain tonight. It's not supposed to be 'as bad', so there's that, but we are hunkering down expecting to have no power or internet regardless.

Essex photo 03 b.jpg
The Essex and the Whale, as drawn by Thomas Nickerson, one of the surviving sailors - Public Domain, Link

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