Beautifully autumn outside. Trees blaze, showing off fab colors. Blue sky highlights the look as the sun beams on it like a doting father. We’re up to 62 F after an overnight shift into the upper thirties. 74 F degrees is being held out a possible high.
My floofs are on this weather like children going after their Halloween candy. It’s perfect feline weather for the moment. Each boi has staked out sunny spots and are living up to their stereotypes as well-groomed, sun-loving beasts.
We received our latest COVID Jab — or COVAB, as I put to others but it’s not catching on. Went much like our first jab back into 2021. First hours, okay. Last night, the vax slammed me down and wouldn’t let me up. I crashed in a big way. Wrapped up in sheets and blankets, my head felt like a match that’d been struck and was burning. Then I spent a period of shivering uncontrollably.
After about thirteen hours of sleep, I forced myself out of bed. The cats helped. They’re like, “Dude, we must be fed and let out. Come on, get your priorities straight and get your ass out of bed.”
So I arose like a creaking suit of armor. Made my path to the kitchen where coffee was administered. Coffee is a wonder drug, don’tcha know. Anyway, I thought along the lines of being out of sync physically and mentally, a condition that borders on being called ‘sick’. The Neurons began playing Jackson Browne and “Doctor My Eyes”. Grazing through the net, I found this version from “Playing for Change”. Hope you like it.
Stay positive and test negative. Get the jab, as it will help, in the long run. Here’s the music. Where is my coffee?
Friday morning, October 18, 2024. Outside air temperature is 31 degrees F. Doesn’t stop the floofs from wandering out into sunshine. Heavy sunshine, no clouds, and sharp blue sky herald the trees’ autumn gowns. They show off vivacious, vivid golds, lemons, ambers, scarlets, reds, and orange among the greens. It’s a new show every year. Our high today will be in the mid 60s.
I got struck with a fake virus popup scam. Where they want you to buy, download, or call somewhere to get rid of it. Go in and clean it out later. Right now, it’s just an annoyance.
Picked it up when I was looking for birthday flowers for Mom last night. Clicked on one site. It came up with the standard thing about wanting to send me notifications. They seem like beggars to me with that ubiquitous plea, “Want me to send you notifications?” I can see them at a traffic corner, newspaper and water in hand, ready to clean your windshield for you. Anyway, I clicked no, of course, and bang, here was the scam. Deep grrrrrrrrrrooowwwlll.
I have a Twenty One Pilots song in the morning mental music stream (Trademark scammed). Song came out in 2009. The Neurons plucked it out of the stuff floating in memory because I was out there with the cats thinking, hey, it’s a good day. That’s basically the sense of TOP’s song.
Barfloofian(floofinition) – 1. An animal who seems alien or foreign to a location, or who is not accepted as belonging. Origins: 14th century Floofman.
In Use: “The kittens’ appearance in the household disturbed Samson, who seemed appalled by their smells, looks, and sounds, treating them like barfloofians whenever they got close — at first.”
2. Animals who are deemed lessor or lacking in some manner because they are different.
In Use: “Corky was a dog and understood that. He got along well with other dogs, and loved his humans, but had no interest in cats, who he thought of as rude and snotty barfloofians.”
We rocked and rolled into another autumn day. Blue skies, no clouds, lots of vapor trails.
Another Tuesday. Another October — my 69th October. I’m 68 but we don’t start counting until we’ve been alive for one year and I was born in July. And ‘nother 15, as this is 10/15/2024.
As the new weather norm goes, it was chilly, in the low fifties at night. Sunshine thrust in past trees and over mountains as the Earth rotated. The thermometer began clawing its progress up the scale. Now at 62 F degrees, 72 F might be here at 4 PM. Rain is anticipated at 5 PM, and that’ll change everything.
The wind is still and the air is clear.
This is floof weather. The boys — Papi and Tucker (pronounced Tuck-ah) — settled into favorite sunshine-favored spots in the backyard grass. Napping followed grooming, with interruptions to head lift for disruptive noises. But all is well for them.
They — the cats — inspired The Neurons’ music choice today. I checked on them after dressing. Seeing them in their sunshine spots, The Neurons jerry-rigged a Rihanna song with new lyrics: “We found sunshine in the backyard, we found sunshine in the ba-ackyard.” This was a butchering of “We Found Love” from 2011. Calvin Harris wrote it and Rihanna had a hit with it. After using it for their purposes, The Neurons introduced the proper tune to my morning mental music stream (Trademark hopeless) for the full experience. It’s a technotune with a driving beat that soon had The Neurons jumping and bouncing, a bit disconcerting as my body’s other cells were clamoring, “Where’s the coffee, huh? Give me coffee.”
Stay positive, be strong, and vote blue. Don’t know what history will say after this election but I’d like to give our nation a longer tenure as a democratic republic. Electing Harris will bend us toward that course. Selecting Trump will divert us further off course, as we saw from his first term and his behavior since.
The body finally had its coffee prayers answered. Here’s the music. Cheers
It’s a wonderful fall day, aka autumn, in Ashlandia this Monday morning. 14th of October, 2024. We’re approaching the month’s midpoint, don’tcha know. Skies as blue as Paul Newman’s eyes. Unabated sunshine splash off autumn’s colors. 71 degrees F outside now, with a few more degrees yet to be gained today before the sundown show begins.
I was out last night — early Monday morning, actually, but you know how our language is when you’re addressing a time that’s a half past midnight; it’s night but it’s morning — checking the sky for northern lights, asteroids, and meteors. Saw none of that. Was accosted by a spaceship. I believe they were aliens but could’ve been Trump supporters, as they were very weird. Anyway, the waxing moon was well short of full but the light it dished out into the night was impressive on its own. Lovely cool air felt me up and a serene silence serenaded me. Love nights like that. They lend a sense of calm optimism to me. With that moon, I could’ve called this Moonday.
Looks like the MAGA belligerence and lies toward FEMA in Hurricane Helene’s aftermess came home to roost. Funny, how when someone took a shot at Trump in PA, the GOP was all about softening the tone. Yet, now that a man was arrested for threatening FEMA in North Carolina amid stories that armed militia are threatening FEMA, the folks that were shushing the Democrats for their attitude and verbiage are letting the crickets sing in the silence. It is notable that many GOP leaders on the ground in North Carolina are pointing out that Trump is lying when he says that FEMA isn’t there helping. Sadly, mainstream media covers that news, and Trump’s MAGAts treat such media as fake news.
Got a ditty about “Jack & Diane” from 1982 in the morning mental music stream (Trademark flooding). Heard the John Mellencamp song on the radio as I aided my wife in her Food & Friends deliveries. This is our county’s version of Meals on Wheels. When I heard J&D, sitting in the car as my wife headed off to door knock, shout out “Food and friends,” and wait for the door to be answered so she could hand over the food items, I started listening to all the instruments employed. The song features an unusual, fragmented musical structure. Different instruments are employed to suggest moods in a way not usually employed in rock music. I think I even heard a recorder or a flute toward the song’s end among the pianos, guitars, drums, and clapping.
It also stayed in my head because I modified the words after I returned home and sang, “Little ditty about Tucker and Papi, two house floofs doing best they can.” BTW, that’s Tucker, pronounced Tuck-ah. The song actually lends itself well to singing about the cats. Example: “Papi sits back, scratches his neck for the moment, washes his paw, and does his best lion king.”
Last note, I want to reiterate that Donald J. Trump is unworthy of holding office. Latest reason for me to make this declaration is his falsehoods, which are known as lies in many places, about Kamala Harris and her cognitive abilities. He likes reflecting back. Whenever he shows signs of something, he immediately uses that issue as a cudgel to bludgeon voters into confusion. Clearly, when listening to Trump and Vice President Harris, it is Trump and his windy, meandering, fraying, old ‘weave’ — and I’m not referencing that abomination on his head — is the cognitively impaired individual seeking our nation’s highest office.
Stay positive, be strong, and vote blue in 2024. We will need all of these things if we’re going to subdue the Orange Menace and his anti-Democracy hordes.
Coffee and I have furthered our fling.
Here’s the music. See if you hear that woodwind somewhere around the 3:17 mark. Cheers
Floof Generis (floofinition) – One of a kind sort of animal, which can be decided by personality, appearance, or actions. Origin: early 1900s, middle Floofinus influences.
In Use: “Camilla was a floof generis, understanding her human’s needs before a word was said, silently rushing off to bring Colleen her cell phone before it rang, opening the refrigerator to bring back a beer, fetching newspapers and books, and of course, slippers and blankets.”
In Use: “The relationship between the child, crow, cat, and dog was so floof generis that videos of it stormed through social media.”
It’s a windy beast out there this morning. Definitely a creature of autumn. Trees are shimmying and waving branches like they’re cheering on the University of Oregon Ducks football team.
It’s technically a Sattyday, or Saturday as they call it in some parts of the U.S., samedi in some other places. October 12, 2024. 64 with a lovely balminess riffing. Most of the sun action is obscured behind a cloudy gray monolith. Our air will tiptoe into the low to mid sevenities this day.
The cats are out there, trying to make out like they’re happy with the weather’s shape. But their dismayed whiskers reveal their truths, that this wind is disturbing their sleep, mussing their fur, and annoying them with its sounds. Whenever I go by a door or window and look out, they eye the house like they want back in. I will go back and see if that’s true. Both will probably come in. Tucker (pronounced Tuck-ah) will stay but Papi will go back out. He has a short memory when weather is introduced as the topic.
You know who else doesn’t like the wind? DJ Trump dislikes the wind. The former President said some stuff about the wind at one of his rallies last week as part of his magic weave. This is lifted from a Huffpost article shared on Yahoo:
“The wind, the wind, it sounds so wonderful. The wind, the wind, the wind is, the wind is bullshit, I’ll tell you,” he said.
The crowed roared.
“It’s horrible, so expensive. Just too expensive. It doesn’t work. All of that to do y’know one tenth of one percent, I mean the whole thing is crazy,” he said.
Trump complained that wind power means people can’t watch television on days with no breeze.
He is right; the whole thing is crazy.
Speaking of wind, it’s a mess down in Florida after Hurricane Milton finished with them. Millions without power. Massive flooding. Sixteen dead, but people left homeless. Gas stations lack gas and alligators are swimming freely as a threat. President Biden has asked Congress to return to pass more funding for FEMA. Let’s see how the GOP reacts.
Moving on.
I have a friend with a fruitful fig tree, and she’s generous with its produce. After receiving pint after pint after pint of fresh, ripe figs, my wife baked a fig cake with a mix of almond and white flour. Excellent with coffee. I theorize it’d go well warm with a scope of vanilla bean ice cream as a dessert. But I’m having it this morning, cold with my coffee. Still fine riding on the taste buds.
All this wind thinking lends itself to songs about wind. I ended up with Kansas singing in the morning mental music stream (Trademark blown away). The Neurons agreed with the choice (although they did campaign for “Against the Wind” by Bob Seger and The Scorpions’ windy offering, “Wind of Change”. So here is “Dust in the Wind”, the 1977 progressive rock offering.
Stay strong, be positive, and vote blue in 2024. Rock on with your day. I’ve been rocking mine with coffee. Here’s the music. Cheers
Floofcronym(floofinition) – Another name given to an animal based on the initials of words being used to describe their looks, personality, or behavior. Origins: 1940, first noted in Greece.
In Use: “The kitten was formerly known as Princess Go-Lucky, but soon became referred to more often as SAFT — Small and Fast Thief — with a penchant for stealing chips, cheese, and doughnuts whenever someone turned their back on their food.”
Snoozaflooflooza(floofinition) – An ongoing celebration of sleep which many animals participate in. Origins: unknown, believed by floofologist to predate human history.
In Use: “Not knowing that her cats had decided to join snoozaflooflooza this year, Judi worried over how much the trio was sleeping, fearful that they had an illness.”
It’s supposed to be Thursday. Where I sit, it feels like Saturday. So it’s a hybrid day, officially Thursday, but more like Saturday in feel. Thurturday.
By the numbers, this is October 10, 2024. 54 F, it’s mildly cloudy. Highs might top 80 F, and there’s a chance of leaf showers. They’re coming off the trees fast in my backyard, energizing memories of being out there with a rake on a chilly day under a cloudy sky, cup of coffee off to one side to sustain me, raking and bagging. Sometimes, it would lightly drizzle. I prefer to keep the leaves in place as mulch but my wife dislikes that approach, so I put myself out there and get ’em up.
Pleased that Hurricane Milton seemed to have skimmed Florida without too much devastation and loss of life. Considering Milton’s smaller size but more powerful winds, we worried here in Oregon about what was going to happen. But Milton swept through fast. Yes, there’s some damage and flooding, and loss of life. Sorry to hear of all of that, of course, but that the levels of these things were not on the scale of Helene is a sort of release.
Now, I’d appreciate it if we could go without a hurricane for a while. I’m sure others have much stronger feelings on that than me.
With this mild but dry, warmish weather, the house floofs are making it their business to tuck in for long naps in their favorite yard spots and while out time with a snooze fest. I check on them regularly, and each will come in, tail up, for attention, food, or treats, but only after long hours outside sleeping. Guess these are the floof days of autumn I’d always heard about.
Today’s song is A Flock of Seagulls with “I Ran (So Far Away)” from forty-two years ago. It started in the morning mental music stream (Trademark purrfect) after a floof incident. Papi the ginger blade was the catalyst. Stepping from the house as Tucker (pronounced Tuck-ah) walked toward it, Papi darted at Tucker and made a little swipe. Toothless elderly Tucker, stopped, half-turned, and used his one good eye to give Papi a stare. Papi responded, “Whoa, shit,” and blazed across the yard to a tree. Springing halfway up it, he hung on and looked back at me. I thought his expression said, “See how far I ran away?” Seeing that (as I chuckled and Tucker completed his journey into the house), The Neuons kicked on the Flock with “I Ran”.
Stay positive, be strong and merry, and vote blue in 2024. I have introduced myself to a cup of coffee. Here’s the music video. Dig the hair. Cheers
Michael Seidel, writer 