I just love Woodland Hospice’s new sign. A home run for Deanna and the team.

Deanna and I spent a couple of our off-days doing serious de-cluttering. We now have a trailer full of trash and many bags of clothes bound for Goodwill; we donated some obsolete office equipment too. We also took care of a decrepit falling-apart dresser, Blanchard style:

And we cleaned out the infamous “militia room” (rumored to be a secret hide-out of the Michigan Militia back in the day):

Deanna and I are so there. . .and there, and there, and there.

From The Morning Sun:

[In December], weather-watchers at Central Michigan University recorded 48.15 inches of snow at the official monitoring station, more than twice as much snow as the previous record for December. It broke the record for the snowiest month ever recorded. That record had stood for nearly 112 years.

. . .It’s absolutely fine for the Detroit 3 to die:

I’ve come across a listing of the products manufactured by Chrysler (JUST by Chrysler) in support of the World War II war effort. (This is from a series of 7 books written by Wesley Stout.)

20,000 tanks (12 models)
438,000 Army trucks
18,000 B-29 engines
60,000 Bofor anti-aircraft artillery guns
3,250,000,000 rounds of small arms munitions
100 miles of submarine nets
1,500 searchlight reflectors
7,800 Sea Mule harbor tugs
29,000 marine engines
328,000 4.5″ rockets
101,000 incendiary bombs
1,990,000 20mm shells
2,000 radar antennae & mounts
5,500 Sperry gyro-compasses
20,000 land mine detectors
air raid sirens
fire pumpers
Curtiss Helldiver center wing sections
B-26 & B-29 fuselage sections
Navy Corsair landing gear
Gaseous diffuser equipment for processing A-bomb fuel 

When the next major war comes (i.e. when the Republicans take over again), where are we going to get things like these? China?

Do the chronic Detroit-haters / union-haters even think about things like this?

Stolen and/or borrowed from various sources:

My friend’s in trouble. He just found out that renewing his wife’s auto tags does not count as a Christmas present.

Members of Congress should wear uniforms like NASCAR drivers so we can identify their corporate sponsors.

You know you are in trouble when the word “just” appears before the word “friends.” - Ira Glass

I’m sorry I hurt you. But it doesn’t mean I’m going to let you keep hurting me.

Brenna is such a skeptic, John reports:

Noticing that one of her Christmas gifts from Santa had a price tag on it, Brenna asked, “Why would the elves put a price tag on the gifts they make?” Mom told her, “Well, sometimes the elves buy the gifts at stores when it takes too long to make them.” Brenna replied, “Hmm. I don’t know. I’m starting to think something fishy is going on.”

Yesterday we had a huge melt. Temps got up nearly to 50. Result of this was thick white fog that sat on the ground all day long. Literally could not see past the lip of the deck. I had to go to Remus at one point and it was tricky, especially since there were some dolts driving without their headlights on. Otherwise stayed here and watched the drips.

Overnight huge winds came up. Broadcasts say we had gusts over 50. Power went out about 4. Came back about 7:15, just as I was thinking about getting up. This morning it’s still foggy but not as bad, but the winds continue to roar. Good news is that our drives and walks melted down to the ground.

But for the first time in memory I did no walks yesterday. This time of year I walk on the road. Headed out with Winston, but the road was covered with wet ice. He slipped and fell 4 times within the first 50 steps. I felt unsafe also. And with the fog, had a vehicle come along, we would have been in trouble. Not worth it.

This has to be about the worst way to go. Man drowns in an Indiana manure lagoon.

Visited the Botanical Gardens with Madison’s mom, who took and shared this picture.