"The conviction of former President Trump on politically motivated charges is an outrage and disservice to the nation," Pence told Fox News Digital.
"No one is above the law, but our courts must not become a tool to be used against political opponents," Pence continued. "To millions of Americans, this was nothing more than a political prosecution driven by a Manhattan DA who ran for office on a pledge to indict the former president and this conviction undermines confidence in our system of justice."
"This conviction also sends a terrible message to the wider world about the American justice system and only further divides us at a time when the American people are struggling under the failed policies of the Biden administration at home and abroad," he added.
Pence continued, "Having been convicted in a court of law, the former president has every right to appeal this conviction and I trust it will be overturned on appeal in a manner that will restore public confidence in our system of justice and equal treatment under the law."
I am just fine with Trump being held to the law (if he was, in this case -- doesn't seem like it). But that law should be applied in equal measures to others, including Presidents, family members of Presidents, presidential candidates and ex-Cabinet members.
May is kind of a "take a breather" month. We don't have a ton of birthdays to deal with, and property tax isn't due til June. And if we're lucky, we've gotten a tax refund, so we temporarily feel wealthy. (The TABOR refund hasn't shown up yet, though. The stinkers.)
However, I've had more than enough work to do. We missed out on the nastiest storms, because we were elsewhere. (Working, it turns out. Or seeing the kids.) And we've had some rain, so the sage and trees are turning beautiful shades of green.
It's been too cold to take many chances for planting, though. And there's the whole wheel incident, plus ,no brakes,to deal with. But in general, we're doing ok. How 'bout dat.
FRUGAL HITS
(some of these are from late April)
*Updated my voter's registration -- have you done that yet? I also sent a letter volunteering to be an election judge for Costilla County. (Had to turn down an extensive offer from Douglas County to be a signature judge again -- which really hurt. But a 3 1/2 hour commute each way?!?)
*Froze more tangerines for summer smoothies.
*Cancelled the Denver Post online subscription before its cost ballooned. (It had been $3 for a year.)
*Filled out a claim for the business. (One of those class action settlements.)
*Our electric bill was way down this month! Could turning lights off, as well as doing the wash and dishwasher late at night, instead of the daytime, be making the difference?
*Used up travel food we'd gotten for other trips. I'm beginning to see a little daylight in the freezer, too. Wonderful.
*Found Money: a quarter in the washing machine, another quarter and two pennies on the laundry room floor. Two more pennies in the Coinstar machine at Safeway... and a penny in a fundraising letter, from a charity we support. (Why not a nickel - or a dime?) Also: 92 cents (plus another foreign coin) in another Coinstar, this time at the Alamosa Safeway! That makes $1.47 found just this month -- almost as much as my total 2023 finds.
*Daughter #2 and Son #1 spent a few days with us, on their way to rockhounding in NM. They brought eggs, a gallon of milk and some eggs, marigolds and dianthus, plus some aging bananas with them. The sweethearts.
*Discovered that dirt under the trees was rich and dark; I think it will work for our garden. I also buried some iffy fish and shrimp from the freezer cleanout in the back deck planter.
*Dianthus in a planter by the front door -- and a marigold on the back deck. (I don't think the marigold's going to make it, but the dianthus is hanging in there.)
No chickens -- yet. Maybe next year.
*Got rides from friends (and the kids) when the truck was out of commission.
*Mother's Day Goodies: Bird of paradise plant, a waving Chinese kitty sundancer, a Yeti snowglobe (no, I am not making this up) and a Dutch spice cabinet from the kids for Mother's Day. Plus a great lunch at a hot pot/barbecue restaurant. (Thank you, Dears!) Best of all, time spent together. I love our kids.
*Ruby has decided to get along - specifically with Freya and Billie, the other dogs in our family. Which means that Rubes can stay with them -- and they can stay with her. And that saves a lot on doggie daycare and dogsitting fees.
*Did some surveys so I could earn more quickly on Swagbucks. I'm almost up to a $25 giftcard. (Here's a link, if you'd like to start earning, too.)
*Another quadruple payment on the house loan. Whoo hoo!
*Beefed up the emergency fund. (Of course it now has to pay for wheel and brakes replacements...)
Thrift shop buys: 2 packs of playing cards for $1.00 each (perfect for playing 'Nickel,' a new game the Brick's big brother taught us), a skein of yarn for a buck, and two nesting boxes for $2.
A friend from church asked me out for a day of thrift shopping. Boy, did we have fun! I not only learned where the Good Stuff around here, including several new shops -- she learned about the Amish grocery store we'd discovered. She drove. (No brakes = no truck.) I paid for lunch, which seemed like a great bargain. Meanwhile, I found: multiple short-sleeved shirts and a few kimono for $4-6 each, fabric (less than $4/yd), 3 videos for $5, several books for $1/$2 each, including two heavy books of Charles Russell and Remington prints, and a few Christmas presents. Plus 4 large tomato plants for $2.50 each! (I got these at a scruffy rock/junk shop. Go figure.)
*Found a uranium glass plate on our thrift shop jaunt, thanks to my handy blacklight. (The clerk said, "You won't find any of that, we always check -- Whoa!")
*Book buys: Eight more buried treasure and frugal books from Ebay's Second Sale (buy 3, get 1 free), Waddle Books and OrionTechLLC (buy 2, get 1 free), plus a Baby Doe Tabor biography way under its usual price-- and a book from Amazon. All free shipping for $36.50. That means .a cost of $4.06 each! (One book was refunded, so actually $3.38 less.)
*Repairs done by the Brick -- fixed the shower drain and installed screens in the windows and doors, split kindling and worked on the truck. He also submitted the wheel claim to Discount Tire. (They were the ones who put the new tires on the truck.) I am very lucky to have this guy in my life.
*Sent $$ to the friend who took care of Ruby while we were in Washington -- it saved us a lot, and we had the comfort of knowing she was being cared for by someone who loved her. (We want to take our friend out to lunch, too.)
*Meals without going to the store -- Sunday dinner for friends (grilled steak) -- and didn't buy anything extra. Game night with friends (homemade chili) and Sunday dinner with other friends (chicken & rice). Plus a church potluck.
*More king-sized candy bars, at $1.14 each -- less than last month's purchase! One of our friends announced she was a "chocolatarian." That's us, too.
*Finished up a knee study, for the knee that's never worked quite right since Charley jumped on it years ago. I saw this advertised on FB and applied for it: $240 and free prescriptions, plus a $30 doctor's visit. (I had to pay for the latter. And surgery or injections, if I needed it.) Turns out that the med was Symbalta, which normally is taken for depression. The doctors in the study saw it also acted on nerve pain, so wondered if it would help for arthritis.
I'm not sure if everyone had the same results, with just a bit (30 mg). But within THREE days, the pain was largely gone. And other than periods of extra stress, or accidents, it's stayed that way.
This has been a HUGE blessing.
I'm walking more, exercising more. I can travel more easily, and keep up with the Brick, instead of limping all the time. I'll always be a little stiff...turns out I have arthritis in both knees, not just one. And I still can hurt now and then. But the difference is radical. I'm not normally a pill-taker, but if this little pill keeps the pain at bay, I'll do it.
Makes me think of this Ed Sheeran song: "when your legs don't work like they used to..."
Misc. money windfalls: A $5.50 venmo from an old grocery class-action suit.
*Our Sunshine Salvage grocery closed -- but a new Amish discount, the Maverik Country Store, opened a mile down the road. I didn't grocery shop at all for a few weeks, too.
Grocery buys: two big boxes of marked-down goods, including chicharrones and potato chips for 39 and 59 cents; canned soup, chili and beans for 79 cents - $1.29, lavender baby powder and the real prize: a wheel of Swiss cheese (5.53 pounds) for $11.99. (Maverik Country Store)Corn chips and a few other assorted snacks for $1.25 each. (Dollar Tree) Three pounds of clementines for $2.97 (a steal this late in the season) and 18 eggs for $2.47. (Safeway) Maple syrup for 40 cents an ounce - the next best for 63-70 cents. (Amazon)
*A buffalo nickel for a silly big brother. (More on this soon.)
FRUGAL MISSES
*We missed getting the garbage out in time for pickup -- two weeks. Couldn't be helped.
*Let some veggies and bread spoil in the crisper. Washed it out, and will try again. I also threw out some spices the previous owner had left. (No flavor - they were ollllld. So were the veggies, for that matter.) Some milk soured -- but I used it up in bread and biscuits.
*Had to pay for the wheel repairs ourselves, before getting reimbursed --- thousands of dollars. At least we could put them on the credit card. (Still waiting on the claim.)
*$680 for brake parts -- it's a lot, but it's a few hundred less than the Brick found anywhere else. We won't have to pay for labor, either, thanks to his skill.
Charles Barkley and Shaquille O'Neal have an interesting relationship.
It's great fun to keep track of their zingers at each other, including this one:
Chuck: “It’s hot as hell down here in Dallas. … I walk every day to get peace and quiet by myself but I aborted today.”
Shaq: “You walked to get what? Pizza and quiet?!”
Finally, our temps are inching up. My Valley friends say June 1st is about when you can assume no more freezes. Is it really going to be spring here -- just when the calendar wants to say we're going into summer?
I guess. At any rate, four tomato plants are waiting to be planted, along with several seed packets.
We still have no vehicle. (Our brakes suddenly went out last week. Was it connected to the Flying Wheel Incident?Possibly, but we can't prove it as easily.) The Brick is fixing the truck, but has to wait until the parts come in later this week. Thanks to a friend who gave us a ride to church, and went to the grocery store with me, we're doing fine. But it means we stay home until then.
Very cool wildlife encounters. Including one from Boulder, CO. (Yes, mountain lions will do this. We had two that regularly screamed at each other around the ranch in Sedalia.)
Some of his estate items, as well as items from Eric and 'Bibi' Hilton's estate (Paris Hilton's great-uncle and aunt), will be available during auction today, May 25.Go here for more.
Update: The auctions in progress now. Presley's bedside Bible, with handwritten notes, was valued at $3,000, a price I thought way too low.
It sold for ONE HUNDRED TWENTY THOUSAND DOLLARS. Go figure.
In case you're wondering, Eric Hilton (1933-2016) was the third son of the founder of the Hilton Hotel chain...and pretty much an outsider, as far as being involved. However, he stayed married to Bibi (Patricia Ann Skipworth) from 1954 to his death. The couple had four children.
Eric died in December, aged 83 -- and Bibi died the following May, also aged 83. She wrote two books, including the modest memoir, I'm Just A Guest Here.
The auction items are mostly hers, including costume jewelry, a few of Taylor Swift's dresses (Taylor Swift??? - sold for $1,000 each)...and a huge lot of Jeran design dresses. One hand-beaded "Ivy" cocktail dress started at $100. (The costume jewelry is way less.)
If you like Carolina Herrara, you're in luck - lots of bags. A few Louis Vuitton bags have a brisk bidding. There's at least one Chanel bag, too, along with some much more valuable jewelry.
Bib's collection of buttons, last I checked, are going for $140.
Now, for the King.
Everything from Elvis' personal Bible to a large collection of clothing and jewelry is up for auction -- and considerably more than the Hilton items. Including his TCB necklace. (More on this later.)
I had a fun bout of flu hit yesterday...feeling a little better, but will be taking it fairly easy for a few days. The truck made sure of that -- we were coming back from the post office when the brakes went out! It will be at least a week before the parts arrive... so we stay home.
(Yes, this is the same truck whose wheel is finally back on. Go figure.)
We've had a few days of that most precious resource: raindrops. For those of you who live in a damper climate (like Michigan), this is liquid gold for us. We rarely get all-day drizzles more than, say, once every two months. In response to this wonderful stuff, the sagebrush is turning bright green, and the trees are greening up, too. It's almost as if they are holding their branches to the sky, begging for more.
The temps indoors are nearly matching the temps outdoors. Which means hot coffee in the morning -- but no fire in the woodstove. If we have one in the evening, it gets too hot to sleep without the ceiling fan on. We have cooler weather moving in this week, though - which means covering the few plants I've put out. (Snow too, probably. Yes, it's May...so what?)
“A reasonable person would not take offense at such complimentary and friendly words. In this case, [Prof] Ozanne’s words were not even ‘unfortunate’. They were not reasonably seen as hurtful or misjudged,” the Tribunal continued. “On the contrary, [Prof Sato-Rossberg’s] objection reflected [her] own hypersensitivity and predisposition to find fault with Ms Ozanne.”
After the decision, the professor announced that she figured she wouldn't be treated fairly by her boss, anyways -- after all, her boss wasn't British. Maybe she was American...
Depending on where you live, it may still be possible to see these wondrous things. (We missed them by a few days -- they were visible in Castle Rock, but we were staying in Nederland! And Fort Garland missed out altogether.)
Then a Mother's Day lunch spent with our kids at a restaurant serving hot pot and barbecue. (Thank you, Dears!)
Then a long drive home, much of it through pouring rain. We noticed a lot of snow on La Veta Pass, though fortunately the roads were reasonably dry.
And finally, church -- and the monthly potluck.
Add this all together, including hours of driving...and we were just beat. But we missed a weekend full of snow, rain, hail and power outages here at home. Fortunately, our woodrack was full, and we had milk, eggs and quick goodies stashed in the fridge.
This week will be somewhat quieter, though I have work to do.
Happy Mother's Day, Mom! Love you -- see you soon.
I'll also be appraising on Friday the 10th, doing one-on-one evaluations of your quilts. Not only will I appraise them -- but I'll also give you what I call "judge's comments:" things quilt judges would look for, and possibilities for your future quilts. The appraising fee is less than my usual, and $5 of each goes to the guild. Contact them for more, plus an appointment.
A great new blog on rock collecting! 'Rock talk with Angel' has its first post up (on green), and more on the way. (Confession: this is Youngest Daughter's blog -- but beautifully done, and well worth reading.)
"Roll, Jordan, Roll" by the Fairfield Four -- rumbly and downright wonderful, if you enjoy a cappella men's quartets.
