Cookies and Rona

I don’t have COVID-19. But my younger son and his family just got through it. Yay, holidays. (No, I didn’t go within snorting range. G and I stayed home, boring but alive.)

My younger daughter threw a hissy fit when I said I’m getting the vaccine soon as it’s available to me. She went on about an untested vaccine, yada yada, how we didn’t know the long-term effects. I pointed out we know well the long-term effects of dying, though. Given the overwhelming proportion of idiots Trumpkins in this part of the desert, it’s more rampant here than anywhere else. We’re number one! We’re number one! We’re… Err… Nevermind.

I decided new year, new decor on the blog. It was long overdue. The spousal unit and I have gone out with cameras in hand the past couple of weeks, though for me, it was pretty minimal. I drove and got us there and back safely. Ya wanted pictures, too? (The mountain scape up top is my image, which also explains it. This is pollution season, so the haze – even in the middle of nowhere – was pretty awful.)

Yay for neutering the EPA, 45! I remember the good ol’ days, when driving to LA, your eyes started burning about 100 miles out.

Fair warning: these shots are mostly Photoshopped to the Nth degree. I was too out of it today to do anything legitimately productive so I played with my photo folder.

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In addition to changing the theme for the blog, I added a new favicon – that little doodad that shows up on the tabs or bookmarks. The gold coin with the B represents Bitcoin, a type of virtual currency. It’s one of those, “If  I knew then what I know now…” moments. When I first heard of Bitcoin was eons ago, and I scoffed. I said to myself, “Self, don’t throw a single penny away on something so stupid.”

I believe the first time I heard of Bitcoin, they were valued at $5 apiece. Later on down the line I decided to buy some – until I discovered they were $200-ish apiece. I thought it was ridiculous to put 200 of my hard-earned dollars away like that. (To be fair, I may not have actually had $200 at the time beyond my bare-bones survival income.) However, my pea brain was never at its sharpest when it came to math. Bitcoin was introduced circa 2009, and had gone from flatline zero to 200+ bucks in roughly four years. Let’s see your stock market returns for the same period, shall we? If you’ve taken your heart meds, go look at the price for a single Bitcoin right now. Go ahead. Google “Bitcoin price”. I’ll wait.

If you looked, you’ll have to the rest after you come around from the dead faint.

If I’d bought just three of the durned things back when, I would be able to pay off all of my bills, including my house, my car, and all credit cards. If I’d sprung for 25 of them back when they were 5 bucks apiece, I’d be retiring early. I’m ridiculously tempted to spring for a Bitcoin miner right now. I don’t have time for the details but the Reader’s Digest version is a computer that “mines” Bitcoin. I could technically do it on my laptop but it would destroy the lappy. I’ll take “Reasons to Say No” for $500, Alex.

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There are cookies, and there are cookies. Computer cookies are trackers. Some are benign, some are malicious. Places like WordPress uses cookies to let you sign in, post, comment, etc. Other sites use cookies to spy on you forevermore.

But the cookies in tonight’s title is  the old-fashioned kind, the kind grandma bakes in the oven. And I did.

My oldest grandson is in the Air Force and I haven’t seen him in forever. He asked for cookies for Christmas and I sent them via Priority Mail. Which, between the hosed-up Frankenstein company commandeered by 45’s general and the grandson’s stationing overseas, means nearly a month later nothing has been delivered.