One a day, plus iron

We're still waiting on results for the Mississippi Senate race. It's Scott Colom (D) vs. Senator (incumbent) Cindy Hyde-Smith (R) and they are not done counting the votes yet. Is this because Mississippi is too stupid to count votes? No. That's not the issue. They are not done counting the votes because of their voting rules.

It's time for the rest of us to learn a little about how Mississippi does things.

( Let's Learn Shit! )

Well, the midterms went about as well as could have been expected. Blue South Carolina? Blue Kansas? Blue Texas? I mean, okay, that's all good but we still have two more years of the current oval office inhabitant.

A gain for the Dems was not entirely unexpected. It's pretty common for the midterm elections to reduce the power of the President's political party for the remaining two years of their term. The President's party usually loses seats in the House of Representatives (80% of midterms since 1946). The party is also likely to lose a Senator here or there (about 65% of the time since 1946). These losses do not automatically mean that the House or the Senate flips. Flipping is more uncommon than narrowed margins. In the last twenty midterm elections, the House has flipped 7 times and the Senate has flipped 6.

In the 2026 midterms, both the House and the Senate flipped from Republican control to Democrat control. That's a substantial loss for the Republicans, kind of a worse than expected outcome.

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I took Switch over the hill today down to the burn pile. Trys came along riding Snap for her first "across the road with a rider" outing. That went absolutely fine. I also upgraded Switch to a bridle that is more appropriately sized for her, since she is more or less riding these days. It needs to be oiled, but I'll take care of that later this week.

( See a pic from the other day? )

Switch went across the road with me and just Trys (no other pony) in which we went down into the holler (further than before) and then back out and we trotted through the hayfield on the road to the tractors near the woods. This was (a) new territory and (b) sustained trotting effort and it went really well. Great job, Switch! She also came to the gate when called.

She has decided that if she just... doesn't open her mouth for bridling, that will work. Spoiler alert: it won't. Is funny, though.

Trys is sending me some pictures of "good trail pony" action. If I get them, I'll post one.

I took Switch out by herself today, across the road. It was a repeat of the ride we did (with a buddy) on Oct. 21 but this time we went on our own.

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I got some time in with the ponies after work yesterday.

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As you know, Bob, I grew up more-or-less in the Lutheran church because my mom thought that a certain amount of Protestantism would probably be useful or at least character-informing for the children and she didn't hate the Lutherans as much as she hated the Episcopelians. Anything Baptist flavored was right the hell out and she wasn't huge on rampantly evangelical practice either. Lutheranism was apparently the just right flavor of Protestantism and it was conveniently located near our house.

Full disclosure up front: I am an atheist. I don't have a bumper sticker or annoyingly confrontational t-shirts about it. I do not distribute pamphlets. I am not an evangelical atheist, but I don't believe any Jesus-adjacent stuff at this point and I didn't ever actually believe any of it, not even when I was a kid.

( Read more? It's a T-I-L like the copper mine* thing... )

Beets. I have been eating beets. (Yes, still. They were free. I got a lot of them.) Beet salad! You will need oven roasted beets (roast with skin on, let cool, rub off skins, dice) and some cucumber (diced same size as beets) and some fresh dill and some red onion (or white onion, which will become purple anyway) and some yogurt and salt. Beets, about 1/2 as much cucumber as beet, about 1/2 as much onion as cucumber. Dill until you feel good about it, enough yogurt to make it suitably wet (like mac salad or potato salad), salt to taste. It's way better than you think.

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Allegedly this is the author's first novel, which he claims he wrote himself. Okay, I'm not gonna dispute that. It's a litrpg of the cozy crafting variety, which is fine. I like cozy crafting just fine and the tropes of the genre that annoy me, well, I skim over them.

( All genres have tropes that annoy the fuck out of me, it's just which ones I'm currently willing to tolerate. )

It's fall, ya'll. How did the garden grow?

( A review of the season... )