wild_turkey

Shelby reportedly had a good day at the doggie hospital. They have her blood and she seems to be in good spirits. We hopefully get her back tomorrow.

I went to Southside Rambler for drinks and it seemed ok. They have a large outdoor space that made it feel somewhat safe during Covid, but apparently there were concerns raised about Covid precautions and one of the owners is a Covid denier on social media. I also went to the former La Zona place for after dinner drinks a few times. It was also fine for that simple purpose. That’s a decent spot and I’m sure someone will open a successful restaurant or bar there, but that needs to be post-Covid and restaurant space is surely cheap at this point.

Austin City Taco does not have a $19 breakfast or anything close to that. They are a casual taco spot kinda like Torchy’s or Velvet, except slightly more traditional tacos. I’ve been a couple times and it was fine. You guys will get your panties in a wad about anything, and when you can’t find something, you imagine new travesties that are worthy of criticism.

I posted back in October when Shelby had internal bleeding and a spleen mass. She had emergency surgery and was given a 50-50 chance of living, which she did but the mass was hemangiosarcoma, a malignant cancer that has almost always metastasized at the time of diagnosis. We opted for chemotherapy and she was expected to live 3-4 months, 6 months if we were really lucky. It’s been 9 months and she’s been the happiest dog with incredible energy and personality. The vet has said she’s a miracle dog and we’ve been very thankful, but we know she’s on borrowed time. This past week she took a turn for the worse. We were unfortunately out of town when it first happened but we got home and took her to her vet oncologist today. She’s very anemic which typically means bleeding, but luckily the abdominal ultrasound and chest x-ray didn’t show anything. She has some kidney problems so maybe it’s her kidneys or maybe GI, we aren’t sure. The vet offered her treatment with a blood transfusion and medicine, which we accepted. It’s pretty expensive so it wasn’t an easy decision, but she’s beat the odds on her previous issues and her quality of life has been outstanding until the last few days, so we want to give her the chance to rebound again. Crossing our fingers that she comes home happy again this week. We know the day will come when she’s no longer fixable and we’re prepared to say goodbye if it appears she’s suffering with no available treatment. We are just hoping this isn’t that point and that she has more good days ahead. By the way, her vet oncologist is incredible - Dr. Allstadt at Veterinary Specialists of North Texas. Hopefully no one needs these services, but if you are in the Fort Worth area and your pup has cancer, she is highly recommended.

Sorry to hear about that. Hopefully you will get many more happy days with her. We are going through a similar situation that I'll share separately.

Watched this today and loved it.

I like seeing movies in the theaters but it seems harder in recent years to find movies I actually enjoy. I think part of that is the shift to making endless Marvel movies or sequels/remakes, rather than good original content. Or maybe that’s always been the case and I just became more picky with age. I get the hate on AMC because I’m sure many of them are still terrible, but the 2 near me have reserved recliner seating, a bar, and limited food. We don’t have Alamo Drafthouse near me so it’s a good substitute. So for me at least, the problem with the movie theater experience is due to the studios and not the actual theaters, and I don’t expect direct-to-streaming movies to improve that.

I like seeing movies in the theaters but it seems harder in recent years to find movies I actually enjoy. I think part of that is the shift to making endless Marvel movies or sequels/remakes, rather than good original content. Or maybe that’s always been the case and I just became more picky with age. I get the hate on AMC because I’m sure many of them are still terrible, but the 2 near me have reserved recliner seating, a bar, and limited food. We don’t have Alamo Drafthouse near me so it’s a good substitute. So for me at least, the problem with the movie theater experience is due to the studios and not the actual theaters, and I don’t expect direct-to-streaming movies to improve that.

Sunday means Nikki Beach. I’m talking sushi, rosé, magnums, DOUBLE MAGNUMS!!!, sunshine, thong bikinis, good vibes only. Tell only your best friends. La vie est belle.

I’m in heaven. Seriously, I might be dead because life doesn’t get better than this.

Yeah. Food was okay, ambience kinda cool. It’s close to our house so we go for happy hour occasionally. Actually kicked around the idea of doing that later today.

If the season is canceled or significantly reduced, it seems everyone gets an extra year of eligibility. I’m assuming many graduating seniors will stay at their schools unless they are projected as high draft picks, or we may also have a high degree of graduate transfers. Either way, they can stay and finish out their college career if they choose to. What’s a little crazier to me is the high school situation. No high school senior is going to take a victory lap for the sake of high school football. Recruiting and signing day will be strange with much less info to rely on, then we’ll have a class of less proven talent that will enter college programs where the previous “freshmen” never even got a freshmen season. It seems like they’ll basically get lumped together into one giant bizarro class.

I have an iPhone 8 that’s running slow and apps are frequently crashing. I’m tempted to upgrade to the iPhone 11 Pro. Any reason I should hold out for the iPhone 12?

Dumb question time... is there something I’m missing that makes conference games safer than non-conference games? Lots of schools have certain regional non-conference opponents that require less travel than many of their conference opponents. Logically speaking, how can a school like TCU cancel their SMU matchup but justify traveling to WVU?

I think Wendy's character is annoying but I also think Laura Linney was miscast for that role. She comes across as winy, desperate, and meek. Maybe it's because I've watched Love Actually too many times and I just think of her as shy and timid, but I can't buy her as the soccer mom who breaks bad and becomes a powerful woman who controls politicians, orders hits on people, and negotiates with cartel bosses. I'm not sure who they should've cast. I keep thinking someone like Keri Russell or Carrie Coon because I've seen them both pull off this type of role, but I don't mean either of those actresses specifically. Just someone who appears a little more tough.

I have a bet with a friend about the 2020 football season. He thinks opening weekend games in Texas will be played as usual with 100% fan capacity allowed in stadiums. If that happens, he wins. If games are canceled or there are any fan capacity limits, I win. Not really a bet I want to be right about, but I don't see any way that cases in Texas will magically reverse course in 2 months to allow this to happen. I'd love to be wrong.

Remember when everyone was worried about what the 2020 SXSW cancellation would do to the Austin economy? That was cute.

Just watched 1917 for the second time (first time was at the theater). Still excellent and I’m now more perturbed that Parasite won Best Picture.

Yeah just wondering. I think being there when they first opened was lucky timing for us. We would still go now even with the more stringent mask policies because we were pretty good about mask usage anyways, but I get that the situation could progressively get worse due to COVID. We are considering another trip in Aug/Sept if things hold up until then. There’s a very limited number of places we can go in a weekend and have fun while feeling somewhat safe, but Wynn earned our trust so far.

Why?

Pretty typical wine stock up for us today: 6 x Louis Jadot Beaujolais 1 x Arsonist red blend 1 x Intrinsic red blend 1 x Orin Swift Eight Years in the Desert 1 x If You See Kay red blend 1 x CA Locations 1 x Rose Gold rosé Total price at Tom Thumb was $202, so $16.83 per bottle average.

Update???

That's what I'm asking about, and I'm asking out of genuine curiosity about the data, not because I necessarily believe it is/isn't happening to a significant degree. Texas reported 1,756 COVID hospitalizations on 6/1 and now we are showing 4,739 hospitalizations as of yesterday. That's obviously a huge increase and most rational people would assume that it's largely due to people primarily hospitalized for COVID. I just wish there was some way to know what % of that is actually a result of people hospitalized for other causes that happen to test positive for COVID despite not having any significant COVID problems. What I think would be helpful is to show the following data over time: Total hospitalized patients from all causes Total hospitalized patients with a positive COVID test Hospitalized patients with COVID or complications secondary to COVID as primary reason for admission Hospitalized patients with other primary reasons for admission who also have a positive COVID test Daily new hospital admits from all causes Daily new hospital admits primarily due to COVID Length of stay rolling average And then repeat the same data for ICU admissions. Forgive me if that data is being publicly reported somewhere, but I would also appreciate if someone could kindly show me where to see it.

I didn't like season 2 and was content not watching season 3. Then COVID hit and I exhausted most of the other good shows on my list and some coworkers said Ozark season 3 was better than season 2, so I reluctantly gave it a shot. This show is still terrible for all of the same reasons: I hate most of the characters. There isn't really a protagonist or an underdog for me to root for. Maybe Ruth is supposed to be the Jesse Pinkman character here? I really don't care if they all die, starting with Wendy. The writing is horribly inconsistent: -In season 2 Charlotte was fighting for emancipation and now she is magically back in the family business without much of an explanation. -Wendy made a big fuss about getting a 2nd casino and hotel at the expense of getting an FBI investigation brought upon them, only to never mention that 2nd casino in the last 5 episodes of the season. -Wendy made a push to win Zeke back from Darlene, only to suddenly drop it when court didn't go their way. -Marty says he's gonna flip and FBI agent, then he just kinda strings her along and does basically nothing of value. There's always a new big problem every 1-2 episodes, then instead of actually resolving it or incorporating it into the overall plot, they just cast it aside and move onto a new problem. Aside from the inconsistent writing, the large scale plot requires too much suspension of disbelief. You can't convince me that the head of a Mexican drug cartel would want a partial share of a Missouri riverboat casino for relatively small scale money laundering operation, and that he would then spend his time chatting on the phone with Wendy of all people. And that somehow Marty and Wendy Byrde can end a cartel war remotely by providing a single FBI agent with some dirt on a single hit and then the U.S. military sweeps in and eliminates Navarro's rivals, all in one episode and all off screen. Yeah because the U.S. military has a long history of quickly and efficiently ending drug wars. That's the biggest plot issue currently, but the writers wanted to raise the stakes and this is where it took them. I don't even need to complain about Ben. As bad as he was, he would be tolerable if the above 3 complaints were 50% better. If this show was a shitty BBQ joint, Ben would be the bad potato salad. Hardly worth mentioning when the brisket and sausage are poorly cooked. I'm out for season 4. Or maybe I'll write a similar rant in a year if we are still living in a pandemic and I still need ways to waste my abundant spare time.

I know a common theory among COVID naysayers is that COVID hospitalization and ICU numbers only look worse because hospitals are now COVID testing everyone, and any positive test gets a patient included in the daily statistics. Therefore, patients who may be in the hospital for something entirely different are also being counted in the COVID stats, even if they aren't primarily hospitalized from COVID. This is a somewhat different take on the previous conspiracy theory that hospitals were falsifying records and death certificates to get COVID payments. That theory implied intentional wrongdoing for financial or political reasons, whereas this current situation, if there is even any truth to it, would be more of an unintentional misrepresentation of reality. I don't necessarily subscribe to this theory, but I also haven't seen any good information that supports or refutes it. I would like to have some transparency on how the data is compiled. Does anyone have a source that could clarify this?