The Criteria!

It sounds like something out of a novel, but it is the criteria Hegseth is using to fire admirals and generals… and it is raising some eyebrows.

'You gotta be kidding me’: Hegseth used these four things to decide on senior officer promotions

A senior official exclusively told MS NOW how decorated military officers with decades of experience were withheld from promotion after Pentagon staff printed out internet searches showing they had attended official events like promoting COVID-19 vaccinations or marking International Women’s Day.

MS Now

By Priya Sridhar

Nov. 9, 2026

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth short-circuited a merit-based process for  promoting senior officers and instead relied on newly invented criteria that disproportionately removed from advancement women and people of color who had already been approved for promotion, according to three military officials.

MS NOW spoke exclusively to a senior official with in-depth knowledge of flag and general officer selection and assignment who described in detail for the first time how, he says, the results of internet searches were used by Hegseth’s office to withhold promotions from women and people of color. He was granted anonymity for fear of retaliation.

The senior official also described how Hegseth intentionally scuttled the promotions of senior officers who were perceived to support DEI initiatives, played a role in implementing the Pentagon’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate, were involved in the evacuation from Afghanistan, or had a connection to former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark A. Milley, who served as President Trump’s senior military officer but after retirement publicly criticized Trump’s leadership.

Those criteria are racist and sexist, and they punish military officers for carrying out legitimate orders!

I would like to point out that we are losing Trump’s War: nearly two-thirds of Americans (around 60%–65%) feel the U.S. is not winning the conflict or is effectively losing ground/stalemated in the region! Those numbers are similar to those from the Vietnam War.

The senior official described to MS NOW how Hegseth’s executive office led a planned and deliberate process that involved creating paper-only files filled with printouts from internet searches that were inaccessible to the officers under consideration. Hegseth’s office gave instructions about the new criteria over the phone instead of in writing.

Why paper? Because there are no traceable records! They can’t be "Ctrl+C'd"! They knew it was wrong, so they tried to hide it and avoid leaving a paper trail. House and Senate committees rely on computer records to perform constitutional oversight; deliberate paper-only workarounds bypass congressional constitutional oversight entirely!

Hegseth’s staff used the internet for the searches!

But those same officers had findings from the internet searches that disqualified them based on Hegseth’s criteria. The senior official described to MS NOW what was in the paper files for more than a dozen of the senior officers whose promotions were withheld. Some of the findings put into the paper-only files included officers who allowed a celebration that included rainbow flags, a Pride Month event and stood up a diversity committee and task force on the USS Kearsarge to combat discrimination.

In an NBC News article…

Two of the officials said there are concerns in the military and the White House specifically that Hegseth is blocking or stalling some qualified officers from receiving promotions through the ranks of general and admiral because of their race or gender as he targets diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives at the Pentagon. There is also concern that Hegseth could be singling out military officers whom he views as aligned with officials or policies of the Biden administration, the officials said.

On Thursday Hegseth fired the Army chief of staff, Gen. Randy George, whose term was expected to be four years ending in September 2027. George, the Army’s top officer, was senior military assistant to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin during the Biden administration.

Hold it right there! This was in the spring of this year while we were fighting a war! Do you see his title? Army Chief of Staff… um, we are fighting a war. Hello?

That has been mentioned in The New Republic:

Hegseth’s Army Purges Have Undermined Military Leadership on Iran

The extent to which Trump’s “secretary of war” has damaged America’s military capability is even worse than previously thought.

Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling

August 25, 2026

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s decision to fire numerous top generals has put America’s military between a rock and a hard place in its war against Iran.

The Army has been without a chief of staff since Hegseth fired General Randy George in April; he has forced out at least three senior officers who were believed to be in the running to be George’s replacement, according to current and former officials that spoke with The New York Times.

All in all, Hegseth has forced out at least half a dozen senior officers, according to inside sources that spoke with the Times, who say this purge has damaged the service’s expertise and has eroded its top ranks.

Hegseth put political ideology before the good of the country! He is...

“Hollowing out the most battle-tested and most lethal, proven leaders in a time of war means troops are less safe and we’re less likely to win,” Representative Pat Ryan, Democrat of New York and a former Army intelligence officer, told the daily newspaper. “We’re doing generational damage to the sense that the military is an apolitical trusted organization that swears an oath to the Constitution, not to a president.”

Other people have started to question this.

'I'm a hard yes': Hakeem Jeffries announces support for Hegseth impeachment

Jeffries predicted "incredibly strong support" among Democrats for it.

ABC News

ByQuinn Scanlan

November 8, 2026

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) came out in support of impeaching Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth on Sunday, telling ABC News he's a "hard yes."

"I'm a hard yes on the Hegseth resolution. The so-called secretary of defense has abused his power, undermined our national security, and engineered this reckless and costly war of choice in Iran, which has skyrocketed prices on the American people and made the country less safe," Jeffries said on ABC's "This Week." "Pete Hegseth has got to go."

Asked by "This Week" co-anchor Jonathan Karl if he's confident all House Democrats will join him in supporting the potential resolution, Jeffries said his conference will "have that conversation" on Tuesday morning, when members convene in Washington for the first time since the midterm election.

I also want to point out that a Navy Vice Admiral was elected to Congress after being fired by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth!

Gampel

[Editorial]

Anyone from Connecticut knows what I am writing about: the sports pavilion on the University of Connecticut campus.

But it is no longer just the Harry A. Gampel Pavilion—it's now the M&T Bank Center at Harry A. Gampel Pavilion! That is what you will hear when the next game is broadcast from there.

Why the change?

College sports are no longer amateur... the players get paid! Now they get paid through a combination of direct revenue-sharing from universities and Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) brand deals!

College sports have become the farm teams for the NBA, NFL, MLB, and other sports associations!

College sports foundations are nothing more than ticket franchises—donate $5,000 to the college alumni foundation, and you will receive season tickets!

You are not going to see sports disappear... they are the colleges' cash cows... or money pits. They also draw students To go to a big name school is a career decision on job applicants... "Oh I see you went to UConn!" Or maybe they dream of eating next to the next NBA star in the cafeteria or on the same dorm floor. 

[/Editorial]

Are We Heading Down This Path.

NO! But we are heading that way!

There was a post on Facebook featuring a New York Times article about facial recognition in Russia... this puts Flock back in the Middle Ages. They track you everywhere and use it for payments!

The New Moscow: A Digital Utopia Doubling as a Surveillance Trap

Cutting-edge technologies have reshaped the Russian capital, making it safer, more convenient — and more closely watched.

By Ivan Nechepurenko

Sept. 14, 2026

On the surface, today’s Moscow is a technological wonderland. You can use your face to pay for almost anything, like subway fares, or even to finalize the purchase of an apartment. Robots scurry across sidewalks making 15-minute grocery deliveries, and driverless taxis are set to begin commercial service this year.

Underpinning many of the modern amenities is a robust digital infrastructure developed by the city government that has made life not only easier, but also safer. Policing aided by digital tools has helped cement Moscow’s transformation from the raw, unforgiving place it was 25 years ago, plagued by home burglaries, street muggings and murders.

But there is a cost to the convenience and security: an expanding surveillance state.

This is Flock on steroids!

Moscow’s roughly 300,000 CCTV cameras make it one of the most heavily watched cities in the world. It is impossible to avoid a lens while simply walking through the city. The same cameras that whisk subway passengers through turnstiles are also used to monitor and flag people.

In April, a Russian rock musician was detained by the police at a railway terminal in St. Petersburg after surveillance cameras mistook him for a similar-looking Ukrainian public figure wanted by the state. After checking his face and pulling at his hair to ensure it was not a wig, they let him go.

Gee where have we heard that before? Flock maybe?

All around the world people are turning over their freedom for convenience. You walk up to a vending machine in the US and hold up your phone to pay. In Russia and many other countries you just walk and get what you want... it recognizes your face!

Biometric payments gaining popularity across Russia, Japan

Biometric Updat

Nov 28, 2025

Facial recognition-based payments are becoming a popular method to pay public transit tickets, while biometric payment solutions are also rising in retail.

Smile to Pay, a biometric payment method offered by Russia’s largest bank, Sberbank, has expanded its network of biometric payment terminals at public transportation systems.

On Tuesday, the Yekaterinburg metro announced it has equipped all of its turnstiles with Smile to Pay terminals, which allow passengers to purchase tickets through facial recognition. Expansion is also underway at Nizhny Novgorod, Samara and Novosibirsk.

The service was launched in late 2024 and now covers six cities. Sberbank says that over 1.2 million rides have been paid with Smile to Pay since the launch.

[...]

Japanese trains trial facial recognition payments

One of Japan’s major passenger railway companies, the East Japan Railway (JREast), is also following global trends by testing facial recognition ticketing on one of its shinkansen lines.

JREast plans to pilot the technology between Niigata and Nagaoka stations in central Japan until next March. About 500 regular commuters are expected to join the test.

Biometric cameras have been installed in tunnel-like gates to match the faces of passengers against a pre-registered facial image database. A passenger receives a green light when the face has been correctly matched and a red light in the case of a mismatch.

JR East plans to introduce facial recognition-based ticketless gates on all of its lines within the next 10 years, according to Japan’s public broadcaster NHK.

But a computer never forgets. In the movie The Graduate (1967), the famous one-word line is "plastics"; today it is Data Centers.

Why is Trump so set on data centers besides pushing his investments... big brother. Where do you think they are storing all those ALPR, toll data, facial recognition camera... everything is now being all linked.

You leave home, drive to work... your drive is recorded by every video doorbell or a smart doorbell on the street records your drive. You stop at the stop light and click. You stop at a coffee shop for your morning coffee... click. You get on the highway to work... click! The toll camera just snapped your plate.

You started your new job and you pull into the factory... click the gate goes up as it reads your license plate. And somewhere deep down in some data center it is all added to your file.

A month after you start your new job you get a letter from the state... "To Whom It May Concern" here are 20 speeding tickets for that road in front of work in the 30 mph zone where everyone does 40! You owe us a thousand dollars in speeding tickets! But I was only keeping up with traffic... yeah, but it is the town's cash cow, they rake in hundreds of thousands of dollars off the camera!

Tell me, just what do you think all those data centers are for... to track your every move. Your every purchase. You see, you opt for paying with your face... you get loaded into a shared searchable database. A cashless society is the dream of every authoritarian fascist leader everywhere!

It is called Data Fusion! Where all the databases on us are searchable from one desk.

That a single camera at an intersection is just a traffic monitor is not the worry. That a database of toll booth reads is just accounting, neither is that just the toll reader. That a license plate reader (ALPR) at a gate is just building security is not the problem. But the problem is when you link those databases together and cross-reference them with facial recognition, credit card records, and smartphone location data, they cease to be separate tools. They merge into a continuous, real-time map of human behavior... they become "1984" Big Brother.

They Don't Want To Learn

Face it the liars have won. Their millions have proven that Joseph Gerber was correct... you tell a lie often enough and it becomes the true..

Someone posted this on Facebook... it is not this I want to talk about but rather all those who thought it a lie. The Republicans have brainwashed the people so much with their lies... that many of them think this is a lie, that they think that this little pill is all we need to transition. They believe what is written on the right and not the left.

None of them even bothered to research it. People who pointed to links showing it is wrong... people commented, Fake News! Lies! 

That is why I am writing this... the people are brain dead.

Close To Home

Is this political cartoon too close to the truth?

What do you think that they have him wrapped around their little fingers?

What do you think?

 

online polls

It Amazes Me!

[Essay]

It amazes me all the people who voted Republican last week. There must be millions!

Yeah, I can discount MAGA people because they would have voted for him anyway. But the others… there is no excuse.

They put themselves ahead of morality.

When the kneeling American citizen was killed by a shot to the back of the head by an ICE agent, they didn’t care.

When they saw all the corruption in the government, they didn’t care.

When he was convicted of 34 counts of cooking the books, they didn’t care.

When accusations of pedophilia, they didn’t care.

When he slept around with other women, they didn’t care.

When they voted to take away the civil rights of people, they didn’t care.

When they took away food stamps, they didn’t care.

When they took away healthcare from the indigent, they didn’t care.

When they gerrymandered districts to cheat, they didn’t care.

There is a word for that kind of people… bigots.

If you voted Republican you are a bigot, you are the type of people who didn’t mind the Jim Crow laws because it didn’t affect them.

The Republican party is a party of racist, xenophobic, Islamophobic, misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic people! They are complicit to discrimination.

If you voted Republican so are you!

[/Essay]

Cuckoo Award!

How many times has the Trump administration sicced the DOJ on them in retaliation for some Trump-imagined affront? The hypocrisy deserves the coveted Cuckoo Award for such gall.

Trump asks DOJ to investigate Democrats calling for impeachment of cabinet officials

The Hill

by Suryatapa Chakraborty

11/07/26

President Trump raised concerns Saturday about some Democrats calling for the impeachment of Republican officials, referring to the threats as “extortion at the highest level” and asking the Justice Department to “look into this.”

“The Democrats are going around threatening a lot of people … with Impeachment and many other forms of punishment, even though they admit they have no reason to do so, and there have been no impeachable acts committed, or even thought of, by the victims of this illegal process,” the president wrote in a Truth Social post Saturday.

And he wants them investigated for doing, with cause, what he does out of malice?

This deserves no other award than the one being handed out here… for having the cojones to do this!

---

This award is handed out to politicians and notables who perform an undeniable act of stupidity, hypocrisy, idiocy, "Do As I Say, Not As I Do," Political lunacy, Monumental stupidity, double standards, or other forms of craziness.

Lies! Lies, and More Lies!

[Editorial]

They have torn down the old and rebuilt… slowly. They cheated and refused to hold hearings on President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, claiming it was too close to the election. When Justice Antonin Scalia died on February 13, 2016, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell immediately stated that the vacancy should not be filled until after the upcoming presidential election.

McConnell throws down the gauntlet: No Scalia replacement under Obama 

Politico 

By Burgess Everett and Glenn Thrush 

02/13/2016

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said the Senate should not confirm a replacement for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia until after the 2016 election — an historic rebuke of President Obama’s authority and an extraordinary challenge to the practice of considering each nominee on his or her individual merits.

The swiftness of McConnell’s statement — coming about an hour after Scalia’s death in Texas had been confirmed — stunned White House officials who had expected the Kentucky Republican to block their nominee with every tool at his disposal, but didn’t imagine the combative GOP leader would issue an instant, categorical rejection of anyone Obama chose to nominate.

“The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice. Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president,” McConnell said, at a time when other elected officials, from Sen. Bernie Sanders to future Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer, were releasing statements offering condolences to the justice’s family, which includes 26 grandchildren.

Keep this in mind: All eleven Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee signed a letter to McConnell explicitly vowing to refuse to hold hearings or votes on any nominee put forward by President Obama.

But they sang a different tune in 2020. When Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, they suddenly had a different story to tell.

McConnell fends off accusations of hypocrisy over holding Supreme Court vote

“The historical precedent is overwhelming and it runs in one direction," he says. 

Politico 

By Marianne LeVine 

09/21/2020

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell pushed back Monday against Democratic allegations of hypocrisy over holding a vote this year on Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s replacement, arguing that historical precedent is on his side.

Democrats are accusing McConnell and other Republicans of a double standard when it comes to the Supreme Court, citing McConnell’s 2016 decision to block President Barack Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland, because it was an election year. But McConnell and Senate Republicans claim 2016 was different because the White House and Senate were controlled by different parties.

During the Obama administration, Republicans blocked or stalled around 200 of Obama's nominees. Judicial nominees usually came from the states where they would sit and would be backed by organizations like the American Bar Association (ABA). But all that changed with the Trump administration; he outsourced the selection process to conservative legal organizations, completely bypassed the American Bar Association, and focused on quickly filling vacancies with young, ideological originalists who put their ideology before the Constitution.

And now, in this election cycle… gerrymandering, threats to use troops, outrageous claims that undocumented immigrants are voting, and lawsuits against the states! The people saw through his lies and those of his party.

The voters said, “Enough of this bull!” But the message didn’t sink in… 

Republicans rammed through Supreme Court nominees. Now Democrats will have the votes to stop them 

AP News 

By SEUNG MIN KIM, MARY CLARE JALONICK and LINDSAY WHITEHURST 

November 6, 2026

President Donald Trump led a transformation of the Supreme Court that ushered in a conservative supermajority but soon he will confront an emboldened Democratic-led Senate that is preparing to play hardball on his judicial nominations.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who is likely to return as majority leader next year, promised in an interview with The Associated Press that Democrats will prevent Trump from installing a “right-winger” on the Supreme Court and that they are “not going to allow any crappy nominees” elsewhere in the federal judiciary or in Trump’s Cabinet.

After years of being on the losing end of highly partisan confirmation fights against Republicans, especially on Supreme Court nominees, Democrats will be under considerable pressure to wield the same type of aggressive tactics.

We have until January 3 to worry that a justice might just decide to "retire" to allow Trump to appoint another far-right judge.

[/Editorial]

A Possible Scenario

Gazing into my crystal ball, I see a possible future. Trump is really, really looking his age… he wears diapers. He shuffles when he walks. Dozes in meetings. So I think that it is entirely possible that he steps down to count his billions and JD takes over.

That is who JD reminds me of: Charlie Brown. Because he is like a clown in everything he does.

So what will happen? Well, Congress gets to vote on the new president's pick. The new President nominates a Vice President and Congress votes! Before the election, I could see this possible scenario working, but now, I can’t see a Democratic Congress voting for a VP that Vance picks. Also, I doubt very much that JD isn’t involved with all the corruption in the White House. Then the Speaker will become President!

So how likely is this to happen? Well, for Trump to step down… I give the odds at 50/50, but with the administration being so myopic, I think that they will miss the big picture. I said the odds are 50/50, so what’s the other half?

Declining Health + an Ambitious Inner Circle → Behind-the-Scenes Control = A puppet. They just lead him around like an old, senile man, tell him to smile! Sign here! Wave! Just like with Reagan.

It Is Bigger Than You Think

Yesterday, I wrote about Trump and his never-ending appeals of his criminal convictions. But it goes deeper than that… before he died, what the judge ruled in that case is BIG if it stands. But the real threat goes far deeper than his personal legal battles, it’s about what his administration is doing to the federal court system

What is it that is so big? The judge ruled that the police and prosecutors need a warrant to search social media!

Social media surveillance case faces uncertainty after judge’s death

Three labor unions say government review of immigrants’ social media feeds violates the First Amendment. A federal judge who wrote “I agree” has died.

The Christian Science Monitor

By Varsha Bansal, Contributor

Oct. 29, 2026

The future of a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s right to surveil immigrants’ social media posts using artificial intelligence was thrown into doubt Wednesday following the sudden death of a federal judge who only weeks ago ruled the case could move forward.

“Plaintiffs’ allegations are of an ongoing surveillance program that is actively chilling the speech of their members and otherwise causing harm. ... I agree,” U.S. District Court Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein wrote on Oct. 1.

In the wake of Judge Hellerstein’s death, a new judge will be “randomly” assigned to his cases, according to the district executive for the Southern District of New York.

The surveillance suit, brought by three of the nation’s major labor unions, argues that the government’s monitoring of millions of visa and green card holders’ online activity is a form of “viewpoint discrimination” that violates the First Amendment. The unions say that’s already resulted in “adverse immigration action” based on the beliefs those immigrants profess.

Like I said, this is important because it limits the government's ability to go looking through “our stuff” without a warrant during witch hunts.

For now, the Trump administration’s surveillance programs will be allowed to continue. That’s because, while Judge Hellerstein allowed the case to proceed, he did not impose an injunction that immediately ordered the Trump administration to stop reviewing immigrants’ social media posts.

And now, the government is on another witch hunt—and this time, it's in homeless shelters. Digital dragnets laugh in the face of "probable cause!" Whether it is the government data-mining a homeless shelter or the feds executing secret warrants to sweep up years of a person's social media data, it smacks of “Big Brother.”

It is just like what happened in the elections. The Trump administration gave the states a list of “illegal voters.” Those lists unraveled under local investigation, with election officials finding massive numbers of clerical errors, jumbled data, and eligible U.S. citizens falsely flagged. If the states had acted on the list, thousands of legal voters would have been affected! GIGO: garbage in, garbage out!

And that is exactly what is going to happen to the homeless shelter data… it will be splashed all over the headlines: “Hundreds of illegal immigrants living right under Mamdani's nose.” But in the end, they will only find one or two, while the other accused individuals will face the nightmare of trying to prove they are U.S. citizens.

Saturday 9

Saturday 9: One Less Set of Footsteps (1973)
On Saturdays I take a break from the heavy stuff and have some fun…

 

Unfamiliar with this week's tune? Hear it here.

1) Jim Croce sings that "tomorrow is a dream away." What are you dreaming about today?
How to get up to the cottage before I have to close it for the season. Minor problems just kept popping up. Like a crown coming off or weather problems.

2) He promises that his lover will soon hear one less voice a-talking. Who is the most recent person you spoke to? (Texts, e-mails and IMs don't count.)
The lady at the counter of the farm store where I picked up eggs, milk, and farm fresh chocolate chip cookies!

3) He admits that he and his lover have run out of things to say to one another anyway. Let's turn that around: Is there someone in your life with whom the conversation always flows freely?
My brother.

4) He mentions the jeans hanging upon her door. Do you often wear blue jeans? 
Always! I used to get all dolled up going to the doctors… but that showed my age. Everyone else are in jeans except us old folk!

5) As a high school student, Jim Croce was not especially interested in music. During those years he concentrated on foreign languages, especially German. Say something to us in German.
Guten Morgen

6) His focus changed when he got to college. That's when he joined a choral group that was chosen for a foreign exchange tour of Africa and the Middle East. When did you first travel far from home? Where did you go?
When I was little we drove to every state this side of the Mississippi in July visiting every battleflied and sometime staying at military officer housing and then in August we spent the month at my mother’s cousin cottage on Lake Winnisquam in New Hampshire. The last time I was there was when we bought our boat for the New Hampshire lake cottage that my parents bought in 1975. The cousin we stayed at died many years earlier and her son ran the business.

7) In 1973, when this song was popular, Norman Mailer was atop the best seller lists with his controversial biography of Marilyn Monroe. When you curl up with a book, is it more likely to be fiction or non-fiction?
Fiction.
Off in the stars fiction with space battles ot magic.

8) Home calculators were innovative in 1973. You could choose a large desktop calculator that featured big keys and plugs into the wall, or a hand-held, battery-operated model. Today every cellphone and laptop has a calculator built in, so do you ever still reach for a stand-alone calculator?
No.
But it was 1972 when HP launched the HP-35! I was in engineer school beck then. Do you know how many slide rulers went into the trash? I didn’t buy one, one of the kids in the dorm rented his out. He had a sign-up list on his door. Buck an hour, five dollars to take it to a test.
Yes, he was very shady. He made bugs, you know listening devices, but he was know for “Blue Boxes” where you could call anywhere for free and he sold them big $$$$.
He got busted! Instead of jail time… he made Blue Box detectors and sold them to the phone company. He was always in and out of legal trouble.

c
Probably groceries. Or an audiobook.

---

The oak is always the last to surrender; its brown leaves will hold on through the wildest of blizzards and surrender only when new life starts to bud.

Now that most of the trees have shed their leaves, the state road that I talk about—it's the diagonal line about halfway up—is visible, and you can see the west-facing cliffs. That is typical for around here; the mountains are called the "Hanging Hill," which was made famous by Frederic Edwin Church in his painting West Rock.

There is another artist who painted around here… you might have heard of him if you like the Hudson River School of painting: Nelson Augustus Moore.

He used to live about half a mile away alongside the same brook that runs near my house, which the land trust is buying. I can look out my window and see the same mountain that he saw. When I was little, we used to play along that brook, and back in high school, our science class even panned for galena, a mineral of lead, silver, and sulfur that was mined right there during the Revolutionary War.

---

In the “If it ain’t one thing, it’s another” department:

Yesterday it rained for the first time in fifteen days and it poured! It came down in buckets. It was impressive, but luckily there were no winds, unlike the downburst on the Fourth of July that knocked out power for four days.

A couple of hours later, I heard a drip… drip… drip… The classic sound of a leak.

I found it in the atrium. I also found other water stains on the window sill. Now what?! This is a floor-to-ceiling glass wall, two giant window assemblies. Back in 1990, it cost $3,000 each!

However, since the windows and skylights are over thirty years old, I have already been budgeting for their replacement. This just moved the schedule up. A number of the thermopane windows are also fogging up between the glass.

All these age-related repairs… even the front door lock needs replacing because I have to wiggle the key just to open it. It is all these little things!