10:13 – I can’t remember for sure the last time I saw any of a presidential debate. I may have seen part of the 1980 debate, but the last time I remember for sure seeing part of a debate was Kennedy versus Nixon in 1960. I watched a few minutes of last night’s debate, and now I understand why I waited so long. I don’t intend to watch another for at least 56 more years.
I watched it on the Roku box on CBS (I think; I installed the ABC/CBS/NBC/Fox/PBS channels on the Roku yesterday and then just picked whichever one was at the top of the screen). What immediately struck me was that Trump seemed normal while speaking, while Clinton’s mouth was moving out of sync with her voice. I suspect someone was standing behind the curtain with his hand up her back, making her mouth move. It reminded me of Chuck and Bob on Soap, except that Chuck and Bob had better lip sync. I suppose Clinton’s rictus was supposed to be a smile, but she reportedly actually smiles so seldom that she was in danger of breaking her face.
UPS showed up yesterday with my Walmart.com order. One of the boxes was only slightly dented, which for UPS is doing good, but the second box was crushed and ripped. We opened that one while the UPS guy was still there. Surprisingly, given the condition of the box, nothing was missing or damaged. There were two one-gallon plastic jugs of pancake syrup, two five-pound paper sacks of corn meal, and four four-packs of 16-ounce canned chili beans. As usual, Walmart used a box that was too large for the contents, giving those four-pack bowling balls lots of room to bounce around and crunch anything else in the box. They made their usual concession to packing materials by tossing a small piece of bubble-wrap and one small air bag into the box. Just enough to be gratuitous without actually helping to pad the contents.
Not for the first time, Barbara remonstrated with me for ordering stuff from Walmart, asking why on earth I’d order from a vendor who did such a horrible packing job. I told her that sometimes they packed stuff well. For example, the last time I ordered Bertolli Alfredo sauce, they packed all dozen of the jars individually within the box, presumably because they’re glass and even a moron knows what’s going to happen if you ship a dozen glass jars loose. But the real reason I order from Walmart is that they offer a lot of things that aren’t available elsewhere, and that their prices are considerably lower on many items. Amazon might carry the same stuff, and they would pack it well for shipping, but they’d also charge a lot extra, often 50% or more.
Email overnight from Jessica, which is the first email I’ve gotten from her other than her request to get her hooked up with Jen and Brittany. In the past, it’s been her husband, Jason, I’ve exchanged email with. Since Jason and Jessica are both on-board with prepping, that’s unusual. Most email I get from newbie preppers is from women, I think because they’re much more open to asking questions about things they’re not experts on.
Jessica said one of the things that she’s concerned about that hasn’t been talked about much here is nuclear radiation emergencies, whether from a nuke plant meltdown, a terrorist dirty bomb, or a full nuclear attack. I sent her links to several useful on-line documents. She asked specifically about potassium iodide or iodate tablets, and I recommended that, given their ages, these are something they should stock. Iodide or iodate tablets protect against one very specific risk: thyroid cancer caused by ingesting or inhaling radioactive iodine. The tablets provide an excess of non-radioactive iodine, which floods the thyroid and prevents uptake of the radioactive iodine. Because thyroid cancers are very slow-developing and because there are downsides to high doses of iodine, authorities recommend taking iodide/iodate tablets only if someone has been exposed to radioactive particulates and only if that person is under 40 years old. There are also considerations for taking them during pregnancy. I sent Jessica links to information about all of these issues.