For the past few years we've had our favorite Christmas movie, In Bruges, on while unwrapping xmas ornaments and decorating. PERFECT!

On the Roku there's a channel that's the equivalent of a sound machine that plays ocean waves, babbling brook, rainfall, etc. -- but with appropriate visuals. It ALSO has a loop of a crackling fire. So when we decorated for Xmas last year, we had the TV yule log on in the background: [link]

Admittedly I'm a special case, but I've needed something with voices going on in the background for the past couple of years. It makes the house feel less empty.

If I'm doing things like sewing (or lately, sorting and pricing for the yard sale), I like having a favorite movie on in the background.

Hell, that's real life. I just collected two more black cats who now live on my patio.

Do they bring you fish and mementos?

It occurred to me while I was driving the evening (and listening to a podcast I had listened to already) that my ability to have music on in the background has really decreased. It's too emotionally involving.

Sometimes I really like the silence, though. Or, whatever ambient birds, cars, crickets, etc. are doing their thing in my vicinity, to be more accurate.

I am sometimes tempted to we are noise-cancelling headphones that aren't necessarily playing anything at work, but that's a whole other thing.

Oh, I got my yard waste bin back! That is to say, there was a forlorn and empty yard waste bin sitting in the street when I got home, and I am interpreting that as the guys working next door discovered they had two and put one out, so I took it. It's not the one I used to have unless someone ran over the lid in the meantime (which certainly could have happened) but I don't see how that could matter to anyone.

Anyway, I can continue to battle the blackberries, is my point.

I don't like audiobooks. Too frustrating. 22 play time for something that takes me 3 hours to read. Even in cars.

And I can't read with music or TV playing. I need sweet silence. I'll play music when I'm cleaning, but unless I'm watching a show, I generally don't want noise around me.

D like to have old movies playing while he's falling asleep and sleeping, but that's definitely a no go for me. So I'll switch it over to the 3 hours of fans video on Amazon after he's fallen asleep. I like sleeping with a fan so it works for us.

And just today saw this vid from down the street.

So frightening. It strikes me as so odd when I see all the lights on in flooded buildings, Spooky.

Kat, please forgive my brain for the vivid dream early this morning which involved you, K, Lawrence O'Donnell and Larry King. Maybe I should not have key lime pie before bed or something. Anyway, I was apparently your boss, and you came to me (with K) bemoaning the fact that you were pregnant but didn't know if the father was Lawrence or Larry. (and typing this now just noticed the Lawrence/Larry thing, really brain?) Anyway, no one seemed to find your hussy ways particularly unsettling, but the upset was in who the daddy was. I argued for O'Donnell, but you were advocating for Larry because he was so smart. It ended up being Lawrence and he was a micro-managing ass about the pregnancy with delivering diet menus and books you had to read and so forth. I was making every excuse to have to send you out of town on business to get away from him.

And then the dog barked that it was time for me to get her breakfast and I woke up. I did not attempt to go back to sleep and see how it all turned out. My apologies for the nightmare scenario! What struck me most, even in my dream I kept wondering why the heck you and K didn't find anything unusual about this situation. Just taking it all in stride.

Total nightmare scenario!! also, ha!

peaches from the farmer's market. fuck yeah peaches.

Fivethirtyeight's now-cast is a thing of beauty. (And the polls and polls-plus forecasts are pretty damn good, too.) Can we just have the election now please?