Our 7 day positive rate is finally back in sustained decline after rising steadily for nearly a month and a half. The lagging indicators of hospitalizations and deaths are still going up, and it looks like we might have as many hospitalizations as we did during the first wave.

And now is when they're finally getting serious about closing things. I wonder if they're going to continue this "wait until the horse is gone before closing the barn door" approach all the way until we have a vaccine.

Yes, they will.

I never understood that phrase. There's probably something else in the barn.

I went out and picked up a twelve pound turkey. The closer it gets to cooking time, the more I think it's a bad idea to but a turkey for three people.

Post-hysterectomy, if it came up in conversation whether we were done having kids, I thought it was funny to answer, "The stable has left the barn."

(Since then, I've aged out of when people wonder these things.)

My nephew caught the rona. My brother says he's mostly fine, sleeping a lot and playing video games but I told him to go pick up a pulse oximeter as soon as he can. He's actually leaving on a trip (he's the pilot) which I don't think is the most responsible thing to do since he's also been exposed. But that was not a fight I was going to pick.

He just needs to sit six feet from the copilot and crack the window.

I'm doing a complicated sous vide turkey thing, and accidentally ended up with only 2lb of turkey thighs instead of 4lb. That's still probably plenty for two adults and a kid.

NMM to Diego Maradona. It was the hand of God.

NMM to the Dice Man, as the author has thrown a six: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/nov/25/luke-rhinehart-obituary

We're going all out for Thanksgiving this year. I got frozen mashed potatoes and a single-serving cherry pie.

Are the frozen worth the greater effort over the instant?

Our county is "purple" (uncontrolled), but the police, county sheriff and DA have said that they're not going to enforce the required gym closures, moving restaurants outdoors, etc. that the classification requires. And there's a curfew that's started, but it's pretty pointless -- 10 pm to 5 am, lots of loopholes. It sounds like it's meant to curb bars without officially saying that they're closing bars.

Even in a county that was enforcing the curfew, it seems like the effect would just be to push the drinking earlier.

With Thanksgiving this week and half the population not trying (and not having anything enforced to make them try), I'm worried that we'll need the National Guard's doctors again, but they'll be committed to all of the other communities that will also be having trouble.

We have community spread again with the most cases per day since April. Still only 87 active cases for the ~1 million population but not good. Related to curfews, everyone who has spent time at bars after 10 pm has been recommended for covid testing, even if asymptomatic. The list of places with warnings reads like a fun day (yoga studios and gyms, fancy bars and beer places, cool restaurants). All restaurants and bars have been shut down for two weeks. And the Atlantic bubble burst with PEI and NL withdrawing until NS and NB get under control again. I'm hoping things will get better enough we can to visit my family for Christmas but my parents have not been great. Maybe they'll smarten up since covid is back? Churches really need to close again.

87 active cases per million? We have 500 new cases in this county of 1.2 million.

And by new cases, I mean new today.

12: My wife won't eat the instant. She has standards.

We usually have only instant, but are making from scratch tomorrow.

15: I have to remind myself we're not all that small (though spread out) so all of the restrictions are actually working.

We ironically got featured in the NYT over the weekend for being a covid-free paradise. And they weren't too condescending! No mentions of fishing at all.

I'm pretty much either in denial or terror about what December is going to be like for covid here.

We were going to do Thanksgiving with a friend that we were bubbled with, but then her dad who was living out of state decided at the last minute to come back and wasn't able to get a COVID test in time, so they're quarantining and the plan is off. We'll still probably exchange some food but not eat together. We may end up doing a trial run for the very Jewish Christmas we're planning to do.

We have only two meat eaters so I was going to buy a rotisserie chicken instead, but I went to the supermarket right when it opened Monday to avoid crowds and they hadn't made that day's chickens yet. They had extremely cheap turkeys if you bought at least $25 of other stuff which I had to do anyway. Also they didn't have any small turkeys left. So for two people I have a 19lb turkey but if it's bad I'm only out $7.44.

22 A Very Jewish Christmas -- what does that involve? Is there a blessing?

Isn't "Jewish Christmas" just Chinese food and edibles?

but the police, county sheriff and DA have said that they're not going to enforce the required gym closures,

Same here (which isn't surprising, since we're nearby counties, but the activists are pointing out that the Sheriff took $108M in CARES money for what they said was COVID, and if they're not doing any COVID enforcement, where'd the $108M go?

Chinese food and movies (at home in this case rather than at the theater).

I'm sure there's some prayer of thanks for getting a great bargain.
Since I didn't plan to cook a turkey I didn't bring a big enough roasting pan or a meat thermometer. So maybe it's $7.44 plus the ER copay to deal with the salmonella.

Since my dad's family isn't Jewish I've never actually done a traditional Jewish Christmas before. There have been years when I haven't done anything for Christmas at all.

Try it my way and thank me on Boxing Day.

No one here eats turkey except the kid, who wanted a drumstick because carnivore culture, which, okay, fair. But apparently "drumsticks" is a dual number because you can only get them in two-packs? Now we have two bloody, pale, quivering gobbets of flesh in the fridge and I don't know what we'll do with the other one. It's too big for the cat.

Cook them both and slice up the leftovers for turkey sandwiches for the kid over the weekend?

Oh, Chinese food, good idea! I am eventless here, though I just booked some time in a cabin in the woods in a few weeks.

Megan, if you're interested in the occasional pro-housing local action, your city's General Plan update has some great ideas (just released) as a starting point.

But apparently "drumsticks" is a dual number because you can only get them in two-packs?

Well, I mean, they sort of come that way on the bird.

I decided to roast a duck.

I do not know how to roast a duck.

This could get interesting.

AIMHMHB, there was one year that my Gentile family got to experience a Jewish Christmas. There was an ice storm and we were without power for a week around the Christmas holiday. We stayed in a hotel, and went to a Chinese restaurant and a movie on Christmas Day. Inexplicably my wife and stepdaughter continue to insist on the Christian version of Christmas even after experiencing the clearly superior Jewish version.

they're fatty, raising them from the pan floor with little feet or a wire rack is worthwhile. I like to cook in the oven at 325 for 60 min to get all the fat, then I quarter the bird and grill for 10 min to sear the outside and add smoky flavor.

My inherited cultural preference is to season with plenty of caraway, salt, and pepper. Mmmm-mm. Finding a good source of duck locally is my main problem. Cheapest asian market ones are edible but not that flavorful and crazy fatty. I have been trying to convince the Amish who I buy other meat from to start selling ducks.

Did you know that the state of Pennsylvania can make your phone screech because of Covid?

Or if someone steals a baby.

38: I did not! In Ohio my phone has screeched for missing children, but not for Covid.

Someone should steal a baby to see if it can screech twice in a day.

Someone should steal a baby to see if it can screech twice in a day.

So what did the Covid screech say? "BEWARE! Dangerous virus on the loose!" ?

15: Ugh, I was thinking of moving back to Pgh when my lease ends to save on rent during the pandemic, but the number of new cases per capita and high positivity rate are definitely downsides.

The screech said to stay home.

Does Baby Yoda have a floating stroller or does he float it with the force?

The (acting) mayor announced a new "hunker down" order for the month of December. It's about damn time.

Is your new mayor kind of slutty too?

No, she's very straightlaced.

I read 48 and thought "what the hell?" And then I remembered the story, which in an average year would have been in the top 5 for crazy news stories, but this year was probably not in the top 5 news stories of that week. (In contrast, I remember the "hiking the Appalachian trail" story vividly. I even remember where I was when I heard the story.)

This is basically Gunsmoke in space with Baby Yoda as Festus.

My phone blared earlier this year for the sheriff's curfew leading up to a George Floyd march.

It's nice that they tried to boost attendance.

35 We cooked a goose one Christmas many years ago. The most important thing we learned applies to cooking a duck as well: you have to remember to turn the oven on.

"Excuse me, I need to go release the Kraken" sounds better than "I need to use the restroom."

44: If you do come back, I'm still not going to the bar until there's a vaccine or outdoor drinking weather.

OT (if that's possible): Why do AirPods cost so much and does giving them to people who are in the same house with you all the time suggest too strongly that they watch shitty TV?

Hurray for made-from-scratch mashed potatoes! (I make made-from-scratch mashed potatoes at least twice a week, it's like a major food group for me...). And Happy Thanksgiving, Americans! You have every reason to celebrate!! (but please wear a mask, okay?...)

We never ate mashed potatoes at Thanksgiving, because the Pilgrims didn't eat potatoes. I'm having them tomorrow as part of my catered meal.

I make good mashed potatoes. My tip is to salt the water heavily so that you don't need to add much salt later. Use 2 kinds of potatoes - russet and either Yukon gold or plain white from Maine or PEI. Russet are fluffy and the waxy potatoes give you the creaminess. After boiling, put them in a hot oven until the edges turn slightly white. Drying them out a bit helps them absorb the butter and half and half or cream better.

Or if someone steals a baby.

More dispatches from a Very Jewish Christmas.

BG's potatoes sound amazing.

In checkin news, the haunted mansion now has floors in all the rooms but these are are concrete or chipboard in all but two rooms. There is hot water, but there are no fittings at all in the bathroom. There are interior doors on the floors of many rooms, but none hanging in doorways. The noise and building work have gone on for so long that the local drug market has relocated from the street outside. We move in on Monday whatever happens, because we were only able to rent this holiday cottage in the middle of nowhere for a week after Ume's lease ran out.

Last night her laptop refused to let her login after an unattended software update. Since it is a really new, whizzy mac, there is no way to fix it if reinstalling the OS doesn't work. It doesn't work. So, today drive 60 miles to the nearest Apple store that has a service slot open.

We'll look back on this with such nostalgia after Brexit.

The noise and building work have gone on for so long that the local drug market has relocated from the street outside.

This is hilarious. "Bodie, I cannot work under these intolerable conditions."

61 At least you live in a country that drove out its worst religious whackos 400 years ago, so the stores are open.

63: Our grocery stores are closed. Grocery stores are closed on Thanksgiving Day and Christmas, but that's all that's left of our Blue Laws.

63: If only we weren't being told by our Supreme Court that limiting in-person attendance at services during a pandemic was an irreparable harm.

65:. Turns out the Constitution is a suicide pact after all

It's really disconcerting the extent to which the conservative media ecosystem has made even the ostensibly "smart" conservatives into idiots. Gorsuch can't actually be so stupid as to not understand the COVID-relevant difference between a church service and a shopping trip or a one-on-one haircut, can he?

When she got there, they told her they would reinstall the operating system, which she had already done herself. So she took the mac back, and half an hour's googling found a possible solution on Stack Exchange. We wiped out, fro the command line, a very obscure database, and rebooted. This time, when the thing hung at logon, we waited and after fifteen minutes the entire screen went black, except for the cursor. Progress! Another twenty minutes, and the logon dialogue re-emerged and let her in. Now she is hunched over the machine saying "90,000 of 110,000 mail messages imported" and so on.

66, 67 -- Yeah, it's going to be lots of stupid culture war shit from here on out. But we did show that harridan Hillary Clinton that we weren't going to let her push us around.

The Gorsuch thing struck me as just so stupid. COVID is temporary, after which everything can go back to normal. Why turn it into a front of the culture war that will literally kill hundreds or maybe thousands of people?

Because it's the precedent they'll use to put back bans on various things homosexuals can do.

After boiling, put them in a hot oven until the edges turn slightly white. Drying them out a bit helps them absorb the butter and half and half or cream better.

I do what my mother used to do: after draining the boiled potatoes, put them back into the pot, and shake them over low-medium heat (on the stovetop burner, I mean) until every last drop of water is absorbed. Same idea, I guess.

I like your combination of Russets with something waxier, BG.

Don't Zoom and poop.

She doesn't sound a very nice person, but just for that reason will suffer worse from shame. I do feel rather sorry for her now. On the other hand, what kind of lunatic forgets that zoom meetings are not one way communications? Someone who only cares about their own contributions, I suppose.

Zoop verb
1. (intr) to 'make a contribution' while Zooming.

75 is good.

Do we have a word for what Jeffrey Toobin did?

Zerking off?

Jeffrey was Tubin' on Zoom.

You go round a French house nowadays and the realtor points you to the door, where there's a sign: Zoop là it says.

Toobin' needs no improvin', but a synonym is:

go mehta verb phrase

       Toobin'
--> Zoobin' (/Z/ for Zoom-relatedness)
--> Zoobin' Mehta --|
                                      | (rhyming slang)
--> go mehta --------|

|| So, a satisfactorily harsh smackdown from the Third Circuit of the appeal from the Williamsport case. Having the Trump-nominated judge on the panel (the other two were GWB nominees) write the opinion is no accident, and may be designed to signal to the SC that this is not the right vehicle. And anyway, they get to do all sorts of Establishing Christianity stuff on their own, so there's no reason for them to reach out to help Trump in such a weak case. |>

"Legends of Tomorrow" may be the greatest TV show of all time.

62: this is my mantra now that we are actually in the house and I shelter with the cat in an almost unfurnished office. Saying "Bodie, I cannot work under these intolerable conditions" out loud in an appropriately actooorish voice makes everything better.

81: Thank you for the frequent updates on this. This opinion is a particularly clear and straightforward read for the non-expert, and it is as you say a complete smackdown. Unrelatedly, I'm sure this is perfectly standard thing to do, but I could almost feel the eye-rolling in the second parenthetical: "To vote by mail, a Pennsylvania voter must take several steps. First, he (or she) must ask the State (Commonwealth) ..."

|| Anyone in the mood for a short story of disaster averted? I recently took on a case here -- part of a sprawling litigation that is pending in 4 other states as well -- and had to do a very labor intensive bit of work to get a torrent of stuff filed here on very short notice. Got all my stuff filed, and I've been helping out in some of the other states, and, on Saturday morning, saw that one of the filings in another state (filed nearly 4 weeks ago) had a vaguish reference to a motion that was filed (or to be filed) in my case. It's a motion that makes sense for them to have filed, and that timing would make strategic sense for them as well. Lightbulb went on, and I realized that I hadn't gotten a docket report covering the period between the last one the client got, and my entry of appearance, which was about 10 days. I guess it just didn't occur to me, although it definitely should have. Depending on what day the motion was filed -- if it was filed -- my time to respond either ran out last week, or will run out today and tomorrow. While my torrent of filings nearly 2 weeks ago provides adequate bases to deny such a motion, nothing was titled a brief in opposition to the motion. A grant of the motion would be very very bad. Judges have the discretion to grant any motion that is not opposed during the time provided -- and while I have decent merits arguments to set an order aside, a procedural default can be much harder. And obviously, it would be my fault -- ok, the other side isn't serving properly, but that's not the kind of thing the judge is obligated to help me with. There's no way to get a docket sheet over the weekend, so I got to spend all day Saturday, all night, all day Sunday, and all last night in a state of pretty high anxiety. I probably did get 4 hours of sleep each night, but no more. Every possible scenario has been worked through. At exactly 8:01 this morning, I called the clerk's office, and had them send me the docket report. Nothing filed.

I'm capable of learning the lesson from this, I think. |>

Hooray!

85: I don't remember how much I've talked about it here, but back in the early 2000s, right before I started commenting here, I worked at a tiny little litigation boutique with some very good lawyers who were also (some of them) slapdash fuckups who defaulted on things all the time. This is no way to practice law, but I did learn that basically anything (barring failing to timely file a notice of appeal) is fixable. If the worst had happened and you were right that there was a motion you weren't aware of, and you showed up in court and said that service of the motion never made it to you, even if it's all your fault for not checking the docket (this must be state court someplace if you couldn't check the docket online?), 99 judges out of a hundred will forgive your default and give you time to respond.

Other than the notice of appeal thing, there is pretty much no screwup that can't get unwound by going to the judge and begging for mercy.

That, of course, is the wrong lesson to learn -- the right one is to not screw up in the first place -- but it's very comforting to know when things have already gone bad.

is not in New York, and is in a place where 99% is way too high. There's also the fact that the judge doesn't much care for the client (and this is quite an understatement). Laying awake at night was not an absurd overreaction.

Can you bill for the time spent like that?

Oh, I would have been lying awake too -- just trying to reassure you that most judges will, even if begrudgingly, cut you procedural slack so they can rule on the merits. Admittedly, literally all my state court experience is NYS, and while it can certainly be wild and crazy around here, I don't know how well it generalizes.