Entry 543: To Peachtree Corners and Back

We are back from our trip to Hot-lanta, which at this time of the year is more like Chill-lanta.  The whether was about the same there as it was in DC, somewhere between 35 and 45 degrees for most the day.  We weren’t actually staying in Atlanta proper (ITP, as the locals say: inside the perimeter), but rather in a city called Peachtree Corners which is OTP north.  It was a relaxing, cozy getaway.  S’s sister, Sw, has a nice townhouse that isn’t too cramped with all of us (plus her little dog) in it.  It was a lot of lazing around, watching TV and movies, reading, drinking coffee, eating cookies -- the best type of vacation, if you ask me.

On Christmas morning, we FaceTimed S’s parents and opened gifts -- or, in the case of the adults, we watched the kids open gifts.  They’re at the age when the opening is much better than the actual getting, and they aren't big on patience, so they tore through everything (literally) in short order.  Often a gift wouldn’t even be completely out of the wrapping paper before they would move on to the next one.  The whole thing was done in, like, ten minutes.  We did another FaceTime with my family later that evening, and the kids didn’t even save anything to unwrap.  It was just as well, though.  It was a very frantic call.  Given the opportunity, Lil’ S1 will dominate the screen (often with his cousin Q), making it almost impossible for anybody else to speak (or hear).  If the adults actually want to talk, we have to put the kids on their own call and let them blather about Pokémon or Bakugan or what have you.

We did get to do a few things outside the house; we walked quite a bit.  We went to the botanical garden (see pics), which was bittersweet.  It was cool, but we weren’t able to get tickets to the evening lights display, so the whole time I kept thinking about how much better everything would look all lit up.  We went through a different drive-through lights display, which was fine, but not nearly as cool as the garden looked.  To make matters more annoying, Sw had tickets from her work for the botanical garden show for the night before we arrived, but they wouldn't let her exchange them for a different night, so they just went to waste.

[It was an Alice In Wonderland theme]

We also went to the zoo (see pic), which was fine.  We go to the zoo so much here in DC that I’m pretty much permanently zooed out, but at least they have some different animals in Atlanta, like giraffes and rhinos.  They also have pandas, which we have in DC, but they are often hard to see, because they’re the main attraction, and there are always, like, a zillion people crowded around their exhibit.  At the Atlanta zoo, you can just walk right up to their cage and look at them.  I couldn’t believe it.  I guess, that’s the difference between paying and going from free.  (The National Zoo, like many attractions in DC, doesn’t charge an entrance fee.)  I’d rather have things be free – everybody should be able to enjoy them – but it is nice to not have to fight the crowds just to catch a glimpse of Mei Xiang sleeping or Tian Tian chewing some bamboo.

Speaking of chewing, I certain did not go hungry this vacation.  I ate so much, I’d wake up and still be full from dinner the night before.  We really mixed up the food types – Mexican, Indian, Thai, and, if you count frozen pizza as Italian, Italian.  And then a massive amount of cookies – I probably ate 25 cookies in four days, no exaggeration – and even a cupcake for good measure.  It was so gluttonous and so glorious.  The walking is the only reason I didn't gain 50 pounds (although the belly is protruding more than I'd like it to; I really need Covid to end so I can get back in the Krav studio regularly).

For entertainment at night, I got the kids into Cobra Kai.  Season 3 releases on Friday, so I wanted to get them caught up on the first two seasons (and I wanted to rewatched them myself).  S wasn’t too happy about it.  There is some bad language and adult humor in it, and she is much more sensitive to that type of thing than I am.  But I won over a key ally to my side, Sw, who got hooked on the show, so it was four against one, and S had to cave or she'd be the Grinch.

It’s a great show.  It has the perfect amount of nostalgia and self-parody without being completely farcical, and the fight scenes are marvelously over-the-top (especially the final one of season two).  Also, the general premise – bullied kids who become the bullies – is interesting.  Lil’ S1 gets most of this, I think, but it probably goes over Lil’ S2’s head.  He’s just in it for the fighting.  That kid loves any sort of roughhousing.  He walks around the house going “Ike! Ike! Ike! Ike!” punching and kicking anything that gets in his way.  (Occasionally this is S, which doesn’t go over so well.)

Yesterday, he challenged me to a boxing match (he has a little pair of gloves), and then when I went into the room he had set up a ring using blankets, and he had gone into my gym bag and laid out my gloves and my headgear and mouthpiece.  It was cute.  (I actually wear headgear and a mouthpiece too, because he can hit legitimately hard now.)   We will see if he’s still like this as he gets older.  He took karate for a while, but he was too young/shy to really participate.  I think we will try again once Covid is over.  I’m not trying to turn my kid into a little badass, but I’m not not trying either.

I do have to rein him in from time to time, however.  Yesterday, while punching me he said, “C’mon, you pussy!”  And I was like, “Whoa!  You cannot say that!”  That’s definitely a Cobra Kai thing.  I told him it’s a bad word, and then I told him that if his mom hears him say it, she won’t let him watch the show anymore.  That did the trick, I think.  He switched to calling me a “weakling” after that, which is still not great, but acceptable.

[Some cookies we decorated over Zoom with my family before we went to Atlanta.  They turned out very nicely.]

In general, S and I have different views about this.  I don't mind them hearing bad language or seeing sex scenes (within reason), because I think it's a good chance to teach them about those things.  S's view is that they are going to repeat it at inappropriate times, but I think that's actually less likely if they know what those things are and what they mean and learn the context for which they are appropriate.  I mean, they're going to learn those things anyway, and I'd rather it be when I'm around, so that I can explain it to them and educate them on what is and is not appropriate and when.  For example, Lil' S2 now knows that p-word is a bad thing to say and that he'll get in trouble if he says it, and so he hasn't said it again.  That's a good thing.

The things I don't want them watching are the things that could be potentially traumatizing or give them nightmares.  But four-letter words and sexual innuendo aren't that.  In short, as long as they aren't watching pornography, YouTube propaganda videos, or, like, Silence of the Lambs, I'm okay with it.

Alright, I think I have to wrap this one up about.  Have a Happy New Year!  If you want to celebrate the end of this terrible year, by all means, go for it.  Personally, I'm reserving most my good cheer for January 20.  That's the real end to 2020, as far as I'm concerned.

Until next time...

Entry 542: Christmas Vacation

We are headed out of town early tomorrow -- going to visit S's sister in Atlanta.  I'm not super keen on traveling right now -- you know, with this raging pandemic and all -- but we're being quite safe about it.  We all got Covid tested last week; we are driving, so we won't be in a busy airport or anything like that; and we will pretty much only be with S's sister, who is super safe herself, and lives alone.  (And we will mask it up, when necessary, as always.)  From an exposure standpoint, it will be no more risky than just living our usual life here.  In fact, it'll probably be even safer, since the kids won't be in their pod.

But still, traveling just doesn't feel right to me at the moment.  It's like, we're probably almost done with this thing.  I feel like we should just hunker down and hang in there for a few months, until we can get this vaccine thing going in full force.  Traveling 600 miles down the country is the exact opposite of that.  But S really wants to go, and her sister presumably doesn't want to spend Christmas by herself, and the boys really want to go, and under normal circumstances I would really want to go, as well.  So, we're going.  I'm sure once I get there, I'll be able to relax, and it'll be great.  But I'm not there yet, so that's not how I feel now.

Anyway, as I said, we're getting up early tomorrow, so I should try to get some sleep.

Until next time...

Entry 541: A Song Of Ice And Aggravation

It has not been a great week thus far.

It started out well, the Electoral College voted Biden for president, as expected, but things quickly deteriorated in the G & G household from there.  Our boys are in a pod with a little girl, and Tuesday evening, we got a call from her mother telling us she (the mother) had been around somebody recently, who, unbeknownst at the time, had Covid.  It sounded like a very low-risk situation -- mostly outside, mostly masked -- but, still, we all figured we should play it very safe, so we canceled the pod, including the babysitter, until she could get tested.  And since it's Christmas break next week, anyway, we just canceled it for the rest of this week.  (She got tested and she's negative, if you were wondering.)

Without the babysitter, it's so difficult to do remote schooling.  Lil' S2 isn't old enough to navigate his schedule by himself, so you pretty much have to sit near him the entire day.  Lil' S1 can do everything on his own, but you still have to check in to make sure he's on task.  He's got some slacker in him.  He's a strong reader (a bit of a bookworm), and his math seems to be okay, but he puts such little effort into his other work.  Anything that requires actually writing out answers to questions, he just doesn't want to do.  His handwriting is atrocious and he's a surprisingly poor speller given how much he reads.  It's a lack of practice, and it's difficult to get the reps in when almost all your work is done on online portals and nobody is really holding you accountable, anyway.

I was working with him today, and when I work with him, it almost always leads to a tantrum (from him, to be clear), because I don't let him slide.  He has to do it right when I'm around.  I don't mean he has to get the correct answer every time; I mean he has to put in the right effort.  He has to use complete sentences that start with a capital and end with a period and use lower-case in between (on his own, he just capitalizes and punctuates things willy-nilly); he has to fully erase his mistakes, so that somebody can actually read his work; he has to write along an approximately straight line; so on and so forth.  You need to get those things to become second-nature or else you'll really struggle to progress to the fun stuff.

The other thing he does, which, to be fair, pretty much every kid does (including me when I was that age), is argue tooth-and-nail about doing something he doesn't want to do, instead of just doing it in half the time, at half the effort, it takes to argue it.  As an example, today he was doing a worksheet in which he had to give examples of antonyms for certain words, one of which was BOLD.  The answer he wrote was LISINS.  We then had the following conversation:

Me: What's this?  What's LISINS?

Him: It's "listens."

Me: That's not how you spell it, and that's not an antonym for bold.

Him: Yes, it is.

Me: No, it isn't.

Him: Amma said it is!

Me: No, she didn't.

Him (revving up to tantrum mode): Yes, she did!

Me: Well, it's not right.  Let's try to think of something else.

Him (full on meltdown): Amma said it is!  I don't like it when you help me!  I like it when Amma helps me!  She said it's right!

Me: *Sigh*

The thing is, though, once I get him to actually calm down and put some effort into it (usually by threating to take away his iPad time), he'll just do it.  He won't fight me, and he even seems to enjoy it.  He's like a wild horse that has to be broken or something -- I don't know.

By the way, I found out later that S really did tell him it was okay to put listens as an antonym for bold, which... I don't even know what to say about that.  I mean, it's the wrong part of speech -- listens is a verb and bold is an adjective -- but even aside from that, it still doesn't make any sense.  Being a good listener is not the opposite of being bold.  Those two words don't exist on the same continuum.  It's like saying swims is the opposite of adamant.  I have no idea how the connection was even made.

I tried to ask S about it, but she made it clear I shouldn't.  Normally I wouldn't be able to leave well enough alone -- I'd have to know what the thought process was behind signing off on listens as an antonym for bold -- but this time I didn't push it, because we are both quite stressed right now.  Not only are we both trying to work full-time and tend to our children in the midst of a raging pandemic, but our roof has a leak in it, and few things in life are more aggravating than a roof with a leak in it, especially when a massive storm of wintery mix blows through town.  Hopefully, we can get somebody out to look at it ASAP.  Will keep you posted.

Until next time...

Entry 540: Fort Washington Outing

The crazies came to town again yesterday.  There was a MAGA rally here in DC, in support of the "Stop the Steal" campaign.  Ironically, the powers-that-be are doing exactly what the protesters are asking: They are stopping a lame-duck president from stealing an election he clearly and definitively lost by 74 electoral votes and over seven million popular votes.  But I suspect the irony is lost on the red-hatted, mask-eschewing, democracy-hating mob.

The Proud Boys were here, of course.  They never miss a chance to embarrass themselves, cosplaying as White-Boy ISIS.  Seriously, they wear paramilitary gear, brandish weapons, attempt to suppress others through intimidation, and rally for their (wannabe) strongman leader to remain in power against the will of the people -- that is some serious ISIS shit right there.  They claim to be a pro Western civilization movement, and yet all they do is act out the worst parts of the anti-American extremists they supposedly hate.  Again, I suspect the irony is the lost on them.

They did some truly vile things last night, desecrating historic Black churches, burning their personal property in a manner than not-so-subtly evokes Klan-like terrorism, and being involved in some manner (it's unclear exactly how) in some stabbings outside of a bar called Harry's, which has sadly become a de facto alt-right clubhouse (it used be a fun after-softball-games dive bar).  For the most part, however, the police did an admirable, unenviable job of keeping them separated from the counter-protesters.  Although it's tempting to want to see these ugly people confronted, it's not worth it.

This all happened miles away from my neighborhood, by the way.  I only know about it from reading the paper.  I'm torn, too, on what the best way to handle this type of thing is.  Is it best to call it out head-on and stand up against it, or does that just give the terrorists oxygen?  Is that just giving them what they want -- the notoriety, the legitimacy?  Is it better to de-platform them, ignore them, as much as possible, and just live your own best life?  I genuinely don't know.

But let's pivot to the latter, because it was a lovely day yesterday (a product of global warming, no doubt, but lovely nevertheless), and the G & G family took a fun little excursion to Fort Washington Park.  The views are remarkable, and it's cool to walk along the massive barricades of the fort.  ("It's like a mini Great Wall of China!" proclaimed Lil' S1.)  It makes me nervous though.  I'm a bit of an acrophobe.  Not really for myself (although I wouldn't say I love heights) but for my kids.  Even if they're on firm ground, behind a barrier they would have trouble breaching if they tried (and why would they try?), I get irrationally scared they're going to fall off.  I get so uncomfortable I try to get everybody to go somewhere else.

S isn't like this, but she has her own thing: water.  At one point, the kids were playing on the bank of the Potomac River, walking along the rocks, tossing stones, and she was as nervous as I was on wall.  The thing is, though, if somehow they fell off the wall, they would be dead; if they fell into the river their legs would get wet.  It's not that deep by the shore, and we could easily pull them out if need be.  On the flipside, they could realistically fall into the river (Lil' S1 at least got his shoe wet), whereas it would be nigh impossible for them to fall off the wall.  So, I guess it all evens out.

Anyway, let's hit some pics and call it a post...

[Views of the Potomac from Fort Washington Park]

[I heard somebody official-sounding say that this is the George Washington Masonic Memorial -- the story checks out] 

[The Washington Monument from a distance]

[Although it kinda looks like my boys are climbing on the wall, which would be very weird, given my commentary above, the cannon is a good 30 feet back]

Entry 539: Dish Brushes and Other Stuff

I got a new dish brush this week.  I mention this not because it's a particularly exciting life event, but because of what it reveals (or doesn't) about my psyche.

I do the dishes pretty much every night.  S is usually busy with other things, and I don't like the way she packs the dishwasher, anyway.  (It's as if she's trying to fit the least amount of dishes possible.  She's obviously never studied the bin packing problem.)  I use one of those scrub brushes with the soap in the handle for all the pots and pans that don't go in the dishwasher.  It's a convenient implement that usually lasts for a while.  The one I had been using, however, got a leak in the handle, so every time I used it I got soap on my hand -- not a lot, but enough that I'd have to rinse off my hand periodically.  It got to be really annoying, and I hated using it.

So what did I about it?  Nothing.  I just lived with it, and kept using it for weeks, months even, while it leaked soap on my hands.

Why did I do that?  I don't know.  That's what I've been trying to figure out.

Eventually, I did order a new one.  It came, like, a day later (Amazon Prime), and I threw out the old one and started using the new one.  When no soap got on my hand, I just thought: Why?  Why did I wait so long?  Why didn't I do this the instant I noticed the leak.  It's not like the notion of getting a new brush completely escaped me.  I thought about it every time I washed dishes.  I told myself -- you should get a new brush -- but I didn't do it for a preposterous long time.  Again, why?  It took, literally, less than a minute to order on my phone and cost $9.99.  So, it wasn't time or money.  It was something else.  Maybe I spent so many years as a cash-strapped grad student I conditioned myself to always make do with what I had; maybe it's just the power of inertia; maybe it's something else altogether.  Like I said, I don't know.

In other news, I've been plowing through some content I put off until after the election.  I listened to Slate's Slow Burn podcast series on David Duke.  The parallels between Duke's rise to power and Trump's* become very apparent in listening to series trailer, which is why I put it off until after the election.  I told myself I'd only listen to it if Trump lost; otherwise, it would have been too depressing for me to handle.

*The ways in which they are the similar: the constant playing of the outsider, anti-media, us-against-them card; the big, unhinged, be-aggrieved-be-very-aggrieved! rallies; and the constant, unequivocal lying that their supporters defend, paradoxically, as "telling it like it is" or "saying what other politicians are afraid to say."  A big difference between the two, however, is that Duke was (is, I should say, he's still around) way more ideologically driven than Trump.  I mean, he's ego-driven, without question, but he also sincerely believes his white supremacist garbage.  Trump, on the other hand, is more amoral and seems to be completely in it for himself.  There's no larger cause or great good with him.

I also started a book about the USFL, a professional football league that was around in the mid-'80s.  It was a legit league that actually stole some good football players away from the NFL (Hall of Famers like Steve Young, Reggie White, and Jim Kelly) and had a decent following.  I was a little young at the time (I was only seven when they folded), but I remember watching their games.  I almost certainly would have been a fan had they stuck around.

But they didn't.  They originally played spring football, so as not to compete directly with the NFL, but then one of the owners convinced the league to move to a fall schedule in 1986.  His hope was not to actually grow the USFL (which he infamously called "small potatoes"), but to somehow parlay the fall move into a merger with the NFL, so that he could own an NFL franchise, which is what he really wanted.  When it all fell apart -- very predictably so -- he got the league to sue the NFL.  They "won" the lawsuit, were awarded $1 in damages, and promptly went defunct.  The commissioner of NFL at time, Pete Rozelle, reportedly told the owner who spearhead his league's demise that he would never own an NFL franchise as long as he (Rozelle) or any of his descendants had any say in the matter.

Who was the rogue owner who led the promising young USFL on a suicide mission for his own personal benefit?  Yep, you guessed it: Donald J. Trump.

The funny thing about it too is that a bunch of the owners knew that taking on the NFL was an insane plan that would never work.  But they went along with it anyway.  (A few were smart and got out before the ship went down.)  That's the weirdest thing about the Trump phenomenon: All the people who admit how awful and incompetent he is, but still vote for him.  I used the word funny above, because that's what it is.  I just wish I wasn't inexorably caught up in the joke.  As I've said many times: January 20 can't get here soon enough.

Until next time...

Entry 538: Burning Hand

I had to be rushed to urgent care last night because I burned my hand.  It was partially me being stupid, but mostly it was just an accident.  To err is human, after all.  I was fixing dinner and there was a saucepan sitting on a burner that wasn't turned on.  Inside the pan was a stirring spoon, the kind with an oval plastic head and a long thin metal handle.  Since the saucepan wasn't hot I wasn't expecting the spoon to be hot, so I grabbed it barehanded.  What I didn't realize (but probably should have) is that the spoon's handle had been sticking out directly above a burner that had been in use, and it was red hot (not literally, unfortunately, as then I would have known not to touch it).  When I wrapped my hands around the spoon's handle, it was like that scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark when the creepy Nazi grabs the medallion from the fire.  I instantly let go, of course, but by then the damage (to my skin) was already done.

[This is what it looked like immediately after burning.  White splotches = intense pain.]

I knew it right away too.  I thought to myself, Shit, this is gonna be bad.  I did all the things you are supposed to do -- avoid ice, hold it under cool running water, etc. -- but still I could feel it starting to blister up.  And it hurt.  I mean, it really fucking hurt.  Without exaggeration, I can say that I cannot remember ever feeling a more intense pain.*  It's a hard to thing to measure, pain, because there are so many different types.  My shoulder pain, for instance, is awful, but that's largely because it's always there.  There's a psychologic effect, a hopelessness, that magnifies it many times over.  This pain was very different.  But on the just-make-it-stop, I'll-confess-to-crimes-I-didn't-commit scale, it was about as high as I've ever experienced.

*One thing that could rival it was another burn I got when I was about 14.  I was at Cannon Beach with my friend J, and I picked up a log to move it into our beach fire not realizing that the underside of it was already smoldering.  I barbecued two of my finger tips and spent much the next few days with my hand in the cooler.

At times like these, it's good to have a spouse to convince you to go to the doctor.  I didn't want to go, but when two hours had elapsed, and the pain hadn't subsided at all, S convinced me using the "Do you really want to be lying awake at 3:00 am the night before Thanksgiving because your hand hurts too much to sleep?" logic.  I relented, and we hustled to our neighborhood medical center before they closed.  (There was no way I was going to the ER.)  S dropped me off, as it would have been difficult for me to drive.

I am so glad I went.  Literally nobody was in the waiting room when I got there, and I was in and out in no time.  The doctor (physician's assistant, technically) diagnosed it as a second-degree burn, applied some ointment, and wrapped it with a bandage.  He gave me some Tylenol with codeine for the night and some extra strength Tylenol without codeine for the day and called in a prescription for a topical cream.  The nurse gave me a tetanus shot, and then I walked to the pharmacy, picked up my prescription, and then walked home.  It was as easy a trip to the doctor as I've ever had.  And, like a miracle, by the end of the night, my hand was substantially better and the pain had almost totally subsided.  I didn't even need the pain meds.

[Much better by the time I went to bed.]

So, now I get to enjoy Thanksgiving.  We aren't doing much.  (No big gathering like the last few years.)  I took the kids to the park, where Lil' S1 climbed nearly to the top of a tall tree, and now I'm writing this with a lousy Lions-Texans game in the background.  I am looking forward to a Thanksgiving feast, however.  We're getting carryout from some place called Sababa here in DC.  We didn't want to cook, so S sent me a list from the Washington Post of places that are doing special carryout meals for Thanksgiving, and Sababa was the only one that wasn't already sold out.  It looks pretty good though.  They're an Israeli restaurant, so it's not quite your traditional Thanksgiving fare (one of the starters is hummus and the entrée is turkey kabobs), but that's fine by me.  The kids will only pick at it either way, and S really likes Middle Eastern food.

[It's hard to see, but if you zoom in enough you can make out Lil' S's head in the red circle, and he went even higher after I took this.  It made me a little nervous, but I figured the branches would stop him if he fell.  Also, what was I going to do?  Climb up there and get him myself?] 

Other than that, I'll probably fix myself a cocktail and enjoy the day off.  S and I are about halfway though Queen's Gambit, which I'm enjoying quite a bit (although I'm a total patzer of a player, I've always been very interested in chess), so episode five might be in the offing.  I also have a new issue of The New Yorker sitting on my mantle, and the book Three-Ring Circus loaded on my Kindle.  I've been tearing through it.  It's a sports book (subtitle: Kobe, Shaq, Phil, and the Crazy Years of the Lakers Dynasty), and I always tear through sports books.  Once I'm finished, I plan to move on to Claire McNear's book about Jeopardy!

And speaking of move on: Until next time...

Entry 537: Birthday Wishes

Fun fact: Today is president-elect Joe Biden’s birthday.  He is 78, which is pretty damn old to start a presidency, but whatever, I’m not an ageist.  I hope all his birthday wishes come true.  In no small part this is because surely one of his birthday wishes is also my big (non-birthday) wish at the moment: An end to the insanity.  I’m not going to lie, Trump’s refusal to concede gracefully (or even ungracefully) is causing me a lot of consternation.  But, I'm going to do my best to try not to think about it for a while.  There's nothing I can do about it, and the constant anxiety is only hurting me.  I need to try to focus on other things: Can't let the terrorist's win.

Speaking of winning, the Seahawks scored a big win last night.  They're back in first place in the best division in football, which makes me happy.  When my sports team do well, it's comfort food, it's a nostalgic melody, it's a shot of dopamine.  It really changes nothing about my life, but it makes me feel a little better, and we could all use things that make use feel a little better right now.

Because it is not looking good on the coronavirus front, that's for sure.  I've basically gone into lockdown again.  Not that I was doing much before, but we would have people over in our backyard or go to another couple's house for a cookout, that type of thing -- very small gatherings, outdoors, masks.  But I think we need to cut that out again.  For one thing, it's getting too cold to do things outside.  (Winter is going to be brutal, trapped inside with the boys.)  For another, infection rates are skyrocketing.  We have our pod -- our family, one other family, and the sitter -- and I'm sticking to that for now.  Even that isn't super safe (obviously I don't have much say in what the other family and the sitter do), but I also have to work, S also has to work, and the kids need to go to (virtual) school, so... it is what it is, so to speak.  Hopefully, we can get that vaccine going ASA and P.

In other medical news, the results of my MRI came back.  No structural damage.  I'm not sure if this is good news or bad news, honestly.  It sounds good on its face, but it's not like it makes my shoulder feel any better.  Something is bothering me, and if it was something structural, it could likely be fixed with surgery -- fixed being the operative word there.  I had microscopic surgery on my knee to repair a partially torn meniscus when I was 18, and the procedure itself was terrible*, as were the next few weeks of recovery, but after that it was like, Whoa, I'm totally better now!  No physical therapy, no anti-inflammatories, no more pain or discomfort, whatsoever.  It felt like a miracle cure.  Since then, I've been very pro-surgery.  But repairing a partially torn meniscus is a very easy procedure, as these things go, and I definitely don't have the same regenerative powers today I had 25 years ago.  It's quite likely shoulder surgery at 43 would be a very different experience than knee surgery at 18.  So, maybe it's good I don't have to go that route.

*Actually, the procedure itself was tremendous, because they gave me awesome drugs and then put me to sleep.  But the aftermath, when I came to and the meds wore off, was the worst I've ever felt.  It was like that scene in Trainspotting when the baby is crawling on the ceiling and its head turns all the way around.

Instead, I just have to live with arthritis in my shoulder -- that's what the MRI revealed.  So it goes.  I've entered that stage in my life.  Now I know at least, and I can manage it, by which I mean I'll probably just go back to doing Krav Maga and weightlifting in about a month or so.  I put a medical freeze on my membership, and once that expires, I plan to resume my training -- my Zoom training, that is.  It'll probably only aggravate things in the long-run, but I'll deal with that in another 25 years, when, incidentally, I will still be ten years younger than the president-elect.

Alright, it's late here.  Until next time...

Entry 536: Not That Schlubby

After the election was called for Biden, I saw the same joke several times on Twitter in reference to Kamala Harris' husband Doug Emhoff -- something to the effect of "Finally, a moment in the sun for schlubby Jewish men with far more impressive wives."  It's supposed to be a self-deprecating joke, tweeted by other "schlubby" Jewish men (who apparently have impressive wives).  But it's actually a humblebrag.  Saying your wife is more impressive than you or "out of your league" or, if you're a football fan, saying you "outkicked your coverage" in the spouse department is totally tooting your own horn, because it's your wife you talking about.  If an amazing, incredible person picks you to be their life partner then that obviously reflects well on you.  I kinda hate this sort of humblebrag, but a lot of guys do it -- I've probably even done it myself -- so I usually just let it slide.

But here's the bigger problem I have with this joke: Doug Emhoff isn't that schlubby.  In fact, he doesn't appear to be schlubby at all.  He's a totally normal looking, you might even say good-looking, fiftysomething man.  He's not Donal Logue.  (There's a deep cut for you.  Remember him?)  I mean, if you were a middle-aged woman, and you were on a dating app, and you came across the guy below, would you be, like, Ugh... look at that schlub?  Probably not.

The better joke: Finally a moment in the sun for the husbands of successful, beautiful South Indian women.  Now if only I could be second gentleman someday.

In other political news, every major network has now made a projection in every state.  Biden ends up with 306 electoral votes, plenty more than the 270 he needs to be president.  Nothing is finalized yet -- that happens over the next month or so -- but there doesn't appear to be anything anybody can do to change the result, no matter how amoral or corrupt they are.  There will be recounts in a few states, but recounts typically change the vote total by a few hundred votes, at most.  Biden is leading by over 10,000 votes in every state in which he's the projected winner.  Law suits to disqualify votes are not going anywhere and wouldn't change the outcome even if they were.  (They seem to be entirely for show, often focusing on, again, no more than a few hundred votes.)  This means the only way things could potentially flip is if state officials try to monkey with their electors in the presidential college, and it doesn't seem like there is any serious appetite to go this route, and it's probably not even legal to do so, anyway.  So, I think Biden-Harris is going to happen.  I mean, I'm still going to have nagging doubts until inauguration day, but that's so much better than how I felt on this date four years ago.

Alright, enough election talk for a bit.

I had an MRI done on my shoulder this evening.  As I've mentioned before, it's been bothering me for years.  I think it's tendinitis (because that's what the specialist thinks), but it's been going on so long that I decided to get an MRI, if only to rule out the possibility of a tear or other structural damage.  It'll be nice to know either way.  I hate getting MRIs though.  I've had three done now in my life, and they're always torture.  I mean that literally: If you wanted to torture me, putting me in a little box and preventing me from moving would be a good way to go.  It's so hard to stay perfectly still too.  I thought I was doing an excellent job, and then I got chastised through the headphones for moving.  Whatever.  The whole thing only last 30 minutes, eight songs.  That's how I marked the time.  (The play list was very calming -- The Cranberries, Fleetwood Mac, Roberta Flack.) Now, it's over.

And speaking of over, I'm going to stop here.  I have a few more topics on my mental docket, but I'm very tired and a bit hungry.  I want to eat a bowl of granola and then go to bed.

Until next time...

Entry 535: Well, I Guess It's Decided Now

That was an agonizing four and a half days.  I spent almost the entire 84 hours anxiously refreshing my phone, waiting for data dumps from counties like Fulton, Maricopa, Clark, Allegheny, etc.  Everybody has their own way of handling this type of thing.  Many prefer to tune out everything until the big news comes along, states are actually called, or a winner is declared.  I'm the exact opposite.  I have to obsess over every bit of information and every possible scenario.*  I crunch numbers on scratch paper; I map out different electoral maps; I follow various data-journalists on Twitter and hang on their every analysis.  (Nate Cohn of the NYT's The Upshot is the most insightful, in my opinion.)  It's excruciating, yes, but it's better than not knowing.  Of course, I have to take breaks to shower and work and whatnot, but even then, in the back of mind I'm still thinking about it.

*By the way, I totally could've made a career of datajournalism.  I'm not saying that as a joke.  I legitimately think it's something I would be really good at.

The relief still hasn't kicked in yet, to be honest.  I believe Biden will be the next president.  I don't think the allegations and law suits of our current manchild president will lead anywhere.  I'm not even sure they're designed to lead anywhere.  As somebody on Twitter put it (I don't remember who and I'm paraphrasing): The purpose of these law suits is not to change the outcome of the election.  It's to crystalize to the base that the only reason in life they don't get what they want is because somebody unfairly took it from them.  I think this is all true, and nevertheless, I still haven't had that cathartic release of anxiety.  I believe it, but I don't feel it.  I don't know why.  Maybe it will happen when Arizona and Georgia are called; maybe it will be on Inauguration Day; maybe it won't be until I can go in public again without a mask on.

But, in the meantime, I'm not going to abstain from celebration, because it's been wild here in DC.  After the race was called by the major networks yesterday, I wrote "BYE DON" on a white tee, put it on, and ran up a major thoroughfare.  In part, I did this because I needed exercise and was planning on a run anyway, but also it was because I knew there would be people lining streets, celebrating, honking their horns, and I wanted to get in on it.  I wish I would have gone down by the White House -- or as close as you can get right now, an area called Black Lives Matter Plaza -- but I weirdly didn't think of it.  I went back today, and it was cool, but it wasn't a party.  It was like the morning brunch after the wedding reception.  Not everybody is there, and those who are are kinda slow and bleary-eyed, and there are little kids running around, because they're the only ones who have any energy.  

Still, I got a decent bike ride in (about 11 miles) and some pics to share.

[My favorite thing about this pic is the patheticness of this old guy's sign.  I mean, I get it, I'm not artistic at all, but anybody who can write a message on a sign can write it so that people can read it from further than five feet away.  (It says "Congratulations Biden & Harris," if you're wondering.)]

[You can just see the top of the Washington Monument poking up in the background.  By the way, all this fencing was put up during the protests against police brutality earlier this year.  There's an entire park engirded that's no longer open to the public.  If I were the mayor of DC, after Biden is inaugurated, I'd tear all this shit down, and celebrate like it's David Hasselhoff razing the Berlin Wall.]

Entry 534: In The Meantime

We are now less than a week away from election day.  Although, that's not really an accurate term anymore, being that the election has already been going on for weeks, and the nobody will actually be elected that day.  We are now less than a week away from the last and largest day of in-person voting.  For some states this is also, unfortunately, the last day a ballot can officially be received.  I probably don't have many readers in Wisconsin, but if I do, and you haven't yet voted, please do so, for Biden/Harris, in person or via an official drop box.  Don't rely on the postal service to get your ballot there by Tuesday.  Wisconsin doesn't have a posted-marked-by grace period for late ballots.  Six days is probably enough time, but why risk it?  That should be everybody's attitude in general.  Why risk it?  Even if your state has the most liberal laws in the union, let's not rely on the mail at this point.*  You have plenty of time to hit up a drop box (make sure it's legit and everything is in order), or, even better, to get your booty to the polls.  Wear a mask, bring a snack, check the website to find out when lines are reasonable, if you can.  Just vote -- for Biden and Harris.

*I voted by mail several weeks ago, which gives plenty of time for my ballot to be received.  I'm sure it already has been.  Also, I vote in DC where the presidential stakes couldn't be lower.  If I lived in a purple state, I likely would've done in-person early voting.  That's what I've done before.

A lot of people are already doing this and early voting returns and the latest polls look really good for the Democratic ticket... which comforts us supporters exactly 0%.  Nobody thinks this is in the bag; nobody even feels remotely good about it.  We should hope it's all true and act as if it isn't.

To that end, if you want to help, it's not too late.  You can volunteer to help get out the vote in swing states (phone banking and the like), or you can donate money to help pay other people to do so.  I don't know how much stuff like this actually helps at this point, but it can't hurt, and if the election is anything like 2016, fractions of percentages could decide the difference.  If your money helps add one new Biden voter for every 200 people that actually could matter.  You can make a blanket donation to something like ActBlue or you can target an individual state.  I just gave something (through ActBlue) specifically to help GOTV for Biden in Pennsylvania, because that's the closest state that Biden (almost) certainly needs to win.  But Michigan is a good one too.  So is Wisconsin and Arizona and Florida and a few others.

Here's my breakdown of most important swing states: 

Tier 1 (critical): Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin
Tier 2 (very-winnable backups): Arizona, North Carolina
Tier 3 (could-win luxuries): Florida, Georgia, Iowa
Tier 4 (close, but probably not): Ohio
Tier 5 (the holy grail): Texas

There are also some important Senate races out there, particularly Colorado, Arizona, North Carolina, Iowa, Georgia (x2), and Maine.  If the Democratic candidate can take the seat in five of these seven races, very doable, then they would likely control the Senate.  That would be good.

Well, we shall see.  In the meantime, consider making a donation.  It's easy -- just Google and click.

Until next time...

Entry 533: Mouse In The House

Well, the debates are over.  They ended relatively uneventfully, which I think is a good thing.  Biden is polling very well, and the less time there is for the other shoe to drop, the better.  The final debate was last night.  I watched most of it (I missed the first 15 minutes or so, see below, and flipped to Thursday Night Football intermittently, which was a good idea, if only for this play) and felt it was pretty much a stalemate.  Trump was much more subdued and came off as less insane than usual, which I'm sure was a conscious decision, but the problem for him is that I think he's actual less effective in a "normal" debate because he has nothing of substance to say.  He might have been better off ranting and raving and trying to turn it into one of his rallies, rather than have voters completely forget what he said three days from now.  It's like when you're way behind in football and have to start throwing risky passes downfield.  Chances are they will be intercepted, and you will lose by even more points, but it's better than just running out the clock.

Maybe he did kinda try to go long with all this Hunter Biden stuff, but few people outside of his little cult seem to believe it or care.  That strategy worked in 2016, in part because he was running against a Clinton and all the baggage that brings, but it's a different opponent this time.  Similarly, he repeatedly tried to paint Biden as a radical socialist lefty, which is a totally anemic line of attack.  Nobody believes that.  Biden easily parried away such declarations, by pointing out that he beat a field of Democratic challengers running to his left.  I must admit, however, I did get a little worried about Biden's comments on the oil industry.  But he later walked those comments back a bit.  Plus, he's not wrong.  I think most voters either agree with him -- many want him to come out much more strongly against fossil fuels -- or, at the very least, they already know that transition away from oil is a pretty mainstream Democratic position, so it's likely not the big gotcha Trump tried to play it out to be.

One area where I thought Biden didn't do as well as I would have liked is in defending his record.  Trump kept goading him for not getting anything done while he was in office, and Biden just kinda took it, and only once mentioned that there was a Republican held congress.  I wish he would've thrown this back in Trump's face by a) rattling off the Obama administration's accomplishments (Obamacare, Dodd-Frank, Dreamer Act, stimulus, etc.); b) reiterating the obstinacy they faced from a Mitch McConnell, John Boehner Congress (and taking the opportunity to remind everybody that it's important for Dems to retake the Senate as well); c) pointing out that that was in the past and Trump is the president now and he's done absolutely nothing.  He never really did that.  Biden never explicitly said how absurd it is that Trump, the actual president today, is running as if he's the challenger and the actual challenger, who was vice president four years ago, is the one in charge of things.  But maybe he doesn't need to say this explicitly.  The voters probably get it without it being said.  Let's hope.

My favorite part of the debate was when Biden referenced the "Poor Boys," and then completely butchered Trump's infamous "stand down and stand by" quote.  That was an old guy moment right there.  But I'm glad he got the name wrong.  Those bozos have gotten enough free press as it is.

Anyway...

[Did you know?  Beverly Cleary is still alive and she's 104 years old!]

I missed the first part of the debate because I was capturing a mouse that somehow got into our house.  We actually got lucky I noticed it when I did, because it just happened to go into our basement bathroom where I could easily seal off it's escape routes.  I don't know if you've ever tried to catch a mouse in an open area before, but it's damn near impossible.  They are so fast and can fit through the smallest cracks and crevices.  I had one in an apartment once, and it took my roommate and me hours to capture it, and the only reason we were successful at all was because we had one of those glue traps and were able to set it along one of its escape routes, and it eventually went into it and got stuck.  Then we had a mouse in a glue trap that we didn't know what to do with, so I put it in a plastic bag, slammed it against the side of our dumpster a bunch of times to put it out of its misery and threw it out.  Sorry, Ralph.

This time the mouse survived.  I trapped it in a Tupperware container on the ground and was somehow able to slide a thin plastic cutting board under the Tupperware to contain it.  I was very proud of myself, because if you give it any space at all it'll squeeze through and run away.  Then I flipped the Tupperware over, holding the cutting board on the top super tightly, and ran out of the house barefooted, down the street to a little wooded area, and released it.  Done and done.  Lil' S1 was my "helper" in this endeavor, by which I mean he opened the door and watched me do it.  (He was also listening to me try to catch it in the bathroom, and at one point it ran across my foot, and I did one those surprised/creeped out "yeeee"s, and he laughed and said, "You're scared of a little mouse, Dad!")  S just kinda stood there freaking out (to be fair, the cutting board was her idea).  She hates, well, pretty much all invasive critters, but especially mice and cockroaches.  She was on the phone with pest control first thing this morning.

Alright, gotta go cook some turkey burgers for dinner.  It might be the last time to grill this year.

Until next time...

Entry 532: Five Thousand Words

I don't feel much like writing tonight -- no real reason, just being lazy -- so I'm going to post some pics and call it a night.

My boys embracing while waiting for a science presentation to start.  It was one of Lil' S2's friend's birthday party.  His dad told me Lil' S1 could come too "if he doesn't mind hanging out with the little kids."  He most definitely does not.  He's so funny that way.  He'll hang out/talk with anybody who will tolerate him.  I'm really glad I got this pic.  It's rare to see them showing affection toward one another.

Here's one of my boys and some friends at a farm outing on Sunday.  I didn't really want to go, but I knew I'd look like the bad dad if I didn't.  Plus, the Seahawks were playing the lowly Dolphins, and I knew the game wouldn't be on TV here.  On a football podcast I listen to, whenever there is a boring slate of games the hosts' go-to line is "it's a good weekend to go pumpkin picking with the family."  I actually did that.

Because of my shoulder tendinitis, I haven't been able to do any strenuous exercise, so I've been walking around my neighborhood a lot.  The Black Lives Matter sign is a common sight.  Also, every Friday night a synagogue up the street has a BLM demonstration, where they line the sidewalks in front of their building holding signs and people honk in support as they drive by.  Tonight we walked by them on our way home from the park.  Lil' S1 was on his bike a bit ahead of Lil' S2 and me, and when we caught up to him, he was just chatting away with this old man demonstrating.  The guy seemed very amused.  It was cute.

If it was only up to my neighbors, I estimate, based on yard signs, Biden would win with 100% of the vote.  There might be a Trump voter somewhere in the vicinity, but they're not advertising it.

Until next time...

Entry 531: Tendinitis of the Soul (and the Shoulder)

So the president has Covid now.  I don’t wish ill on anybody… but I don’t know how to finish that sentence.  He will likely have mild symptoms, because he has access to top-notch healthcare, and most people have mild symptoms, regardless (one of the confounding things about this virus is that it kills some people and hardly affects others), and then once he gets better I'm sure we will hear a stream of logorrhea about how he overcame the Chinese Virus, and it’s actually not that big a deal, and the fake media… blah, blah, blah.

But it’s not a good look for him, anyway you slice it.  It underscores his recklessness and keeps Covid, a bad issue for him, in the news.  I doubt it’s going to swing the polls much, because, at this point, I don’t think there is really anything that can swing the polls much, but hopefully it’s another drop in Biden’s bucket, a fraction of a percent of win-probabilty added to his side of the ledger. The debate, for all it’s awfulness (and it was awful; I watched the entire thing after telling myself I wouldn’t turn it on at all), probably played a similar role.  And with the election only a month away, and millions of ballots already cast, the situation is pretty clear: If the polls are anywhere close to being accurate, and if there are no voter suppression shenanigans (two big ifs), Biden will win handily.  If you are thinking, “But everybody said the same thing about Hillary in 2016!” you’re not totally wrong, but you’re not totally right, either.  There are some key differences between the two races (FiveThirtyEight has been doing solid work on this, as always), but I get the consternation.  I feel it myself.  It’s not irrational.  Nothing is 100%.  Long shots sometimes cash in.

In other news, something is wrong with my right shoulder, probably a bad case of tendinitis.  I’ve had it for years; like, I remember first feeling it at an exercise class I took maybe six or seven years ago, and according to my records (i.e., this very blog), I was rehabbing it in physical therapy in 2016.  Obviously, the PT didn’t totally take.  I can’t even remember if it got better at all.  I quit after a handful of sessions because the woman I was working with moved away, but I imagine I would have continued if I was happy with the results.  But it just won't go away.  The discomfort is always there, and I've learned to navigate around it.  Sometimes it flares up and causes me pain; sometimes it’s just a little annoyance; most of the time it’s somewhere in between.

A couple weeks ago, it was irritating me enough that I broke down and went to the doctor again.  I wanted to go straight to a specialist, but I needed a referral, so I saw a GP at my neighborhood clinic first.  She told me it's probably tendinitis, and then I saw the specialist who also told me it’s probably tendinitis.  Neither one thinks there is structural damage, because the injury doesn’t seem to affect my strength (which might be part of the problem; I’m not forced to rest it).  Currently, I’m taking an anti-inflammatory (basically extra strong ibuprofen), and, once again, doing PT.  I’m not optimistic that it will work, but I’m willing to try.

I have a follow-up appointment with the specialist in two weeks.  I think we will try a cortisone injection then.  If that doesn’t take, then I’ll get an MRI to try to find out if something else is up.  That’s probably what I really need, but it’s an expensive procedure, and I have to try everything else first to get insurance to cover it, and even then I expect the copay to be hefty.  So, I don’t mind putting it off a bit.  I’m already dipping into my HSA to cover the PT copay: $70 a pop for 45-minutes sessions!

Okay, enough about health woes. 

We had a little incident this week with my elderly next-door neighbors, and by “incident” I mean my kids and their friend were throwing stones at the side of their house and broke their glass door.  We were working from home at the time, and the sitter* told us the neighbors came over and said they heard a crash and saw the door was broken.  So, I went outside to check things out, and it was like that scene in The Simpsons where Homer steals Flanders air conditioner.

The broken door only faces our yard, and there were a bunch of stones lying around it that perfectly match the kind used to pave our walkway that the kids are constantly digging up.

*Remember how I told you our sitter wasn't very attentive?  Yet another example.  If the kids are taking a break from school and playing in the yard, I don't expect her to literally be watching them everywhere they go, but, my goodness, she should know if they're throwing rocks at our neighbor's house, or anywhere, really.  I can't wait to be done with her.  It's super hard to find babysitters right now.  A couple we know just had there's up and quit and them, totally leaving them in the lurch.  That's the only reason we're keep ours.  I mean, she's really nice, but she's just not good at the job.    

I brought all the kids outside and asked them what went on, and they all claimed ignorance.  I was 95% sure at least one of them was lying, but nobody actually saw them do it, and they repeatedly denied it, so what could I do?  I told them to go back inside, and then we (S also came out by this point) told my neighbors we would pay to get their door fixed and clean it up for them, but they waved us away, and said “don’t fret over it.”

Later that night, I decided to work on the younger one a little bit more.  Initially, he again repeatedly denied having anything to do with it, but then he slipped up and gave me a little opening, saying maybe his brother did in on accident, because he was trying to throw a rock on the roof.  I thought he actually did it and was trying to blame it on somebody else (he plays with those rocks the most), but his brother overheard us talking and finally confessed to it.  That’s the thing about little kids, they eventually crack.  Probably they even want to tell the truth, but they’re too scared to do so.  Honestly, I was pretty surprised they all lied, somewhat convincingly, for as long as they did.  (S called their friend’s mom, and apparently it took even longer for her daughter to come clean.)  Lil’ S1 actually broke the window, but they were all throwing rocks, which might explain why nobody threw him under the bus immediately.

I was pretty hot, but I played it cool.  I didn’t think raging and screaming would do any good.  Plus, to get them to fess up, I told them they wouldn’t get in trouble if they told the truth.  So, they didn’t get “punished.”  But they did have to go over to our neighbors and admit their wrongdoings and apologize face-to-face (properly masked, of course).  As a little kid, that was so much worse for me than going without TV or whatnot.  Also, we made each of them hand write apology notes, which we are going to take over to our neighbors this weekend.  In part, this is also an excuse for us to check up on them and ask again if there is anything we can do.  (They’ve insisted there isn’t and been pretty cool about the whole thing so far.)  I feel bad, because they’re really old, and just the act of going out to purchase a new door, which I saw them doing, looks like an ordeal.  They do have an adult son who lives with them, but I’m not sure what's up with him.  I think he has issues.  Whatever the case, he doesn't seem to help his parents much.  

Well, I think that's enough for now.

Until next time…

Entry 530: 2020 Gonna 2020

A few hours after I put up my last post, I learned RBG died.  It was pretty crushing for me, as it was for many people.  Aside from the loss of a civil rights icon, much like John Lewis’ passing early this year, it portends a possibly substantial swing in the ideological makeup of the Supreme Court.  It also sets up what’s sure to be an excruciating confirmation fight in the already highly contentious weeks before the election.  It will be excruciating, in large part, because my side is almost certainly going to lose.  In all honesty, I haven’t really been following it because I already know – I already knew as soon as the news broke – exactly what would happen.  A Trump appointed judge, probably this Barrett woman, is going to be confirmed and seated.  There just isn’t enough, if any, resistance among Republican senators to stop it.  The only thing the Democrats can possibly do is cry hypocrisy, which they should do, but nobody in a position to do anything cares about such cries.  Hypocrisy is not the political liability we wish it was.  A lot of voters, I suspect, even prefer a hypocrite, provided they are hypocritical in their favor.

Democrats could also threaten to “pack the courts,” but in order for that to happen they would need to win the presidency and a majority in the Senate (and hold the house).  Then they would need to get everybody onboard to abolish the filibuster, and then get everybody onboard to change the number of Supreme Court justices.  That’s a lot of conditions.  I mean, it’s not an impossibility, but it’s also not really much of a deterrent for Republicans like Mitt Romney in the here and now.

It is something I would absolutely do, however, if I was Joe Biden and I had the chance.  The rules surrounding the Supreme Court have needed to be updated for a long time.  Even among good faith actors (which out leaders most certainly are not), it’s weird and arbitrary to have vacancies determined by the whims of health of octogenarians.  Also, nine is too small a number.  It concentrates too much power and doesn’t allow for enough diversity and variance of opinion.  If I were in charge I would do something like: 15 justices, 15-year terms.  This way one justice is replaced every year on a fixed schedule, and every president gets four selections per term, and I would make it so that they could only be blocked by a supermajority in the Senate.  No games; no procedural shenanigans.  No multigenerational fixtures; no minority rule.  If you win a few elections, you get the court majority.  That's how it should go.

But something like this is obviously not going to be in effect before November, and that's worrisome because it's possible the Supreme Court will have to rule on a disputed election, and we all know in which way they will be leaning from the get-go.  There's also a possibility Trump loses the election and just refuses to leave.  (Bill Maher has been banging this drum for years.)  I tend to think this won't happen, but I definitely don't feel good about it.  If, knock on wood, he loses decisively -- like Biden carries all the "Blue Wall" states by a comfortable margin plus any of Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, or Ohio, I think he'll put on a show and cry foul, and then come up with a bullshit reason why it's actually better for him to leave, anyway, and then he'll start his own cable channel, telling his lies and conspiracy theories (and outright gibberish) to the 30% of the country that eat that shit up.

But, I could be wrong, and if he stays then I think there are two things to do.  First, say to Republicans "come get your boy."  I'm more optimistic about this working than most people I've heard talk about it.  I don't think that most Reps want the US to become a failed state over Trump.  (What good is a 6-3 majority on the Supreme Court if the government doesn't even function?)  I don't think they even like him, or his presidency, very much.  They know how dangerous he is.  They know he's full of shit.  They just want to be in charge, so they're willing to put up with it.  But straight-up denying an election result is a bridge too far, I suspect, for all but the most hard-core Trumpists.

But, I could be wrong, and if I am, then you go to Plan B: Biden just never concedes.  If Trump loses but Republicans in Congress (and on the Supreme Court), find some sort of way to claim he actually won, by not counting certain ballots, or by changing the law in swing states to appoint Trump-loyalist electors, or by doing something I haven't even thought of yet, then you start a movement in which every Democratic politician and voter refuses to accept it.  We all treat Biden as if he is the president, and he acts like the president.  In effect, we start a parallel government of the United States of America, and claim, rightfully, that ours is the real one.

This sounds absurd, and it is, but what the fuck else are we supposed to do?  And it could work, if you think about it.  If major Democratic-run states -- California, New York, Washington, etc. -- don't accept a government as legitimate and just don't abide by their laws, how can they be forced to do so?  In theory, the military could be deposed to hold these places by force, but would our military turn against its own people to fight for an unpopular wannabe dictator who's trying to stay in power after losing a democratic election?  I don't think so.  I mean, this would lead to a civil war -- not a contentious political battle that we half-heartedly follow on cable news while football is on commercial, but a literal, blood in the streets, civil war.

And on that cheery note...

Until next time...

Entry 529: It Just Doesn't Make Sense

Raging fires caused by climate change wrecking havoc up and down the entire West Coast; a seemingly interminable pandemic that still is not under control; the very real possibility of election-related violence a few months from now: Americans have a lot on our plate at the moment and most of it really sucks.  Like everybody, I’ve been coping in my own ways – trying to take care of myself, physically and mentally, while doing what I can to help my family and others close to me.  I’ve been doing mostly okay.  The fact that S and I are both gainfully employed is a huge boon, but finances are but a tiny sliver of the overall health-and-happiness pie.

There are things which aren’t going as well.  A big one for me is sleep.  I’ve mentioned before on this blog my love-hate relationship with sleep: I love doing it; I hate trying to do it.  What I wouldn't give to be one of those people, like my wife and several of my friends, who are lights-out when their head hits the pillow.  But I’m not.  I’m not an insomniac, but I’m a fussy sleeper.  I need everything to be just so to fall asleep.  If I can set my own schedule, and sleep from, like, 2:30 am to 10:30 am then things would be much better, but obviously having kids and a “normal” office job makes that impossible.  (I think this is a big reason I liked college so much.  I could synch up my schedule with my inner clock.) 

So, what typically happens now is I go to bed around 1:00 am, I wake up at 6:30 am, because S and the kids are up, and I sense my household is abuzz, then my youngest son gets into bed with me and rolls around annoyingly for a half-hour, and then he leaves and I doze lightly until 8:00 am, at which point my alarm goes off, and I hit snooze twice, and then I bolt up at 8:18 am and get the kids ready for virtual school at 9:00 am.  One weird thing is that I always have amazing sleep for the two nine-minutes snooze sessions.  It’s that amazing, deep dreamland, REM sleep.  I really think those 18 minutes are the difference between me being zombie-like exhausted all day and being just normal very tired.

[Speaking of REM... They are high on my list of bands I used to listen to a lot that I almost never listen to now.  They're a good group, but too, I don't know what the right word is -- twee? -- for me to really enjoy anymore.  By the way, here's a link to the video.  Blogger changed how you embed videos, and they don't show up on my iPhone anymore.  I love it when "improvements" make things worse.] 

Sleep is something that makes no sense to me – or at least the fact that it can be so difficult makes no sense.  If you have food it’s easy to eat; if you have water it’s easy to drink; if you have to poop or pee it’s easy poop or pee (for the most part).  But sleep is in a different class: It’s a necessary physiologically act that, for whatever reason, is not very easy for a sizeable section of the population.  It just makes no sense.

Here are a few other things in a similar vein.

Why do people, especially kids, love sugary, unhealthy foods instead of nutrient-rich healthy foods?  I’ve heard it posited that this is how we evolved because our ancestors desired calorie-rich foods when calories were scarce.  However, I don’t really buy this, because I don’t think it’s ever advantageous, from a survival perspective, to eat shit food.  Like, if you could only have one meal, and your options were a bag of cotton candy or a bag of broccoli, you’d always be better off eating the broccoli, no?  But every kid would take the cotton candy.  It just makes no sense.

Why are miscarriages so common?  One-fourth of pregnancies end in utero.  That is an insanely high number, if you think about it, and one that causes much consternation and sadness in this world.   It also, to me, is a pretty good argument against the religious, “pro life” classification of fetuses as people.  So, by such people's logic, God – this magnificent, perfect, all-powerful entity – wipes out a quarter of humanity before it’s even born?  It just makes no sense.

Why are we so isolated in the universe?  Space: the final frontier.  Except there’s nothing out there.  Yeah, I know, there’s cool stuff like planets and asteroids and black holes and stuff.  But where are the aliens?  Where are the other inhabitable worlds?  Where's the life?  Why are we so alone?  Imagine a universe like Star Trek, where we can move about from planet to planet, from star system to star system.  It’s not sci-fiction.  Well, it is, but only because of our place in the universe.  We would’ve had people on Mars 30 years ago if it could sustain life.  We could go to other solar systems, but for the fact the second closest star to us is four light-years away.  (So, it would only take 150,000 years to get there, using slightly better technology than we have today.)  The really deflating part: We can see and hear much, much further than we can travel, and we don’t see or hear anything out there.  There’s no indication there is any life within contact range, and we're exploring using light, which is faster than we can possibly go no matter how good our technology.  I mean, I suppose we could discover shortcuts through the fabric of space (wormholes), or learn how to harvest resources from space, or recycle so efficiently, that we could create a society that could float through space for hundreds of thousands of years, until we reach somewhere cool.  But it seems more likely to me that humans will go extinct first.  It's cosmically annoying.  In theory, we could be partying with Martians and moon-hopping for the summer.  Instead, we are stuck here, on this pale blue dot, no longer having even the capability to go to our lone moon, because there’s no reason to maintain our rockets, because there's no reason to go back to the moon.  It just makes no sense.

Until next time…

Entry 528: More School and Sad News

Another week of school in the books -- only, like, 95% of the year left to go!  I'm guessing that it's going to be remote learning until 2021, probably Fall 2021.  I've become more and more pessimistic about the prospect of in-person schooling as the virus has lingered.  The vaccine picture doesn't look particularly rosy to me.  Even if we can get a safe one sometime soon, the logistics of inoculating, in a timely fashion, a huge portion of the population -- especially in a country rife with anti-vaxxers and other Big Pharma/Big Government conspiracy theorists -- just doesn't strike me as very likely.  If I were in charge (if only...), I would probably start shifting resources toward disposable at-home testing.  If we got a semi-reliable, affordable Covid test, similar to a pregnancy test, where you could swab yourself and get a result back in ten minutes -- and my understanding is that this is well within the realm of possibility -- that would be huge.  With such a test and the continuation of distancing and mask-wearing, I think we could get that infamous R-value under 1, meaning the disease would peter out.  A vaccine or other treatment would accelerate the decline, and of course we should continue developement along these lines, but I think it's foolhardy to pin all our hopes on this.  But we have a foolhardy president (to put it mildly), so... we'll see, I guess.

I'm trying not to stress about school.  I'm mostly succeeding.  The kids are actually better at sitting in front of a computer all day than I thought they would be.  Whether they're actually learning effectively is another question -- but, whatever.  S does enough worrying for the both of us.  Actually, I shouldn't frame it that way.  She's been pretty mellow, for the most part, but she has intense moments where she gets super annoyed/stressed with something.  It's usually justified, but the thing is, nobody is good at doing school this way.  Not the teachers, not the students, not the parents, not the administrators.  It's going to suck.  It's going to be confusing.  People are going to send the wrong links or say the wrong thing or not show up to the right meeting.  You just have to roll with it as best you can.

As an example, S started an email chain with Lil' S1's teacher about turning in homework, on which I was cc'd, and it kinda went off the rails, not in a hostile way, just in a talking-past-each-other type of way, so S was annoyed, which I get, but my thing is "why are you even worried about homework right now?"  (I mean, everything is homework at the moment -- isn't it?)  If the teacher sends us an email saying Lil' S1 needs to start turning in homework, then of course we need to get him to do that.  But let's not go out of our way to create new things to worry about.  Let's just focus on getting him to the right meeting at the right time each day.  Let's get that down first.

Another thing about S that makes times like this more stressful for her is that she's a consumate comparer.  You don't know how many times I've heard about what other families have or do that we don't.  This family is doing special tutoring; this family is sending their kids to private school; this family bought a portable schoolroom for their backyard.  And it's not just about school and it's not just during coronavirus.  It's about everything, all the time, and it's often framed as if we should be doing that as well.  Actually, that's not entirely fair, it's more framed as, Should we be doing this?  With a question mark at the end.  So-and-so has their kids in gymnastics, should we put our kids in gymnastics?  Should we get a membership to a private pool?  Should we put them in tennis classes?  Should we have them take French?  Should we get them bigger bikes?  Should we rent a house on the beach for a month?  Should we get an electric car?  Should we get rid of a car?  And so on and so on.

On one hand, this is a good quality.  There's nothing wrong with being ambitious or wanting what's best for your family.  On the other hand, it's, like, just stop: stop comparing what we have to what everybody else has.  For one thing, you don't even know if other people are even happy with what they have.  People often pretend as if things are better than they actually are, especially on social media.  For another thing, if you cherry pick the best parts about everybody you know, and use those as points of comparison, then you're setting yourself up for inevitable failure.  Nobody can possibly be as good as a best-of composite of all their acquaintances.

Anyway...

In other news, sad news, I found out today a guy I went to high school with died of cancer a few weeks ago.  This marks, like, the twentieth person I know from high school who has died.  That's abnormally high, right?  It seems like it, but I don't know for sure.  One factor in this might be that I knew a lot of people in high school.  I wasn't the BMOC or anything like, but I had my irons in a lot of fires, so to speak.  I did jocky and nerdy and arty things in high school, so if you picked a kid at random, there was a decent chance I knew them.

This guy who died recently, for example, he was two grades ahead of me, but we were on the wrestling team together, so I knew him.  We weren't buddies -- I don't even know if he would have remembered me -- but I remember him.  He seemed like a good dude.  He was an excellent athlete.  Football was his main sport, and I once saw him on TV playing in a random bowl game in college.  (He played for Air Force, and I think it was this game I saw him in.  So, it probably wasn't "random."  It was against my boyhood team the Washington Huskies, which is likely why I was watching it.)  His obituary made me sad, as obituaries often do.  He had kids and a wife and did a lot to help out veterans in need.  You hear clichés about how life goes fast, and how you take it for granted when you're young, and then you have kids and reach middle age and come to find it's all too true.

My dad forwarded me the obituary and included in the email was a photo of the wrestling team, in which I happen to be standing right next to this kid.  It also made me lament, just a tiny bit, that I didn't try harder in wrestling or stick with it after high school.  At the time the photo was taken, I was a sophomore and he was a senior, and we were pretty evenly matched, despite the fact he had two-years and thirty pounds on me.  I had so much promise!  I mean, I fulfilled it to some extent (district champion at 168-pounds in 1996), but with a little more dedication, I probably could have been really good, like, one of the top wrestlers in the state.  The flip-side of this, however, is that it would have taken some serious sacrifice, and maybe it wouldn't have been worth it.  Maybe I was better off doing other things, like hanging out with friends or learning how to code or reading books.  Those things are important too.  At the very least, however, I wish I would have gotten into martial arts earlier.  It's cool now, but at 43 I'm just never going to do be able to do the things I could do at 23, and I almost never got sore back then.  Youth!  Such a shame it is wasted on the young.

Alright, I started out talking about a guy I once knew who tragically passed away and ended up having a mini-midlife crisis.  I think it's time to quit.

Until next time...