Entry 725: Sunday Afternoon Lightning Round

• S left last night so it's another week of single-dadding it for me. Although, I have my sister-in-law around to help me, which is huge. She took the kids out this afternoon -- it was supposed to be for Lil' S2's birthday, but Lil' S1 somehow got in on it too -- and then she's coming over a few days this week to watch the kids. I have to go into the office, and the kids are done with camps for the summer. It's a pretty sweet deal we have with S's sister: She watches our kids; we watch her dog. From our perspective it's like, two kids for one dog? Heck yeah, sign us up. From her perspective it's like, I get free dogsitting for hanging out with my nephews? Count me in.
  
  
• Put me down for a ticket on the Kamala hype train. As somebody who was tepidly in favor of Biden staying in the race until pretty late in the game, I couldn't be happier with how the switch has gone. Kamala is now a slight favorite, according to the polls, as opposed to being a massive underdog, like Biden. I don't expect Trump to retake the lead. It could happen of course, but it also could happen that Harris widens the gap, and we get to a 2020-type race. She definitely has some weaknesses, but a) I don't know that people care; b) I don't think that Trump can exploit them. On the latter, Trump just cannot refrain from the weird personal attacks that so many normies find confusing and distasteful. I mean, so far he's gone after Kamala for not identifying as Black until recently (she went to an HBCU as an undergrad and was president of the Black Law Students Association in law school), for being stupid (her law school was Cal Berkeley), and for nobody knowing her last name (what?). These are just not things that resonate with swing voters. On the former, I think so many people are so happy to have a feasible option beside Biden and Trump that they're willing to overlook Harris' shortcomings.
  
  
• We've been watching The Office as a family. Overall, it's a wonderful show, but it definitely takes a dip in the middle of Season 5. The Andy-Dwight-Angela love triangle goes on way too long, and then a lot of the characters become caricatures. The low is the episode in which Michael frames Toby by planting a bag of drugs (which is actually a Caprese salad) in his desk. Although, the Dwight Schrute "fire drill" isn't that much better. Those storylines were just too out there for me. The show comes back pretty strong, though -- the Michael Scott Paper Company episodes were solid -- and I was laughing again by the end of the season.
  
  
• Speaking of comedy, we watched Spaceballs last night with the kids. It still mostly holds up. I mean, gags like guys getting hit in the nuts and crashing into walls ("Ludicrous Speed") are evergreen hilarity for preteens. But also there are some genuinely clever jokes, and Lil' S2 loved how the combination for the air shield is 1-2-3-4-5. RIP John Candy. I was about to also type RIP Bill Pullman, but he's still alive. It's Bill Paxton who died relatively young. RIP Bill Paxton.
  
  
• I'm watching a little WNBA while I write this. My team, the Seattle Storm, are pretty good this season, which is surprising, as they were one of the worst teams in the league last year. They're playing Caitlin Clark's Indiana Fever, which is surely the reason they're on network TV in the first place. One problem with the WNBA is that their most marketable player is on a team called the Fever. What an awful name. Whose idea was that? Hey, let's name our team after a disease. Is the Indiana Sars already taken? It reminds me of that Foreigner song: Well, I'm hotblooded, check it and see, I got a fever of 103. Dude, you need to go to the hospital. Take an ibuprofen and lie down, at the very least.
  
  
• As I mentioned in a previous entry, I'm reading Lonesome Dove, and it's reminded me of how much it must have sucked to have lived back then (1870s). A major undertone of the book is how uncomfortable everybody is all the time. They're in Texas, so they're constantly suffering through the heat and dust, and there is no place to shower. There's one scene in which a guy gets dirt all over his girlfriend's bed, and it made me cringe just thinking about it. And you know it wasn't a very comfortable bed, anyway, just some sack stuffed with feathers or something like that. Surely there were no springs, and I doubt it had a firmness rating or a sleep number. Then, there is a part where a guy gets a thorn in his hand, and it's get infected because of course they didn't have Neosporin back then. And the way the author talks about the mosquitoes -- it just all sounds so miserable. I don't know when the best time to be alive was or will be, but I don't see how it could be before the advent of antibiotics, sun screen, or Deet.
  
  Until next time...