Sunday, March 13, 2022

News and Updates

1. As of this writing, Kyiv still stands.

2. It’s very hard to focus on other things when you know there’s a barbaric war going on – and yes, I am well aware that there are barbaric wars going on all the time around the globe, but this one hits me harder than most and if you find that problematic I will thank you to keep that particular bit of information to yourself as I have my reasons – but the world continues to make demands anyway. This is one of the things wrong with the world.

3. With both of my kids in college now, spring break is A Thing more than ever. Oliver and Dustin spent the last week or so hanging out with us for their spring break, livening up the place a surprising amount for two relatively quiet people. It was good to have them here. They left to go back to Small Liberal Arts College today and the place seems much emptier now. Lauren’s spring break started yesterday but she is spending it in Texas visiting Maxim’s family and by all accounts having a grand time there. For me and Kim, spring break starts next week. There will be bloggage about that, no doubt.

4. I have a theory that there are only seven hundred people on the planet. They all know you and they all know each other. There are some issues that I need to work out about this theory (why can’t I find parking?) but every so often I find more evidence that this is true. For example, last night we drove up to see Helena in her play. She did a wonderful job and we enjoyed it very much!





But here’s the thing. Helena is the daughter of our Swedish friends, Mats and Sara. Mats met Kim when he was an exchange student in her high school (graduating class: 63) back in the early 80s up in northern Wisconsin, and now it is Helena’s turn to study abroad. It’s pretty random where they put you on these programs, and a lot of it depends on where they can find volunteers to house you. So it was really a bit of a surprise when Helena discovered that one of the teachers in her American high school is Paul, who was a friend and classmate of Mats and Kim back in the day.  Kim had not seen Paul in Many Moons, and we met him and his wife Lisa for dinner before the show. It was a grand evening all around, I say.





5. I finished my second book of the year today. Granted, it was a dense (though well written) anthropological study of, well, all of human history and every society within it, so I knew going in that it would take some time. But last year I hit this milestone around January 8, so I suspect this year’s book list will be rather shorter than usual. Oh well. It’s been that kind of year.

6. It was winter here right up until late last night, and now it is spring and looks to remain so for a while. I’m sure there will be one more dip in the temperatures and perhaps even another snowfall, but we do seem to be heading toward warmer weather.

7. I’ve spent most of the last four weeks cycling two different cars into various car repair shops. Neither of them is actually fixed at the moment, though there is light at the end of the tunnel for one which means that I can then get the other in for what might be its last visit for a while. It does get tiresome.  And expensive.

8. Can we all just agree that Daylight Savings Time is silly and forget about it? If we all decide to ignore it maybe it will go away.

9. They’ve lifted the mask mandate down at Home Campus for most spaces, which has caused various bits of Upheaval in some quarters, but for the most part it seems to be going well so far. The transition went more slowly than I thought it would but I suspect that this is because they made the announcement by email and students don’t read emails anymore. Emails are things their parents told them about, like boiled sweets and paper maps. So it was a gradual transition, which I suppose is for the best.

10. The longer Kyiv stands, the worse it gets for Putin and his regime. And the worse it gets for those assholes, the worse it gets for their willing stooges here in the US. Slava Ukraini.

2 comments:

LucyInDisguise said...

4. The problem with your theory is that the actual number is 765. Those excess 65 people have just one purpose for existence: fill all available parking places wherever you may be heading. No one has ever met any of them in person. They are dispatched by your phone’s GPS.

6. Here in Northern Nevada, there is no such season as Spring. Or Fall. We only have two seasons: Freeze & Broil.

7. Two-thirds of the way to getting a new (used engine) installed in my Dodge Dakota. Gonna end up being around $3K. (I’m paying someone else to do it. My days as a backyard mechanic are soooo over!) So, of course, the Jeep has developed as-yet-undiagnosed issues with the front axle. This is the true Never-ending Story

8. I’m sitting here, watching the clock tick by the last hour before I can login and start work. The Law requires 34 consecutive hours off. Daylight Silly Time stole one hour yesterday, so here I sit. There aren’t enough “Grrrrrr”s in the world. Could have slept for another hour!

10. Indeed.

Time to get to work.

Lucy

David said...

Hi Lucy!

4. You know, that makes as much sense as anything else with that theory so I'll run with it.

6. I suppose that makes things easier to track. Here in Wisconsin we have Summer (also known as Construction), False Autumn, Second Summer, Second False Autumn, Third Summer, Autumn, Winter, Deep Winter, More Winter, False Spring, Yet More Winter, Second False Spring, Random Snow, Spring (usually a Thursday), and back to Summer. Can't follow the game without a program.

7. Good luck with those! I've been trying to get the airbags fixed on the 07 Vibe (neither car model nor parts are made anymore) - Tuesday will be the fourth try. Meanwhile the 00 Saturn wagon (same parenthetical statement) has new non-rusty things underneath but the banging from the rear axle is getting louder. Definitely a never-ending story.

8. Not enough grrrrs in the world indeed.

10. I keep bouncing from stories that talk about how this will get incredibly bad and eventually the Russians will wear down the Ukrainians and win to stories that talk about how the Russian forces will collapse by the end of the month. I suppose they're not mutually exclusive stories. I have noticed a) a definite lack of trolls on social media of late, as Russian bots and money have gone silent, and b) a concerted effort by right-wingers to retcon their subservience to Putin into something else. Fuck the lot of them.