News and Updates

1. So it’s been a while but it’s also been a busy while and that’s a lovely thing. This summer has been packed with things – most of them good things, at least in my hyperlocal spot in the universe – and I have quite a backlog of posts to make now. This will get done eventually.

2. We had houseguests last week from Belgium and spent a happy time showing them around southern Wisconsin and generally hanging out and enjoying their company as well. It’s been a while since we’ve seen Fran, Veerle, and Roeland, and now we owe them a visit! Look for details in the next post.

3. Of course there is nothing like the prospect of houseguests to make every mechanical system in your life fail completely. In the last two weeks we have: 1) gotten a flat tire on my car, had to call AAA to get the damn thing off the wheel, and then had to replace all four tires because they were mostly working on the memory of treads, 2) replaced two miniblinds moments before they died, thus removing the last of the blinds that had actual strings on them, 3) snapped the outside garage light trying to tie a string of overhead lights onto it (I have a replacement that I won’t put up until we take the string of lights down in the fall), 4) repaired both toilets, 5) fixed the dehumidifier, 6) fixed the lawnmower, 7) flushed the hot water heater only to discover that the sediment blocking the upstairs bathroom sink and shower wasn’t coming from that, and 8) cleaned and replaced the showerhead to no avail so I will have to put up a new one, and if the plumber I spoke with over the phone yesterday is correct in his assessment of the situation we will likely need to replace the pipes to that bathroom which can only happen by removing everything between those pipes and the open air and that sounds both expensive and shower-free so I think this process can stop now.

4. On the plus side, Lauren is still traveling, Oliver is gearing up to go to grad school this coming week, Kim and I are about 80% certain we still have jobs in the fall (the joys of working in higher education in a nation governed by idiots who see education as a threat to their power), and the cat is now getting monthly shots for arthritis and feels much better, apparently. I need to see if they’ll do that for me as well. Every day we’re closer to November and civilized weather. There are still good things in this world.

5. We spent today at IKEA getting stuff for Oliver as he sets out into his first real apartment and while IKEA is Kim’s favorite store and we love Sweden in general, it is always an experience at IKEA. At some point I was just standing by the cart while Kim and Oliver were off doing something else and a woman walking past exclaimed to nobody in particular, “Somehow my very quick upgrade has turned into an epic situation” and I think we all felt that, down there at the IKEA.

6. Every time I look at anything to do with the news it’s like somebody turned up the Stupid to catastrophic levels. Convicted Felon Donald J. Trump and his minions, lackeys, cronies, and slaves have defunded PBS (the only really reliable source of news in the US, because a well-informed citizenry asks too many pointed questions), seriously proposed a Versailles-level palace addition to the White House (remind me, how did it end for the last residents of Versailles when they were this actively cruel to the people they ruled over?), waffled on tariffs for the umpteenth time while inflation sets in anyway, forced a major network to cancel one of its most popular shows because the host dared to criticize Convicted Felon Donald J. Trump directly, and continued to have their ICE goons kidnap people off the streets and traffic them to foreign nations, and really all you can say is that they should have released the fucking Epstein files by now, unedited and unchanged. Also, the Israeli genocide against Gaza seems to be gaining speed and far too few people in the US seem bothered by this grotesque evil. I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just.

7. The late and much-lamented Molly Ivins once said that “Some days you open the paper and it’s kind of like finding Fidel Castro in the refrigerator, smoking a cigar. Hard to know what to think.” I feel that more and more every day.

8. Every once in a while I log into my Reddit account to see if I still want to keep it. I haven’t deleted it yet, so I suppose that’s a good sign. I recently stumbled across a forum whose only purpose is to ask people to read things written in cursive. The thing is, though, that these are not 17th-century manuscripts that even historians would have trouble reading because clearly everyone in the 1600s was severely malnourished to the point of not being too weak to hold a pen correctly. No, these are recent documents, clearly legible to anyone of my generation, but they stopped teaching cursive in schools about a decade or two ago and now there is an entire cohort of Americans that can’t read any handwritten documents older than the Obama presidency and it makes me I feel even older than I did before I knew this.

9. The air is hazy again right now because of the Canadian wildfires and if there are people reading this ten or twenty years from now I just want to point out that there was a time when that wasn’t a normal part of the summer. Us old folks (see Item 8, above) can remember when it was possible to go outside in the summer months without protective gear or SPF3K sunscreen (available in matte or glossy) and it is a shame what they stole from you. Honestly, I spent most of Tuesday night walking around the house looking for what was burning, since a minor fire would fit in well with Item 3 above, only to discover that it was Canada. You could actually taste the air if you went outside. You’d think it would taste of maple syrup, but you’d be so, so wrong.

10. Yes, we saw the South Park episode. I hadn’t watched South Park since Chef was still on it, but many people insisted we see this episode and so we did. The South Park people have clearly run out of fucks to give and I wish them well because somebody has to take Convicted Felon Donald J. Trump and his minions, lackeys, cronies, and slaves down a notch. Might as well be poorly animated, gleefully foul-mouthed cartoon characters.