Election Bummer

Harumph. My first choice for city council is likely to place 3rd in a top-two primary. My first choice for mayor is way down the list. My first choice for school board is coming in a distant second, so I’ll get to vote for him in November. But I’m not even confident he’s a good choice. I’m with him on one issue, but I don’t know much about him on other issues. I just think we need more than one opinion in this city, so whatever I can do to bring some diversity (of ideas!!!) to town is what I’l be doing.

After the Election

The work doesn’t stop when all the votes are counted. I don’t have any kids in school (thank goodness), but I really want the district to lighten up with the anti-racism rant that they’re on. They’re not going to quit until the discipline numbers for every group of kids are equal. I wonder if they’ll keep going until the numbers for boys and girls are equal. That would be very interesting. The best way to accomplish that, I think, would be to get the girls to act up as much as the boys do. I doubt they could get the boys to sit still and behave. Oh, sorry. That was snarky.

MAGA vs WOKE: I Can Relax

In 2020, my anxiety about wokeness increased almost daily. By the end of the year, it was on par with my anxiety about MAGAs. Wokesters want to indoctrinate kids with race essentialism; MAGAs want to, well, what do they want to do? Create chaos, I think. I felt like our country was in the midst of a steep decline and I needed to do something. But what? Writing is the only thing I can really do, and my audience is pretty small. Hence, more anxiety because I couldn’t help stop the decline.

Then last night I listened to a DishCast with a conversation between Wesley Yang and Andrew Sullivan. And slept well. Yang has such a special perspective on the craziness. If you don’t follow him on Twitter, do so. He tweets are, well, they are hard to characterize, but I get a kick out of them. In any event, last night I listened to him describe what’s happening as just more politicians trying to position the next generation of voters (today’s K-12 kids) to be ready to vote for them. I guess the thought that this is business as usual was comforting, even though it isn’t really comforting if I think about it much. Better than the end of America as we’ve known it, though.

Ice Cream Preferences

I was in for a stress echo last week (an echocardiogram with an injection to get my heart rate up). It took a while as lots of different players were involved. We had to get the “device nurse” to set my pacemaker up a notch. So I told my story about having a serious angina attack while checking out at the grocery store. Instead of walking home, I got a ride with Lyft. I almost asked the Lyft driver to take me to the hospital, but I’d bought ice cream and I wanted to get that into the freezer, so I came home. By the time I got the ice cream safely put away, I felt fine, so I just stayed home.

But the mention of ice cream got us all talking about favorite flavors. I voted for Tillamook French Vanilla. Others voted for Moose Nuggets, Strawberry, Chocolate Fudge, anything with coffee flavor. All agreed that Tillamook is super creamy. The test came out fine, but I couldn’t get to the ice cream fast enough when it was done.

To Travel or Not to Travel

In a fit of optimism recently, I made reservations to go to Kodiak, AK in mid-August. But I’ve been reading their newspaper online so I’ll know what’s going on in Kodiak, and one thing that’s going on is Covid. Their numbers are equal to the last big surge in December. Alaska is all red on the CDC’s Covid risk map. Alaskans are not big on the vaccines, so I just don’t know whether going there is a good idea. We are really looking forward to this trip, but I can’t imagine coming down with Covid in Kodiak. Not a good scenario, I think. We probably wouldn’t really get sick until we got home, but then we’re here with all these older folks who really don’t need to be exposed to Covid. 

Damn. Why can’t people just get vaccinated so we can get on with life!

And Speaking of Covid…

I went to a Cactus restaurant for my birthday with Charlie and another friend. We started out at a nearby Bar and Grill with outdoor seating, but for some reason, it was screaming kid day at the B & G. So we went to Cactus instead. Their outdoor seating was full, so we went inside. Our table had a note saying that the employees without masks were all vaccinated, so we should just chill. 

Are they not reading the news? Vaccinated people can get Covid; vaccinated people can spread Covid germs to vulnerable people; hence, vaccinated people who are close enough to hear your order in a noisy restaurant should be wearing masks! I think I’ll call them and give them a piece of my mind. Super frustrating! 

A Year Older

Yes, it’s true. I’m a year older. But I feel fine! Except when my heart does angina tricks at the grocery store. I’m confident I’ll be here a year from now! 

Charlie has a birthday in September, and it’s a big one. Should he have a party? Hmm.