End the Madness

Here we are, at last. The big day (sort of - hello lawyers). I went for a walk earlier and recorded a meandering, distracted Hopcast.  I haven't got the energy to process the audio. There weren't any new thoughts or observations. We've all known for a year (or four) how we're voting.

I've had some waves of anxiety about today. That anxiety hasn't been eased by hearing from a friend who made his last pre-election weapon purchase or stories in The Los Angeles Times about contingency plans.

I'm less anxious right now. One of the benefits (curses - morning guy hates night guy) of being a night owl. It's wonderfully quiet, and earlier I fired up a late night bowl of quinoa. I'm an expert in the realm of bad decisions.

I also had a good day. A friend of mine is moving back east in a week or so. A few of us gathered in a friend's backyard for a going away. I think that makes 5 legit social events for me since March. I definitely don't agree with the "cure can't be worse than the disease crowd" (veil for anti-science), but they've got a point about isolation not being healthy. My morale improved immediately upon being around people I care about, some of whom have gone through some incredibly challenging experiences during the pandemic.

There were four of us. None of us are excited about Biden, but we're all excited about a possible Biden Harris win. Stop the madness.

There are really strange currents happening in the media. It's way too late (early) to try and put together a coherent description of what I mean. But there's this growing segment of indepent journalism that...no, it's too late, my eyes are closing. I agree, Obama was disappointing on many levels (hugely inspirational on others), neoliberalism sucks, The Lincoln Project sucks, neocons suck, MSNBC's retirement home for national security folks sucks, the Russiagate investigation was ugly. Those are important issues, but they're secondary to the importance of getting a con artist, science-denying, fraud out of office. It's also about checking his base. The "lock her up" chants are a disgrace.

I got a Big Mario's pizza for the backyard party. One of my friends is looking at a move to Maine. Buy some land (cheap), build a place. Man, I love those discussions. Maine and the PNW seem like kindred souls. Logically it seems like you could do something similar here, but sometimes the heart wants distance. I'm not sure that I could ever get myself to move east of the Mississippi again (nothing logical about that mental boundary), but if I did, Maine would be high on the list. I do like New England.

I took a photo of Sam's while I was waiting for the pizza.