First night’s sunset in Cabo. Not too shabby. Taken with the new iPhone 17 Pro Max.

After a long travel day, we saw plenty of whales and I downed some ice cold Herra Durra Blanco. Therapeutic.

UPDATE

Down day today, just whale watching and porch sitting. Trying to rest up for a big day tomorrow – leaving on a fishing excursion at 7am. Have no idea how the fishing will be. The weather is…atypical. I feel qualified to say that after coming down here on this week for 20+ years. Rough seas, cloudy skies, a hard easterly current offshore…this is unusual. So again, I have no idea what fishing will be like. I could have walked over to the docks at noon-ish to see what the morning boats were bringing in, but…lazy.

Part of the down day is a little Internet surfing. I’m dropping in on the Lexington Fasig-Tipton Winter Mixed Sale, where our syndicate is shopping for yet another broodmare. It’s surreal, watching a KY auction in real time as we sit on the Cabo coast 3000-ish miles away.

We took a long walk on the beach as our minor exercise today. Walking on these beaches is strenuous – you sink in easily through the coarse granite sand and you have to expend considerable energy to move forward. It’s also a free pedicure.

The other big activity of the day is reading. I just finished Maximum Light by Nancy Kress, a superb story about ecological damage gone extreme. The core idea is the same as my short story Intervention – human birth rates drop to near zero, but for very different reasons. In Kress’s book, it’s because of ecological damage resulting in human genome error. In mine it’s because aliens watch what we do to the Earth/ecology and decide to punish us. I wonder if my short story was subconsciously influenced by Kress’s book, which I think I read years ago. In any event, her book is excellent. Recommended.

Now I’m on to a classic Peter Hamilton space opera, Fallen Dragon. I love Hamilton’s books, and they’re classic world building novels. Everything my writers’ group hates about world building, Hamilton does. He influences my writing – my default mode is to explain the world I’m writing about by telling, not showing. That’s anathema to a lot of writers. But I love it, so fuck ’em. My novel Lost Hope was first written with extreme backstory and world building, and my writers’ group convinced me to rewrite it as first person present with little or no telling. That’s where I got lost. I may or may not get back into it, but I kind of understand why I’m stuck. Days like today where I have hours to sit and think make me want to get back into serious everyday writing. We’ll see.

Tomorrow, fishing. Hope we catch something edible for the rest of the week.

What a game last night! That was one for the ages. I sure wish I could have been there.

Mark Pope’s post-game presser with his 1996 National Champ team mates was a real treat. Happy for him.

Dook lost, Vandy lost, and we beat Tennessee again. Perfect day.

This team, though…they’ve turned out to be tough. Slow starters and dramatic, but tough. Kardiac Kids, for sure.

Big day today. It’s gameday for UK v TN, UK at home in another high-stakes SEC slugfest. I sure hope we don’t have to hear Rockytop after this one. And I sure hope Doug Shows isn’t one of the refs.

And it’s the day before we leave for Cabo. Last minute packing to do. This will be our first flight using the new Southwest boarding process with assigned seats, so that’ll be interesting.

And…it’s the day I finished the incredibly tough iPhone switch. Yesterday we went to the T-Mobile store to give them lots of money in exchange for two shiny tech bricks. That turned out to be very, very hard. We spent 3 hours at the store as the techs there fumbled through the account/plan and device changes. I can’t tell you how many times I heard “we have a new system, and it’s much harder to use”. We managed to get K’s device switched and the data transferred, but my phone simply would not allow us to copy its data onto the new one. We tried several methods, but….nope. So we took my old phone and the new one home, where I worked on a manual process of transferring all the data, apps, and settings from iPhone 14 to iPhone 17.

I spent most of the evening and another hour or two early this morning, but I’m finished. The 14 is now clean and reset to factory, and the 17 is working fine. But what a slog – I’ll think twice before the next switch, hopefully in 3 years or longer. Every step of the process was difficult and slow. It’s amazing how much of life is now packaged up in one’s phones, apps, data and passwords.

I’ve decided it’s time to upgrade mobile phones, and holy shit the shopping/comparison experience is tough. The mobile service providers have made it *very* complicated to decide what one should do. Lots of confusing, dense information to sort through.

We’re both currently on T-Mobile 55+ plans, using an iPhone 14 Pro and an iPhone 14. With the advent of the iPhone 17 series, the new features – mostly better battery life, standardized USB C charging cables, and better cameras – are compelling. K’s iPhone 14 won’t hold a charge for more than a few hours, so that’s now a big problem.

Both Mint Mobile and Spectrum offer deeply discounted monthly rates but limited value on new phone purchases or trade-ins. For example, Mint offers a $15/month rate (for a year), but will only give me $200 trade-in toward an iPhone 17 Pro. T-Mobile, if I stick with my $60/month rate, will give me $900 in trade-in toward the upgraded iPhone. So comparing the two, my 12-month cost for T-Mobile would be $60×12 = $720, plus $200 (the difference between trade-in allowance and the $1100 price of the iPhone 17). So, $920.

The Mint Mobile 12-month cost would be $15×12 = $180, plus $900 (the difference between trade-in allowance of $200 and the $1100 price of the iPhone 17, again). So, $1080.

I looked at Boost Mobile – they have great monthly rates ($25/month), but offer no trade-in deals. So their 12-month cost would be $900 (for a new phone bought through Boost) plus $25×12 = $300 + $900 = $1200. I have a feeling that if I do the same analysis for other providers, I’ll end up in the same price range. Funny how that works.

Plus, if switching to another carrier, I have to consider things like international charges, data charges, call coverage (Fallbrook has had some very spotty coverage in the past – your mileage varies a lot in our rural area), customer service…etc. So the simplest/safest is to stay with the devil we know.

You would think there’d be a strong incentive for a carrier to encourage existing customers to stay, but I can’t really find one. T-Mobile’s superior trade-in value is great, but it’s available to anyone – not just existing customers. This is a mostly mature market, so there’s just not much difference among the competitors.

I understand the technical details of mobile phone service and devices due to my engineering background and decades of providing/buying phone service for employees of my companies, so while the current offerings are dense/complex, all I have to do is absorb the financial details and the conclusions are pretty obvious. But I can’t imagine someone with no technical background trying to grok this. What is 5G and why should I care? Is 5GB enough data per month (and what is a GB)? Is 128GB enough local storage on the phone? They’ve made it tough.

The path of least resistance is to wander over to the T-Mobile store and do the deal in person, both phones at once, and get the phones’ data transferred right there. Apple has made that pretty easy. New phone cameras for the Cabo trip seems like a good idea, and certainly for the Ireland-Scotland trip coming up in late May. Time to bite the bullet.

Everyone getting ready to vote this year should watch this short video. We must vote the criminals out of office and then begin the process of bringing ICE to heel. They are an abomination.

It’s January 31st, ending the wildest/worst news month in memory. Convict Donny and his gang of disease-ridden flying monkeys have worked very, very hard in the past month to tear down American democracy and reputation. They’ve made a lot of progress.

Kentucky basketball has been on a roller coaster, mostly negative Gs, and today we get another gut check against Coach Cal and Arkansas. Cal has found new motivation and a home in Arky, so we’re a big underdog. You never know what you’re going to get from the 2026 Wildcats, so I’ll tune in with no expectations.

It’s perfect weather here in Socal – 80 degrees and sunny – while most of the country is in the freezer. That’s a big part of what brought me here the first time, back in the early 1980s. I remember a fateful February day, digging my car out of the snow in 10 degree weather, fighting my way to the airport in Cleveland, then landing in 80+ degree sunny weather in San Diego. I was flabbergasted. It had never occurred to me that a full-on climate change was possible with only a plane flight. At that moment I knew I was going to to live here.

Tomorrow brings in a perfect month. I just heard the term, meaning a month (always a February, never a Leap Year) in which all the days of the month line up in a perfect little 7×4 rectangle. It happens every ten years or so. Maybe the numerology of a perfect month will do something to counter the evil intent of Convict Donny’s gang. That would be nice. I’m spending most of the perfect month in Socal and Cabo – warm, peaceful places, as long as you stay off the freeways and out of town. That’s the plan. By the time I make my way back to KY, the deep freeze should be over and I’ll get to enjoy some time with the grandsons without risking frozen fingers and toes.

Though I am looking forward to Cabo. K and I have been going there for 20+ years and we have it down to a science. We know what’s good about the place and what to avoid/ignore. A week spent watching whales from our back porch and sipping good tequila. One long day fishing offshore. A couple of good meals out, with restaurants that carry wines from Casa Madero, the oldest winery in the Americas (1597!) and one of the best. Some exercise each day in the resort’s well-furnished gym. Epic sunsets. Last year’s whale watching was superb, so it’ll be interesting to see if this year’s migration in and out of the Sea of Cortez is as active as 2025’s.

We’ll also make a trip to the desert late this month (or in mid-March), as we expect a superbloom this year. Lots of winter rain hit the Anza Borrego desert, and when that happens, the desert comes alive for a few weeks. Here’s a shot of a blooming Borrego from 2017 (with an iPhone 6!).

I did a little research this morning and confirmed something I’ve suspected for a while. There’s a clear correlation between my travel and getting sick. Over the last 3-4 years, about 2/3 of the time I return from a trip or long flight(s), I get sick. Sometimes a cold, sometimes a flu, a couple of times Covid. Yikes.

That’s a huge downside to the travel life I’ve adopted. I’m not sure what, if anything, I can do to avoid it. Maybe adopt some extreme hygiene on travel days? Tons of hand sanitizer, some immune system boosters, and carry/wear a mask if I find myself in the vicinity of someone coughing and sneezing (I think masks do more to protect others from catching my germs, but, they *might* help as a line of defense against airborne crud).

One more reason I need to win a lottery and start flying via private jet.

I feel quite a bit better today – not 100%, but around 80%. But I’ve already lost 3 days to this latest post-travel illness. Grrrr.

My mood may be affected by the fact that I’m still sick, still losing valuable days to a bug caught on the cruise. No good deed goes unpunished. But things *do* seem pretty grim.

Kentucky basketball isn’t what it should be. With a massive NIL fund to pay the players, we should be a top-tier team. We’re not. On any given night (like last night), we’re capable of getting massacred by a solid team. It’s not clear why, so it’s not clear what the fix might be, so it’s maddening. No joy in Mudville.

The war zone in Minneapolis is so discouraging, so hard to watch our government terrorize citizens for…nothing, The cruelty is always the point with MAGA. Story after story of ICE/CBP agents breaking laws and roughing up or killing citizens. It’s a nightmare, a literal civil war. And now it’s coming to Philadelphia (or any other random blue state/city).

With all the attention on the people killed in MN, there’s still a giant list of atrocities being committed by Convict Donny and team every day. Dozens and dozens of things we didn’t vote for and will make life worse for most Americans. Insane foreign and economic policy. A war with Venezuela. Vaccine deniers taking over federal healthcare. Important regulations being gutted. Voting rights under constant attack. You can’t keep track of it all, which I’m sure is the strategy. Steve Bannon used the term “flood the zone with shit” so that we’re overwhelmed and can’t respond effectively. Well, it’s working.

There’s soooo much to do at the Socal house, so much work that’s just piling up because I can’t get to it. Big house, big property, now 50-ish years old, so there’s a lot of maintenance required. I’ve gotten pretty good at scheduling that maintenance, building it into my weekly calendar, but that’s all now irrelevant because I can’t do the work at the moment. Sore throat, congested, no energy – just walking up and down our hill does me in.

So yeah, 1/28/26 isn’t turning out to be a happy time. Some of that will change soon, and some won’t. Meanwhile, I’ll do the only thing I can and read a good book or two.

I almost made it. Thought I had escaped cleanly from the cruise with no residual damage, but nope.

We made a clean and fast exit from the ship two days ago. Down the gangway in minutes and walked to a short taxi line. $25 later, we were deposited at Ft Lauderdale airport where the security lines were surprisingly short. Great so far.

Our flight to San Diego via Denver was delayed about an hour, but not cancelled. We left FL feeling lucky. Exit row seats and everything. A nice just under four hour flight landed us at the North Pole in Denver.

UPDATE – the power just went out at the house, 630am. The generator kicked in within 2-3 seconds, and stayed running for 10 minutes, until utility power returned. Worked perfectly – I love our Generac. Anyway, back to Denver.

Denver was intense. Runways covered with swirling powdery snow, ice hanging from parked planes. About 15 degrees and windy outside. We only had 30 minutes until our next flight, so we ran from gate to gate with all our luggage. That was fun. We made the flight and took our seats, then waited to be de-iced by the line of trucks along the runways.

I was pretty sure we weren’t going to get to take off – conditions were harsh. But we made it, and I settled in for the relatively short 2 hour flight.

Made it home by 9pm, an 18 hour travel day from ship to home. A celebratory splash of Willet Rye, then a well-deserved bedtime. A long but successful day.

Then I woke up the next morning, Monday, with a massive sore throat. Uh oh. I managed to get some things done, but by the afternoon I was feeling awful. So much for a clean escape. Some kind of virus had tagged along for the ride, and now decided to show me who’s really the boss in travel situations.

A long afternoon yesterday curled up on a couch, mostly non-functional. At least today I feel stronger and have few doubts that this is a cold, not flu or Covid – no fever, no body aches, just congestion, sore throat and some serious fatigue.

This is one of the hidden costs of a travel lifestyle. You lose days every so often with the illnesses you pick up in crowds. It’s frustrating, but at least I have confidence that the new leadership of the CDC and HHS will lead the way to a cure for the common cold. Right.

What a day. UK wins another close one, and I had to watch via my phone again. I suppose I would watch all of them on my phone if it means they win. The officiating was horrific – pretty sure there was some betting thing going on, because the calls against UK in our own house were inexplicable. But we won.

I also managed to get checked in to tomorrow’s SW flight using the ship’s shitty wifi, no small feat.

But the big news of the day is the second stone cold execution of a US citizen by ICE in Minneapolis. I’ve see the videos, including frame-by-frame, and it was simply an execution. We’re now in a full fledged civil war with MN as the front line.

I hope everyone now understands that no one is safe, your legal carry permit means nothing to the ICE goons, your 1st and 4th Amendment rights mean nothing to the Trump regime. Regular people are being labelled as terrorists and killed by the masked thugs called ICE.

The ONLY good that can come out of all this is that the rest of the US wakes up and does whatever it takes to right the ship. Vote. Publish. Protest. Speak out. Fight if you must, and we may be forced into that.

UPDATE

After watching more news about Minneapolis, I’m really upset. Nauseated. How can it have come to this? The rapid escalation of violence and lawlessness since Jan 1 is stunning. Watch the movies Civil War and Anniversary and you’ll see where this is heading. Life needs to stop imitating art. Sadly, it’s time to make sure you can defend your home, because they’re coming for us all before it’s over.

Here, on a ship in the Caribbean, there’s nothing I can do but stew and rant. But when I hit land, time to make some plans. Instead of spending time on corporate boards, I think it’s time to get all my like-minded friends, families and neighbors organized, informed and moving. Create an organization or join an organization, I’m not sure which is better. But I’m jumping in one way or the other.

We’re having a full day at sea today (and another tomorrow), so we watched a movie. Holy shit. Everyone who cares about politics and about our country should see Anniversary. It shows how a single-party authoritarian government plays out by focusing on a single (though pivotal) family and how they are affected by the cultural/political change. It’s terrifying. We are clearly on this path.

Diane Lane deserves the Oscar for her role. And the writers/producers deserve credit for being brave enough to make this film. This one is going to give me nightmares…

Congress is back “at work”, and the feckless Democrats are busy shooting themselves in the foot. I’ll donate plenty to see these seven Dem Congress-idiots voted out. Voting to support ICE in any fashion is a non-negotiable firing offense. They should be ashamed.

The seven Democratic representatives who voted yes to approve ICE funding were:

• Tom Suozzi (New York)
• Henry Cuellar (Texas)
• Don Davis (North Carolina)
• Laura Gillen (New York)
• Jared Golden (Maine)
• Vicente Gonzalez (Texas)
• Marie Glusenkamp Perez (Washington)

This is pretty much my greatest fear about our government and country:

A quote from a Canadian journalist is floating around the net, sometimes paraphrased. It’s best to get the real thing. It’s by David Cochrane, host of CBC News Network’s daily “Power & Politics.”

“America isn’t the way it is because [Trump is] president. He’s president because America is the way it is.”

Yikes.

I was finally able to do that thing where, like in a movie script, you come up with the perfect comeback line.

An older “gentleman” was sitting in the cafe aboard ship a while ago. He was wearing one of those big, obnoxious Trump 2028 hats, advertising his MAGA-ness to everyone. He caught me staring at it and asked me “You like my hat?”.

With no hesitation I smiled and replied, “Yeah, love it. It really helps me understand who’s dumb and who’s not. Right?”. I gave him a thumbs up sign.

The confusion on his face was priceless. I just walked away.

One serious downside of getting Internet service aboard ship is that I can get the latest news about Mad King Donny. This article from Digby just about sums it up – we have a moronic madman in charge and he’s busy alienating America from the rest of the world.

What good is the 25th Amendment when no one will use it? We clearly have a deranged, mentally ill person in charge, and that’s *exactly* what the 25th was meant to remedy. What will it take? Good call for the 25th here.

Europeans now have a new MAGA slogan – Make America Go Away. I don’t blame them.

Sitting on one of the entertainment decks, close to a bar but tucked away so I can observe the natives as they walk past on their way to dinner, drinks, the casino, bingo night, etc. It’s entertaining and oh so depressing. So many walkers, canes, and scooters. People on scooters with a drink in each hand (can you get a DUI on a Rascal?). People bent way over, shuffling a painful walk. Aging isn’t pretty, and you have to wonder why. As a race we seem to be wired to dislike signs of aging. Is that simply Darwinian “survival of the fittest”, encoded into our behavior?

It’s a “formal night” for dinner, so now all the folks who sported way-too-tight swimwear and way-too-much-skin a couple of hours ago on the pool deck are all dressed up – which means many different things. Tuxes. Glittery dresses. Funereal suits. Business casual. Jimmy Buffet garb. An aging hipster with waxed mustache and a full head of white hair wearing wrinkled garbardine. Little black dresses. Shorts and a sports coat. Bow ties and velvet jackets. A whole lot of bellies overlapping belts, a whole lot of pear-shaped people.

I planned to do a little writing on the trip, and so far these weblog posts are all I’ve managed. I have an idea for a new novel, but…that’s a big goal. In between small $20 glasses of wine I may get a start. I definitely have to outline this one, hard – my first attempt was to write “Lost Hope” stream of consciousness (the “pantser” mode, aka seat of the pants), but I definitely need to be a plotter. I need structure. I got very, very lost letting the characters take things where they wanted. Now I can’t quite stand to kill off all their little stories and make them adhere to an outline, so I end up with multiple not-quite-right versions of everything.

Tomorrow I think we arrive in Aruba and I’ll break out the good camera gear. Open ocean doesn’t provide much inspiration for photos, but that should change on landfall.

Last couple of days in Louisville before jetting of to FL and then the Caribbean. Maybe some cold golf today, then a quick trip to Mt Sterling tomorrow. It’s been busy – some cold weather, some nice weather, a couple of Cats games, a huge birthday party, visits with siblings, building a dry sauna for the basement, 24+ hours with a new puppy, and lots of time with the kids. Got to take grandson Jesse to his first basketball practice yesterday – that was a nice memory.

Meanwhile, the world continues to go to shit. Every day is a new list of atrocities – it’s become clear that America is breaking apart at the seams. 30-40% of the country could care less that our own government is attacking (and killing!) citizens on the streets and in their homes because they’re brown or Democrat or both. That same minority doesn’t mind that we’re unlawfully attacking Venezuela and seizing their property, the *exact* same playbook as Russia is running on Ukraine. Our corrupt autocracy is emulating Putin’s. And finally, that same minority doesn’t seem to care that all these atrocities are happening so that everyone will forget that the government is unlawfully holding/concealing the Epstein files, which undoubtedly show Convict Donny as a pedophile. It’s Wag the Dog in reality, on steroids. From Digby today;

Where are the Epstein files? A social media poster on Monday noted, “So when an ICE officer tells you to get out of the car, you’re supposed to get out of the car, what are you supposed to do when a judge tells you to release the Epstein files?”

Thus in the field failure to comply with orders barked by kitted-out and under-trained DHS enforcers merits a bullet to the head. Yet failure of AG Pam Bondi’s DOJ to comply with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, passed overwhelmingly by Congress and signed by Dear Leader, seems not to merit not even a slap on the wrist. Immediately after the killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis, the right claimed her death was the consequences of her own choices. 

Donald Trump’s “Great Again”: For my friends, a pardon; for my enemies, a bullet to the head. God bless America.

Some other tidbits from The Titanic the USA as it sinks:

• Convict Donny posted a picture of himself labelled “the acting King of Venezuela” on social media. Ugh.
• The EPA has announced it will stop including the cost of human life and illness in its calculations about how much to spend on pollution control.
• Our attacks on VZ ships turned out to have been launched by military aircraft disguised as commercial aircraft. So now we can add perfidy – a war crime – to the charges of murder.
• A Republican congressman introduced a bill to allow the US to annex Greenland as the 51st state.
• Both Jerome Powell and Senator Mark Kelly are fighting back hard against Convict Donny’s illegal actions against them. Good for them!

And this just in – a cruise ship leaving Florida yesterday is reporting a huge Norovirus outbreak, affecting at least 100 passengers and even more crew. Norovirus is nasty stuff and highly contagious. I’m really looking forward to getting on the cruise ship in Ft. Lauderdale and eating at the buffet. More seriously, I’m stocking up on hand sanitizer and plan to only eat hot fresh food (no salads, nothing sitting in warming trays) as much as possible. I hate cruises and only agreed to go on this one as a big favor to my spouse – her siblings and their spouses arranged the trip, so off we go to the southern Caribbean to be close to the action in VZ. Let’s hope it’s not a literal shitshow.

In better news, my Hermitage Farm thoroughbred syndicate just acquired another stellar broodmare at the January Keeneland auction – No Fault of Mine. She’s got a great lineage, a great track record (5 wins and 6 seconds in 16 starts!), and is beautiful to boot.

My favorite social media post in a while:

That pretty much sums it up. Convicted Felon Donny is starting wars across the world to make sure people don’t get the proof that he’s a pedophile. He’s a long-term Russian asset and a child molesting creep. His election (twice!) is proof that American culture and our Constitutional processes are broken.

As bad as it is, it’s gonna get worse. More wars, more lawlessness, more destruction, more seizures of formerly peaceful / productive citizens and institutions. Donny Convict needs to be retired, ASAP.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Things I would not have believed if you told me in 1980:

• That we would all carry around a supercomputer in our pocket. And that the world’s entire collection of knowledge and history is available anytime, everywhere, just for asking.
• A large percentage of Americans distrust science and medicine, preferring to believe fairy tales about vaccines and the 2020 pandemic. (This is particularly hard to understand given the previous item.)
• America’s federal government being taken over by a completely corrupt, evil bunch of sociopaths, led by a pathetic idiot.
• That Rush and Jackson Browne would still be recording, giving concerts to large audiences and generally still creative/productive.
• That I would pay $1000/seat to go to a rock show or sports event. (Certainly not every time, but it’s been done.)
• That we haven’t been back to the Moon or even close to going to Mars. After more than 50 years since Apollo 12.
• That I could (and do) carry a giant library of books, photographs, and music in my pocket. And so does most everyone else.
• Ubiquitous and cheap flat screen TVs.
• That I would own an olive grove and (sometimes) harvest olives to make oil.
• That UK basketball would be in a crisis, clearly no longer the best in the country.
• The instant gratification of Amazon shipping and delivery. Think of something on Monday night, it appears on your doorstep on Tuesday morning.

There’s certainly more, but those are the ones that jump out at me. The world of 2026 is a strange, strange place compared to 1980.

We really do live in the worst possible timeline of the multiverse. We have (a) an insane leader who controls the world’s largest military and is surrounded by a group of hate-filled sociopaths, and (b) a UK basketball team that is pathetic. I need no further proof.

The UK hoops game last night was pathetic. From A Sea of Blue:

Leading 66-58 with 4:34 to play, that’s a game, at home, you have to close out. Plain and simple. Instead, Kentucky did everything you could possibly do to lose a game. Defensive breakdowns, turnovers, bad shots, missed shots, everything.

It was ugly, again. This season is over, a dead team walking. Another year trashed for fans.

And on the political front, what can you say? ICE just killed an innocent woman, straight-up executed her in broad daylight, and everyone in charge is gaslighting us with stories that in no way resemble the reality we all can see on video. No shame, no truth, no accountability. We’re now living as hostages to a hostile government.

And the outrages are accelerating. Every day there’s a dozen stories of how this government is making life worse for everyone. We’re getting numb to the horror, but it’s real, it’s ongoing and eventually it’s going to affect all of us, personally. Just like it did for that poor woman in Minneapolis yesterday.

I’m *really* glad I didn’t take the pledge for a dry January. Mind altering substances are needed to get through these times.

Posting from Phoenix airport, easy travel day so far. Decent wifi here, first flight wasn’t crowded, and theyve got good wood-fired pizza in Terminal D. Had to take out a loan to afford the pizza, but that’s become de rigueur.

One guy on the flight was wearing a T-shirt that literally made me see red. It said “Evil Lost” in large letters, and showed an electoral map of counties in the US, massively colored red. Because of course the huge number of rural counties voted for Trump, because they just couldn’t see their way to voting for a black woman. Evil lost…what a fucking joke. Like everything else associated with Convict Donny, it’s a perverted lie, the exact reverse of the truth. Evil is now in power, and we’re seeing it in action right now:

• The idiotic weakening of vaccine schedules for children by our captured health systems.
• The blatant exercise of military power – at the moment in VZ, but threatened against Canada, Greenland, Mexico, Cuba, etc. We’re becoming a brutal warmongering empire.
• The celebration of Jan 6, MAGA’s foundational lie.
• The blatant ignoring of law by Trump’s DoJ, including release of the Epstein files.
• The incessant and blatant financial corruption of this administration – it’s everywhere, all the time.
• The cowardly toadies in Congress and SCOTUS.
• The economic burden about to be shouldered by millions of Americans trying to afford health care.
• Ongoing snatch and grab operations by our secret police, terrorizing innocent families across the US.
• The DoD’s decision to try to punish a decorated war hero, an astronaut, for speaking the truth.

So yeah, “evil lost”. What a crock.

I tentatively signed up for a new AI-based writing tool called Spiral. I’m just beginning to explore what it can do for a writer, and my first test was to use it as a research assistant. I asked Spiral “Is Mark Pope a good coach?” The app told me that it was going out to the web to get information relevant to my question and “pondering” before it gave an answer. It pondered for about 5 minutes, and then produced this nicely-formatted answer.

———-

That’s not bad at all. It would have taken me quite a while – an hour or two – to gather all that data and then write a short article citing it. If I were still in the workplace, or working as a freelance writer, this would be immensely useful. Right away I can predict the rise of “super-employees”, who use tools like this and produce 2x or even 10x the work product they used to. Or produce the same work product 2-10x faster.

Then…I told Spiral I was writing a murder mystery on the Moon, and it responded with this:

——–

That’s a compelling premise, Jeff! A murder mystery on the Moon offers some fascinating constraints—limited suspects, no easy escape, unique forensic challenges in low gravity and a sealed environment.

What can I help you with? Are you looking for:

• Research on lunar science, Moon bases, or space travel logistics?
• Help writing specific scenes, chapters, or content for the novel?
• Something else like brainstorming plot elements or working through story problems?

——–

Hmmmm. I’ve been stuck on the novel for months, and have pretty much given up. Too many edits, too many versions, just confused on how to finish. But can I use Spiral to restart the writing process? Maybe help with some problematic plot elements, or help me fill in more/better scenes in Act 2 (I think I have a solid Act 1 and Act 3 – the book’s middle is what has me stuck.)

There’s probably a fine line between using an AI tool for research and plotting, versus using it to generate the actual text. Publishers are already taking a hard line – no AI-generated stories allowed. So proceed with caution.

But this might be what it takes to get me writing again.

Lost most of the day yesterday to what feels like an incipient cold or flu. Stuffy head, no energy, no desire to do anything other than rest…I hate losing entire days like that. There are only so many left.

Postscript from yesterday – UPS says they tried to deliver the painting at 1pm (outside of their published time window, of course), but was unsuccessful. But my son-in-law was home, so…did they really? Whatever, the painting is still in the wind and that’s one delivery try down, two more to go.

The news this morning that the US attacked Caracas and captured the President of VZ was…disturbing. Congress is out of the loop, so the attack is unconstitutional. Illegal. Just another lawless day for Convict Donny. We’re establishing a norm that the President can attack anyone, anywhere, with no approval, no justification. By this norm China could attack DC, remove Convict Donny because they say he was not duly elected. As our eyeliner VP says, “…there’s no law, there’s only power”. Maduro is a bad guy, but I don’t like how this went down. I predict this action will not end well.

In better news, today starts the real 2026 basketball season. UK plays at Alabama as a five point underdog. I think it’s a toss up, and I like our chances if we just come out and play in the first half. This is do or die for Pope and the team. But hoops is back for the next two months, and I’m grateful.

In an extreme case of the “no good deed goes unpunished” rule, I bought a rather expensive painting for my wife as a Christmas present. We just visited good friends in Florida and the wife of that couple is quite the artist. So I had K select one of her paintings as a gift, and we decided it would go best in the Kentucky house. I figured I’d just ship it from a UPS store in Florida to KY…and that’s where the punishment started.

First, the packing and shipping. The painting is large, a 3 feet by 4 feet unframed canvas. It’s mounted on a wooden frame, so that thing that happens in the movies where they roll a painting canvas up and stick it in a tube wasn’t possible (that would have been easier, in retrospect). But at the UPS store I procured a large enough box ($80) and some packing material. They informed me that they could pack the painting in the box for about $250 or I could do it myself, but I could NOT pack it inside their store. Easy decision, I bought some tape and acquired some bubble wrap from UPS (another $20). I packed the thing carefully, secured the box and took it back to the store to be shipped.

It’s only 17 pounds, and the shipping cost turned out to be $570! Their first bid was $1800, for a guaranteed delivery in a couple of days. I took the bargain option of $570 giving me a delivery date of sometime in 5-7 days. I shipped it to my daughter’s home, as I would not be in KY within the 5-7 days. Mission more or less accomplished, and the package was on its way.

Now roll forward to today, exactly seven days after I shipped it. For days I’ve tried to get shipping/delivery updates from the UPS website, with zero luck. No tracking info until today, when I see that it’s out for delivery. That’s good, but…the UPS website also tells me that “signature is required”. Not good, because I can’t guarantee that anyone will be home at the exact time of delivery.

So I try the UPS website to change that “signature required” flag. Absolutely no way to do so – their website has a lot of circular logic in it. It looks nice, but functionally it’s shit. I try their chatbot for help, and it’s worse than useless. No luck. I try getting a live human on chat, finally get one, but they’re also useless – can’t help with any of my options. I try calling in for phone assistance, and once again, no luck. First I can’t get an agent. Then a couple of hours later, I manage to get a live agent on the phone and they tell me that (1) they can’t change that delivery flag, even though it’s MY package and my money that sent it, and (2) that the UPS store that sent it (in Florida) is actually the sender and only they can change the delivery terms.

Sooooo….I call the Florida store and talk to the same person who created the shipping label and accepted the package for shipment. He was incredulous that I would think that he could change anything about the delivery at this stage, and informed me that UPS would try three times to deliver based on the apparently immutable terms of delivery (delivery terms are apparently on the same level as laws of physics), and if unsuccessful they would send the package back to origin (Florida) and charge me another $570 for that courtesy.

I don’t really know what I should learn from this experience. It’s as if I got shoved into a Kafka story, and any move I make is thwarted by some obscure rule and no matter what I try, it’s going to cost money and my original good intent is being laughed at by UPS trolls. Maybe there will be a happy-ish ending to this tale, but along the way I’ve learned that UPS is a stock I should short. Their idea of customer service is punishment.