It’s the end of the Thanksgiving holiday weekend. Tomorrow it’s back to work for many people (back to part-time work for me), and time to eat something other than Thanksgiving leftovers. Then we have a short three “normal” weeks until the beginning of the Christmas holiday week. I’ve always loved that cadence of a few weeks of work, then a week or two of rest and celebration. Call me lazy.

Though this year has been anything but normal. This past week we worried about family members who recently tested positive for COVID (so far, so good – no descents into serious symptoms). My recovery from knee replacement surgery continues – getting used to all the strange little nuances of having an artificial knee. The existential drama of the 2020 election is playing out with a whimper from Trumpville, a good thing. The addition of a grandson in the midst of the pandemic was an amazing thing about 2020, the best thing that happened all year. Yay for Jessie!

The year began with what I believed at the time would be the biggest event of the year (so much for that), with my brothers and I moving my dad and stepmom out of their house and into assisted living. That was traumatic for everyone, but that experience is now lost in the chaos of the rest of 2020. And I’ve spent considerable time this week thinking about what the economy is going to be like in 2021 after 20-25% of all small businesses are gone.

Another 2020 thing – we have close friends who are leaving the state post-retirement, and that hurts extra because, well, making close friends after the age of 60 isn’t easy. Each person’s world shrinks a little every year we age, and their leaving shrinks both our worlds a bit. But I wish them the best of luck.

Thinking forward just a bit, I have a few short-term goals for the remainder of 2020.

• Make some better progress on the novel.
• Change my daily routine; bake some exercise into every day.
• Get my slice(s) of pumpkin pie.

That’s a pretty ambition-free list (odd…it turns out that the only solid antonym for ambition is “lazy”, and that isn’t the right word here). So I think I can get ‘er done, as they day back home.

I just woke up from a post-turkey-sandwich nap and realized I’ve made a terrible mistake. We didn’t have the usual crowd here for Thanksgiving, and Kathryn doesn’t like pumpkin pie, so…I decided we could go without pumpkin pie this time. What an idiot. It’s 48 hours after the Thanksgiving meal and my entire nervous system is sending a “where’s the pie?” urgent signal. Withdrawal is not gonna be pretty.

For your entertainment on this fine Thanksgiving Day, I present the Trump Memorial Library. Someone spent a lot of time on this – the detail is excellent. I chuckle every time I take the tour.

I didn’t know this about Thanksgiving. From Heather Cox Richardson’s wonderful blog:

“That first Thanksgiving celebration was not in Plymouth, Massachusetts. While the Pilgrims and the Wampanoags did indeed share a harvest feast in fall 1621, and while early colonial leaders periodically declared days of thanksgiving when settlers were supposed to give their thanks for continued life and– with luck—prosperity, neither of these gave rise to our national celebration of Thanksgiving.

We celebrate Thanksgiving because of the Civil War.“

And Lincoln was the one who institutionalized the Thanksgiving holiday for Americans. Who knew? Follow the link above and read the whole thing.

One more weird and trivial item about Thanksgiving. It seems that raccoon was once viewed as a tasty Thanksgiving main course, and President Coolidge’s family adopted their raccoon rather than roasting it. Good for them.

This weekend has brought some fearful, discouraging developments.

1. Coronavirus has made its way into our family circle. I won’t say who to protect their privacy, but…it’s no longer an abstract fear. It’s here.
2. An old friend has suffered a serious drug overdose due to depression and hopelessness. I’ll call this a second-order COVID effect related to isolation and loss of normalcy.
3. The US has passed 12M known cases, 260,000 deaths and accelerating. The holidays are just going to add fuel to the fire.
4. My dad is still in lockdown in his assisted living facility – it’s been about eight months since he’s been outside! He’s OK for now, but all these months of inactivity are weakening him and those with him, quickly. You can hear it in his voice.

It’s hard to stay optimistic in the face of all this. My natural tendency (personality plus training as an engineer) is to want to immediately fix things that are a problem. But some things can’t be fixed. I can make all the plans I want and it isn’t going to change anything on that list.

There *are* things to be thankful for, and I run them through my head fairly often now like a mantra. Our friends and family. Financial security. My successful knee surgery. A sound mind and reasonably-sound body. The beautiful grandkids. Plenty of books to read.

Here’s to focusing on the positives, even as it gets tougher to do so.

The news from the world is weird, scary and bad. COVID. Politics. Environment. Economy. Easy to get depressed.

Then there’s this guy. Makes you believe it’s all going to be OK. How can you not love that face?

Well, we seem to have survived the 11/13/20 numerological curse.

At least most of us survived. Yesterday’s COVID-19 numbers were 183,000 new cases and 1397 deaths, according to World ‘o Meter. It’s tragic, and it didn’t have to be this way. Trump and his cronies led us to this point. Tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of people have needlessly died because of the lack of any plan, logic or empathy on the part of the federal government. We’re all kind of numb to this news now, but…it’s 100% criminal and history will judge us harshly. Especially Trump.

Only 67 days until the 2021 inauguration, and that includes three big holidays. So it’s survivable. In the meantime, as the Brits did in 1939, Keep Calm and Carry On.

Internet service was restored yesterday. Turns out the problem was a malfunctioning cable amp in the attic; took about a minute to fix once the technician found it.

What’s really on my mind this morning is how wrong I was about retirement. After working for 40 years, I couldn’t imagine much beyond the daily commute and meeting-filled corporate life. Work hard for five days, then try to pack some combination of rest and fun in for two days. Repeat 50 times per year.

As I left the full-time workforce in late 2018 I imagined all my time taken by golf, travel, reading and maybe writing. For the first year or so that was mostly true – we traveled HARD in 2019. I managed to fit a lot of other things in, but travel was the focus.

And then 2020 hit. I suppose what has happened since then is a bit of a regression back toward employment, but it’s been useful given the difficulty in traveling. Combining my part-time gigs of 2019 and 2020, it seems that filling one’s time after full employment hasn’t been a challenge at all. I’ve stayed busy with a diverse set of projects, including:

• Paid phone consultations with companies in the US, India and Europe, typically on how IT works in energy companies. these are typically 1-2 hours and pay quite well.
• A multi-month consulting gig advising a German company on software for bioreactors.
• Growing Board responsibilities at 211 San Diego. We’re leading a great nonprofit organization, one that is very needed in this shitshow of a year.
• Publishing one or two technology analyst reports for an advisory services company. My most recent one from 2019 was on artificial intelligence and automation.
• Filling a part-time role as COO for a growing company. That one is very recent, and it remains to be seen how long that gig will last. But it’s challenging.
• Writing my first real novel, a work still in progress but getting closer to complete.
• Serving as a Board member for a rapidly-growing for-profit technology services company.

So when I look back at that list, I’m amazed at all that’s happened, all that I’ve been able to do post-retirement. I conclude that being semi-employed, self-directed and self-employed is much better than the full-time corporate life I had adopted. Who knew?

Yesterday our Internet and TV service went dark. It’s happened before, but it always got fixed in a reasonable amount of time (4-5 hours is my definition of reasonable for something like this).

Eight hours into the outage I managed to reach someone from Spectrum, our so-called service provider. Their automated system kept telling me that my area was “experiencing intermittent outages, and our technicians are working hard to restore your service”, but I could find no evidence of that online. (Using my weak T-mobile phone service as a mobile access point, the same thing I’m doing to post this). When I reached their human, she said no, there was no outage in my area so they would have to schedule a technician to come by and check things out. The first appointment they had to offer was Friday, four days out. No amount of outrage on my part would move her from that date, so I hung up the phone upset and determined to switch providers.

Today I still have a goal of switching, but I want to also fix the weakness in our data services. We need two providers, and I’m willing to pay for that. Turns out Internet service is now the #3 priority in our house, just after electricity and running water. It may become #2 after our Tesla battery bank goes in.

Without Internet, I can’t do video calls. There’s no Netflix or Amazon Prime via Roku. My music server won’t work. Doing basic research for writing is difficult. And on and on.

Living on a rural hilltop as we do puts me at a disadvantage here. Many of the advanced data services (like AT&T fiber) aren’t or may not be available at our address. The cell carrier’s coverage is also weak. Where’s Musk’s space-based Internet service when you need it?

Anyway, later today I’m off to a coffee shop somewhere to use their Internet service and do some research on what services I should sign up for. And Spectrum will be last on my list.

Here’s a little screed from Dave Winer, a smart guy I’ve been listening to for 20 years. Among other things, Dave is the original blogger, the Blogfather. Here’s what he has to say about Biden’s speech last night and what he recommends. I agree.

But Biden’s speech was disturbing. Not because he said anything other than what he was saying through the campaign — he was totally consistent. But now we’re on the other side of the election, and I don’t think all the happy talk about working across the aisle will amount to anything, other than a sense by the Repubs and their voters, that yeah you can walk all over the Dems and there’s never a price to pay.

Another quote: I like what JFK said in his inaugural, to the Soviets.

“Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.

The equivalent from Biden to McConnell today would be…“We noticed that Trump stopped getting his Cabinet officials approved by the Senate a couple of years ago, and McConnell never said a word about it. So the first round of my Cabinet appointments will be on the house, freebies, appointed without Senate approval. Then we can have a big bipartisan conference on how we want this to work in the future. And until then, the Senate is out of the advise-and-consent business. If you don’t like it, ask Nancy Pelosi if she’ll impeach me. Heh.”

Hopefully the Repubs will squawk, loudly, and take the Dems to court. And Biden, like Trump, will ignore what the court says, if they dare rule on this.

Same with oversight from the Senate. Cross that off the list too, until we come to some larger agreement about enforcing the norms that Trump and McConnell trashed over the last four years. Maybe the price is, dear Senate, that McConnell is censured and loses his party leadership. Or maybe we insist that he be sent back to Kentucky. I’m not kidding. What you all did is not excusable. We’re willing to let McConnell take the fall, and then we can move on from there.

But don’t tell me how we’re friends, we’re not friends. McConnell came within a hair of turning America into a fascist dictatorship. He must’ve thought he’d get away with it.

I wrote about this in We must be worse than the Repubs on Oct 27.

“The Repubs walk all over the Dems. But if you love America, you have to vote Democratic, because the Repubs are crazy fascists. We have to teach the Dems how to be hardass motherfuckers, and insist that they have a head-on collision with the Repubs so they respect them, and in doing so, respect us.”

It sure sounds like Biden is making the same insane mistake Obama did, believing that this election is somehow transformative, or that he is transformative, and all of a sudden, because the US is in dire trouble (as usual when the Dems take over), the Repubs will transform. They only respect you if you drive straight into a head-on collision with them without hitting the brakes. You are the president, Mr President-elect, you have to be the badass. I’m hoping you know that and this happy talk is just a veneer.

I agree 100%. Don’t be naive – the Republicans will not change, will not play fair in 2021. Have to recognize the game and play it better.

OK, this works for me. Now back to our regular (not insane) national program…

2020 remains the shittiest year ever, with very few exceptions.

The US has registered over 10 million COVID-19 cases so far. Informally, that’s more like 20-30M cases, given our deplorable testing program.

The US 7-day moving average for new COVID cases surpassed 100K for the first time, registering 101K yesterday. There’s really no end in sight right now – Americans have lost the will to control the disease.

It’s been 35 weeks (245 days) since we started taking pandemic precautions in our household. Sure seems longer.

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have received 4 million more votes than Trump/Pence. That’s a solid victory in the popular vote.

On this day (Nov 7 in 1972), Richard M. Nixon was re-elected President in a landslide. I’m thankful the story will be different this year.

It rained approximately 0.1 inches in Fallbrook last night, the first rain in 8 months.

We also had the coldest temperature for the year last night, at 51 degrees F. That’s a balmy evening in the Midwest, but around here people will break out their down jackets and ski caps.

According to GoodReads, I’ve read 75 books this year. I’ve slowed down lately – my attention span is pretty short these days.

20 years ago this week I proposed to this wonderful person (below). Definitely one of my better decisions in adult life. Thanks for saying yes.

Have to say, I’ve felt tired and unsettled all day. Can’t get comfortable, constantly hungry and irritable. Maybe it’s the lingering question of Trump. I don’t have Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS), but I may have a case of Trump Existential Dread (TED).

Or maybe it’s the weird weather moving through. The day started out sunny and cool, then it got hot, and now at 330pm there’s a windy, Bay-area-style fog/cloud front moving in. That’s a lot of weather in one day for Socal.

I’ll keep trying to find something to push me out of my funk. TGIF, right?

This was nice to wake up to today. From CNN, 11-6-20, 7am PST.

We had the opportunity to see a traditional Bluegrass band while in Branson. That’s my kind of country music.

I really hoped that people would rise up and vote Trump out by a landslide, but it didn’t happen. Instead, we have one of the closest elections ever, much like 2000 (Bush v. Gore). That didn’t end well.

It will take a couple more days to get reliable results from WI, PA, MI, NC, GA and NV. Biden needs to win several of those to win the election.

This morning feels exactly like I’m in the hospital waiting room, waiting to hear whether a loved one has died or not after a horrific accident. Lots of dread but clinging onto a slim hope that everything will be OK.

Overlaying that dread is a sadness at the realization that approximately half of all Americans want Trump as President even AFTER they’ve seen him in action. After all the lying, the disrespect for women, the in-your-face graft and corruption, the infantile behavior, the lawlessness…they still want him in charge. This isn’t the country I thought it was – the reality is much darker.

It’s going to be a long couple of days.

Upon returning home and reflecting on the state of things, several thoughts dominate.

First, this is going to be a pivotal week for America, if not the world. I think this might be the most important week in my lifetime. If Trump is re-elected, chaos and division will reign for another four years. I truly don’t think our democratic system can survive under an unleashed Trump. Trump has made it clear that laws and norms don’t apply to him, and is tearing the democratic system down to his sole advantage. We would become an autocracy, basically a third world country with first-world technology and resources. Hard to believe, but here we are. And it gets decided this week.

Second thought is that I have a lot I still want to experience and accomplish, so it’s time to get healthy. I’ve taken health for granted and have been lucky, but I can’t count on that forever. So I intend to put the some serious willpower into getting healthy.

I had already made this personal resolution about health, and then I heard some bad news from one of my best friends about a surgery gone wrong. He’s had a serious health setback and will need help from his friends and family to recover. I’ll be there for him, but his misfortune is a stark reminder not to take good health for granted. Consider me reminded.

Third thought is that it’s a big country. There is sooooo much open space between CA and KY. Millions of square miles of unpopulated or very lightly populated land. Given that, why do we have such an immigrant-hostile attitude? I’m not saying we should just open up our borders, but a rational immigration policy would select people willing to settle in some of these vast unpopulated areas and make something of the land and of themselves. I would love to see our immigration policy and process revised, top to bottom. Immigrants could once again become the engine of our growth.

Fourth and final thought is that it really is a great country. We take so much for granted, and we’ve accomplished great things in the last 250 years. Our technology, our national infrastructure, our vast national resources – we have all the ingredients we need to accomplish great things as we did in the past. But we’re about to lose that by dividing ourselves politically. We need a common cause, maybe a common enemy, to get reunited as a country.

Maybe it’s time for some hostile aliens (and I don’t mean immigrants) to land. I’d prefer the uniting force be something less militaristic, but…so far a pandemic and ecological collapse haven’t managed to be that uniting force. But an invasion by ugly, merciless, baby-snatching insectoids – that might just do it.