Spent a lot of the day in one of the most American, most common activities – shopping in a classic suburban mall. Kind of a nightmare, but necessary for the upcoming Derby. Most of my clothes the last year have been purchased at Costco, and a few online from Chinese makers via Amazon. Not exactly haute couture. So I’m trying to move upscale a little for the big week. It’s been a looooong time since I bought any dressy clothes. Retirement from full-time in office work, then a couple years of at-home pandemic work, then a few more years of actual retirement. So shopping for formal/dressy clothes in a mall is a very unusual thing. It wasn’t fun.

I was mostly successful. Everything fits (mostly), and everything looks good. I’ll say that Von Maur prices are crazy high (didn’t buy there), and Macy’s prices (with clothing on sale) were acceptable. Pretty much the same clothes, but Von Maur was 2-4x more expensive. How do they stay in business?

Shifting gears, it appears that a constellation of federal judges are challenging Donnie Convict more directly. And Donnie is ignoring them. That’s a Constitutional crisis – the Executive branch is defying the Judicial branch. So it’ll be “interesting” to see how this plays out. If the judges fold, we have a dictator, a king. Crazy. I sure hope sanity prevails, but so far “sanity” is well hidden.

Maybe Spring will bring new light to all of this.