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.