Wednesday, January 13th, 2021
Given we are still quarantining at home and today was an unstructured Wednesday meant for check-ins with teachers I managed to coerce EM to go for a post lunch walk with me. It is the first neighborhood walk in the new year and the first walk the two of us took together in six or so months seeing we stopped our walks once the pools reopened.
It was beautiful weather, sunny at 11C and we meandered through some of the streets we had visited daily over the spring. The two houses under construction earlier in 2020 seem to be mostly completed with one already inhabited by the new owners. EM and I agree it is way too big for the lot and has an ugly fence and basically no garden inside the fence. I suspect that the area outside the fence is county property. We still remember the old house on the lot, which was a single-story bungalow. In its stead there is now a hideous three-floor mansion, ugly as can be and completely soulless. Otherwise we stayed home and worked.
The only other achievement was to order new firewood – a half cord which will be delivered in a week or two. By then I shall have burned whatever I had left of last February’s order. Given the current lack of exercise I ordered delivery only. Stacking the wood will be a good activity for me, though given the blisters on my fingers I shall need gloves to do so.
I am so looking forward to getting back into the pool. Saturday is the day! I shall head to the pool directly from practice in the park. I am excited to see the Aikidokas again as well. There is so much to discuss given recent events.
One outcome of last weeks riots is that the instigator in chief has been impeached for a second time. No other president in the history of the USA has achieved this feat. This of course does not stop the current administration from passing decisions setting up president elect Joe Biden and his administration for failure. There is no cooperation from the GoP whatsoever, they are not even confirming Biden appointees. Fortunately, the Democrats will hold the slimmest of majorities in the Senate as of next week, so they can vote appointees through on party lines, hopefully at record speed.
I am rather anxious about next week. The right-wing nut cases are trying to organize armed marches in DC and elsewhere. It has become harder for them to do so given Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube have curbed access and Amazon Webservices is no longer hosting Parler. The downside of these curbs is that it is infinitely harder for the security forces to monitor plans now as organizers are moving to encrypted messenger services. What is mind boggling is the fact that Republican legislators were involved in organizing the march to “stop the steal” which resulted in the invasion of the Capitol. These same law makers now insist on carrying weapons and refuse to pass through metal detectors when entering the Capitol. Somehow it feels like we are living in a country on the verge of a civil war. No one knows what will happen at the inauguration next weeks. 20.000 troops have been brought into the Capitol to protect the ceremony. That is more than the US forces in Afghanistan and Iraq combined!
The virus is of course unimpressed with all of this. The USA reports 229k new infections over the past 24 hours to bring the total to 23.8 million. More than 383k Americans have died and today the US records the highest death toll in a single day. 4406 People succumbed to the virus on a single day. I fully expect to see this record broken multiple times over the coming weeks. This does not impress GOP legislators who refuse to wear masks; of course those are the COVID deniers and QANON conspirators. While sheltering in place during the CApitol invasion they have infected several demoratic legislators.
What has this country come to?