Wednesday And Foggy

     Foggy as all get-out out doors.  Foggier still on my TV.  National politics used to be easy to comment on; now I just want to point at it and shrug.

     At the state level, our Governor gave the yearly State of the State speech last evening.  It looks like we're doing better than the neighboring states in terms of unemployment (three percent-ish), job growth, solvency of the state government and other metrics -- but when two of the neighboring states are Illinois and Michigan, looking better by comparison is kind of playing on the "easy" setting.  Still, the state's doing well and more people are moving here than moving away, so that's good news.

It's Warm

     Or warm for January, at least.  Today's high will be in the upper fifties, possibly even sixty or more. 

     I am taking as much comfort in this as I can, because it has also resulted in remarkably intense earaches and sinus discomfort.  --And bad as it is, it's still better than having to deal with bitter cold.

Monday Again

     Didn't we have a Monday just  last week?  Really, we've had enough of these, and yet--

     Some days, it's like crawling inside a Klein bottle: no matter how hard you try, you're stuck on the outside.  Which is also the inside.

Gun Show

     After a delicious breakfast at Northside Kitchenette, The Data Viking, Tam and I went to the Indy 1500 Gun (and Knife) Show yesterday.  The State Fairgrounds were busy with multiple events including a huge RV Show.  It was a miserably rainy day and between the three of us, there's a badly broken (and badly rehealed) ankle, a pair of shins rebuilt with titanium and stainless, and a once-broken knee that is slowly unwinding the cartilage from the upper hearing surfaces of the joint.

     So of course we were directed to park halfway across the sprawling fairgrounds from the event venue, despite having a blue-spaces placard borrowed from one of our vehicles* and pointing it out.  There were no shuttle buses running through the race-track infield where they put us, and there was puddle between us and the pedestrian underpass, a wide, long and in places deep pool of water.  We limped our way to the best place to cross, and wended down and through the low-ceilinged, dank tunnel under the track before walking a couple of blocks to the show.

     The show was...crowded.  The firearms selection was pretty good but had nothing really outstanding; the prices for things I'm interested in (an S&W Bekeart .22 target revolver or one of the models that followed right after) were pretty high.

     The main booksellers vanished several shows ago; they'd been struggling with a bad vehicle and worse health and we figure they set up shop wherever they were or wherever they could get to when life on the road became too much.  Their main foes -- literal foes, the show had to keep them at opposite ends of the very large building and there were still occasional arguments -- had dropped out even earlier.  There are a few other booksellers who show up at every second or third show, and they weren't at this one.  The usual tool guys were nowhere in evidence.  One has been headed that way, selling off what appeared to be the lighter contents of Grandpa's machine shop, four table-loads at a time, an endeavor with a definite end point.  The other one is a perennial, with a decent mixture of industrial surplus, sorted garage-sale finds and Chinsesium; I don't know why he wasn't there, but his usual tables, backed up to a guy who sells chemistry glassware and related items, were empty.  There was one guy doing knife sharpening and he was pretty busy, so I skipped it; time to get out the coarse stone and diamond hones and sharpen my pocketknife myself.

     Yes, I do realize that I go to gun shows and look for things other than guns.  There were a lot of knife sellers at this one, including some very high-end stuff, both "big name" makes and craftspeople selling their own wares.

     Some of our Usual Suspects were there, too -- the guy selling Cold War surplus and offering free anti-semitism with every sale and the fireworks guy with "cute" (not at all) names for his products that harken back to the worst crimes of the WW II Axis powers.  It's convenient of 'em to hang it right out there; the First Amendment protects them but I wouldn't buy gold bars from either one even if they were selling them twelve for a dime.

     On the other hand, the local chapter of the National African-American Gun  Association had well-staffed table with a nice display behind it and were running a raffle.  The local chapter is the Indy Red Tails Gun Club, named after the distinctive paint job of the Mustangs flown by the Tuskegee Airmen.  It was good to see them there; there's always a contingent of serious African-American hunters at the show and the usual young men one sees at the 1500 includes young men of color in demographic proportion, but this level of organization is relatively new and I'm happy to see wider Second Amendment support.

     I don't know if it's the Fairgrounds or the 1500, but increasingly, they set up very narrow aisles between the rows of tables in both sides of the building (with one wide aisle in the center of the larger side), and then leave a big empty space at the far end.  For me, this resulted in skipping a couple of aisles altogether: the crowd was at a standstill and there was no way through.  They need to either institute one-way aisles (good luck with that!) or make them wider.

     At the end, the Data Viking and I both bought nothing.  Tam picked up some ammo and we headed back to Roseholme Cottage, where DV and I watched a couple of episodes of The Expanse while Tam went to the range.  Later, her friend Shootin' Buddy stopped by and we all had a nice early supper at Marco's.

     Not a bad way to spend a gray, rainy day.
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* I'm not saying whose it was, but all three of us qualify.  Usually, we'd rather leave those spots for people having a much harder time of it, but the Fairgrounds are huge and the parking staff is always overworked; they need to get you to a spot ASAP, so they can get the five hundred or more people behind you into parking spots, too.  If it's a long way away from the event you're attending, oh well.  There are usually shuttles but they were so busy we only saw one the entire time we were outside the show -- and the posted route didn't include the infield parking area.  It's not badly run but really busy days tend to almost overwhelm the staff; they're always friendly but they have no time to sort anyone out.

Browser Computer Frustrations

     Another morning of frustration with my browser -- but it's not just the browser, it's everything.  My "refurbished" desktop computer has never been entirely happy and is becoming less so.  Time, I suppose, to be looking for another.

     In the meanwhile, the Raspberry Pi booted up fine and other than screen size, a couple of pieces of software and issues with saving files on Dropbox, it's an adequate machine.

This And That

     Ended up sleeping most of the day yesterday, other than a light lunch and light dinner.  It didn't prevent me from getting a full night's sleep last night, so it must have been what I needed.

      The TV news has seemed preoccupied - or co-preoccupied, anyway -- with the current goings-on of the Windsor family.  We fought a war so that we didn't have to pay attention to them, and yet somehow we can't quite look away.  Ignore all the "throne of Empire" -- well, Commonwealth -- stuff and you've got a young couple stepping back from the family business to go their own way, a story that plays out every day all across the planet.

     The other news preoccupation is the President of the United States and what may or may not be going on with Iran.  Whatever it is, it's not going to end soon; we're three (or is is five?*) Administrations into the current troop-heavy version of the Great Game and the only constant is, we can't get out without leaving a power vacuum that will soon fill with the worst possible replacement.  Some of my left-leaning Facebook contacts are sounding the alarm about how Mr. Trump's got to be removed and I'm reading it, thinking the impeachment process is, in fact, underway, so what are they urging that they haven't already got?  The storming of the Winter Palace?  Well, the weather in Florida's not so bad this time of year, but I think the golfers will object.
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* Possibly more.  U. S. involvement in Iran goes back to at least the Eisenhower administration.

No Fun

     Rannie the cat and I have something in common.  I think mine is milder, but it does seem that I've been fighting a sinus infection over the last few days.  It hit pretty hard this morning and after trying to ignore it, I finally had to admit defeat.

     I called in sick and went back to bed.  Slept like a log until about ten minutes ago, so I guess that was what I needed.

     Last night's dinner was a deli pork roast from the hot food cabinet (and darned good); I'd browned left-over slices of it for breakfast and made a couple into a sandwich for work, so that's my lunch.  With a little horseradish to help my sinuses!

Presidents Making War: Another Conditionally-Bad Thing

     Ensuring that the Federal Government follows the Constitution in that only Congress may declare war is a grave and urgent task -- if the President rattling sabers isn't from your party.  Or you can wink at the war police action if you're a Congressthing who figures it will be unpopular and you're hoping when public opinion turns, it will drag the other party down with it.  Or, what the heck, in an excess of patriotic zeal, real or feigned.  (See Public Law 107-243 or 107-40 for examples.)

     Congress has tended in recent years to tell the President to "do the right thing" and leave him alone with the Joint Chiefs while they look on from the sidelines and wash their hands, the specific enumeration in Article One, Section Eight notwithstanding.

    Wikipedia tells me, "The last time the United States formally declared war, using specific terminology, on any nation was in 1942, when war was declared against Axis-allied Hungary, Bulgaria, and Romania...." Congress, it appears, has been asleep at the switch or just waving the Executive Branch on by, all through the Korean Conflict, the Vietnam War (euphemism bedammed withal), Grenada, Panama (okay, that was more like a drug bust) and the specific manifestations of the War On a Noun in Iraq and Afghanistan, to ignore U. N. "peacekeeping" expeditions and name a few war-ish actions that spring to mind.

     Then an extremely polarizing President authorized the military killing a man who was a known sponsor of terrorism.  True, he was very highly placed in the Iranian government -- and the person in day-to-day charge of their version of the SOE.  Congress -- especially the Democrats in Congress -- is not happy.  Nope, they are riled and they're talking about reining him in, starting some time next week.

     And never mind that it's been Congress who have let the reins out all this while.

     Who knows?  This might even spell the beginning of a whole new era of Congressional responsibility!  But I think you'd be wise to not bet any more money that you can afford to lose on that.

Poor Rannie!

     Tamara's cat, Random Numbers "Rannie" Wu, has another upper respiratory infection.  She started getting sniffly over the weekend and by yesterday, she was wheezing, sniffling, burbling and sneezing.

     She refused breakfast yesterday.  Tamara took her to the veterinarian yesterday afternoon.  The diagnosed a bacterial infection and we started her on antibiotics last evening.  She's still recovering and not feeling very well; refused breakfast again this morning and is due for her medicine shortly.

     Huck, my huge yellow-striped tomcat,  is not at all understanding.  He keeps trying to get Rannie to play by bounding up, throwing a foreleg over her shoulders, and attempting to wrestle, a behavior she doesn't like very much even when she's not sick.  Is he being a pill or is he trying to cheer her up?  It's hard to say.

     Tam's poor cat prefers to nap on hot pads and furnace registers, hoping to feel better.  She's taken to turning her back on the room, a sure sign she's not happy.

     The antibiotic helped a lot the last time she had a sinus infection.

What, Me Blog?

     There's an entire blog devoted to the history -- most of it pre-Mad magazine -- of Alfred E. Neuman.

     Turns out that guy has been on the job a lot longer than you might expect.

Epic Tweet Battle?

     I guess it's the new platform for war -- or maybe I'm just hoping.  Given the inconclusive nature of many modern wars (or war-type endeavors), a Twitter fight doesn't look like such a bad idea; the body count would be less and most world leaders have a great less to lose when they start doxxing.

     Just don't bet money it'll stay at that level.

My Brain Is Full

     I spent most of yesterday and today critiquing about a hundred and fifty pages of someone else's fiction and boy, is my brain tired!

     It's much easier to write "unclear -- fix this" or "Did the Mongols really use carrier pigeons?" in the margins of a manuscript you didn't write and won't have to rewrite or research, that's for sure, and supposedly it's good practice for digging into one's own work.

     Meanwhile, I'm messing with Scrivener more.  It's got some interesting cross-platform capabilities that I am hoping to use.