one down, 99 to go

Happy December, all! Today is Day Two of the toughest 100 day stretch of the year for me, officially known as meteorological winter. It’s not that we get a metric ton of it up here in British Columbia. We’re only a few miles/kilometers from the ocean, which favours us with much more rain than snow. I know from regular check-ins with my ace buds Joe, Bill and Ducks that Kansas has already been clobbered with snow and the requisite sub-freezing temperatures.

They do, however, by being near the 37th Parallel, get more daylight than I do. Today, for example, they saw sunrise at 7:12 a.m. and will see sunset at 5 p.m. Here on the 50th Parallel we got sunrise at 8 a.m. and will see sunset at 4:20 p.m. The flip side of that, of course, is that we get much more daylight than them in summer.

And in 19 days, all four of us (and others) will see the Return of the Light on the winter solstice. So there’s that.

In other heartening events, Jude and I can now watch the news without cringing as Trump continues to implode. Almost every day brings a different crisis or fresh wrinkle on an existing one. Though the Epstein saga has the most potential to bring Aging Orange down, the “second strike” fiasco may make it happen sooner. Pete “FAFO” Hegseth is attempting to blame Admiral Milton Bradley (I swear to Random Chance that I’m not making up this name) for ordering the follow-up strike on the two survivors of a drug boat strike. Manifold, the world’s largest social prediction market, has the chance of the recently promoted Bradley retiring soon at 37%.

It may not be just one of these crises that dethrones Donny Jay, but the combined weight has got to have the GOP fretting. If the election in Tennessee today is on either side of a single digit win, count on an uptick in the fret level. And remember, no matter how it plays out, it’s Biden’s fault.