Collecting Survival Tips and Such.

 So, I'm not going to write at length about our current disaster, other than WE FUCKING TOLD YOU SO YOU FUCKING MORONS. 

Survival tips:

Don't immerse yourself in the firehose of bullshit Executive Orders; they're not automatically law and most are straight up un-Constitutional and will go nowhere. Every Republican appointed judge is not in Shitler's pocket, and they're already going "Naah," to attempts to end birthright citizenship, etc. We do still have laws. This is a tactic to frighten and overwhelm people and get them to give up.

Don't abandon social media spaces you use for valuable connections with groups that are important to you. Right now there's a lot of hand-wringing about abandoning certain sites because the owners have orange lips. Block the assholes with wild, gleeful abandon and don't click the ads, but don't yield social media spaces you actually use to these fascist assholes, use it in ways that benefit you. 

DO take breaks when you need to and figure out what level of information you can consume without losing your mind. Get outside (weather permitting) do crafts, do hobbies, read books, watch movies, and don't check your phone more than a couple of times a day.

Be disgusted. Do not be afraid. They want fear; that's the whole point of this firehose of bullshit. They want fear and surrender in advance. 

One for instance: The oil and gas industry pushed the stock market up a bit because Shitler apparently claims we are suddenly, magically going to go back to oil and gas based everything. He can't make that happen. The world has already invested trillions in moving away from pollution based energy, and while we do still need oil for the time being, energy companies think decades out and they also know how much useful oil is in the ground. They're not going to throw out their own business plans and scream "Bless You Shitler, we're gonna trash the billions we've invested in the future and rebuild the coal and oil plants we've been tearing down to return to the diminishing and more expensive dead dinosaurs!" We are already selling more than we consume, oil leases are sitting around unused, this is also bullshit to con the rubes.

Even if it wasn't just an insane idea for the planet, it's not economically feasible. This transition began decades ago.  Was it urgent enough or aggressive enough? No, it was not. Lobbyists buy a lot of denial. But it's no longer "if" we will move to clean energy, it's happening. Not fast enough, not nearly fast enough but it's really not an option, and anyone who actually understands this shit knows it.

I'm not being Little Miss Sunshine here, we are in for a world of hurt in so many ways, ICE is already acting like the SS, enough bad shit is really happening. I'm just suggesting that when you hear a new outrage, wait 48 hours until actual experts weigh in and let us know if it's really a thing that could happen.

Well I guess I did sort of write about it, didn't I?  

Anyway, my job situation remains murky, like an old Magic 8 Ball. My boss assures me that she and HER boss both want to keep me for as long as I want to stay and are figuring out how to reconfigure things to give me work, but it's a weird situation. We had a face to face team meeting this week and discussed legal issues and I suddenly felt like I was back in the job and remembered that I really used to LIKE it. I like the people I work with, etc. but it did feel more like nostalgia. Without getting too specific there were references to "How we used to work" not only before covid but before various other changes that are now in the old days. It was comforting to realize that it's not just me; everybody's feeling the same thing. 

I've been focused on fixing things I can fix. Today I re-potted a dozen sad, neglected pot-bound plants that were temporarily camping inside when the nights were dipping into the 30s. "Florida Winter" appears to be over, the next 3 weeks will be considerably warmer, mid-70s days and 50s nights. I re-potted most of the Succulent Ranch today. It was one of those tasks I'd put off for months because it's just a pain, but it did feel so good to get it done.

Backstory: I think it was Christmas 2020 when my daughter gave me a set of adorable tiny owl planters for Christmas. I mean, tiny, like desk ornament sized. I went on eBay and bought teeny, tiny succulent clippings, none of them bigger than the first joint of my little finger. I bought 10, and didn't expect more than 2 or 3 to survive, I thought they'd be cute little accent plans.  8 of them did, and they grew and thrived and are now big grownup plants in real pots. They outgrew their first big kid pots, and are now taking over the balcony. I had no idea what had been unleashed. 

Hence, the Succulent Ranch.  I need to get some hangers for the string of pearls and string of dolphins and get the "son in law" who still needs a blog nickname to put up some hangers, because they really want to hang on the balcony. I still marvel that these plants started as clippings the size of a fingernail.

The slide scan project continues, and while I'm not blasting through it because it's still tedious, I can say I've made more progress on it this month than anyone did in the last 50 years. I'll get it done in the first quarter of this year.

Next weekend is Epcot Festival of the Arts. I did productive house things this weekend. Next weekend is for fun.