It’s Monday in early December, 2020; and the state of the world is decidedly “meh.” As usual.

‘Rona cases are concerningly on the rise, in part because of the colder temperatures, the holidays (we’re about two weeks out from Thanksgiving, after all), and people all over the place still politicizing this thing, denying it, and not taking reasonable precautions, as was obvious during my trip to the grocery store Saturday morning. We’re very likely to hit 300k deaths this week, and it didn’t have to be this way. Wear your masks, keep your distance, folks. Even if I don’t particularly like you, I don’t want you dead, okay?

I’ve also got my eyes on Congress, as they’ve created a huge pile of crazy for themselves, doing the unfortunately usual government thing: waiting until the last minute to sort out essential actions; in this case, virus timulus (largely due to idiotic political differences and gamesmanship), continuing budget resolutions (again with the debt limit), and the annual defense authorization bill (being held up by things not not even related to defense, stuff like facilities named after confederate leaders, and a provision of the Communications Decency Act of 1996!), all of which could affect millions of people. Staring down the barrel of a another potential government shutdown this Friday isn’t something I’m particularly looking forward to, plus I know a lot of people worse off than me that could use the small business loans and unemployment expansion provided by the pathetically small $908 billion relief package that’s getting kicked around.

Oh, and there’s snow (not much, but the first time this year) in the forecast. Good thing I’m not really going anywhere.

It’s not all awful, I guess. I’ve got work tasks mostly lined up for the next two weeks before my holiday break, I’m finally past the worst of the flu vaccine side effects, and we got some household projects done over the weekend. I also sold a couple of records in Canada this weekend, for whatever reason; I’m not going to complain.

The weekend otherwise, apart from the raccoons, was typical. I did some laundry, read some books, watched a movie or two, did the shopping, and made an excellent batch of slow-cooked Carolina-inspired pork barbecue. I’ve got fresh local brussels sprouts to roast this week (olive oil, salt, garlic, balsamic vinegar – yum!), and some very nice apples. I did some more recording-for-(not really)hire for a friend, who’s very happy with the results, and although I got a little frustrated with people here and there, it really could have been worse.

As for the looking ahead? All that stuff up there is concerning, of course, but I have stuff to do, and I’ll get it done, because that’s what people with my kind of outlook do. No other way to look at it.