Morning Update: 07/01/24

Congratulations, we’ve made it through the first six months of the year. I don’t know about you, but it certainly feels as though it’s been more than six months. Eight or nine is more like it. Isn’t Christmas around the corner or something? Happy Canada Day to those of you who celebrate. Happy “Oh Crap It’s Monday” to the rest of you. The Supreme Court is ready to hand down at least three more disastrous decisions today. Your boss likely wants you to get five days’ worth of work done in three. The kids have less than a month left to summer vacation.

Fireworks in the neighborhood got the best of Hamilton last night. He cuddled up close and I softly reassured him that everything was okay as neighbors callously fired one noisy munition after another until well past 10:30. He’s been okay with the noises during the day so far. During the day he can see that there’s no imminent danger. When it’s dark, though, he doesn’t know that. At night, he’s 65 pounds of tense muscle ready to spring at anything that might be an attack. At the moment, it’s looking as though Wednesday night into Thursday could be cloudy with chances of rain and thunderstorms. Something tells me it would take a helluva thunderstorm to keep down the noise either night, but the dogs deal better with thunder than fireworks, so bring it on.

My insurance changed as of midnight this morning. The instant I opened Facebook this morning, right at the top of my newsfeed, was an ad reminding me that my insurance changed. For the most part, I think this is a positive thing. Transportation to doctor visits and the pharmacy is back. I shouldn’t have to worry about which meds are covered. But there’s still work to do today to inform all the doctors of the change and make sure that the chemo meds are continued going forward. We still have a little over eight months of that stuff to endure. Let’s not botch it up now.

I’ll also need to see if the new program will cover assisted living facilities. I’ll have to be careful talking about this one because if I say the wrong thing it could cause trouble. I don’t want them to think that I’m in any immediate danger, just that I need help I can’t get at home. We’ll see how that conversation goes.

At least we’re not in France. Macron was an idiot for calling snap elections right as the country is set to host the summer Olympics. You couldn’t pay me enough to be in Paris right now. Not that the situation is much better elsewhere. Bulgaria’s elections tilted toward the right as well, and Pakistan sentenced a Christian to death for saying hateful things about Muslims. 2 Algerian journalists were arrested for publishing a video showing businesswomen protesting at a government-sponsored event. The world is a nightmare.

You know I’m not a big sports nut, but when the hell did a guy named Sinner rise to the top of the tennis ranks? Headline writers are enjoying this too much. “Sinner can become No. 1.” “No. 1 Sinner wins his first grass-court final.” “Sinner looks smooth on clay.” Apparently, the dude is a favorite to win Wimbledon as well. Does that mean more tennis players should be Sinners? 🤣

If you’re somewhere in the corridor of coolness this morning between Chicago, Indy, and Detroit, enjoy the below-70 temps this AM. It’s 55 here this morning, enough that I tossed on a jacket before taking the dogs out. No, this doesn’t disprove climate change, you idiot. Warm temps will be back tomorrow, fueling the storms Wednesday night into Thursday. How do you not know how weather works? Personally, I think we’ll take a nice walk later this morning, then probably grill out for dinner since it’s so unseasonably nice.

That’s all I’ve got for the moment. If anything huge arises, I’ll let you know, but let’s hope the day stays calm.