Today wasn't quite as good as yesterday, mostly because I didn't get quite enough sleep, woke up a little too early, and then spent too much time reading the news. I did get myself out of bed and go for a walk around eight - I found an excellent coffee shop by following signs into a parking lot that promised coffee. This is not how I normally find coffeeshops, but it was much better than Starbucks, so I'm happy I did. And I walked around Carlsbad for awhile after that, which was a good way to wake up.
Then I came back, did a bit of writing and other work while sitting in bed, and eventually showered and ate lunch while talking to Anne. Barbara lured me to write outside with the promise of a fire pit - we have been sitting in the gazebo, but it got foggy / windy today and the gazebo wasn't quite as nice. The fire pit was great, though - it was more of a fire stand since it was chest-high (waist-high if you're taller than me), but it put out the right amount of heat to keep us both comfy while we wrote / chatted most of the afternoon. I also took a break to call my parents, which felt very pleasantly like Sundays of old.
Eventually we came inside, and I placed the dinner order while we all talked about business stuff. I was my usual social self during and after dinner, but it was hard to focus. There's a lot of cognitive dissonance going on when the specifics of this retreat -- a house we've stayed at several times, a book I want to write, and easy and plentiful food delivery -- are so standard and mundane. Meanwhile, outside political events are anything but mundane.
One example of a thousand: Musk and his staffers -- several of whom are interns at Musk's companies who dropped out of college and are now in charge of the government despite not being elected or appointed, or potentially even paid by the government -- are accessing and downloading sensitive/classified information and shutting off Treasury payments to groups like Lutheran Family Services. All of this is a clear violation of the Constitution's laws around appropriations and spending, and apparently being done without any of the security clearances or information handling laws that administrations have historically followed.
[If you don't believe me about them targeting Lutheran Family Services, Musk tweeted it himself. He also tweeted that he spent the weekend "feeding USAID through the wood chipper" - even though much of that money stays in the US, and it's a key way we compete with China and Russia's efforts to buy allies around the world.]
While I knew the general shape of this was coming given what was said on the campaign trail, it's still shocking to watch it happen. It's also worrisome to know that many people I love, who are affected in some way by government spending (via funding for their jobs, medicare, the farm bill, social security + social security disability, or even just wanting roads/safe air travel/a functioning post office/a functioning society in general) are in for a lot of pain.
But I need to write a book tomorrow, and this isn't helping me to go to sleep. Goodnight!
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