20201212S-2020-AustinTX
Today was an early celebration of my Aunt’s 75th birthday. I cooked a frittata with onions, roasted garlic, spinach, chicken sausage, broccoli, shiitake mushrooms, cooked sweet potato, and feta. This was our breakfast, along with mimosas. Her daughter and son-in-law joined.
I then snuck in a trip to Barton Springs. The cold water and the hot sunlight combined to make a enjoyable experience. As I walked in, I remembered that I needed a mask. I had no idea where my mask was. I normally keep it in my car. I didn’t want to walk all the way back to my car and so I imagined the universe in which I forgot to put it back in my car and it was instead in the bag that I used the last time I came to Barton Springs. I unzipped the bag pocket and reached inside with about 90% confidence and found myself 10% surprised that the mask was there! I then walked back to the gate and had my temperature checked while I signed my name and phone number in case I needed to be contact traced due to any covid exposures that day. There were two cups of pens – clean and dirty. I asked if I could use one of the “dirty” pens and, after getting a “whichever you prefer” answer, I signed my name with one of the dirty pens and put it back in the dirty pen cup. There were only about 5 people swimming laps in the pool and about 30 people sun bathing. I almost didn’t go to Barton Springs because I was planning to go the next day. I just now checked the weather and tomorrow looks like rain – so I will likely not go tomorrow. That also means no ecstatic dance under the monkey tree.
Speaking of ecstatic dance under the monkey tree, there was a planned dance last wed there which only lasted a few minutes before it stopped by the police who said that a permit was needed. I had wanted to go to it, but changed my mind at the last minute. I wondered how much the future shutdown had on my feeling of my mind changing. I have been using a framework of bi-directional time in which cause and effect and proceed in both directions of time. It helps me to understand why I might decide not to go to a dance that is later canceled. Who wants to go to a dance that is canceled? Actually, I kinda wish I had gone now.
It’s been a wild 150 days since I last blogged. My experience has been one of imagining two different sets of universes continuing to collide. This is how I understand why about 25% of the U.S. population believes that Trump not only won the presidential election, but that Trump will be staying on as president for a second term.
Speaking of politics, today I had a wish that Biden (in the 75% of universes around us in which he becomes the next U.S. President) establishes the “Biden doctrine of bi-partisanship”, which becomes a doctrine for the foreseeable future. In this doctrine, Biden uses the power of the pocket veto to send a clear message that he will only sign bi-partisan legislation. Any bills arriving on his desk which are voted closely along party lines would just sit in a stack. Only bills with at least 20% or so support from the minority party would be considered. A byproduct of the Biden Doctrine would be that the centrist in each party would gain power at the expense of the extremists. A new power block would be created, which would slowly (over 50+ years or so) lead to the formation of a third “Centrist” party.
In other news, I deleted Twitter from my phone a couple days ago. This was surprising easy to do and definitely life changing – having an immediate effect reducing the amount of time I spend on my phone. While I did compensate a bit by surfing on Facebook instead, Facebook has never really grabbed my attention and so I’m now in a space where I have extra time. I credit the deletion of Twitter for having time and energy to begin writing blog posts again.
The Tarot card reading that I received tonight also motivated me, along with a text from J about the Geminid meteor shower tomorrow night on the date of the new moon. Now I just need a dark place from which to view it!
surfing the universe 