I’m still reeling from the election. Much like Will on the morning after the Brexit vote, I couldn’t sleep and got up around 5:30 to check the results. By then, the outcome was a near certainly and ever since, I’m still unable to get my bearings. Part of it is the shock that my fellow countrymen could vote for someone so totally unfit for the job. It’s also anxiety and fear of what the future holds. Trump’s victory was total since he has both houses of congress who will rubber stamp his every dictatorial whim. The shortlist of candidates for cabinet posts is a who’s who of evil, bigoted, trash from the extreme of the party. He will also appoint at least one Supreme Court Justice, someone who will make Scalia look sane in comparison.
I fear a rollback of much of the progress recently made in LGBT rights. That and criminalising abortion are at the top of the Vice President’s list. Much like Britain post-Brexit, the white supremacists are emboldened and hate crimes have shot up since the election. I could console myself that I live in France, and am not really affected by much of this. But we’ve got our own election coming up in May and many people here are already talking about a far-right victory. If that happens, we’ll have to find somewhere even more remote to set up shop. I was toying with the idea of New Zealand but the recent earthquake has ruled that one out too.
There’s not much else to report this week. We had band practice on Thurs and it went fairly well. We have one more repetition, and then the sound check on the day itself. We have to collect and set up the equipment on Thurs. If we run into any trouble, Alain is around Friday am to help us. Will and I are mostly prepared, although I’ve still got one song that needs a bit more work.
On the subject of work, we put a couple sites live at the weekend. The first is the latest and probably the last version of ARBC. It’s mainly a facelift, plus the removal of the carving services which will be spun off into their own website. Andrew hopes to sell this version in the spring. The other site was for an existing client and I added a new shipping service which required some programming time. I’ve started in earnest on Kudoze, my big project with Abby.
We had one social event on Friday night when Benoit and Virginie came to dinner. Eva has split up with Lucas and was out on the town with a new fella. Since we missed curry this month, I decided to give it a go and made pork vindaloo, with rice and curried creamed spinach on the side. The vindaloo was tasty and not too spicy but I went a bit nuts with the peppercorns so the spinach was feisty. Our French guests who like spicy food had to leave most of it on their plates. We hadn’t seen them since Sept and got caught up with them, but mostly, lamented the state of the world.
I mowed the front lawn on Tuesday when it was partly sunny. I still need to do the back but it’s been wet here lately so it’s hard to find a day when the grass is dry enough. Apart from that, the garden is mostly done for the season with all leaves/fruit/chestnuts fallen and tidied.
Will had some very minor surgery on Thurs. He’s had a cyst on his shoulder blade for quite some time and finally decided to get it removed. It was a fairly quick process, and he’s got a few stitches until Friday. When I had mine done, they left the wound open and I had to have a nurse come every other day to change the dressing. It’s bothering him a bit but hasn’t stopped him from doing much except working out. It’s been a very good experience with the new doctor and I’ll be using him too.
I’d like to sign off on a happy note but I’ve got nothing.