Thursday's Meanderings

 A Little About me

I'm way too busy. but the more I put on my schedule the more I get done. Today, I had a 1-1/2 hour ZOOM class - the second of two sessions on Eleanor and Franklin (Roosevelt). Very interesting- great teachers, new to me, and lots of familiar faces who keep turning up in the various classes I take. Tomorrow, I have a Reading the New Yorker ZOOM class and an afternoon Friday with Friends session. Also tomorrow, I lead the Atria Writer's Workshop. Having nothing fresh to read, I may just read this blog post.

I decided to go back to posting on Facebook, but exclusively political opposition posts. We'll see what Facebook's algorithms make of that. Posts from a very right wing "Bill Blair" (no one I know) keep showing up in my feed. I wonder if FB is proselytizing, trying to convert me.

The pants hemming activity seems to be picking up, there are a couple more "customers" waiting in the wings.

Today's News Made Political:

Last night an Army helicopter crashed into an American Airlines Regional Jet. Three soldiers were in the copter and 60 people in the plane. They crashed midair as the AA plane was on final approach over the Potomac. The wreckage and the people all landed in the nearly freezing cold river. No survivors and many American figure skaters and their teachers, a married couple, immigrants from Russia.

Today Trump blamed DEI enforcement policies for the crash - implying that maybe the pilots or the air traffic controllers were hired to comply with DEI policy rather than because they were qualified and competent. You have to realize, he knew nothing about the identities of the people he's vilifying- just a crazy wild-assed assumption - he had to find blame that would support his hate and rage-filled paradigm. 

Assisted Living Life:

I have found my tribe here and call several people "friend". Theses friendships are fragile because we all recognize we are in the winter of our lives. Yet, we come to trust, care for, laugh with, confide in, and seek out each other's company. My circle is formed around the people I play bridge with and those who share my love of reading and writing. We all admit that there is no place we would rather live at this point in our lives, yet one of our common bonds is our shared complaints about the facility. In an earlier post, I've mentioned our gripes about the dining room and our plan of attack.

Today's issue is the barking dog on our hallway. The resident next to me has a little dog that barks constantly when she is not in her apartment. It is quite an annoyance. I hate to complain about this because I know the dog gives her comfort, but it is clearly miserable. So, I helped draft another letter asking our acting executive director, who is a regional vice president, to address the problem. I don't want the role of complainer-in-chief, but doing nothing except to grumble in our beards is pointless. So, I drafted another letter, hoping it will go out over someone else's signature.

Bridge

Bridge as we play it deserves its own special heading. In Thursday's bridge, the big news is that I bid and made a grand slam - 7 no Trump (I wish!). I think this is a lifetime first 7NT slam for me. The rest of the game was our usual slapstick routine. The first hand of the day was dealt and came up one card short. Because we keep doing the same silly things over and over again, we each counted our cards. Everyone had 13 cards except the dealer who had 12. We looked on the floor and then we looked to the third most common explanation, a card left in its box, but it was a red card, and we were playing with a blue deck (some would doubt we ever played with a full deck). Looking in all the boxes, we found the missing blue card. We played for a while until one player had only two cards left while all the others had four. The missing two turned up under the chair of the player. This happens frequently and we usually can patch together what the play would have been, but this time it was just hopelessly confusing. We do need to make a video of outtakes of all the feeble ways we play. But the important thing is we don't take ourselves seriously (except in the matter of 7NT Grand Slams), we prop each other up and laugh at ourselves.