Like the first installment, I talk about a bunch of different things in one or two sentence snippets. First off, some music to set the mood.

  • I’m continuing to listen to my biography of William Tecumseh Sherman. I feel like I have a new revelation every day about how fucked up our cultural memory of the Civil War is. For example, the guy had absolutely no love for slaves. He seemed to think it embarrassing that the abolitionists pushed “the negro issue” to the point of war. For him, slavery wasn’t the slap in the face, secession was. There seemed to be a general consensus in the mid-1850s that slavery would eventually go away if they didn’t politicize the issue.
  • Yuengling is better than I remember it. It’s a good “cheap beer.”
  • Baby Trshmnstr is hours or days away, and she’s already expensive. A questionable result on a sonogram resulted in 2 specialist appointments before the specialist came to the conclusion that this was all kicked off by a shoddy original sonogram. Sometimes things just work out, and you don’t need tech to monitor every little thing. We were teetering on the edge of inducing at 36 weeks because a sono tech was having a bad day.
  • Just like in most other parts of life, negotiating is all about preparation. Without preparation, you’re pretty much guaranteed to be taken advantage of.
  • Paying college athletes is the dumbest idea ever. I’d be cool with a small stipend increase or something, but paying them a salary will torpedo non-revenue sports, put the final nail in the coffin of the “student-athlete,” and intractably separate the blue-bloods from everybody else.
    • You know what’s dumber than paying college athletes? The solution some moron on a sports board had to the issue: socializing all aspects of college so that the athletes didn’t have to pay for a night out at the movies.
  • Something has changed recently in the way that California is viewed by the rest of the country. It’s one thing for people in Texas and Nebraska to see California as a completely different country. It’s another thing when the Mid-Atlantic and New England have a complete disconnect from California.  I don’t think it’s quite there yet, but I’m a little surprised how much the DCers I’ve met since moving here are just as down on California as Texans are.
  • I’ve tried concealed carrying my S&W M&P9 Shield, but my holster is uncomfortable. Some of it is that I need to lose some of the muffintop so it stops rubbing on the butt of the gun. Some of it is that it’s a single clip holster, so it’s constantly rotating on my belt into uncomfortable positions. Here’s the holster I got. Any suggestions?