1. I'm devastated at what the media and some leading Dems did to Joe Biden. And disgusted. Some of them were people that I respected. Others were people I sent money to. I will be more than happy to send money to their primary opponents next time they run. I do love that those disgusting people wanted an open primary at the Convention, and Joe Biden, in a Dark Brandon move, denied them that by endorsing her. It was brilliant.
2. I love Kamala Harris. I supported her in 2020 and was looking forward to supporting her in 2028. I've spent this past week, however, in an up-then-down sort of way. There is a lot of excitement about her candidacy, and it's infectious. But then... I honestly don't think she can win. I think that, like Clinton, she'll blow out the popular vote easy but fail in the Electoral College. I
hate this. I think in 2028, after four more years of capable and stable leadership and Trump -either dead or completely mush-for-brains- out of the picture, she could win. This year? I don't think so. They're motivated by hate and they have a systemic electoral college advantage. I think we'll also lose the Senate. By not doing any partisan gerrymandering, NY may have cost us the ability to retake the House and after the Supreme Court's decision about racial gerrymandering the few districts we could have grabbed either in 24 or 26 are in jeopardy. So I'm no longer hopeful about our chances this year, and some of the polls are already scaring me (there is evidence that a) Biden significantly outpolls Harris in some swing states, b) that the most reliable voting block doesn't like her -their mistake, imo-, and c) the never-Trump vote might not follow Harris.) I'll donate and maybe even volunteer and be positive etc when out in public but this -with my two or three readers, and three maybe be an overestimate, 🤣- I'm being honest about my feelings. Ugh.
3. Work is sucking these days. I'm bored.
4. Continuing to plug away at the weight loss thing with Zeppy. That drug is a fucking miracle. I've been eating the same way for over a year now and last fall, I'd pretty much stopped losing more than a few ounces here or there. Zepbound restarted that, I suspect with some biochemical tinkering of my set point, leaving my body no longer defending a very high weight. I've lost more than I ever thought I would or could and I'm less than 10lbs from a dream goal, which might or might not happen: being able to ride Icelandic horses here, right down the road from me! If I get there, I'll be thrilled, but even if I don't, it'll be fine, I'll just have to ride them in Iceland where the weight limit they allow is higher, LOL. I feel so much more relaxed about the day-to-day ins and outs of dieting and eating and exercising. I've always hated and mistrusted the addiction framing on people being fat, for various reasons (*), and at first, I was a bit surprised at the data that show that GLP-1 drugs are effective at helping with addiction. They seem to, which is great and I've seen some commentary about how yeah, fatties are just addicts but... GLP-1 are also being shown to be effective in Parkinson's disease and in a phase 3 trial, Alzheimer's. I don't think we're "there" yet on figuring out exactly how they work and how they help people, though they clearly do. (*) Hard to be addicted to something that you need to actually
survive. In addition, the arguments seem very much which came first the chicken or the egg to me. Anyhow, as more research into GLP-1 drugs come out, I hope the addiction model gets ditched wholesale, and hopefully we'll get some insight into the brain biochemistry that is very clearly involved. It always was, as many of us fatties have long suspected, just a little bit more complicated that Calories In Calories Out, which, while try, is elides the whole "how the calories are processed".
5. In light of that, I'll share this review:
Trapped fat: Obesity pathogenesis as an intrinsic disorder in metabolic fuel partitioning. Normally I'd steer clear of anything with Gary Taubes's name on it (his agenda has led him down some pretty tortuous paths) but this is nevertheless interesting, though I haven't done enough of a deep dive or search on primary sources to trust it all. Still worth a read, if only to be familiar with this reframing.
6. This is in pink!
My baby girl turned 21 this week! OMG, how the eff did that happen, she was just a baby two minutes ago! She's an extraordinary young person! 7. We have a few days of camping booked for late September at Crater Lake. The boat tours will have shut down by then. 😢 Why do they stop those a full 10 days before they close the campground? Still, looking forward to that. And we booked two nights (and a previous one so we can get an early start) at a campground near Mt Baker for early September. Had to book Sunday and Monday night, which was the best I could do for minimizing vacation days. We'll get up early Tuesday morning and hopefully I can get into work in time for a solid half day. Tomorrow, we have to drive Linnea to Bellingham so she can start packing hrr place up, since her old and new places don't overlap, sigh, but we'll be taking her furniture down. Anyhow, plan is to leave her the trailer and head out to go on three short hikes in the area.
8. Perry is leaving for a regatta in Canada tomorrow at 5am. I should get some sleep, we have to drive him to the airport. He'll be pretty close to Niagara Falls, and he's hoping to get a group of athletes together to go visit. I hope he does, and I really want to go back there one of these years, I loved going when I was a kid.
9. Still looking for a plan to get my novel moving towards publication. I know I need an agent, but each time I look at agents/agencies, I realize my poor little book doesn't quite fit into any category. Yes, romance, but it's too long to fit their size requirements. One of these days, I'll figure out my next steps. Maybe I should find someone to put it in audiobook format, since that seems to be a good way to get traction. Anyhow.