Well, now that the summer solstice has come and gone the days are getting shorter again. It sure seems like the days get shorter a lot faster than they get longer after winter sets in. It was a tough weekend for me last weekend. Not just because I had to do a major upgrade on Sunday morning (always nice to work for free on Sunday), but because my trackball’s scroll wheel stopped working.

This may not seem like a big deal, but, man, as Joni Mitchell sang, “… you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone.” It was beyond annoying to have use my keyboard arrow keys or grab the scroll bar and drag it down. Thanks goodness for Amazon – I ordered a new one on Sunday morning and damned if it didn’t get here yesterday.

Every time I want to disavow myself from all things Amazon, they drag me back in again.

I’ve also had a ridiculously sore neck for the past couple of weeks. Not the normal annoying pain that I’ve become accustomed to in various parts of my body (either individually, or in concert with one another), but a super pain in the neck that’s forced me to sleep on my back with a heating pad wrapped around my neck.

And of course in this nanny state we live in, the goddamn heating pad shuts off after a while, so I have to keep on restarting it (good thing I don’t actually sleep much). Plus my ear bud cord gets all tangled up with the heating pad cord which (because I tend to toss and turn a lot) gets wrapped around my neck.

Every time I have to get up to take a leak (which, fortunately, is only about 27 times a night), I damn near strangle myself.

The worst part about the neck thing is that it hurts to look down, meaning I can’t sit outside and read for very long, which is about the only thing I like to do these days after work (especially now that Game of Thrones is over – can’t believe I have to wait another year for that to come back).

And then yesterday my seemingly never-ending foot issues resurfaced, so I’ve been hobbling along like a 90-yr old man. So even if I was able to sit outside and read, the walk back and forth to refill my beer would be intolerable.

I always knew that getting old would suck, but I didn’t know what a maliciously sadistic process it would be.

On the bright side, I’m taking next week off (first week I’ve taken off in, I think, a couple of years), and if things stay quiet at work, I think I’ll take Friday off to make up for working on Sunday. So that’ll be good. Until I have to come back to work again, at which point I’ll feel like cutting my throat.

But no meat pie for me, thanks.

It’s a big day around here today. Not because I have a (living) dad, and not because I’m anybody’s dad (stepdad, yeah, but that doesn’t really count for much – let’s just say I’m not anticipating any cards, ugly ties, or phone calls today). No, the big thing for me is that it’s the Father’s Day Fly-In Pancake Breakfast at the little airport in our town. That means that the skies will be full of single-engine planes, ultralights, and maybe even choppers (last year they were doing helicopter rides that flew over my house every 20 minutes or so).

Otherwise, it’s gonna be hot (again) around here. We haven’t had a lot of rain lately, and the grass is getting kind of crunchy (and not growing, which I consider a bonus). So there should be lots of pool time today. I really ought to brew a batch of beer, but I don’t think that’s gonna happen. If I’m really ambitious I’ll get one kegged. Otherwise, I think I’ll just hang out by the pool and watch the airplanes.

And try not to think about having to go to work tomorrow.

For those of you who are dads, or have dads, or have dads in your lives, have a happy Father’s Day.

Well, it looks like Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic nominee for President. It of course has actually been looking like that for quite a while, but now, even though she doesn’t have enough pledged delegates to win the nomination, she’s got a majority of them (even if Bernie were to get all the DC delegates in the final primary) and barring an indictment, I don’t see any super delegates (who are actual party members, as opposed to people who are just registered to vote as Democrats) changing their minds. It’s been a foregone conclusion for a while now, but I think you’ll see Bernie conceding shortly (once he gets whatever relatively meaningless concessions he can get – a prime time convention speech, at the very least, I would think, and maybe a promise from President Obama today to force the Florida Payday Loan Queen out of the DNC Chair).

I think Bernie’s been good for Hillary, having pushed her to the left ever so slightly be being in the race (ThinkProgress has a decent article about the ways that Hillary changed post-Bernie – and a few ways she didn’t like Capital Punishment, Fracking, and a Carbon Tax). Not that her “evolved” policy stands necessarily mean anything of course, but I think Bernie helped show anybody who was paying attention that taking stands against corporate greed and for working people are actually politically expedient.

I have to admit to being disappointed (though not surprised) by the results. I don’t have the animosity that some people seem to have for Clinton (both male and female – it’s not all misogyny or “boy crazy” young women – my wife, for one, is not exactly a Hillary fan, and my mother-in-law absolutely despises her. Mostly, I think, because she felt personally insulted when Hillary mad that comment about not staying home and baking cookies). After all, I voted for Clinton (twice) for Senator and again in the 2008 NY State Primary. I’m just sad because no matter how the election turns out, we once again won’t be getting a Liberal President – and I honestly think we need one.

Of course, god forbid we get Trump. It’s one thing to get basically more of the same, but if that loudmouth conman gets elected, I shudder to think what might happen. Hillary’s “foreign policy” speech the other day was a good start at attacking him, and I think you’ll see most of the “BernieOrBust” folks get in line the same way the “PUMAs” did in 2008.

It’s these “independent” and young voters I worry about. I don’t know that they’ll break for Trump so much as just become disinterested and not get out to the polls. ‘Cuz you know that teabaggers and Republicans – no matter what they say right now – will all fall in lock step behind anybody with an “R” after their name (especially an “R” that’s running against Hillary).

It would be nice to get finally get over the “a woman could never get elected President in the United States” thing (the same way – no matter how you feel about Obama – that it was nice to get over the black guy getting elected hurdle). I’d just prefer it was somebody like Elizabeth Warren (who I hope doesn’t run as VP because I think she can do a lot more as a Senator and I’d hate to think that Charlie Baker would get to appoint a Republican Senator at a time when it’s crucial to take back the Senate).

Whatever happens, it’s gonna be a long, ugly road to November 8th. I don’t think I can stand listening to (and looking at) Trump and his idiot followers for the next five months. Heaven help us if we have to look at him for the four (or eight) years after that.

It seems to me that when I was a kid, the D-Day anniversary was a big deal. I guess that’s because it was a mere 20 years (give or take) after the war and things were still pretty fresh in our parents’ mind. Now, 72 years later, there aint many of the Greatest Generation left, and there’s barely a mention of the Normandy invasion. D-Day always fascinated me (not as much as teh Civil War, though), because try as I might, I could never (and still can’t) imagine myself running across that beach with the Krauts dug in and trying to kill me. I mean, basically they just had to choose who to shoot – not a lot of cover on a beach – and if they chose you, you were dead. I suppose when they drive the LST up to the shore and drop the front door open, you don’t really have much choice, but, still…. I’m glad I didn’t have to do it (and I’m glad that truth, justice, and the American way didn’t have to rely on me, ‘cuz we’d all have been screwed).

So to any of you old-timers out there who are still left – good job, and thanks. I think the least we could do to celebrate your heroics is make this a holiday so I can get another day off. Coming a week (more or less) after Memorial Day, it would be a perfect way to get two four-day weeks in a row. There really aren’t enough summer holidays anyway. I mean, you got Memorial Day, then the fourth of July (which they fuck up by insisting on having it on the fourth every year instead of making it a Monday holiday), and then it’s all over on Labor Day.

At the very least, they ought to add VE Day on May 8th and VJ Day (which could either be August 14th or September 2nd – or, what the hell, why not both?).