Friday Files 4.28.2023

What it looks like on the bay and what it looks like less than 10 minutes later on the windows four blocks up the street. I have spent so much life chasing light without regret.

My shore corner store (Boyar's) is back, baby! I'm super thrilled. I ate meals from their hot case and ordered this week. They got new produce cases and I'm thrilled even though it costs a king's ransom for any of it. In the summer I'll pay it to be able to walk

Seen while walking

Imagine being this dog. A big galoot for a pug who still insists on being a lap dog. His feelings are very hurt because we've been walking for about an hour after work every night and he is a couch dog by now. I used to walk him miles all over this town when he was a puppy trying to get him to be less afraid of people. That didn't work, but it did encourage him to be more at home among pillows and blankets. Ben is the best good boy and would walk with me forever.

Travel is back back back. I did some more refining of Griswold Summer European Vacation trip this week and booked Vatican tickets. I also booked one of my top three must see before I die destinations for February: Morocco. I've wanted to go since I first set foot in EPCOT's version when I was like five or six years old, and it's been high on MFD's radar for the past 10+ years as well so it's perfect. Our travel priorities do not always align LOL. I got an absolutely tremendous deal - the total for flights/hotels/transfers/breakfasts was the same for two of us as I've been pricing out for one of us over the past 1.5 years, and in the pre-Covid years as well. I booked this trip as a one stop shop, where a company books your flights/hotels/transport between cities. I'm comfortable doing that but it's nice to take a break from that too, so when going to countries where I am less familiar with how the transit works - and where there is a language barrier I consider more surmountable than usual - I don't mind having a company do that. Especially when they run insane deals.

If you are free to travel whenever you want, there are some great deals out there for Europe airfare right now.

Speaking of travel...have you ever noticed that most of the complaining reviews of anywhere international - countries, hotels, services, etc - are made my Americans? It's like if it doesn't work exactly the same as it does in America, people lose their fucking minds. I hate it.

I have also ordered several dresses that I do not need for Europe, but want to try anyway. 

Billy Hicks the Creep lording over those of us in the backyard before I left Philly this week

Why I do not buy shit in stores anymore - nor do I buy it online of the stores that have locked every fucking thing up. What the fuck kind of country values corporate profit over health and has its citizens in a position where they don't make enough to cover necessities. 

Not interested in uniting with flag humpers who surely stand for law and order yet park in a fire lane and sit there while behind them the parking lot is a sea of empty spots. If you are with someone who needs door drop off, do that then park your car. 

No, I am not happy Joe Biden is running again. I wasn't happy he was running the first time, or that he won the nomination. Yes I will be voting for him because despite what internet commenters think, no one is going to challenge him. Not because there isn't someone better, but because we do not currently exist in a system where someone from within the party is going to challenge an incumbent president and the main reason we are not in that system is lack of campaign finance regulations and the existence of Citizens United. Get money out of politics, as I have said ad infinitum. And yes, not voting for Biden by simply refraining from the vote or writing in someone who will not win is a vote for fascism. Fascism as conducted by the GOP is unfolding in FL, TN, OK, and MT in ways we have not seen before - in the censure of democratically (the process, not the party) elected lawmakers at the state level. This is well beyond the fascist book bans, anti-abortion, anti-trans, anti-Black, anti-gay methodology we are more familiar with. This is very fucking serious shit and if you care about not living in a fascist country, vote for Biden or commit to the revolution, which will be violent out of necessity because things have gone well too far. Since no one could even commit to a national strike or halfheartedly throw a Molotov cocktail in response to a corrupt court striking down Roe or in response to the gun murders we are subjected to daily, both actions which would be and have been done in other countries for those things and much less, people who think they know in the comment sections can STFU. This is fucking dire. 

Coming to the end of dogs on the regular beach season in Ocean City. We are not okay. We can still drive to Dog Beach, but we are not okay.

The faces of the beach this week.

And the bay...they imploded boiler units on the former power plant that is across the bay from us. The smokestack is coming down in the future too and internet commenters are...lamenting this as a loss in the landscape? Just because it's always been in your sunset photos doesn't mean it belongs there. It is a fucking phallic smoke stack of a shut down power plant,  not a fucking lighthouse! What's to mourn?

Today is super rainy so we've not been out much...we're living on the memory of the previous few days, where we've spent at least an hour outside after work every day walking around.

Have a good weekend! Tomorrow is Independent Bookstore Day - support your local!