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altivoChilly and wet, wet, wet. I hope things aren't headed the way they went last spring. We were just getting off to a good start. Today looked and felt the way March normally would, with gray and dreary skies and cold drizzle the entire time the sun was up (but not directly visible.) Tomorrow they've backed off the rain forecast, but counting songbirds in dull light and high winds isn't going to be very fruitful, I fear. Still, I'm committed (or should be.)
Gary's school term is over for at least a couple of weeks. Looks like he aced both classes, and now we get a couple of weeks of respite. He has so many "to do" things on his list though that I fear he'll never get through even half in that time.
The news reports that the executive director of the Chicago area commuter rail service suicided today by deliberately standing in front of a train. He was under investigation for financial mismanagement and possible embezzlement. I find this stuff so difficult to understand that it makes my head hurt. Here's a guy with a six figure income, probably more than a quarter million a year, and he can't live within his means? He has to "borrow" from his employer? I just don't get it. Is this why executive salaries keep rising at astronomical rates, while the rest of us get annual increases that are less than inflation? The only sympathy I feel is for the train engineer who saw him on the track and couldn't stop, and the people whose commute was disrupted for an hour or two. Someone who does a thing like that isn't worth the cost of cremation, let alone burial. Maybe we should throw a few executive bankers under the wheels too. Day traders as well. Yesterday's fiasco with the stock markets proves that the whole thing is a sham, as I've been saying for years. They are trading monopoly money that has no real value at all, but have convinced themselves, the government, and most of us that it really is worth something. Now it has once again been talked up into a bubble of phony value, and because someone fat-fingers a keyboard, that supposed value plunges. Meanwhile unemployment continues to rise, the governments of several states are going bankrupt, and congress-critters are too busy toeing the party lines to actually negotiate with each other and get something useful done. I say hang them all. The only good Parliament is a hung Parliament. I'll supply the rope.
Gary's school term is over for at least a couple of weeks. Looks like he aced both classes, and now we get a couple of weeks of respite. He has so many "to do" things on his list though that I fear he'll never get through even half in that time.
The news reports that the executive director of the Chicago area commuter rail service suicided today by deliberately standing in front of a train. He was under investigation for financial mismanagement and possible embezzlement. I find this stuff so difficult to understand that it makes my head hurt. Here's a guy with a six figure income, probably more than a quarter million a year, and he can't live within his means? He has to "borrow" from his employer? I just don't get it. Is this why executive salaries keep rising at astronomical rates, while the rest of us get annual increases that are less than inflation? The only sympathy I feel is for the train engineer who saw him on the track and couldn't stop, and the people whose commute was disrupted for an hour or two. Someone who does a thing like that isn't worth the cost of cremation, let alone burial. Maybe we should throw a few executive bankers under the wheels too. Day traders as well. Yesterday's fiasco with the stock markets proves that the whole thing is a sham, as I've been saying for years. They are trading monopoly money that has no real value at all, but have convinced themselves, the government, and most of us that it really is worth something. Now it has once again been talked up into a bubble of phony value, and because someone fat-fingers a keyboard, that supposed value plunges. Meanwhile unemployment continues to rise, the governments of several states are going bankrupt, and congress-critters are too busy toeing the party lines to actually negotiate with each other and get something useful done. I say hang them all. The only good Parliament is a hung Parliament. I'll supply the rope.
