Can I just say something like BLECH? I mean the weather and a few other things, mostly mundane.

We’ll start with the weather. Bone-chilling? Yes. Oh it isn’t really all that cold. This is Michigan and it is January. The temperature hovered around about 30 all day and Old Man Winter spat little bits of precipitation of various sorts at us off and on in one of his blow-hard modes. Patches of ice on the area freeways caused numerous accidents this morning but my 0-Skunk-30 Walk and Zen Drive over to Cubelandia happened on dry pavement, thank you very much. Leaden skies. We have not seen Mr. Golden Sun since about last Saturday. Maybe 20 minutes or so on Tuesday? One absolutely gorgeous thing that happened on my Zen Drive was a huge flock of birds swirling across the road in the sky above me. It was a split-second thing but a welcome sight. But I took a “sunset” walk through the woods after work today and man oh man was it cold, even with my balaclava!

TAILGATERS? What the heck? Yes, I am only going 35 on northbound State south of the State/Ellsworth roundabout. Why do you think I am going so slowly? It is not because the road is slippery although it’s possible there are some slippery patches and my vee-hickle does not have winter taaaars on it. But the real reason I am only going 35 is because THE CAR IN FRONT OF ME IS ONLY GOING 35. What do you want me to do, rear-end it? And to the person who was so hot to get around me *in* the roundabout that they passed me on the right, with squealing taaaaars, as we both exited it? The speed limit in this roundabout is 15 and there is a REASON for that. Believe me, it takes a lot less time to get through the State/Ellsworth intersection with the roundabout than it used to with the traditional stop-lights and stuff. Chill out.

Twitter, will you please stop spamming me with the same tweet (over and over ad infinitum) about Melania Trump’s “IQ”. I actually clicked on the link once and it took me to one of those clickbait sites that reported the “IQs” for a whole bunch of celebrities but you had to click “next” to get to each one. (Where these “IQs” come from is not clear.) After about a billion clicks, I finally got to Melania — she was last of course — and it did not list her “IQ”. I blocked that twitter bot or whatever. Here’s the kicker. Against all odds, I actually *like* Melania Trump. I think. Or maybe I just feel kind of sorry for her. I suspect she *does* have a relatively high IQ and I also suspect she is not all that happy about having to take on the job of First Lady of her adopted country. I suspect this isn’t what she signed on for when she married “The Donald”.

Finally, to answer yesterday’s second commenter, I do actually think that the EPA will transition eventually. I know we’ve all been through this (together) a whole bunch of times, including a couple of ridiculous government shutdowns. My tears yesterday were complicated and related in part to reminiscing about my years working over there at “that darn EPA”. To me, what Trump is doing feels different and scary. I think it is important for agencies to tweet in resistance to being squelched (we didn’t have Twitter when Reagan took office or even when he died – 2004, I fact-checked that🐽). President Trump tweets whatever the heck he wants. Why can’t career scientists Tweet too?

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