The Daily Parker

I'm leaving the country today, for the first time in almost exactly two years, and I couldn't be happier. I miss my Ancestral Homeland. And the list of Covid-related travel requirements, while annoying, make sense to me. In fact, because I return Sunday, I timed my (£39 FFS!) UK 2-day test to double as my US 3-day test.

Before I take off, and consign poor Cassie to 103 hours of desperate loneliness (albeit with her entire daycare pack), I want to comment on two news stories.

First, the Chicago Anti-Cruelty Society has temporarily waived adoption fees because adoptions have declined 33% in the past three months. "The rescue organization is housing and caring for more than 420 animals and has 140 animals in foster care," Block Club Chicago reports. I foresaw this at the beginning of the pandemic: people feeling lonely and isolated adopting pets that they wouldn't want when the pandemic started to wane. It really pisses me off, but after all, we live in a selfish, consumerist society that views dogs and cats as disposable.

Second, the New York Times reported Monday on how President Biden's infrastructure bill will help Chicago's West Side—but thanks to conservatives in the party scything away hunks of it, it won't help enough:

[T]he protracted negotiations over both spending packages have forced Democrats to cut several initiatives partly or entirely: tuition-free community college, a clean energy standard to combat climate change, billions of dollars for affordable housing assistance and measures to lower the price of prescription drugs.

Places like the West Side may still receive record amounts of federal assistance. But the tug of war leading up to Friday’s passage of the infrastructure bill — and still looming as Congress awaits a vote on the $1.85 trillion social-safety-net package — has delayed the party from what may be an even bigger challenge: selling the investments to voters.

Another issue being closely watched by Chicago community groups, an initiative to replace lead service lines that can cause toxic drinking water, will receive $15 billion in the infrastructure bill and could get another $10 billion in the social-safety-net package, according to environmental groups that have negotiated with lawmakers. That is well short of the $60 billion sought by industry experts and the $45 billion Mr. Biden originally proposed.

I get that legislation takes time, and when your party has a majority of exactly one—and that one is the Vice President—you won't get everything you want. But if Republicans would remember that they represent Americans and not just other Republicans, maybe we could have done better.

All right. Off to the longest doggie day care Cassie has ever experienced...

There's just something about how she sits on the couch that makes me smile:

Cassie's year-end performance review might have to take this sort of thing into account:

Cassie and I both love these crystal-clear autumn days in Chicago, though as far as I know she spent her first two autumns in Tennessee. Does Nashville have crisp fall mornings? I don't know for sure, and Cassie won't say.

I meant to highlight these stories yesterday but got into the deep flow of refactoring:

• People who adopted dogs during the pandemic have discovered that dogs cost money. No kidding.
• Also, living alone costs more than living with a partner, even though singles have more social contacts and tend to be happier. Again, no kidding.
• It turns out that online "wellness" communities spread huge amounts of anti-vaccine bullshit.
• “This idea of intellectual debate and rigor as the pinnacle of intellectualism comes from a world in which white men dominated,” said the geosciences department chair at Williams College, causing me to react loudly enough to alarm Cassie.
• The worst airline in the history of the world died pathetically a week ago, and its successor airline managed to launch with truly ugly livery.

I will now make Cassie drool buckets by using salmon skin as a training tool.

So these things happened:

• The FBI withheld REvil decryption keys from victims so not to tip off the criminals.
• Anonymous hackers have doxxed an ISP that provides services to right-wing hate groups.
• Two disbarred lawyers have filed suit against the doctor who admitted to performing an abortion in contravention of Texas law.
• As feared, Chicago-area animal shelters have started to fill up as selfish people return the pets they took home when Covid made them lonely.
• Josh Marshall frames the current squabbles in the Democratic Party as "policy vs. positioning."
• Molly Jong-Fast decries the attention given to the pretty 22-year-old white girl murdered in an area that saw over 700 non-white people go missing over the last 10 years.

And finally, break out the Glühwein: Chicago's Christkindlmarket will return to Daley Plaza and Wrigleyville this winter.

I have a Roomba. I have a dog. When these two things live in the same house, every dog-and-Roomba owner has the same anxiety: will they interact in such a way that will require a messy cleanup? iRobot, who manufacture Roombas, have a new model advertised (only $850!) to reduce this anxiety considerably.

I do not have this new model. I have an older model. And yesterday, anxiety turned to horror.

Fortunately (depending on how you look at it), Cassie's accident must have happened at least 12 hours before the Roomba found it, so the offending matter had dried up. Unfortunately, the Roomba hit it early in its run. Fortunately, the damage didn't look as bad from out here. And fortunately, I keep a set of Roomba parts on hand just in case.

When I got home last night, Cassie wagged and wiggled exactly to the point of me entering the room where she'd left her present for the robot. Even before I had noticed the mess she tucked tail and ran back to the living room.

Maybe I should buy the $850 model that can avoid small objects on the floor?

Well, one of us is working, anyway...

Someone—I won't say who—gained 3 kilos since she arrived at my house in March. That's a 12% increase. Will she notice when I cut her kibble by 10% until she's back down to 23½ kilos?

And no, I didn't forget that today would have been Parker's 15th Gotcha Day. I do miss him.

Hanging out in my (relocated) office, last Wednesday morning:

Cassie last got a bath (I think) sometime in April. So, wow, did she need one today. And she was a trooper. Before:

After:

She actually likes water, so she just let me spray her down, shampoo her up, and spray her down again. Once inside and toweled off, she got the zoomies but good.

After two hours she's dry and doesn't smell like a wet dog. And she's so soft again, without the sheen of whatever she rolled in at day camp for the past few weeks.