I spent all of last weekend with friends, and we wound up just having fun and not worrying about photos. So, not much from Seattle to post. I did capture Hazel lazing on the couch, though:
I don't know what I did to deserve it, but Hazel spent a long time staring at me the way Cassie does. Of course, they do know and like each other:
I'll have the usual roundup of horrifying current events later today.
Inner Drive Technology World HQ hit 34.3°C yesterday afternoon and only cooled down to 25.7°C by 6 this morning. As we do on hot days, Cassie and I started our long walk just before 7am, doing exactly 5 km in 50 minutes while the temperature (and dewpoint) rose a full degree.
Fortunately, it looks like a much-anticipated cool front went through just after 10. I wouldn't know; I've been in meetings. So I'm about to take Cassie out again before the thunderstorms hit.
I might even have time later today to read all the horrible things going on in the world. My tl;dr: no one actually knows what will happen next in the Middle East, least of all the OAFPOTUS, which you can tell because any bad thing he says about someone else, he's really projecting about himself.
I got in a bit early this morning to beat the heat. Good thing, too, as my train line partially shut down upstream of my stop just as I got on the train. It's up to 34°C at O'Hare and 33°C at Inner Drive Technology World HQ (feels like 42°C—107°F), with a forecast of 36°C and continued horrible heat indicies for this afternoon when I walk Cassie home from dog school.
Chicago isn't the only place getting this awful weather. The record heat will affect over 200 million people this week with similar temperatures from North Carolina to Connecticut hitting tomorrow.
Meanwhile, the Lake Michigan-Huron system's water level has dropped more than 150 cm since its soggy peak in 2020, giving us our beaches back and ending routine flooding on lakefront streets on the South Side. (Don't worry, we still have a fifth of the world's fresh water.)
The weather should moderate tomorrow, with thunderstorms coming through in the afternoon. I very much preferred the weather in Seattle this past weekend, though. And I hope that Cassie and I can get some real walks this week.
What a weekend. I mean, for the world; for me, yesterday included vacuuming the house and my car, and taking Cassie on 2½ hours of walks plus sitting outside at Begyle to get pats from random strangers. (To be clear, Cassie got random pats; I did not.)
We started at Horner Park:
And stopped briefly at Burning Bush, where Cassie was under the table even before I got my beer:
I had some stuff about the political events over the weekend, but I'll put that off until later.
Cassie enjoyed some couch time with me yesterday evening:
Eventually she decided on a full-bagel nap:
Cassie and I took a 7 km walk from sleep-away camp to Ribfest yesterday, which added up to 2½ hours of walkies including the rest of the day. Then we got some relaxing couch time in the evening. We don't get that many gorgeous weekend days in Chicago—perhaps 30 per year—so we had to take advantage of it.
Of course, it's Monday now, and all the things I ignored over the weekend still exist:
- Josh Marshall digs into the OAFPOTUS's attack on the state of California, noting that "all the federalizations [of the National Guard] during the Civil Rights Era were over the refusal of segregationist state governments to enforce federal law under court order. Trump’s argument is...[that] the President [has the right] to decide when a state government isn’t protecting or enforcing civil order to his liking and to intervene with federalized National Guard or the U.S. military to do it at the point of a bayonet. ... The crisis the administration insisted it needed to solve was a crisis of the administration’s creation."
- Philip Bump puts the encroaching fascism in broader context: "What’s important to remember about the fracture that emerged in Los Angeles over the weekend is that it came shortly after reports that President Donald Trump was seeking to block California from receiving certain federal funding. ... The point was that the Trump administration wanted to bring California to heel...."
- The Guardian highlights how Chicago has led the way in resisting the OAFPOTUS's xenophobic mass-deportation program, as part of our long history of respecting immigrant rights.
- Anne Applebaum looks at last week's election in Poland and feels a chill that "every election is now existential."
- Lisa Schwarzbaum, a former film critic for Entertainment Weekly, likens the OAFPOTUS's style of governing to Mutual of Omaha's "Wild Kingdom."
- Ezra Klein expresses surprise at who has objected the most to the recommendations in his recent book Abundance, and the left-wing emphasis on messaging: "Democrats aren’t struggling primarily because they choose the wrong messages. They’re struggling because they fail to solve problems. ... [Brandon] Johnson is the most proudly left-wing big-city mayor in the country. ... He’s also the least popular big-city mayor in the country and may well end up as the least popular mayor in Chicago’s history. Policy failure breeds political failure."
- Oh, by the way, Meta and Yandex have started to de-anonymize your Android device by abusing how your Internet browser works.
Finally, a community group on the Northwest Side has launched an effort to build a 5-km rails-to-trails plus greenway project to connect the Bloomingdale Trail with the North Branch Trail. This would create a direct connection between the southern flank of Lincoln Park and the Chicago Botanic Garden in suburban Glencoe. It's still early days, though. I'd love to see this in my lifetime. I'm also waiting for electrified railroads around Chicago, but this project would be a lot cheaper.
Pro tip: Get to Ribfest as soon as possible after it opens. Cassie and I arrived exactly at noon yesterday, allowing me to score three 3-bone samplers in just 45 minutes.
Here, too, where I expect the lines would be a block long by 2pm:
In the end, Cassie had a really good afternoon—at least until she went to sleep-away camp because of my concert:
I sense ribs in my future today as well. And very likely a 5 km walk either coming or going from Ribfest. Sadly, we won't get there exactly at noon, because I have some errands to run before then. As long as we get home before it starts raining...
Lunch today will be a sampler of ribs from the first vendor at Ribfest that looks appealing. Then Cassie goes to sleep-away camp and I go to a performance call in Glenview at 3pm. So tune in tomorrow morning for the first rib report.
Cassie and I met with her surgeon today to discuss removing the mast cell tumor on her head. The good news is that the tumor is small, sub-cutaneous (as opposed to being in her skull or more delicate tissue), and very slow-growing. The bad news is that its location, about a centimeter from her left ear, complicates the removal a bit. The surgeon generally prefers to remove about a 3-cm circle of tissue around the tumor. Since everyone wants Cassie to retain her left ear, she'll have to remove slightly less tissue, which increases the probability of missing some cancer cells.
Still, the surgeon is very optimistic, not least because dogs can live for many years with untreated mast cell disease. Popping the tumor out now gets Cassie's life expectancy to the same place it would be without the disease. She may develop another mast cell tumor later on (as Weimaraners, in particular, are apt to do), but that doesn't indicate metastasis, nor does it mean she'll have a shorter life span.
Really, the worst part of it will be the bill. Because, of course, all surgeries at this clinic come with a complimentary (and mandatory) walletectomy.
So, on July 8th, she'll get a chunk of her head removed and sewn back up, and she'll be in a cone for two weeks. She'll also look ridiculous for a month or so until the fur grows back.
Updates as the situation warrants.
Welcome to stop #129 on the Brews and Choos project.
Brewery: McHenry Brewing, 3425 Pearl St., McHenry
Train line: Union Pacific Northwest, McHenry (Zone 4)
Time from Chicago: 88 minutes
Distance from station: 1.3 km
It finally happened: I cheated. I couldn't figure any reasonable way to visit McHenry Brewing without taking an expensive and rare Lyft part of the way home, because the UP-NW line only has three daily trains to McHenry in the afternoon with three return trains in the morning. So, not wanting to find myself stranded two counties over, I bundled Cassie into the car and drove up there.
(Spot the happy dog.)
I also had a bit of serendipity as the brewery were celebrating the owner's 50th birthday, which explains the hats. The building has a long history of brewing beer, too: it first opened as Lager Brewery back in 1868.
Because we drove up there, and I didn't get lunch on the way up, I only had one pint of the Pearl Steet Pils (5.5%, 13 IBU). I liked it, especially sitting outside on a sunny (but smoky) first day of summer.
I wouldn't mind another trip up to McHenry, as the area just east of the brewery has a nice, big park and lots of shops and restaurants along the Fox River. The brewery itself was OK and so was the beer I tried. And hey, Cassie got lots of pats, so she'd go back too.
Beer garden? Yes
Dogs OK? Outside only
Televisions? Yes, avoidable
Serves food? BYOF
Would hang out with a book? Maybe
Would hang out with friends? Yes
Would go back? Yes