Day: November 9, 2020

So, Biden Has Won

November 7, 2020 2 of 8

I seem to recall wondering how many words I can get out of “pleased astonishment.” I think I’m still in “stunned disbelief.”

I hang around with a lot of people with anxiety disorders and I’m starting to pick up on their attitudes I keep thinking that something’s going to happen. That there’ll end up being a lawsuit about this and the Supreme Court will decide that Trump won and then we’ll get the second Civil War that the people on the ends of the theoretical political horseshoe have been wanting.

I took this from inside the conservatory at the United States Botanic Garden when Alex and I were in DC in 2011.

What political horseshoe? There’s a theory that the people on the very farthest ends of the political spectrum are actually more alike than they are different. I’m not a political scientist, so I can see both sides of the argument whether there’s a horseshoe or not. Back in 2016, I did see people who at least claim to be on the far ends of the spectrum claiming that electing Trump would hasten the downfall of our current political structure and then we could build a new constitution with new rules. The problem is that I can’t see us coming up with a new constitution with new rules without an actual Americans-killing-Americans civil war.

And so, if the Supreme Court would decide that, then I can’t believe that the American people who voted for Biden would take that lying down. And the winner would be the side that has most of our armed forces supported.

I’d love to be able to breathe a sigh of relief, but I really won’t believe it until Biden’s inauguration.

Or maybe we could have a street party here in San Antonio, like they’ve had in cities like Philadelphia. Being surrounded by people who know that everything will go smoothly would probably go a long way towards that sigh of relief, too.

Since I’ve been on a comic-book-reading roll lately, this post’s Gratuitous Amazon Link is Volume 4 of the Ms. Marvel compilations, Last Days, by G. Willow Wilson, Dan Slott, Adrian Alphona, and Giuseppe Camuncoli.

They’ve Gotten Rid of Google Play Music!

November 7, 2020 1 of 8

I’m going on a road trip tomorrow. I’m taking Mila and driving up US 281 to probably Burnet and then back down, hitting all of the state parks on the way. So I’ll have some state park posts later.

Preparing for this, I’m downloading music, a Pimsleur lesson, and audiobooks onto my podcast phone (a Samsung S5 from 2014). And just setting this up is more of an adventure than I though it would be.

Until October, when I started focusing on Pimsleur, I primarily listened to ChinesePod in the car. And I used Google Play Music to play the lessons.

And now Google Play Music is gone. They say I have to use YouTube Music to play things from now on. Will I be able to use YouTube Music on my podcast phone (a Samsung Galaxy 5 that I got in 2014)? Will I be able to find my ChinesePod lessons on YouTube Music if I *can* use YouTube Music on my podcast phone?

Okay, so I downloaded YouTube Music (I was totally expecting Google Play to laugh at me for even trying it), and moved my next ChinesePod lessons into Google Drive. Then I opened Google Drive on my podcast phone and downloaded the files to my phone.

Where are the files in YouTube Music? I found them under Albums -> Device Files.

Welp, I ended up downloading most of them twice, so I have nine podcasts in that directory. Better than zero, I guess.

Great. I closed the app and now I can’t find Albums anymore. Ah-ha! Library -> Albums -> Device Files.

And the files play! And if I delete the extra copies from My Files, it gets rid of the extras. Yay!

Now, let’s get El Ladrón del Rayo sorted out. I need to download the book completely, because my podcast phone doesn’t have an internet connection; I have to use wifi.

Yay! It’s working!

Okay, so I have my Pimsleur lesson (half an hour), five ChinesePod lessons (another two-ish hours), and El Ladrón del Rayo (10.75 hours). Yeah. That should get me through the day. I’m only planning to go as far as Burnet, which is two hours to the north, but there will be some driving around in the state parks that I visit.

I also picked up my travel snacks — “wasabi” peas (they’re actually flavored with horseradish), almonds, Golden Grahams S’Mores bars, Skittles, pop, and water. Also, I’m going to bring dog food and two kinds of dog treats for Mila. I’m going to stop on the way for a Subway with veggies (spinach, green peppers, cucumber, tomato, black olives, and provolone cheese — yum!) Mila will want to eat my snacks, but she can’t have any of my snacks, except for the water. I’m trying to train her out of begging, but it’s going to be a long road.

Gratuitous Amazon Link time! For this one, it’ll be The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Beats Up the Marvel Universe by Ryan North and Erica Henderson. This one was awesome. I love The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl. And she really is unbeatable. She wins by befriending the villains. This is a skill that more of us need. This is a skill that *I* need.

A New Topic? Maybe?

November 6, 2020 3 of 8

I had a dream. I dreamed it for you, June.

No. That’s Gypsy.

I did have a dream, though. In it, The Doctor was in front of some kind of governing body of invading aliens (not unlike in the Invasion of Time storyline), but in this case, the conflict wasn’t about Gallifrey but was, instead, about Earth. The invaders needed a Time Lord/Lady to solve the problem, but they also needed someone with a stake in Earth’s future to solve the problem. So, The Doctor ended up turning Sarah Jane Smith into a Time Lady. When I woke up, I (a) wondered if Sarah Jane Smith would fare better than Donna Noble had, (b) wondered if this was me in a way mourning for Elisabeth Sladen (belated, I know, since she died nine years ago (!)), and (c) kinda missed the days when I was a huge Doctor Who fan.

I’ve had a number of fandoms in the past, Doctor Who was probably my first one, and definitely was the one that lasted the longest. But I’ve also been a fan of two soap operas (Santa Barbara and Sunset Beach), well, okay, three soap operas, because even though Dark Shadows is its own fandom thing now, and I was just a baby when it was on the air, it still aired as a soap opera originally. I was a fan of Roswell and of Beauty and the Beast (the 1980s version) and of Smallville. I know there are others, but that’s pretty much it for me right now.

Oh! Babylon Five! That’s my traditional move whenever the people around me get into Star Wars vs. Star Trek. I throw B5 into the mix and sometimes will gather a sizable group who agree with me. I came to B5 pretty late, but I think it still counts.

I was a huge comic book fan for decades, and I guess you can be a fan of book series, and I’ve got a lot of those. So, I guess I’ll sometimes be blogging about my fandoms. Maybe.

Gratuitous Amazon Link time! Today, it’s See How They Run, the second Embassy Row book by Ally Carter. I just read it about a year and a half ago, and I can remember bits and pieces of it, the ending made an impression, though.