I have not posted anything for a while, for a variety of reasons: a rough winter personally and being in a bit of a funk, lack of time due to a full-time job and an intense research project, and not being sure that I have anything to say that is of interest or value.
I also took a bit of a break from Facebook in the sense that I have not been posting many statuses or responding to other people's posts much. I found that I was responding to a lot of posts in groups or on other people's pages, posts made by people that I do not know personally, and I have come to question the usefulness of doing so.
Although I have not been highly present, I have been thinking about many things. Here, in no particular order, are some of the random thoughts that I have had recently.
1) Trump is still President. I am disturbed by this fact on many levels. One is that so many people are obsessed with every word or tweet or appearance he makes. Another is the fact that although he is clearly immoral, has clearly done several things that are illegal, and is a danger not only to Americans but to the world, there have still been no moves made to impeach him. My theory is that there is little to no political will to remove him from office. The longer he is in office, the better the Democrats (or even other Republican leaders) start to look. I believe that at some level, the public, especially the American public, is secretly fascinated with the titillating leadership of Trump, and there is actually no real will to return to a less dramatic, pre-Trump state of things. I fully expect that not only will he finish out his first term as President, he will also be re-elected, and although many people will claim to be upset and disappointed, in reality, the vast majority of people are living for his next tweet.
2) The more headlines I see about what people should and shouldn't feed their pets, whether or not they should be swimming in lakes and rivers, how many ticks are between the paw pads of dogs, whether feeding them ice will kill them or not, the number of dogs left in hot vehicles, etc., the more I am convinced that animals would be much better off if they were not pets, and nature, not human intervention, was allowed to guide their lives. (Yep, I realize probably no one is going to agree with me on this one. I'm okay with that).
3) The older I get, the longer my to-do list gets, and the less time I seem to have to get anything accomplished.
4) Somewhat related to #3, I am a bit panicky about how fast time seems to go these days. I go back to work in just over 2 weeks... where did the summer go?
5) This is the first year in at least 5 years that I will not make it to even one live CFL game.
I also have some posts that I plan to work on in the next little while. I would like to be more regular in posting, but we will see how that goes. Here, as a bit of a teaser, are some of the posts that are percolating, in no particular order:
1) Riding Mountain National Park;
2) Why "church" and I are having a bit of a disagreement at the moment;
3) Train travel;
4) Legacies (the meaning of life);
5) Baking bread;
6) Sackville, New Brunswick.
So, yes, I'm still here, in case anyone was worried. I'm just spending a lot of time thinking about things, and trying to figure a few things out. I'll be back soon.