Christian and Lorena got tickets for the Trump rally today in Manchester, NH, drove up there from Cambridge (only about an hour drive), saw the massive lines to get in, checked the temperature (14° F), and decided to try again tomorrow at the Concord, NH rally. Lorena has been a huge Trump fan since the very beginning. They were pretty sad, but there was a good chance that the would have stood in line for several hours and still not been able to get in. I have gotten a lot less political with age. More and more, I am buying into the “not my circus, not my monkeys” motif and I think it seems to serve me well. It is very much in the spirit of “render unto Caesar” and the whole concept behind Mere Christianity. Still, I do like the Donald and would love to see him poke the establishment in the eye.
After high tea at the Savoy Hotel, the only logical way to up your game gastronomically is to go to McDonald’s. I am seriously worried about Kelly though–she actually said, “the ketchup is better here.” A couple of questions are begged at this point. 1) Who goes to London for food? and 2) Who judges a McDonald’s by the quality of its ketchup. Still, there is no down side to a happy meal. Still I am happy for Lorena. As an avid McDonald’s fan and ex-multi-year employee, it was important for her to check out the McDonald’s in England. She has visited a McDonald’s in every country in North America, so now she wants to do Europe.
Lorena and Kelly made it to London last night. They had a great flight, saw the Aurora Borealis as they flew past Iceland, landed at Heathrow Airport late morning and made it to their Bed and Breakfast by 1:30 PM London time. That got a little rest, went out and got some dinner, took this photo of a lamppost by a picturesque church and then made their way back to the BnB to make an early night of it having spent the entire previous night on the plane. When they were looking for something to eat, the found a restaurant named Wahaca (Oaxaca) that is part of a chain in England. Even if that was done by Mexicans trying to spell the name phonetically so that Englishmen can pronounce it right, it is just wrong! 
I am never again going to make fun of the way English is spelled improperly on their signs. Never. I do hope they get to try it out though.
We live in interesting times. The most notable non-presidential election of my lifetime is scheduled to take place this coming Tuesday. I am not wildly involved in any of this, but like to know what is going on. I do not trust any of the traditional news sources–we have not subscribed to a paper and ink newspaper for a couple of decades now and we do not have a television. That leaves the internet and, to a much lesser extent, the radio. Fortunately, I think it is possible figure out what is going on better than any time in my lifetime. I will continue to depend on non-traditional news sources and continue to vet my current sources at the same time I look for new ones.
Yesterday was my 63rd birthday. It is a strange and interesting time in life and the world. The New Year whether counted from one’s birthday, January 1, or some other important annual even like the start of school or a church convention is a time for reflection. For some reason, this year more than many in the past, I feel a need to reassess what we (Lorena and I) do. We have a few short term goals we want to accomplish like Lorena’s degree and some remodel projects, but in the whole scheme of things, they are not so consequential.
I have flown in and out of Portland International Airport more than any other airport for my entire professional life. Honestly, PDX had lost its luster over the years as the Portland culture seemed to coarsen in lockstep with the aging of the quite famous PDX carpet. While the city of Portland and the State of Oregon maintain their unparalleled beauty, (well, that is true for the City of Portland, only if you do not look too close) the coarsening of the culture has not abated. That can not be said about PDX anymore. Most of my travel was pre-remodel and now they have the new carpet installed. It is a joy to fly in and out of here now. It is not really up to the level of our beloved RDU airport, but that is really just a regional airport so might not be a fair comparison and PDX is almost that good anyway.
I started a new job last week. I flew to Boston to get started with the new company. I had a good number of firsts while I was there–at at