Republicans to start blaming Obama

I don't want to get into a whole lot of politics, but I'd just like to point out that we have now entered the momentous era in which the Republicans will start blaming the cascading failure of the American society on Obama. They've all been very uncertain since November, but now that Obama is officially president, they'll be sure to let everyone know that the reason America hasn't yet come out of the crippling recession-turning-depression that it's been inexorably heading toward for decades is because Obama is in office. It'll be Obama's fault that he isn't capable of the impossible task of making America solvent again. That's all I had to say about that.

-As I'm sure most of you know by now, Mom has become a statistic of the economy's implosion. What's she going to do now? Well, rather sensibly, she says she's going to start growing fruits and vegetables; in fact, the day before she got laid off, she had just bought some plants to start raising indoors. I think this is a great idea, and when I get home I'll be happy to plant lots of food. Ideally (to my mind), we would have pretty much the whole yard planted with stuff we can eat - and we could start canning the stuff when we couldn't eat it all. I don't guess that'll happen as soon as this growing season, but I think it's something we ought to work toward. Growing stuff is of course not the only thing Mom's going to work on. She says she'll also help Micah with school, and obviously look for a job too. When I heard from her last, she was hopeful about her prospects for a place she was going to visit that Monday... which would be yesterday. We'll see what happens. Mom's blog would probably be a better place to find updates about it though.

-Well, over break I've made a couple plans. One is that this spring Dad and I are going to go up to Eaton and hunt some groundhogs (whistlepigs). And also this spring, I'm going to get in touch with Mr Lorenz, the academic coach and French teacher from Finneytown, because he makes bows and arrows. He also makes trebuchets; he's got two. He says he'll teach me how to make a bow.

-So, now I'm back at college. I had another incredibly stressful drive back here. This time it wasn't actively snowing as I was driving, but it had been really cold for several days and snowed a lot during that time, and in addition, I was driving the whole time into about a 30-mph headwind. These things combined, and so the snow drifted aggressively across the road all through Iowa, sometimes piling up an inch or two high. As we moved into night, everyone started driving a lot slower. For the last 30 miles, I was going about 30 mph. At one point I was going to change lanes, and all the snow under the car held me back. I've never tried to change lanes before and had the lane say "no". I saw that happen to a guy in front of me too, and it was pretty funny. Less funny (but still somewhat) were the dozens of cars scattered hither and thither in the ditches on either side. At one point my passenger counted a cluster of eight. A lot of these were upside-down. A lot of them were also big trucks, which makes sense given how much wind there was. It was an ugly night for driving. But, despite the odds, I in my stick-shift Mustang managed to "keep it between the ditches; dirty side down", as Dad advised me before I left. So maybe I'm a good driver after all. I at least got both of us back without killing us too badly.

-I'll tell you more about my classes once I've sampled them for a little longer. I think I'm going to work at CERA this semester, and I'm also working at Bob's. If I play it right, I might not have to work in the dining hall at all. But I probably will anyhow. I have only one class on tuesdays and none on Thursdays, so that'll be nice - it'll give me some time to doo homework on those days. I think it'll be a good semester.