Happy The Eagle Has Landed Day to all who believe it actually happened.

For the first time since losing my job on June 1, I was busy all week. One of my consulting contracts kicked in 100% and my other one starts tomorrow. For all practical purposes, I'm fully employed again. I'm just working for myself. With the Trumplicans dismantling the heath care system in the US my monthly health insurance premium is likely to increase from $850 to around $1800 in 2026, but I guess I will deal with that next year. There is nothing I can do about it now. It has not escaped my notice that I don't need to be in the US to do my job, and getting the hell out may be the long term solution.

It's been brutally hot again this week in RVA. I was thinking that summer is no longer fun. When I was kid I was outside from 9 AM to 6 PM every day all summer. My mother would not have let me sit around inside all day. Of course, with only 3 or 4 TV stations and no computers or video game consoles, there wasn't much to do inside except read, which I did plenty. You don't see kids out playing baseball or soccer at all anymore. You might see then after dinner for a few hours, but the all day background noise of kids enjoying life is not something you hear when the heat index is over 100F every damn day.

And now that I typed the above I had to find data to back up my feeling. The data doesn't really do it though. This chart of average daily highs and lows in RVA in July does not support the idea that air temps are rising in July. This is not to suggest that climate change isn't happening, because the global data don't lie. This data may support my idea that RVA is not a bad place to be during climate change. Our latitude plus the relative nearness of oceans and mountains may be moderating the extremes? I don't know, but I did expect the July temps to show a more pronounced upward trend.

Last night was a date night. After dinner at the always good Greek on Cary we hit our favorite local music club for Mackenzie Roark and the Hotpants. It was the first time we had seen her and it won't be the last. Although I do wonder if we'll be seeing her in small 100 seats clubs in the future. They sold it out and it seems like they could be a band on the rise. It's loud, twangy, classic country, the kind of tunes you'd hear in classic honky tonks and juke joints, if those places still existed. Here are a couple of tunes. I will say that their recorded music doesn't capture the energy they exude live. On stage they come across more like a loud rock band.

Ghost of Rock and Roll
Take my Money

This article about the Starbucks near Gallaudut University (a university where sign language is the primary language) is interesting. All the staff are deaf, giving the average commuter stopping in for a cup of caffeine a brief look at life when it is not organized around them.

I was looking through my bookmarks this week and rediscovered this piece of short fiction from my friend Charlie Kondek.

This would never work for me, but that doesn't mean I can't appreciate these thoughts from Richard MacManus about blogs borrowing the concepts of seasons from podcasts or TV shows.

I thought I bookmarked a couple of other things this week, but if I did, I don't know where I put those links.

And that is it for this week. Remember, in a world where you can choose to be anything, you can choose to be kind.

As I mentioned yesterday in the weekend update, our car is at the shop, not safe to drive, waiting for a part to be delivered. After 4 days of no vehicle I decided to rent a car for a couple of days as we have shit to do, plus we both have appointments Monday morning. The math on rental car vs. Uber was a wash.

I hopped on the city bus for the 3 mile ride to the airport, and upon arriving stood in line for 15 minutes while the 2 Budget/Avis agents dealt with a grand total of 3 customers. When I got the front I was told that there were "no cars in the garage" and that I could have a seat and wait and eventually maybe somebody would return a car and I would get the rent the car I had reserved the day before.

Cue Seinfeld. That bit was broadcast in September 1991. So it was already enough of a recognized problem then to be worthy of pop culture skewering. And here we are 34 years later, and the problem hasn't gotten better, if we are being generous. If we are realistic, it's worse. Budget tried to blame it on the storms in RVA yesterday. Apparently a bunch of people with afternoon flights decided to skip the flights instead of returning their rental cars in the rain.

Right....It could have been 78F and sunny, and they would not have had a car for me.

There were 8-10 people ahead of me in the desperate suckers line. Unlike all of them, who were visiting RVA and thus needed transportation, I could say FU to Budget and just go home. The bus was leaving in about 10 minutes so that is what I did. I canceled the reservation on my phone and rode the three stops back to the bus stop closest to the house.

At that point both my wife and I really needed to get out of the house, as we had been home bound without a car since Tuesday. So we walked the one mile to the local pub for dinner. While walking I realized that the last time either of us had walked one mile for a dinner date was college. Fish and chips, a burger with fries, two beers, and an iced tea didn't cost $55 after tip in college though.

In grad school (and undergrad) I was taught that a market with notoriously bad customer service was just begging for a competitor to come in and do things right. However, that was before the corrosive effects of private equity were well understood. Any real threat to the current market would just be purchased and killed. See the tech industry for literally dozens of examples.

Anyway, I rode the city bus for the first time yesterday, and I did a college like date (in spirit, if not in price) with my wife. We will be home all day, because you know, we don't have wheels.

Note: We live at the very end of the bus line. Getting to the airport is easy via bus. Getting downtown or anywhere else we might want to go in RVA via bus is 90 minutes each way.

I was out in the yard before 8 AM mowing to beat the heat. I did not beat the heat. (I mow with a human powered reel mower, so no noise to disturb the neighbors.) Last weekend was Independence Day in the US. But given that the government and about 1/3 of the citizens have abandoned the ideals set forth in the Declaration of Independence, I certainly did not feel like celebrating. We were camping, but otherwise did nothing specific to celebrate.

While at the campground, the airbag light in the truck came on warning us that the passenger airbag was not arming. I figured it was the sensor that detects if a full sized human is in the seat, which is a cheap part. When I dropped the truck at my mechanic Tuesday he told me it is the airbag control module, and that I should absolutely not drive the vehicle until it is fixed. There is a chance that the airbags will just all blow while I am driving, or not blow at all in an accident. Unfortunately, it's not a cheap fix (are there any cheap car fixes these days?) and the part is in short supply. So as I type this on Saturday morning the truck (our only vehicle) is still at the mechanic. I'm hopping on the city bus this afternoon to go to the airport and rent a car, as we have shit to this weekend, and we both have appointments on Monday morning.

BTW, after this repair I'll be at $6100 on car repairs this calendar year. I bought the Edge in 2020 with 92,000 miles on it, and it's been fine until this year. But that is a big bill to deal with in a year when I'm had job issues and now I am starting a business. I was supposed to head to Asheville this weekend for DrupalCamp, but as I have no wheels that got nixed. 2025 just refuses to give me a break. I was curious, so I went and looked at what I could buy for $10K. (The $4K the Edge might sell for, plus the $6K I've spent on it this year, assuming they can get the airbag module.) I can not get a better vehicle for $10K, so in hindsight the decision to keep fixing the Edge is a good one.

Onto the links.

Kerri wrote about not getting the the current trend of people tracking every detail of their life. That struck a chord with me as I too have zero desire to track much of anything in my life. My wife bought me a smart watch for my birthday a few years ago, and after two weeks I returned it and replaced it with an analog watch. She also has the most adorable dachshund.

This article takes a more realistic look at the digital nomad life. It's not all hanging out at the beach working on your laptop. That really shouldn't be a surprise. That said, I am looking at a 4-6 week trip next summer where I work from the camper as we visit every National Park east of the Mississippi river that we have not yet visited.

Martha Wells, author of the MurderBot books, is not expecting true AI anytime soon. BTW, if you have not watched the MurderBot series on Apple TV, it is well worth a one month subscription to binge. It's ten 30-minute episodes, so you can easily knock it out over a weekend, or even a rainy day.

Ryan (who I met when he sent me an email via my blog over 20 years ago, and it turned out we lived in the same neighborhood) has added a blogroll to his site. I need to do that.

This post was composed while listening to Jukebox the Ghost.

And that is it for this week. Remember, in a world where you can choose to be anything, you can choose to be kind.

The food pyramid is just a suggestion.

For a recent cigar and bourbon pairing, I reached for a couple of familiar old friends: Isaac Bowman Port Barrel Finished Bourbon and the Oliva Serie V Melanio.

The Isaac Bowman is produced by A. Smith Bowman Distillery, located right here in Fredericksburg, VA. Despite the distillery’s proximity, their core expressions can be surprisingly hard to come by — even here in Virginia. The Isaac Bowman Port Finish, fortunately, is generally found on store shelves, but that doesn’t make it any less desirable.

I’ve long been a fan of port-finished bourbons as companions to full-flavored cigars, and the Isaac Bowman is no exception. The bottle bears no age statement but is believed to be aged in oak for 4 to 5.5 years, followed by a 3 to 6 month finish in port barrels sourced from both Virginia and Portugal (using a mix of American and French Limousin oak). It’s bottled at 92 proof (46% ABV).

The port influence is immediately evident on the nose, offering notes of dark cherry, sweet apple, and vanilla. The palate carries those same port-aged qualities forward — delectable hints of sweet fruit, brown sugar, creamy vanilla, and a touch of mild spice. The finish is long, warm, and very satisfying.

The Oliva Serie V Melanio has made more than a few appearances in these Musings and on my Instagram feed. I can’t recall a time when I didn’t have either the Serie V or Serie V Melanio — usually in several vitolas — resting in my humidor. It’s a versatile, well-rounded cigar that pairs just as well with whiskey as it does with beer or coffee.

This cigar features an Ecuadorian-grown Sumatra wrapper over Nicaraguan binder and filler tobaccos, including Jalapa-grown ligero. Medium to full in body, it delivers a beautifully balanced profile of peppery spice, caramel, coffee, sweet nuts, and chocolate. The lingering mouthfeel is creamy and smooth.

This particular stick was from a box of Robustos I purchased in April 2024. It was brimming with the expected rich flavors and maintained an excellent, cool burn from start to finish.

The combination of the cigar and the port-finished bourbon was an absolute delight — perhaps one of the best pairings I’ve enjoyed in recent memory.

Cheers!