McDonald's and Melania Shoes

I stopped in to the nurse's office at school and signed up for a flu shot yesterday.They'll contact me with a time to go get it. I wish they could do a new Covid booster too, but that's not something they offer, and I don't think I'm entitled to one under the NHS. Dave has been asked to get one, though, because his Crohn's and its treatment makes him vulnerable in the eyes of the medical establishment.

While in the nurse's office I weighed myself and was shocked to find I'm 88 kilos -- or 194 pounds! I don't know why this shocked me because that's the same weight I was last summer, but I guess I forgot. Clearly I need fewer lazy days on the couch reading "Bleak House." (And probably less dessert.)

When I was young I weighed about 175, and when I worked out more in my 30s and 40s I was somewhere around 180-185. But this additional ten pounds is not muscle. Sigh. The weird thing is, I still have the same waist size I've always had -- so where is this weight gain going? I guess my trunk is thicker than it used to be.

I may have blogged this photo before -- I'm not sure. This is me as a 16-year-old, in the summer of 1983, wearing my uniform for my first-ever job at McDonald's. I don't recall the pants being so flared -- they're practically bell-bottoms! But I do remember that uniform was magical. You could spill literally anything on it, and then throw it in the washer and it would emerge clean. It was 100 percent polyester, obviously.

This photo came to mind yesterday as I read about Donald Trump's ridiculous assertion that Kamala Harris never worked at McDonald's, as she has said she did in the very same summer that I began working there. One wag called it "burgerism," a play on Trump's "birtherism" argument that Obama wasn't born in the United States. I'm surprised Harris's campaign doesn't just release a photo like the one above -- but then again, if you spent all your time keeping up with Trump's firehose of lies and accusations, you'd never be able to spread your own message. I suppose whether or not she worked at McDonald's for one summer is hardly the most relevant issue we're facing.

I keep wishing this campaign season would just end. But the minute it does, the next one begins, you know? The news media has always liked the horse-race atmosphere, with this or that candidate pulling ahead or falling behind, and it's much easier to cover politics that way than to actually analyze the issues (which readers and viewers don't have much patience for anyway). It doesn't really do anyone any good, though. It just makes us all tired.

I found this blingy pair of shoes while walking Olga yesterday morning. They're still out there, as far as I know, lying atop their carpet of leaves and soy sauce packets. They're very Melania, aren't they? Except that hers would be Gucci and would cost $10,000.