Looking Forward and Looking Back

I came across these Picasso-esque figures on a wall between Belsize Park and St. John's Wood. (I'm not sure Picasso would agree they're Picasso-esque, but you know what I mean.) I think whoever drew them may have been following existing cracks or contours in the wall. Or maybe shadows?

Dave and I have ironed out our plans for February break in a couple of weeks. We are indeed going to Florida, and our friend Warren, who has stayed with Olga in the past, will dog-sit for us here in London. We're going to fly into Tampa on the 15th and fly out on the 22nd. In between I'm not sure what we're doing. Dave will spend the bulk of the week in Bradenton with his parents, and I hope to get up to Jacksonville to visit my brother, and we'll see my step-sister just north of Tampa.

It's good to have a plan. I haven't been back to Florida for a year and a half, and I think we both felt like we were due for a visit.

Last night I was re-reading some posts from 2013 when we first got Olga. It's so funny to read them now, when she is so thoroughly Olga to me, with all her quirks and personality traits known. Back then she was a blank slate, a question mark. I remember when I picked her up I was surprised by how big she was, and she was wearing a studded leather collar that frankly made her look thuggish. We got rid of that right away. She was called Tinsel by the shelter where we adopted her, and it took us a while to settle on a new name -- Mona was the most viable secondary option, but when we chose Olga we did it with certainty. And Olga she has become, through the subsequent 12 years of our shared life together.

When I got her I remember thinking, "We're going to have this dog for at least ten years!" That seemed like such a long time. But it went by in a flash.

Anyway, I'm not sure what prompted this retrospection. Olga's health seems more or less fine; she's just doddery and slow. She's 14 or 15 years old now. Maybe I'm a little uncertain about leaving her when we go to Florida. But we've gotta have lives, too, right?

Remember those violas I found on the sidewalk in St. John's Wood last November? They're blooming away, despite our near-freezing nighttime temperatures. Rugged little things.

So Trump has pardoned most of the January 6 rioters, as expected. I'm not too worked up about this, given that many of them have already served their sentences and punishment has been inflicted. I was on the fence about prosecuting them in the first place, and I still think the Biden administration, by vigorously doing so, missed an opportunity to extend an olive branch and ease the grievances of the MAGA crowd. The prosecutions turned them all into martyrs in the eyes of some Americans. (I do think some of the leaders of alt-right organizations -- like Enrique Tarrio and Stewart Rhodes -- were rightly imprisoned as instigators of violence, and I'm sorry to see them get off.) Trump declined to pardon the rioters in the waning days of his first term, so if I were them, I'd be saying now, "Too little too late!" But of course he can do no wrong in their addled eyes.

I can't even talk about all the other stuff Trump is up to. We are in for a world of crazy.

By the time I went to work yesterday morning, two of the abandoned chairs in my previous post had been taken -- the two on the left. I would have adopted that middle one if it had still been there. Dave can thank his lucky stars it was gone!