These last few weeks have been really strange. I’ve seen a lot and have lived through a lot in my lifetime. To be sure, I’ve had an exciting life, especially when aircraft are involved. As a pilot, I try to live on a plan – knowing what’s going to happen between point A and point B each day and looking forward to no surprises along the way. However, most humans aren’t wired that way and I either drive them crazy, or they drive me crazy. Some, however, relish in chaos. Me, not so well. But these last two weeks have really pushed me to the limit of my endurance envelope.
Hurricane Irma had me on edge a week, or so before it hit us because I was trying to plan for the worst-case scenario. I always plan for the worst-case scenario but always hope for the best. But plans don’t always work out and that is why contingencies exist. My family and I were lucky in that the worst result of Irma was the inconvenience of no electricity for over 72 hours. We had food, we had shelter, we had plenty of water and we even had two full tanks of gasoline. But a block house is just not equipped to let airflow somewhat cool the house when there are no fans running. The weather was about 80 degrees Fahrenheit during the first part of the blackout but by the third day we are in the 90’s and the humidity was high. We just weren’t going to make it and I set out to find us a hotel. Well, I wasn’t the only one and hotels were few and far away.
The power came back on just as were leaving to go to the hotel. We got to work on clean up and disposing of the refrigerated groceries we lost because of the power outage.
We made it through and I believed we could now take a quick break to catch our collective breaths.
But no sooner than I thought things were calming down, news of another hurricane showed up. It seems it will miss us but my hometown, Mexico City was hit with a devastating earthquake. There is lots of damage, but thankfully, friends and family are good.
And, as if none of that was enough stress, some Russians have been poking and prodding my blog everyday looking to exploit the security to plant Malware. They were successful and set I about to patch my site, plug the holes and get everything in order again. But, they aren’t giving up as each day has been a new battle. But, at least, the blog remains free of Malware.
So as the stress levels remain high, I have no room for politics in me and I just took some time to digest it all.
But “Rocket Man” kept nagging at me.
You know, Donald Trump referring to the North Korean leader as Rocket Man this week.
Yes, there are all sorts of issues with the U.S. leader referring to another as Rocket Man but I couldn’t help myself and the imagery of Dr. Strangelove blowing up the world just made me laugh. It must be the stress.
I realize how dark it is for me to be laughing at the possibility of the world blowing up. I get it, but maybe the stress of the earthquakes and the hurricanes, not to mention Trump’s continued attacks upon my country has pushed me towards the darkness.
So, please excuse the dark humor for today and let me express myself through what I use to calm my nerves in times of stress – drawing.
Have a great weekend and see you again on Sunday with another installment of the RumpToons. On Monday, I’ll give you another example of why The Wall has nothing to do with border security.
