Fortunately, I'm keeping dinner really simple today and just making loaded baked potatoes. Clean off the potatoes, coat them in olive oil, sprinkle with sea salt and then in the oven for an hour at 425. Very easy and any of my flu germs will be terminated with extreme prejudice.

Gud, please take care of yourself.

We went out for Mexican tonight because it was kids eat free night and we had a gift card. Also their margaritas are yummy.

So this is meant to be mocking the idea that the 1980s were that long ago, and it's funny. [link] But, I graduated from high school in 1990, and the 1980s were SO DIFFERENT from now. We watched some classic 1980s teen movies with Casper, and BOY are they terrible (Sixteen Candles? YIKES, for race, gender, rape... Breakfast Club held up better, but still had some issues.) I knew no out gay people at my high school; a guy I knew came out at a class dinner with the principal in 1991 and it was SHOCKING. I now know out gay and transgender 7th and 8th graders. The 1980s *were* in some ways a long time ago.

Timelies all!

I'm so sorry, Emily.

The 1980s *were* in some ways a long time ago.

It kind of trips me out that the 80s are literally to today as the 50s were to the 80s.

Yeah, I graduated HS in 1972 and lived in Virginia '74-'79. It was a very different time. I'm not terribly inclined to condemn dumb shit people did 35 or so years ago, but I will freely condemn stupid ways of handling the disclosures. I don't recall people thinking much of anything about blackface at that time, as opposed to sexual harassment, which does not fall into the 'youthful folly' category for me at all. So some stuff decades ago I may shrug off, and other stuff not so much.

Very easy and any of my flu germs will be terminated with extreme prejudice.

Call me an asshole, but I hope that the flu germs on your wife's potato survive.

No, she'll just blame him.

The 1980s *were* in some ways a long time ago.

Yes. And while the erosion of the public safety net and a lot of economic factors are not good, I'm glad that some social issues have improved.

I sometimes wonder what things would be like if we hadn't lost so many people to deliberately unaddressed disease. If we'd refrained from roiling up regional tensions during the first Gulf War. If our intelligence apparatus hadn't decided it was cool to do an end run around the Constitution to fund regime change via drug running. There's so much crap that started in the '80s that's still reverberating today.

Perhaps the hair was an early warning sign. Socio-political malaise expressed follicularly.

At least there was Prince.

Coworker, who was running this morning's 7AM meeting, showed up 10 minutes late with no explanation. Husband's VPN is mysteriously not working. The temperature dropped 30 degrees overnight, which may explain the blinding headache I had last night. WTF, Thursday.