Republicans have always played dirty and the Democrats refuse to. Playing dirty is literally the only way the Democrats can win against this unhinged amoral mass of fascists.

True on all counts. I am trying hard not to go into full panic mode.

If the Democratic party had paid even a tiny bit of attention to either PR or succession planning in the past 40 years, SCOTUS and the electoral map would both look very different. I am not optimistic.

I dropped Dylan off at the airport at fuck-too-early o'clock this morning and he has landed safely in LA, where he will be studying music production at UCLA for a week. On Sunday Aeryn heads off for two weeks of sleepaway camp, giving us almost a full child-free week! We have nothing planned except an 80s dance party boat cruise on Friday (this is an annual party sponsored by a local indie radio station).

Woo-hoo, enjoy, Jess!

An 80s dance party boat cruise sounds so fun!

Yeah, kind of. Calli, I don't know which is more irritating--the recurring digestive issues or the manufactured crisis around the water meters.

I was surprised to find that one of my coworkers is convinced that Trump is going to win -- not that she's happy about it, and intends to vote anyway. She's Black, btw, and has even more to fear from a racist dictatorship than I do.

I really think it’s starting to turn this way.

I'm either disconnected from the election, or I'm hungry (or both): I got an email with the subject line "Team Joe" and I instantly assumed it was a Trader Joe's email. (It was not.)

Maybe Biden *should* team up with Trader Joe's! America is back, baby!

I am pessimistic about how the election will turn out but I'm going to vote and hope that everyone who is pessimistic votes and that will do something.

Today M and I went to the Southeast Game Exchange/game convention. It was really fun. It's small in terms of a convention and the first convention I've been to in a very long time. There were only 2 rooms with panels and the only panel that I thought looked interesting was tomorrow. But I didn't ask for tomorrow off. I got 2 large really cool art prints (one the artist said she was leaving Meta because of their AI scraping and I really want to share the print so I'm trying to figure out how to do that). 3 smaller prints (it was buy 2 get 1 free I couldn't resist), a really cool purse/dice bag--the creator said she started making dice bags and then sized them up for purses and then branched out to making other things. The one I got is Wonder Woman print and then this keyfob money/ID holder that is Scooby Doo. Some really cool washi tape. 2 stickers. An art card that was thrown in as a freebie. Light saber ear cuff. Very cute Supernatural pin. And I swear some thing else.

I was admiring the cool earrings and ended up getting the ear cuff because the creators were like "oh hey if you can't wear earrings try an ear cuff". They also said they might be able to switch one out but I wasn't really paying attention and I like the light saber. So now I'm going to be looking more into ear cuffs for ear jewelry. (one of my ears always ends up with cysts and it's closed up so I'd need to get it re pierced and it seems like too much of a hassle).

I also ran into a co worker (the one I shared the fanfic with) and he said he saw another co worker there.

M and I went to Recraft after (to say hi and look for frames) and as we were leaving we ran into that other co worker who had left one kid at the convention and was taking the other to the maker's space at Recraft since that kid was tired and bored.

There is a one day ComicCon in Oct or Nov which I kind of want to go to and a Retro Toy convention the week before Thanksgiving which we are going to look at.

I totally splurged today but I had cash I've been hanging on to and that's what I used for this and it was so much fun to see everything and talk to people.

Then when we were coming home I mentioned Dragon Con to M, who hadn't heard of it so I explained what it was. And then discovered how large it has become.

Oh and I saw someone wearing the Loop Earplugs I've seen a few places and she said they worked really well and blocked out almost all the noise at the really noisy end. They had a free play arcade I wanted to try but it was right by the Dance Dance Revolution and Rock Band contests. They literally had those 2 next to each other. It was sensory hell over there.

I bought loops and hate them. I hear loud ocean type sounds when I use them that are worse than the background noise.