201st day sober. I drank coffee and O'Doul's last night and I think between the both of them, I really made a mistake. I must have gotten up 6 times to pee during what passed for sleep, and I slept in until about 1PM to try to get sufficient sleep which I'm not sure I did.
I've been feeling better if I alternate coffee and green tea instead of just drinking coffee all day. And I probably need to have a rule of no coffee after 9PM or so.
The Kyle Shittenhouse verdict is in, and he's off the hook on all counts. So that sets a legal precedent: If you are white, it's perfectly OK to have a gun you're not legally supposed to have, go to another county armed up, and shoot anyone who disagrees with you, even if they are white also. There's already precedent for that last, of course, when the Klan killed white civil rights workers in the South in the 1960s.
So Shittenhouse is now a Nazi hero, and as they're saying on Reddit, next comes his million dollar book deal and speaking tour. I'm glad I've armed up to the extent I have, and am glad I'm not in flyover country. Of course I have unique "privileges" in that I'm white enough to be hated by blacks and browns, and colored enough to be hated by whites. Lucky me.
To celebrate this day, I've just spent $90+ on Amazon on "Time To Read Hebrew" books 1, 2, and the teacher's guide set. Those books are used in the Hebrew reading class at the local synagogue, and I'd even taken the class, although dropping out in the end due to a bunch of factors. Being a drinker, I was not good at getting up early enough for the class, and it was during a very wet winter which made getting to the class tricky - although I dropped out, I told myself that if I re-take the class and it's rainy as hell on class day, I'll go down to the area the day before and stay in a hotel if that's what it takes to make the class.
But I'm hoping I can essentially "do" the class with the books on my own and YouTube, and then I need to see about taking the other classes. I have no where near the level of internet access needed to take the classes now as they're all on Zoom. So I have to hope that in another year or so the classes will be in person again. The expensive one will be the Intro To Judaism, as it requires going to temples all over this area, many of which hard to reach by bus or bike. That will require some planning and hotel stays.
I sent an email to my aunt, the one who'd rather cut her hand off than give me a sandwich if I were starving, to say I've gone 200 days without a drop of alcohol just as a conversation starter. It'd be nice to be actual friends with her, to find out more about that side of my family, but she seems to be pretty much a Real American(tm) by which I mean, she's really not friends with anyone.
She's got a daughter who came over for the summer when I was a kid in Hawaii, and when she saw how poor and underfed we were, she spent a good part of her money feeding us. My aunt's only reaction to this was, "If I'd known how things were, I'd have taken her back right away". So, if she'd known her daughter was in the presence of poor relatives and even worse, caring about them, she's have yanked her right outta there and left us in the lurch, where we belong. That's a very American response.
I actually got in contact with her daughter in the 90s, and her daughter wanted me to drop everything and come to work for her and her husband for free. Like, what? Again, a very American response. I explained that I had my own business going and could not afford to do this, and after that she wasn't interested in staying in contact.
I've actually had someone I'd been friends with, or I thought I was friends with anyway, because he'd wanted to learn from me about that sport I'd been good at, finally give up on the sport and tell me "Because there's no more benefit to me to being friends with you, I don't want to be friends any more" or something to that effect; I'm sure I've mangled it. But that is how things are done here in the evil empire.
So unless I am useful to my aunt somehow, I can't think of why she'd want to stay in touch, since in the evil empire family means nothing.
When I was in high school I read a book about Albert Einstein and read of the Jewish custom of inviting a poor Jew to Sabbath dinner. I was shocked and had to put the book down. That's completely opposite of the American custom of staying as far away as possible from anyone poorer than oneself, and poor relations being untouchables. I cannot think of a single way to be more Un-American than to convert* to Judaism and to follow its precepts. If I ever actually do make it to Israel, I will say, "Einstein brought me here".
*According to 23andme, I'm not the least bit Jewish, genetically speaking. But Mom sure used a lot of "Jewishisms" and also had some very strong, I won't say stated beliefs but beliefs that were unspoken and deeper; unquestionable. Such as that gambling is Very Not Good, likewise drinking and she hardly let alcohol in the house. Also, tattoos were not good and even after we became poor enough to fall in with the kind of people to whom tattoos are really cool, she could not be convinced to get one. My aunt's not saying anything either and the whole subject seems to be hush-hush.
I was up at a bit after 1PM, had coffee etc., and got going about a quarter to 5. I dropped off packages at the post office, then did some shopping at H Mart, and got on back here. Zero zombie problems so this was a good night.
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