Rankings

 Funny (not really):  I have been stressing about work lately (imagine that) but Sunday morning Fr. Steve (of all people) gave a homily where he said that one had to wave away the pessimism present in our daily lives... and I realized he was correct.  I prayed some more on it and today was... better.  Much.  Calm, orderly, went through a few projects at once... I hope this continues the rest of the week.  Of course, some of it is me... I do need to be a bit more disciplined, and we all know how I love discipline...

We had our quarterly OC Board meeting today, and there will be changes (not involving me); one of our long-time managers is retiring and we need to find a replacement... and so far, no one wants to.  Time, of course... well, I am not going to push the issue now.  Actually, the meeting went pretty well -- lots of stuff was discussed, issues handled, policies refined.  It ran a bit long (and with this cold of mine I was feeling it) but everything on the agenda was handled.  Phew.  Afterwards I decided to hit the gym -- I went this morning but wanted to burn some energy and thus did legs.  It felt good, even if I was lagging a bit.  I will put it down to the cold, but I suspect i am not as young as I used to be.  Hell, I am still feeling yesterday's Wrestlemania fest...

24-hour restaurants closing at unprecedented rates | Watch (msn.com)
This could be me, but... we shut down a lot of things that kept these places open during the pandemic -- bars, concert halls, even stores and such.  Those places employed a lot of people -- and had plenty of customers -- and once that went away... well, it's not exactly sustainable to keep them open, is it now?  I have been there a few times -- good grub -- but it is hard to keep ALL of these places open if the infrastructure to support them is not yet complete.

presidential_greatness_white_paper_2024.pdf (brandonrottinghaus.com)
Interesting... my first thought was that there was something of a modernist bias here.  I realize the government does more now, but...Kennedy as 10?  Biden as 14?  Odd.  Polk at one point was in the Top Ten of Presidents due to his successes -- war with Mexico, settling the Canadian border -- but now of course we hate the guy for the motives for the war.  Wilson seems to be dropping, and as we discussed before... that is good.  Coolidge at 34?  Do we hate prosperity that much?  Grant is climbing, good; Jackson falling... possibly.  I mean, like Polk, we can dislike his motives but the results were... well, there is the Second Bank failure and the Trail of Tears -- but I think we tend to forget that his philosophy guided a generation -- if not more -- of Democrats.  I would say Trump as well, but I doubt that the Donald has actually read anything about the guy...