Ethan and Ehlana:
Happy 38th Birthday, Aunt Deborah!
Happy 10th Birthday, Alex Byrd!
Happy 9th Anniversary, Neil and Michelle Ryan!
Before we get to the news from today, our campfire and camping last night was great – even without any co-ed nap time. The Pizzeria pizza was a hit with all teens and kids; our ball practices were good and on the short side; and then our band was the highlight of the campfire – even when we only used guitars and Aiden drummed on whatever he had close to him – like coolers, bag chairs, bottles, and more. Our teen friends appreciated the dance opportunities and cuddle time; and the youngest campers fell asleep to our ballads – just as we’d planned. We still had a late night – much-later than Mom and Dad did after getting home from the pub and anniversary party; so after two late nights we were happy to pack up the campground this morning.
I still had my football workout this morning, so we were up early for Tai Chi; had our tents and gear packed up before breakfast; and then that meal was an adventure – especially with the junior campers. My football workout was good; and then I joined Ehlana for some house and yard chores for the rest of the morning. We’re splitting up that work a bit this week; wrapped up around one o’clock; and then we were kept busy for the afternoon mostly helping out with kid control at the Carringtons while Mom and Aunt Leanne anchored the crew getting everything ready for Aunt Deborah’s birthday dinner party. We helped with the work too; kept busy until we sat down for that meal and celebration; and then we kept busy getting the next-gen kids fed; working on the clean-up crew after the meal; and then more kid-control fun at the park while the co-ed ball practices were going on.
Some of our cousins are doing sleepovers or camping at other homes, but Ehlana and I needed to do some office work tonight; so we came home after the ball practices and got started on that fun in the office with Mom and Dad. We all had a lot to get done and needed to work in real time a lot, so even with the time phasing; we’ve been up late again tonight. We got a lot done, so it is worth being this tired, but it has also been a very long day; and we’re ready to crash and nap soon. Bath or Jacuzzi time was still needed, so we took care of that after wrapping up in the office; and we’ve blasted through the world and political news checks – though we covered some of those checks while working on family business and charity projects that are affected by various challenges around the world.
Cassie and Michael are dealing with some of those issues in-person; and we all learn a lot through them as we adapt our efforts based on what is needed by different people in different regions of the world. This isn’t a real-life example for us, but an actual suggestion for use of electric vehicles for a project we are involved in might have sounded good to some of the partners, but was ridiculous because that project was in an area with unreliable electricity; so re-charging those vehicles would have been both a challenge and put more pressure on an already-overloaded power system – which is why the idea didn’t get out of the brainstorming stage. Our point here is that even with some fairly-smart Magi Masters involved, we don’t pretend to know everything; and locals often know what they really need.
On the world and political news front, the top story was another meeting between President Trump’s special envoy and Russian President Putin; and we were not surprised to find out that more talk didn’t lead to any real progress to end the Ukraine conflict. In response to that lack of progress, President Trump put new tariffs on India for the audacity of trading with Russia. Singling India out from all of the other countries that trade with Russia is intentional and stupid; since ticking off a trading market of one-point-four billion people will definitely backfire. We even have a recent example of that, since the new tariffs on Brazil have led to China fast-tracking around two-hundred Brazilian companies for trade with them – including most or all of the coffee exporters. We’re sure that Brazil will not care about tariffs on exports from them if they can just sell everything to China instead! None of this is stopping the fighting in Ukraine, and we have to wonder if our special envoy is doing anything at all except spending a lot of money traveling the world. His visit to Israel seems to have done nothing for the Palestinians, and as he headed to Russia; the latest news from Israel is that they are planning on ‘occupying’ all of Gaza and want to get rid of all of the Palestinians. At the rate they’re dying of starvation and never-ending attacks by the Israeli army; they’ll achieve that goal while the rest of the world stands by and allows this genocide.
Finally, we’ll comment on the national political news nonsense. As always, there are stories out there meant to distract from the real issues; and we do not appreciate the waste of our time to sift through the garbage along the way to getting the important information. We would really love to see all of the evil power players in the world get what they deserve, but the political lawfare on both sides of the fictional political aisle is a waste of time; and nobody with power and money will ever get convicted of any really-serious crime! That’s depressing, but true; and we don’t expect anything to change until something big actually breaks the current system.
Too much of that news is depressing, so let’s wrap this up while Ehlana and I work on happier thoughts to take with us into dreamland. Stay tuned for our next update while we rest up a bit and then get back to living our next batch of summer adventures.
Until next time, live with love, fellow Magi of the Light!
