Ethan and Ehlana:
The top family news for today is that Cassie and Michael are in Fiji, and our updates from them feel weird because it was already Wednesday when they arrived; and now they are already transitioning from afternoon to evening with a business dinner meeting. They’ll be sleeping and starting their Thursday by the time we get around to our Wednesday morning breakfast! The time change is a challenge for them; so they are using their Magi talents to adapt and deal with the fatigue issues; and they are enjoying the tropical weather a lot too. For the record, it isn’t actually that much warmer there than it was here today, since their high was in the low-eighties and our high was seventy-nine, but then if we want to compare apples-to-apples; our forecast for tomorrow is for a mid-eighties high. That really doesn’t compare to a tropical island scene, though, so they still win for best fall location!
Moving along, our day has been pretty good. The overnight rain ended in time for Tai Chi to be by the river; we had a standard school day breakfast with Mom and Dad; and then we headed off to school. We had fun with our friends including the cheer squad practice at lunch for the girls and our football or band practices after last classes of the afternoon. The warm weather was nice for the outdoor time we had today – including for the team practices; and we had dinner and our study session outside too as Sophia hosted that meal and work time between practices. Our teen praise team practice included getting new music to learn for both Thanksgiving and Christmas; and we have a lot of music to learn – especially for the Christmas musical that Stacey has planned for the special, teen-led annual Christmas show. We didn’t work on the Christmas music tonight – only the songs for Thanksgiving; and then Ehlana and I walked Naomi and Aiden to their homes after collecting Silkie along the way and leaving Aaron with Sophia at her house.
Our day wasn’t done once we were home. Mom did a Magi lesson with us; we used time phasing to get family business and charity work done; and had a work-related vid-chat with Cassie and Michael between meetings for them. We admit to being jealous of the tropical views on their end of that call, but skipping out on both school and football to go along with them wasn’t an option – especially when that would only be fun if we got to take our four best friends along with us! We are into our Wednesday now as we’ve moved on from the office work to our bedtime twin chat and computing, but we’re doing pretty good even with those extra time-phased hours of our day; and we are content with the work we got done tonight too.
That brings us up to our world news report of the day; so let’s do that and then call it a night. The aftermath of the peace deal signing in Egypt continues to be a top story, and we will hope for the best, but the rhetoric is annoying and strongly-suggests that none of the leaders involved have a clue about history; since this is just another in a long line of deals that won’t actually solve the core problems in the region. It is far too soon to see whether anything improves for the Palestinians in Gaza or the West Bank; and that will be one of the measures for success that actually means something. While President Trump is claiming a peace victory in the Middle East, he is also talking tough about Venezuela and Russia; and starting a war with Venezuela would be as-idiotic as getting directly involved in the Ukraine war with long-range missiles that only our military can use and target – unlike other weapons that have been given to Ukraine. We’ve gone over this many times now; yet it still gets talked about by our leaders without any seeming understanding of the true risks of that kind of escalation. Ditto that for the latest threats directed at China that include adding one-hundred percent to the existing tariffs – as if our leaders don’t already know how that would work out for us. The Netherlands might not be the only country to attempt stealing China’s foreign assets either, but they could be among the first to find out the consequences to their own economy. We are, for instance, really interested in finding out how long that company they stole can continue to produce semiconductors if their Chinese parts suppliers stop all shipments to them! Those fourteen-thousand European employees might not be very happy with the Dutch government if they all end up unemployed!
Finally, for tonight, we want to note that the government shutdown continues; life goes on and most of the ‘normal’ people in our country don’t even notice or care; and we only wish that the shutdown could extend to the military-industrial complex and the banks; since they are all still getting their billions of dollars every day – and that is billions thanks to the trillion-dollar shares of the federal budget that they get to take from the taxpayers before we ever get to the ‘discretionary’ spending! Let’s also point out that President Trump didn’t need to cancel his trip to Israel and Egypt; so his budget must not be discretionary either! We’ll guess that sending weapons to other countries will be exempt too, but we should stop there and avoid the temptation for a serious rant on government spending in general.
That’s also enough for this report and we’re ready to get some sleep; so we’re out of here starting right now.
Until next time, live with love, fellow Magi of the Light!
