Decided I’m abandoning my affiliation with the Democratic Party and will become an independent (small “i”) voter. Between sidelining Bernie in 2016 and now attempting to block 3rd party access to state ballots, this system needs to be systematically demolished and rebuilt.

>Ecology also teaches that all life on earth can be viewed as a competition among species for the solar energy captured by green plants and stored in the form of complex carbon molecules. A food chain is a system for passing those calories on to species that lack the plant’s unique ability to synthesize them from sunlight.

Excerpt from The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan

It was only 93° today.

>My sister got lucky
Married the yuppie
Took him for all he was worth
—Tom Petty

Finished reading: [Guts: A Graphic Novel](https://micro.blog/books/9780545852531) by Raina Telgemeier 📚

Our back patio is usually chaos. Zoey doesn’t seem to mind. She says she could do without the heat, though.

Currently reading: [The Omnivore’s Dilemma](https://micro.blog/books/9780143038580) by Michael Pollan 📚

Summers in Portland have felt more like Redding every year. We now have 3 official seasons: rain, smoke, and scorching hot.

Started reading: [White Bird: A Wonder Story (A Graphic Novel)](https://micro.blog/books/9780593487785) by R. J. Palacio 📚

I see you, Cannon Beach.

Happy to see more EV chargers at state parks & campgrounds across Oregon.

Glamping supreme. Ask me if I brought the portable AC. 🏕️

Countdown to camp. For all the money we’re spending on this, we could’ve stayed at a pretty nice hotel with a pool. 🏕️

It’s going to be around 100° the next four days. We walked around the neighborhood on the early side and stopped to listen to the bullfrogs at the wetlands. The creeping thistle looked neat. The bees looked happy.

I worked as a cook at P.F. Chang’s in college. Whenever someone finds out about this, about half the time they say “I love their chicken lettuce wraps!”

Then I break the news to them that it’s just ground up and fried chicken fat and skin, the stuff that normally gets thrown away.

Organic fireworks.

Explained Independence Day to my inquiring 5-year-old son today, as best I could. He responded:

>But dad, war is not good. People get hurt and that’s not something that we should be remembering.

Couldn’t argue with that.

I just want Apple to allow me to choose “natural” scrolling for the trackpad, and regular scrolling for the mouse wheel. Is that too much to ask?

I love that my personalized radio station played me Ja Rule – Mesmerize on my drive home today.

I’m 43 and just now feel like I have enough PTO to stay somewhat sane, yet enough responsibility to feel guilty using it.

We’ve got a camping trip with friends this weekend that we booked in January (you have to do that here), and now it’s supposed to be around 100 degrees each day. Seriously considering sleeping in the Tesla and testing out Camp Mode.

Several _days_ later, all 20 years of emails — 117,006 messages at 11 gb — have been imported to iCloud. After setting up mail forwarding, I no longer need to keep Gmail in Mail via IMAP because it’s all searchable. Delayed retrieval is also solved by forwarding. Perhaps the most boring post ever.