March 294th.

It's about time to pause my job search for a couple weeks, as the industry tends to just hibernate until the new year. New job openings will appear, as everyone finalizes their 2021 headcount. It'll be fine.

Last night the Shitgibbon and his pet lunatics sat down in the Oval Office and discussed how to stage a coup, by physical force, using the military and everything. Attorneys on Twitter are now (re-?)acquainting themselves with the dust-caked federal crime of "seditious conspiracy," which seems to mostly get pulled out for terrorists (even white ones) because, let's be honest: it exceeds the ambition of most criminals. Unlike every other conspiracy charge, seditious conspiracy doesn't require you to have gone as far as to start your overthrow of the government or its laws, so this seems to qualify. Good times!

This is the first winter I've had a violin nice enough to really feel affected by the weather. Higher-end violins are built more lightly, so they can resonate more, which makes them more sensitive and harder to play, and also makes them more likely to disintegrate when rented to students (who are mostly kids). I also haven't particularly liked my rental violins, so it's a treat to have one I really enjoy. It's still a stupid instrument.

My violin teacher, already working remotely, and with finances only somewhat better than you'd expect for a Millennial musician, went down to Puerto Vallarta a few weeks ago. My first question was "Are you coming back?" and the question is open, but he's certainly ripe for the expat life. Absent the ability of the Bay Area to put you in a room with the right people, you might as well go someplace else.

(There's a famous Scottish fiddler named Alasdair Fraser, who actually lives relatively nearby here, and whose son Galen is also a local musician. Alasdair wrote a pair of tunes I learned in simplified form, but my teacher described being out at a jam session, and "Galen's Arrival" came up, and Galen said, "That's me! I'm Galen!" and of course the song was written for his birth. But there are no jam sessions.)

We're staying home. We should walk the dog more. We're all healthy, for the moment, but the pandemic is looking grimmer than ever.

One nice feature of a new job will be that I'll have less time to read Twitter.