Monday, August 24, 2015

Laughing while the world burns

Actually, it's more of a smolder and a smile.

I woke up at 4:30 this morning in a cold sweat.  No idea why.  And then I saw all kinds of breaking news alerts about China's stock market crashing, followed by London & Germany.  Twitter started trending #BlackMonday, and visions of 1987's crash came roaring back.

As many of you know, I grew up in Miami.  When the market crashed in 1987, a broker friend of the family got shot and paralyzed by a nutter who blamed him for losing all of his money.  People do some fucked up shit when they get desperate.  I'm glad the US markets have started to recover a bit today.

I texted a friend who happened to be awake fortunately.  [My text may or may not have done the waking. ;) ]  We talked about books, philosophy, and sushi until I calmed down a bit.

Now on to the smile part.  I went to the pharmacy to pick up some eye drops for my upcoming eye surgery.  I was updating my contact info with the cashier, and she of course asked me for my number.  I'm in the middle of a busy store and didn't want to yell my digits (with all kinds of freaks wandering about potentially eavesdropping), so I tried to be discreet about it.  Nope.  She couldn't hear me (or was just messing with me) and made me repeat it.  Several times.  Sigh.


In other news, there was an M-class 5.6 solar flare last night and solar storms making a direct hit to Europe and Asia.  Coincidence?  If anyone sees any pretty Aurora, send me pics please.

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