Greetings From the Robinsons

Dearest Rachel –

Well, it seems as though my subconscious decided to take the night off last night; I guess I can’t expect it to come up with something to tell you about every night. After all, there are plenty of real-life things I could be telling you about. It’s just that none of them at present would really be worth creating an entire letter about. So this is just going to be a scattered mess of an update about how things are going, both personally and in the wider world as I’m able to see it, so you’ll have to bear with me.

Actually, I’d taken a step back from said wider world for about a day, now. Between meeting Lars to walk through Harms Woods, and then (since he was meeting his nephews for lunch, thus leaving me at liberty much earlier than usual) an hour or so at the gym working out as per usual, I was too worn out to bother with the usual ‘news bath,’ as Frank Zappa once referred to the process. So I dropped out of the loop for about twenty or so hours, give or take. It might have been refreshing, were it not for Daniel asking if I’d heard what ‘the cabal’ was up to this time; I told him I hadn’t, and wasn’t particularly keen on hearing about it then, either, as the claims he hears about – despite the fact that the joke regarding the difference between ‘a conspiracy theory’ and ‘the truth’ being eighteen months have proven to be true considerably more often than not – tend to be decidedly more outlandish than most of the ones proven to be true. I have to keep reminding him that ‘the kraken’ regarding the voting machines was never released; he should stop promising that it will, or believing those who say so. But once the subject was dropped, we at least were able to enjoy a pleasant (early) dinner together, as well as plenty of ridiculous gaming videos.

Of course, this morning, with my mind not being able to come up with anything to write you about, I found myself back flipping through my news feed yet again rather than working on a letter to you. Some of the stuff is just a continuation of what I’d heard about over the weekend – most news is like that, with events, and reactions to events, and reactions to the reactions, after all – but there are the occasional actual new things (even if they’ve been planned well in advance), including the confrontation to occur this evening in Milwaukee. Even as I read about it, I can hear Simon & Garfunkel in my head.

Sitting on a sofa on a Sunday afternoon
Going to the candidates’ debate
Laugh about it, shout about it
When you’ve got to choose
Every way you look at it, you lose

“Mrs. Robinson,” Paul Simon, 1972

That last line sticks with me, honey – we are all the Robinsons, now.

I wish I could set the news aside; for all that’s happened since we experienced regime change, the worst thing that’s happened to me has nothing to do with who’s supposedly got their grubby paws on the levers of power, and no amount of promises from whatever politician can reverse it (and, as I’ve said before, it wouldn’t be right of me to do so even if I could). It does leave me wondering, though, about the purpose of power, if you can’t do all the good you want to do. Although, with that particular phrasing in mind, the question arises as to whether what you want to do is truly ‘good.’ After all, both sides seem to think that what they’re doing is ‘good’ and ‘just’ and ‘right’; they can’t both be correct, can they, especially given how diametrically opposed they seem to be?

Anyway, that aside, I could tell you about the effects of that fitness time. I don’t recall if I mentioned it to you (probably not, as I had considered making it the topic of a future letter. I’d even picked out a title for it: “License to Splurge”), but I was hoping to get the gang together at a Brazilian steakhouse once I’d gotten past the weight as shown on my drivers’ license (which I’m pretty sure was out of date even the last time I actually went to the DMV to renew it, which has to have been eight years ago or so, since the last couple of renewals have been by mail, between Covid and a clean driving record). I was hoping to time that to somewhere near the end of September or early October, so Erin could consider it an approximately-timed birthday present and not feel obligated to pay for her meal for once, but I wasn’t sure I could make that weight by then. However, after coming home exhausted from yesterday’s workout, I’ve concluded that it won’t be a problem. To be sure, I was still over my target by half a pound (and even that was an outlier, as I’d just sweated out a fair amount of water weight), but at the rate I’m going, the question isn’t going to be whether I can get to that weight within a month, but more like how far past that particular target I can be by then (and thus, presumably, how much I can eat that night and still stay under that target).

Again, it’s yet another celebration I wish you could have a part of; I’m pretty sure you would be cheering me on (and offering your own special incentives along the way).

Still, I’ve at least been hearing from you a little bit more recently. I’ve been going through some of the old vacation footage, in order to isolate your voice. It’s yet another AI project for which I’m trying to test the waters on; some day, it will probably merit a whole separate letter (or several of them) on the details of how it’s put together, and to what purpose, but for now, I’m needing to assemble at least ten, and preferably around fifty, minutes of you talking in order to generate a decent aggregate voiceprint. For all that I complained about how few photos, relatively speaking, I have of you, distilling that amount of just you talking is that much more of a challenge. And the results won’t be available – let alone worth talking about, if you’ll pardon the expression – for a while, yet. But in the process, I get to hear from you again, even if I’ve heard it a time or two before. It’s better than nothing.

Anyway, that’s what’s been happening over the past few days. Wish you could fill me in likewise from where you are, honey. But for now, just keep an eye on me, and wish me luck. I’m going to need it.