I turned 57 today. I think my health is a little better than is was in the past few years. My blood sugar is more under control, for one thing. And I feel pretty good. I lost a few pounds since last year, nothing major, but at least it’s a step (or thousands of steps) in the right direction.

It’s scary out there right now though. We’re all struggling to get past the whole COVID-19 thing, still wearing a mask everywhere and still trying to socially distance while at the same time trying to get the world functional again. Then the death of a black man at the hands of a white police officer occured in Minneapolis and all hell breaks loose again. Protests everywhere from Black Lives Matter (BLM) fill the streets in many cities, including Kenosha, and the bad element takes advantage of the situation to vandalize and loot what they can at the same time. It ends up sending the entirely wrong message. Whether these people are part of BLM or are just tagging along to take advantage remains to be seen, but it’s scary out there.

They’re busting out windows all over, firing weapons crazily, starting fires… One police officer’s home in Racine had pretty much all of the windows of his home and the windows of a minivan in his driveway smashed out as well as someone starting a fire inside the house.

In Kenosha we listened to the police scanner all day Sunday while watching a protest participant stream the protest live on Facebook. There was shooting, people throwing bricks at police officers and their vehicles, breaking out windows in vehicles and the windows of stores. One person came out of his house as the protesters were walking by and threatened someone with a shotgun. Things got pretty heated. The police were initially trying to stop the vehicles in the protest, but that turned ugly and they weren’t able to stop the walking protesters at all, so they decided to stop trying to stop the traffic and just keep the protest civil, but I don’t think it turned out quite that civil anyway.

The city has imposed a curfew for everyone to reduce exposure and crime in the city during the protesting. People are allowed to be out and travel only if it’s to and from work. As if COVID-19 weren’t enough, now we have this to deal with. But Happy Birthday, Me! I’m going to go play some games and stop thinking about what’s going on in the world for a few hours.