My pretty upper garden

It’s only Monday?

I spent all last week getting to Friday and it is Monday again?

One of the things I like about my deck garden right now is that the Ajuga matches the Columbines. The ajuga is the blue flower in the pot and the columbines are the taller flower behind. The funky effect is because this is an old lensbaby lens. Behind is the top of the Fireglow in the bottom garden. Behind that is the compound’s gazebo. The plant in the pot with the ajuga is an Acer called Anne-Irene. 

I love exercising at home in the same room as my office. Every rest break I can email or answer a WhatsApp message and I feel very responsive and very efficient. 

The first nightmare I just wanted to go back to bed and stay there. Last night’s dream was so messed up I wanted to get out of bed to run away from it. Most of the dream was me losing everything you can imagine (how can you lose a toilet seat?) but there was a very sick part of the dream that …. Please no bad dreams tonight. 

Last week was Climate Week in DC and it included the energy job fair I went to. One of the offerings was free one-on-one career counseling sessions. Most of them were fully booked and several offered sessions later. I had my free session today. So incredibly kind! 

I presented every one of my negative thoughts and concerns about job hunting, here and now. He did not disagree with any of my conclusions or analysis. I told him my three pronged approach:
- apply for local jobs
- apply for far-away jobs
- start a business
By the end of the conversation the business sounds absolutely perfect for me. 

His idea for addressing age-ism - apply for leadership positions. That is a really good suggestion and I agree with him. 

I learned that the new term for consulting is “fractionalism.” Spending fractions of your time with different organizations????? 

I had a meeting with the fabulous African lawyer and she thanked me for explaining, clearly, what was going on with USAID and Power Africa. She had asked when we were coming back and who was going to do the work. Possibly never but the whole thing is illegal so no one knows? We are! For those who can pay anyway! I realized that none of this makes sense to anyone, anywhere around the world. 

She said it is unspoken, not official, but the client never hires American firms. The good news is the consortium will be led by a European firm and we will absolutely emphasize that we are Mozambican! The joy of having two founders with one of them Mozambican! 

I had what turned out to be an overly ambitious list of things to do today, but I did add the two new folks to the company Google Workspace and hopefully tomorrow I will add them to the website. 

Putin has a big Victory Parade planned and these are very important to him in terms of propaganda. He wanted to kick all Ukrainian troops out of Kursk before the parade. Ukraine has launched a new ground attack. Russia had “tank traps” on the border. Apparently they didn’t work any better than my humane mouse traps that year. 

Moscow has rehearsals for this parade. Today residents complained of large-scale disruptions in mobile communication and the internet, during the rehearsal. 

Atesa partisans disabled a transformer substation in Saratov, leaving important facilities without power including at least two mobile communication base stations. Atesa is a partisan group in occupied territories of Ukraine and in Russia. Atesa means “fire” in Crimean Tatar. The members are Ukrainian, Russian, and Crimean Tatars. They do sabotage and recon and post pictures to taunt Russia with how deep in Russia they go. 

France has said it will manufacture 1,200 AASM Hammer bombs for Ukraine in 2025. This type of bomb is one that Ukraine has already been using successfully. It is a “glide bomb” meaning it has wings and a navigation system so it can be launched from a distance rather than dropped from above. They glide, they don’t have a propulsion system so they don’t generate heat and therefore Russian infrared homing missiles can’t intercept them well. Ukraine loves the AASM Hammer bomb because they are accurate and they are resistant to Russian electronic countermeasures.