Spouse talked me into visiting the city the other day. He had to get the results of his TB test checked for the medical portion of the job process. They have a whole ugly building - the Government Accountability Office - which looks like a place that ritual sacrifices the sense of humor of its employees. There is a carved stone frieze outside at the entrance that, swear to god, if they added some fierce aztec styled bald eagles would look like depictions of sacrifices to the sun god (in a complimentary way: I think how the figures are positioned reminds me of aztec art). So we walked around and checked out the razor wire around the capitol and read the colorful signs at freedom plaza and looked at the beautiful sculptures scattered everywhere in the city. Some businesses still have boards up, because they are shut down or because they are still worried about unrest. The fancier places invested in painting the boards instead of leaving slabs of unfinished wood to face the street.

We mused about the terrible toll of covid on local business and activities and spouse threw out bits of historical trivia about the buildings we passed. We listed the museums we haven't visited yet, and what we want to be sure to see when things open up. The biggest bummer about visiting in winter is that the fountains are off and drained of water - they are so gorgeous when they are running. We stumbled across a grilled cheese shop and got a to-go order of tasty grilled cheeses with cups of tomato soup with a bloody mary tang. I got a spiked hot cider. We walked to the Washington monument and ate in the lee of a curved retaining wall as the wind pushed around dead leaves and scraps of papery garbage. We picked up refuse as we left - cardboard tags from souvenirs and a crumpled Christian tract. It was a nice day, chilly but not cold, and just breezy, not windy. The city is very very beautiful, and it truly is a treasure to amble around and experience it without the slap-dash tourist rush to get to the next sight. Whatever impression I had of the city from TV and movies, in person the federal heart has a smart, generous, proud vibe that can quickly shift to the perfunctory politeness of a govt bureaucrat when unappreciated. It's amiable, but does not suffer fools well. I read a quote somewhere that east coast cities are kind, but not nice, and west coast cities are nice, but not kind. I'd say the city fits that observation.

Spouse found out they need him to redo the part of the job process. This is not good, but not too unusual. Theoretically he redo's, passes that portion and it's done. They assign him a slot in the next available training class. Fingers crossed.

So the r/wallstreetbets thing has gotten very interesting. I admit, I invested a little bit of spare money in dogecoin this morning. I couldn't help myself - the memes are strong right now. What the hell, why not. It was frustrating experience fighting with different services until one worked, but I managed to do it. Yup. Intangible internet doge meme money that is worth literal whole pennies is mine. This must be the future. Actually I do like the concept of cryptocurrency and this seemed like a good time to get my feet wet. Whenever I tattoo again I can take crypto as a payment option. All independent artist/craftspeople should be pretty sick of 3%+ of their income automatically lopped off for credit card payments. Why are we feeding this godawful vampire machine?

I realized I had forgotten to mention - I wrote it in a scrapped version of a post that got away from me - the night of January 20th (inauguration) there was a moon-mars-uranus conjunction in taurus, squaring the waning jupiter-saturn conjunction in aquarius. Uranus is known for bringing a electric, revolutionary, genius quality; mars is the god of war and action; the moon is about intuition, irrationality, moods. Taurus is the sign of material wealth, stability and security. My best guess was it could signal either stock market instability, or home turf terrorist violence, maybe. I thought to myself, hey, I should probably do something with my 401k before this happens. But I forgot. It is interesting to look at the WSB financial shakeup in that light, especially with the pluto return bearing down on us. Mars and jupiter will move on but we will still have that harsh uranus-saturn square on and off the rest of the year. Yuck, barf. I've truly had enough saturn. So it's severe authority construct vs surprise freedom lightning bolts. The tyranny of the ruling class vs genius innovation, battle royale. If wall street is the battleground, could be a bumpy ride for corporations and retirement accounts alike.

Uranus can bring a push to advance humanity as a whole, rather the individual. There is such anger toward wall street, such deep internalized knowledge that the working class have gotten the poop end of the poop stick for so long. People have figured out a way to band together and financially riot. There's no risk of covid or teargas or police violence when you invest in a stock. No political ideology or skin color or activist group to be blamed and demonized. Just people deciding they want to come together to fuck the financial system that is obviously rigged to ruin them. Very very interesting shift. Super curious to see what cryptocurrencies do. This might be the time people see the value of independent financials and bring them into more mainstream use. People in r/dogecoin have watched WSB do this (granted, much different situation) and are planning strategies to help the group as a whole. Source our own stimulus. If we stick together we can help each other! I'll put some spare money on that experiment. Let's see how it goes.