Off to College!

I hosted Julia's going away to college party last night and toasted her. I couldn't help it but I broke down as I did so. I will miss her, as she is going so far away.

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Week in Review

The peak day for me was Wednesday. The younger kids got back from their trip to Montana, including Glacier National Park, and Aidan and Dylan came over to pick up Jax.

That evening, Peter came over and we had dinner -- Chinese food from Alice's. Claire is due back today from her trip to Poland and this is their first anniversary! A year ago we were all in Seattle celebrating with them.

At work the hot news cycle continues to drive us crazy. Trump looks likely to be impeached more than ever before. He acts like a guilty man. Best guess is his team did in fact collude with the Russians in trying to steal the election from Clinton. There is just too much evidence to believe otherwise.

Plus he has a real prosecutor on his tail in Mueller, which clearly scares him. For the first time in his life, this bully is learning what most of the rest of us know -- we cannot just do whatever we want to do, we have to play by the rules.

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House Guest

The other night when I was sleeping Jax figured out how to turn on the TV by playing with the remote. Or maybe he just pressed the right button while playing with the device. Either way, when I woke up the TV was on.

I've placed a stool by the front window so he can look out. He gets pretty excited when anyone walks by and especially when my upstairs neighbors come and go, because they have young children and he obviously likes kids.

We've been trying to recover from the hack at KQED but it has been seven weeks and we are still not back to form. Our next big investigative piece will come out this coming week -- a look at how undocumented immigrants are treated when they are detained in county jails on behalf of ICE.

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Visitor

This Jackson, Aidan's cat, who is one year old. He is staying me the next week as the kids travel to Montana, including Glacier National Park.

Tonight, when I got home I discovered he had gotten into an open package of seaweed, which I suppose makes sense because cats like fish and the smell of the seaweed must have attracted him.

He is a very curious kitten and has been exploring every corner of the flat he can get to.

Julia, Dylan and Aidan are staying here tonight before their flights to Missoula tomorrow morning. Julia just ordered us Chinese food.

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Brunch This Morning

Aidan and Julia took me to Toast on 24th Street, a place we discovered some years ago that is very close to Noe Valley Bakery, where Julia works as the checkout clerk.

Aidan's breakup with Zaira looks to be permanent and he seems to be doing fine. He also is set to quit U-Montana, move back home, and apply to SF State.

Dylan is still hoping to attend U-C Santa Cruz but he has yet to get word on whether he can after getting a low grade in a required statistics course.

Since Aidan and Zaira had two cats, she is keeping Mika and Aidan is keeping Jax, the one-year-old kitten.

My fantasy baseball team is in 3rd place. Due to a big differential in pitching innings I am effectively in second place, but 200+ points behind the leader.

It is warm and sunny here today.

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Russia-Gate

Until this week, I did not know what to think about how far the scandals surrounding Trump would go. Now I do. We are headed straight to impeachment, perhaps not until after the next Congressional elections next year, but ultimately that is the only way this can end up.

Why? Because what we know to date is far from everything. There is a slow drip, drip, drip of intelligence leaking out of the White House and the intelligence agencies.

So, as a long-time investigative reporter, my sense is that there is much, much more evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Putin. I have no idea which smoking gun will sink the administration or when but there will be one.

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The Next Generation

Grandson Luca pitching today in Santa Cruz. (Photo by Aunt Sarah.)

Peter's birthday was Friday (36).

Work is slowly returning to a new normal following the June 15th hack. Our operations have been badly disrupted and my staff is exhausted.

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