Tonight’s installment

We had a meeting to provide concern this morning. If you can’t say anything useful, sit with people.

We were going to all have lunch together. We’d planned it last week when we were all going to be fired, during my meeting with my “ritual.” We postponed it when it became clear we’d have a storm today.

One of the very sweet people on the call, someone who does not curse, told me today that after my ritual someone knocked on his door and asked if everything was ok. Apparently he’d been loud.

I had an interview, or a pre-interview. I had a lovely discussion with a recruiter. She asked why I was interested in changing positions which was a stupid question and I just dodged it by answering her other questions. 

The afternoon was rough. There was a big USAID staff meeting about retirement. Everyone wanted to know what would happen if they were laid off but, of course, the overlords are not following the law so no one knows. No one could answer their questions. There are all these people who are so close to retirement but not close enough and so they expect to lose their retirement benefits. My beloved last boss will miss it by less than a year. It was supposed to last two hours. It lasted three. It was awful. At one point the person leading the meeting lost it and began yelling and gave his supervisors name if anyone wanted to report him. He was tired of being insulted by President Musk. He is taking the “buy out” and is tired of being judged for that. He is tired of his team being completely overworked by frightened employees who all desperately want answers right now, before they are fired. They all want to know if they will be ok and of course, they won’t all be. Some will be able to find new jobs. Some will go through their life savings. 

Remember that almost everyone leaves at 4? At 4:30 we got a request for another last ditch Hail Mary so a group of us met, again, to put together a spreadsheet, in desperate hope that it will save us. Our group was established by LAW. There is an actual law establishing us. Does this mean we might survive, somehow? 

It hasn’t saved our projects so far. 

But there is such a desperate effort to do something, anything, just in case. If you come to it with the right attitude a lot of things can be fun and even this last minute effort was fun. Of course, I didn’t have anything else to do. We were done at 6.

The Netherlands is delivering 25 armored tracked YPR vehicles to Ukraine for medical evacuation. The Netherlands has allocated over 10 billion euros in military aid to Ukraine. 

They’ve also delivered the last promised T-72 tanks. 

Germany has announced the delivery of 100 IRIS-T missiles to Ukraine.

The United Kingdom has announced a new military aid package for Ukraine to include tanks, artillery, and various missiles. 

There is a Russian weapon that is not garbage. The 9K38 Ilga is a Russian made portable air defense system. It can be hand carried. It uses infrared to target. It is older. It was first deployed in 1983 and is used to target aircraft, missiles, helicopters, and drones. Ukraine just used one to shoot down one of the fancy Russian Su-25 fighter jets