1/6 Very limited energy after these two travel days.

1/5 Sunday, 2pm. We arrive at the airport and realize hundreds are stranded in the hall of the terminal. Realize a little later that this is because of the airspace closures in the Caribbean due to the “operation” on Saturday. Even later we would learn that the closures had already been lifted by Sunday morning, but the ripple effects were continuing.

Sunday, 5pm. Right before our inbound flight is about to land on St Thomas it gets diverted to San Juan because the airport is clogged with other planes waiting to get out.

Sunday, 8pm. Our inbound flight lands three hours late. The crew is nearing its maximum allowed working hours and if they want to get us off of St Thomas at all it has to be fast.

Sunday, 9pm. We leave St Thomas.

Sunday, 11pm. We get diverted to Fort Lauderdale because getting us to JFK is beyond the crew’s maximum working hours. They hope a replacement crew will be available to get us from FLL to JFK in the middle of the night.

Monday, 1am. There is no replacement crew. We need to get off the plane, get our luggage, and find someone to drive us to a hotel.

Monday, 2am. Fall asleep.

Monday, 6am. There is no news yet from Delta when our flight will continue to JFK. I text with support agents and get conflicting answers. There are no flights out of FLL until Wednesday. Our flight is not in the system because it is technically still the same flight as yesterday.

Monday, 8am. We get rebooked to a flight on Wednesday. It is unclear whether that is a glitch in their system and we could just go back to the airport and get back onto our flight from last night, or we will really not get out of here before Wednesday.

Monday, 9am. We decide to take matters into our own hands and rent a car and drive to Jacksonville (5 hours), and get an evening flight from there to JFK.

Monday, 11am. On the road to Jacksonville.

Monday, 5pm. Arrive in Jacksonville.

Monday, 7pm. Depart Jacksonville.

Monday, 9.30pm. Land JFK. (As it turned out later, our original flight had left FLL at 2.48pm and had landed at JFK at 5.25pm.)

Monday, 11pm. Uber to Upper West Side arrives at apartment. Exchange a few things in the luggage, get Jeep from garage, drive Jeep to Newburgh.

Tuesday, 1am. Arrive Newburgh. Put every piece of clothing and fabric into the dryer immediately to prevent infestation with any kind of bugs. Feed cat.

¼ Okay joke’s over. Due to the closures of Caribbean airspace we are stuck on St Thomas with hundreds of other passengers in an overcrowded terminal with little air condition, and we have no idea when we’re going to make it out of here. We all know why, says one of the captains.

1/3 I have long been wanting to convert scans of some books that are dear to me into ebooks. But I never got around to figuring out what programs I could use for that, and developing a workflow around it. Today I asked AI to do it for me, and it worked absolutely flawless. Of course it filters out the page numbers without me asking for it. Of course it understands that it is a German book and what that means for resolving the hyphenations. – Just think this through a little further and be astonished at what it means.

½ Enjoy your writing, J said to me this morning, and I was surprised to hear that from her, even after five years. Writing is not something I enjoy. It is me most honestly facing the mess and the inadequacy that I am, and trying to figure out just what is wrong with me.

1/1/2026 We did not expect that above the thicket of trees in front of our bungalow, we’d have a clear line of sight to the sky above the cruise ship harbor, and when it came to fireworks, it did not disappoint.

12/31 At this point, the vibe in the country seems to be that this administration has turned out much worse than anyone feared, but that its days are numbered. With many months delay, the courts have kicked in and they are preventing the worst. At this point, every new piece of horror news simply makes everyone sigh and say “oh, so we will have to repair that one, too”. The midterms will put an end to the trifecta and slowly but inevitably the rebuilding of the country will start. Historians will shake their heads for decades and centuries, but we’ll be okay. – This could be hopelessly naive and dangerously complacent, but it is, I think, where most of the country is at this point.

12/30 While we are moving around naked in the sun, like proto-humans on a primordial tropical beach, we’re trying to care, with G’s help, for the remote cat. Surprisingly the heating turned on just normal this morning and the temperature started to rise. After much research, mostly analyzing the model numbers of the devices which G photographed for us, it turns out the heating may have been working properly all the time. It’s just that it can’t heat more than 40 degrees above what’s outside, and if that’s 10, then Link won’t have more than 50.

12/29 In some distress because while we are enjoying the warmth and the pool, the remote sensors tell us the heating in Newburgh is not working and Link is alone with temperatures of 9 outside and less than 50 inside – how much less we don’t know. After checking the apps almost constantly for many hours and some detailed discussions with AI, I have a plausible theory of what’s going on and how G can fix it when she goes there tomorrow. Last night, Link came to the automatic feeder and ate just like normal, which was a reassuring thing to see.

Apart from that, J was able to get a USB-B cable at Walgreens, half across the island, last night. Today she’s using it to program her guitar synth much more intuitively from her laptop. Deep discussions about it, an overwhelming multitude of possibilities – J does not find them overwhelming, just exciting –, and the question of what can be uniquely violin about it.

12/28 We’re not going anywhere. Not to any of the pristine beaches supposed to be a stone’s throw from here, because we’ve been to pristine beaches before and nothing can beat being right here at our bungalow with its pool and not having to do anything. I’m playing through some of my jazz standards every couple of hours, and J is building content for her business. Started an essay I’ve meant to write for a while.