To St. Louis for a few days. So that should be the subject of the next three or four posts. Unless it’s not.

Of course, many here are still reeling from the election results. I have my concerns, to be sure, but have a much more pressing problem that I am dealing with now…..

I wear a watch that tells me how many steps I am walking. In fact, it can tell me more than that. For example, it tells me the time. And other things I pay no attention to. It and I have always gotten along very well. Until now.

Before I detail my problem, I should tell you that the my watch is fine as long as you just let it be. But start fiddling with it, and then you have problems. There are four buttons you can push. You can push them separately, or in various combinations. You can push and let go, or you can push and hold the buttons in for various combinations. Or you can push them (or groups of them) in sequence. But you have to know how to do that, and there is nothing on the watch itself that gives you a clue.

Yes, there is a little booklet (emphasis on “little”) that gives you hints (it’s written in code so you can be equally confused irrespective of the language you speak), and I needed that booklet last week, when I changed the setting on the watch from Eastern Daylight Time to Eastern Standard Time (or Central Daylight Time, if you please). I figured out how to do this. But in doing this, my watch got confused, or perhaps just got angry at me for challenging its accuracy.

The problem? My watch thinks that noon is midnight. That means that it no longer sets by steps back to zero at midnight, but at noon. So when I wake up in the morning and look at my watch, it has several thousands steps marked on it – the number of steps I have taken since noon the previous day. So, I guess I am going to set my watch to 24 hours, rather than 12/12, and then I will move the current time up, or back, 12 hours, and then go back to 12/12. But that will take effort, thought, and energy, all of which are things I seem to lack.

One reason I lack those things, of course, is the election. I am not going to engage in the “she should have” conversations. I think she ran a pretty good campaign, and am not going to look for nits to pick. As to Trump and what will probably be two Republican Houses of Congress, I am going to take a wait and see approach. I assume I will disagree with much that they will do, and I will surely complain along the way, but I am willing to see how it works out. And if it works out well for the country and the world, so be it. And I understand that, as that eminently modest man Elon Musk has said, there may be some discomfort for everyone but him along the way.

I also still think that Musk is the biggest danger. His plan to shrink the size of government will most likely be very disruptive, if it comes into effect, not only for federal employees and their families, but for the economy of the District of Columbia and environs, as well. Washington is in a very good place now (except for the diminution of the tax base as a result of the reduction in value of much downtown real estate), and I would hate to see that momentum turned back. But I understand that is a real possibility.

The thousands of officials at the Department of Education may lose their jobs, and the even many more thousands at the Department of Agriculture may find their jobs being moved to, say, Rapid City, South Dakota. We shall see if any of this happens as a part of Musk’s proposed downsizing.

We shall also see what will happen to electric cars. My guess? Chinese and certain other vehicles will not come into the country, Tesla will be given special treatment, and the electric vehicle capacity of General Motors and other domestic makers will be crippled. Again, we shall see.

It is quite possible that most of the destabilizing positions taken by Trump in the campaign will never come to fruition. But his effect on judicial appointments will be felt for decades, and his emphasis on deregulation over environmental and climate regulations will surely be felt.

As to foreign policy, who knows? The answer is “nobody”, because Trump’s foreign policy will be ad-lib and designed to keep everyone off balance. He believes that this fear of the unknown or unstated will keep otherwise predators on America at bay. We shall see how well this works.

Jeez. Here I go again, immediately after promising not to nit pick now, and letting us see how things will work out. I better stop. Besides…..I have an airplane to catch.