Category: covid-19

Last Minute Lunch Post

My lunch break is ending. I had Chef Boyardee Beef Raviolis and I rode the exercise bike for six minutes and I can practically taste your jealousy.

Ugh.

I’m not keeping track of Covid-19 infection statistics anymore. I accidentally deleted my spreadsheets. Did I mention that in a previous post? I think so. I was messing with the file system on my iPad and who knew the iPad directly accessed Google Drive? I didn’t. I do now. Oops.

Anyway, I saw this tweet this morning:

https://twitter.com/bpolitics/status/1478249944930787331

I think I saw the US have a million new cases over a four day period, maybe three days, but I never saw a million cases in a day. I went to the Johns Hopkins site and poked around and sure enough there were 1.083 million cases reported on January 3rd.

These days many people (including your humble narrator) are testing at home. Is this a case of home tests taken over New Years weekend being saved up and reported to their primary care physicians all at once? Is that million cases actually from three days and not one? Does it matter?

No. No, it does not matter.

Covid-19 infections in the US are spiking like they never have before. It’s probably mostly omicron, but delta is surely still part of it too. What is it about all of these new infections that make Americans think it’s all over? I don’t get it. We locked down the entire nation for so much less than what we’re seeing today. It doesn’t matter if omicron is generally milder than delta. Even with the milder symptoms omicron is supposed to have, we still have so many more infections that hospitals will still be overrun and masses of Americans are going to die. Who cares if the death rate for omicron is down if the infection rate is so much drastically worse? You still end up with more dead people due to omicron. It’s math people. It doesn’t lie.

Shit. I wasn’t planning on writing a lunch break post that depressed the hell out of myself but here we are.

Okay, back to work, depression boy.

And So This is Monday

Marjorie Taylor Greene has been permanently suspended from Twitter.
Devin Nunes has left Congress.
Monday has arrived and the holiday season is over. Back to work with us.

That’s the news and I am outa here.

I don’t want to go to work today. I am sitting at my desk, looking at my computer and just thinking over and over again, I don’t want to go to work today. Really, once I punch in I will be over it and everything will be normal again, but right now? Damn it, I don’t want to go to work today.

There isn’t much else going on. I think we’re a little burned out from Christmas/New Years and are sort of ready to settle back into life. Not work though. I don’t want to go to work today. The kids will be going to their father’s tonight and staying there until some point on Wednesday. Bellana leaves for her study abroad program next week and Harry returns to school the following weekend.

For me personally, I have super shaggy Covid hair again. Back when the pandemic started, about 22 months ago, my hair was in need of a cut. Everything shut down though so I had to deal. After a month or so it was so long it was insane and Jen cut it for me. Now here we are, two years later. I was planning on getting a hair cut at the beginning of December, but that little omicron bitch came along and messed that up. I know I have three vaccine shots and everyone will be masked up, but I still don’t want to risk getting something and passing it on to the kids and screwing up their plans. Once Harry moves back to school I’ll get a hair cut. Until then… super shaggy Covid hair. Again.

There is only one other item of blog-worthy note today. It feels like it’s kicking off quite a bit early this year but…

I’ve signed up already.

Prepare yourself for the obnoxiously boring posts.

Testing as a Family

Earlier today the four of us had the first ever (please don’t make it the first annual) Family Covid-19 Rapid Test.

Jen lined up four test kits on a table and we all got together and festively* swabbed our noses (and possibly our brains, ouch) together. Fifteen minutes later we all checked the results and wouldn’t ya know it, we were all negative!

Let the New Year commence!

I didn’t get a picture of any of it so you’ll have to settle for this picture of Patches sitting on my desk.

Enjoy!

*I say festively, but the truth is Jen had to drag the kids out of bed to do this, so it might not have been all that festive for them. College kids, ya know?

Pre New Years Eve thoughts

We are less than 90 minutes away from December 31, 2021. While I am strongly looking forward to telling 2021 to fuck off and die, I’ve also started thinking about how to celebrate the end of this dirtbag year and the start of the next year.

I’ve started thinking, but I got nuttin’.

We are going to have the first ever full family Covid test tomorrow. Nana and Papa are coming over for the delayed Christmas Eve and we need to ensure everyone is safe. Rapid tests for all and for all a negative rapid test!

I am going to set up the alternate music nook in the cellar tomorrow. I want to use my new pedals with my 18 watt amp and my KTR overdrive pedal and the rest of the band pedal board, and I also don’t want to mess with the cool setup I have in the bedroom. So two nooks it is! I’ve got a couple of tunes ready to record so I’ll use them to test drive the set up. I’m not sure I’ll actually get to play tomorrow but it is a long weekend so fingers crossed.

As for traditional stuff like New Years resolutions, I don’t have anything yet. I might not at all, but if I do I’ll share it soon enough.

Until then, happy New Years Eve Eve! What’s left of it.

Oops: Dumb Ass

I have spent the entire duration of the pandemic keeping a couple of spreadsheets with nearly daily data for Covid-19 infections and deaths. I had line graphs and everything. March 2020 through December 2021. One sheet for Massachusetts and one for the entire United States.

Last night I accidentally deleted them both.

Oops.

Dumb ass.

Always back up your shit, kids. Always back up your shit.

Christmas: Recap

We got a little Christmas snow last night, though it may have actually been Boxing Day snow. I’m not sure. Not enough to worry about, but I started cleaning it off anyway. I’m halfway through and my back hurts so much that I can’t stand. So I will rest up a bit before taking another shot at it and while I do that I will write about what was going on over the last few days.

Last week the kids finished up their semester. Harry drove Bellana’s car home on Thursday. Bellana didn’t come with him. One of her roommates lives down south in the former confederacy (which should be pronounced the way Eric Cartman pronounces it, confederasaw). She and a third roommate helped her drive home. They made it to Virginia on Friday and the rest of the way on Saturday. She was booked to fly home late Wednesday night and get here just after midnight on Thursday.

While she was down south her roommate’s brother started showing symptoms. She saw him on Sunday and then he tested positive on Tuesday. Bellana decided she would do her quarantine at dad’s house while waiting for her PCR test results which probably wouldn’t come back until Sunday. And as such, Christmas at our house was postponed and Jen and I were crushed.

Originally we had talked about moving Christmas morning to New Years Eve as that would be the first day that Jen and I were both off from work and we could do the whole Christmas experience as if nothing had happened. Later it was decided that we would do Christmas morning on Wednesday evening as that would be the next time the kids were here (barring a positive test, of course) and really no one was going to want to wait an extra couple of days.

Yesterday they did their Christmas morning at dad’s house, which they were going to do this year regardless of Covid. In a normal year they would wake up at dad’s and come to our house in the late morning. Next year it will be the opposite. Yesterday though, as the clock ticked over to the afternoon and no kids arrived it was really just devastating. It’s such a silly thing. What difference does the calendar date make anyway. Christmas is a concept. Christmas is a feeling. Christmas is family. So what if we push it off a few days? Well… apparently the calendar date is a big deal because yesterday just felt awful.

And then…

Around 1:00pm, with our Chinese Food “traditional Jewish Christmas dinner” en route, Bellana sent a text. The PCR results were in early and she tested negative. Can they come over around 4:00pm? Yes! Yes you can! They got here and massive hugs were exchanged and Christmas commenced and all was right with the world. They were even able to join in on a quick zoom call with my brother and sister and their families. HoHoHo! Literally a Christmas miracle.

Covid can suck it, we had Christmas after all.

I can’t say it was the best Christmas ever, because the first half of the day was by far the worst, but as Christmas miracles go… I’ll take it!

And that, loyal readers, is the story of the 2021 Christmas that almost wasn’t. Covid Christmas II: The Year that Had a Santa Claus After All.

Not a Terribly Good Day

As December 22nds go, this one was probably my worst. This morning was just awful. Really bad.

No Christmas for us this year. Maybe a New Years-mas or something, but no Christmas.

Just a five alarm shit hole of a day.

Composing Topical Christmas Songs

Now that it looks like we are going to be quarantining for Christmas I feel the need to come up with some topical new Christmas carols*. I’m coming up empty though. The best I have are just parodies and they are awful. Weird Al would be so disappointed in my work.

For example, change “I want a hippopotamus** for Christmas” to “We’re going into quarantine for Christmas.” I told you it was awful.

The only other one I have right now is to change “all I want for Christmas is my two front teeth” to “all I want for Christmas is no quarantine” but that’s just embarrassingly bad.

I think I am going to quit while I’m ahead. Blah. I’m guessing the universe will thank me for stopping before it gets out of control.

*The reason I feel the need to come up with some topical new Christmas carols is because I need to do something to distract myself from the need to just start screaming in frustration. Covid can kiss my ass… again.

**I spelled hippopotamus correctly on the first try. I am pretty proud of myself for that.

No Olympics for Us

I was really looking forward to the NHL sending players back to the Olympics this year but I really should have known better. It’s no use getting our hopes up about anything anymore. Here in Covid-land it’s all gone to shit and we’re just going to tread water in said shit for the rest of our days.

One year ago today I wrote this:

“Now we just have three work days, and a Christmas Eve to go before our first and hopefully last ever Covid-19 Christmas. Here’s hoping the little bastard goes down in history as a unique little blip on the universe. HoHoHo.”

Nope. It was most definitely not a unique little blip on the universe. It was a solid kick, square in the balls. Fuck you, universe.

Fuck. You.

Okay, so that got more dramatic than a handful of hockey games deserves, but on the scale of life, the universe, and everything… yeah, fuck you.