So Covid is over, right? Let’s have huge holiday parties. WOOHOO!
In Massachusetts, we have had three days in a row of 5,000 new Covid-19 infections. The US has had about 140,000 new cases a day this week. That’s fun too.
So yeah, go out without a mask and have yourself a merry little huge gathering. Covid-19 is over and everything is back to normal.
Hashtag sarcasm.
I feel compelled to post something during lunch breaks. Why is that? Why must I give in to the need to overshare?
There is literally nothing going on today. I have done some unusual, sort of interesting stuff at work today. I have a meeting to get through this afternoon. All is well on the work front.
I haven’t done any christmas shopping yet. I don’t know what to get anyone, but I have to get on it. With the shipping issues going on these days I can’t put faith in last minute stuff. I have to get it done and get it done soon. But what to do? I don’t know.
So… Omicron… Asshole. It’s in California and Minnesota. The person in Minnesota recently travelled to New York… so safe to say it’s all over the country now. I’m so tired of this. The rumors are that it’s significantly more contagious, but not as severe as other recent variants. Still, not as severe sort of implies you aren’t going to the hospital to be hooked up to a machine that breathes for you but it does not imply that you don’t get really fucking sick, you know?
Okay. Back to work with you, lunch break boy.
Wash your hands, social distance, wear a mask, get the vaccine… don’t let yourself get sick and in doing so don’t get others sick. Seems pretty simple to me.
So I guess I have to put christmas lights on the house now, eh?
December 2021. Heading into Covid month #19 and somehow things are getting worse again? Figures. Lock downs forever.
I guess I have to start christmas shopping now, eh?
It’s not that I don’t enjoy the holidays, it’s more like I just don’t want them to be here yet. It seems like they were just here yesterday and it was Covid and all that and now it’s back and it’s still Covid and I just don’t want to deal with it. I want my old christmas back, and with each new day I become more convinced that the old christmas is never coming back. Covid crap isn’t abnormal anymore. Everything else is now abnormal and it makes me sad. I guess.
The upside is that we’re just a few weeks away from the kids being home again. Bellana is going to school in Europe next semester so she won’t be here for long, but she’ll be here for a while and that’s good. Harry will be around for his whole break.
I am not sure what I want to do for music in December. I can promise you that I won’t be writing a christmas song. Guaranteed. I want to start sneaking over my parents house and doing some cleaning. I want to start on the second floor and work my way down. More sorting than cleaning, I think. A pile of stuff to save, a pile of stuff for other people to review, and a pile of stuff to donate/trash/junk/whatever. I just want to do something. I’ve been wanting to do something for months but haven’t yet.
What else. I’ve got 20 minutes until I have to punch in to work and last night’s episode of The Flash is still playing so what else should I write about?
I have no idea what to get anyone for christmas. In other words, this December is kicking off exactly the same as every other December. HoHoHo and all that.
Okay. I have a shit load of work to do today so I guess I should just get to it. Time to punch in. Welcome to December, everyone.
Yesterday was Monday and somehow I was feeling optimistic about the state of the universe. Today is Tuesday and… sigh. Something about tomorrow being the start of December is messing me up today. I’m not sure exactly why, but it’s probably Covid-19 and holiday related. We’re not getting a normal Christmas for the second year in a row, which implies that our Covid Christmas is actually now the normal. Shit.
I had three projects to do at work in less than two weeks. I picked off one of them yesterday and was feeling pretty good about the state of things. Now, simply because it’s the next day, I am feeling a little defeatist about the remaining two. Why? Where is my rational brain hiding? Come out and play, brain. Pretty please?
I took the barrels out to the street this morning. The barrels are full to bursting, partly with Thanksgiving detritus, but they’ve spent the whole week in the new little shed thing so the squirrels weren’t able to get at them. 10 minutes after I took the barrels to the street I looked out the window and saw a squirrel sitting on the barrel snacking on some stuff. Sigh.
Okay. Time to punch in to work. Here’s hoping the state of the universe improves a little. Fingers crossed, folks.
Our plans to cut down a christmas tree today are about to be washed away. Forecasts call for heavy rain to start at exactly the time we were planning to leave on our tree hunt. Oh good.
Hey, did you hear about the new Covid-19 variant that’s popping up in South Africa and early data (which could still be off) is suggesting it could be 500 times more contagious than the Delta variant? Oh good.
What else… I don’t know. I want to get some guitar playing in today, and pretty much all weekend. We’re looking into a minor thermostat upgrade that hopefully will be entirely wireless. We have a ton of turkey dinner leftovers and the stuffing is calling me, but for some reason I have a craving for toast right now. What’s up with that? I wish the kids didn’t have to leave today. I want them to stay, but I don’t want to hold them back, you know? Just call me Robert the Conflicted Red Head. Sounds like a band name.
A week ago Monday I took my mother to the doctor.
Over the weekend we paid a visit to Jen’s mom.
Yesterday I saw Harry and went inside two stores.
Today I’m dealing with a bunch of common cold symptoms. The first hint of illness in about two years.
I took a home Covid-19 test. It came back negative. Kick ass, Covid-free-me.
Two vaccine doses and a booster, you damn well better be Covid free. I got your breakthrough case right here! (Picture me making some sort of rude hand gesture in Covid-19’s general direction)
I took my mother to a doctor’s appointment today. It went well, thank you.
Based on the massive traffic I struggled through getting home I would say that pesky pandemic is over. If that’s the case, why was I freaking out so while hanging out at the hospital?
I was cool as a cucumber on the outside, but a basket case of Covid worry on the inside.
I am so ready for this bullshit to end. Get the damn vaccine.
No car music today. Maybe tomorrow. Definitely not Saturday. Maybe Sunday. I don’t know. I wanted to do it today but I stayed in bed too late. I had enough time to shave (will wonders never cease?) but not enough to go for a musical drive before work.
Remember the early days of the pandemic lock down? That was either 19 months ago or it was 123,513,641,278,582 years ago. I’m not sure. One of those two. March 2020. I made a working from home pledge to myself that I would continue to get out of bed at the same time I would need to wake up if I still had to drive to work. In March that was probably around 6:00am. Maybe 6:15 at the latest. I would usually try to get up before 6:00 though, just to have some morning routine wiggle room.
I stuck to that pledge for a very long time, but eventually 6:00 started turning into 6:30, then 6:45. Today it was 7:10 or so. One recent morning it was something like 7:50, I think. Jen, the love of my life, likes to be punched in to work by 8:00 so I don’t see myself staying in bed much longer than her. Working from home gives you the luxury of sleeping until 8:59, rolling out of bed, and punching in by 9:00. Fortunately I haven’t gotten that bad yet.
Our return to office plan us currently looking to January. We don’t know the details yet, but come New Year I will be back in the office at least some of the time. I need to get back onto a commuting sleep schedule by then if I can. I probably won’t, but it would make life easier. I’d also be able to get out for car music and maybe even sunrise-at-the-beach photos. Don’t hold your breath though.
I don’t feel sick. At no time since getting the booster shot on Thursday evening at 8:00pm have I felt sick. I was a little alergyish on Friday morning, as I sometimes am when I first wake up, but I never felt sick.
Having said that, is the booster shot I got on Thursday the reason I am so wiped out today? I got the shot Thursday night, they say you might start feeling something after 12 hours. After 14 hours I was outside mowing the lawn, and I did that off and on for a few hours. As out of shape and grossly overweight as I am, mowing the lawn requires me to work my ass off. I did in fact work my ass off. Big time. Last night I got a good nights sleep, better than I usually get, and today when I got up and got my shit together I had to go out to run an errand at an actual store. Covid safety was not pleased with that, but I had a mask and I social distanced the shit out of the joint. Then when I got home I jumped right into my planned project for the morning: Cleaning the holy hell out of the shower. It took forever, and it also took a lot of my very fat and grotesquely out of shape self getting up and down off the floor. Much like the lawn yesterday, today’s task kicked my ass.
I’ve been a mess ever since. My legs are dead weight, my back and shoulders are killing me. I can barely move, and I am so tired I can barely keep my eyes open.
My question then: Am I still feeling the effects of the shot? If fatigue is a side effect, is that where all of this is coming from? I’m guessing not, but who knows.
My second question: If I am still feeling the effects of the shot, does it change my opinion on whether or not you should get the shot? Fuck no, it does not. Get the damned shot and stop being a science denying idiot. The shot works. Get it. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. Do not put the health of your friends and neighbors in jeopardy. Get the mother fucking shot. End rant. Or as HTML would say if rant was an actual tag, </rant>.
Pumping gas in a station in central NH where apparently Covid doesn’t exist. We are the only people with masks.
Inside the Red Head's Head 