Category: covid-19

One Year Ago Today

If I did my math correctly, and if my memory is correct, today is the one year anniversary of my wife’s company sending everyone home. I remember it being a Wednesday, and my company made the same call on Friday the 13th, so that would be today. For some reason though my brain keeps telling me it was the 9th.

It doesn’t matter, the point is that this week is the anniversary of the last week that things were open. I took a look back at what I posted to the blog on 3/11/20. Here are some highlights.

I wrote a long paragraph on why we needed to lock down. Statistics based on China told us that were were going to have more cases requiring hospital care than we had hospital beds. Shutting down would cut down on the number of cases, therefore freeing up hospital beds. It wasn’t about infringing on rights or over reacting, it was about resource management. Knowing what we know now, half of America decided to ignore that little factoid by about May. Selfish assholes. I mentioned social distance a couple of times, and always put it in quotes. I wonder when I stopped doing that. I did add this parenthetical aside following one mention though:

I fucking LOVE that term and I’ve been practicing it since I was about four years old

There was another post where I wrote about the University of Vermont telling students not to come back after spring break. They cancelled the first two days and then went full remote on the third day. Bellana was prepared for it and had everything she needed at home already. She was itching to go back though. She did. Eventually. About 10 or 11 months later.

The last post of the day was me speculating on selling my Fender Stratocaster. I had planned to bring it to Guitar Center to try trading it for an amp. I was going to go that night but decided against it, given the state of the world. I pushed it off until the weekend but the weekend never came. I wrote this line, showing the spirit of things in the early days:

This is the very definition of non-essential.  It can wait.

I am so tired of all of this. I want my world back. I want everyone safe even more though, so we stick to the lock down and wait. It’s just getting harder and harder to wait.

Long Day

Today was a long day. Just busy from start to finish. I didn’t have a chance to stop for dinner until around 8:00. I was able to talk to my father at the rehab place for a couple of minutes but my mother’s phone kept going straight to the answering machine. It’s a landline and sometimes when you press the button to hang up it doesn’t actually close the line. That’s probably what happened.

Tomorrow is likely to be another long day. I hope it goes smoother though.

We found out this week that the building my group works in is likely to be sold. I guess someone approached us out of the blue with an offer too good to refuse. They asked us to go in and clean out our desks. They set up a schedule so there will never be more than five people in at a time. I signed up for the last day on the sheet, April 9, 2021. The last time I saw my desk was March 13, 2020. what a fucked up world, eh?

I’m so tired of it all.

I’m Tired of Snow

I don’t have anything really important to add to the universal discussion today. Just working the day through. I’m on lunch right now, in the last few minutes of my break, and I just wanted to state to the public that I am sick and tired of snow.

It’s March 8th. Spring is less than two weeks away. The entire ground is still covered with snow. I’m tired of it. I want to see grass again, even if it’s dead grass. I’m done with snow. I want it gone. Screw you snow. Screw you winter. It’s our second Covid-19 March and if we have to suffer through more lock down then I want my freakin’ Springtime and I want it right freakin’ now.

Thank you. I patiently await the Universe’s response.

New Week, New Attitude

It’s Monday. The first day of a new week. Yippee. The 52nd week of Covid shut down. Last week had a nasty work issue. This week is likely going to have another. Still, I have made a decision.

I have decided that this week is going to be better. Granted, every week since late January has been pretty crappy, but this week is going to be better.

The bed is made, the dishes are done (except for the caste iron skillet, I have to do that again), the cat is fed, I’m 3/4 of the way through last night’s Walking Dead (Dog, the early years), Harry just found a playlist with the theme songs from all of the episodes of WandaVision. Today is International Women’s Day and my wife and my step daughter are shining examples of intelligent, strong, powerful women who deserve to be celebrated every day of the year not just today, but given the situation I will celebrate them like crazy today.

This week is going to be better. New week, new attitude.

Granted, it’ll probably go to shit as soon as I punch into work, or try to scoop the kitty litter, or something. For now though… This will be a good week.

Vaccine FOMO?

I spent a good chunk of this morning going through nearly every vaccine distribution center in Massachusetts trying to luck into booking someone else’s cancelation. No dice.

Is it possible that part of my frustration at not being vaccinated yet can be chalked up to FOMO? The Fear of Missing Out?

No. No, it can’t. Not getting an invite to the Dispo app is FOMO (even though the entire concept of that app is flat out dumb, I still want in damn it, let me in!), but not getting vaccinated is not. The frustration over not getting a vaccine appointment is due to not having a vaccine appointment. That’s all, folks.

Jen is working today and Harry is at his dad’s so I am on my own. I’ll think of a cleaning project to do for a while then I’ll mess with my amplifiers. I said Jen is working, but the cat just ran into this room and Jen followed. Sometimes the cat gets into “Timmy’s stuck in the well” mode and makes us follow her places. It almost always ends on the bed where she just wants us to focus all of our attention on petting her. Our cat is both smart and powerful.

I am also trying to cheer myself up over my lack of a vaccination appointment by listening to Rush. Clockwork Angels, to be exact. Allow me to say that “Seven Cities of Gold” is possibly the best song ever recorded. The music annoyed the cat enough that she left the room (and allowed Jen to leave as well) but to me it’s pretty much the pinnacle of human accomplishment. I mean, that and the moon landing, but mostly Rush.

Okay, now that “Seven Cities of Gold” has finished, I’m listening to “The Wreckers” and I need to correct myself. “The Wreckers” is the high point of human accomplishment. There, fixed that.

The Vaccine Appointment Shuffle

It shouldn’t be frustrating but it is. I want a damn vaccine. We have three options now, I don’t care which one I get but I really can’t deal with waiting to get something.

Massachusetts is open for people under 65 with two of a short list of medical issues. They open new appointments at all delivery sites on Thursday at 8:00AM. It’s 8:07 and they haven’t released anything yet. They announced yesterday that there are so many people booked for their second dose now that there will be very few first dose appointments available this week. I was also hoping that next week they would be opening up to people under 65 with fewer than two comorbidities but they announced that they are opening up to all teachers and school staff first. That’s a good thing, and it’s something I wanted to see, but I wanted us to be done with those heroic folks already. That happens on March 11th. Pardon me while I spend another couple of minutes refreshing the appointment page….

It’s 8:10 now. Still nothing.

March 13th is the magic date for me. 3/13/20 was the last day I worked in my office. That’s the one year mark. I was hoping I might luck into my first shot before the anniversary. It doesn’t seem likely.

It’s 8:15, still nothing.

Frustrating.

8:20. Still nothing.

One Year Ago Today

I keep doing this but here’s something I posted one year ago today:

179/365

Just in case you forgot that society fell apart in March 2020 and here we are in February 2021 and it still hasn’t come back online yet.

We are only 15 days away from the one year anniversary of my last day in the office. It’s been a brutally long two weeks.

Screw you, Covid-19.

Methuen Vaccine Clinic

Methuen is setting up a vaccination clinic of it’s own. It’s at The Loop and it’s open on March 2nd. I just looked at the appointment sign up and it’s all booked solid. If you qualify, keep an eye on this site and maybe you’ll stumble on a cancelation or something. I don’t see anything about it being open beyond March 2nd, but I guess we’ll have to see. There are only so many vaccine doses available, and anyone with a brain wants one.

THE STIR CRAZY FILES – EPISODE 74

Today is the magical day.

Back story: I’ve been working from home for over 11 months now and there hasn’t been a single instant, not even a nanosecond, when I’ve missed commuting. Not one. I do not miss cramming my fat ass into a metal box for 80 minutes or so, working 8.5 hours, and then getting back into the metal box for another 80 minutes. I don’t miss it even one tiny little bit.

However… When I was commuting there was one day of each year that was sort of magical. It was sort of a light at the end of the tunnel. The tunnel of which I speak is winter. It does not involve a groundhog or anything like that, it only involves the sun.

My shift ends at 5:30 PM. That’s 1730 for you military time folks. During the winter, when I left the building to go home it was dark. During the summer it’s light. You know how the sun works and seasons and all of that, right? You know what I’m talking about.

The one special, magic day each year was the first day when the sun set at the same time my shift ended. 5:30 PM. The sun would, of course, be down by the time I actually go out the door, but that’s not the point. The point is from that day forward, the days were not only getting longer but I could actually perceive them getting longer. Does that make sense? Sunset at 4:30 or 5:00 didn’t affect me at all because I was inside the whole time and I didn’t actually get to experience the extra minute or so of light each day. Once the sun started setting after 5:30, I did get to experience the extra light.

So every year I would check the times of the sunset and quietly celebrate the symbolic moment when the sunset started happening after my work day.

Today is that day. It’s Friday February 25, 2021 and the sunset in Methuen, MA today will happen at 5:30 PM Eastern Standard Time.

Happy 5:30 day, everyone. Enjoy.

12%

Massachusetts is going to allow people into arenas for sporting events starting March 22nd. Yet they can’t offer vaccines to people under 65 years old unless they have two of a short list of comorbidities.

I believe they are going to allow entry to 12% of the building capacities. That’s 2107 Bruins fans, 2234 Celtics fans, and once the season starts, 4553 Red Sox fans.

A gathering of 2,000 people… yes there will be social distance and masks and all of that… still… If the Bruins play three games in a week, that means we could have three super spreader events in town in a single week.

We’re never going to get out of this covid mess, are we.