The car dealership that sold us one of our cars (the Kia) has been spamming the shit out of me lately. Mostly email, but today there was a robo call. It was one of those super insulting robo calls that is a recording of an actual person who is trying to trick you into thinking it’s really a person talking.
The gist of the call was, we have been missing our recommended maintenance appointments. Well no shit. We haven’t used the car at all, so why do we need maintenance? Also, There Is A Fucking Global Pandemic. No, I am not going to get my windshield wipers replaced and risk catching the plague. What the hell, assholes?
That’s not what I’m bitching about today though. When the recording ended (why did I stay on the line? I don’t know) a computer voice came on and said that if I wanted to be removed from the call list I could press 9 at any time.
Well, you can bet your sweet ass I pressed that little 9 button on my iPhone as fast as humanly possible. When I did, the computer voice responded with, “we are sorry. There was an application error and your request was not completed.”
>insert sound of a fat red head screaming his head off here<
I thought about making a stir crazy thing out of this, but it’s not funny or anything.
I have to do something I don’t want to do today, and that means I have to do something that I really don’t want to do.
The lawn is long and shaggy and needs to be cut. Crud. I don’t wanna. Unfortunately, the last time I cut the grass I emptied out my gas can. So if’n I want to cut the grass today, I have to go to the gas station and fill ‘er up.
Did he just say, if’n?*
One of the cars is kinda low on gas so I guess I’ll kill two quarantine breaking birds with one quarantine breaking stone.
Gloves… mask… gasoline. What could go wrong?
*That sentence is a joke lifted from an episode of the old Greg the Bunny show on Fox. Pretty sure the whole series (one season only) is on youtube. You should watch it all.
ADDENDUM: I managed to shake enough gas out of the can to fill the lawn mower tank one last time. So save the above until next time.
It’s Sunday. My thumb hurts, and the rash on my arm is bigger than it was yesterday. I’m falling apart completely. Quarantine is finally breaking me, it seems. So what’s a red head to do? How about some reflection on the state of his world? Also known as a post full of random stuff? Sounds good to me!
Today is kind of a big day. Symbolically, if not literally. Today is the last weekend day that the kids are at our house before Bellana goes back to school. We’re going all out. Jen is making her favorite dinner tonight. Harry is making her favorite dessert right now. I’m so worried about the future. I want her to go and have a great second year at college, but I don’t want her to go and be at risk of catching the plague. I want her to stay here and be safe. Basically all the same arguments I made last August, with a few pandemical twists. Mostly I just don’t want to miss her again. Selfish, yes, but it’s still true. At the same time, if they can keep the Covid bubble closed and stop her and the rest of the students from being exposed, then I want her to have a great semester. I want her to have a ball. She doesn’t leave for a little over a week, but her last weekend is a dad weekend so we’re giving her a send off a little early.
I feel a little better about my step son’s school plans now that I know he’s only going in person half of the time instead of all the time. I guess you could say I feel half better than full bad? Get it? I would feel full better if he was going full remote, but that’s probably going to require an outbreak in the high school and I don’t want that either. I want him home and safe.
Sports: The Bruins won their first Tuukka Rask free game. They are up two games to one in their first round series against the Whale. I have confidence in Jaroslav Halak, that’s not the issue. I just had more confidence in Rask. A Cup win seems less likely with Halak carrying them, but really given the way they played in the first few games into the return to play, I had lost most of my Cup confidence anyway. We’ll see how far they can go. I’d like to at least beat the friggin’ Whale.
The Red Sox are utterly atrocious. They are very close to being on pace for the lowest win/loss percentage in franchise history, and the franchise has been around for about 120 years or so…. that means they are really, really bad. We all knew it was coming though. They have one major league starter in their pitching rotation and he’s probably a #4 on a real staff. Maybe a #3. Chris Sale, Eduardo Rodriguez, and Nathan Eovaldi together is a nice start for a rotation, but with Sale out getting Tommy John surgery, and E-Rod out with Covid-19 related heart issues, that just leaves Eovaldi and a bunch of minor leaguers and that is a recipe for complete disaster. Add a few hitters having epically bad seasons so far and you have a team that has a good shot at the #1 overall draft pick next year.
Music… 50/90 is 42% complete. I just added songs #20 and 21. I’ve got seven songs with rhythm guitars down that are waiting for lyrics and vocals. That’s it. 28 songs total so far. I need to get to 34 by the end of the month (50/90 takes place over three months and 50/3=16.67). I also want to have a 10 song (at least) album in a month for August. Five of the completed songs were started and finished this month, and three of the unfinished songs were started this month too. Those three are the top of the priority list right now, and I have to keep the new stuff coming so I don’t fall behind. I feel like I am way behind on things, even though I’m really just at the halfway point.
A bird just flew into the window, about two feet away from me. I hope he’s okay. It looked like it might have been a glancing blow. More like he bounced off than crashed.
We applied for vote by mail ballots recently, and our 9/1 Primary election ballots were delivered a couple of days ago. Will there still be a functioning USPS for us to mail them back? The shit stain of a president admitted publicly that he’s hamstringing the post office to tamper with the November election, and the response from those who stand as a check and balance against him? They went on vacation. Also, there is a global pandemic that is killing a thousand Americans a day so they went on vacation. If you still think your government represents you, then that should show you the truth.
That’s kinda a bummer note to end on. Here, let me make it worse by adding a couple of new songs. That should push us all off the ledge, right?
You can tell we are in a global pandemic and a massive lockdown by the size of the gigantic party going on down the street right now. There are at least a dozen cars lining the road.
Today is August 13th. Five months ago today was the last time I was in the office in Waltham. Five months. At the time the work from home order came, we were expecting it to be two weeks. Five months and counting.
My step daughter was on spring break, expecting to go back to Vermont. Nope. My step son kept saying that they can’t close schools, that would be crazy? Nope. Closed. My wife read a news report that hinted things could be bad enough to keep us home until the Fall and I thought that was ridiculous.
Now we are planning for back to school. University life will require a quarantine and a negative test to be let onto the campus, and from there on it’s a bubble. High school life… who the hell knows. Even the administration doesn’t have a friggin’ clue where they are going, never mind the students and their families. It’s a complete disaster.
Work? It’s looking more and more like we won’t be back in a building until sometime early next year. Jen’s company is still closed down completely. Mine has been sneaking people back into one of the buildings, and next month they are going to open another. My building is not on the reopening radar yet so it’s unlikely we’ll go back this year. We don’t know for sure though. We had wondered if we might be making working at home permanent, but the company squashed that talk emphatically. We’re going back, we just don’t know when yet.
In the last five months I have bought two tanks of gas. Normally it’s two a week(ish). I’ve been to my parents house a few times and been incredibly nervous about it each time. What if I have it and give it to them? What if they have it and give it to me and I bring it home and give it to everyone else?
I haven’t set foot in a store since a few days after we were sent home. That first weekend (I think) I went in a grocery store a couple of times, and maybe a drug store once. This was before stores put their Covid restrictions into place. I haven’t had to wait outside for the headcount inside to go down. We’ve been using instacart and amazon for pretty much everything we need. I’ve done a couple of curbside pickups, one at Best Buy and one at Home Depot.
Are there signs this is coming to an end? Not really. There are hints of vaccines. Until I and my family have one in my blood I’m not going to stop stressing. So many of our fellow citizens seem to think it’s okay to start reopening, and every time they try there is an outbreak and a new spike and it’s time to stop being stupid and just shut things down again.
I want this to be over, and it won’t be over until we all take it seriously… and there doesn’t seem to be much chance of that happening.
Here’s what I have for today, for the state and the country at least. The city of Methuen hasn’t given us numbers in a while:
Massachusetts
Total Cases: 121,707 (up 392 from yesterday)
Deaths: 8,751
Death Rate: 7.19%
United States
Total Cases: 5,124,050 (up 52,871 from yesterday)
Deaths: 164,329
Death Rate: 3.21%
Sure, let’s open up the schools. Let’s get a shit load of six year olds to hang together in a closed room. What could possibly go wrong, 50,000 times in a single day.
I have been in three or four discussions today on the topic of kids going back to school during the pandemic.
One started with a parent at a town meeting saying that her kid going back to school in person was worth the risk of two kids dying. It’s only two dead kids, she said.
Another started with, police and fire departments need to go back to work so teachers should go back too.
I just can’t believe that actual human people made these arguments in all seriousness. I mean, it’s only two dead kids, right? What’s the worry? It is infuriating! Fire departments go to work so teachers should too? Do teachers take the job with the understanding that it might cost their lives? I’m not a fire fighter, but I’m pretty sure they do. Likewise, I’m not a teacher but I’m going to take a wild guess that the answer is an emphatic and total NO! No they don’t! If you think a teacher should risk his or her life for their profession then FUCKING PAY THEM FOR IT. Again, I’m not a teacher but I am willing to bet that teachers don’t get hazard pay.
It’s only two dead kids, she said. Well ma’am, what if one of the two dead kids is yours? Is it worth the risk then? You fucking moron? Is it worth it if your kid dies, or is it only worth it if some other mothers’ kids die?
Have we as a people always been this evil? How could so many of us not have noticed?
Oh… and I won’t use that over sized first letter thing again, okay?
This just popped up in my iPhone’s news widget. We’ve spent a lot of time over the last few days stressing over back to school. The entire discussion is insulting. If the pandemic was bad enough to shut down schools in March, how is it not bad enough to stop a re-open in August? It’s absurd. The situation would need to be better now than it was in March and it is most definitely not better. It is worse. So very much worse. FIVE MILLION infections worse.
To quote the great Will Ferrell in Zoolander, I feel like I’m taking crazy pills.
I left the house today! WOOHOO! Suck it, Coronavirus!
I went to my parents house today for something that was not an emergency. What a nice feeling that was, let me tell you. They are having a bit of an issue with vines and invasive plant over growth. They are kinda taking over. I took a trusty, heavy duty hedge clipper over there and went at it. They can now get through the front door without anything pulling any Little Shop of Horror shit on them.
The downside. Thorns. I didn’t realize it. They didn’t realize it. Some of those vines had the biggest, ugliest, razor sharpiest thorns I’ve ever seen. My father chucked a pair of heavy gloves out the door for me, which helped, but I half expected my second favorite Bruins t-shirt was going to go home in rags. Luckily I avoided that.
I stayed until my back pain convinced me that it was time to go. I got to talk to my parents through the door for a few minutes. Mom had a bad day yesterday, pain wise. Today seems a little better. She’s definitely a little more together cognitively, which is great. She had blood work yesterday, and a nurse visit the day before (I think?) and a chemo treatment this coming Monday. It’s not going to get easier for a long time.
On the way home I had to do something that I hadn’t done in months. I had to put gas in the Mazda. I’ve written about it before, but I haven’t put gas in that car since early March. Five months. If there’s a plus side to lock down, it’s the huge reduction in carbon emissions coming from our family. I’ve now put gas into each car once since the lock down started.
Unfortunately, the visit to the gas station was a clear demonstration of why our country has gone to shit. There were four customers. Me, a driver on the island next to mine, and a couple on a motor cycle on the next island over. There was also a youngish guy putting air in his tires. Of the five people, there was one mask. Mine. I had latex gloves on too. The rest of the group? Nothing. My skin didn’t touch anything that isn’t a part of the bubble we live in. Inside the car? Yes. Outside the car? No. I kept waiting for some smart ass nazi-friendly remark from one of the other customers. It never came. Good. Screw them.
My Flickr photo-a-day thing is up to day 343 today. Just a few more weeks to go. I tried to take a picture out the car window while stopped at a stop light. There’s a farm on the State Hospital grounds (technically I don’t think it’s on the grounds anymore, I think the land changed hands? Something like that? It used to be State Hospital property, but who knows, whatever) and I tried to get a picture of some corn.
That was my second attempt. The first attempt also caught the control box for the traffic signal. I didn’t want that though, so I took another.
When I got home I noticed the image on the box. I thought it was a reflection of one of the State Hospital buildings, but the angle is all wrong. I zoomed in and saw it’s a painting! How cool is that? A little cropping and now this photo 343/365:
The United States of America topped the 160,000 COVID-19 death mark today. Aren’t you proud of us? We topped the 4,000,000 infections mark 16 days ago, on July 23rd. At the current rate we should hit 5,000,000 on Sunday or Monday. That will be one million new cases in 18 or 19 days. One million cases in less than three weeks.
But sure, we should be fine letting all of the kids in the country go back to school. There’s nothing to worry about.
Inside the Red Head's Head 