Okay folks, it’s bed time.
Car music tomorrow. Weight loss surgery appointment, haircut, and stopping by my parents for a minute.
I can do it. Vaccines don’t fail me now. Masks, do your job!
I’ll take a Covid test in the morning too. Just to be safe.
Fingers crossed, but for now it’s sleep time.
Good night, everyone!
I failed to get out of bed early enough to go out for some car music today. It’s been a while. I need to keep on this. I want the re-recordings done before RPM starts on February 1st. Get on it, fat boy!
My hair is so long that it keeps covering my glasses. When I am wearing my sit-at-the-computer glasses and I have to look somewhere else, I try to look over the top of my glasses. I can’t do that today because there is 20 pounds of hair sitting there. I keep thinking my glasses are dirty because there’s smutz on them. The smutz, as you can probably guess, is actually my hair. If I don’t get my hair cut tomorrow I am going to lose my shit. At the same time, I really don’t want to get my hair cut tomorrow because I really don’t want Covid. Damn it!
Yesterday was Dr Martin Luther King, Jr day in the USA. Was it also a holiday in the UK? Why is the That Pedal Show live show happening today instead of yesterday?
I just did something I haven’t done in ages. Instead of chasing my lunch with some junk food, I had some fruit. I am sharing that information not because it’s interesting to you, my loyal and much loved readers, but because if I happen to look back at this a few days or weeks or years from now I want to know that on at least one day I did at least one thing right. I am encouraging/guilting my hypothetical future self.
My step son is taking a jazz piano course. Just a one credit thing. He had his first lesson today. He’s very excited. He said he popped a 9th on top of a Dominat 7 chord. Yes. Next stop, Chick Effin’ Corea babie!
Right, back to work.
This bed looks made, doesn’t it?
You can see the bed when I’m on conference calls at work, so I keep it neat looking. All nice and made up. Not like hospital corners neat, but nice enough.
It looks like it’s made right now, right? Let me let you in on a little secret. It’s not made at all.
The sheets and the pillow cases are in the wash. The blankets and the throw pillows are arranged as an elaborate ruse to fool coworkers into thinking everything is normal.
Insert maniacal laughter here.
When the pandemic started I declared that I was still going to get up at the same time each workday morning that I did before the company sent us home. That means I would have to be up and ready to go out the door by 7:30am.
I stuck to that for a while but eventually the snooze bar started getting pressed an extra time or two. Today I got out of bed at 7:00am. Last week there was a 7:15 and a nearly 7:30. Soooo. Nope, not sticking to that particular lock down promise to myself.
Today is the day that my company is trying to reopen the buildings. This is their second attempt. The first was last summer. We’re going hybrid so we are only supposed to be going into the office a small percentage of the time. Last week they gave us the option of delaying our come back to February 1st if we were worried about Omicron. Am I worried about Omicron? You bet your viral ass I am. So I won’t be going back today.
Still, with the hybrid return on its way I should really try to start getting out of bed earlier again. It would be the smart move. I should really do it. Will I do it? No, probably not.
We took Harry back to school. We are empty nesters again. We’re happy and sad and yadda yadda. I miss him. I miss Bellana.
I don’t have a problem with them being at school. I am loving the trip, seeing where they are going and how they are getting there and all of that.
I am just tired of all the other shit. I am so tired of Covid. Just feeling overwhelmed and absolutely sick of it all. I want our lives back. I want to get back to a world where stopping for gas isn’t something that makes me feel afraid for my health and the health of my family.
I don’t know. I just want this crap to be over, you know?
Wearing masks are harder for people who wear glasses.
If you were super curious about how The Netherlands is handling the quarantining of visitors from other countries, here’s what I know.
Bellana entered the country on Thursday morning, January 13th. She was allotted some time to get from the plane to her final destination, which was something like three hours by train, and then once she was where she was going her quarantine began. On Monday she will take a Covid test. The results will take 48-72 hours to return but once they do (assuming a negative result) she’s free to move about the country.
So worst case scenario (that doesn’t involve a positive test) is that her quarantine starts on 1/13 and ends on 1/20. Note that in The Netherlands they would say her quarantine starts on 13/1 and ends on 20/1, but that’s neither here nor there.
One funny note from our FaceTime. She has changed her weather settings on her phone to Celsius. She said it was currently 2 degrees. Jen laughed and said it was 2 degrees here too. Doing the math, our 2 degrees is -16.7 degrees for her. Brrrr, babie.
So now you’re up to date on the Dutch quarantine process for international travel. I hope you all enjoyed this little lesson.
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:
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.
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.
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?
Inside the Red Head's Head 