Tag: coronavirus

Seventy-Nine Minutes

I have seventy-nine minutes to go until the long weekend. New Years is so close I can practically smell Times Square.

Two unrelated things come together in this post. First, I am curious how many of my loyal readers and only friends are planning on going out for New Years Eve. By going out I mean going someplace where more than 10 people will be present. Doesn’t matter if it’s inside or outside, I just want to know if you are going to an actual party. Second, WordPress.com has just given us access to a third party plug in/embed thing that lets us add polls and surveys and stuff like that to our posts. I add ’em and no one response to ’em, but I keep adding ’em!

I posted one of these polls the other day before I knew how to see the results without actually adding a response. Once I figured it out I found there were seven responses. Six of them were me. Wheeeee!

73 minutes to go.

What percentage of the work day is left? It’s 4:18pm. I work from 9:00am to 5:30pm. I have worked (7 * 60) + 18 = 438 minutes. There are (8 * 60) + 30 = 510 minutes in the day. I have worked ((7*60)+18)/((8*60)+30) * 100 = 85.88% of the work day. Fuck yeah, math.

Answer the poll! Polls are fun! Specifically, polls are fun when you’re a lame blog poster like me so let me have fun!

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.

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.

Hockey Takes an Early Christmas

The NHL was supposed to go on its Christmas break after the end of play on the 23rd. There would be no activity, including travel, until the 26th.

As it turned out, all of the games on the schedule for the 22nd had already been postponed due to the league shutting down individual teams for Covid outbreaks.

So the league and the players did the smart thing and decided to start the Christmas break early. It now starts at the end of play tonight (the 21st) and all of the games on the books for the 23rd, there are five of them, will be postponed.

I got my info from the players association’s news site.

Now while I think that their hearts are in the right place, I think they are coming up short. Personally, I think they should shut down until New Years Day. Let the infected players recover and then come back on 1/1/22 with the Winter Classic.

But that’s just me.

Our Personal Spider-Man Saga

As of a few minutes ago all four of us have seen the new Spider-Man. Given the current Covid/Omicron state there was no way Jen and I were going to see it in a theater. Sorry, Mickey, it just isn’t going to happen.

How then do we see the movie while still staying ridiculously, hyper vigilant against the plague?

One way is, to borrow a phrase from the Grumpy Old Geeks podcast, to go to Sweden. (Thepiratebay is located in Sweden…. Get it?)

Pirating works but there is the moral aspect of taking something that many people worked terribly hard on without giving them their due. The solution? Before we watched our horrible pirated file, Jen bought two tickets to a showing. There, moral questions answered. There is still the moral question of not spending money on concessions, but I can assure you that we would not be doing that anyway. There is zero chance we would stand in line near other people. Covid, you know? Speaking of Covid, our little work around means there were two open seats that could help with social distance.

So we’ve seen a horrid quality copy of the film, and the studio gets their ticket sales. We will further make it up to everyone by buying it when it gets to iTunes.

As for the movie itself? You’ll get no spoilers from me. You’re welcome.

Brian May Shares His Covid-19 Experience

Brian May, the guitarist from Queen who is also an astrophysicist, posted to his Instagram yesterday that he has Covid-19. Today he shared his experience so far. There are two clips. One is short and is background (and some guitar playing) and the other has the main details (and also some UK political stuff).

Clip one:

Clip two:

In summation, he went to a birthday party, he tested every day afterwards (there’s a novel idea, eh?), and he and a whole bunch of people who went to the birthday party caught it. He has three Pfizer shots (me too! Brian May and I are Pfizer bros.!) and it was a horrible couple of days but thanks to the vaccine he’s coming out of it and he’s doing all right now.

Remember folks, this is a scientist we’re talking to. It’s not his specific field, but he is wicked smaht, m’kay?

Just sharing this to wrap up the post I made yesterday.