Tag: covid-19

8:55am on Day Two

I’m not just sure, I’m Covid-19 positive.

With sincere apologies to South Park for paraphrasing one of their most brutally offensive, yet absolutely brilliant jokes.

Dig what I just did:

19/365
19/365

Also, dig what else I just did (sorry it’s a little blurry):

I think I will call my doctor and the weight loss clinic and just ask for advice on what to do. Maybe I’ll ask for a Paxlovid prescription, I don’t know. I should send a message to my boss too and tell him not to expect me back tomorrow.

Shit. Three and a half years I successfully avoided this Covid-19 ass munch and now here I am with a positive test.

Calling it a positive test makes it sound good, doesn’t it? It makes it sound like it’s a positive thing and not a negative thing. I think we need to tweak the terminology and come up with something new. Call it a blurble test or a non-blurble test. Something like that. We’ll see if I can make that happen. I’ll let you know.

3:30am on Day Two

My music projects are on hold. I might just mark them as fails but I also might just extend the deadlines. They are all goofy B.S. anyway so I can really do whatever I want with them, right? I was going to go out shooting photos today but I was self quarantined even before I started feeling sick, so that was basically off the table too.

Nope, as of right now (4:09am on Tuesday September 19, 2023) my only creative outlet is… you guessed it… Live Blogging Whatever the Hell this Bug I Caught Is! Yes! Bring on the blog posts! Bring on the photos of trash barrels full of used tissues and bottles of Tylenol! This is going to be so much fun! Just Ace reporting/personal blogging at it’s most dramatic! I bet you can’t wait, oh my readers and only friends*!

I have declared that 9/18/23 is officially Day One of this illness, though I really should have declared it day zero. I am a computer science nerd, and we start counting at zero, not one. I figured I’d make it all make sense for non computer science geeks though and started counting at one. That makes today Day Two, hence the title of the post. Can you dig it? I knew that you could.

I went to bed a few minutes before 11:00pm last night. Jen is in our bed and I am on the couch. We both need to spread out so even though it absolutely blows chunks that we’re not in bed together, it will probably help us both sleep more. I was freezing cold. I had two heavy-ish blankets on and I was thinking of turning on the heat, even though my father would have been offended by that happening in September. I took some Tylenol just before bed because I was thinking I will likely develop a fever at some point, assuming this is Covid, of course. I thought I’d be preemptive. I woke up at 3:30 to go to the bathroom. I got back onto the couch and bundled up but within a couple of minutes I was roasting hot. I kicked off the blankets but couldn’t get myself to fall asleep.

I need to get up early this morning to bring the trash out to the street. I would have done it last night but it poured rain all day and I couldn’t bring myself to go outside and get hosed down. I feel like it’s too early to go outside and do it now so I have an alarm set for 6:00am. Will I sleep again between now and then? Who knows. I did sort of start my daily routine. I’ve had eight ounces of water and my morning vitamins, along with another dose of Tylenol. I’m starting to feel chilly again. I think I am going to post this and then lay down.

I can tell by the looks on all of your faces that you are utterly fascinated by all of this. I’m sure you can’t freakin’ stand the anticipation building up for today’s Covid-19 home test #2. You can cut the tension with a knife around here!

Okay, folks. That’s it for now. It’s 4:20am (he he he) and I am hitting the publish button. Talk to you all later today.

*To borrow a phrase from Anthony Burgess’ novel, “A Clockwork Orange”, of course.

Yup, I’m Sick

We all knew it was coming but now it’s here.

I’m sick.

I tested negative for Covid-19 this morning but tonight I have a stuffy head and a cough and some general aches and pains. I am guessing I will test negative again tomorrow, but soon enough I am going to have a positive Covid test all of my own.

I avoided it for three and a half years, but now here we are staring the 21st century plague in the face. Time to put all of those vaccination and booster shots to work. Let’s get it done, bro’s.

Happy Rob-Probably-Has-Covid-19-Day, kids. Let’s celebrate by coughing a lot and sleeping off the fever.

Shit.

I’m Guessing That’s a Bad Sign

So the Covid journey of the last few days. I haven’t said which of us tested positive, but I need to now. It was my wife, the love of my life, Jen. She woke up feeling shitty on Friday and we started driving home from Florida. She was worse on Saturday and worse still on Sunday. She also had her first positive Covid test on Sunday. Today she’s feeling really sick. She’s clearly in for a few rotten days.

Me? Even though I spent all of that time sitting next to her in the car I have been feelin’ fine. Today I’ve been freezing cold all day, but that’s been the norm over the last year or so. My nose has been a little runny. I chalked that up to being so cold, but it has been a smidgen on the concerning side. I tested negative for Covid this morning so that’s cool. I also just ripped off two very emphatic sneezes… well… shit. That seems like it might be a bad sign, right?

Here’s hoping that Jen starts to feel better before I start to feel super bad. That way I can take care of her at the worst and she can take care of me at the worst. That would be helpful for both of us.

Back Home for Reals

We got home to Boston and that’s when the Covid test came back positive. We dropped our bags off at the house and then went to the doctor and then went to the pharmacy. It took hours. Finally by 4:45pm we got home to stay. We’re in quarantine land now and that’s a pain in the ass, but it’s also a good thing. We’re going to be living with Instacart and Amazon for a week or so. Doordash is bringing dinner as we speak.

We are back to 2020 lockdown again. I was really hoping we were done with this shit forever, but there you go. Get well soon, us.

The ‘Rona Rears it’s Ugly Head

We both knew it was coming, even though I would not admit it and will deny it for ever, but after two days of negative tests we had a positive Covid-19 test today. I’m still not going to say which of us is sick, but as of this moment it’s still just one of us. That will change soon enough, I’m sure.

We are hanging out at an urgent care parking lot waiting for them to tell us we can come inside. We are hoping for a prescription for paxlovid to help things along.

Wish our immune systems luck. Yippee.

Optional

The sign that you can’t see in this picture says “masks are optional.”

I don’t know how I feel about that. I’m trying to be less militant about mask wearing, but I still wear them more often than not. I’m actually wearing one right now as I write this.

Maybe next time I come here I’ll see if I can convince myself to leave it in the car. Maybe.

Suck it, Global Pandemic

After three days in the office working in close proximity to six people, two are feeling under the weather today (note: I’m not one of them).

Oh hello, negative Covid test. Stick around for five days or so. Thumbs up, bros.

Three Years Today

Three years. Bullshit.

Today is March 13, 2023. On March 13, 2020 we left the office in Waltham at 5:30pm and the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown started. I mean we all had our own individual experience as we did not have a functioning Federal government at the time, we just had a nazi cunt in the White House pretending to run a Federal government. We were all sort of left on our own while more civilized societies worked together. Yeah, I ‘member.

So Jen’s company sent everyone home after work on Wednesday and my company sent us home after work on Friday. The kids both came home around the same time. Bellana was on Spring Break and they just had everyone stay home. Harry was still in high school so his experience was more closely similar to mine. Just one day he was told to stay home and telecommute.

So that’s how it all started. Today? Today the pandemic is still a thing, but our society is more or less ignoring it. Very few of us are still wearing masks. Most of us in the Tech industry are still working from home for the most part, but we’re being pulled back into the office more and more often. My company has us coming in once a week. My fingers are crossed that at some point soon we’ll eliminate that requirement, but that hope is not based on any actual evidence. Jen’s company closed their buildings, but they are still pulling people in to temporary work sites now and then. I don’t know anyone who is still 100% working from home.

In my family, we’re all vaccinated up the wazoo, and every time a booster is made available we jump on it. It hasn’t stopped anyone from contracting Covid-19 but it has drastically reduced the severity for most of us. Jen and I haven’t caught it at all. Three years of precautions have been successful for us. Sure, we’ve over done it and we continue to over do it to some extent, but we’re still Covid-Free.

And that, folks is the long and the short of it. They told us to expect to be working from home for a couple of weeks and it’s turned into three years. It’s not even unusual anymore. It’s not even “the new normal” anymore. It’s just normal now. As Bruce Hornsby and the Range once said, that’s just the way it is.

Happy third quaren-versary, folks. Do something fun at home by yourself to celebrate.