A couple of nights ago I went to a concert for the first time since Covid came around. I knew I was missing live music after four years or so, but I wasn’t really aware of how much I was missing it.
So now what?
How about hockey? I’m watching the Bruins play Tampa Bay right now (tied at one in the first period). When was the last time I went to a hockey game? My Flickr account tells me I went to a Bruins game in February 2016. Was that the last time? It might be, I am not sure.
We are going to a game next month at my step kids’ school. Should I try to go to a UMass Lowell game before then? I hope I will be feeling the same sort of I-can’t-believe-how-much-I-missed-this feeling that I got on Saturday at the Letters to Cleo show.
I’m in the office today. Not my office but another of my company’s buildings that is 35 miles further from home. The first 10-15 miles of the commute was brutal. After that it was just a matter of trying to go fast enough to make up for some of the lost time. I got to the parking lot with a couple of minutes to spare.
Speaking of the parking lot, I have never seen it this full. Even pre-pandemic, I never saw this place packed the way it is. There is a conference here today. We are not going to it, but we are involved in a couple of things that are sort of related to it. I’m the guy hiding in a conference room, sitting as far away from everyone else, and only removing my mask to consume sustenance.
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.
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.
Happy August 1st, everyone! August doesn’t have a national holiday so this year I am going to try and make it feel better by acting like every day is an extra big deal. No I’m not. I’m just so happy that July and its constant rain is over. Granted, August might get constant rain too, likely will thanks to climate change, but for this one, sweet, shining morning, August is dry and I am happy about it.
I wore a mask at my mother’s house yesterday. Not all the time, just when I knew she was near me. We are both vaccinated, but she ain’t catching jack shit from me. The MA department of public health is recommending vaccinated people wear masks when they are indoors with other people around because we can’t tell who the morons who aren’t vaccinated are and if they aren’t going to do anything to protect their own health, then we the vaccinated have to do it for them. Because they are stupid. Because they are morons.
Thanks to the never ending pandemic of the unvaccinated we are still using instacart for groceries and they screwed up big time today. We had to go back for a second round. All in all I am happy for the service, they are right a crazy high percentage of the time, but every once in a while… We asked for hamburger patties and got pumpernickel bread. Riiiiight.
What else is going on on this fine Sunday morning in August that hasn’t seen any rain yet? I broke the music mold a smidgen today. We slept kinda late. Not super late, I was up at about 8:15, but for me that’s pretty late. I wanted to do some car music but the aforementioned instacart delivery was on its way, and I had some things I wanted to do before I left so I didn’t get into the car until almost 10:00. I do my car music in a movie theater parking lot, and due to the idiotic decision to re-open the state despite the never ending pandemic mentioned in the previous paragraph, the movie theater was going to be open at 10:00. I rolled the dice. I park in the back parking lot so hopefully anyone going in early to catch the delta variant and a movie would probably park in the front. My risk paid off.
I did park in a different area of the lot though. I recorded four songs. There were two technical problems but neither stopped me. First, I use Trello to track my progress. The songs I needed to work on are on a list called Complete Lyrics/Melody on a board called 2021 50/90. My normal workflow is to bring up the Trello app on my iPhone and use that to let me know which songs to work on. The last couple of times I’ve done this though, the iOS app wouldn’t refresh. It’s showing me the board from about two weeks ago. Nothing is up to date. I had to turn my iPhone hot spot on and bring it up on the Mac. That is annoying as all hell.
The second technical problem wasn’t a problem but I would have had I kept going. The temperature outside was in the mid-70’s but the sun was out and shining bright and damn if it didn’t get roasting hot in that car. I’d open the windows but then people would be able to hear me “singing” and ain’t no way that’s happening. About halfway through my little “session” the Mac’s fan kicked on and it never shut off. I don’t know how much longer I would have been able to go before it started to overheat but “fortunately” my voice ran out of gas after about an hour and I had to stop.
I did manage to finish four songs. That’s one more than I had planned. I had three songs with the guitars finished and I wanted to pick those off. I also had six songs with lyrics and melodies already written that don’t have guitars yet. A couple of those have MIDI guitar tracks acting as place holders. I did one of those.
So the plans for the rest of today include, but are not limited to, cutting some grass, recording some guitar parts, having a cookout for dinner (weather permitting, of course, though July is over so the weather will be glorious), and hanging out with my step son who only has a few weeks left before he moves to college.
Of course, as I type out that to do list I am sitting at my computer reading twitter, making fun of creationists, and thinking that it would be really nice to just sit and watch movies with Harry and Jen all day. That might be the better to do list.
Welcome to August, may it stay sunny and dry. Good luck, folks!
Thanksgiving weekend has finally arrived. My favorite of all the long weekends. Sure Covid has destroyed it, but at least they can’t take it away from us completely.
Today is the first day we spent with my step daughter who is home from college. She’s going to spend the rest of the long weekend at her dad’s because that’s just the way the calendar worked out. Still, I am so glad she’s here.
We are doing a zoom Thanksgiving tomorrow with my side of the family. I don’t think my step kids will be available, but I hope we can sneak them in for a few minutes at least.
Thanksgiving is pretty much my favorite holiday. It’s going to take more than a global pandemic and a worldwide quarantine and the end of American democracy to ruin it for me. Damn right.
There are two numbers that jump out at me here. One good, one unbelievably awful. First, the good.
Methuen has not had a COVID-19 death since June 15th. That’s nine days. That is incredible. We’ve had 16 new cases in that time but no fatalities. Excellent!
Now the terrible news. You’ve probably worked this one out for yourself. The United States had 37,324 new cases yesterday. We had been doing well enough for the daily increases to occasionally dip below 20,000, but now with states opening up like morons, we’ve topped 30k on four of the last six days. The level of stupidity in my country is utterly astounding.
It should also be noted that through most of the pandemic, Massachusetts has been the state with the forth highest case count. We got hit hard. Reports are now saying that we are the state with the lowest infection rate. That’s good news. In the last few days we’ve dropped to the sixth highest case count, as Texas and Florida have been skyrocketing. Jen and I were looking at the numbers by state a few days ago and we estimated at that time that it would probably take Florida another week to catch us. Nope, they blew past us today. It only took a few days.
….and yet… we’re still opening up for business. Their money is more important to the nation than your health, and even your life. Way to go, USA.
There is something delightfully therapeutic about bashing the holy hell out of an electric guitar when you’re in a state of near permanent near panic over a global pandemic. The plague might get me, but until it does I’m going to vent all of my frustrations through bad music and mediocre guitar playing.
If you enjoy freaking out and panicking over the state of the world related to COVID-19 then by all means go ahead and read the news. I often start my lunch break by perusing Google News. I look through the headlines of the topics I follow and if something catches my interest I’ll open it up in a new tab and save it for later. Once I’ve gone through the front page I pop on over to those other tabs and start-a-readin’.
In our present global situation though, a quiet little lunchtime activity like that is enough to either make me want to punch everyone on Earth square in the face, or curl up in a ball and cry as the world around me collapses into anarchy. Yeah, both alternatives sound like so much fun.
In one article I read a few minutes ago, the Governor of New York said that things are falling apart much faster than anticipated. He said the Federal Government (I don’t recall which agency) has a stockpile of about 20,000 respirators. New York estimates they need 30,000. The Feds (I think he said FEMA) agreed to send 400. Four Hundred.
Who was it, the Lt Governor of Texas, I think, who yesterday said that grandparents are willing to die in order to save the US economy. Really. I am not kidding you. Some numb nuts actually said that. The nerve… the gall… the stupidity. I said it in a post yesterday and I’ll say it again. These fascists clearly care more about giving money to billionaires than they do about the lives of the people who put them in their offices. Their constituents are worth less to them then their bank balance. If that isn’t evil, then what is?
A few weeks ago I got into a minor online argument with a maga cult member who swore that electing a socialist like Joe Biden… as if Joe Biden had a socialist bone in his body… would burn down the entire country. As of this moment, there is a bill being hammered out in the US Legislature that is by all accounts near completion that will see the US government send checks of $2400 to married couples, with an additional $500 per child. Funny… I don’t hear those maga cult members I was arguing with complaining about socialism now. Now that the high priest of fascism, the cheeto himself has come out in favor of this plan. Is socialism no longer the devil that you swore it was? How does that work? Is it not socialism if a republican does it? Hypocrites.
Okay, I’m done with the news today. I’m going to put my headphones back on and listen to podcasts about Sunday’s episode of The Walking Dead. After that, maybe some prog rock. Probably no blues today… my heart can’t really take that right now.
Inside the Red Head's Head 