Got a text today from my mother that my grandmother had stopped breathing. She's breathing again now, but it's faint and it can't be much longer now. My mother and her sisters had to raise hell to be allowed inside the care home to see her, since visitors are officially not allowed in for two more weeks. She turned 90 last week, I tried to call her but she was unable to speak. I haven't been able to see her since Christmas because 2020, and now I'm 600 km away and will probably not be able to get there in time, I don't even know right now if I'm going to try. Last time I saw her she had forgotten how to read, her greatest joy in life, so together we read poems by Harry Martinson and Stig Dagerman. She only needed me to read a few lines before the rest of the poem came to her from memory. Before I had to leave, she grabbed my hand and recited from memory: Quiet your hurricane soul. A hand out held may be all you can offer to help make a broken man whole. But this, friend, is more than enough – a star's steady smile through the rain. One less human heart bound to hunger is a sister or brother we gain. Edit: Just after I posted this my father called me to tell me she had passed away.No one can reinvent the world.
That's all of it, and Dagerman never gave it a name. He wrote it for the Red Cross as a plea for compassion in the syndicalist newspaper Arbetaren, for which he wrote over a thousand daily verses from autumn 1943 until the day before his suicide 1954. He was an amazing writer, both verse and prose, and you can sort of see where those verses were coming from in his travelogue German Autumn from 1946: People demanded of those who were suffering their way through the German autumn that they should learn from their misfortune. No one thought that hunger is a very bad teacher.
I am excited to meet Winston. I can’t imagine how excited she was. Winston better join our founder meeting tomorrow.
We didn't want to commit to getting one unless we were sure, and were willing to wait if need be. It'd be a tough process for her if it ended up to be drawn out. I'm a believer in picking the puppy, and then getting emotionally attached. Next time, if there is one.
My parents brought home a black lab puppy to surprise me at about 12 or 13 years old. Dad said, "go around the other side of the car and help your mother with the groceries". The bag in her lap had the puppy in it. Named her "Christian's Black Magic", and called her "Magic". Such a great surprise!!
Sigh. Honestly? I'm at a loss now what's safe to do and what isn't. Private gatherings should be limited to 6 people at most per government recommendations, which is easy enough. But we know risk outside is limited, so can you sit with a larger group in the park if you keep distance to most people? What if you sit across from someone for a while the one day of the week I go into the office? Public transport seems to be fine, but the official policy is to use any mouth covering, preferably noneffective nomedical stuff. So I got myself some N95 non-medical masks, which are the best non-medical efficiency, I think. And at what point do you have symptoms? An amount of sniffs or sneezes or coughs that can be counted on two hands per day seems fine. But we also know that 40% is asymptomatic. Does that mean no symptoms at all, or does it fly under the radar as "it's nothing"? And how should I recalibrate now that testing capacity is limited again? Hospitalizations are very low over here right now, but a lot of young people seem to test positive. Yet I've heard nobody in my peers who has tested positive, only a few negatives. So am I a terrible person for seeing friends again? For having a board game night? I can go on but I'll stop now. Safe to say it's tiring, it's grinding my will down to apathy and I hate it. Something cool; one of my work projects is to help build the mobility app of the future. One app to not just plan, but also book and pay for not just PT but also scooters, ebikes, rental cars, you name it. Yesterday we launched our closed beta, so after half a year of working behind the scenes to build up the data analytics platform to support development, we're now out testing with real users and I can buy actual e-tickets for trains and buses. There's a lot of competition in this space, but I'm really hoping we can make a difference and compete with Google Maps and the likes for multimodal trips.discovidture, dis·co·vid·ture, n : the uncertainty and unease at taking any coronavirus related health risk.
You are not a terrible person. I have eased in to allowing to see friends, socially distanced and while outside. We had Two friends over for drinks outside. I went to a restaurant with a physician/investor and ate outside at a place that is known for being very safe. Congrats on launching the new product. Good luck!
I get together with friends for board games nights, just keep our face masks on. We have also had several family gatherings, again keeping our faces covered. The large family gatherings we social distance 10 feet or so, except when talking in small groups (3 or 4 people). We've been lucky that the weather has permitted outdoor gatherings. Winter will put a real damper on getting together.
Gonna be real - doing pretty badly Out of college & at a full time salaried job. In college, I had a amazing group of friends that I loved dearly, and while social media is okay, having a discord call once a week really isn't the same. And soon I'll be moving to Clearwater FL (nearish tampa) presumably and I've been very anxious that that place is going to be a boring suburb. Side note: how the hell are you expected to find friends after college? And when the hell are you expected to do anything if you have to wake up at 8am every day? And the job is feeling kinda demoralizing since it just sunk in that the product we're going to be shipping will inevitably be a hard to use buggy mess and while we're trying to polish it up as much as possible I can't see it being in a place I can be proud of in time. Long and short is: don't really have anything to look forward to, short or long term Anyways, sorry for the rant, don't really know what parts of this are covid, what are just "growing up", and what are more personal. Bah. Just got new headphones tho so that's something
That's super real. My fiancee graduated in December of last year and has been working roughly full time since then. She has espoused similar feelings in the recent weeks. I experienced much the same for a long time. When we first graduate college and enter the workforce it really does seem like that work and the necessary actions to maintain one's ability to work are all that there is time for. With a good degree of work and intention, you can create time for yourself and your loved ones in your schedule. Whenever I hear 'I can't, I'm busy' what I'm really hearing is 'I can't, I won't make time for you. Social hobbies are the best way to make adult friends. If you have an active one, even better. If you are an adult without a physically active hobby or pasttime, get one before you regret not getting one. Your life from now on is exactly what you make of it. Every year composed of months, weeks, days and hours. How you live is how you will have lived.
There is much to look forward to, and don't make your job your identity. Do you have any hobbies? I met many of my friends playing pool and darts after work. I met my best friend working. We still get together a couple times a month, and it has been 25+ years. Don't be in a rush to make friends, just open yourself to experiences with other people. The friendships will come on their own. For 17 years I have been getting up at 5:30 every morning so I can get my family moving and out the door on time. My work day doesn't start until 9:00 after my hour commute. Most days I don't get home until after 7:00. Then after dinner and homework, working on the house, I still manage to find time for hobbies. Unless you work until 10:00PM you should have plenty of time for hobbies, socializing and getting a full night sleep. From my experience, leave the house. Don't get sucked into television and surfing the web. When you go out, keep your phone in your pocket. Be interested in what is going on around you, don't look bored or annoyed to be there. If you do that enough, someone will eventually start a conversation while standing in line, or whatever. When they do, find a way to ask open ended questions, let them talk. People like to talk about themselves. Listen to them, ask follow up questions about what they talk about. I'll get off my soap box now. I doubt you wanted my brain dump, but I hope it helps.
Honestly sounds like normal life stuff, and not COVID-related, really. You'll figure it all out. There's no formula. You just live and follow the pretty shiny things and see where they lead. (And Tampa is a college town... my niece just moved there for college. You'll find plenty to do.)
On the bright side, there are definitely worse places in FL than Clearwater. At least there are really nice beaches there, if you're into that kind of thing. Also the Dali museum isn't far (St. Pete, I think). I'm no fan of FL, but if I had to live in FL I'd live in Miami. If I couldn't live in Miami I guess it'd be somewhere in the Tampa Bay region. Maybe you can become a hockey fan...The Lighting are playing in the Cup Finals starting tomorrow!
Sorry about Florida, it really is gods forsaken waiting room. Hopefully you will be making good money that can compensate for living there. When I was in that life stage I spent a good 10-15k a year going to bars and meeting people. I can’t say I really made a lot of friends but there were some girls and I got a wife out of the deal. During covid though it’s not a good option. For friends, try to work with people you want to be friends with. I know it’s hard to pull off but work friends are essentially free. They are around all day they are convenient and you dont have to invest a lot of free time making them. While you have no kids you can make friends by going out and meeting new folks and doing activities you like. It’s hard and slow though like 1-2 years to get there. After that no new friends except parents of your kids friends. I don’t know what you like to do for fun but what ever it is I’d try to get into that and leverage money to be able to make new contacts. For example I had an acquaintance that bought a boat, and went out fishing every weekend. He invited anyone that would come including random folks on forums. He met tons of cool folks, seems expensive but I spent way more on the bar than he did on the boat and I think he had more fun. You could probably do something similar by buying some expensive price of gear for whatever hobby you are into and invite folks to use it with you. Join clubs, take lessons for cooking and outdoors, basically use money to put yourself in situations where you meet folks open to meeting new folks. The openness is key, try to avoid events where clicks hang out. Also I too have a bit of a headphone fettish I have like $1000 of various headphones and iems in my house
Congrats on graduating and landing a full-time salaried job. You are re-locating to a major city within Florida. As with all places, big or small, you will have to gently remind yourself where your own interests lie and set your course to seeking them out in your new location during your free time. My first real out-of-school job (I only have a year or two on you) was on the Space Coast. There was not much on that side of Space Coast. But, my favorite thing about that gig was the flexible work hours. I got up a little bit earlier so I could leave work earlier and go read on the beach. 'Adulting' means carving out time for you. Tampa is a big city - with COVID, it will be generally rougher to 'get out there' making more friends, but that's where getting friendly with those you will interact with daily anyways comes into play. Even if it's just starting out with greetings and small talk. Making friends can look like getting more acquainted with neighbors, making an effort with chatting up co-workers and striking up conversations at the nearby comic shops (my ploy). Two of those settings are places that you will spend most of your day at. Maybe you don't click with some of them, and that's ok. The comic shop is where I knew I would find nerds of some capacity in a small town to jive with. Now, Tampa is not a small town (it has a few colleges pulling students to that area) and has gorgeous scenery. Personally, I would make weekend trips to the Preserves and State Parks nearby if that's were I was located! An easy way to find out what isn't boring is asking your neighbors and/or co-workers what to do around the area. Maybe lurk the USF/NCF/Eckerd/etc subreddit/forums for what your peers do.
How do I know I'm better than I was? I lost my car keys for a solid hour today, and I didn't freak out or have a nervous breakdown. I just methodically searched throughout the house and found them as I was disassembling my recliner.
Just settled down in Lawton, OK near Ft. Sill where I'll be working for a year. OKC is quite surprisingly a super cool town, spent a day or two there after our 3-day road trip from NYC. I've got two weeks in preventative quarantine doing nothing but taking free-to-cheap online classes off of UDemy to try to maintain some semblance of intellectual stimulation. Also learning my way around Ableton. There's a blood drive across the street from my apartment complex this Friday, so I'm throwing a post-blood-donation party at my apartment to make friends and see who passes out first. This is my roommate's fat fuck of a rabbit. His name is SGT Pepper. He gives me life in the morning. This is all the books I threw in a box to bring with me from home. If you want to read one, pm me for a book exchange. While moving I found a Ziploc full of letters and postcards I've received and kept over my years at school. Some of them are from the Hubsquad, and I doubt I ever replied via mail, so I'm going to try to do that this week.. but I haven't seen or heard from lil in a minute and I fear she's moved since she sent me one.
Iceland was the best trip I have ever taken. The best mountains, waterfalls, glaciers, thermal rivers, black sand beaches, lush green juxtaposed against black molten rocks. Just the best. We drove around the whole of the country, but didn’t get in to the interior. My favorite part of the trip was the Westman Islands. It was out of this world. A small fishing village on a remote Icelandic island that happened to have one of the best restaurant I’ve ever dined in. And I’ve dined in some nice ones. It is called Slippurinn We stayed at some awesome Airbnb’s and one amazing hotel that felt like staying in a luxury hotel on Tatooine. I never did a trip report either. I should have. It was remarkable. Maybe I’ll do a retrospective trip report for the places I’ve been these past few years. Also... yes, don’t die.
The armor grows thin... the weak and soft flesh is becoming exposed... Quarantine has been a breeze for my wife and I. We have a nice home, a nice yard, and live just outside a big city that has all the modern services. (All mod cons, as my British friends would say.) The Smoke has changed that. We have been doing a LOT in our yard. Projects. Planting. Building a wall and patio. Enjoying the yard. Getting outside and watching the birds, or sharing a distanced chat with friends under our lovely 100 foot tall Douglas Fir tree that I have named "Doug". With the air quality index being basically "go outside and die", all of that has come to a screeching halt, and we are left with... the Internet and TV. She can't go skating. I can't work in my shop or on my myriad yard projects. And we are now way more familiar with what most people have experienced during quarantine. The boredom. The feeling of being trapped. We knew we had it good.... there was never any question in our minds about that. But now we are getting an inkling of what our friends have been experiencing since March. And it sucks. We'd make up new things to do... but are too depressed and basically spend our time opening and closing the fridge or sleeping. It's depressing. Bleh. I'm completely apathetic about it all. Could do many things. Don't wanna do anything. Bleh.
Seriously put on the n95 and get back to it. We have been a bit stuck because n95s don’t work for young kids but at night I still put on the n95 and go for a walk. There is a small shortage of n95s but it’s not any worse than it was if flour and you can score a few if you overpay a bit
Tonight will help. Going to have dinner with my Dad. And the air might be clearing this weekend, so working outside - masked or not - will be on the table again. I just went for a drive last night. Drove around West Seattle. Down streets I'd never driven before. Just to get out and about. Electric car. Windows up. Air in recirculation. So not contributing to the bad air quality, at least...
Sorry you’re going through this, but I don’t think you are feeling what we have all felt. I think this is something different. I may have been quarantined, others may be stuck in an apartment but they can open a window or go for a socially distanced walk outside. You cannot. That’s rough. That’s real isolation. Isolation from the sun, the earth. These are the things that are getting most of us through this. There’s a reason you can’t buy a tent or bike these days without a wait. Many people are getting their sanity through connection to the natural world. You can’t do that. That’s rough, pal. Hang in there. Write that novel! Record that song! Watch all 100 of TIME Magazines top films in alphabetic order. Godspeed. Stay safe!
You make excellent points, of course. It's a little hard to see the sun when you are under the metaphorical (and actual) cloud layer... :-) It's the apathy that is most surprising to me. I could be writing/recording music. I could be reading. I could be working on any number of books and screenplays I have in the works. I could continue removing all the old HVAC ducting for our old forced-air heating system we replaced... two years ago. There's plenty to do, and lots of interesting projects... but lifting a finger is SO HARD...
House Still painting the house. The parts we could reach from the ground and from the small ladder went quickly. Now I'm up on the big ladder and it is a grind. I am weirded out being up on a 30 ft ladder. And having to climb down to move the ladder a few feet then climb back up is not much fun. The worst is actually trying to move the ladder without losing control of it or bashing the siding or a window. But the house needs the paint; the old paint has flaked and peeled away in spots, faded to almost nothing in others. Plus, I really didn't like the light grey we painted it last time. Now it is more of a dark blue and I find it appealing. It looks so much better which is keeping me motivated. Family Our middle child surprised us with a visit over the weekend. She and her husband (and our grandson) came up midday Saturday (getting me off the bleeping ladder) and stayed until Sunday evening. She looked good and was the most stable I have seen her in years. Conversations flowed and there was no arguing. The big news (but not really a surprise) is that they are pregnant! From what she told us the first couple of months have been rough on her, which explains the spastic text conversation she has had with my wife, but things have eased. Their move date has been pushed to the end of the month, so I am sure that stress is not making it easier on her. We're going to have to start saving up for plane tickets to be there after she has the baby to help out. I have a few weeks of vacation saved and will have a couple more by then, so I might be able to help for a month. Not sure if my wife will be able to stay that long. Work I wish I had known back in the spring I was going to be working from home this long. I would have invested in a better chair and desk. We still don't expect to be back before the end of the year, but I can't justify the expense for just a couple more months. I'm half tempted to run to the office one day and grab my chair and desk from there. Overall, still making forward progress, family remains healthy, and a new baby on the way. Life is good.
House painting, gutter work, and siding fixes became MUCH EASIER when I bought one of these: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0000CBILQ Ladder stability. Confidence. Comfort. Accessibility. Fewer times moving the ladder, etc. Ladder stand-offs are amazing tools that anyone with a ladder should have.
I actually have one of those, but with my 50 year old aluminum ladder, it is not of much help. My brother-in-law who was a general contractor for 20 years stopped by yesterday. He asked "That ladder is scary as shit isn't it?" He has been on it and knows just how wobbly it is. Then a miracle happened, he offered to let me use his ladder that is only a few years old. I would have asked him at the outset if he wasn't normally a colossal turd. If I had asked him to borrow it, he would have given me endless crap about how I shouldn't paint the house myself, that I should just hire someone to do it. If I could afford to hire someone, i would have! But yeah, it helps make sure the ladder isn't going to go sideways, but it still bounces and wobbles with every move. I fear at some point the thing just might bend and collapse. Every time I climb it, I get that much closer to justifying the $500 for new one. But really, when do I plan to use a 32 foot extension ladder again? 20 years from now? Never? And where to store it? The one I have now lives outside on the ground against the foundation and has for its entire life. Not to mention that the $500 is going to supplies to rebuild the front porch that rotted off the house 20 years ago. Won't need the ladder for that!
I've been bike shopping this week. Bikes have come a long way since 2007 when I did this last. There seem to be two kinds of bike shop employees. For the shops downtown close to campus, they'll help you ride whatever you ask for, but that's about all the help you get. They also find the color a notable feature. Hint: for a $3000 bike, color is the last thing on my mind. Then there are the shops that listen to what you want and respond to your questions in helpful ways, working out the details of what you need and how they can help. Customer experience is a buzz word these days, but my customer experience probably affected my ride experience. My favorite bikes are from the shops that listened to me, even if I knew what I wanted to test ride before I got to any of them.
Gym stuff is going great - numbers keep jumping up. Joined a DnD campaign after being an (the sole) audience member via discord. It's actually so much fun. The reveal was excellent too - I've been gaming friends with these guys most of this year, and have been following the campaign since it started, I just mute myself in chat and listen when they're in the zone. Eventually they said "Hey come join the campaign you'd love it" and I of course said "thanks but no thanks", but then I went to the DM and said "actually yes please". So the DM orchestrated a grand reveal mid-way through the session and it worked a treat. Chants started up, screaming and cheering. They didn't see it coming and it was glorious. Good times yo, Wednesdays are so much fun now. It's the little things.
Somehow, I think this is awesome! In fact, for April 1st of next year mk should have everything convert to luxombourgish, automatically.