Well, maybe I can get this installment started. We all seem to be fine.
My sister's virtual seder is tomorrow night, and I'm worried that she's mad at me for not participating. I need to talk to her, but she's 5 years older than me, and I'm still scared of her.
Ace has now been running a fever of 100+ for three weeks. But she feels fine. We should really teledoc. We all feel fine though.
Kids do that, but a week is a long time.
And three weeks is probably even longer.
All still fine here - online paper-and-pencil RPG was a moderate success, but the next one is online Scythe which I am very much looking forward to. Also, why has no one sat me down and made me watch Studio Ghibli films before? Those things are great!
Your posts are about 5,000 words too short.
4: I mean, normally we'd never know. But it does seem prolonged.
I'll go. I'm doing well. My well being is negatively correlated with time since having gone out and done some volunteer food provision and I did that yesterday. Someone alerted me to the fact that NYC Health and Hospitals is looking for worker volunteers beyond licensed healthcare professionals right now, so I just filled out an application and said I was available 20 hours a week. I spoke to someone on the phone; it sounded like they'd likely be able to place me. I'd really have to stop any pretense of the orgo right now if I did that, but eh, my concentration is shit and I would really just like to prioritize the way of being that is best for me right now, which is finding ways to work outside the home, and I definitely find the thought of moving toward the big thing that's happening way less aversive than being forced to sit at home on the internet and read about it. Ultimately medical schools would probably smile on the decision to work in a hospital right now, although it's not a substitute for good grades, I know.
I'm having an RSI flare from excess time on the computer/phone and insufficient exercise, and a lower back injury is also inflamed right now. In yoga I notice that my knee injury has also gotten worse during this time. So much for rest being curative. I procrastinated so bad on setting up the fancy ergonomic work station which my old boss gave me DL permission to take home after I was laid off form my old job, and now I've lost the screws, and getting new ones is another admin task.
On Friday I texted my questionable research practice to say, hey, I don't need anything from you, but I'd really like to just know that you're some semblance of okay and have your basic needs met. He did text back to that and say that he'd been depressed about everything. So he's alive. I had a back burner low level thrum of anxiety and sadness about the fact that if he did die I would have no way of ever knowing because I'm not integrated into the rest of his life, and he has no social media presence, so I'm happy he is willing to communicate enough to verify that he's not dead.
Ghibli films restore my faith in humanity entirely. Have you watched Princess Mononoke yet? And the dubbed version of Kiki's Delivery Service is surprisingly great - normally I hate dubs but Phil Hartman is brilliant. Well hello, Kitty ...
Honestly, Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer was overrated.
10: not yet. So far only Spirited Away and Nausicaa of the Valley of the Winds - the former preferred because not dubbed, despite the latter having aircraft very clearly based on the Me.323 Gigant heavy transport. But more will no doubt follow. Porco Rosso is definitely on the list.
Nothing much new here. We went XCing on Saturday down at the continental divide, only saw one person. Work is slow.
The state website changed a bit, with better visual presentation of data: https://www.arcgis.com/apps/MapSeries/index.html?appid=7c34f3412536439491adcc2103421d4b
As you can see, we passed 300 positive cases yesterday, had the sixth death (first one in this county) on Saturday. Gallatin still way out in front -- and it really in a matter of rich people visiting second homes. That's also part of the Flathead story -- and lead Whitefish, the main resort town, to close all motels etc to non-essential travel. Tat won't get to the second-home crowd, but one hopes they'll get the message.
Oh and the granddaughter, now 3, has been calling by video several times a day.
Co-worker is ordering literally over a ton of flour (a pallet of 50 50lb bags). I seem to have signed up for one, mostly expecting that it wouldn't happen. Guess I need to find somewhere to put it.
One bag. Maybe two. I suddenly need some buckets to keep the flour in.
Still here.
Yesterday was our 40th anniv. Projected dinner party didn't happen. Today is a good friend's 70th birthday. Party also not happening.
Mildly pissed off about this, but worse things happen in ICUs.
So much for rest being curative.
I had a brilliant start to the year, fitness-wise. My best January and February ever. Lost 15 pounds. Best running times as an adult. Got into a real groove, working out pretty vigorously in some fashion five days a week most weeks.
Now working at home, my time management is shot. I'm completely sedentary, unable to organize/motivate for exercise time -- but the rest has done wonders for my joints and back, which were starting to get screwed up.
Still, being at home really mimics my traditional winter malaise. I'm going to have to figure out a way of dealing with it.
Happy Anniversary to the y's! Wishing you many more that you can celebrate with friends and family.
How delightful to discover Ghibli for the first time. Given your comment in 15 I think you might enjoy The Wind Rises about Jiro Hirokoshi, the designer of the Mitsubishi Zero. I'd also recommend the dubbed version (I usually don't) because Werner Herzog does one of the characters. Also Grave of the Fireflies is one of the most powerful anti-war films I've ever seen. And I never want to see it again though I'm glad I did the first.
I feel like the This Is Fine dog, but...things are fine. I had hoped to reënter the workforce this summer, but I think that's not going to happen. I was listening to a few versions of the last scene of La Bohème this morning. It's cathartic. I choke up at the final two lines. A good Rodolfo should sound like he's sobbing while singing Mimi's name. I'll go for a bike ride this afternoon. I need to get in some longer rides. I had hoped to spend a few weeks bike touring in Europe (DE, NL, ferry to UK, maybe BE) this spring. Once it got cleared from the table I really slacked off in riding and have quickly fallen out of shape.
We're up to 1,823 cases here now, a lot for such a small pop. They seem to have trouble flattening the curve, it's plateaued for a few days a couple of times and then it shoots up again. This may be related to testing issues or something, the hell if I know.
I'm bummed about the situation with my parents. It would not have happened but for me answering my mom's asking me how I am truthfully over the last few weeks ("Angry, anxious, bored, depressed, just like everyone else") and her treating it as a function of my own personal mood rather than the situation. But I've muted them now and we'll see how that goes.
I went out shopping early this morning as I was running low on things, most people are practicing social distancing pretty well (it helps that we have a large Filipino population here, I think, they've seen this stuff before), but not everyone. I did enough shopping for 2-3 weeks for most things. Tomorrow I need to hit the booze distribution center to pick up enough booze so I have over Ramadan which is a couple of weeks away, also getting a couple of cases of beer for a friend of mine who is currently back in Yorkshire with his family.
I started replaying through all the Halo games again since I don't currently have the attention span for movies (though TV is fine).
Still fine, nothing much going on. Just received delivery of 3 bottles of red wine, 7 of white, a bottle of rye and a bottle of Campari, so I'm feeling secure.
I'll amend my checkin today to say that I just did some good therapy and had one of those "breakthrough" type sessions. I'm happy I'm keeping my job and that my funding agency reversed itself because only someone who knew this person could have done this, and sure sometimes therapeutic relationships outlive their usefulness and it's time to let go, and even strictly time-limited therapy can imbue a useful sense of urgency, but just randomly terminating them before it's time really sucks. I haven't heard from my own therapist about scheduling a session for this week and wonder if he is seriously ill.
20- I regularly buy the costco 50lb bags (which cost about $14). One bag almost precisely fits in one of these even though it says 40 lb. I guess flour is denser than dog food. I had two bags at the start of staying home but we've gone through about 2/3 of a bag already.
I tried to check, but the flour kept floating out with the water.
Random complaining: at 1:42 in this ep, The Daily Show shows a news clip with a scene from Central Park that supposedly demonstrates people violating social distancing orders. Literally every person in this scene is keeping their distance from other people, except two couples who are obviously couples. Maybe the runner in the front of the frame is passing a little closer than necessary to that walker, though you can see her trying to curve around. I really wish there was some effort to disambiguate people making choices at the margins to preserve basic sanity and people truly cramming together in groups.
Like, honestly, if it wasn't important at some level that people stay sane, why are liquor stores open? If any non-essential trip out is forbidden, why are restaurants open for takeout as well as delivery?
So I hate to disappoint the sorry-not-sorry folks who actively hoped the coronavirus would selectively kill Fox News voters, but of course it is selectively killing African-Americans in cities (and in swing states) instead. I'm irrationally angry that anyone went far enough down that fantasy road to ignore this vastly more likely scenario. This is not a fucking board game. There should be a national month of mourning.
I'm also horrified by the racial disparity in death rates. I am guessing some of it is explained by the racial disparity in exposure to environmental hazards.
One third of all Pennsylvania Covid-19 deaths were reported yesterday. I hope that increase is at least in part because of better testing.
Still doing fine here. Cases and deaths in Alaska are slowly tracking upward but still at low levels. It's not clear when we'll hit the peak or how high it will be.
It will, however, be the highest in North America.
We excel at most things when they're measured by latitude.
Still alive and well enough in Fresno. Routine is still similar to the norm, though weekends don't include exercise anywhere near most springs right now. Last weekend was rainy, but the weekend ahead should be sunny and warmer. Maybe I'll break out my bicycle and get at least routine maintenance in during the week so I can get some exercise in this upcoming weekend.
Re-de-lurking to check in from the lowlands. (15+ years a lurker, I guess it might finally be time to change my ways.) All is well here, we are teaching/learning from home, shops are entirely our of flour, and the tulip merchants are in desperation giving the stuff away. All that aside, I need to thank you all for being my fictional companions for all these years, this blog feels like the last part of the good internet, and I am so grateful for the fact that it still exists. I will try to learn to comment, have patience as I find my feet...
Nausicaa of the Valley of the Winds
I very strongly recommend reading the original comics. I think a remarkably successful epic (with inevitable stronger and weaker moments).
I'm doing fairly well. I feel more tired, stressed, frustrated, and irritable than I normally would and working from home is less productive (and not quite as good ergonomically) as working in the office, but those are all minor complaints.
My health and financial situation are still solid (*knock on wood*), and I recognize that's fairly lucky.
Andrew Sullivan remains firmly on brand, saying that if you're worried about the racial composition of the victims you're the real racist. He has not yet to my knowledge asked for a correlation of dick size to disease severity.
this blog feels like the last part of the good internet
+1
raster!!! super warm welcome to commenting, physically distanced but with mucho social solidarity!
all continues pretty well, fever seems to be finally resolved, i hope i hope i hope, bacterial lung infection didn't come back once i finished the antibiotics, just dealing with the cough and the usual asthmatic aftermath of any respiratory infection. am now in the extended phase of every day feeling slightly better, causing me to reflect on exactly how insanely shitty i felt before.
researching the world of rank beginner classical guitar, would very much like any tips, advice, etc.! had a super lovely opinionated and informative e-mail from the parent of one of the kid's closest friends, was so wonderful to receive. they live less than a mile away, and yet it felt like it came from across the ocean.
hand in there barry - keep the unhelpful family communications firmly muted for now, you just don't need that crap. thinking of you very warmly.
I lost 31kgs or so last year. With Christmas and much less exercise I've gained 4kgs back. Much less exercise because:
* no gym (closed because of CV-19, obviously) and I was going 3 or 4 times a week,
* no commute (which is 10,000 steps a day plus), *
* torn supraspinatus (since November), and now all of my physio and scans are cancelled.
that latter of which means I can't even do the things I'd normally do at home, like kettlebells or TRX. The only way to get the weight back down will be really strict calorie restriction, which, since I am stuck at home and unable to shop very freely, is not likely to happen. So I'm going to have to try to see if I can just maintain my weight at lowest-point-plus-four-kilos.
It's nice to spend more time with wife/kid, but all of my own personal free time is gone. Which really really is not good for mental wellbeing.
* I'm still averaging 10,000 or so a day, but I was doing a lot more.
ttaM and I had a thread about classical guitar a few years ago, probably 2015. Let me see if I can find it so as not to duplicate effort...
I had my first red meat in 6 weeks today. Now, unfortunately, I am craving grape kool-aid.
My foot is a lot better though, and my sister seems to be holding up pretty well too. I am not nearly as depressed and irritable as I was last week. Still can't wait to get back on my feet though.
Here it is. I signed up again a couple of weeks ago for Classical Guitar Corner, but have been too depressed and angry to do a lesson more than once. Huh, typing that out, it occurs to me that maybe that's a problem.
The drink that made Hastings famous.
My grandmother in Maine usually served grape kool-aid, but my grandmother here in mpls served cherry kool-aid. Make of that what you will.
This year, if things don't open up by August, people will celebrate Kool-Aid Days at home and the toast will be, "Next year in Hastings."
49 makes me picture this except the Kool-Aid man is charging the whole line of horses and taking them out like bowling pins.
Sorry dq, this link goes directly to guitar advice without making you relive the Halford days. Oops. (Hi Raster!)
Honestly, 53 should be forwarded to the Adams County Historical Society.
Raster! It's spring break here, so I didn't make anyone do school yesterday and merely encouraged work today. I'm extremely cranky and the kids are less so, but the weather is lovely and I brought the dog back from my girlfriend's so I'll have an excuse to make myself walk. I need to eat both more and better and exercise is totally not happening unless cooking/cleaning counts. I'm going to go back to my angry grouchiness now and try to take a nap. Then I have to finish hand-sewing a mask for Mara, after which I only have one more to go to make sure we're all covered with one each. But first a nap if I can. Everything will feel better after that.
I feel like I should find some more edifying way to spend my evenings than watching Tiger King on Netflix. But watching the antics of deranged murderous zookeepers is oddly calming, somehow.
I have no intention of watching Tiger King, but I am deeply fearful that it is one of those cultural touchstones that I must experience if I am to have any hope of understanding modern America. Like The Apprentice.
59: I watched a couple of the early seasons of The Apprentice. It gave me no insight into modern America.
I am guessing some of it is explained by the racial disparity in exposure to environmental hazards.
Also higher obesity rates.
Robert Griffin still has greatness.
https://twitter.com/RGIII/status/1247157311128428550
We're still fine, though it's all starting to feel weirder to me. I spent the afternoon watching documentaries on the Flint sit-down strike while cutting fabric into squares for a woman in my neighborhood who's sewing free masks. We're currently at "recommended" for masks but it looks like they'll be required pretty soon.
I'm really struggling the past few days. Everything's fine, aside from the global pandemic, but I think it's just all hitting me now. Pebbles' birthday was a few days ago and of course we'd canceled her party and one of her little friends stopped by to wave at her through the glass door and I had to excuse myself because I just lost it.
46, 48 & 54 - thanks! wow that thread is an odd trip down memory lane, guitar info v interesting.
This curve, it is not flattening.
All the people sewing masks reminds me of the Red Cross sewing circles during WWII.
Oh Cala, yeah it's the seemingly little stuff that gets me.
67: mossy that is terrifying, and with the research coming out about how prior lung damage from particulates weakens folks infected with covid 19, it is just a huge giant wave of human misery. a colleague of mine was all set to go home for a month's visit to delhi, i know she is in distress not to be with her family right now but i am so glad the timing was such that she didn't go.
68.1: Lots of people in Japan spent WWII sewing circles and nobody here celebrates them.
All the people sewing masks reminds me of the Red Cross sewing circles during WWII.
I told my niece I felt like I was rolling bandages during WWI.
Here in western mass, everyone's masked at the supermarket now. People in my neighborhood are being very careful about social distance--most of them are my age or older which is to say moving into a high risk group. I feel I should volunteer to bring groceries to old people, but then I think, wait a minute, I am old people. Zoom hangouts and readings are keeping me more or less sane.
I'm doing okay here, still distracting myself with work and cooking for my quarantining family. Looks like when they move on to my sister's house after their 14-day quarantine here is over we may be getting another batch of family coming down from Boston. Time will tell. At least it keeps me busy with the baking and such.
I've learned that you can get a lot of things from Office Depot that you might not have expected. I now have a stunning quantity of Irish Spring soap.
The sewing is more soothing than anything else (except the cooking) these days. As I was folding and stitching a narrow piece of jersey to make a mask tie last night, I told my partner that I felt a sudden wave of kinship with the invisible garment worker who had sewed the twin to my tie just a few months before, probably in Pakistan. (Just as all this kicked off, I had ordered a set of organic cotton jersey sheets. They came in a drawstring bag that I'm not going to use for storing them, so I re purposed it as perfect mask material. And the tie got repurposed too....)
I had to do a tedious project tonight (scrubbing basement walls with Borax) and was trying to distract myself with audio material. Anna Sale posted an interview clip that it took me a minute to realize was a memorial. I was truly, deeply sad to hear about John Prine. One of the most precisely beautiful and unpretentious songwriters ever.
75: Prine dead. And the Supremes, Republicans and Trump killing democracy in the USA. Apparently all pre-2016 IGs being canned. I have come around to agreeing with Trump when he said he know the Constitution "better than anybody" (when he was attacking the gold star father). He understood that as with any system of norms and "rules" it was useless in the hands of unscrupulous people.
Anyhow. Just out here waiting for someone to send me an angel that flies from Montgomery.
77: Should say that the IG thing is not confirmed. But "we'll have to see what happens" to quote our greatest living constitutional scholar.
Today was our municipal election (all by mail, as it has been for the past couple years). Results are still preliminary since the ballots only had to be postmarked by today, but it looks like most or all of the incumbents on our super-progressive Assembly won. One race is pretty close and could still go the other way, which wouldn't have a huge impact policy-wise but would majorly impact my household specifically so here's hoping it ends up going well. The city's done a very good job with pandemic response, which seems to be evident in the case numbers so far.
All the people sewing masks reminds me of the Red Cross sewing circles during WWII.
I told my niece I felt like I was rolling bandages during WWI.
Even closer parallel - when the Germans started using gas in WW1, it was chlorine, which can be neutralised by just breathing through a pad of gauze soaked in the appropriate chemical; the army asked civilians back in Britain to start sewing gauze masks, and they turned out thousands within a week.
re: 48
Looking back at that, I think the basic advice and links is probably still OK. Wondered if I'd still agree now, especially since I sometimes look back at past-me and think I was full of shit.
I've started trying to play classical again, after a few years when I literally never pick it up. Using the book of etudes I mentioned in the thread, ironically enough. One thing about coronavirus, is I've stopped biting my nails, which means I can play nylon string again (I literally find it impossible to play without proper nails on the right hand). Very very rusty and not any good at the moment, though.
re: 84
One thing that might be nice to do, if I had privacy to do it, would be to try and record something every day (or even every week). Just some kind of easy 1 minute study.
83.2 At Ypres a Canadian medical officer, who was also a chemist, quickly identified the gas as chlorine and recommended that the troops urinate on a cloth and hold it over their mouth and nose.
67. WTF is the matter with Pakistan? OK, don't answer that, but it has about one tenth the population of India. Are they literally ignoring this thing?
89 Pretty much the entire Islamic world has responded effectively, closing mosques including for the mandatory Friday prayers, calling off other religious gatherings and ceremonies, etc., the pictures of Mecca with the completely empty Great Mosque that houses the Kaaba are positively surreal. But Pakistan has the Tablighi Jamaat, and they're still holding gatherings of tens and hundreds of thousands.
They're a missionary group, basically Islamic evangelicals so it's not much of a mystery why they're behaving the same way as the American evangelicals still holding gatherings in their megachurches.
I'm cranky this week. Usually, exercise will uncoil my bad moods, but that one neat trick ain't working this week.
92: I need to do my indoor calisthenics. No good place to exercise outside right now. I went grocery shopping yesterday and it was a 2 hour long process. I cried when I got back to the car. I left some things in the bag (dried beans, cans) and figure that if I wat 3 days, it will be ok, if I don't disinfect them.
I have remained extremely grumpy and I'm not sure how to channel it, definitely tempted toward maudlin Facebook rants. I've been perseveration about the friend/foster sister who lived with my family during the last year of the war, who'd been injured in the worst mortar attack on Tuzla after a long quiet, once the teens went out to the cafes again. I worry about what quarantine is like for them now as adults and parents on the other side of that dynamic. And we heard from Mara's mom yesterday that her teen sibling has been released from jail, which had also been terrifying me. The family isn't doing anything to quarantine or assume exposure, but there's not really anything I can do to interfere there. I'm an exhausted mess, which is dumb because basically everything is fine and the problem is just that I don't have downtime or alone time or a break. But that's how this gig works and I knew that going in.
An">https://t.co/IdYB52heKC?amp=1">An article featuring some folks you may recognize, so that's one thing to take off my worry list.
Goddamnit, what is WRONG with my phone/brain? I never used to have trouble making links. Sorry, friends.
And I could have actually left the link. Maybe it's better to make readers copy/paste like Sir Kraab did anyway. (Phone autocorrected anyway to "angsts." I already know I'm a grouch now, okay??) https://t.co/IdYB52heKC?amp=1
With Ramadan coming up and no end in sight I bought a fuckton of cheap vodka and good bourbon and Irish whiskey. I probably won't have to get booze through most of the summer. They closed the parking lot at the distribution center, you had to enter on foot keeping your distance and they only let in about 30 to 40 people in the store at a time. I'm now set not to leave my place for two weeks, except perhaps a trip to my local bodega.
Super great! The girls are so big!
Sanders is super scrawny, I bet they're already hungry again.
Agreed -- nice article, nice shot. It's sad to hear how worried she is about Lee.
105: She does actually see Lee every other weekend and one evening a week. But she also doesn't think of Lee as self-sufficient and knows that she's almost 58 and thinks that's reason to worry.
Faizan Mustafa, a constitutional expert, said the Jamaat did not act appropriately and missed the writing on the wall after the Indonesian preachers tested positive in Telangana. Jamaat has remained an apolitical organisation since its founding in 1926 and works to encourage Muslims to practise Islam the way it is believed to have been practised at the time of the Prophet Mohammed. It was established in northern Haryana's Mewat area by Maulana Muhammad Ilyas Kandhlawi. Maulana Saad, its present chief, is Kandhalawi's great-grandson. The group was vilified by the mainstream media for its "carelessness", and the country's 200 million Muslims were blamed for spreading the virus that has killed more than 70,000 people worldwide. #CoronaJihad trended on Twitter, with many ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders calling the religious gathering "corona terrorism" - a term many said hinted at the Islamophobia of the governing party. A central minister called the Markaz gathering a "Talibani crime". According to a report in Time magazine, tweets with #CoronaJihad appeared nearly 300,000 times and were potentially seen by 165 million people since March 28. "It is unfortunate that people are calling it a conspiracy and using terms like Corona Jihad. Communalising it is not the right way. The media too has played a mischievous role," Mustafa told Al Jazeera.
beautiful family, thorn - thanks for posting the link, the subject of the article is distressing and i'm so sorry your girls are anxious, but selfishly it is immensely cheering to see lovely pictures of families right now. i have a junior who's partner just gave birth to their first, and the photo he sent me would be beautiful in any context but its extra wonderful right now.
Really sweet to see you guys, Thorn.
It's a sweet article, Thorn. The girls are darling, as always.
That's a really nice article, Thorn.
Be a shame if anything happened to it.
We're within the top 10 of the top growth regions.So is Kuwait and the UAE. I have to think this has a lot to do with the conditions in the migrant worker camps.
My old employers/current client reduced salaries company wide, so I volunteered to take a 15% cut, too. (Wouldn't feel fair otherwise; more selfishly, I don't want to be the tall poppy whose pay suddenly went up 17% relative to company average.) Supposedly they intend to pay everyone back that money if the company recovers enough, but we'll see. Which is fine: I figure being a contractor makes it easier for me to avoid wage stickiness issues. 85% is so much better than zero.
Otherwise, things are good at casa riata. Weather here is amazing, and we're fortunate enough to have a garden to take advantage of it.
My mom, I swear. She occasionally frets about whether it is safe to be in her backyard or whether there's just so much coronavirus wafting through the air she could get it there. I had some success with my "would you think it was plausible that you caught the much more contagious common cold that way" heuristic on that one, because she was forced to laugh at herself and say no. Then she mentions that she had a conversation with the mail carrier, and on questioning, neither of them were wearing masks, and yes they were within six feet of each other. Apparently it was a short conversation.
I mean, I'm on team "respond to an individual's lapses in protocol non-judgmentally unless they just seem indifferent or depraved; they are likely expressions of basic needs that should be understood and accommodated," so I said, hey, I get it if you just wanted to have a normal conversation, but I pointed out how little it made sense to flip out about being outside at all and yet have interactions that really do represent transmission possibilities, especially when they're with people who are out and about, touching things a lot, and are manifestly not being very careful themselves.
She also stressed about the possibility I might bike through a cloud of coronavirus and yet is curiously understanding of my desire to volunteer in the hospital.
I had to go the pharmacy today to get a repeat prescription filled. Not a fun experience. Queuing outside for about 45 minutes, as they had the door locked and were manually letting people in, locking the door, and opening it again when they leave. Which was fine, and meant they never had more than two customers there, and they were able to keep them 4 metres or so apart the whole time.
But ... despite having what seemed like a football team of pharmacists, it was taking them around 15 minutes or per person to fill their prescription, and longer for some. I don't know if this was because they were filling a lot of prescriptions to be sent out to home bound people, or just madly inefficient as they are slow at the best of times. The old Jamaican lady who was in there at the same time as me eventually left in tears as she decided she couldn't wait any more.* I think she'd been waiting in there for nearly an hour and I've no idea how long she'd been queuing outside.
I was lucky, when I arrived there were two people ahead of me in the queue so it took me a little under 1 hour to queue and get my prescription and leave.** But when I left the queue was back up to seven or eight people, and I'd expect the poor sods at the back would have been waiting for a _long_ time.
* to be fair, they did tell her they'd get someone to bring it to her home later that afternoon.
** this was a routine refill, ordered in advance.
I'm now wondering if my kid and maybe I already had it, based on the new stories about spreading in NY from Europe by mid Feb. We had a layover of a couple hours in the Panama City airport on Feb 23, which I think is a transit point for most places in Asia to anywhere in South or Central America or Caribbean. 8 days later (Mon March 2) kid came home from school midday with a cold, and he was home and pretty sick the whole rest of the week with one of the worst colds he's had. He never had a significant fever but reached 99.3 max at one point. He had chest pain occasionally which he had previously when diagnosed with a non-hazardous arrhythmia several years ago. No serious coughing or breathing problems.
We kept him isolated in his room and a separate bathroom and had everyone practice careful hygiene as practice in case someone did get covid. He was better a week later but I had a runny nose, mild sore throat, and coughing six days after he got sick. I've gotten a cough from runny nose and allergies most years so I assumed it was that- checked temperature several times a day and maxed at 98.4. The cough/mucus dripping is still partly around a month later which is the same as I've had before. No breathing issues, I played hockey twice with the symptoms at my usual beer-league dad level of ability. No one else in the family has any symptoms since then.
TLDR when the hell can we get antibody testing?
I know. I am also impatient for antibody testing. I imagine it will ramp up like everything else is.
My son's weird cough-thing started in January and lasted long enough that kids were joking it was Covid-19. But I think it started too early to be Covid. And none of the local outbreaks are in our circles.
I had a cold about 4 or 5 weeks ago, that lasted longer than usual, and I had a tight/sore chest and some pleuritic pain for about 3 weeks after. I've had a serious chest infection twice in the past, and this wasn't as bad as that, but it was worse than a usual cold. No fever, though. My temp went up a bit one day -- which is unusual for me -- but nothing that would count as a genuine fever.
Chest still feels a tiny bit scratchy now, and it feels like I get out of breath a tiny bit faster than usual. I'm more than 50% sure it was just a cold, and I have some allergies so cruddy cold-like symptoms that linger aren't that unusual. But, the chest thing was unusual. My wife had the same cold and also had long-lasting (but minor) chest discomfort.
So, it'd be pretty good to get an antibody test.
Living in London, and commuting into central London multiple times a week along the same lines that connect to Heathrow, means that my exposure to potential infection was fairly high, but not as high as usual, as I've been co-located with a client nearer my house a lot of the time recently.
Fuck">Fuck">https://twitter.com/andr6wmale/status/1248298330893025281?s=21'">Fuck this virus.
I am not OK, but I feel I have no right to complain: so many people have it so much worse.
(I am physically fine, btw, but my anxiety levels are through the roof...).
Fuck everything
Seconding 125, as so eloquently expressed by Barry...
These stories about the Feds seizing emergency medical supplies from the states and hospitals and giving them to private middlemen are absolutely enraging. How does this keep happening and no one gets shot in the fucking face?
How does this keep happening and no one gets shot in the fucking face?
The Feds and the people who support them right now have all the guns.
I have had that thought in non-punchline form more than once lately. I also keep thinking of this tweet from Kieran Healy (via neb, I think?):
The depth of incompetence of this administration is exceeded only by the breadth of its corruption. And, as it turns out, every formal and informal backstop against both has failed entirely. The scope of this institutional disaster is hard to grasp.124/125 made me laugh and laugh amid the horror, however, so thank you.
As an unimportant aside, I worked with Gl*nn F*ne, the now-removed I.G., at my first job out of college. He was an associate at the labor law firm where I paralegaled. I only knew him for a few years, but I always thought he was a good guy, and his subsequent career seems to back that up. Perhaps interesting to you all: he was drafted by the Spurs (I didn't actually remember which team -- I had to look that up) despite not being especially tall (shorter than me anyway, at 6') but accepted a Rhodes scholarship instead. Quite a good addition to the firm's softball team. (Not being of an athletic bent, I kept score and played with everyone's kids.)
