Well, here we are. January. No more paid holidays (for me, anyway) until Memorial Day. Fuck. Anyway, let's get into it....
Friday, January 1:
Working from home, day 169.
New Year's Day.
When I awaken in the afternoon, it's sort of weird. It feels like a Saturday, but it's not. It's a Friday, which I don't normally have to work, but tonight I do. It's a Friday, and Daisy would normally be working, but tonight she's not. It puts me into a weird chronological headspace -- just where one wants to be for the beginning of a new year, right?
When I login to work at 10 (my normal time; I offered to come in earlier or work an altered shift since it was the holiday and it's hard to anticipate holiday coverage needs) it's pretty much a ghost town. With most of the repairs from the Nashville bombing now complete and January 1 being pretty much a holiday everywhere in the world, nothing is going on. For the overnight hours, I'm not so much a manager as I am a warm body occupying a position that I volunteered to work out of duty and, really, for the sake of honor -- other managers have had to work at least one holiday as well; I work New Year's Day every single year (I can't remember the last time I didn't work it, honestly) and covering four hours of Christmas night during a crisis scenario I now feel that I've more then fulfilled my "duty" for holidays for a while.
As an aside, the first thing I did when I got in was put in PTO for February 7, which is Super Bowl Sunday. I don't care who plays in the game (well, I do, but honestly it's mostly irrelevant) -- I try to take off Super Bowl Sunday every year if I can, and I find that even if I don't necessarily end up caring about the game, at the very least it's a "break day" after getting no other days off during the month of January -- not traditionally one of our busiest months at work, but the bulk of the long, slow slog through the dark winter.
The wife and I finalize and place a grocery delivery order (something like $200 or so, but literally everything we should need for the better part of the month. It is to be delivered tomorrow evening, as it was one of the soonest delivery times possible. We're nowhere near out of food or anything like that, but we are out of a lot of around-the-house-and-kitchen staples, so to speak. I am frustrated in turn that the vast majority of the stuff I need to order from Amazon Pantry has been out of stock for days, if not weeks or months (depending on the items). It is what it is, of course, but about half of the staples that the wife ordered from the local grocery store I would've normally gotten from Amazon -- tortillas, pasta, some canned/dry goods, snack foods, etc.
Truth be told, I am not in any dire need of anything right now, not in any way. If society collapses sometime within the next month, we'll get by mostly fine.
At the end of my night, I work a little longer than usual to wrap up a few loose ends and make sure the normal Saturday morning people are good to go, and then log off, come upstairs, and fall asleep in my chair. I wake up an hour or two later and go to bed, where the wife is still sleeping -- and so ends my New Year's Day.
Saturday, January 2:
Day off.
I hear Daisy talking on the phone with her parents in the mid-afternoon hours, which stirs me awake. By the time I get up and shower, and sit down in my chair, the Ring doorbell (which chimes through our Alexa devices) goes off and it's the groceries arriving. Beforehand, Daisy had gotten an emailed/texted receipt that showed a list of everything that we'd ordered that was out of stock, and therefore, we were not charged for -- and a good chunk of it was my own groceries (my meatless chicken nuggets, my vegan lunch meat, etc). Frustrated by that, she had placed another order via Whole Foods for delivery, and Whole Foods did have most of those items in stock when our primary grocery store did not. That was the order that had arrived -- the main grocery order came an hour or so afterwards with the rest.
What came next was Daisy cleaning the kitchen and performing a deep-clean of the refrigerator and freezer to trash and reorganize things, a more powerful cleaning and trashing of old stuff than perhaps I've seen since we moved into this house -- into the trash went items that had expired in early 2019 (we moved into the house in 2018, so there's a good bet they came with us from our old apartment) and three hours later, all of the groceries had their places and were neatly put away, like cupboard, refrigerator, and freezer Tetris. I marveled at the work; when Daisy gets hyper-focused on something, she knocks it out of the park. I offered her my help, but she did not want it -- this was A Daisy Project.
Once she was finished, she baked us a homemade stuffed crust vegan pepperoni, vegan cheese, and kale pizza. She thought it was a failure; it did not live up to her expectations (but it was good) and we watched the first episode of the final season of Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, which just recently released on Netflix. I would've watched more with her but I had trouble concentrating and sitting still, so once that was over I came upstairs and decompressed here on my computer for a while before she came upstairs as well and eventually went to bed.
Tomorrow starts over a full month of normal, five-days-a-week work shifts again, now that the holidays are done and over. It's been since before Halloween since I've had a "normal" working schedule not interrupted by PTO or holiday time, and as such, I'm not sure it's going to be fun to adjust back to the "business as usual" normal groove of things again. While I do like patterns, routine, and predictability, and while I am insanely grateful to be gainfully employed going into my seventh year at this job, I am also just as watchful and fearful of what the future holds for me within it. We've got more (relative) job stability right now than we've had for a while, but that stability is fleeting and could be stripped away from us at any moment.
I also love working from home. I don't have anyone to impress here but the cats, and don't have anyone to interact with on a daily basis but the wife. I don't have to shave, or cut my hair, or even shower every day when I never leave the house -- I go through so much less laundry now. I can lock my computer and turn on the PS2 or go lay down on the couch with my phone (or take a nap!) on my lunch hours. Covid is likely to be around for a while and we'll likely be social distancing to some extent for at least another year, even after everyone has access to the vaccines and all who want them get them. I'm looking forward to the new normal where most people will continue to work from home long after Covid has ended, where masks are no longer required or even mostly necessary but most people still wear them out of courtesy in most public places anyway. I look forward to the new normal of restaurants being open for in-person dining again at nearly full capacities because of herd immunity (or as close as you can really get to that, anyway). I look forward to seeing movies in a movie theater again, and as mentioned before, wandering store aisles aimlessly without worrying I'm going to catch a disease that could kill me or kill other people. I look forward to traveling, to seeing my family and friends, to being able to go on a real vacation with the wife.
I am mostly happy. I am mostly content. Every day is an active choice to put the best foot forward, to make the best of the situation you're in. Sometimes that's more difficult than others, of course, but for the first time in a long time, I actually have hope. I am optimistic for 2021. We're getting a new president in three weeks. We're vaccinating thousands of people every day. There's an extra $1200 stimulus deposit that dropped into our bank account today. The house is full of food. While we're getting older, the wife and I are mostly in good health, and she just got a promotion at her job.
I want 2021 to be the year of growth, the year of moving onward and upward, the year of fulfilling dreams and the year of letting old things go -- whether those "old things" be physical things or conceptual ones, like emotional baggage and stress.
I canceled two of my comic subscriptions tonight. I'll probably cancel (or let expire) three or four more in the coming weeks and months. I'm letting those things go. There are some books I'll stay subscribed to until I die or until the publishers stop publishing them, of course, but I'm weeding out the ancillary stuff I don't want or need to keep spending money on. When I have time and energy, I'm going to do a deep clean of my upstairs office's nooks and crannies, and take inventory of what I need and what I don't. What I don't need, I'll either sell, give away, or trash. I've decided that I'm not going to be wasteful in 2021, and that every new item I purchase (for whatever reason) will have a purpose and a need, other than a simple "ooh, I want that." Wants are fleeting. Wants are purposeless. If I can't reasonably justify buying something, I shouldn't get it. I will not be archiving music in 2021. I will not be starting projects I can't finish in 2021. I will not be taking on more emotional baggage or responsibility than I can reasonably handle in 2021.
This is also why, if possible, I plan for 2021 to be the last year that I vape, or use any sort of vaping/nicotine product. As it stands now, I have enough vaping supplies to get me through the better part of the year. I do not need to purchase any more. Once I run low, or run out, I want to let it end. It is not a huge expense for me, and hasn't been for a very long time -- I haven't purchased any new devices or actual needed supplies in close to a year or so anyway. Once I'm done, I'll either sell, donate, or trash what I've collected over the past five years or so to remove any further temptation, and that'll be the end of it. April 2021 will mark five years of being a non-smoker, so it's high time I wipe the slate fully clean, so to speak. I will still need some juice on occasion to get me to that end point, as everything will be a slow process, but I am confident I can let it go and be done with it.
I have also told the wife that I have one last goal to reach sometime this year, and it is a rather large one that will require her help, along with some patience and understanding. Sometime between now and December 31, I want to acquire a new vehicle. And I want it to be something I actually want.
While I have dreams of finally owning a Firebird or the above 1982 Corvette Anniversary Edition, I want a car again. It doesn't have to be new. It doesn't have to be fancy. But it has to be something I want, and it has to be something I actually want to drive. I'd be happy with a used subcompact as long as I can fit in it and it's reliable enough. I turned 38 a few weeks ago, and over the course of my life, and only eight years of that time can I say that I actually owned a vehicle that was fully mine, all in my name, owned outright and taxed/titled/licensed only to me. I had the opportunity to own a Firebird once and only once -- a 1991 midnight purple one that I would've bought the very day I saw it and took it for a test drive had it not exhibited a bad fuel pump that wouldn't let it get above about 30mph. Two weeks later I found the Monte Carlo.
If I don't get one of the cars I've always wanted now, they'll either be out of my price range in the future due to collectibility factors, or I'll be too old to really enjoy them, or both. It's pretty much now or never for anything from the 80s that I want to get in any semblance whatsoever of drive-able shape, as the older the cars get, the more they break down and are junked. At the same time, I've been without a vehicle since I sold the truck in 2018 when we moved into the house. For someone who's as into cars as I am, it's been torture these past few years to not even own one.
At the same time, I'm not stupid; I rarely leave the house (or have reason to do so) and obviously a rear-wheel-drive Corvette or Firebird isn't going to be a good choice when the weather gets as bad as it does in Nebraska for four or five months of the year.
Sunday, January 3:
Working from home, day 170.
I get up in the mid-afternoon hours and can almost predict at that point, even, that work will be slow for the night -- based on the fifteen and only fifteen emails I have in my inbox since Saturday night. I'm okay with this; I have to get back into the groove of working these five-day weeks again, and the best way to do that without me slipping into a stress-and-anguish-induced depression is for the month of January to be really slow when it comes to stuff to do at work. Being able to leave my desk to go to the bathroom, make a sandwich, feed the cats or decompress on the couch for a few minutes is always a good thing. During the busy times, if I ever have to go to the bathroom, even, it feels like I'm abandoning my post during an attack on the citadel.
As an aside, my boss once asked me, when I missed a call while I was on the toilet, "you don't take your phone to the bathroom with you?"
For one, I think that's way out of line to expect me to answer a work call while shitting, but my answer was "no, I read books and magazines on the toilet, like a gentleman and a scholar."
This is true, by the way. It is almost an extreme rarity I ever take my phone to the bathroom with me.
The night is uneventful and very quiet throughout, and I come upstairs at the end of my shift even before Daisy is awake for the day. When she leaves for the office in the morning (she's working in the office this week), I go to bed.
Monday, January 4:
Working from home, day 171.
The stimulus ($1200, since Daisy and I file together) is in our bank account. But, as always when we come into any sort of money, and I stress here that it never fails, a major problem has happened with the car:
- Tax return from 2019: the brakes die on the car and it takes about $900 to replace them.
- First stimulus last year: a lady backs into us in a parking lot, crushing our front end. It takes almost the entire check to repair it.
- Second stimulus, this week: today, the check engine light comes on, and the car shudders and shakes and smells of gas/exhaust -- probably the catalytic converter dying.
It never fails, everyone.
Daisy set up an appointment to take the car into the shop for tomorrow morning and will be working from home until she has to take it in. In the interim, I did a quick order on Amazon to get the stuff I needed that couldn't wait, because if car repairs take our money again, I'm making sure I have the household stuff now before we can't afford to buy it.
Yeah, that's how my brain operates; fuck you if you think that's foolhardy.
Tuesday, January 5:
Working from home, day 172.
The problem with Daisy's car is a manifold sensor -- a "MAP sensor" (manifold absolute pressure). It is replaced quickly and efficiently for less than $200. The replacement secondary oil pan she needs so that the car doesn't leak oil like a sieve all over the garage floor, however, is $260 or so. It'll get replaced sometime next week once the part arrives in the shop. In the interim, the car is back home and life returns to normal. Somewhat normal, anyway.
It's fine. We have a little more money than usual thanks to the stimulus, we've done all of our shopping, most of the bills are paid (and the rest will be paid this week once Daisy's paycheck hits on Thursday) and there aren't really any real ancillary expenses that otherwise need to be taken care of in the short term. I'm at relative peace at the moment. My life does not revolve around money, but a lot of my anxiety does. I have little to no anxiety whatsoever when I know that there's more than enough money in the bank to take care of most things that can, and usually do, go wrong.
Work has returned to pre-holiday workload levels, for the most part. It's not crazy busy, but it is and has been pretty steady since all of our clients have returned to their respective places of business after the holidays. I take care of what I can, and delegate what I should. It feels like I'm conducting an orchestra some nights, and others it feels like I'm trying to put out a raging house fire with a garden hose. There is a definite ebb and flow in my line of work.
The local news channels and the Weather Channel are calling for a minor snowstorm to sweep through the area over the next 24 hours or so, with accumulations being light (1-3 inches) as most of it is predicted to fall as rain since the temperatures will be above freezing as it begins moving through. As I absolutely hate shoveling snow (Daisy shoveled everything from the last snowstorm, even though we didn't have to leave the house), my hopes are that it's more rain than snow this time around. This would mark the fourth measurable snow we've had since October or so.
On my lunch hour, I fire up the PS2 to find...it is not reading discs. Any discs.
Sigh. Goddammit.
Mind you, this is the second PS2, the one my executive director found for me to replace the broken one. I really don't want to have to purchase a third one from someplace just so I can play my games. I am not sure at this juncture whether it's a hardware problem or if it just needs a good cleaning/laser cleaner run through it, or what -- it seems to boot up into the operating system fine; it just doesn't want to load games. I can still use the old one I guess, if I put a box of nails on the lid to hold it down. It's just a pain in the ass.
I put it out of my mind; I have other shit to take up my time and can't obsess over a 20-year-old game system.
The credit card dispute over the original PS2 has not yet been settled, either. I expect to hear something soon.
Wednesday, January 6:
Working from home, day 173.
I go to sleep for eight hours and I wake up to all hell breaking loose in Washington, with an angry mob storming the Capitol building and basically attempting a coup while the electoral college results for Biden are being certified.
Did I wake up in some weirdo, Sliders-esque alternate dimension or something? This is some wild shit.
Over the course of the night I watch and follow the news closely as people die, as the Capitol grounds are swept and secured, and as the certifications continue -- and watch, in triumph, whether these asshole insurrectionists like it or not, as Biden is officially declared to be our next president. Fuck off, you seditionist assholes.
I also fully believe that the Capitol police as well as the regular police should've opened fire on all of these traitors before they even reached the Capitol steps.
But Brandon, you may be thinking, do you want to start a civil war?
What, against people trying to overthrow a government and install a dictator, eliminate true democracy, and subvert the will of the populace against what has been touted as the most secure American election of all time, with a president-elect who not only won the electoral college but the popular vote, and it really wasn't even close?
Don't get me started.
These people are fascists and traitors, simply put. A huge chunk of this country disgusts me.
Anyway.
The night at work goes mostly quietly. My internet at home goes out for about 20 minutes in the midst of it, which basically screws up my entire work computer. It takes another 15 minutes to reboot it, get everything back online, and get all of my programs up and running again. As such, I'm basically out of commission for most of an hour and don't actually take a lunch hour.
When I go to bed I do so hoping the world will be a better place when I wake up.
Thursday, January 7:
Working from home, day 174.
Payday for the wife.
The wife decides to stop at Aldi tonight on the way home from work, even though there's not a lot we actually need from the store. This is partially because she is working from home next week and we'd rather not go out any more than possible if it can be avoided; it's cold, January is dark, and we're nearly constantly tired.
The night at work is mostly quiet; I slog my way through it without the help of my escalation manager colleague, who had to be out of office for undisclosed reasons. It feels like I should be getting paid tomorrow, but I have to wait another week. In the interim I make sure all of my bills are taken care of but one last one, for a credit card that hasn't cycled yet, and I end my night relatively on time.
Friday, January 8: Day off.
Saturday, January 9: Day off.
Sunday, January 10: Working from home, day 175.
Monday, January 11: Working from home, day 176.
I take a break for a few days. I really don't have anything of substance to write, and the weekend flew by almost in the blink of an eye. I am trying to stay positive and keep moving forward through the days, but I find myself sleep-deprived and already burnt out after only one week back to work on a normal schedule.
What I do have is hunger -- I've been far more hungry over the course of the past few days than I've been in months, and I don't know why. I've noticeably been eating more and have been eating more frequently than the usual. There used to be days where I'd eat one decent-sized meal and that's all I'd need; those days are now apparently in the past, as I frequently become ravenous at the drop of a hat, to the point where I begin to feel sick if I don't get something on my stomach. Mind you, this is a big shift as I used to get physically ill every time I ate, or close to every time. I don't know what's going on with my body, but it needs to even out at some point.
In addition, on Friday morning I also developed a mild gout attack in my left foot -- the big toe joints and the ball of the foot. It sucks, but it has not been bad. It has slowly, slowly begun to fade in the days since, but it is still there now. Like the other times I've had mild cases, I'm sure it'll disappear completely in a few more days.
Tuesday, January 12:
Working from home, day 177.
Daisy will be dropping off the car to have the secondary oil pan (or whatever the part is that lets oil leak all over the garage floor) replaced at 8am. As she's working from home this week, this isn't a huge concern, and will likely be back home, with a loaner car, and working before I even go to bed in the morning.
I've been so tired as of late, as I mentioned previously. I'll go to sleep around the normal time (anywhere between 8:30 and 10am, roughly) and wake up around 5pm, feeling like I need another 4-5 hours of sleep to actually function like a human. I'm getting what doctors say is enough sleep, but it's just not cutting it. I don't drift off at my desk during work hours or anything -- thanks to caffeine of course -- and work has not been particularly stressful. I sometimes wonder if this is going to be the rest of my life -- constantly feeling exhausted, almost unable to move or care about anything because all I want to do is sleep.
This week is just dragging on, too. By the end of my shift this morning it felt like I had already worked five days this week, when it's only been two.
Wednesday, January 13: Working from home, day 178.
Thursday, January 14: Working from home, day 179.
Friday, January 15: Day off. Payday for me.
I take a few more days off due to being extremely exhausted and because Daisy is working from home -- which means I spend more time with her and less on the computer.
On Thursday night, in the middle of my shift, the next snowstorm of this current winter started. We were put under a blizzard warning, and once it got light in the morning I could see why -- aside from the 40-50mph winds that were blowing all night and into the day, we were under whiteout conditions. Luckily we'd gone out before it started so that I could pick up my meds from the pharmacist -- it's only the second time I've left the house since Christmas.
Saturday morning was spent shoveling the driveway out; we got 3-ish inches of dense snow thick with ice. In the afternoon, Daisy got a smallish grocery delivery from Whole Foods, and we spent the day watching The West Wing and playing on her Wii together. In the evening I fell asleep in my chair for a nap, and when I awakened she was already in bed for the night.
Sunday, January 16:
Working from home, day 180.
In the night, I pay the last bill I needed to pay through the beginning of next month. This is helped by the fact that because of the Nashville bombing on Christmas (something that now appears to have been swept almost completely under the rug by the news media and/or forgotten about), I got a $150 bonus on Friday's paycheck for coming in to work extra hours to help out. Everyone who pitched in and helped out during the crisis, salaried or hourly, got the bonus -- our executive director made sure of that. It was unexpected and a bit of a nod to us who actually have a strong sense of duty and took the time to assist, and it is appreciated. It's not life-changing money, of course, but it does make me feel a little better about selling my soul to that company for a paycheck.
I've physically cleaned the lens of my PS2 with a q-tip and alcohol (as I've read is the easiest fix) and ran a laser lens cleaner disc through it three times -- a CD which it will, remarkably, play -- but no games will load on it. I've researched this problem and there's no real consensus on a fix for it; the PS2 lasers on the slim systems (like I have) are notoriously fragile and prone to random failures. Most solutions entail replacing the entire lens reader system -- something that is less complicated than it sounds, and replacement parts are $25ish new on Amazon -- or junking it and buying a new system. As I now have two PS2s that don't exactly work that well, I'm not a big fan of spending money on a third if I can avoid it. I might remove the laser assembly from the one with the busted lid and broken fascia and replace it in the other one, or just swap cases (a literal five-minute job if you have a screwdriver) so I can have one with a lid that closes, boot it up, and see if it works better with a lid that closes. It's worth a shot -- it's just more work, though. It's something else to do when I already have a laundry list of other bullshit to do around the house.
I also may see if I can get a good-condition first-release PS3 (the first-release models will play PS2 games, later ones will not) and put any repairs of the others on the back burner until I have more time and patience.
Still no word on the credit card dispute from the guy who sold me the first one. It might be another week or two; it's just interesting that it's taking them so long.
As expected, the post-holidays malaise has set in a bit. I'm not really depressed, I'm just sad that there's not really anything to look forward to anymore. Yes, we're getting a new President in three days, but this country is a god damn train wreck right now and it doesn't appear to be getting much better. Biden can send us $2800 (since Daisy and I file together), and it'll be nice, but it doesn't change that I don't get another day off work until Super Bowl Sunday -- which I took on PTO -- and after that, Memorial Day. It doesn't change that I can't walk into the doctor's office today and get the Covid vaccine. Prioritizing frontline workers and the elderly is one thing -- saying you can't get it until all of those people have had their chance and have gone first is quite another, and is going to cost more lives and just lengthen the timeframe of everyone and everything getting back to normal again.
Maybe that makes me selfish. I don't know. I just want normality, as I've mentioned here before.
"Say it's a month to the day after you received the second dose of the Covid vaccine...what are you doing tonight?" Daisy asked me last night.
"Hopefully, eating food in a restaurant and going to see a movie in a theater afterwards," was my reply.
These are not the only things I care about, of course. But I can't tell you how much I want to not have to wear a mask everywhere I go, and how much I want to be interacting with people normally in normal social situations again. The sooner those who want to be vaccinated can get those vaccines, the sooner the above becomes a reality again for everyone.
Still the malaise is there. I'm not sure how fixable it is. It's been cold and snowy and just dark for a while now; it is, after all, January. There's another snowstorm on the horizon for next weekend -- could be a big one, could be nothing. It's a week out and predictions are fairly shaky even 48 hours out when it comes to Nebraska most of the time.
The night at work is very quiet, probably due to the MLK holiday. I have agents who work one or two issues all night long, and I myself work one very early and then...basically sit there all night listening to podcasts and reading the news.
Monday, January 17:
Working from home, day 181.
MLK Day.
I am awakened earlier than usual in the afternoon by my large male cat projectile vomiting onto the floor next to the bed. As such, and as I am fully awake, I strip the bed and begin the very time-consuming process of washing the sheets and blankets -- time-consuming because it takes about 90 minutes per load to wash and approximately the same amount of time to dry, give or take. And there's always two loads. This is why I generally try to do it on weekends so it's not a "race the clock" scenario that will plague the wife and make her wait until everything's done before she can go to bed for the night. I also make sure to use extra fabric softener on the sheets and blankets, and pour patchouli essential oil into the loads as well to scent it. It is an event. It just takes so much time.
Feeling productive, I also leapt into the shower and scrubbed down, washed and conditioned my beard (I did not use the balm on it today) and brushed my teeth, put on my testosterone for the day, and sat down at my desk to play a game to kill time while the laundry did its thing. After the game was over, I went to Amazon to purchase the light bulbs, cat food, body spray, and fabric softener I needed to purchase previously but did not, and balanced the checkbook.
In addition to all of this, the rubber sandals I bought on a whim and ended up loving this past summer came back into stock (they'd been out of stock for months) so I purchased a second pair of those. I don't really see this as an excess, or if it is, it's a very small excess. Shoes are kind of important, and the rubber sandals I have now have been my go-to pair of shoes for around the house if I'm not wearing socks, even in the winter. I hate being barefoot. I also trashed a few older pairs of my sandals in the fall because they were falling apart -- something that's really difficult for me to do, because some of those sandals were my favorite shoes of all time.
Today is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. As such, being a state/federal holiday, Daisy did not have to work. I do, of course, since I only get the big holidays off from my job (New Year's Day, Memorial Day, July 4th, Thanksgiving, Christmas). She is back in the office for the remaining four days this week, days which I hope go quickly so that we can barricade ourselves indoors for next week. I sleep better when Daisy works from home, and sleep longer at that.
The night at work is again very quiet, until about 6am when everything explodes. Few things at work irritate me more then when everything is super-peaceful and then goes batshit crazy in the span of 10-15 minutes when all I'm doing is trying to wrap everything up so I can leave the office. Most of my team leaves the office at 6, I leave at 7, and most of the daytime management doesn't arrive until 8 or 9. If I have to stay late to handle something it's usually only at the request of one of my superiors (though I'll occasionally do it for a colleague or friend who could use the help or expertise I can offer). Otherwise, it's a daytime problem -- a daytime shift who sometimes needs to be reminded that we are their backup, not the other way around (translation: most of the time if your daytime teams did their jobs correctly, we wouldn't have to clean up their messes all night long, and those messes wouldn't explode in the morning). I'm getting so sick of the need to "reset expectations" for some of our clients because the dayshift teams can't or won't. There's a large number of things that our overnight shift cannot do for these clients because the teams who can assist are only in the office from 8am to 5pm.
Tuesday, January 19:
Working from home, day 182.
Last day of the Trump Presidency.
I need to show you folks something that happened to me tonight, because it bears repeating.
Yes. This actually happened.
We bought this house from a contractor, a guy who did high-level construction work. He redid several rooms himself, adding and breaking down walls to make the kitchen bigger, adding a downstairs bathroom, and moving the laundry room upstairs (to what is now my man cave/home office). And in all of that time, he had fucking Christmas light bulbs screwed into the living room ceiling fan fixture. Not to mention how dangerous that is from an electrical perspective, of course.
Then again, it was also the same guy who built the retaining wall that goddamn collapsed eight months after we purchased the house, so there's that too.
Anyway, both bulbs are now replaced with actual light bulbs, and after some neck/shoulder pain and frustration screaming at how difficult the cover is to remove and replace correctly, the living room is now awash in actual light that lets you see things.
The wife returned to the office to work today. I am not happy about it. We crossed 400,000 Covid-19 deaths today in the United States -- 400,000 people who were alive this time last year but now are not, all because of a virus that is still tearing its ass through this country, sickening or killing fairly indiscriminately at this juncture. I'm not a germophobe, nor am I a hypochondriac, but this virus is killing close to 30,000 people a week despite the vaccine, and public schools are open? Interstate travel isn't being restricted? Malls and most retail establishments are still operating? Jesus Christ, government, if you're not going to step in to stop stuff like this, at the very least try to get your shit together -- subsidize the vaccine manufacturers to make hundreds of millions of doses and open the proverbial doors to everyone to go get the vaccine as soon as possible. At current infection rates we'll cross 500,000 deaths by this time next month and a million by summer.
I'm also of the mindset that we should be done screwing around -- just like there's a "mask mandate" I 100% believe there should be a "vaccine mandate." Oh, I don't believe for a second that it would ever work, but there are ways to do it to make it appealing, starting with a flat mandate that all federal, state, county, and city government employees nationwide must get the vaccine or lose their jobs. Military too. Police officers. Then issue an order that publicly-traded companies must have a vaccine policy on file with the government (which would detail mandatory vaccinations for employees and/or conditions that vaccines must be completed before you can be hired for said company) or they will face severe tax or other penalties. Then threaten that private companies are next. Just threaten and that would probably be enough. In reality they probably couldn't do anything to force the private sector to do anything.
I also suppose I should reflect on the past four years, at least briefly, as this is the last day of Donald Trump's presidency.
These last four years have been very long ones. Never so frequently have I been as disappointed, disheartened, or sometimes outright disgusted with our country. Barack Obama signified hope, stability, and a readiness to take care of business and do some good -- backed by his diplomacy, even-handedness, and his amazing oratory skills. Donald Trump has been the exact opposite of all of these things and more. He has turned America into a joke, into a shadow of what it once was. It's going to take many years and probably at least a generation to unfuck this country back to what it was before he was elected president, and it's going to take the rest of some peoples' lives to ever trust the government again, in any way.
With Biden and Harris, some of that hope has returned. Not all of it, but some. Even some small steps back in the right direction means something, and is good for the whole of the nation as well as our nation's standing in the eyes of the rest of the world. So many people forget that most other countries on the planet look to the United States as a beacon of hope, or otherwise look up to us as the shining example of what people can do right when they work together in peace and in harmony. I believe the American dream, though marred by the past four years of abuse of power, is still alive -- but we'll need to work to nurse it back to health.
I look forward to tomorrow, not just physically but metaphorically. I cannot wait for our new era to begin.
Wednesday, January 20:
Working from home, day 183.
Inauguration Day for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
It is a new day for America.
I am relieved. I truly am. I am relieved that today our long national nightmare of the Donald Trump presidency finally ends. I have never been so...lifted? I guess? on an inauguration day before. I am also very surprised that it passed without incident, without problems or issues, without violence. From now on, we move forward again.
Work last night was horrible.
Thursday, January 21: Working from home, day 184.
Friday, January 22: Day off. Payday for the wife.
Saturday, January 23: Day off.
Sunday, January 24: Working from home, day 185.
I take a few more days to not be here. My energy levels are fucked. Where and how I lost pretty much all the real energy I had before remains unknown. Yes, I know part of it is January and that January is a dark, dismal, cold month for everyone, but it's more than that. I'm restless. I'm bitter and constantly tired but unable to get real quality sleep, and when I do it's more often than not plagued by what I call "stress dreams," which aren't exactly nightmares but dreams about losing the house, the car getting destroyed, about someone dying, about someone emptying our bank account, or one of us losing our jobs, etc. They're not horrific enough to be classified as nightmares but they're bad enough to where in my dream I'll be like "nope, this isn't real, not happening" and wake up in a panic.
I've been in such a daze that half the time I can't remember whether I've taken my pills for the day, even if I say aloud to myself as I'm doing it, "I am taking my pill." I have taken it today, but try telling me that ten or twelve hours from now when I awaken in a daze not knowing if it's day or night, or even what day it is. It's the little things like this, the lapses in memory and cognizance, that make me worry. Sometimes it's hard to trust my brain, and with my eyesight getting worse and worse by the year, I have creeping fears that I'm becoming more and more of an old man. I mean, I already have gout and low testosterone, what's next? The eyesight and memory.
The wife is working from home this week, which is good as there's another snowstorm coming. I mentioned this above, early last week -- they knew it was a possibility then. Well, now it's almost a certainty and we're scheduled to get 6-9 inches of snow (predicted at this juncture, anyhow) basically tomorrow through Tuesday night.
[update: while typing this, the forecast was updated again:]
Description
...WINTER STORM WARNING IN EFFECT FROM 6 AM MONDAY TO 3 AM CST TUESDAY...
WHAT...Heavy snow expected. Total snow accumulations of 6 to 12 inches. The highest amounts are currently forecast south of a line from Seward and Lincoln to Nebraska City and Red Oak.
WHERE...Portions of east central and southeast Nebraska and southwest Iowa.
WHEN...From 6 AM Monday to 3 AM CST Tuesday.
Well, that's pleasant.
If we get this snow it will be the most we've seen here in Omaha, in one storm, in about two years -- almost exactly two years, to be honest. It is very rare in Omaha to get a foot of snow. I think it's happened maybe one other time in the seven years I've been living up here. We've had some come close -- some 9, 10-inch storms before, and those are a mess too...but it's rare to get a full foot. We may not this time either, but if we do, they've at least forecast for it.
When I lived in Kansas and Missouri, a full foot of snow in a storm was remarkable, but was still fairly commonplace. Those storms would hit 2-3 times a year. And don't get me started on growing up on top of a mountain in rural West Virginia, where we'd get a foot one day, then another foot three or four days later, and then eight or nine more inches on top of that the following week, etc. One of the years I was in high school, I think I went to school maybe two days for the entire month of February....because it was closed the rest of the time. I sat at home watching reruns of Knight Rider (this should really tell you how old I am) and playing my PlayStation.
Anyway. The snow starts later tonight, when I'm working. I already told Daisy that until it's completely done, we're not shoveling any of it away -- I don't care how heavy it is or how long it takes to do it, I'm only shoveling it once. It's cold, we're both working from home and not going anyplace, and I have zero spare energy. I also know it's coming because my allergies are attacking me in new ways and forms previously unknown to scientific study.
It is January 24th, and I still have the full beard, still slowly getting longer. A few weeks ago, at a colleague's suggestion, I purchased a new type of beard balm that is less waxy and pomade-y and more oily/vaseline-feeling. The new balm makes my beard feel remarkably good and helps lessen the dry skin and irritation of having a face like a wolfman. I told the wife I'll keep the beard until all the balm is gone and then decide whether/when I want to shave it off. I have nobody to impress, after all (as I keep saying in this blog) and Daisy likes it. Judging by the hairs from it that I lose when combing it out or just from normal daily lose-a-hair here, lose-a-hair there, the beard is roughly two inches long all over right now, maybe a little more. It's thick, it's long, and most of it is very gray. Were I to shave it and grow it out again in another year or so, it would likely be almost completely gray at that point.
I haven't decided. It's likely that once the spring starts to settle in and temperatures are warmer every day, and once I can actually get a haircut again, I'll take both the hair and the beard off. We shall see.
Monday, January 25: Working from home, day 186.
Tuesday, January 26: Working from home, day 187.
Wednesday, January 27: Working from home, day 188.
The snow...is a thing.
When I went to bed Monday morning, the snow had started -- though it wasn't awful yet. There was maybe two inches or so on the ground; nothing major, nothing to get worked up about. As Daisy is work from home this week and I never leave the house, we were less than concerned -- only concerned that it would be a bitch to shovel out if we really got the amounts they were calling for. The last I checked, on Monday morning as I was going to bed, was that the forecast had been updated to 9-16 inches.
When I got up Monday afternoon, there was about six inches of snow on the ground. That in itself would make for a decent storm, but the forecast itself had been shifted a bit as well. Now, the heaviest snow was predicted for after dark in the evening and night hours. Schools and public offices began closing for Tuesday. By all accounts the roads were a wreck. Again, we don't leave the house, so eh. My concern then shifted to making sure our phones and the like were fully charged, in the event that we lost power or internet. Our biggest inconvenience was that we couldn't place our grocery delivery order(s), as we absolutely weren't going to make delivery drivers bring stuff to our house in that. Daisy went to bed. I began my normal night of work (which was very busy, so I didn't have much time to pay attention to weather).
Well, in the night, it hit.
Now, I don't know when the heaviest snow started; it could have been in the evening before I started work, or it could have been in the middle of the night while I was on a two-hour bridge call and working multiple issues for hospitals and school districts...but when I was able to (finally) get off work around 7:40 or so, I opened the curtains in the dining room to see, well, a white nightmare.
It has been a very long time since I have seen this much snow on the ground. So much snow to where you can't tell where the snow ends and the ground begins. Cars on our street, yard decorations and outdoor furniture, and anything else outside were literally just featureless bumps. I could not tell where our driveway ended and the street began, or where our yard ended and our sidewalks or porch began, because it was all covered in what was then about probably ten inches or so of thick, heavy snow.
Across the street from us, our neighbors were shoveling from their walkway from their front porch to the sidewalk on the street. They had cleared it off at this point, and were standing on it. The snow on either side of their legs nearly went up to their knees.
Between their house and ours was the street. A car very slowly drove up our street, which was unplowed at this juncture, and the snow was being pushed out of the way by the car's bumper, the snow on the street almost up to the center caps on their wheels.
The snow was still coming down at a pretty good clip.
"Fuck this shit," I said aloud.
I woke Daisy and told her that it was bad, that we had gotten most of what had been predicted, and relayed that it was still coming down. I then sat in my chair and decompressed a bit, trying to make myself tired quickly so I could get up earlier than usual for, well, the shoveling. Because it would have to be done -- city statutes/laws.
When I awoke, Daisy had just gotten off work and was already outside beginning to clear everything off. I was exhausted and my back was already killing me, and this was going to be at least a two-hour job even with both of us doing it. I had just gotten dressed to go join her when she burst into my room.
"Where's your wallet? Two guys just came down our street and offered to plow out our driveway for $10."
"Fuck yeah," I said, my face lighting up while she dug into my wallet to get a $10 bill out. "Shit, it would be a bargain at $20."
She went back downstairs and paid them, and I watched two dudes with a massive industrial-sized snowblower clear out our driveway and walks like it was nothing in the span of about 15 minutes or so total. They even cleaned off our front porch.
My back and the need to sit upright in a chair for my job thanks them far more than the $10 bill from my wallet ever could.
The totals for snowfall varied around the area, but were all in the realm of between 11-14 inches. The east and south parts of the city and surrounding area got more. I don't know exactly what we got, but looking at it today (a day later), it's pretty close to a full foot, give or take an inch or so.
Daisy let me know later Tuesday evening, after the guys had plowed us out, that she would not have been so fervent about getting us dug out (the city of Omaha declared a "snow emergency" for the first time since I've been living here -- it was such big news that it made the news on NPR nationwide) but, one of her coworkers in the office this week was sick, possibly with Covid, and could not get into the office anyhow...so Daisy herself was going to be forced to work in-office for the rest of the week.
"Does that mean you get extra days working-from-home next week to make up for it?" I asked. The answer is no. I think this is bullshit, but whatever. Just like me, she really doesn't get a say in how she works -- if they tell her she's needed in the office, she has to go in. It's similar to how if I'm asked to login and work at any time, even on my days off or on holidays/etc, I don't get to say no unless I'm not at home or in the hospital or what have you.
I worked my normal Tuesday night shift -- also quite a busy one -- and got off work half an hour or more late, again. When I opened the curtains in the morning, I found that it had snowed almost another inch in the overnight, covering up most of what had already been plowed out. I almost goddamn cried in disgust.
"I'm not shoveling it," I told Daisy. "I don't care if it's an inch. City laws say you don't have to shovel less than three. Fuck it. Fuck it. Why bother if it's just going to snow more again anyway?"
Daisy went to work this morning and ended up getting the car stuck on a hill; she had to reverse to get down the hill.
I fucking hate winter. I don't use the term hate much -- I generally reserve it for things that cause me or my loved ones pain, or for Donald Trump, but winter...winter is something I genuinely hate.
This afternoon when I awoke, I found that the Weather Channel is tracking two more storm systems as well -- the first expected on Saturday into Sunday (which may miss us), and the second coming around this time next week. I have a feeling we're not going to luck into having roving snowblower guys patrolling our residential streets for either of those storms. What's worse is that we're also not likely to have much melting in the interim -- temperatures are supposed to hover around the freezing point and maybe hit slightly above it a few times over the next week, but not enough to melt the majority of what's on the ground now.
The city garbage/recycling collection teams have also basically thrown up their hands at this point too. They relayed via email on Monday that all collection days would be shifted an extra day later this week, and then updated that email today to say something along the lines of "just put your stuff outside when you can and we'll get to it when we get to it" because the snow has fucked everything.
Thursday, January 28:
Working from home, day 189.
35th anniversary of the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion.
A full moon.
I'd be lying if I said this past week has been easy. It hasn't been.
My lower back (right side only) has been seizing up and has put me in a lot of pain over the past few days. Sitting upright in one of two different computer chairs for the vast majority of my waking hours isn't exactly helping it that much, nor is my "worst mutant power ever" ability of only being able to sleep 5-6 hours at any given time. I guess this is what your late thirties is like, folks -- random pain and sleep deprivation. At least I don't have kids. When my mother was 38, I was 16 and in high school.
As the five-day weeks go on with no real respite or rest, and no vacation or "extra" days off in my future (aside from Super Bowl Sunday, which I took PTO for far, far in advance) and dark January continues to be dark, I find myself having little to look forward to other than the comics I receive in the mail and my groceries that we have delivered. I'm trying to save all the PTO I have so that I can actually take some time off (a day or two, probably) in the mid-spring and then again over Memorial Day week/weekend/etc. I'm trying really hard to be happy and to see the positives in everything, and am trying even harder to be a kind, loving person. It's more than being nice, it's being kind. Being kind to oneself, though, is even more difficult than being a kind person in general. Sometimes, anyway.
The beard remains on my face, though as the days go on I find myself considering shaving it off more and more. Daisy said I could -- not that I need her permission -- but because I grew it out primarily for her and because she knows the upkeep it entails. It would grow back, of course, but I know my luck -- the day I after I shave it, the temperature outside will drop below zero and for some reason I'll be forced to be out in it a lot or something along those lines will happen. I also have spent a decent amount of cash over the last few months on beard balms and face cleaning scrubs, all of which become pretty much useless and a waste of money once I shave it off.
I have a weird fascination with how much, or how long, I can really get it to grow before it's too unwieldy or too big of a pain in the ass to justify keeping. When I shave, I also barely recognize myself in the mirror for a few weeks, which tends to give me some weird mental self-identity issues. Don't ask -- I can't even really explain it myself.
The night at work is godawful, plagued by outages and other issues I'm engaged on. I work half an hour late, again, but luckily do not get stuck on anything that would've kept me there even longer.
Friday, January 29:
Day off.
Payday for me.
The wife and I finally receive our grocery delivery orders from two different stores, and a good chunk of the evening is spent putting those groceries away and finding space for them.
My Sodastream replacement CO2 and new soda flavors -- diet "Dr. Pete" and diet root beer -- also finally arrive in the mail (they were supposed to arrive by Tuesday, but, snowstorm).
Daisy had a very rough day/week at work, so we have a "let's just be fat" sort of dinner consisting of fries, vegan chicken nuggets, and vegan pizza bites (like pizza rolls, sort of) and watch The West Wing before bed.
Saturday, January 30: Day off.
Sunday, January 31: Working from home, day 190.
It's been days -- multiple days -- since I've showered, and my greasy hair and really unkempt beard makes me look (and probably smell) like a homeless person, so while the wife sleeps, I take an hour to scrub down, deep-condition my hair and beard, brush the fuck out of my teeth, apply new testosterone, and massage the beard balm deep into my beard, combing it through as well.
Many of you may think it's weird that I don't shower every day. Well, I don't leave the house, folks. It's the middle of winter, so most of the time I'm not sweating and getting funky. I spend my waking hours in one of two computer chairs, on the couch, or in my chair upstairs in my room. In my off hours, I sleep, I feed the cats, I occasionally play a video game or dick around on the internet, and I share meals with the wife and watch TV. The rest of the time, I'm working. And, as I've said before, I truly have no one to impress. I don't go anywhere, I don't talk to anyone or see anyone but the wife, so it's not like I truly need to look good or dress well or be scrubbed completely clean every day. That's just how it is, really.
I mentioned a few days ago that I was having back pain. A few weeks ago, I pulled a back muscle pretty badly (when I was trying to mess with the PS2 and actually get it working again). Over those past few weeks, the muscle has not really healed well, and over the past week or so especially, has been spasming pretty hard for no real reason when I move just a certain way, and once it starts, well...I can move nearly any way I want and it will still spasm -- a bright, deep stab of debilitating pain that sucks away my breath and usually has me cry out -- usually as a reflex I can't control. Ibuprofen can help, but it just makes the pain from the spasms a little more dull. None of this is pleasant, and my frankly sedentary lifestyle of being cooped up in this house 24/7 isn't helping much. What I really need is several days of uninterrupted, no-need-to-get-up because there's nothing to do deep sleep so that my body can rest up and heal. I really can't get that anymore, and haven't been able to since shortly after I was married. Like it or not, being continually employed means that you're stuck sleeping and getting up on the schedules of people other than yourself. Being a homeowner means that there's always something else to be done around the house too, and being an adult means you have to pay bills and cook your own meals and etc etc.
My back never feels better than when I've gotten some hardcore sleep, though.
Because she was curious about how to do it and fascinated with the process, Daisy watched a few videos and decided to take apart the PS2 that had stopped reading games. She disassembled the entire system, cleaned it meticulously with canned air, isopropyl alcohol, and Q-tips (and fuck was it disgusting inside there), and then carefully reassembled it and told me "plug it in, see if it works."
It did. Not only did it work, but it worked flawlessly. So now I don't needlessly have to purchase another laser and take it apart and replace it or anything else, as long as it keeps working correctly.
And so, my friends, ends January -- the coldest, darkest month (I mean, generally) of the year.
Let's see what February has in store....
