Musings of a marginally sane feline-appreciating female.

So, work yesterday was fine once I got settled in, it was just hard again to settle in. My old boss called me to ask who would be good for some training and we ended up spending a good half an hour going, “THIS IS WEIRD, IS IT WEIRD FOR YOU TOO???” That did me more good than any email from corporate.

The June 10th date the Governor threw out was quite the gut punch. The original “shit is closed” end date was 4/24 – you think, OK, I can do that. Then the feds come out with May 1. OK, that’s just one more week. Then Northam comes out with another fucking 40 days. FORTY MORE DAYS.

Mind you, that is 90 days from the original declaration of the State of Emergency, so it wasn’t a date plucked out of thin air. He could always rescind early, and I suspect he doesn’t want to be extending every two weeks or whatever. But going from 31 days to 71…ouch.

The VDH website has a new visual – a chart showing the estimates of when cases started. Last two weeks, it’s spiked after the weekend – hence the Governor going full SIT YOUR ASS DOWN.

The freedom dipshits immediately came out in force on Nextdoor. FFS, shut up, you can still go to the store, and outside, you’re not a prisoner.

My friend pointed out this website that does a great job of showing if you’re flattening the curve or not – does countries & states. Virginia seems to be on the right track so far. (I don’t really follow the national numbers, because I have no faith that they are accurate.)

45 is saying there are no problems with tests, even as Governors tell him on the same call they are still having problems getting tests. I’m waiting for some Governor to finally snap and tell him to go fuck himself.

In the mornings, I watch BBC World News. Been seeing a lot of Nicola Sturgeon (Scotland First Minister) – damn, the Scots are lucky to have her. She’s smart and actually cares about her folks. (Unlike some asshole I could mention who lives in the White House.)

Onwards.

70 days, 15 hours, 41 minutes.

Virginia is Stay At Home until June 10.

71 days, 8 hours, 39 minutes.

I’m not super enthused about work today.

I’m tired.

My work doesn’t matter in the big scheme of things.

I need a get the fuck away from this vacation. As does everyone else.

I’m just very tired.

31 days, 15 hours, 21 minutes.

I’m glad the administration got its head out of its ass and said they’re recommending 30 more days of social distancing. (Were they actually *really* recommending it before?)

It’s a dot on the horizon we need.

Granted, it’s a dot that will probably move, but it’s something to focus on.

32 days, 3 hours, 50 minutes.

I hope.

Day 16.

Though the days are all running together and time is a mess, I am so glad it is the weekend.  Spending M-F working and just sort of pretending everything is OK is oddly exhausting.

I have been able to finally settle down enough in the evenings to do needlework, which is nice – that took a good week and a half to get to that point.

Shoutout to the folks who “stress-action” – stress clean, bake, whatever. I wish I was a stress cleaner – instead I just tend to quietly shut down, LOL.

Our CEO sent out a little video message check in, which was a nice thing to do, but hey, CEO’s of the world – some tips:

– Unless you are actually somehow using the AirPods to make the video, take them out.
– Do not, under any circumstances, use the word “golfing” or any variation on it.

Major props to VDH for being pretty transparent with Virginia’s testing & case data. As a data driven person, I appreciate being able to look at these numbers. That being said, we do not appear to be really flattening the curve.

Looking at the past two weeks and the progression of cases & hospitalizations, we will max out our ICU beds in 11 days, on 4/8. Granted, that is pushed back from 4/7 as of 3/20, but it’s not enough of a move fast enough.

But, as we all know all too well, a LOT can happen in 11 days. So, maybe staying in will work – we just can’t tell yet – so we keep staying in.

It didn’t have to be this way. The idiot in chief… I am so sick of the “oh it came out of nowhere, everything was fine 20 days ago” etc, etc. Fuck him, I can pinpoint when I became aware of this on a daily basis – January 30. How do I know? Because at that point, we had a potential case at the university and I had to run an errand right next to the university, and I was a little weirded out by it. JANUARY FUCKING 30TH.

And the Defense Production Act was only kicked on yesterday. And he wants GM to reopen a factory they don’t own anymore. And the constant fucking lies and the retaliation against blue states… I swear, if we do not have some kind of truth & reconciliation commission when we’re on the backside of this… Heads need to roll. Hell, I’m thinking tarring & feathering needs to make a comeback.

Update: Sometime in the past 30 minutes, payroll hit. DID NOT NEED THAT STRESS.

~~~~~

So, my bank does the ‘get your direct deposit a day early’ thing – it’s very, very nice. Tomorrow is our “real” payday, but basically, if my bank has the transfer, they just put the money in my account.

Guess who doesn’t have a direct deposit today?

The last time this happened, there was a holiday and someone didn’t take the extra day into account.

No holiday this time around, so, what the fuck happened?

After being told our company is in better shape to weather the pandemic/recession than most and then this…

NOT A GOOD LOOK MY DARLING EMPLOYER. NOT. A. GOOD. LOOK.

Last time this happened, it was sorted by Friday/Monday – and I can absorb it – but not everyone can.

Work the past two days wasn’t too bad once I got settled in – but yeah, settling in was kinda hard.

I cannot believe that 45 is talking about just “reopening everything” on Easter. LET’S JUST LET FOLKS DIE SO COMPANIES CAN MAKE MONEY! PACK THOSE CHURCHES!

Fuck that. We’ll be having our usual brunch at home.

We could make sure folks have the financial resources to stay home and safe and flatten the fuck out of this curve. There’s an idea.

The upside is that given that the feds haven’t done shit, they can’t really reopen much of anything. My fear is he will rescind the telework provisions and order federal workers back into the offices. And we don’t need to do that. I’ve sent notes to my reps on that.

Liberty University in VA is reopening. That’s a fuckton of stupid right there.

Virginia is in lockdown mode in pretty much everything but name only. Schools closed for the term. Entertainment closed. Non-essential open, but you can only have 10 people about. Restaurants carry out only. Grocery stores still open. Basically, no one is doing shit until 4/24 around here.

While I know folks really need a dot on the horizon that they can focus on – Easter isn’t it. It’s far, far too soon. Hell, 4/24 may very well be too soon, and we just won’t know until we get there.

Virginia’s % of positives as a total is ~6.5%, down from ~10% – but we’ve only test 0.05% of the state’s population. I’d love to say it’s a trend and staying in is helping, but we just don’t have enough data to be positive about it yet.

I hope Mar-A-Lago is infested with fire ants while it’s closed and can never reopen.

I have to work. I’ve worked remotely for 3 1/2 years, so there has been no adjustment on that aspect of it all. But today, I am very, “could we not?”

But, I can’t even fathom how I am going to settle down enough to actually, you know, work? I test software. Last week, when I could get myself together enough to focus, work was a godsend – once I am into a test run, I am INTO A TEST RUN. But, just getting there – HARD.

Multiple reasons for this, obviously.

– Hey, we’re in a pandemic!

– My job doesn’t feel like it actually *helps* anyone in this shitshow we’re calling life these days.

– The tone-deafness of corporate messaging. It really makes me want to scream.

But, we’ve gotta eat, and I’ve really got to keep this job, so I will do my best to get my shit together, because “who didn’t handle a pandemic well” will be at the top of the “who to cut” list when it comes to that.

On a lighter note… we had our first culinary disaster last night. Little bro made stuffing and grabbed the wrong size pyrex cup to add the water and didn’t realize it until it was too late. Stuffing soup. I tried putting some in a frypan to cook off the excess water – a valiant effort, but alas, it did not work. (And FML, I was cringing hard at the waste. FFS.)

Semi-related – my concerns about this fucking with my head on doing the marketing? Already happening. We have a jar of mustard that is just about empty in the fridge. A full one in the pantry. I bought another one, since the one in the pantry is about to be opened. (It wasn’t the last one in the shop or anything.) I am suddenly wanting backups of everything. :(

Welp, time to go attempt to work.