Musings of a marginally sane feline-appreciating female.

I have a to-do list that is a good 10 miles long, but I have a very large coffee, so at least step 1 is done!

Starbucks was a scene this morning. Getting napkins, I gently picked up two bags right in front of the dispenser so as not to knock them over, fully prepared for someone to get mad*, but instead got, “I’m so sorry!” What? No! Just trying to not knock them on the floor! You’re fine! Lady with FIVE drinks, two bags, and a TODDLER. “Um, do you need help getting all this to your car?”** “Oh, no, she [toddler] loves to help!” Good thing those bags have handles you can just loop over a kids arm. I did at least get the door, cause she did NOT have enough arms for it.

Of course, that nice interaction was followed by a dumbass in the parking lot. Idiot pulled up in front of the shop, blocked 4 parking spaces in the process, got yelled at by what appeared to be his own daughter for it, and got beeped at by the person next to me trying to leave. I had my windows open and just waited for him to move, and as he finally pulled past me, he had the audacity to say, “Sorry for the spectacle”*** and I just replied, “No problem, but you know you can’t park there.” Not sure how he missed my “You are a fucking idiot” face.

BBC was just talking about how China has reported 39 deaths from Omicron 2. Given how China has been a bit iffy with its reporting, I can’t help but wonder if that’s accurate, but also wonder how much worse it would be if they’d gone with US approach of “let ‘er rip” and really wonder what is in store for us.

We have almost 76% of the county fully vaccinated (Omicron got some folks off the bench, thank god) but our cases are creeping back up again and year over year, we’re higher now than we were in 2020 or 2021 at the same time – and the I would say the big difference now is we have zero structural mitigation beyond “get vaccinated.” And in retrospect, I have to wonder if the big drop we saw last summer after mask mandates were dropped and things opened back up was not so much folks getting vaccinated as the initial variant just burning itself out before Delta hit.

If there is any good news, our breakthrough cases are currently under 5% of all cases – which is shaky data given we have no idea how many unreported home test positives are out there, but it’s something. Not enough to get me up to my bar on a Saturday night (and I so, SO wanted to go last night) – but still something.

I know I’m not alone in really wanting that warm weather drop to show up like we had last year – I’m really starting to lose my fucking mind here. I miss that brief point in time where we were all at least *trying* to be safe. Now I just feel like a fucking weirdo. Sure, I’m an excellent introverted hermit, but even I need to chill out with indoor beer and a few people and food that isn’t in a takeout container every now and again.

Well, I have sat here and vented my spleen and dithered enough as a mode of housework procrastination, so I’m going to go try and knock out some cleaning.

You have a great Sunday, and don’t let the idiots get you down.

* We’ve hit the point in the pandemic where I’m just prepared for everyone to be mad. I liked it better when everyone was just very tired.
** Is that weird? It felt vaguely weird, but she had a lot of stuff and a small child, so I had to ask.
*** Not sorry for blocking 4 parking spaces for an extended period of time, sorry for the spectacle of getting called out for it. And yes, it was a mediocre white dude.

Got out and walked near 4 miles and when I walked upstairs to get a shower, I realized I’d totally overdone it, but it was TOTALLY worth it to be out and about in the sunshine. I’m tired as fuck, but my mood is lighter than it’s been since…IDK, last fall.

Every winter I slog through, then spring comes and the weather properly turns and I wonder WHY DON’T I MOVE FURTHER SOUTH?

Lots of pretty flowers and nice quiet moments today.

And all is fairly right in my little world. No real side effects from the Covid booster other than being kinda tired and a sore arm, and I 100% believe the post-shot ice cream cone eaten while sitting in the sunshine helped.

And our local farmers markets are open!!!!! I cannot explain why that is such a huge dopamine hit, but it sure is – I guess it’s the combination of being outside in nice weather and good food and it means that spring is here. We’ve got bread and empanadas and salad stuff!

Plus, there are some new vendors this year – dim sum, fresh pasta, and quiches! I’ll definitely be trying those over the course of the summer, plus the kiwi savory pie tent – it’s not new, but I somehow haven’t tried it yet. For the dim sum one, I legit need to do some research, cause I know nothing about dim sum other than it’s good and I don’t want to just stand there going, “Uhhh…”

Honestly, the change in weather and light and all that just does such wonders for my mood. Plus, empanadas. Fairfax County drives me fucking nuts, and I really should move farther south where there is more light and less winter, but I would really miss our farmers market.

And it’s such a lovely day, I’m gonna take my happy ass out for a walk and keep riding this good weather high I’ve got going.

You have an awesome day.

Here’s the LilyMonster is being rather goofy this morning…

And I am 100% blaming it on the pandemic.

Got to the pharmacy and they asked for my vaccine card and I said with a straight face, “I don’t carry it with me cause I’ll lose it, but I have a picture on my phone” and the gal said it was OK and took down the dates and my hand to god, it did not register why she asked for the physical card until she handed me a fresh one with the booster information on it.

I facepalmed so hard I could have given myself a black eye. Thankfully the tech was very good natured about it and I have a feeling I’m not the first one to do this. But gawd, I felt so fucking stupid.

I did get my ice cream – our local B&R didn’t have the Tax Crunch, but they did have Oreo Cold Brew and it hit the spot.

Yeah, I am way, WAY too dependent on them for, well, everything, especially procrastination. But also with the way tech was messing with me this morning, when I went to take a shower, I half expected the power to go out to boot.

I am sooooooooo petulant about my Covid booster today. I am still mad at the pharmaceutical companies for not being able to figure out to get a vaccine with sterilizing immunity – as though somehow I could have done better as someone who barely passed high school chemistry.

But I will get it. And I will probably get myself an ice cream cone afterwards and I think I may even veer off my usual chocolate chip path and try “Tax Crunch” – coffee ice cream with a fudge ribbon and Rice Krispies. I mean, if I’m not getting a lollipop for the shot, I might as well get *something* good, right?

Like I said, so unreasonably petulant about this.

Off to a rip roaring start this morning – woke up to no cable, no internet, and no cell phone signal.  Let me tell you, having zero means of communication beyond going outside and yelling is seriously unsettling.

Was there a solar flare last night?  Is it an Earth Day promotion to force folks out to touch grass?

Had to order manually at Starbucks, cause though I did have a cell signal there, mobile ordering was down.  OH THE HUMANITY.

Back from Starbucks, power cycled everything and at least got 3 4G bars on the phone.  Sloooooowly got the Cox website to load and it’s an area outage with an oddly specific restoration time of 1:38PM. At least it’s not the cable card again.

Good thing I have today off since I wouldn’t have been able to work anyway, LOL. Seems everything went out after 8AM, since my morning BBC news did get recorded.

And I’m kind of an idiot cause I started typing this on my laptop thinking well, I can copy it to Evernote and then pick that up on my phone and pop it into WordPress. All of these steps require internet. That thing I don’t have today. 🤣

Well, I guess I could get some housecleaning done between now and my vaccine appointment… HAHAHAHAHA.

Have a great Friday and I hope all your tech cooperates!

And I kinda half forgot about it. Back at the start of the year, the team lead wanted everyone’s PTO plans and I put a fair amount of thought into the not-beach days and there was a big gap between days off in March and Memorial Day, so I put down tomorrow to make the half day Friday a whole day Friday.

Granted, this was before I took the day for Lily’s teeth cleaning that didn’t happen, but I’m taking it anyway, cause I planned it out to be as close to having 40 hours left at the end of the year, so I’d have slack for sick days or whatever and it was a good call, cause I do need this long weekend.

And, taking the whole day off prevents the half day from becoming an “aw shit, I’m not leaving early today” situation.

And my big plans for the day is getting my Covid booster, wheeeeee. And I need to remember to ask how long I need to wait to then be able to get my shingles vaccine. Wheeeeee.

I’ll admit, the urgency for getting this Covid booster just hasn’t been there – I mean, other than the 2 months last summer when our cases were genuinely low, I haven’t felt particularly safe and it doesn’t feel like getting vaccinated has made any difference or helped get back to “normal” for myself or for the community at large. I totally understand getting vaccinated is about avoiding severe illness/death, but my god, we needed something that provided serious transmission protection. Especially since we’re ditching every other mechanism of transmission prevention, and long covid appears to be an afterthought if it’s thought of at all.

And that judge in Florida who overturned the mask mandate on airplanes… We’re going to be dealing with the damage done by the last administration for generations given the number of unqualified people put on the bench with lifetime appointments.

Well, time to go do the thing for capitalism, cause, well, not like I can do anything else.

Hang in there.

Got my BBC news right on my cable!! No casting from the iPad! Took two trips to the cable shop, 4 (maybe 5?) calls to tech support, but it’s all working!

Mega props to the last lady I talked with – she Would Not Give Up. I think the lady before her would have gotten there, but when she was asking me about the tuning adapter…I couldn’t find it. I forgot WTF it looked like and I was envisioning the very small WiFi adapter that came with my old TiVo and looking for that, not the fucking BIG BLACK BOX RIGHT ON THE SHELF IN FRONT OF ME and I had to be “Uhhhhh, I gotta check on this, I’ll call back, thank you!”

But the last lady – and her name now escapes me, dammit – she was great. When suddenly I’m getting audio, then video – I legit hollered – YOU DID IT! And “Tell me what you did so I can write it down in case I need to know again!” The magic bit here was “refreshing the status” cause the new cable card was stuck in “Not Staged.”

All the women I dealt with were spectacular. The gal at the cable shop yesterday – she activated the card in the shop (first guy didn’t) – and chucked out the first card she was going to give me cause she could tell something wasn’t right with it in their system. Also tried to see if she could make our bill cheaper (she couldn’t but apparently if I upgrade our modem, there are deals – why that matters, I know not, but I know what to investigate) The guys…not as much. First cable card wasn’t activated, but he tried hard to sell me security and home automation. Tech support dudes just defaulted to “well, you’re gonna have to have a tech come to the house” – even when it was escalated.

The women know that no one has time to wait around for a tech to show up – not that their techs are bad, but we all know the special hell of sitting around and waiting for a service person when everything on their schedule before you has gone sideways.

More women in tech, plz.

And farking cold to boot.

And the administration is “disappointed” at the idiot judge who dropped mask mandates on public transport. Could you, IDK, do something? Also – to every airline that decided it was a great idea to announce this MID-FLIGHT – FUCK YOU.

I cannot even imagine the hell of being on a plane when that happened.

We are literally heading into another surge, and Delta airlines is saying it’s a “seasonal illness” and we’ve had to endure 767 days of half the country being complete fucking assholes. Delta’s seasonal illness has killed 160 people in my state in just the last week.

I’m not sure we can truly calculate the damage that TFG did – to not just quietly ignore, but gleefully endorse hateful ignorance – I don’t know how we ever really come back from this.

But hey, we’ve created some killer shareholder value.

How is that for fake Monday morning chipperness? Easter was good, but I did not sleep particularly well last night – weird ass dreams.

The weather is shiiiiiiiit today, so I doubt I’m getting over to the cable store at lunch. But I did figure out that I can use the cable app on my iPad to stream BBC and send it to the TV, so at least I’ve got the morning news, YAY! TiVo is still out of commission until the card is replaced so I can’t record anything, but I can stream pretty much anything I want one way or another.

Though, had I realized I could just stream BBC via the cable company app, I probably wouldn’t have bothered with turning in the old dying cable card in the first place. Ah well.

Got taxes filed yesterday, fuck yoooooooooooooou government. Tax a few billionaires, please.

I’m still on my 6AM alarm bullshit because apparently I hate myself. The extra hour to get a jump on things and absorb any “what do you mean it needs to be done yesterday” nonsense with these extra builds is helpful. But my body does not like it one bit. I thought I’d adjust to it – I’ve been doing it for a few weeks now and I thought I’d adjust to it, but I haven’t.

And that is why I bought PowerBall tickets today, LOL. I like my job and company enough that I’d give them a couple months notice.

Well time to go do the thing, just in case the lottery doesn’t work out…

You have a great day.