News and Updates

1. Yesterday, in a fit of optimism regarding how today would go, I got my COVID booster and my flu shot at the same time, and I have to say it seems to have worked. I now have the flu and definitely feel like I have COVID. Oh well. I’ve done this enough times to know that it’s an illusion that will pass sometime later today, that I will feel fine by dinner time, and that getting vaccinated is the single best way to preserve your health and the health of those around you. It’s an intelligence test that far too many Americans fail for ideological reasons, unfortunately, because apparently drowning in your own fluids is a surefire way to own the libs. I don’t get it but I don’t have to either and at this point I am perfectly willing to be owned in that way if it tightens up the gene pool a bit. If COVID has taught me anything it is that I am not really a good person. Oh well. Regardless, today will be a low-key day, yes indeed.

2. Not that this bothers the cats. This morning I was sitting in the big grey chair in the living room that Mithra considers hers when she walked into the living room and barfed on the carpet. When I got up to clean it up she casually (or as casually as an 18-year-old blind and arthritic cat can muster) hopped up onto the chair for herself. Well played, cat. Well played.

3. It is a good time to be a Philadelphia sports fan. The Eagles are the only undefeated team in football, and the fact that this drives the haters mad is just extra joy for my home town. It won’t last – it can’t last. There hasn’t been an undefeated team in football since 1972 and the Eagles aren’t going to change that (and yes, Patriots fans, you have to win the last game for it to count) but it’s fun now, even for someone like me who isn’t nearly as big of a football fan as I was even ten years ago. The Phillies somehow managed to squeak into the playoffs for the first time in a decade as the last team in, swept the Cardinals in two games in St. Louis, and now hold a 2-1 lead over the defending World Series champion Atlanta Braves. Will they ride this to a second WFC tour this century? Maybe. Maybe not. But it’s fun now. The Flyers won their season opener, which means they are above .500 for what experts predict will be the only time this season. None of the Sports Knobs see them as anything other than a cellar-dwelling afterthought this season, but it’s fun now. The Union was at the top of the MLS table last time I checked. Definitely fun now. Good times, I tell you.

4. This is what you focus on when the larger world goes to shit. Sports are a break that way. There are wins and losses, drama and skill, and in the end the sun rises in the east the next morning no matter what the scoreboards say. The whole point of sports is that they are meaningless fun, and I intend to enjoy them thoroughly.

5. Kim and I went up to see Lauren a bit ago to be ringers on her trivia team. She and Maxim play trivia on Mondays and they get some of their friends to join – Isaac and Daniel for most of the game that night, while Chase joined toward the end – and it’s a fun time. But there are teams of graduate students that always dominate so we went up to even the odds. We came within a point of winning, and had a grand and glorious time in the process. And somewhere in there I pulled an answer completely out of the air in a subject I have no expertise in whatsoever (“How about The Maltese Falcon? – that sounds plausible”) and it turned out that not only was my wild random guess right but nobody else got it either, so WIN.

Meme courtesy of Daniel.  

 

5. We also went up the following weekend when Maxim’s mother and brother came to visit, and we had a lovely time with them. There was fondue, which was somewhat odd in that Lauren was sick and we ended up getting together anyway. But people have to eat, after all, and fondue is fun. Lauren got better after that and joined us the next time we went up to see them. There was pie! There was a corn maze where we all split up into our own groups and somehow managed to arrive back at the exit, maze completed, at exactly the same time! It was good to see them again and share stories together.

6. I got fired again. Or, more accurately, I wasn’t hired at all. It took several weeks and more than my share of time spent with the IT department over at the Mother Ship to get things straightened out last time and I thought I’d cleared all those hurdles for this semester except that I actually work for at least three different campuses (and anywhere up to six, depending on how you count) and last week I got an email from the IT folks at another campus announcing that they were deleting me from their servers because I didn’t work there. This came as a great surprise to me, half an hour after teaching a class on the Revolutionary Crisis for that campus. I called the IT folks up there and they said, “Huh. That’s what our records show. Call HR at this number.” The HR number is a placebo, unfortunately – four times in twenty-four hours I called it and let it ring three dozen times before it disconnected without being answered or allowing me to leave a message. Eventually the academic-dean-type-person who thought he had hired me last spring was able to track down the issue and get it resolved and now I’m actually going to get paid for this semester, which I thought was a good outcome. I really need to check with the other campus to see what they’ve got in store for me.

7. Every time the January 6 Committee conducts business two things become more clear: Donald J. Trump actively conspired to overthrow the legitimate government of the United States – a process that clearly fits the definition of treason – and his supporters think that’s just fine. I grieve for this country and worry for the future of the American republic. We will not be secure until Trump and every single one of the minions, lackeys, enablers, and cronies who participated in that scheme pay the full price of treason.

8. Kyiv still stands, and at this point I’m not sure whether the Russian military will be able to say the same in six months. I admit that came as a surprise – I would not have predicted that in February. Can’t say I’m sorry, though.

9. My revised online class is now up and running and I’ve already had a student turn in an assignment for it. There is a certain amount of trepidation with this, but I keep reminding myself that the students don’t know that this is the first month the class has been offered in this version so they just see a class. We’ll see how this goes.

10. I’ve been posting surveys on a whiteboard easel at work just to get people in and talking, and so far it seems to be working. I have discovered that people are pretty evenly split on whether pineapple belongs on a pizza and whether one should relax by doing Something or by doing Nothing. Most people are not fans of mimes. Also, if you ask whether a sandwich should be cut diagonally or horizontally you should be prepared for an avalanche of people writing in different answers for specific cases. This annoyed me at first, but then it occurred to me that it meant that the survey had actually succeeded in getting people in and talking and I should just back off and let it happen.