1. I spent much of this week sick with whatever crud is going around that isn’t any of the more deadly ones, of which there are apparently a wide range of choices – the measles epidemic that has already killed one child, the first to die of that disease in a decade in this country, not that Health Secretary Brain Worms sees that as a problem; the tuberculosis outbreak in Michigan; the rapidly expanding bird flu that is now considered endemic in American cattle so good luck all of you who think raw milk is somehow healthy; and so on. No, I just had a normal flu. Two days of fevers and chills, plus a week of headaches, coughing, and brain fog. Fun times.
2. The second day of the fevers was Monday and I actually stayed home from work – the first time I called in sick for non-Covid reasons since before the pandemic. I spent the day letting random soccer games wash over me and not eating. But by Tuesday I felt well enough to go back wearing a mask, and now I think I am back to where I can read more than seven words at a time so tomorrow my goal is to catch up on a backlog of text messages and emails.
3. I’m not going to address politics directly in this post, not much. I suspect there will be another one of those lists in the next day or two. So goddamn much has been destroyed since the last one. Convicted Felon Donald J. Trump, Unelected Co-President Elon “Sieg Heil” Musk, and every last one of their minions, lackeys, cronies, and slaves need to be thoroughly horsewhipped, dropped into a large scrubland surrounded by razor wire, and told to go Galt and leave the civilized folks alone. If they die, they die.
4. On Saturday, when I still felt pretty good, Kim, Lauren and I went to see our local minor league hockey team play. It is always a fun time to do that. They’re building a new athletic center on the north side of town now, one that will have a regulation sized rink instead of the scale model they currently play in, but the current place has a lot of charm in a way. Just don’t stand in the end of the concession line when it reaches out to the front door because at that point you will be standing directly in front of the home team locker room and there will be a MIASMA that will tempt you to reconsider your thoughts of food. It turned out to be a good game, though. There were 67 total shots on goal and the home team won 3-2 and Lauren figured out that the assistant coach was someone she went to high school with because that’s what living in a fairly small place will get you.
2. The second day of the fevers was Monday and I actually stayed home from work – the first time I called in sick for non-Covid reasons since before the pandemic. I spent the day letting random soccer games wash over me and not eating. But by Tuesday I felt well enough to go back wearing a mask, and now I think I am back to where I can read more than seven words at a time so tomorrow my goal is to catch up on a backlog of text messages and emails.
3. I’m not going to address politics directly in this post, not much. I suspect there will be another one of those lists in the next day or two. So goddamn much has been destroyed since the last one. Convicted Felon Donald J. Trump, Unelected Co-President Elon “Sieg Heil” Musk, and every last one of their minions, lackeys, cronies, and slaves need to be thoroughly horsewhipped, dropped into a large scrubland surrounded by razor wire, and told to go Galt and leave the civilized folks alone. If they die, they die.
4. On Saturday, when I still felt pretty good, Kim, Lauren and I went to see our local minor league hockey team play. It is always a fun time to do that. They’re building a new athletic center on the north side of town now, one that will have a regulation sized rink instead of the scale model they currently play in, but the current place has a lot of charm in a way. Just don’t stand in the end of the concession line when it reaches out to the front door because at that point you will be standing directly in front of the home team locker room and there will be a MIASMA that will tempt you to reconsider your thoughts of food. It turned out to be a good game, though. There were 67 total shots on goal and the home team won 3-2 and Lauren figured out that the assistant coach was someone she went to high school with because that’s what living in a fairly small place will get you.
5. I haven’t had much focus to read, so I’m still slogging my way through the book I started weeks ago. It’s a good book by one of my newfound favorite authors, but I have to say that this author took a calculated risk by taking the absolute least likable character from his previous book, putting her in a new context, and centering the narrative around her. It’s been a challenge.
6. Working in higher education these days has been an exercise in just pressing on as if tomorrow will still happen, because what else can you do.
7. One of the nice things about being more or less over this flu has been being able to return to my own bed. I’d been borrowing Lauren’s old room in order not to spread this crud to Kim, and nobody else’s bed is ever as nice as your own.
8. I got to tell the story of the Dawes Plan this week in class – the abbreviated version I use for my US history class rather than the full version that my Western Civ class gets, since for the US it’s a small foreign policy act but for Europe it’s a major event in many ways – and that always makes me happy. There are a number of set-piece stories that I look forward to in each class and it is always a good day when we get to one.
9. Every so often the list of small things that need to be fixed on one or the other of the cars reaches a tipping point and we take it in to our Local Guys and they get it sorted out for us. We’ve been going to these same Local Guys since before I moved here in the mid-1990s and they know me pretty well at this point. They do good work. And now the van has two functional headlights, a working overhead brake light, and fresh oil on top of it. Win.
10. I find myself getting sucked into various “reels” these days – the little video clips that Facebook and Instagram have now that Vine is dead and TikTok openly mouths right-wing propaganda. I already know FB and IG are owned by a vile right-wing billionaire and can take that into account, and for the most part I skip over those and head to the comedy and the music (as well as far too many highlights of the recent Super Bowl – hey, the Eagles don’t win those things very often, so I’m going to revel in it a bit). There are a lot of talented people on this planet. That’s a good thing to remember in these parlous times.
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