Category: NJ

no more masks

As expected, NJ will pretty much drop its mask mandate this week, on Friday. (See here for an NJ.com article and here for one from the NY Times.) As I mentioned in my last post, I have some trepidation about this. But I guess I’m going to have to get used it and hope for the best.

I see that Stephen Colbert is going to start doing shows in front of a live audience again, starting June 14. NYC, in general, is opening back up again pretty quickly. I haven’t really kept up with what’s going on with the museums though. As far as I can tell, the Met and MoMA both still require masks and timed entry tickets, and haven’t announced plans to change that.

I’m still trying to manage my anxiety around all of this reopening. I bought a box of Chipwiches at the grocery store last week, and those are helping.

trepidation

This post is going to be a bit of a follow-up to my previous post, from Thursday.

To recap my vaccine timeline: NJ opened up vaccine registration to everyone on April 19, I got my first shot on April 20, my second on May 18, and I should be at full immunity in two weeks, on June 1.

So, basically, for anyone in NJ who waited for general availability of the vaccine, and got a two-dose vaccine, the earliest they could possibly be at full immunity is right around June 1.

NJ still has a mask mandate right now, which is good, but it looks like we’ll be dropping it on Friday, just in time for Memorial Day weekend. I know that, technically, people who are not fully vaccinated are still supposed to wear masks, but that’s not going to be checked or enforced, and I’m sure a lot of unvaccinated people are going to stop wearing masks. NJ currently has around 55% of adults fully vaccinated, which is great, but I’d really like to see that number closer to 75% before we get too enthusiastic about reopening. (But of course nobody’s asking me for my opinion.)

I’m seeing a lot of other signs that people and organizations are rushing to open things back up. The Catholic Bishops of NJ are lifting the dispensation on the Sunday mass obligation, effective Sunday June 6. That doesn’t really matter to me, since I stopped attending mass regularly at some point in the 90s. But a lot of Catholics take that stuff seriously.  (Hopefully, good Catholics might also be the kind of people who care enough to get vaccinated and/or to wear a mask to mass.)

We got an email at work this week saying that there would be an announcement next week about returning to work. I’m not sure what they’re going to announce. I’m sure it won’t be anything crazy, like “we’re reopening the office on June 7 and everyone needs to come back full-time.” But I’m a little worried about what it might be, and I’m finding myself not at all enthusiastic about returning to the office. (And I’m not the only one.) I’d love to see the company require vaccination for all employees, but I doubt they’d do that. The original, pre-vaccine, plan was to have people come in two days a week, in two groups, so the office would basically be half-full Monday through Thursday, and (mostly) empty on Friday. Post-vaccine, they may decide that’s not necessary, but I’d like to see something like that to start. I don’t necessarily mind going back to the office at this point, but I really hope they’ll let us continue to have some flexibility regarding remote work.

I saw a quote on Twitter today that said “No amount of guilt can solve the past, and no amount of anxiety can change the future.” (I’m not sure where that came from originally. It seems to circulate in various forms, usually with an “unknown” attribution.) So I guess I should just relax and enjoy the weekend, and stop worrying about returning to work, at least until I know more about my company’s plans.

Meanwhile, on the topic of distractions, which I touched upon in the previous post: I am now binge-watching the old Clone Wars cartoon on Disney+. This seems like a perfect thing to do at this stage of the pandemic. There are seven seasons to get through. It’s got some complexity to it, which keeps me engaged, but it’s all just nonsense, really. Basically, it’s a perfect distraction from my anxiety.

On a related note, my Apple TV showed up yesterday, and I’ve got it hooked up and working. I can’t see much of a difference between the old, non-4K, box and this new fancy 4K version. But I’ve mostly been watching stuff where I wouldn’t expect to see a difference, like Clone Wars and old episodes of New Tricks. (By the way, New Tricks is another good series if you’re looking for pointless distraction.) I tried the new color calibration stuff on it, but it didn’t work. I may try it again at some point, but it sounds like it might not be worth doing, so I’m not in a hurry on that. The main selling point of the new Apple TV is of course the new remote. I’ll just say that I’m liking it so far, but I’d gotten so used to the old remote that I’m still getting used to the new one. Once my brain starts remembering where the buttons are, I’m sure this new remote will be much less frustrating than the old one was.

scheduling my vaccine shots

Today was the first day of universal eligibility for the COVID-19 vaccine here in NJ. So I finally got my chance to register for it. I went online at 6:30 AM, while I was eating breakfast, and managed to secure an appointment for tomorrow, at a CVS in Union. It’s about a 30-45 minute drive from my home, so that’s not perfect, but it’s not bad either. And it’s tomorrow! The second shot will be in mid-May, so I guess I’ll have a reasonably degree of immunity in… early June?

It would be nice to be able to make a few trips into NYC over the summer, to visit the Met and MoMA, stroll through Central Park, and other stuff like that. I don’t know what the overall situation will be, though, so maybe that’ll be something I feel comfortable doing, or maybe it won’t.

I took a full day off from work tomorrow for the shot. It’s scheduled for 11:45 AM. If it was closer to home, I could have just done it on my lunch break. But with the drive there and back, plus whatever waiting I’ll have to do, and taking into account the possibility of post-shot side-effects, I figured it would be safest to just take the whole day off. Plus, I think I need a day off anyway. I’ve been tired and distracted at work a lot lately.

I read a NY Times article on languishing this morning, and I think I see myself in the description of that condition. Successfully registering for the vaccine actually brought me a lot more joy that I thought it would. I was pretty happy for a few hours there. Things started settling back towards my “new normal” around lunch time, but I gave myself an afternoon boost with a cappuccino and got through the rest of the work day. (I’ve been spending way too much money on afternoon cappuccinos at my local coffee shop lately, but I guess it’s not the worst thing I could be spending money on right now.)

So the plan for tomorrow is to maybe sleep a little late, have a leisurely breakfast, maybe read some comics, then go get my shot. The CVS I’m going to is near Galloping Hill Inn, so I can stop for a hot dog on the way back, maybe. I haven’t been there in years. And maybe I can get home in time to watch the Apple event at 1 PM. I don’t think they’re going to be announcing anything I’ll be interested in, but you never know. Then, maybe more comics, then dinner. Unless the vaccine shot throws me for a loop, in which case: nap, then dinner. That should be a nice day off either way.

Apple stuff, vaccine stuff, and more

I’ve got a few things to blog about, and I think I’m just going to write a hodge-podge post with a random selection of subjects. I guess that’s a reasonable thing to do on a cold and dreary Saturday morning.

Apple stuff

I noticed in my “On This Day” widget that I bought my current iPad two years ago today, and my first Apple Watch five years ago today. The iPad is still in pretty good shape, though the battery life isn’t what it used to be. Next week’s Apple event will probably include an announcement about new iPads, but I think I’ll stick with my current one for a while longer. I primarily use it to read comics and browse Twitter and Facebook, and it’s fine for all that.

As for the Apple Watch, I’m quite surprised to realize that I’ve been wearing one for five years now. I’ve got to say, Apple really got it right with the Watch. I was leery about a few things when I first bought one, but it’s been great. I got used to the Sport band pretty quickly, and haven’t ever bothered to try a different style. I don’t want to give the Watch all the credit for the fact that I’ve kept my weight down and my fitness level up over the last five years, but honestly it probably deserves a lot of credit. It’s dumb, but closing my rings does motivate me to get out and exercise more often than I would otherwise.

Vaccine stuff

I’ll finally be eligible to get the COVID vaccine, starting Monday. I’m registered with the state of NJ, so we’ll see if anything comes of that. I’m also getting myself ready to try other avenues, including RWJ, CVS, and Walgreens. This (subscriber-only) NJ.com article has a good round-up of vaccine resources. The suspension of the J&J vaccine and the opening up of eligibility on Monday may mean that I won’t have much of a chance of getting vaccinated any time soon, but I’ll give it the old college try, and maybe I’ll get lucky. In general, availability seems to be better in south Jersey than around here, but I hope I can find an option that’s relatively local. I really don’t want to have to drive down to Atlantic City.

Apparently, more than a third of adults in NJ are now fully vaccinated, and more than half have received at least one dose. So that’s good news. Meanwhile, the global death toll has passed three million. So we still need to take this thing seriously.

Reading, Watching, Listening

I dropped my cable subscription down to Broadcast Basic this week, and I’m doing fine with that so far. I miss TCM a bit, but I still have eight or nine TCM movies on my TiVo that I haven’t watched yet, so that’s no big deal. And I miss The Daily Show, but I can always watch bits of that on YouTube.

I’ve had Apple One for about a week now, but I haven’t watched anything on Apple TV+ or played any Apple Arcade games yet. I did get all my photos up to iCloud though, and did a bunch of organizing there.

My two favorite TV shows right now are probably Falcon and the Winter Soldier on Disney+ and Invincible on Amazon. Both, coincidentally, have related podcasts from Comic Book Club. There’s a whole mini-industry going right now around podcasts and web site articles recapping and discussing various nerdy TV shows. Sometimes, I think there’s a bit too much of that. Even the NY Times does recap articles now. But, hey, it doesn’t do any harm, and sometimes the discussion is interesting and fun. I’ve been watching/listening to the Comic Book Club guys on and off for more than ten years, so they seem kind of like old friends. (You can read a bit about their history here.) I never made it to any of their live shows in NYC, and now I kind of regret that, since they never be able to start those back up again.

The Invincible show has gotten me interested in the Invincible comic book again. I bought and read the first four volumes some years ago. I enjoyed them, but didn’t get around to buying any more, until 2016, when I bought volumes 5-13 from Comixology during a sale. There are 25 volumes, so I need to pick up 14-25 to get the whole run. There’s another sale going on at Comixology, so I can get them for half-price right now, but that’s still enough money that it’s not an easy impulse buy for me. I haven’t actually read those volumes that I bought back in 2016 yet either, so I don’t think I need to be in a hurry to complete the set. But, of course, the collector’s mentality has kicked in, so now I’m probably just going to go ahead and get them.

I’m somewhat tempted to buy physical copies rather than digital, but I know that’s a bad idea. I have way too many books in my apartment now, and I haven’t been able to get rid of them via library sales like I used to, since my local library system suspended their book sales when the virus hit. As I mentioned recently, I’ve stopped ordering comics from Westfield, so hopefully I can start putting a dent in my backlog of physical books (both comic and otherwise) and then find something useful to do with the ones I’ve read. Maybe the library can start up their book sales again over the summer. Maybe they can do them outdoors in the parking lot or something like that. That would be cool.

too much snow

Fair warning: this is going to be a rambling post, mostly complaining about the weather, and about how crappy I’ve been feeling. You’ve been warned.

We started off February here in NJ with a huge snowstorm on Monday. According to NJ.com, we got 23 inches here in Somerville. I’m pretty sure it’s the worst snowstorm we’ve had since the big one in January 2016. I’m very glad that I can work from home right now. That wasn’t the case in 2016, and dealing with driving and parking turned out to be quite a big problem. This time, I just left my car alone on Monday and Tuesday, and stayed indoors. (I did knock a little snow off it on Tuesday, but not much.) On Wednesday, I made a concerted effort to dig it out of the snow. Over the course of three 30-minute sessions, I managed to get about halfway there. But then, Wednesday night, I felt horrible. Lots of pain, sore throat, headache. I guess I’m just too old and broken to do manual labor anymore. I left it alone again on Thursday, and tried to heal up. I felt a little better today, but still not great. I did a little more digging, but maybe just 15 minutes, total. At this point, between the digging and some melting, I could probably move the car if I had to. But I’m still feeling pretty bad.

What’s left of the snow (and there’s a lot) isn’t likely to melt anytime soon. And now we’ve got another storm coming in this weekend, bringing maybe another eight inches. I’m really glad that I don’t need the car right now. I’ve been ordering my groceries from Whole Foods for the last few months, and getting them delivered. And I have ShopRite in walking distance too. And it looks like my company won’t be asking us to get back into the office for quite some time. So I may just leave the car where it is for the rest of the month. I should probably try to drive it around a little at some point this month, if I can, but I don’t think it’ll be a huge problem if I let it sit for the next few weeks, if I have to.

Now it’s Friday night, and I still have some pain in various parts of my body, plus a bit of a headache, and still kind of a sore throat. I plan on getting up early tomorrow and doing my laundry. After that, I think I’ll just be resting up for the remainder of the weekend. The Super Bowl is Sunday, but I have to admit that I don’t much care about it. I didn’t pay any attention to football this year.

I have a bunch of other stuff I want to blog about, some of which might actually be useful or entertaining. But I sure don’t have the energy for it right now. Maybe if I feel better on Saturday afternoon or Sunday, I’ll try to write something useful. For now, this is all I got.

what a week

In my last post, on New Year’s Day, I said “I’m expecting the first couple of months of 2021 to be pretty rough.” It turns out, the first couple of weeks of 2021 have been pretty rough. So one week ago, we had an angry mob storm the Capitol building, and today, we saw Trump get impeached for the second time, at record speed.

I wanted to write a post about the whole insurrection thing over the weekend, but I just couldn’t get my thoughts together in any coherent way. I still probably can’t, but I feel like I need to get some stuff out of my head, regardless. It might not be that organized or coherent, so I apologize if it isn’t.

It’s been interesting to follow the reaction of some of our local NJ politicians to the Capitol incident. Here are a few links.

  • Andy Kim got some attention for picking up trash in the Capitol building after the incident. Here’s an article from the Post, and here’s one from NJ.com. It’s a small thing, but it was one of the only positive stories to come out of this, and really reflects the kind of values I want to see in my elected representatives.
  • Meanwhile, Bonnie Watson Coleman, another NJ rep, has now tested positive for COVID-19. Here’s an article on that from NJ Spotlight. While of course there’s no way to tell for sure, there’s a good chance she was exposed while locked up in the Capitol building with a bunch of other lawmakers, many of whom refused to put on a mask. So that’s infuriating. Here’s a Post opinion piece she wrote. (She’s not happy.)
  • Mikie Sherrill is alleging that some members of Congress led “reconnaissance” tours of the Capitol a day before the insurrection. If true, that’s… horrible. (But she could be wrong on that.)
  • Jeff Van Drew continues to disappoint, being the only NJ rep to vote against certifying Biden’s win. Here’s a USA Today article on that. A lot of people aren’t happy with Van Drew, but I’m not sure he cares. Here’s an NJ.com article about protests calling for him to resign.
  • Van Drew also, for some reason, decided to wear an extremely weird suit to work today. People have been making fun of him for it on Twitter. Here’s one from Sam Bee. And another from Matt Platkin. Not really a big deal, but I guess it’s yet another example of his generally poor judgement. (And it gave me a laugh today, which I sorely needed.)
  • Chris Smith, meanwhile, is keeping a low profile. Both he and Van Drew are quoted in this NJ.com article about today’s impeachment.
  • My own rep, Tom Malinowski, has been setting a good example. Today, he hosted two online meetings, one on vaccine distribution and one on the insurrection. I watched parts of each. He always comes across as calm, reasonable, and thoughtful in these things. I’m leery about putting too much faith in a politician, but he genuinely seems like a hard worker and good guy.

I’ve definitely been experiencing some information overload over this past week. I feel like I need to keep up with the news, but so much of it is just crazy. I want to talk to somebody about it, but I’ve hardly got anyone to talk to. (Hence this long, rambling, blog post, I guess.)

My Twitter feed often becomes quite surreal these days. I keep stumbling across stuff, and thinking it’s from The Onion, but it’s not. Or thinking that I must have misread something, but… nope. Here are a few examples:

  • Trump really was planning to give the Medal of Freedom to Bill Belichick. That was not an Onion article. (He declined, though I actually did first read about that in The Onion.)
  • Someone Wrote “Trump” on a Florida Manatee, from the NY Times.
  • From NPR: “Joint Chiefs Remind U.S. Forces That They Defend The Constitution” — because apparently that’s something we can’t take for granted anymore?
  • And I could probably add a few more links, related to some of the characters who romped around the Capitol building last week, from the weird guy with the viking hat to the scary guy with the zip ties. I’ll just add one: “Jamiroquai Singer Says Capitol Rioter In The Viking Helmet Isn’t Him.”

I had a few serious, high-level, articles about the insurrection that I wanted to link to, but I’m too tired to do that, and I’m not sure they’re necessarily the best ones to reference. Maybe I’ll revisit that later. For now, just one more link: I Recommend Eating Chips, from the NY Times. This is a pretty dumb article, but it does kinda sum up how I’m feeling lately. I’m trying very hard not to stress-eat, and I’m definitely not eating Doritos, but I’ll admit I had a small bag of potato chips with my lunch on Sunday, and it felt pretty good.

 

The Morning After

I tried to be careful about how I was following election news last night. I watched the regular NJ Spotlight newscast at 5:30 PM, then some of their later election coverage, from about 9 to 9:30 PM. And I listened to a bit of WNYC, and checked Twitter a few times. I check Twitter only via Twitterrific, and I’m careful about who I follow, so my Twitter feed is relatively sane. So I managed to get a pretty good night’s sleep last night. (A little Yo-Yo Ma helped out too.)

This morning’s news is… pretty much what I expected. No conclusive winner in the presidential race. Cory Booker reelected to the Senate, and Tom Malinowski reelected to the House. The legal weed question passed, by a 2 to 1 margin. Overall, the Democrats will likely keep their House majority and probably won’t win a Senate majority.

The mainstream media (at least the sources I follow) seem to be dealing well with Trump’s FUD. The Washington Post has a headline that reads “Trump falsely asserts election fraud, claims a victory” and the NY Times has one that says “As America Awaits a Winner, Trump Falsely Claims He Prevailed.” So we’re getting that word “false” in there, at least.

I haven’t looked at Twitter or Facebook yet this morning, but I inevitably will at some point. I’m sure that a lot of people will have opinions about all this. Either way, I need to try to get through the rest of the work week without getting distracted by all this stuff too much. Hopefully, I can find some interesting work to occupy my mind.

Afternoon Walk

I’ve been going out for walks nearly every day since the pandemic began, and taking photos. I haven’t posted any of the photos to Flickr since May, though. So here are a few photos from a walk I went on this afternoon. It was a nice autumn afternoon walk. (I’m trying an embedded album below, which might or might not look OK here. If it isn’t working, try this link.)

I had my Airpods in, and was listening to Invisible Man, which I started in May, and still haven’t finished yet. (I’m just at the part where he realizes that he can be invisible, so I’m getting near the end.) I don’t usually listen to audiobooks while I’m walking. Usually I go with music or podcasts. But I really felt like making some progress with Invisible Man today, so I gave it a try. It worked out OK. I managed to give enough attention to the book, and also managed to not get hit by a truck while crossing any streets.

afternoon walk 10/24/2020

NYCC, masks, and other stuff

It’s almost time for NYCC, though this year it’s going to be a virtual event called Metaverse. I’ve gone to NYCC a bunch of times, and have been on a roll recently, going in 2017, 2018, and 2019. Alas, I’ll just be watching from home this year. I really wish we could have gotten this COVID thing under control by now, but nope. I haven’t looked closely at the panel schedule yet, but I’m taking off Thursday and Friday next week so I’ll be able to watch some stuff and simulate the con experience a bit, like I did for the San Diego con a few months back. This whole “staying home all the time” thing is starting to wear on me.

I know I still need to take COVID-19 seriously though. Our president’s inability to do so may have been the start of a super-spreader event here in Somerset County. That’s probably an exaggeration, but it’s still not good.

It’s been really hard to process news this year. And the news of Trump’s infection is particularly hard to process. It’s not surprising news, really, given his disdain for mask-wearing and all that. But it’s hard to fit all this stuff in your head and figure out how to react to it and how to deal with it. This column from Politico has a pretty good take on it all. And Nick Kristof’s column in the Times is useful too. (Reminder: wear a mask!)

…and now I’m starting to go down a rabbit hole, reading stories on the Politico and NY Times sites about Trump’s condition. I need to stop doing that, and maybe go out for a nice walk. Maybe ending up at the coffee shop where I can get a nice cappuccino and a pastry. (Which I will bring back to the apartment, of course, because actually eating/drinking at the shop is still too scary. Sigh.)

COVID Alert NJ

I installed the new COVID Alert NJ app on my iPhone today. It’s been more than six months since the pandemic started, but hey, better late than never, I guess. NJ.com and NJTV have articles about the app, and ABC 7 has a write-up on New York’s app, which is basically the same as the NJ app, but with a different color scheme (purple vs. blue). The first state to release an app using the new Apple/Google API was apparently Virginia, which released their app in early August.

NJ’s app was apparently created by an Irish company, because I guess they couldn’t find any competent software developers in NJ. (I kid. There are plenty of competent developers in NJ, but we’re slow and expensive.) The company is called NearForm. They started with the app for Ireland, I think, then started rebranding and customizing it for other countries and for several US states.

I found a Guardian article from a few months ago indicating the the Ireland app had over a million installs at that time. NJ’s app is currently at just under 35,000 installs, according to the app itself. (I’m not sure if that’s just the iOS app or combined iOS/Android.)

The tech behind these apps is kind of interesting. Here’s a write-up on it, from Apple’s web site, and one from Google. This stuff is helpful, but only if they can get a lot of people to install the app and enable it. And, well, we know how much all the other stuff that only works if we all do it is working out here in the USA…