Category: personal

Labor Day

So, here it is, Labor Day. If you’d told me back in March that I’d still be working from home in September, and too afraid to take NJ Transit into NYC to visit a few museums on Labor Day, I’d… well, I’d be a little depressed but I probably wouldn’t be that surprised. I didn’t initially expect this thing to last so long, but there were good reasons to suspect that it would be around at least until the end of 2020, even back in March. I was ruminating in my last post about whether or not I could talk myself into going into NYC today; I’ve definitely given up on that idea.

Walking


I’ve been going out for a morning walk nearly every day since the beginning of this thing in March. That habit has been one of the bright spots of the last several months. I’ve gotten into the habit of taking a few photos on my walks and picking one of them to save to Day One, along with a short journal entry, usually just a sentence of two. Day One tracks streaks, if you post to it every day, and my current streak is nearing 200 days. (Looking back, it appears that my current streak started on March 10, just before the pandemic lockdown.) I post about other stuff in Day One too, but I almost always start the day with a photo from my walk.

Often I just walk a circuit down Main St, up one of the side streets, then down High Street, back to Main St, and back to my front door. I can get a good 20-minute, 1-mile walk out of that. On weekends, though, I’ll often walk along the Peters Brook Greenway. I can get some nice photos along there. I took the hibiscus photo in this post yesterday morning, just about one minute before getting bitten by a mosquito. That mosquito bite bothered me a lot more than it should have. I’d gotten so used to getting into a nice relaxed state on these walks, and it’s been so long since I’ve been bitten by a mosquito, that I took it as something of a personal affront. And of course my mind started playing out all sorts of nightmare scenarios. (Can you get COVID-19 from a mosquito bite? Almost definitely not. Whew.) But I got back out there this morning and did a nice 40-minute walk along the Greenway again. This time, though, I tried to keep a little further away from the water.

Reading

I really didn’t do anything much useful yesterday, and I don’t plan on doing much today either. Yesterday, I read the “City of Bane” issues of Batman, which were the end of Tom King’s run on the title. My Goodreads review for the second half of that story nearly turned into a long essay on the Trump presidency, but I held myself back. Finishing that story got me thinking about King’s run on Batman, which started with the DC Rebirth event from the summer of 2016, which was of course just a few months before the 2016 election. That got me thinking about how much the world has changed over the last four years, and especially over the last six months. And how much it might change over the next, say, six months, or four years. I’d started reading monthly comics again in 2016 with the DC Rebirth event, and have keep reading them, though I’ve dropped Batman and Detective recently and I don’t have any titles on my current subscription list that were on it back in 2016. And I’m thinking of dropping monthly books entirely again. (But this is a subject I’ve blogged about too many times.)

Listening

Bandcamp has continued to do their Bandcamp Friday thing, where they waive their revenue share and give all the money from sales to the musicians. I last bought anything from them in June, so I was overdue to spend some money on music. I wound up spending around $75 this past Friday, buying seven albums (all digital), including something called Good Music to Avert the Collapse of American Democracy, a compilation benefiting the voting rights group Fair Fight. So I hope my $20 helps, though I’m not optimistic about the future of American democracy, to be honest.

almost the end of summer

Well, here it is, almost Labor Day, and almost six months since the COVID-19 stuff started. Things are continuing to open up a bit more. I went for a haircut on Saturday, my first since February. I’ve been trimming my own hair since then, and honestly not doing the best job. Since my regular barber decided to retire during the pandemic shutdown, I had to go to Sport Clips, which was… ok, but not really the same quality as the 80-year-old Italian barber I’ve been going to for the last 20 years. NJ has also recently allowed gyms to reopen, and will be allowing limited indoor dining starting this weekend.

I haven’t been keeping really close track of what’s going on with school reopenings, but I actually saw a crossing guard out this morning, so I guess at least some schools around here are open now, for (presumably) some in-person instruction.

The Met and MoMA are both open now. As I mentioned last month, I’ve really been missing my visits to both of those museums. Here’s a post from a year ago today, talking about a couple of my NYC museum visits from last summer. Sigh. I’m pretty sure I’m not going to try going into NYC this weekend, but I’m still toying with the idea. It’s tempting. I haven’t really done much of anything this summer, aside from work, exercise, reading, and watching TV. (Well, and sleeping and eating too, I guess.) I haven’t traveled more than 15 miles from my home since March. And I only went that far for doctor’s visits.

Here’s an article from the Washington Post, by someone who went to the Met and MoMA right after they reopened. And here’s a visitor’s guide from the NY Times, with some information on the current exhibits at the Met and MoMA, and the new rules for getting in. It looks like they’re both open Sunday and Monday (Labor Day), so… maybe I can talk myself into it. Or maybe I should just order myself copies of Making The Met, 1870–2020 and MoMA Now, and stay home and enjoy the museums from afar.

Five months and counting

We’ve just passed the five month mark since this whole COVID-19 thing kicked into high gear. My last day in the office was Thursday March 12. I took Friday March 13 off and, at that time, wasn’t even sure if we were going to be allowed to work from home the following week. Well, we were, and I’ve been working from home since. At the end of May, it looked like we might have to come back in August. That got pushed to September, and has now been pushed to October 5. Meanwhile, I never even got a chance to clean out my desk, so it’s probably still cluttered with a desk calendar stuck at March 12, a few boxes of granola bars that likely expired a month or two ago, and random scribbled notes from whatever I was working on in March. (The wasted granola bars bother me more than they probably should.) It seems like we’ve been living in a state of denial through this whole thing, where we’re always a month away from reopening everything, but that date keeps getting pushed back.

I’ve really been missing my trips into New York to visit The Met and MoMA. The Met is supposed to be reopening on August 27 for members and August 29 for the public, and MoMA plans to open on August 27. I don’t think I’m ready to go in to New York yet though. I’m not ready to deal with NJ Transit, Newark Penn Station, the NYC subway, or all of the extra stuff that would be involved in getting into and moving through the museums. But I’m tempted to give it a try. I spent a little time last night thinking through it, but couldn’t really come up with a plan that sounded like it would be both safe and fun.

One thing that’s probably a bright spot is how well the S&P 500 is doing right now. It’s at a new record high, which should probably make me happy, given how much of my retirement money is in S&P 500 index funds. But it’s a little unnerving for some reason. Maybe I just don’t know how to process good news? Or I just don’t trust anything that looks like it might be good news?

I have a bunch of other stuff I wanted to blog about, including some tech stuff and some comic book stuff, but I should really stop now and plop myself down in front of the TV and relax for a bit.

a day off

I took today as a PTO day. I had a dentist’s appointment in the morning. Normally, I would just start work late after that, but I realized that the year is almost half over and I’d only taken one PTO day so far. And (again) normally, when I take a Friday off during the summer, I generally go into Manhattan and spend the day checking out museums and walking around parks and stuff like that. That’s all off the table now, obviously. I really had no plans today beyond the dentist’s appointment.

After going for a walk and killing some time poking around at stuff on my laptop, I decided to try giving blood. I haven’t given in a while, and I know the blood supply is low right now, since they can’t really do blood drives as usual. So I made an appointment and drove over to the New Brunswick donor center. I’d never been there before. It’s just a nondescript building on a side-street downtown. They were following reasonable precautions, checking temperature before entering and stuff like that. Before you can donate, you need to fill out a questionnaire on a laptop. I’m hoping that they were wiping those down between uses, though I didn’t actually see anybody doing that. Anyway, I got through the first step but got turned away because my blood pressure was too low. So that was kind of a waste of time, but it got me out of the apartment for a while at least.

Between the dentist’s appointment and the blood center, I had more human contact today that I’ve had since the lockdown started. A lot more really, since the main room of the blood center is basically one big open room, and there were about a dozen people in it. Most were wearing masks, but the three or four people who had finished donating and were at the snack tables had their masks off so they could eat and drink.

I’m seeing some posts on Facebook from local restaurants that are going to start doing outdoor dining on Monday the 15th. And “personal care” businesses are set to start reopening next Monday, the 22nd. Murphy’s stay-at-home order was lifted earlier this week too. (That was largely symbolic, but still worth noting.) I’m not sure how good an idea any of this is, but nobody’s asking my opinion.

I have a bunch of other stuff I want to blog about, but maybe I should stop for now. I also have a bunch of stuff I wanted to get done today, and it’s now 2 PM and I haven’t really done much of it.

Yet another week

I should probably stop blogging about pointless mundane stuff, but… I’m not going to. It makes me feel better. And nobody really has to read any of this, so I might as well.

I’ve mentioned previously my experiment with home grocery delivery from Whole Foods. Last week, I’d pretty much decided not to do it again. But I started feeling a little sick last night, and didn’t feel any better this morning. So I went ahead and put in a Whole Foods order for delivery, figuring it would be safer for everyone if I didn’t go to the grocery store this week. Things seemed to be going well with it. They made a few reasonable substitutions. And there was only one item they were out of and didn’t have a substitute for. The delivery guy showed up at 8 AM, no problem. But he only dropped off one bag, when there should have been three. So I didn’t get most of my order. To make a long story short, I got a credit from Amazon for the missing items, then went out to ShopRite and bought all the other stuff I needed, since it didn’t look like the missing bags were going to show up. So that was kind of a failure. Then, at 10:30 AM, someone randomly showed up with the other two bags. So now I have a bunch of extra stuff, and a very full refrigerator and freezer. I probably still have the credit from Amazon too, so I guess it all worked out? Either way, it was all more trouble than it was worth. (And as to feeling sick: I’m still not quite right, but I think it’s just an upset stomach.)

On a completely different topic: I’m a little worried about the comic book industry. DC just announced that they’re withdrawing their business from Diamond entirely, and using two new distributors. There’s a round-up of reaction and some analysis here. I wouldn’t want to own a comic book store right now. I’m not sure how this is all going to play out. Maybe everything will be fine? But probably not. I’m still ordering comics from Westfield, but it’s getting harder for me to justify the expense. They skipped shipping anything in April (for obvious reasons). My May shipment showed up last week, and it only had two comics in it. So the shipping cost was higher than the cost of the actual comics. I just placed my order for this month (for stuff that should ship in August) and I only had four regular books on my order. I added a couple of one-shots, so hopefully I’ll get at least six books. With delays and cancellations, I think I’ll probably be averaging 4-6 comics per month, for the rest of the year, which isn’t really enough to justify the shipping cost. So it would make sense for me to just switch to digital. But I feel like now would be a bad time to cut and run on Westfield. Their service has been great, and supporting a (relatively) small company seems like a good idea right now.

On a bright note, the 2020 Eisner Award nominees have been announced. I haven’t heard anything about how they’re going to actually hand out the awards, since SDCC is of course canceled. Maybe they’ll do a virtual awards gala, or maybe they’ll just issue a press release with the winners, and then do something to celebrate them at the 2021 con (assuming there is a 2021 con). There’s a lot of stuff on the list that I haven’t read. Some of it is stuff I’ve been wanting to read but haven’t gotten around to (like Immortal Hulk), and a lot of it is stuff I’ve never heard of. Looking at stuff I’ve actually read, there’s Death Wins a Goldfish, by Brian Rea, which I read just recently. And The Handmaid’s Tale: The Graphic Novel, which I read a few months ago. And I think that’s about it. So there’s still definitely some quality comics work getting published, and there’s still a ton of it that I haven’t read.

SharePoint, social distancing, civil unrest, and so on

I need to start a new SharePoint Online project at work soon. It’ll be an attempt to move an on-prem SharePoint 2013 site, with a fair amount of custom code, to SPO. I haven’t had time to learn much about SPO yet. I’ve taken a couple of pokes at it, but I’d been having trouble finding the right resources.

I “attended” Microsoft’s virtual Build conference this year, and had hoped for some useful SharePoint content, but there wasn’t much. About the only thing I could find was this session on the Microsoft 365 developer program. I already knew about that, and have an account, so that wasn’t too useful. It did, however, point me in the direction of a web page that (in turn) pointed me to this course on extending SharePoint. That seems to be what I need to get started.

I’m cautiously enthusiastic about learning this stuff, but I’m a little leery of the dev stack that they’re recommending. I have some limited experience with the tools they’re using (gulp, yeoman, node.js, and so on), but this stuff always seems like a house of cards to me. Too many different tools, all from different open source projects, pulling in possibly hundreds of different files, all just to get the scaffolding for a “Hello World” project up and running. Well, I need to remain positive and give it a try. I made it through the first “Hello World” example today, and I’m hoping I’ll have time to make some more progress tomorrow.

Since the dev stack includes node.js, I found myself visiting the node.js web site today. They’ve changed their home page to contain a Black Lives Matter message. (I’m not sure how long they’ll leave it up, so here’s a link to an archive.org snapshot.) We had a fairly small and very peaceful BLM march in Somerville over the weekend. And protests in NJ have mostly been peaceful, with some exceptions. I don’t have much to say about all this, other than that I hope something positive comes out of it all. I’m afraid that it’s going to get worse before it gets better though. (My own contribution to this situation was to start catching up on all the Black Lightning episodes on my TiVo. And to keep listening to the Invisible Man audiobook that I started a while back. So, not much, really.)

Meanwhile, NJ is starting to open back up a bit. Today actually marks three months since the first COVID-19 case in NJ, according to the newscast I just watched. I think that Murphy is acting with a reasonable level of caution, all things considered. I am worried about the “knuckleheads” who might push things a little too far and cause another spike in cases. I’ve actually been venturing out a bit more myself this week. I had a doctor’s appointment, then had to go to Quest for some blood work. And I’ve got a dentist’s appointment next week. It feels a little weird, going out and driving and stuff. I’m really wondering about how “armored up” the dentist and hygienist are going to be for my appointment. Dental work has got to  be pretty high-risk, given the level of contact necessary.

Here’s an article about the current state of things in downtown Somerville. And here’s one on a plan to close off Main Street to car traffic a few nights a week, and use the road for outdoor dining. It’s an interesting plan, though if it’s not implemented carefully, it could be a disaster. I want to see Somerville’s restaurants have a chance to do some business this summer, but not if it means that the whole street is crammed with people eating and drinking and spreading germs. If they can keep things reasonable and organized, maybe it’s not a bad idea. If things get crowded (like on a normal, pre-COVID-19, Friday night), then I’m going to be locking myself in my apartment and keeping the windows closed.

Another week down

This is undoubtedly going to be another rambling hodgepodge post. It’s Saturday morning and I didn’t get much sleep last night. You’ve been warned.

In last Saturday’s post, I mentioned that my employer might have people start coming back to work in June. At that point, they hadn’t actually announced anything, but now they have. The details of the plan can be found here. It all seems pretty reasonable, I guess, but I’m still a bit worried about it. I might be able to opt out of the August A/B plan and continue working from home. I need to talk to my doctor. (Speaking of which, I haven’t seen my doctor since before this thing started. I hope he’s OK.)

I have an appointment with my dentist for a regular cleaning coming up in mid-June. I’d been assuming I’d have to reschedule it, but my dentist has reopened his office and called to confirm the appointment yesterday. He is spacing appointments out a bit more, so multiple patients aren’t in the office at the same time, so he changed the time of the appointment, but it’s still on the same day. And I assume he and the hygienist will be using a lot more PPE than usual. It’ll be interesting to see how that works out.

Looking back at previous blog entries in the “on this day” column for today, I saw one about the Big Bambu exhibit at the Met from ten years ago. That was probably my all-time favorite roof garden installation. In a normal year, I would have been up there by now, maybe more than once. They are still planning on going ahead with this year’s exhibit, but we’ll see what happens with that. It was originally scheduled to run from April 21 through October 25.

I decided to take another shot at getting my groceries delivered from Whole Foods this week. This time, I put in the order on Friday night for Saturday delivery, in the 8-10 AM window. I’m tempted to write in way too much detail about this week’s order, but I’ll boil it down to a few points. They were out of stock on four items, and offered substitutions for all four. Only two of those were reasonable substitutions though. (Example: seltzer water is not a good substitution for iced coffee!) So, again, I had to make a supplemental trip to ShopRite to pick up some stuff. And their prices are, in general, higher than ShopRite’s. (There’s a reason why their nickname is “Whole Paycheck.”) Things went pretty smoothly though. The delivery guy showed up at around 8:30 AM and brought the bags all the way up to my door. Everything was well-packed and nothing was missing. So, while it’s convenient, I don’t think it’s going to become a regular thing.

My plan for this afternoon involves maybe watching a meditation-related talk at 1 PM and the SpaceX Demo-2 launch at around 3 PM. There’s also been quite a bit of WonderCon from Home content posted recently. There are at least a few panels in there that I’d like to watch. So life is (relatively) good. I’ve still got a job, I’ve got groceries, and I’ve got plenty of content to keep me entertained and/or distracted.

A Quiet Memorial Day

As I mentioned in my last post, there will be no bike race today, so it should be a pretty quiet Memorial Day here in Somerville. I went out on a relatively long walk this morning: two miles, thirty minutes. I don’t usually use my AirPods while I’m walking, but today I decided to try that, and listened to the new Vessels VIII compilation from Future Astronauts. I didn’t see too many other people out, and the weather was great. So it was a nice relaxing walk.

I’ve added some more photos to my May 2020 Flickr album, covering all of the random photos I’ve taken since I last uploaded any, on May 3. Nothing special, just random photos. I’ve been trying to maintain certain habits since this thing started, as a way to help myself stay sane. Doing a morning walk, and taking a photo or two, is one of those habits.

I’ve been looking back on past posts again, both here and in my Day One journal. I see that’s it’s been a year since I bought my Xbox One. As I predicted, I kind of lost interest in it at some point, and I’m mostly just using it as a DVD & Blu-ray player now. I canceled my EA Access subscription, which would otherwise have billed me for a second year this week. I’d really only been using it to play Bejeweled 3, which is kind of silly. Bejeweled is really more of an iPhone game, and certainly easy to play on an iPhone. I’ve considered trying to get back into some video games during this pandemic, but haven’t really managed to do that. I feel like doing something a bit more interactive than reading and watching TV would be a good idea, but can’t really work up too much enthusiasm for it. I guess I’m really just not a “video game guy” anymore.

I started working my way through the Resident Alien comic book series this weekend, and will probably read volume 5 today. That one was published in 2018, and is the most recent. There’s supposed to be one more mini-series coming, and I’m looking forward to buying that one when it comes out (hopefully soon). It’s a really good series, and has been a pleasant distraction this weekend.

One more habit that I’ve been trying to maintain during the pandemic is meditation. I’ve been working my way through a forty-day course called Mindfulness Daily At Work in the Insight Timer app on my iPhone. It’s pretty good. I’m still not sure that meditation helps me that much, but I guess it helps me enough to be worth the relatively minor time investment that I’m putting into it.

Memorial Day Weekend

I think this is the end of week ten since I started working from home. It’s probably time to stop keeping track of which week it is. This is just the way it is now. My employer is starting to talk about reopening our offices, slowly, but they haven’t officially announced anything yet. Right now, the official word is that we’re all still working from home through June 1. I’m fairly certain I’ll still be working from home through June. I might have to start going back into the office on a limited basis in July. We’ll see. It would be nice to have more certainty, but, as Nicholas Kristof points out in his column this week, “Let’s Remember That the Coronavirus Is Still a Mystery.” I’m trying to accept, with humility, the uncertainty that there is around this thing and take things day by day.

NJ’s COVID-19 dashboard shows that we’re now over 150,000 cases, 10,000 deaths, and 500,000 tests here in NJ. Gov. Murphy has been gradually loosening restrictions. The maximum size of a “gathering” has been increased from 10 to 25. Beaches are open this weekend, with some restrictions.

I’m definitely not going anywhere this weekend though. I’ll be staying in, reading comics, maybe playing some video games, and just generally puttering around the apartment. I generally spend Memorial Day at home, watching the Tour of Somerville. The tour has, of course, been canceled this year, for the first time since World War II. So it’ll be quiet in Somerville on Monday.

I had wanted to “attend” a number of the sessions from Microsoft Build this past week, but we had a bit of an emergency at work that took up most of my time, so I pretty much missed it all. I did have some time Friday afternoon, so I went back and watched some of the stuff that’s available on-demand. I have a few more sessions bookmarked, and I’d like to watch those this weekend.

I got an email from the Metropolitan Museum this week saying that my membership would be extended for however long the museum is closed. I was expecting that, and I suspect that MoMA will do the same. (MoMA had extended all memberships when they had closed for renovations last year, so they’ll probably do the same for this situation.) The Met is now tentatively planning to reopen in August. I think that may be a little optimistic, but it’ll be great if they can. I haven’t heard anything about MoMA or any other museums in NYC making plans to reopen yet. Museums elsewhere in the country are starting to reopen, but of course no other city has been as hard-hit as NYC. I don’t think I’ll feel comfortable going into New York for museum trips (or anything else) until we’ve got a vaccine and/or an effective treatment for COVID-19.

When this thing started, I, like many other people, started looking into the possibility of getting groceries delivered, or at least just doing grocery pickup. At that time, all of the various options for grocery delivery were overwhelmed, so I just kept making my weekly trips to ShopRite as usual. This morning, it was raining pretty hard and I decided to check and see if grocery delivery was possible. Surprisingly, it was. ShopRite had delivery slots open, but not until the middle of the week. Whole Foods, on the other hand, had same-day slots open. So I went ahead and placed an order. I put in the order at 8 AM, for delivery between 10 AM and noon. It’s 11 AM now, and the order just arrived. The process was pretty smooth. They were out of stock on one item, though, so I guess I’m going to run over to ShopRite today anyway, at least for a quick trip. I don’t think I’ll switch over to delivery on a regular basis, but it’s nice to know that it’s an option.

This was a pretty random post, but it’s been a couple of weeks since I’ve blogged, so I thought I should gather my thoughts and write something. I may write some more later this weekend, if I get bored and/or feel the urge.

 

ready for May

I’ve been blogging about once a week through this pandemic. But, for some reason, I’m going for three days in a row this weekend (Friday, Saturday, and Sunday). I’m not sure why. Probably because it’s the end of one month and the beginning of a new one, so I’m taking stock and thinking about stuff. The Washington Post published a long overview article about April yesterday, and it’s a doozy.

I did a couple of fun things yesterday evening, including watching most of Mark Evanier’s Cartoon Voices panel live, and all of a live webcast of Neil Gaiman speaking with N. K. Jemisin. So I got a little bit of the feel of being at a good comic con. And, for some reason, watching these things live always feels a little more exciting than watching the recording later.

I’m feeling a little better this morning than I did yesterday. I didn’t sleep too well last night, but it was better than the previous night. And since I have nothing at all on my to-do list for today, I can just take it easy. I went out for a half-hour long walk this morning, and that was quite nice. Not too many other people were out. The rain had stopped, the sun was shining, and the birds were chirping.

After my walk this morning, I uploaded some more photos to Flickr, updated my March/April album, and created a new May album. I’m not sure how long I’ll keep taking photos and uploading them, but, for now, it’s a nice little thing to do.

It’s supposed to get up to 78º later today, so that might be a problem. I don’t really want to close the windows and turn on the air conditioning, but I might have to. Otherwise, my allergies will really kick in and I won’t be able to sleep again tonight.

I’m again looking at the “On This Day” sidebar on my blog, and I see that five years ago today, I went into NYC, and visited the Whitney and the High Line. This would have been a great weekend to do something like that.

I’ve been meaning to post a bit about the music I’ve been listening to lately, but haven’t gotten around to including that in any of my other recent posts. I’ve been listening mostly to slow, quiet, stuff. Yesterday, I pulled up Max Richter’s Sleep to help me relax and take a little nap. (I bought a copy of that back in 2018, and it’s come in handy on several occasions.)

And I just bought a copy of Ludovico Einaudi’s Seven Days Walking, which is a seven-part work, coming in at about six hours total. It’s quite simple and relaxing, and works well as background music. I didn’t know much about Einaudi, but I’ve looked into him a bit, and he’s apparently quite popular, as classical composers/musicians go. He’s “the most-streamed classical artist of all time,” according to this article. But, apparently, he’s somewhat looked down upon by serious critics, if this review in The Guardian is any indication. Or this one, which compares his music to Thomas Kinkade’s painting. (Ouch.) I’m fine with that, though. I’m enjoying his music, and it’s helping to keep me sane.

And for a couple of shorter works: I recently bought Neroli (Thinking Music Part IV), by Brian Eno and the ZeroZeroZero soundtrack by Mogwai. I’ve also been thinking about picking up some stuff by The Necks, after listening to a bit of their album Drive By and reading some stuff about them, including this old article from the Times.

So, as you can see, it’s mostly been quiet, slow, instrumental music. I’ve also been listening to a bit of WQXR on weekday mornings. That gets me started with some shorter classical pieces, some nice chat from their morning host, Jeff Spurgeon, and a little bit of news (but not too much).

It’s nearly 11 AM now, so I should really wrap this up. I still don’t have much of a plan for today, but that’s fine. I think I’ll go out for another walk before it gets too hot out, then have lunch and read some comics.