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.

 

Still staying at home

From Where Americans are still staying at home the most, in the Washington Post:

In New Jersey, second only to New York in covid-19 deaths, people are spending 96 percent of their time at home, just 1.7 percent less than at the peak. That is both the highest stay-home percentage and the smallest change of any state. Gov. Phil Murphy (D) reopened state parks and golf courses on May 2, but his stay-at-home order is still in effect.

I’ve been going out a bit more over the last week or two, but not by much, and I’m wearing a mask now almost every time I go out. (I’m still skipping the mask on my early morning walks, since I don’t generally see more than one or two people that early, and I can easily keep my distance from them.) Generally, I’m alone in my apartment for 23 to 23.5 hours each day.

War and Peace

This morning, I stumbled across a quote that I’d highlighted in War and Peace, when I was reading it last year. It seems kind of relevant to our current situation, so I thought I’d share it here.

At the approach of danger there are always two voices that speak with equal force in the heart of man: one very reasonably tells the man to consider the nature of the danger and the means of avoiding it; the other even more reasonable says that it is too painful and harassing to think of the danger, since it is not a man’s power to provide for everything and escape from the general march of events; and that it is, therefore, better to turn aside from the painful subject till it has come, and to think of what is pleasant. In solitude a man generally yields to the first voice; in society to the second.

(Make of it what you will. I’m not going to editorialize, though its application to current events should be fairly obvious.)

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.

exhausted

This post is mostly going to be more of the same stuff I was posting about yesterday. First, today was supposed to be Free Comic Book Day, but of course that’s been postponed. I found some folks trying to do FCBD-ish stuff today on Twitter, but nothing that was too interesting to me. This weekend is also Awesome Con Online. They have some mildly interesting stuff going on, but honestly nothing that I’m likely to watch.

I had some trouble sleeping last night, but I still got out of bed at 6 this morning and worked my way through my to-do list: laundry, grocery shopping, bank, and a few other little things. I even drove my car for the first time in a month. (Apparently, you have to do that once in a while, or the rats take over.) It’s just past noon now, and I’m ready for a nap. And, since it’s Saturday, I think I can just go ahead and do that.

I had a few more things I wanted to mention here, but I’ve just about run out of steam. So I guess it’s time for that nap.

still here, still home.

My Day One journal has been showing me some interesting stuff via the “On This Day” feature recently. I’ve also been poking around my blog, via the “On This Day” plugin. Here are some examples:

  • One year ago today, I was on my way to Redmond for a Microsoft event. (I mentioned it here when I got back.)
  • Four years ago today, I went into NYC and went to the Met and MoMA. (I just checked, and I’m pretty sure I haven’t been to the Met or MoMA since October 2019.)
  • In 2005, on this day, I went to a Dreamworks Animation presentation in NYC with a friend.
  • Three years ago on 4/29, I went to the Star Trek Original Series Set Tour in Ticonderoga with a couple of friends. (We’ve talked about going back again this year, but hadn’t made any plans.)
  • One year ago on 4/27, I went to the Somerset Patriots season opener. (The Patriots are doing an opening day at home thing today. It’s a nice effort, but there’s not really much point to it.)

The general theme here being, of course, that late April and early May are usually a good time to get out of town and do some fun stuff. Not this year though!

We just got the news at work today that we’ll be working from home through to at least June 1. And, while Governor Murphy is reopening state parks this weekend, most of the “stay at home” restrictions will likely remain in place through most (or all) of May. We’re making some progress in NJ, it seems, but there’s still a long way to go. And I think it’s going to be a very long time before I want to go into Manhattan and do any of the things that I used to enjoy doing in NYC, like visiting museums, seeing movies, and all that stuff.

I’m trying to enjoy some of the “at home” stuff that’s being done lately, but I haven’t had time for too much of it.  I did watch the Space Songs: Through the Distance event that the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum did last night, and that was quite good.

And I want to watch the Cartoon Voices panel that Mark Evanier is going to do on YouTube tomorrow. I missed the Sergio Aragones thing he did earlier this week, but I will probably watch the recording of that later. (I would have liked to have gone to WonderCon this year. And San Diego, though that was already ruled out for me.)

The Met and MoMA have both been posting a lot of interesting online resources, but I haven’t had the time to look at any of them, really. I should maybe take some time for that this weekend too.

Anyway, I guess I’ve survived working from home and spending approximately 98% of my time alone in my apartment through most of March and the whole month of April, so there’s no reason why I can’t make it through May too.

Six weeks in

I think this is the end of the sixth week of social distancing / work from home / whatever this is. I’m starting to lose track. My last post was on Easter Sunday, two weeks ago, so I thought I should check in again. I don’t have much to report. I’m still employed and still healthy.

I’d mostly avoided take-out for the first four weeks of this thing, but I started getting more adventurous last week. After six weeks without pizza, I finally decided to just go ahead and order a whole 12″ pie last night. I only intended on eating half of it, but I wound up eating the whole thing. So I’m going to have to try to eat healthier today. I’ve been doing a pretty good job of sticking to routines, including staying with pretty much the same diet I was following before this started. But I’ve actually dropped a couple of pounds, so I think there’s room for an occasional pizza in there, as long as I don’t overdo it.

I’ve been going out for morning walks on most weekdays since this thing started. Generally, I go for a walk at the same time that I would normally leave for work. I try to take a photo or two on these walks. I’ve been writing short journal entries in Day One every day, and saving a photo with the entry. Today, I took a bunch of those photos and created an album on Flickr. You can find it here. They’re mostly just random photos of flowers and trees. But the routine of going for the walk, taking a photo or two, saving it to Day One, and writing a little journal entry is one of the things that’s helping me stay sane.

So, this hasn’t been much of an update. As usual, there’s a lot of news I could link to, but I’m not really in the mood to do that right now. I’ve gotten my laundry and grocery shopping done, and went for a nice walk, so now I just want to relax for a bit.

Easter Sunday

Well, today is apparently Easter Sunday. I haven’t really celebrated Easter in a traditional way in several years, so being at home alone on Easter isn’t that weird for me. Still, I usually try to get out and do something on Easter. Last year, I went out for a nice walk and uploaded some photos to Flickr. I could of course go out for a walk today, and might do that a bit later, but I’m thinking about just staying in all day. I had to go out a few times yesterday, and it was exhausting.

I have a bunch of stuff that I want to blog about today, and I’m not sure how to organize it all, so this post may be somewhat scattershot. We’re about a month into this whole social distancing thing, and there’s a lot on my mind.

Masks

I guess I’m going to start with masks. Here in the US, the initial advice to everyone was that wearing masks in public was unnecessary. This gradually evolved into the situation we have today, where mask-wearing in public, here in NJ, is now required in most public places. It was required in supermarkets starting last week, and has now been expanded to include situations like picking up take-out food. If you’re interesting in the science behind mask-wearing, Ars Technica has a good article on that. And the Pinboard guy has been pushing for public mask-wearing in the US for a while, and has a good blog post on the subject.

Acquiring masks here in NJ hasn’t been easy though. I haven’t seen them for sale anywhere, though of course I’ve only been to ShopRite and Walgreens in the past month. I watched a video showing how to make a mask with a bandana and two hair ties, and managed to make myself one that way. (I had a spare bandana, but I had to buy hair ties.) That will do in a pinch, but it’s not great. I also went online and ordered masks from a few different sources. Only one of those orders has shown up so far. It was an order of two apparently homemade cloth masks, via eBay, which shipped from Texas. They’re reasonably well-made and fit me OK. I don’t know if they’re going to last through too many washes, as the straps don’t seem too sturdy. But hopefully, they’ll be good enough for now. I also ordered a five-pack from Buck Mason, which should be shipping at the end of April or early May. I’m hoping those will be good quality and will last me a while. The options for mail-order face masks right now seem to be: (1) eBay, (2) Etsy, and (3) various mail-order clothing retailers that have added cloth masks to their stores, but aren’t able to keep up with demand. I found out about the Buck Mason masks from a GQ article. That article lists a bunch of other similar sources. (I found a fancy/ridiculous $185 face mask by following a link in that article. And, no, I’m not buying that one.)

My trip to ShopRite yesterday was my first adventure in public mask-wearing. It didn’t go too bad, but I found that my glasses were constantly fogging up. I’ve read articles about how you can prevent that (Kotaku, Lifehacker), but I’m not too optimistic about the methods they’re suggesting. I guess I’ll stick a tissue under the top of my mask the next time I go out and see how that works.

Comics

I have a few follow-ups to last week’s post on the state of the comics industry, and other comics-related stuff. First, here’s an article from the NY Times on the situation. It’s actually a pretty good summary of the situation. It used to be that mainstream articles about the comics industry routinely got stuff wrong, over-simplified things, and/or indulged in overused cliches (usually related to the 1960’s Batman TV show). But they’ve gotten a lot better in recent years.

I was going to link to some other stores about the current state of the comics industry here, but there’s probably not much point. There’s a lot of speculation, but nothing much solid. I will say that now is probably a good time to support some indie comics and charity fundraising bundles. I recently bought a Firelight Isle Kickstarter and a COVID-19 Humble Bundle. There’s probably a bunch of other stuff out there I could be buying, if I had the time and inclination to go looking.

I realized just yesterday that this weekend would have been WonderCon. I went last year, and had been seriously thinking about going this year too. It’s funny to think that, as recently as February 29, it still seemed possible that WonderCon wouldn’t be canceled. There’s a fairly low-key WonderCon at Home thing going on this weekend instead. I poked around on the site and checked out the Twitter hashtag, and there’s some cute stuff there, but I haven’t been able to work up too much enthusiasm for anything there.

How I’m Doing

(…for lack of a better section header.) I’m very glad that I still have a job, and that I can work from home, and that work stuff seems to be pretty stable, so far. And I’m glad that I appear to be healthy, and have enough to eat, and have TV and comics and books and music with which to distract myself. I’m very worried about how bad things could get if this crisis drags on for too long though. I’m worried about myself, and my friends, and the world at large, I guess. I mentioned above that I kind of exhausted myself yesterday, just dealing with some everyday stuff: laundry, grocery shopping, and a trip to the bank. All the hand-washing, mask-wearing, awkward maneuvering around other people, keeping up with new rules, dealing with the spotty availability of everyday things. It all adds up to extra stress. I’ve been hoping that, at some point, things will settle down a bit, and I can get into a good rhythm. But there always seems to be something new that throws a wrench into the works. Yesterday, it was the new rules around mask-wearing, the fact that all of the self-checkout lanes at ShopRite were cash-only, the broken change machine in the laundry room… I found myself with a headache in the afternoon, and of course immediately started to worry about whether that was a symptom of COVID-19 or just a regular everyday headache. I’m thinking it’s just a regular headache, but it’s persisting a bit today. I’m going to try to take it easy today and just rest and relax and hope that tomorrow will be a nice “normal” work day. And I hope that anyone who made it this far down into my self-indulgent ramblings is having a good day, a good Easter (where applicable), and is happy and healthy.

 

worrying about comics

The plight the comics industry finds itself in right now pales in comparison to the general plight we all find ourselves in right now. But hey, I’m a comics fan, so I worry about comics.

Part of my concern is of course selfish: I want to be able to keep buying and reading the comics I love. I want to go to comic cons. But I also worry about all the people who make their living in the comics industry: writers, artists, publishers, resellers, con organizers, and so on. Most of them are pretty good people, and most of them aren’t rich.

There’s quite a conundrum going on right now: publishers could, conceivably, continue releasing comics digitally while most of the comic stores are closed. But, if they do that, then fans will buy the digital copies from Comixology and the stores will lose that income. And some fans may never go back to the stores. But if the publishers hold off on any publishing, then they’ve got no money coming in at all. Meanwhile, Diamond isn’t shipping comics, accepting shipments from publishers, or paying vendors. So nobody can sell anything through Diamond.

ComicHub had a mildly interesting plan to allow fans to buy new comics online from their local shop and get advance digital copies of them, but that plan seems to have fizzled out. Marvel is now pausing work on a third of their upcoming releases. I’d expect DC to do something similar.

Comixology (owned by Amazon), meanwhile, is currently offering a two-month trial of Comixology Unlimited (which normally has a one-month trial). And Marvel (owned by Disney) is offering up some free stories on Marvel Unlimited, presumably hoping to snag a few new subscribers while comic shops are closed. I guess I have mixed feelings about this stuff. It bothers me that it might be only the very large companies that come through this thing in good shape. But, hey, we all have to make a living, and, well, I work for a pretty large company too.

John Jackson Miller wrote a great post on his blog giving some historical context and offering some hope for the future. It’s worth reading. Meanwhile, I just placed my April order with Westfield (for stuff shipping in June), so I guess I’m still optimistic that things will get back to “normal” at some point, and I’ll be able to buy and read good old-fashioned 32-page comics again at some point.

work from home, week two, done

I’m not sure I should really be writing a blog post right now, but I think maybe it’ll help me sort some stuff out. I haven’t been sleeping well, so it might not be super-coherent. Bear with me. (Or feel free to bail out. No one really needs to read my ramblings.)

I’ve now been working from home for two weeks, and it looks like my group will continue doing that for the foreseeable future. I think that our management has accepted this as the new normal this past week, since they’ve now deactivated our access cards for the building and told us that if we need anything from our desks that we need to get manager approval first, then the item can be picked up at the loading dock. And that we should only do this for critical items like medication or glasses. So my plan of going in at some point and picking up my granola bars, tissues, and hand sanitizer is now out of the question. Oh well. It’s amazing how fast we went from “you can maybe work from home, I guess” to “you can’t enter the building even if you want to.”

I’ve got things set up now so that I can be reasonably productive from home. But, honestly, not nearly as productive as I can be in the office. I really only have room here for a single-monitor setup, and I’m used to working in a multiple-monitor setup. And the office chair that I have at home is OK for occasional use, but not really great for a full eight-hour work day. I’m wondering if it’s worth blowing $1300 on an Aeron chair for home use. That’s what we have in the office (though I’m not sure of the exact model we use). Or maybe I should figure out some way to use a standing desk at home. The limited amount of space I have here makes it hard to do much. Anyway, I’ll probably muddle through, by taking a lot of little breaks to stretch and walk around a little.

I’ve continued to do all of my grocery shopping at the local ShopRite, in person. I’d love to switch to delivery or pick-up, but all of the local options for delivery or pick-up are constantly booked solid. I’ve tried Instacart, ShopRite, Whole Foods, Target, and Walmart, and they’re all, always, booked up. I’ve heard that the way to get a slot is to go online right after midnight, when a new day opens up on the schedule, and grab a slot right away. I’m not sure I’m desperate enough to try that yet. (And maybe I should leave that option for people who actually need grocery delivery, as opposed to people like me who are just lazy and/or scared.) In theory, all of these services are trying to ramp up, but it’s definitely not going smoothly. I see that Instacart workers are planning to strike on Monday. I can’t blame them. If nothing else good comes out of this thing, maybe at least we can get better working conditions for “gig workers” like these folks. (Not that I’m optimistic about that, but you never know.)

In terms of living with the solitude of “social distancing,” I’ve found two recent articles helpful. One by Scott Kelly, who spent a year in space, and one by Jason Rezaian, who was imprisoned in Iran for almost two years.

I’ve been bookmarking articles about the mental health aspect of all this, though I’ll admit I haven’t been reading all of them. (And I probably shouldn’t be reading all of them. Obsessively reading/watching news about COVID-19 is one of the things to avoid, according to the experts.) Anyway, here’s an article on 10 Ways to Ease Your Coronavirus Anxiety from the NY Times. (Yes, even the NYT succumbs to publishing listicles occasionally.) And from the HBR: That Discomfort You’re Feeling Is Grief.

On the lighter side, if there is one, it seems that Americans Coping With the Coronavirus Are Clogging Toilets. People: do not flush paper towels or disinfectant wipes!

And, for anyone looking for distraction, here’s Brian Michael Bendis’ Stuck at Home Comic Book Reading List. There’s some good stuff on his list, though some of it is maybe a little too heavy for me right now. Speaking of comics, it’s looking like COVID-19 is going to do a lot of damage to the comic book industry. I know that this shouldn’t be the first thing on most people’s mind right now, but it is troubling for long-time fans like me (and of course more so for people who make their living in the industry). Diamond has halted new comics shipments into their warehouses. And a lot of shops are going to be in some trouble if they can’t keep selling regular monthly comics every Wednesday, as usual. I’m still ordering my books from Westfield Comics, and they’re still going, for now. Their statement about COVID-19 can be found here. I’d been thinking about dropping my monthly books at some point this year, but now it feels like I should keep buying them, just to help out.