Day #87 of Self-Isolation
Jun. 12th, 2020 09:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkat1. Apparently if you walk through a Cemetery long enough, you will eventually stumble across a tombstone/statue with your last name across the bottom of it.
No, I'm not going to show the bottom of the statue. Oh, I don't know if this is an omen or what, but apparently there's a Bear Statue right behind it.
The statue looked old (the angel statue not the bear), circa 1800s. So, make of that what you will.
Anyhow on the highlight of my wandering through Greenwood - a walk that I treated myself with after a long week cooped up in my one bedroom apartment working - was the rare sighting of not one, but two white-tailed hawks. Lovely big birds. I'd been walking down a path, looked straight ahead and then he was. I was trying to avoid people and there was a couple walking up the road I was about to enter, and another stopped on it. Then after taking a photo of it, I turned and looked up and another one was sitting on top of the statue that I was standing next too. So close. Yet so far away. (Far away in that it is VERY hard to take pictures of wildlife on the cell phone - there's not telescopic lense and it has a way of distancing things, I have to reformat, crop, and enlarge to get it to work. Also you can't get up in the bird's face - it will either fly away or attack you. It's not a flower or a statue. And for some reason what seems up close with the naked eye the cell phone camera or a camera in general likes to make seem far away. Unless of course you have a telescopic lense, which I do not. My brother was a photography major at one point - hence the reason I know all this. He likes to lecture me on it. Lecturing folks on a wide variety of topics is a family trait apparently - I think it may be genetic.)
I did what I could. Like I said above, ridiculously difficult to photograph well. But it made my day to see them. I had a huge grin on my face. Being out in nature - makes me happy. I need to find a place to retire where I don't need to drive and can wander about in nature periodically.
2. New York vs. Coronavirus, Racism and Police Brutality - mostly just Police Brutality and the Coronavirus...
New York has been busy,busy,busy. It really went to bat after getting caught with its pants down the first week of March. It did not take that sitting down, oh no, it got up, put on its boxing gloves and jumped into the ring. And not just the Coronavirus, but pretty much everything the Universe is sending its way. The latest? The Black Lives Matter Protests - which have about thirty to forty thousand people protesting across the State daily since George Floyd's death.
And our Governor, has a been a busy little Governor. I'm considering calling him "super-governor". Between fighting to restructure the hospital system, getting everyone in the state tested, building airports, restructuring crazy workplace, cleaning all the buses, trains and subways, and fighting the Federal Government...he's also found time to find a way to get the local communities around the state to restructure their police force. Plus, he hold press briefings every day.
What did he do today? He passed into law four bills and signed an executive order. What did it entail...ah...
Go HERE. On top of that, he signed an executive order in which all local communities have to provide a financing plan on how they intend to use their police force, and for what events, etc. What are they using them for and how, prior to being able to get any state funding. And they have until April 1, 2021 to do it. If they don't provide a plan showing how they are refinancing and reforming their police force by that date - no funding. By the way the local communities and police are "state funded" and the Federal Government has no say in it.
Wow.
They are however still protesting in my neighborhood. The picture was taken from across the street - because I am social distancing and still afraid of the virus. Even though it currently has a 1-2 % infection rate in New York according to their testing. And they have gone nuts with the testing.
On the Coronavirus front? New York has really gone nuts with testing. They are literally testing everyone they can get their hands on, some people more than once. All essential workers and nursing home workers get tested multiple times. Also they want all protestors to get tested. To date New York has tested 2,801,400 and it may be slightly more than that, since the John Hopkins COVID MAP of DOOM sometimes lags behind.
The news is still good regarding testing. Yesterday, we tested an extraordinary 72,395 New Yorkers for COVID. Of those tested, only 822 people were positive — or 1.1% of the total. This is great news: Even as New York has increased testing over the past few weeks, the number and percentage of positive results has stayed extremely low.
As a result of testing, a very slow re-opening process, monitoring, masks, social distancing, and handwashing and sanitation measures - New York appears to have beaten the virus. Instead of increasing as it is in other states, the infection rate is decreasing in New York. Our death rate is also falling, as is the number of new cases and hospitalizations. New York City has entered phase one of reopening - with manufacturing, curb-side pickup for non-essential retail, elective surgeries, ambulatory care, doctors visits, in store pick-up by appointment only, non-essential outdoor construction. It's slated to enter Phase 2 sometime in July, which is professional services headed back, along with libraries and musuems re-opening. Each phase is staggered and based on how many cases, how many hospitalizations, how many deaths. The MTA is slated to return to full service soon. And will slowly increase the number of trains and capacity, with mask wearing on all trains and public transportation mandatory.
Many retailers are waiting a bit to re-open. They are understandably shell-shocked, between the virus and the looting that happened a few weeks back (we only had one or two bad nights of it, nothing much since then and we haven't been under curfew since last Sunday), they are playing it safe. Macy's may open next week. Bloomingdales may wait a bit longer. Chanel, Aldo, and the others are holding out for a bit. I honestly don't blame them.
They are all boarded up at the moment. I don't want to be wandering around either. There's over 8 million people in NYC on a good day, and they've only tested 2.3 million. Also I'm not sure about the tests. I know too many people who've had it and did not get tested.
That's one nasty little virus. One twenty-two year old woman had to get a dual lung transplant because of it. And I know what happened with my family members. I'm playing it safe. That virus is painful. Luckily my workplace and Governor are letting me play it safe. I wish I could avoid the doctor's appointment next week - kind of dreading that, but no way around it. Avoiding it could put my long-term health at risk. Also my mother might drive me insane long distance if I skip it. Which is kind of the same thing.
3. My hair is growing out or rather long enough to pull back into a short pony tail, which I'm rather happy about. It's finally out of my face. The haircut I got in March was cute, but it was always flopping into my face. Now, not so much.
I see no reason to go back to the hair salon, and do not understand the people who feel the need to. Why? I can wait until 2021, no problem. In fact, now I have a legitimate excuse. Besides it's not like anyone really sees me, but me. And my hair looks a little shaggy, but otherwise fine.
Keep in mind that I tend to avoid getting my hair done as long as possible. Also I got my hair done on February 29. Not that long ago. The roots are showing, but they look fine. I normally do it every six to eight months anyhow. Like I said - I don't like getting my hair done. Never have. It's expensive and takes two-three hours, sitting with stylists that I have to come up with things to talk about, in an uncomfortable chair. Best part? Head massage.
4. Crazy Workplace
Spoke with Chidi today. He likes to call me with questions, he's fun to talk to. I asked him if he was protesting - he's not and has no inclination to do so.
Me: I get that. I wasn't exactly crazy about protesting and marching prior to the pandemic, I'm certainly not going to do it during one.
Chidi: It's mostly really young people - and I honestly don't think half of them even know or care what they are protesting about.
Me: Possibly true. Right now there's a bit of a controversy over what defund the police means - abolish or defund. I'm not sure we want to completely abolish.
Chidi: Exactly.
We also talked about Staff Meeting.
Me: So did you have a reaction to what boss told us during the staff meeting or none at all.
Chidi: Of course I had a reaction - you would have to be nuts not to have one or really stupid.
My theory is thusly confirmed that boss had indeed managed to stress out his entire department during the staff meeting.
Chidi: What is this? Are we being laid off? Or sent somewhere else? I've had enough change. I don't want anymore change. No more change.
ME: Yeah I get that. Although I seriously doubt we're being laid-off, we're lean to begin with. And he has a lot more work for us to do. What did you make of the suggestion to reach out to someone - who?
Chidi: Union reps. I did. And a bunch of other people did too.
Me: I really don't want to. Our union reps are kind of useless, also they already know -
Chidi: Actually they had no idea. Hadn't heard about it at all. If we all reach out at once - they might do something. You should reach out. Others from our group have.
Sigh.
So I reach out. And the union rep, as Chidi predicted, had no idea.
Union Rep: Where did you get this from? We've hear nothing at all.
Me: From a reliable source that shall remain undisclosed, except that it is the same one that informed all of my colleagues.
I repeated this to my mother, who laughing stated: "In other words, guess."
Sigh. I'd be more worried about this if Crazy Workplace hadn't been threatening to do it for the last twelve years and counting. Honestly they've been threatening to do this since I joined. So, I'm skeptical that they will actually pull it off. They have a lot of irons in the fire, if they get enough push-back, they may jump in another direction, regardless of what the over-paid and nutty organizational consultants suggested.
Every crazy workplace threatens me with re-organization, informing me that it will be better and more efficient. It never is. All it does is stress out all the employees, result in massive lay-offs, overworked folks and low morale. [It's a dumb idea. I don't know why people keep doing it. I've yet to see it work.] Also I don't see them laying us off at the moment - we're lean to begin with, there's more work coming our way, and the State is overwhelmed with unemployment claims as it is - the last thing they are going to do is add more.
In other news - regarding Crazy Workplace, I spent most of the day fighting my work place's technology. I had to find work-arounds for a lot of things. For the remote - had to go to Windows Virtual Drive, as opposed to Citrix which crashed, yet again. For awhile I thought I was the only one it crashed on - but the Admin came out with an email about using WVD if you can't use Citirix and how much easier it was to use. Which in turn resulted in two emails - one stating that they couldn't get into WVD if their wife was alread logged into it in their computer and they were sharing, and two, that it didn't work for people with citrix boxes. (So apparently getting the tower and getting rid of the citrix box prior to being sent home - was a good thing? Note Citrix crashed at the office too - hence the reason I got the tower finally. IT got tired of all of my service requests - my citrix system crashed five times a day. Poor thing, it just wasn't designed to be used in this fashion.)
I was going to say technology won, but I guess I did?
5. All in all not a bad day. I finally got the Amazon order that I was fretting over. It was my contact solution, shampoo, paeolo muffin mix, almond flour pancake mix, kind energy bars, and a brownie pan. It was very beaten up box. Super's wife called me about two other packages that came prior to it - informing me that I should come get them quickly - since they were small and she was concerned. Apparently some guy had come in the building a few days ago and stole one of the packages. (I've not had this happen yet - but I also tend to pick mine up rather quickly.) She caught it on the security tape.
I don't know why she was calling me - there were a lot of other packages that hadn't been picked up either - including something that looked like a trampoline. Also not everyone in the building is wearing masks. The Super has stopped entirely - no clue why. But his wife wears one, as does their son. This may explain why mostly men die of the virus - they are idiots. Natural selection at its finest.
I did have a fun moment in the Cemetery. There was a young guy who gave me sideways look for wearing a mask and studying a map. He walked past - and then stopped at a cross-roads, and had a look on his face of complete confusion and being lost. I enjoyed that tremendously. I didn't try to help, he wasn't wearing a mask and I was annoyed with him. Besides he didn't ask, so I figured it was best to keep walking in the opposite direction, chuckling to myself.
6. I'm going to leave you with...a view of my poor embattled city from the highest peak in Brooklyn, Battle Hill. Battle Hill is the site of major battle in the Revolutionary War - the Battle of Brooklyn.
No, I'm not going to show the bottom of the statue. Oh, I don't know if this is an omen or what, but apparently there's a Bear Statue right behind it.
The statue looked old (the angel statue not the bear), circa 1800s. So, make of that what you will.
Anyhow on the highlight of my wandering through Greenwood - a walk that I treated myself with after a long week cooped up in my one bedroom apartment working - was the rare sighting of not one, but two white-tailed hawks. Lovely big birds. I'd been walking down a path, looked straight ahead and then he was. I was trying to avoid people and there was a couple walking up the road I was about to enter, and another stopped on it. Then after taking a photo of it, I turned and looked up and another one was sitting on top of the statue that I was standing next too. So close. Yet so far away. (Far away in that it is VERY hard to take pictures of wildlife on the cell phone - there's not telescopic lense and it has a way of distancing things, I have to reformat, crop, and enlarge to get it to work. Also you can't get up in the bird's face - it will either fly away or attack you. It's not a flower or a statue. And for some reason what seems up close with the naked eye the cell phone camera or a camera in general likes to make seem far away. Unless of course you have a telescopic lense, which I do not. My brother was a photography major at one point - hence the reason I know all this. He likes to lecture me on it. Lecturing folks on a wide variety of topics is a family trait apparently - I think it may be genetic.)
I did what I could. Like I said above, ridiculously difficult to photograph well. But it made my day to see them. I had a huge grin on my face. Being out in nature - makes me happy. I need to find a place to retire where I don't need to drive and can wander about in nature periodically.
2. New York vs. Coronavirus, Racism and Police Brutality - mostly just Police Brutality and the Coronavirus...
New York has been busy,busy,busy. It really went to bat after getting caught with its pants down the first week of March. It did not take that sitting down, oh no, it got up, put on its boxing gloves and jumped into the ring. And not just the Coronavirus, but pretty much everything the Universe is sending its way. The latest? The Black Lives Matter Protests - which have about thirty to forty thousand people protesting across the State daily since George Floyd's death.
And our Governor, has a been a busy little Governor. I'm considering calling him "super-governor". Between fighting to restructure the hospital system, getting everyone in the state tested, building airports, restructuring crazy workplace, cleaning all the buses, trains and subways, and fighting the Federal Government...he's also found time to find a way to get the local communities around the state to restructure their police force. Plus, he hold press briefings every day.
What did he do today? He passed into law four bills and signed an executive order. What did it entail...ah...
Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today signed the 'Say Their Name' Reform Agenda package following the killing of George Floyd and an ongoing pattern of police brutality against minority communities across the nation. These landmark policing reforms will help reduce inequality in policing and reimagine the state's criminal justice system. The reforms include:
* Allowing for transparency of prior disciplinary records of law enforcement officers by repealing 50-a of the civil rights law; (Repealing 50-a will allow for the disclosure of law enforcement disciplinary records, increasing transparency and helping the public regain trust that law enforcement officers and agencies may be held accountable for misconduct.)
* Banning chokeholds by law enforcement officers;[In 1993, the New York City Police Department completely banned its officers from using chokeholds, but the ban has not prevented police officers from using this method to restrain individuals whom they are trying to arrest and the continued use of chokeholds has resulted in too many deaths. This new law creates criminal penalties when a police officer or peace officer uses a chokehold or similar restraint and causes serious physical injury or death.]
* Prohibiting false race-based 911 reports;[Recent years have shown a number of frivolous and false calls to 911 based on the callers' personal discomfort with other people and not for any particular threat. This new law makes it a civil rights violation to call 911 to report a non-emergency incident involving a member of a protected class without reason to suspect a crime or an imminent threat.] and
* Designating the Attorney General as an independent prosecutor for matters relating to the civilian deaths.[This new law establishes an Office of Special Investigation within the Office of the Attorney General to investigate and, where appropriate, prosecute cases where the death of a person follows an encounter with a law enforcement officer. The law also requires the new Office of Special Investigation to produce a report explaining the reasons for its decision regardless of whether it chooses to pursue charges. This will help improve public confidence in the criminal justice system by removing a potential conflict of interest in these types of investigations. This law builds on the Governor's Executive Order No. 147 from 2015 which established the Attorney General as an independent prosecutor in instances of police-involved deaths.]
Go HERE. On top of that, he signed an executive order in which all local communities have to provide a financing plan on how they intend to use their police force, and for what events, etc. What are they using them for and how, prior to being able to get any state funding. And they have until April 1, 2021 to do it. If they don't provide a plan showing how they are refinancing and reforming their police force by that date - no funding. By the way the local communities and police are "state funded" and the Federal Government has no say in it.
Wow.
They are however still protesting in my neighborhood. The picture was taken from across the street - because I am social distancing and still afraid of the virus. Even though it currently has a 1-2 % infection rate in New York according to their testing. And they have gone nuts with the testing.
On the Coronavirus front? New York has really gone nuts with testing. They are literally testing everyone they can get their hands on, some people more than once. All essential workers and nursing home workers get tested multiple times. Also they want all protestors to get tested. To date New York has tested 2,801,400 and it may be slightly more than that, since the John Hopkins COVID MAP of DOOM sometimes lags behind.
The news is still good regarding testing. Yesterday, we tested an extraordinary 72,395 New Yorkers for COVID. Of those tested, only 822 people were positive — or 1.1% of the total. This is great news: Even as New York has increased testing over the past few weeks, the number and percentage of positive results has stayed extremely low.
As a result of testing, a very slow re-opening process, monitoring, masks, social distancing, and handwashing and sanitation measures - New York appears to have beaten the virus. Instead of increasing as it is in other states, the infection rate is decreasing in New York. Our death rate is also falling, as is the number of new cases and hospitalizations. New York City has entered phase one of reopening - with manufacturing, curb-side pickup for non-essential retail, elective surgeries, ambulatory care, doctors visits, in store pick-up by appointment only, non-essential outdoor construction. It's slated to enter Phase 2 sometime in July, which is professional services headed back, along with libraries and musuems re-opening. Each phase is staggered and based on how many cases, how many hospitalizations, how many deaths. The MTA is slated to return to full service soon. And will slowly increase the number of trains and capacity, with mask wearing on all trains and public transportation mandatory.
Many retailers are waiting a bit to re-open. They are understandably shell-shocked, between the virus and the looting that happened a few weeks back (we only had one or two bad nights of it, nothing much since then and we haven't been under curfew since last Sunday), they are playing it safe. Macy's may open next week. Bloomingdales may wait a bit longer. Chanel, Aldo, and the others are holding out for a bit. I honestly don't blame them.
They are all boarded up at the moment. I don't want to be wandering around either. There's over 8 million people in NYC on a good day, and they've only tested 2.3 million. Also I'm not sure about the tests. I know too many people who've had it and did not get tested.
That's one nasty little virus. One twenty-two year old woman had to get a dual lung transplant because of it. And I know what happened with my family members. I'm playing it safe. That virus is painful. Luckily my workplace and Governor are letting me play it safe. I wish I could avoid the doctor's appointment next week - kind of dreading that, but no way around it. Avoiding it could put my long-term health at risk. Also my mother might drive me insane long distance if I skip it. Which is kind of the same thing.
3. My hair is growing out or rather long enough to pull back into a short pony tail, which I'm rather happy about. It's finally out of my face. The haircut I got in March was cute, but it was always flopping into my face. Now, not so much.
I see no reason to go back to the hair salon, and do not understand the people who feel the need to. Why? I can wait until 2021, no problem. In fact, now I have a legitimate excuse. Besides it's not like anyone really sees me, but me. And my hair looks a little shaggy, but otherwise fine.
Keep in mind that I tend to avoid getting my hair done as long as possible. Also I got my hair done on February 29. Not that long ago. The roots are showing, but they look fine. I normally do it every six to eight months anyhow. Like I said - I don't like getting my hair done. Never have. It's expensive and takes two-three hours, sitting with stylists that I have to come up with things to talk about, in an uncomfortable chair. Best part? Head massage.
4. Crazy Workplace
Spoke with Chidi today. He likes to call me with questions, he's fun to talk to. I asked him if he was protesting - he's not and has no inclination to do so.
Me: I get that. I wasn't exactly crazy about protesting and marching prior to the pandemic, I'm certainly not going to do it during one.
Chidi: It's mostly really young people - and I honestly don't think half of them even know or care what they are protesting about.
Me: Possibly true. Right now there's a bit of a controversy over what defund the police means - abolish or defund. I'm not sure we want to completely abolish.
Chidi: Exactly.
We also talked about Staff Meeting.
Me: So did you have a reaction to what boss told us during the staff meeting or none at all.
Chidi: Of course I had a reaction - you would have to be nuts not to have one or really stupid.
My theory is thusly confirmed that boss had indeed managed to stress out his entire department during the staff meeting.
Chidi: What is this? Are we being laid off? Or sent somewhere else? I've had enough change. I don't want anymore change. No more change.
ME: Yeah I get that. Although I seriously doubt we're being laid-off, we're lean to begin with. And he has a lot more work for us to do. What did you make of the suggestion to reach out to someone - who?
Chidi: Union reps. I did. And a bunch of other people did too.
Me: I really don't want to. Our union reps are kind of useless, also they already know -
Chidi: Actually they had no idea. Hadn't heard about it at all. If we all reach out at once - they might do something. You should reach out. Others from our group have.
Sigh.
So I reach out. And the union rep, as Chidi predicted, had no idea.
Union Rep: Where did you get this from? We've hear nothing at all.
Me: From a reliable source that shall remain undisclosed, except that it is the same one that informed all of my colleagues.
I repeated this to my mother, who laughing stated: "In other words, guess."
Sigh. I'd be more worried about this if Crazy Workplace hadn't been threatening to do it for the last twelve years and counting. Honestly they've been threatening to do this since I joined. So, I'm skeptical that they will actually pull it off. They have a lot of irons in the fire, if they get enough push-back, they may jump in another direction, regardless of what the over-paid and nutty organizational consultants suggested.
Every crazy workplace threatens me with re-organization, informing me that it will be better and more efficient. It never is. All it does is stress out all the employees, result in massive lay-offs, overworked folks and low morale. [It's a dumb idea. I don't know why people keep doing it. I've yet to see it work.] Also I don't see them laying us off at the moment - we're lean to begin with, there's more work coming our way, and the State is overwhelmed with unemployment claims as it is - the last thing they are going to do is add more.
In other news - regarding Crazy Workplace, I spent most of the day fighting my work place's technology. I had to find work-arounds for a lot of things. For the remote - had to go to Windows Virtual Drive, as opposed to Citrix which crashed, yet again. For awhile I thought I was the only one it crashed on - but the Admin came out with an email about using WVD if you can't use Citirix and how much easier it was to use. Which in turn resulted in two emails - one stating that they couldn't get into WVD if their wife was alread logged into it in their computer and they were sharing, and two, that it didn't work for people with citrix boxes. (So apparently getting the tower and getting rid of the citrix box prior to being sent home - was a good thing? Note Citrix crashed at the office too - hence the reason I got the tower finally. IT got tired of all of my service requests - my citrix system crashed five times a day. Poor thing, it just wasn't designed to be used in this fashion.)
I was going to say technology won, but I guess I did?
5. All in all not a bad day. I finally got the Amazon order that I was fretting over. It was my contact solution, shampoo, paeolo muffin mix, almond flour pancake mix, kind energy bars, and a brownie pan. It was very beaten up box. Super's wife called me about two other packages that came prior to it - informing me that I should come get them quickly - since they were small and she was concerned. Apparently some guy had come in the building a few days ago and stole one of the packages. (I've not had this happen yet - but I also tend to pick mine up rather quickly.) She caught it on the security tape.
I don't know why she was calling me - there were a lot of other packages that hadn't been picked up either - including something that looked like a trampoline. Also not everyone in the building is wearing masks. The Super has stopped entirely - no clue why. But his wife wears one, as does their son. This may explain why mostly men die of the virus - they are idiots. Natural selection at its finest.
I did have a fun moment in the Cemetery. There was a young guy who gave me sideways look for wearing a mask and studying a map. He walked past - and then stopped at a cross-roads, and had a look on his face of complete confusion and being lost. I enjoyed that tremendously. I didn't try to help, he wasn't wearing a mask and I was annoyed with him. Besides he didn't ask, so I figured it was best to keep walking in the opposite direction, chuckling to myself.
6. I'm going to leave you with...a view of my poor embattled city from the highest peak in Brooklyn, Battle Hill. Battle Hill is the site of major battle in the Revolutionary War - the Battle of Brooklyn.