Day 298 - Depressed
Jan. 11th, 2021 05:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatIt was an overcast, overall depressingly slow day. Although I managed to get things done. I've been getting more done of late at the start of the week than the end of the week for some reason or other. I'm thinking it's because the stuff I'm waiting for usually gets approved or sent to me by the end of the previous week? God knows.
Sent an email to Breaking Bad Boss - that I was in a work lull do to various things being on hold - and to advise when new work comes down the pike. I don't expect a response. I have no control over the amount of work they assign me. Only how much I manage to get done.
And not everyone has the same situation - unlike the office, in which we all do. At home - some of us are working off of small laptops, others have huge desktop computers with multiple screens and printers. Some have kids, some don't, some with them on the way. Although why anyone in their right mind would want to bring a child into the world at the moment is beyond me. (Feeling somewhat nihilistic at the moment - I'd blame the weather, January (which always sucks), and work lull - but honestly - it's possibly due to everything else that's going on, and no end in sight.
Mother is doing better and actually sounded chipper. She told me that she was going to be fine, and that whatever happened regarding my Dad, he is 85 and lived a great life. My mother is good at bulking herself up - and she's been talking to her friends and family. I've not talked to anyone today except her.
Bible Study Group was understanding and sent prayers/warm thoughts, when I conveyed my situation to them and current state of mind. Whatever focus that I have - seems to be relegated to my work.
COVID has for better or worse made me aware of how alone and isolated I currently am - with no way of remedying the situation any time soon.
Crazy Workplace and the Vaccine
Apparently Crazy Workplace as a New York State Agency with front-line essential workers has been aloted the vaccine - and is considered part of Phase B. I kept getting tons of emails about Crazy Workplace's plan or lack thereof to roll out the vaccine to its employees.
The email basically told me how to register for the vaccine - but to only do so if I was a frontline worker. (I'm really not.) And that they would provide some sort of financial alottment or compensation to hourly operating workers per dose (I don't think I classify as operating, hourly yes, operating no).
What's confusing is where to go. Right now, as far as I can see - there isn't any distribution of the vaccine near me. The distribution centers alotted by the City are the Brooklyn Army Terminal in the Navy Yards - which is somewhere in Sunset Park, and a couple of others I've not heard of. Crazy Agency's current distribution center is Jacob Javits Center in Manhattan - which isn't exactly easy to get to on a good day. (It is on the West Side of Manhattan, near the pier, if I remember correctly - so two to three subways, and a walk.) I'm hoping by the time it gets around to my group, they will have figured this out and have closer or easier to get to distribution sites. They did state that they were going to set up sites exclusive to the agency on the agency's property. (I'll probably get this at the office same way H1N1 had been offered. Although, I never got the H1N1 vaccine, because they were afraid to give it to me on account of my tremor.)
I've been reading about the folks who got the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines on Facebook (people I've met in real life outside of social media - who are all in the medical field or volunteering in it) - and none have experienced any side-effects to speak of. The one's who have report something similar to what you might get with the shingles or flu vaccines.
Mostly the side effects seem to be with the other ones, not these.
So that's good news, at least.
I'd rather my parents, brother, sister-in-law, niece, etc got it before I did. But I have a feeling it won't work out that way - because of where I work and how they are doing this.
They want to get a million distributed by the end of the month - but are running into problems. For one thing - a bunch of doses were thrown out because the hospital distributing them didn't get its act together in time or couldn't figure out who to distribute them too. Another? One hospital distributed them to the wrong people - people not line to get them.
In short, distributing the vaccine is akin to herding cats. They've only gotten 250,000 doses distributed to date. Crazy Workplace advises us to be patient, that the roll-out will be slow - because they've never done anything quite like this before.
The world is doomed.
New York vs the Corona Virus
For the first time I watched the State of the State. I don't know. I feel like I've heard it all before. Although the Governor did state that a few districts/cities across the state had put plans in place regarding public safety and police. So I suppose that's good news. (Not NYC which well...I would have been shocked if NYC had gotten its act together.)
He's optimistic. I'm...taking a wait and see approach. Which is kind of how I'm viewing 2021 at the moment - wait and see. After the first week, I kind of want to skip ahead to 2022 or 2023 or maybe just go back to the 1990s.
Our Crazy Federal Government
Oh dear.
Where to start? I've been following it on FB, NY Times, and Twitter off and on all day long. I've never seen anything like this in my life. Turns out there's quite a bit of fallout as a result of the Big Mutant Zombie Apocalypse (that wasn't) in ways that many of the participants had not anticipated.
1. Most of the US corporations and banks have decided to jump ship - so to speak. Which I guess is a good thing? Although it does kind of reveal how much money our representatives were getting from corporate donors or PACS for their campaigns, and well living expenses.
Politicians aren't paid that much. It all comes from campaign donations.
Some of the corporations/banks have abandoned both parties for the time being, until this is resolved (they don't want to take any chances). Most have just abandoned the Republicans supporting the thing in the White House.
Personally, I think it is too little too late. They should have done that in 2020.
Among the many jumping ship - and ceasing all contributions? Coco Cola, JP Morgan, Citibank, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Facebook, AT&T, Dow, the LIST goes on and on.
Hallmark went so far as to request that Hawley and Morrison return their donations - since they violated Hallmark's trust and principles.
2. All the major social media platforms, hosting/distributing channels on the internet have yanked the accounts of Trump and his followers. They've been whinging about losing their social media outlets. It's rather amusing in a way - because they are the ones who put some of these restrictions in place to begin with. Talk about being put on the opposite side of your own argument. Youtube has been yanking them as well - Steve Bannon podcast was removed.
Parler has declared bankruptcy and is out of business. They can't fight Amazon, Goggle and Apple who basically yanked them off their platforms, and terminated their hosting contract - which they have the right to do.
Gabe is the only still active - but no one is doing much there.
And no, there's nothing they can do - hosting platforms are permitted to deny content. Actually there's more restrictions on what they are permitted to carry - but they can refuse to carry whatever they damn well please - as anyone who was on Live Journal in the early 00s already figured out or for that Tumblr. Fandom already knows that hosting platforms can ban, censor or remove content at whim. We aren't paying them and even if we were - they could cancel the subscription and remove it at any time.
3. All the Airlines have placed all the people who participated on a No-Fly list. This has come as a bit of a shock to various protestors - who believed they could raid the Capital Building, then get drunk at their hotel, and fly home. Not so much. There's videos on Twitter of the idiots getting knocked to the ground and arrested by Washington, DC airport security and police. They caught a lot of them in the airport by doing that. Folks on Twitter wanted to know how the airlines figured out who was at the protests - only to learn it's not that hard, you can triangulate cell phones, and with the assistance of the FBI - voila.
4. Paypall, Stripe, and various credit card, and payment agencies have yanked their accounts or blocked them- so that they can no longer use them to fund themselves or fund travel of members.
5. PGA Golf Tournament has yanked the Masters Tournament from Trump's Golf Club in New Jersey and terminated its contract.
6. And... some disgruntled staffer changed the White House Department Twitter page to read - "Trump's term ended 1/11/2021" making everyone think he'd post his resignation on Twitter. (LOL!)
***
House Democrats introduced an article of impeachment against President Trump for inciting a mob that attacked the Capitol last week.
The process for acting on it may take until Wednesday. Today, Republicans blocked a separate move to ask Vice President Mike Pence to strip Mr. Trump of power under the 25th Amendment, leading the House to call for a full vote on Tuesday.
If Mr. Pence does not intervene “within 24 hours” after its passage and the president does not resign, House leaders said they would move on Wednesday to consider the impeachment resolution on the floor, just a week after the attack.
Already more than 210 Democrats have signed on to the charge, just shy of a majority of the House. Several Republicans were said to be considering voting to impeach for the first time, though party leaders were opposed.
The impeachment bit is controversial. Some believe it will cause more problems - since there's not a lot of time, also divide everyone further. Others believe it is crucial to preventing the monster from coming back. (I know another way to keep him from running again - convict him of treason and execute him.).
I witnessed a discussion between the belly dancer (my friend) and one of her belly dancing friends on FB, and dear god - the woman is an idiot. Not my friend, the other one. She just refuses to believe Trump was responsible or that it wasn't Antifa, she can't get past her own need to play the victim and be right. All evidence to the contrary. She believes the conspiracy theories because they support her world-view, and to do otherwise would require that she question everything she believes in.
I hid her comments. I've lost all patience for this people - who play the victim and whine, and don't care who gets hurt as long as they get what they want. God, I've come to the conclusion that there really is not such thing as a good Trump Supporter.
OTOH - of the 74 million who voted for him, less than 1% supported what happened on January 6. Only 10,000-20,000 showed up, they were expecting between 50,000 to 100,000 or a million. Part of the reason nothing was done - was the Feds didn't take it that seriously. They underestimated the insanity of Trump and his supporters. Keep in mind - it was 10-15,000 protestors, after over 26-50 million in the summer. And the one's in the summer didn't do all that much. That was part of it, the other was - well, the people in the Capitol Police and Senate Security who looked the other way. They are paying for that now - two policemen died, and four protestors. There were five to six deaths during one of the worst days of the virus, and after the business community begged them not to do it.
Apparently the thing in the white house is upset that Twitter and the PGA Golf Tournament was taking away from him.
At any rate, I feel this odd sense of Deja Vue - we're back to the Impeachment Briefings.
Family
Brother and Aunt K are coordinating what to do next with Mother. I can't do anything - of the three of us, I have a full time job, no car, and can't drive down. I'd have to go through an airline, and take a cab to and from the airport. If I were to go down - I'd have to quarantine for 14 days down there, and quarantine for 14 days back, which is over a month, and I only have a month worth of vacation days. I also can't do FMLA too effectively, since out of state.
****
I'm stuck. I feel trapped, and as if the walls are closing in on me. I had a panic attack on Friday. Today, I'm just numb. Don't feel much of anything.
Except back pain, and I took something for that.
Went to the grocery store and scored hand packed wild salmon burgers with just olive oil, lime juice and light seasonings. I used one to make salmon tacos with blue corn taco shells, montery jack cheese, salsa and guacomola - which were amazing. So I may do the same thing tomorrow. I honestly wasn't sure how they'd turn out.
It's hard to care about much of anything. I don't know what will happen with my job. I don't know what will happen with my parents. Or my country.
And I can't do anything. There's nothing I can do. I feel useless. Although, according to Mother, calling my Aunt K, and asking her help was a great thing and helped tremendously. Aunt K has volunteered to go back and help - once they let visitors back in on January 21. Bro and K were negotiating on which should drive down or up as the case may be.
Bro: If we still have a country by then, we can figure something out.
Aunt K: We'll still have a country - I'll call Karen, and tell her I can come up and help out if they are understaffed.
Sometimes having an extended family is a lovely thing. Although come to think of it, we're all one another's extended family - a large squabbling one. I'm listening to Barack Obama's audio book - "Promised Land" - and he quotes a poem by an Iranian poet, who said humanity is the sum of all its parts, or part of the whole or something along those lines. That we are all a part of each other. And right now, we're all in pain, cut off. Somehow, someway, we need to find a way to bond together again.
Sent an email to Breaking Bad Boss - that I was in a work lull do to various things being on hold - and to advise when new work comes down the pike. I don't expect a response. I have no control over the amount of work they assign me. Only how much I manage to get done.
And not everyone has the same situation - unlike the office, in which we all do. At home - some of us are working off of small laptops, others have huge desktop computers with multiple screens and printers. Some have kids, some don't, some with them on the way. Although why anyone in their right mind would want to bring a child into the world at the moment is beyond me. (Feeling somewhat nihilistic at the moment - I'd blame the weather, January (which always sucks), and work lull - but honestly - it's possibly due to everything else that's going on, and no end in sight.
Mother is doing better and actually sounded chipper. She told me that she was going to be fine, and that whatever happened regarding my Dad, he is 85 and lived a great life. My mother is good at bulking herself up - and she's been talking to her friends and family. I've not talked to anyone today except her.
Bible Study Group was understanding and sent prayers/warm thoughts, when I conveyed my situation to them and current state of mind. Whatever focus that I have - seems to be relegated to my work.
COVID has for better or worse made me aware of how alone and isolated I currently am - with no way of remedying the situation any time soon.
Crazy Workplace and the Vaccine
Apparently Crazy Workplace as a New York State Agency with front-line essential workers has been aloted the vaccine - and is considered part of Phase B. I kept getting tons of emails about Crazy Workplace's plan or lack thereof to roll out the vaccine to its employees.
The email basically told me how to register for the vaccine - but to only do so if I was a frontline worker. (I'm really not.) And that they would provide some sort of financial alottment or compensation to hourly operating workers per dose (I don't think I classify as operating, hourly yes, operating no).
What's confusing is where to go. Right now, as far as I can see - there isn't any distribution of the vaccine near me. The distribution centers alotted by the City are the Brooklyn Army Terminal in the Navy Yards - which is somewhere in Sunset Park, and a couple of others I've not heard of. Crazy Agency's current distribution center is Jacob Javits Center in Manhattan - which isn't exactly easy to get to on a good day. (It is on the West Side of Manhattan, near the pier, if I remember correctly - so two to three subways, and a walk.) I'm hoping by the time it gets around to my group, they will have figured this out and have closer or easier to get to distribution sites. They did state that they were going to set up sites exclusive to the agency on the agency's property. (I'll probably get this at the office same way H1N1 had been offered. Although, I never got the H1N1 vaccine, because they were afraid to give it to me on account of my tremor.)
I've been reading about the folks who got the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines on Facebook (people I've met in real life outside of social media - who are all in the medical field or volunteering in it) - and none have experienced any side-effects to speak of. The one's who have report something similar to what you might get with the shingles or flu vaccines.
Mostly the side effects seem to be with the other ones, not these.
So that's good news, at least.
I'd rather my parents, brother, sister-in-law, niece, etc got it before I did. But I have a feeling it won't work out that way - because of where I work and how they are doing this.
They want to get a million distributed by the end of the month - but are running into problems. For one thing - a bunch of doses were thrown out because the hospital distributing them didn't get its act together in time or couldn't figure out who to distribute them too. Another? One hospital distributed them to the wrong people - people not line to get them.
In short, distributing the vaccine is akin to herding cats. They've only gotten 250,000 doses distributed to date. Crazy Workplace advises us to be patient, that the roll-out will be slow - because they've never done anything quite like this before.
The world is doomed.
New York vs the Corona Virus
For the first time I watched the State of the State. I don't know. I feel like I've heard it all before. Although the Governor did state that a few districts/cities across the state had put plans in place regarding public safety and police. So I suppose that's good news. (Not NYC which well...I would have been shocked if NYC had gotten its act together.)
He's optimistic. I'm...taking a wait and see approach. Which is kind of how I'm viewing 2021 at the moment - wait and see. After the first week, I kind of want to skip ahead to 2022 or 2023 or maybe just go back to the 1990s.
Our Crazy Federal Government
Oh dear.
Where to start? I've been following it on FB, NY Times, and Twitter off and on all day long. I've never seen anything like this in my life. Turns out there's quite a bit of fallout as a result of the Big Mutant Zombie Apocalypse (that wasn't) in ways that many of the participants had not anticipated.
1. Most of the US corporations and banks have decided to jump ship - so to speak. Which I guess is a good thing? Although it does kind of reveal how much money our representatives were getting from corporate donors or PACS for their campaigns, and well living expenses.
Politicians aren't paid that much. It all comes from campaign donations.
Some of the corporations/banks have abandoned both parties for the time being, until this is resolved (they don't want to take any chances). Most have just abandoned the Republicans supporting the thing in the White House.
Personally, I think it is too little too late. They should have done that in 2020.
Among the many jumping ship - and ceasing all contributions? Coco Cola, JP Morgan, Citibank, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Facebook, AT&T, Dow, the LIST goes on and on.
Hallmark went so far as to request that Hawley and Morrison return their donations - since they violated Hallmark's trust and principles.
2. All the major social media platforms, hosting/distributing channels on the internet have yanked the accounts of Trump and his followers. They've been whinging about losing their social media outlets. It's rather amusing in a way - because they are the ones who put some of these restrictions in place to begin with. Talk about being put on the opposite side of your own argument. Youtube has been yanking them as well - Steve Bannon podcast was removed.
Parler has declared bankruptcy and is out of business. They can't fight Amazon, Goggle and Apple who basically yanked them off their platforms, and terminated their hosting contract - which they have the right to do.
Gabe is the only still active - but no one is doing much there.
And no, there's nothing they can do - hosting platforms are permitted to deny content. Actually there's more restrictions on what they are permitted to carry - but they can refuse to carry whatever they damn well please - as anyone who was on Live Journal in the early 00s already figured out or for that Tumblr. Fandom already knows that hosting platforms can ban, censor or remove content at whim. We aren't paying them and even if we were - they could cancel the subscription and remove it at any time.
3. All the Airlines have placed all the people who participated on a No-Fly list. This has come as a bit of a shock to various protestors - who believed they could raid the Capital Building, then get drunk at their hotel, and fly home. Not so much. There's videos on Twitter of the idiots getting knocked to the ground and arrested by Washington, DC airport security and police. They caught a lot of them in the airport by doing that. Folks on Twitter wanted to know how the airlines figured out who was at the protests - only to learn it's not that hard, you can triangulate cell phones, and with the assistance of the FBI - voila.
4. Paypall, Stripe, and various credit card, and payment agencies have yanked their accounts or blocked them- so that they can no longer use them to fund themselves or fund travel of members.
5. PGA Golf Tournament has yanked the Masters Tournament from Trump's Golf Club in New Jersey and terminated its contract.
6. And... some disgruntled staffer changed the White House Department Twitter page to read - "Trump's term ended 1/11/2021" making everyone think he'd post his resignation on Twitter. (LOL!)
***
House Democrats introduced an article of impeachment against President Trump for inciting a mob that attacked the Capitol last week.
The process for acting on it may take until Wednesday. Today, Republicans blocked a separate move to ask Vice President Mike Pence to strip Mr. Trump of power under the 25th Amendment, leading the House to call for a full vote on Tuesday.
If Mr. Pence does not intervene “within 24 hours” after its passage and the president does not resign, House leaders said they would move on Wednesday to consider the impeachment resolution on the floor, just a week after the attack.
Already more than 210 Democrats have signed on to the charge, just shy of a majority of the House. Several Republicans were said to be considering voting to impeach for the first time, though party leaders were opposed.
The impeachment bit is controversial. Some believe it will cause more problems - since there's not a lot of time, also divide everyone further. Others believe it is crucial to preventing the monster from coming back. (I know another way to keep him from running again - convict him of treason and execute him.).
I witnessed a discussion between the belly dancer (my friend) and one of her belly dancing friends on FB, and dear god - the woman is an idiot. Not my friend, the other one. She just refuses to believe Trump was responsible or that it wasn't Antifa, she can't get past her own need to play the victim and be right. All evidence to the contrary. She believes the conspiracy theories because they support her world-view, and to do otherwise would require that she question everything she believes in.
I hid her comments. I've lost all patience for this people - who play the victim and whine, and don't care who gets hurt as long as they get what they want. God, I've come to the conclusion that there really is not such thing as a good Trump Supporter.
OTOH - of the 74 million who voted for him, less than 1% supported what happened on January 6. Only 10,000-20,000 showed up, they were expecting between 50,000 to 100,000 or a million. Part of the reason nothing was done - was the Feds didn't take it that seriously. They underestimated the insanity of Trump and his supporters. Keep in mind - it was 10-15,000 protestors, after over 26-50 million in the summer. And the one's in the summer didn't do all that much. That was part of it, the other was - well, the people in the Capitol Police and Senate Security who looked the other way. They are paying for that now - two policemen died, and four protestors. There were five to six deaths during one of the worst days of the virus, and after the business community begged them not to do it.
Apparently the thing in the white house is upset that Twitter and the PGA Golf Tournament was taking away from him.
At any rate, I feel this odd sense of Deja Vue - we're back to the Impeachment Briefings.
Family
Brother and Aunt K are coordinating what to do next with Mother. I can't do anything - of the three of us, I have a full time job, no car, and can't drive down. I'd have to go through an airline, and take a cab to and from the airport. If I were to go down - I'd have to quarantine for 14 days down there, and quarantine for 14 days back, which is over a month, and I only have a month worth of vacation days. I also can't do FMLA too effectively, since out of state.
****
I'm stuck. I feel trapped, and as if the walls are closing in on me. I had a panic attack on Friday. Today, I'm just numb. Don't feel much of anything.
Except back pain, and I took something for that.
Went to the grocery store and scored hand packed wild salmon burgers with just olive oil, lime juice and light seasonings. I used one to make salmon tacos with blue corn taco shells, montery jack cheese, salsa and guacomola - which were amazing. So I may do the same thing tomorrow. I honestly wasn't sure how they'd turn out.
It's hard to care about much of anything. I don't know what will happen with my job. I don't know what will happen with my parents. Or my country.
And I can't do anything. There's nothing I can do. I feel useless. Although, according to Mother, calling my Aunt K, and asking her help was a great thing and helped tremendously. Aunt K has volunteered to go back and help - once they let visitors back in on January 21. Bro and K were negotiating on which should drive down or up as the case may be.
Bro: If we still have a country by then, we can figure something out.
Aunt K: We'll still have a country - I'll call Karen, and tell her I can come up and help out if they are understaffed.
Sometimes having an extended family is a lovely thing. Although come to think of it, we're all one another's extended family - a large squabbling one. I'm listening to Barack Obama's audio book - "Promised Land" - and he quotes a poem by an Iranian poet, who said humanity is the sum of all its parts, or part of the whole or something along those lines. That we are all a part of each other. And right now, we're all in pain, cut off. Somehow, someway, we need to find a way to bond together again.