![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatThe reason I'm blogging every day, if blogging is the right word for it, is to have a kind of chronicle of the day to day experience of living through a pandemic in a major city, alone.
Everyone's experience is different of course. This is just my journey, which I'm attempting to chronicle.
In some respects 2021 has been harder for me to navigate emotionally speaking and physically than 2020, and in others easier. The challenges have changed. And in some respects the pandemic or COVID has added a layer to all of it.
The damn phone scammers are driving me nuts. I can only block up to 32 numbers, had to delete a few to add more.
The scams?
* There's been a security breach in your Apple ID Cloud account
* The extended warranty for your car is about to expire - this is your last warning.
Note: Apple doesn't call people unless you call them. These are phishing scams.
***
Talked to mother a couple times today. Seem to be talking to her over the phone (we don't do Zoom/Skype/Facetime or any of that stuff in my family) several times a day now that my father has been moved into the extended care facility. My mother fears she'll never be able to bring him home again, and is upset that they chose the wrong facility and maybe the one that her mother was in - was much better. [I reminded her that she moved my grandmother three times, because she wasn't satisfied with any of the facilities. To wit, she reminded me that the first time had to do with the staffing, the second her mother's behavior, and the third was well the final one more or less. My father doesn't understand why they bought him a 32 inch television set - if he's only going to be there temporarily. I told him not to look a gift horse in the mouth and be happy.
Spoke to Dad today for father's day. He sounded chipper, even though mother expressed that he was grumpy and refused to leave his room - so they were visiting inside it, as opposed to outside. Plus side, was I could actually hear what he was saying for the most part. He told me a story about his days in the service, back in the 1950s, when he almost got discharged for failing to clean and service his rifle appropriately, also that he'd met a bunch of Broadway stars who'd all been drafted at the same time and went back to Broadway. (I didn't catch that part, it was garbled. Mother related it to me.) A lot of what he said though - made no sense, he was telling me about utilities in the Arizona Desert, after I was telling him about Painting Substations on Long Island. What the two have to do with each other, I've no clue.
Oh, and mother told me she'd spoken with yet another extended family member, Susan, whose daughter and family work in a munitions factory.
Mother: Your cousin Katie is developing an environmentally sustainable bullet.
(I burst out laughing)
Me: That's kind of an oxymoron.
Mother: I found it to be kind of weird too. I mean inventing a bullet that is environmentally sustainable but is meant to kill people.
Me: Well, hey look it at this way it's a biodegradable bullet - it will kill you, but it won't hurt the environment.
Gotta love humanity.
When mother told father this story he burst out laughing then advised us not to speak about this to loudly to non-liberal ears. I don't know why.
My parents live in South Carolina - it's conservative. They like to live in ultra conservative states for some reason. I don't understand it myself.
Also per mother - Susan's family has been through the ringer. Her daughter (the one who is designing the biodegradable bullet - she only has the one), twisted her ankle walking across her living room and fell on the other foot wrong, breaking it severely in several places - so severely the bones were sticking out. (Yes, I cringed too when I heard it.) And her son-in-law fell off a ladder and broke his pelvis in two places and required a hip replacement. They are all healed now. Mother doesn't understand why she can't heal too.
This appears to be the year that family members go to and from the hospital a lot.
Anyhow, I thought the bullet bit was funny.
**
It's hot here today - or hot from my perspective. In the upper 80s and humid. I went on a quick walk to pick up fruit and vegetables, plain non-fat yogurt, and sigh - more imported chocolate. Came home, made a smoothie.
For dinner? Grilled some chicken on the small George Forman style counter top grill, placed it in almond flour tortillas, and made cheese, chicken, spinach quesadillas, with homemade quacomole, salsa, and chips.
Now if I can just stop having the chocolate bars.
But my green shorts fit better this month than last - so progress?
***
Via Facebook Live (which was in turn via Zoom) viewed my Church's 23rd Annual Juneteenth Service - they've been doing it for 23 years. I didn't like this service at all - for one thing they had massive technical difficulties. And I didn't quite buy the idea that serving time in a prison was equitable to being a slave. Usually it's a lovely service - this years annoyed me.
To provide an example? One of the speakers was a man who served 29 years for murdering his wife's rapist. He killed the man who sexually assaulted his wife. While understandable, murder is still a crime, and you go to prison for it. You're not an innocent dude who is conscripted into slavery. You are a person who chose to kill someone - in revenge, and are serving time for that. It's not the same thing.
Comparing things that are not comparable or analogous - annoys me. And people do it all the time.
Prison isn't slavery. It's not rehabilitation either, as a bank robber once explained to me during a prison lock down. (I'll never forget doing a parole hearing during a prison lock down, during a sever thunderstorm. That stuff sticks with you.) Prison is punishment. We are punishing you for committing a crime against society. Is it just? Not really or not always. Is it racist? Yes. I don't think humanity know how to do the justice thing, to be honest. But we're very good at the vengeance thing.
The Foucault or Paris model of prison is rehabilitative, but I don't know of anyone who really practices that. Also US prisons aren't quite as bad as the ones elsewhere. But to say having prisoners work in prison is equitable to slavery? I don't know. It's meant to be rehabilitative - to provide skills post prison. I'm on the fence about it to be honest.
Covid
* After my mother's story about the extended family member (as in distant cousin) who died of COVID post vaccination, I've been a little nervous. OTOH - mother heard the story from a third party, who got it from the man's daughter, and well said third party tends to exaggerate medical issues.
* The Delta Variant is becoming a problem. See? This is the reason everyone needs to get vaccinated, the longer this thing can bop around, the worst it gets. It thrives by jumping around from person to person, mutating each time it does it.
As the U.S. heads into its second pandemic summer, President Biden warned that those who fail to get vaccinated against Covid-19 risk becoming infected by “a variant that is more easily transmissible, potentially deadlier and particularly dangerous for young people.” Vice President Kamala Harris visited a vaccination center in Atlanta on Friday, above.
In Russia, the Delta variant is now the most prevalent version in Moscow, where case numbers have tripled over the past two weeks and city officials have added 5,000 beds to coronavirus wards. The outbreak has led to some vaccine mandates.
And in England, “freedom day,” when the last remaining coronavirus restrictions had been scheduled to end, was delayed until July 19 after a spike in Delta cases. [Source the NY Times]
* According to mother- Florida is acting as if the pandemic isn't an issue and pressuring the cruise lines to take un-vaccinated passengers. The stupid cruise lines caved and are separating them. Florida makes me twitch.
* The pandemic has resulted in a weird twist on the job situation in the US.
According to the Labor Department, nearly four million people quit their jobs in April, the most on record. The dynamic has placed more power firmly in workers’ hands: With employers offering higher wages and incentives, like those offered by Waste Management, above, to combat the labor shortage, many workers — especially in low-wage positions in restaurants and hotels — are leaving their jobs and jumping to ones that pay even slightly more.
The pandemic has driven workers to quit for other reasons as well. People were able to save money and pay down their debts, giving them a cushion to leave jobs that left them dissatisfied. Other workers, disinclined to give up remote work, are abandoning jobs that are less flexible.
Gee. I wish I felt comfortable doing that. But it does explain the sudden expansion of jobs listed in my field on Linked in, and the queries I've received.
Also explains the problems my mother's community is having obtaining help at the moment, they had to go to an outside service for cleaning and housekeeping. I'm thinking the conservative may be right - maybe no stimulus checks should have been sent?
In Better News..
There's a lot of television shows, and movies coming up because of the pandemic backlog.
* New Star Wars Movies and TV Shows
Includes the Book of Boba Fett, The Mandalorian Season 3, Ahoska, basically a lot of spin-offs from The Mandalorian (suggesting I really need to binge watch S2, and get over my fear of the spider episode already. Mother and others have already informed me that I can skip over it easily enough.)
Ahoska: "Like The Book of Boba Fett, this is a spin-off from The Mandalorian, and will see Rosario Dawson reprising her memorable role as the former Jedi Ahsoka Tano. Originally debuting in The Clone Wars animated series – and returning as a key player in Star Wars: Rebels – Ahsoka made a thrilling move to live-action with the Mandalorian episode 'The Jedi'."
[I've never been able to explain why I prefer Star Wars to Star Trek. I just do. I think I find it to be more realistic and relatable somehow? Or I like the fantasy elements? It's not as clean and neat as Trek. I also prefer Farscape to Star Trek, and Babylon 5 to Trek, so that should tell you something.]
Obi-Wan Kenobi - with both Ewan McGregor and Hayden Christiansen reprises their roles, set 10 years after Revenge of the Sith.
[The lovely thing about Star Wars - is Lucas built a great world, and left a lot of things open-ended. We only get a snippet of it in the main films. But more interesting bits are left to our imagination or anyone who wants to build on it. I wrote fanfic in my head about it.]
Also has Andor - a spy-thriller which is the prequel to Rogue One, also Lando is in the works.
* Upcoming Marvel Movies and Television Shows
There's a lot.
[actually I should have done that in a separate post...but I was getting bummed out and thought I'd cheer us all up.]
**
All in all not a bad weekend. Haven't done all that much. Trying to fend off mice with mint - not sure its working, and stop the scam calls. The phone finally stopped ringing, I also unplugged it after talking to my mother to ensure she wasn't trying to call me. She can call my cell.
Warmer than I'd wish. And I still haven't made it to the Botanical Gardens.
Tomorrow I may walk somewhere else. Who knows? I've tried to stay off the computer as much as I can, and read through some comics - or graphic novels. The New Mutants is actually more of a graphic novel - and the art is amazing, as are the stories. I've not been able to focus enough to read a book - best I can do is audio books at the moment. That inability to make it through an actual book - reading, not listening to it, has eluded me since this pandemic started. I don't know why. I can't help but think that part of it is that so much of my reading was wrapped around my commute?
In a side note, someone on the General Hospital FB Fanboard actually compared the General Hospital Mafia to the British Royal Family and Pariliment. LOL! (I'm easily amused these days, you kind of have to be?)
Below is a photo of three Muslim Pakistani Women waiting to cross the street in my neighborhood.
Everyone's experience is different of course. This is just my journey, which I'm attempting to chronicle.
In some respects 2021 has been harder for me to navigate emotionally speaking and physically than 2020, and in others easier. The challenges have changed. And in some respects the pandemic or COVID has added a layer to all of it.
The damn phone scammers are driving me nuts. I can only block up to 32 numbers, had to delete a few to add more.
The scams?
* There's been a security breach in your Apple ID Cloud account
* The extended warranty for your car is about to expire - this is your last warning.
Note: Apple doesn't call people unless you call them. These are phishing scams.
***
Talked to mother a couple times today. Seem to be talking to her over the phone (we don't do Zoom/Skype/Facetime or any of that stuff in my family) several times a day now that my father has been moved into the extended care facility. My mother fears she'll never be able to bring him home again, and is upset that they chose the wrong facility and maybe the one that her mother was in - was much better. [I reminded her that she moved my grandmother three times, because she wasn't satisfied with any of the facilities. To wit, she reminded me that the first time had to do with the staffing, the second her mother's behavior, and the third was well the final one more or less. My father doesn't understand why they bought him a 32 inch television set - if he's only going to be there temporarily. I told him not to look a gift horse in the mouth and be happy.
Spoke to Dad today for father's day. He sounded chipper, even though mother expressed that he was grumpy and refused to leave his room - so they were visiting inside it, as opposed to outside. Plus side, was I could actually hear what he was saying for the most part. He told me a story about his days in the service, back in the 1950s, when he almost got discharged for failing to clean and service his rifle appropriately, also that he'd met a bunch of Broadway stars who'd all been drafted at the same time and went back to Broadway. (I didn't catch that part, it was garbled. Mother related it to me.) A lot of what he said though - made no sense, he was telling me about utilities in the Arizona Desert, after I was telling him about Painting Substations on Long Island. What the two have to do with each other, I've no clue.
Oh, and mother told me she'd spoken with yet another extended family member, Susan, whose daughter and family work in a munitions factory.
Mother: Your cousin Katie is developing an environmentally sustainable bullet.
(I burst out laughing)
Me: That's kind of an oxymoron.
Mother: I found it to be kind of weird too. I mean inventing a bullet that is environmentally sustainable but is meant to kill people.
Me: Well, hey look it at this way it's a biodegradable bullet - it will kill you, but it won't hurt the environment.
Gotta love humanity.
When mother told father this story he burst out laughing then advised us not to speak about this to loudly to non-liberal ears. I don't know why.
My parents live in South Carolina - it's conservative. They like to live in ultra conservative states for some reason. I don't understand it myself.
Also per mother - Susan's family has been through the ringer. Her daughter (the one who is designing the biodegradable bullet - she only has the one), twisted her ankle walking across her living room and fell on the other foot wrong, breaking it severely in several places - so severely the bones were sticking out. (Yes, I cringed too when I heard it.) And her son-in-law fell off a ladder and broke his pelvis in two places and required a hip replacement. They are all healed now. Mother doesn't understand why she can't heal too.
This appears to be the year that family members go to and from the hospital a lot.
Anyhow, I thought the bullet bit was funny.
**
It's hot here today - or hot from my perspective. In the upper 80s and humid. I went on a quick walk to pick up fruit and vegetables, plain non-fat yogurt, and sigh - more imported chocolate. Came home, made a smoothie.
For dinner? Grilled some chicken on the small George Forman style counter top grill, placed it in almond flour tortillas, and made cheese, chicken, spinach quesadillas, with homemade quacomole, salsa, and chips.
Now if I can just stop having the chocolate bars.
But my green shorts fit better this month than last - so progress?
***
Via Facebook Live (which was in turn via Zoom) viewed my Church's 23rd Annual Juneteenth Service - they've been doing it for 23 years. I didn't like this service at all - for one thing they had massive technical difficulties. And I didn't quite buy the idea that serving time in a prison was equitable to being a slave. Usually it's a lovely service - this years annoyed me.
To provide an example? One of the speakers was a man who served 29 years for murdering his wife's rapist. He killed the man who sexually assaulted his wife. While understandable, murder is still a crime, and you go to prison for it. You're not an innocent dude who is conscripted into slavery. You are a person who chose to kill someone - in revenge, and are serving time for that. It's not the same thing.
Comparing things that are not comparable or analogous - annoys me. And people do it all the time.
Prison isn't slavery. It's not rehabilitation either, as a bank robber once explained to me during a prison lock down. (I'll never forget doing a parole hearing during a prison lock down, during a sever thunderstorm. That stuff sticks with you.) Prison is punishment. We are punishing you for committing a crime against society. Is it just? Not really or not always. Is it racist? Yes. I don't think humanity know how to do the justice thing, to be honest. But we're very good at the vengeance thing.
The Foucault or Paris model of prison is rehabilitative, but I don't know of anyone who really practices that. Also US prisons aren't quite as bad as the ones elsewhere. But to say having prisoners work in prison is equitable to slavery? I don't know. It's meant to be rehabilitative - to provide skills post prison. I'm on the fence about it to be honest.
Covid
* After my mother's story about the extended family member (as in distant cousin) who died of COVID post vaccination, I've been a little nervous. OTOH - mother heard the story from a third party, who got it from the man's daughter, and well said third party tends to exaggerate medical issues.
* The Delta Variant is becoming a problem. See? This is the reason everyone needs to get vaccinated, the longer this thing can bop around, the worst it gets. It thrives by jumping around from person to person, mutating each time it does it.
As the U.S. heads into its second pandemic summer, President Biden warned that those who fail to get vaccinated against Covid-19 risk becoming infected by “a variant that is more easily transmissible, potentially deadlier and particularly dangerous for young people.” Vice President Kamala Harris visited a vaccination center in Atlanta on Friday, above.
In Russia, the Delta variant is now the most prevalent version in Moscow, where case numbers have tripled over the past two weeks and city officials have added 5,000 beds to coronavirus wards. The outbreak has led to some vaccine mandates.
And in England, “freedom day,” when the last remaining coronavirus restrictions had been scheduled to end, was delayed until July 19 after a spike in Delta cases. [Source the NY Times]
* According to mother- Florida is acting as if the pandemic isn't an issue and pressuring the cruise lines to take un-vaccinated passengers. The stupid cruise lines caved and are separating them. Florida makes me twitch.
* The pandemic has resulted in a weird twist on the job situation in the US.
According to the Labor Department, nearly four million people quit their jobs in April, the most on record. The dynamic has placed more power firmly in workers’ hands: With employers offering higher wages and incentives, like those offered by Waste Management, above, to combat the labor shortage, many workers — especially in low-wage positions in restaurants and hotels — are leaving their jobs and jumping to ones that pay even slightly more.
The pandemic has driven workers to quit for other reasons as well. People were able to save money and pay down their debts, giving them a cushion to leave jobs that left them dissatisfied. Other workers, disinclined to give up remote work, are abandoning jobs that are less flexible.
Gee. I wish I felt comfortable doing that. But it does explain the sudden expansion of jobs listed in my field on Linked in, and the queries I've received.
Also explains the problems my mother's community is having obtaining help at the moment, they had to go to an outside service for cleaning and housekeeping. I'm thinking the conservative may be right - maybe no stimulus checks should have been sent?
In Better News..
There's a lot of television shows, and movies coming up because of the pandemic backlog.
* New Star Wars Movies and TV Shows
Includes the Book of Boba Fett, The Mandalorian Season 3, Ahoska, basically a lot of spin-offs from The Mandalorian (suggesting I really need to binge watch S2, and get over my fear of the spider episode already. Mother and others have already informed me that I can skip over it easily enough.)
Ahoska: "Like The Book of Boba Fett, this is a spin-off from The Mandalorian, and will see Rosario Dawson reprising her memorable role as the former Jedi Ahsoka Tano. Originally debuting in The Clone Wars animated series – and returning as a key player in Star Wars: Rebels – Ahsoka made a thrilling move to live-action with the Mandalorian episode 'The Jedi'."
[I've never been able to explain why I prefer Star Wars to Star Trek. I just do. I think I find it to be more realistic and relatable somehow? Or I like the fantasy elements? It's not as clean and neat as Trek. I also prefer Farscape to Star Trek, and Babylon 5 to Trek, so that should tell you something.]
Obi-Wan Kenobi - with both Ewan McGregor and Hayden Christiansen reprises their roles, set 10 years after Revenge of the Sith.
[The lovely thing about Star Wars - is Lucas built a great world, and left a lot of things open-ended. We only get a snippet of it in the main films. But more interesting bits are left to our imagination or anyone who wants to build on it. I wrote fanfic in my head about it.]
Also has Andor - a spy-thriller which is the prequel to Rogue One, also Lando is in the works.
* Upcoming Marvel Movies and Television Shows
There's a lot.
[actually I should have done that in a separate post...but I was getting bummed out and thought I'd cheer us all up.]
**
All in all not a bad weekend. Haven't done all that much. Trying to fend off mice with mint - not sure its working, and stop the scam calls. The phone finally stopped ringing, I also unplugged it after talking to my mother to ensure she wasn't trying to call me. She can call my cell.
Warmer than I'd wish. And I still haven't made it to the Botanical Gardens.
Tomorrow I may walk somewhere else. Who knows? I've tried to stay off the computer as much as I can, and read through some comics - or graphic novels. The New Mutants is actually more of a graphic novel - and the art is amazing, as are the stories. I've not been able to focus enough to read a book - best I can do is audio books at the moment. That inability to make it through an actual book - reading, not listening to it, has eluded me since this pandemic started. I don't know why. I can't help but think that part of it is that so much of my reading was wrapped around my commute?
In a side note, someone on the General Hospital FB Fanboard actually compared the General Hospital Mafia to the British Royal Family and Pariliment. LOL! (I'm easily amused these days, you kind of have to be?)
Below is a photo of three Muslim Pakistani Women waiting to cross the street in my neighborhood.
no subject
Date: 2021-06-21 02:53 am (UTC)Chocolate's easier for me to resist right now given that I don't air-condition the house much so, last Saturday, I bought Reese's Pieces instead. I do have some chocolate in the refrigerator, though. Your chicken quesadillas sound great.
no subject
Date: 2021-06-21 09:56 pm (UTC)The prisoner I was representing told me that it's not the place, its the people that you are stuck with. There's some nasty characters that they get stuck with in prison. I mean imagine rooming with a child molester or a rapist, or a hitman?
Summer does make chocolate less appealing. Even with the A/C on in my place - it can get soft.
I need to back away from it - though. Thanks on chicken quesadillas.
no subject
Date: 2021-06-21 05:57 pm (UTC)The spam I get the most of regards either car warranties or Amazon account charges. But there's about 5 others that come and go, sometimes calling me four times a day from different numbers.
no subject
Date: 2021-06-21 09:52 pm (UTC)I've gotten the Amazon too. It's more recent. They go on spasms. Yesterday was the worst I'd had in a long while.
no subject
Date: 2021-06-21 10:06 pm (UTC)The phone scammers here like ringing me about alleged big orders from Amazon (they're calling on a number I've never given to Amazon) or telling me my National Insurance number has been compromised. Those ones are coming through on spoof numbers very similar to my real one.
no subject
Date: 2021-06-22 12:16 am (UTC)Carly (the local mafia boss's widow) stepped up in a leadership royal, because Jason (the mob enforcer and her husband's business partner) was unavailable. (He was on the run for murder, but has since been cleared of all charges.) Now that he is available, she wants to just step down. But she can't because it will seen as a sign of weakness. And she can't lead, without the expectation that he'd throw her out. So fans are upset at the spoiler - that Jason and Carly (long-time friends, who are kind of like siblings at this point) are getting married. (Because they are shipping Jason/Britt - the woman he went on the run with.)
One woman doesn't understand why Carly couldn't be the "head" in the name only like Queen Elizabeth currently is, with Jason doing all the heavy lifting like Parilment.
Like I said on another post, Carly could just be the "head" in name only - like Queen Elizabeth - while Jason does the heavy lifting like Parliament. ... *voiceover, "Zero brains went into the making of this decision."* ... AND once again, assurances that "that won't happen" are out the window.
I told her that the Brits might take exception to comparing GH's mafia leadership to the British Government. And that the analogy doesn't quite work.
The phone scammers here like ringing me about alleged big orders from Amazon (they're calling on a number I've never given to Amazon) or telling me my National Insurance number has been compromised. Those ones are coming through on spoof numbers very similar to my real one.
Yeah, it's similar here. We also get our Social Security Number or IRS ID has been compromised instead. Also, yep they spoof numbers off of our number. Interesting that they are similar. I'm wondering if the hackers are the Russian mafia or the Chinese Crime Syndicate?