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flexagon"We desire appetitively because of our bodies. We desire emotionally because of our sense of self in contact with other human beings. And we also have rational desires to understand how to do what’s best. Our goodness requires all of these capacities to be developed and then expressed." -- seen in a nytimes article
Vacation: not spent entirely as expected, so far, but I'm quite happy with where I've been investing my time. And one good outcome is sitting down with the bug to write down all our covid-related agreements and practices; a few changes are evolving on that front, not least due to the far reaches of our bubble (ex-bubble!?) going crazy and throwing a giant Christmas party. (I can't explain it either. Someone who I'm not close to, who'd hitherto been acting very rationally, seemed to either run out of cope or decide the virus naturally avoids Christian holidays. I don't know which, or whether that person is going to go back to normal after this or not). The landscape is changing in terms of test availability, most particularly a weekly free PCR test for me provided by Zillian, so we're looking into test-related protocols and the like. (Note tocoraline: I was wrong while we were out walking, and the free test is a PCR test not an antigen test. More actionable.) It all really sucks. I know there've been a lot of holiday-related pod adjustments, some of them messing seriously with secondary-type relationships, but didn't expect to be dealing with any of that myself.
2020 continues to offer adventures in painting on tiny canvases. 2021 will do the same for a while. It's tiny-canvas time. So in weird pandemic connection news, I hereby report that a first outdoor hand-holding can feel like a first kiss if you haven't held hands with anyone new in many months, and you got permission to do that from at least four adults across two covid bubbles, and then you sat under a gazebo in a park in winter and you put both your hands into someone else's hands and you just sat there for a few minutes. Complete mind-blown static-in-skull dumbfuckery. This is your brain on pandemic. And yes it's kind of funny, and also I think I'll read Victorian novels with a bit more sympathy from now on. When characters have reactions to the unexpected sight of a bare ankle (oh, c'mon, an ankle?), or the bending of a rule that makes no sense to me to begin with, or the brush of a hand, I'll think about covid and all these bubble rules and contortions and I won't be so jaded.
Lastly, I've been making a HIIT video fornorwoodbridge for Christmas, all customized to what he has in his basement, and it's been really fun! Hearing my voice on video doesn't seem to bother me so much anymore. I wouldn't do quite the "silly sub" persona for anyone else, but I almost wonder if there'd be a market for custom videos. Like: tell me what you want to work on, and what equipment you have / how high your ceiling is / what you want your rest intervals and work intervals to be, and what tone you'd like the instructor to take, and I could do that for people.
There is bad news in the world. Two, yes two, of my favorite local restaurants are closing after NYE because they can't even. One of these has been our Friday night standby for a while now (our original Friday night standby hasn't been open since late March). And there's a new coronavirus strain in England that's not looking like a lovely development in any way. Same mortality/morbidity rate as our now-familiar foe, but 50% higher transmissibility? The "put a num on it" blog has a rather nasty post estimating a 1/3 chance of severe fuckage in the US as a result. And there's news I strongly dislike regarding the long-term effects of covid along with the startling prevalence of long-term or long-haul symptoms (most recently just "long covid").
Vacation: not spent entirely as expected, so far, but I'm quite happy with where I've been investing my time. And one good outcome is sitting down with the bug to write down all our covid-related agreements and practices; a few changes are evolving on that front, not least due to the far reaches of our bubble (ex-bubble!?) going crazy and throwing a giant Christmas party. (I can't explain it either. Someone who I'm not close to, who'd hitherto been acting very rationally, seemed to either run out of cope or decide the virus naturally avoids Christian holidays. I don't know which, or whether that person is going to go back to normal after this or not). The landscape is changing in terms of test availability, most particularly a weekly free PCR test for me provided by Zillian, so we're looking into test-related protocols and the like. (Note to
coraline: I was wrong while we were out walking, and the free test is a PCR test not an antigen test. More actionable.) It all really sucks. I know there've been a lot of holiday-related pod adjustments, some of them messing seriously with secondary-type relationships, but didn't expect to be dealing with any of that myself. 2020 continues to offer adventures in painting on tiny canvases. 2021 will do the same for a while. It's tiny-canvas time. So in weird pandemic connection news, I hereby report that a first outdoor hand-holding can feel like a first kiss if you haven't held hands with anyone new in many months, and you got permission to do that from at least four adults across two covid bubbles, and then you sat under a gazebo in a park in winter and you put both your hands into someone else's hands and you just sat there for a few minutes. Complete mind-blown static-in-skull dumbfuckery. This is your brain on pandemic. And yes it's kind of funny, and also I think I'll read Victorian novels with a bit more sympathy from now on. When characters have reactions to the unexpected sight of a bare ankle (oh, c'mon, an ankle?), or the bending of a rule that makes no sense to me to begin with, or the brush of a hand, I'll think about covid and all these bubble rules and contortions and I won't be so jaded.
Lastly, I've been making a HIIT video for
norwoodbridge for Christmas, all customized to what he has in his basement, and it's been really fun! Hearing my voice on video doesn't seem to bother me so much anymore. I wouldn't do quite the "silly sub" persona for anyone else, but I almost wonder if there'd be a market for custom videos. Like: tell me what you want to work on, and what equipment you have / how high your ceiling is / what you want your rest intervals and work intervals to be, and what tone you'd like the instructor to take, and I could do that for people. There is bad news in the world. Two, yes two, of my favorite local restaurants are closing after NYE because they can't even. One of these has been our Friday night standby for a while now (our original Friday night standby hasn't been open since late March). And there's a new coronavirus strain in England that's not looking like a lovely development in any way. Same mortality/morbidity rate as our now-familiar foe, but 50% higher transmissibility? The "put a num on it" blog has a rather nasty post estimating a 1/3 chance of severe fuckage in the US as a result. And there's news I strongly dislike regarding the long-term effects of covid along with the startling prevalence of long-term or long-haul symptoms (most recently just "long covid").
