Since We've Finally Made It To The End of 2020

This little old blog really is basically moribund at this point, I'm afraid. But I felt like it would be wrong, somehow, not to at least stop in here to say that I did, in fact, survive 2020. Since that hardly seems like something that can be confidently assumed, really. It was a year that featured some not-great stuff for me, personally, which, of course, is hugely overshadowed by all the ways it was terrible for many others and on a much larger scale. But, although 2020 has made me feel a lot of cynicism and disillusionment, and even though I know the change of digits on the calendar, in itself, means nothing, I am nevertheless feeling hopeful for better things in 2021. And I hope very much that that will be true for any of you out there who happen to be reading this, as well as for the world at large.

And, hey, at least I read a good number of books in 2020, so the year wasn't a total loss, right?

Anyway. Here's wishing you all a very happy New Year, and a better, brighter future to come.

Hi, again.

Hello. I keep meaning to check in here and state that I am still not dead, but I keep forgetting, or not bothering, or whatever. But, well... Hi! Still not dead!

Honestly, it's almost eerie how little any of this situation has affected me personally. I continue to go into work regularly. I have to wear a mask into the office, and there are fewer people there, but most of the folks I regularly work with when I'm on day shifts are still in at least some of the time, and it's pretty much still business as usual for me. We might have more people around starting the beginning of the month. I'm not entirely sure what the plan is at the moment, because they held the zoom meeting discussing it on my day off, and I was asleep. It did get recorded, though, so I'll watch it at work this weekend. Whatever changes they're making, it's still probably not going to make much difference to me, other than that presumably at some point they're going to stop paying me overtime for working on the skeleton crew.

Otherwise, the main impact on me is that I'm only going out to the grocery store when my milk starts threatening to go off, and that I'm nearly three months overdue for a haircut, which is not pretty.

Honestly, we've been very lucky here. Parts of New Mexico have been hit pretty hard by the virus, but I think there have been a grand total of two cases in my zip code. And even in the rest of NM, there is no doubt that it could have been a lot worse. Our governor did a really good job with locking things down very early on, and an amazing job of making sure people in the state could get tested.

I am, however, worried about what might happen in towns like mine, where we've had almost no infection so far, as restrictions are eased (which they are beginning to be in NM). This thing is still spreading, and I feel like it's just gonna be lurking out there, waiting to attack the infection-free pockets of the population as soon as our guard is down. Maybe that's why you get the secondary waves that historically always seem to happen with pandemics.

Anyway, that's about all there is to say from my perspective. Other than that I'm still finding it bitterly ironic that genuinely all I want to do is to stay home, but I'm not allowed to do so, while everyone else seems desperate to leave the house. And also that, wow, does reading/hearing other people's reactions to their own enforced isolation bring home to me how psychologically different I seem to be from most of you social weirdos out there. But I do feel for you folks who are craving face-to-face human interaction, anyway, whether I understand you or not. And I hope everyone who might be reading this is doing physically well, and psychologically as well as you possibly can, given the odd circumstances of our lives right now.

Hi.

So, yeah. Hi. I'm not dead of coronovirus. I figured I should probably mention that.

You may have noticed -- or very well may not have, which is fine, because I hardly expect to the front-of-mind for the entire universe -- that at the start of the year I finally did follow through on what I've been saying I might do for ages, and stopped updating this blog regularly. I figured I'd probably still check in every few months or so with a little update on what's going on with me, or some random thoughts or something.

I figured that whenever I finally got around to doing that, the worst thing I'd have to talk about was the fact that we lost my grandmother recently. Which was incredibly sad -- she was beloved by a lot of people -- but hardly unexpected, given her age.

A global pandemic, however, was very much unexpected. Not that it should have been, maybe. God knows I've read enough books talking about how inevitable something like this happening probably was. Still. The whole thing feels surreal. Fictional. That's a feeling I've been having off and on for the last couple of decades, to be honest, but it almost seems to be a permanent state now, and I have no idea what to do with that. I used to feel excited about the idea of living in the future. Now I am clearly doing so, and I have no idea how to get to grips with it.

For the moment at least, as far as I know, I and my nearest and dearest are doing OK. Well, not sick, anyway. And I'm still working. First my organization sent as many people home to work remotely as possible and cut the staff in the building down to a skeleton crew. And I kept going to work, because I'm one of the bones in the skeleton. Then our governor issued a stay-at-home order and directed non-essential businesses to close. But my bosses declared us essential. Based on... I don't know what. I don't think I'm essential. But I'm still going in to work. I don't feel good about it. I feel like I may be subverting a public health order aimed at saving lives for no truly justifiable reason, something that seems to me distressingly emblematic of all the ways in which our society is fucked up right now. But I don't make these decisions, I guess, so I continue to do what I'm told, and I try to keep my moral qualms and my existential crises to myself. Mostly.

They're paying me time and a half, though. I'm gonna donate some of the extra to food banks, because there are surely a lot of people earning zero right now and wondering how the hell they're going to eat.

I do find the whole situation richly ironic, I have to admit. I know so many people who are going stir-crazy, desperate to be allowed to leave their houses, to be social again. Me, I long for my home every second I'm away from it. It's the only place I feel safe and comfortable right now, if I'm entirely honest. And my personality is such that I genuinely could just stay here and never see another human being for a year or so and be perfectly fine, psychologically. Or at least as fine as I am normally. Ha, ha.

Anyway. That's the state of things for me right now. This is me, checking in, reaching out. Whatever.

Try to stay safe out there. Try to stay sane. Good luck to all of us.

Our Government Is Bad, And We Should Feel Bad.

Oh, look, our idiot leadership has decided to go from dysfunctional to entirely non-functional yet again. Go, USA.

Well, fortunately, the observatory I work for, while highly dependent on NSF funding, foresaw this possibility and made a point of making sure we'd have enough money to keep going for, hopefully, longer than this will last. (Meaning about a month. If it runs longer than that, we've all got real problems.) So this time, at least, we won't have millions of dollars of taxpayer-funded astronomical equipment sitting idle instead of doing what it was built for and advancing science and our understanding of the universe. All the groceries on the shelves of the military base grocery stores my mother works at are presumably going to be left to rot and have to be thrown out again, though, so fear not, I'm sure the appropriate amount of economic damage will still happen as our country once again cuts its nose off to spite its face.

Here We Go, Ready Or Not.

Well, here we are, rapidly nearing the end of 2017. Very rapidly, in fact. I swear, this year has gone by like an eyeblink. I thought I'd accepted the fact that everything seems to go by faster as you age, but it's the rate of acceleration that's getting to me. I figured by the time things seemed to be flying by this fast, I'd be in my 70s, at least.

But however much it might seem to me that we can't possibly be at the end of the year yet, we are, and I guess that means it's time for a look back. I'm not going to talk about the year in the world at large, though. To be honest, at some point in 2017, I kind of got tired of hearing from the world at large and told it to go away and not bother me for a while. I should probably try to be a better, more up-on-current events world citizen in 2018, but we'll see whether or not I'm up to it. For now, all I can say is that, in broad outlines, 2017 seemed like about what I expected after 2016, and that that's not a compliment to either year.

In my own personal life, 2017 was the year I lost a cat and lost a tooth, so maybe there's not a whole lot to recommend it there, either. But it was also the year of my grandmother's 90th birthday celebration, which I'm very glad I was able to make. And I am coming out the other side of the year alive and whole and doing all right, which is all I really ask.

Anyway. I hope all of you have a good and safe New Year's Eve, however you are or aren't celebrating. (Me, I'm not celebrating, as I'm stuck at work. Which on one level I don't mind, as I've never been a New Year's Eve partier, and it's not like I have anything that much better to do. But it does seem like a bad start to the year, somehow. Alas.) And I wish everyone, especially anyone who's been having a tough time in 2017, the best and happiest possible 2018.

See you guys on the flip side of the calendar.

Looks Like It's That Time Of Year Again

Merry Christmas!

I don't have any big plans for the holiday this year. I'm working today (although I get to do an 8-hour shift instead of a 12-hour one, so I guess that's something), and I'm working on Tuesday, so I'm mainly intending to spend Christmas itself relaxing and, y'know, not working. I figure I'll follow the tradition I've established in the last few years of staying up until midnight tonight and opening my presents then, then sleeping in on Christmas morning, that being the sort of luxury that not having children or houseguests affords. (Even if I can't sleep in too late, since I do have to be into work early the next day.) I also have a nice meal to cook, and pie, and a selection of festive beverages. And, of course, there will be Doctor Who, which, let's face it, is the important part of the holiday.

Anyway. Here's wishing a lovely, warm, happy Christmas to everyone who celebrates, in whatever capacity, and a lovely, warm, happy end-of-the-year season to everyone in general.

And don't call me while I'm watching Doctor Who. ;)

You All Know What Day This Is

Thanks right. Happy Doctor Who day!



Oh, and, yeah, happy turkey day to my fellow turkey-eating Americans, as well!

Well, It Looks Like The Dragon Spit The Sun Back Out, At Least.

So, how was the eclipse? I, uh... I slept through the entire thing, by virtue of getting off work at 8 AM and collapsing from exhaustion for five hours and change. Well, it was nowhere near totality here, and I have seen a partial eclipse before. Still. This probably comes under the heading of "you know you're getting old when..."

Various Things

Because I haven't been updating much lately, here is one post about various things.

1. I was really sorry to hear about the recent death of actor Stephen Furst. I loved his character Vir in Babylon 5 so much I named a cat after him. After I heard the news, I sort of just went and stared sadly at the cat for a while.

2. My car is now in the shop getting the damage from being scraped in the parking lot fixed. Meanwhile, I have a rental, a Hyundai Sonata. This is a much more high-tech car than my Fit. It greets me with a little musical fanfare when I get in, which I honestly find somewhat unsettling. It seems like a decent car; it's got a pretty good ride. But it has led me to a new appreciation of one of the Fit's selling points: visibility. I've got a lot less of a view of the world around me in this one. I keep trying to adjust the rear view mirror for a better view and then realizing, no, that's just all the window I've got back there.

3. I also have new glasses. They are strange and uncomfortable and slightly nausea-inducing. Probably just because I need to get used to them, not because there's anything really wrong with them. It's worse with the progressive lenses than with the regular kind. Stupid aging body.

And, OK. Three things is probably enough for now, right?

Go, Endurance Readers!

So, today is the day of Dewey's 24 Hour Readathon, an internet-based challenge in which, as the name implies, participants read for 24 hours straight. Every time this comes to my attention, I think, oh, it would be really cool to do that sometime. And every time it actually happens, either I've forgotten all about it, or my work schedule doesn't remotely permit such shenanigans.

This time out, it actually would have worked with my work schedule, but, alas, I'm still not doing it. Partly because I didn't want to get up a 6 AM, but mostly, I think, because I only realized it was this weekend a couple of days ago. If I'd had more time to psyche myself up, and to stock up on snacks, well, maybe.

As it is, though, I think perhaps I will engage in a show of solidarity by spending a good-sized chunk of today sitting around and reading. It's the least I can do, right?

WTF, Weather?

It's snowing today in a surprising number of places here in New Mexico, and it's supposed to get down into the 30s tonight where I am, and even lower tomorrow night. At the end of freaking April! This is because I was extra proactive this year and got my swamp cooler up and running a week or two earlier than I usually do, isn't it? The Weather Gods are clearly punishing me for my arrogance. Guess I'd better turn my wall heater back on...

(Seriously, though. By the end of the first week in May, it's usually unambiguously summer here, and already getting freaking hot. Why is there snow?!)

Yeah, Science!

Of course, April 22 was not just Earth Day, it was also the day of the March for Science. I gather there were some activities going on for this where I live, and I have to say, even that though I am chronic non-joiner and find it extremely difficult to get off my butt even for things I strongly believe in, marching for science is something I might have made an exception for if I weren't working today. (You know, doing science.) As it is, in a vague gesture of solidarity, I wore my shirt with the Neil DeGrasse Tyson quote: "The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it."

CNN has some pictures of amusing sciencey signs. I particularly like the one that says, "What do we want? Evidence based research! When do we want it? After peer review."

It's Where I Keep All My Stuff

Happy Earth Day! Remember, it is extremely important to take proper care of the Earth, as the relocation costs are entirely prohibitive.

Operation Don't Get Killed By My Airbag Is A Go!

Today's fun activity: getting the airbag inflator on my car replaced. I went online and looked up some information on the recall, and it turns out to be huge, and has even been called "the largest and most complex safety recall in U.S. history," with more and more cars being added to the list over the last few years, and the company that makes the airbags possibly paying as much as $1 billion in penalties. Well, I guess that's what happens when your safety equipment occasionally impales people in the face...

Belated Easter Well-Wishes

I hope all of you out there who celebrate Easter had a good one. I don't much, which is probably just as well, considering I had to work all day. I did eat entirely too many of those malted milk eggs with the chocolate candy coatings, though. They are stupidly yummy.

Up And Away

On a happier note, I will point out that today is the 56th anniversary of the first human spaceflight.

Way to go, Yuri Gagarin!

Bye, 2016! Don't Let The Door Hit You In The Ass On The Way Out.

So, here we are. In my time zone, at least, we're less than 24 hours from the end of 2016.

And, man... You know, every year, it seems like there is a chorus of voices bemoaning all the terrible things that have happened in the last 365 days and suggesting that it's been a much worse year than most. I'm usually pretty dismissive of that. After all, every year has its share of deaths and bad news, and those things tend to loom larger in our minds than the events of past years only because they're more recent.

But 2016, it seems to me, really has been a giant tire fire of a year. It just kept burning and burning, and the longer it went on, the more noxious fumes it poured out onto all of us. I would like to say that I'm relieved it's almost over and that I'm anticipating much better things in 2017, but, of course, the truth is that 2017 will be shaped by the choices we made in 2016, and I'm not feeling too optimistic about those. Well. Here's hoping that it'll exceed expectations, eh?

In my own personal life, I suppose 2016 is memorable mostly as the year I finally got my driveway resurfaced, so I guess there's that. And one genuinely good surprise this year is that my beloved elderly cat Nova is still here with me at the end of it. He's down to skin and bones and very much showing his age, and to be honest I hardly expected him to make it to his 17th birthday -- round about June -- never mind still being here on New Year's Eve. But here he is, still getting around OK, still happily scarfing down bowls of that super-expensive prescription cat food, and still sitting on my lap and purring. That, at least, is one thing that does make me feel warm and glad at the end of this year. I think I will take it.

And I guess that's it for me for 2016! See you all next year, when I'll be back to do the usual roundup of my year's worth of reading, if nothing else.

Tis The Season

Is it Christmastime again? Man, the years really are just rolling right on by now.

Anyway. Here's wishing all of you a very Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah and/or a generally wonderful holiday season!

I don't have any extra time off work this year -- just the weekend, which I would have had off, anyway. But I am enjoying it. The holiday makes for a lovely excuse to just relax. I spent all morning in my pajamas finishing a book, which is thoroughly good for the soul. Tonight I'm going to make myself a nice dinner, and then I'm going to follow my usual impatient custom of opening all my presents at midnight. Tomorrow I'm probably going to get together with some people from work who are also hanging around town for the holiday and don't have family here, and we're going to play some board games. Can't stay too late, though, because of course there'll be new Doctor Who tomorrow evening. It would hardly be Christmas without Doctor Who! Even if I still can't quite believe I now live in a world where I get new Doctor Who as a present every Christmas.

I hope everyone everyone reading is having at least as nice a time as I am, however you're spending these days. And, hey, we're almost ready to be done with 2016!

Marking The Occasion

I'd like to wish a very happy Thanksgiving to all my American friends, and to express the hope that all of you may find you have many things to be glad about this year.

Wait... What?

What I want to know is, what freaky-ass alternate timeline have I just landed in, and, for the love of all that's sane, how do I get back to a reasonable reality?

What the fuck, America? Just... What. The. Fuck.