patrickrhett

First off, yeah, I never finished my last post. I read more than 3 books in 2022. But not a ton more.

Things got busy again this year as everyone tried to ramp back up to some semblance of pre-covid work, with mixed results. I am currently working from home Monday and Friday, and we all went to the office 3 days a week for a few months, but right now I’m working those days from home too as a special 4 week program.

Post EM Twitter is really starting to suck, so I started following people on Mastodon a few days ago. A post I saw in both places this week said something along the lines of, “Posting on multiple platforms makes posting on any platform seem ridiculous.” I keep thinking of that every time I open either app, and I’m thinking of just walking away from both of them, like I have with Facebook, MySpace and Friendster.

Or here’s an embed of the actual post that will last as long as Mastodon does, I guess.

All of which led me back here. Good ol’, consistent WordPress. And, since I’m mainly posting in all of these places for an audience of myself (and my mom [hi mom] and possibly one or both of my weird nephews [hi weird nephews]) it makes sense to do it in a place that will be around in 20 years, so the whole, long record can be read after my passing to substantiate my mental decline and invalidate my will.

Oh look, we just got a dog.

You know what this is.

I read 28 books last year; the full 2020 list is here. Or, you know, a couple of inches that way ⬇︎. I’m currently running a bit behind schedule if I want to meet or exceed that number.

It’s been 206 days since my first Monday working from home. I’ve now finished Spring, gone through all of Summer and started Fall working from home. I’ve heard different things about when we get to go back to the office, and what that will look like. Everyone agrees it won’t be before next year, which starts in 85 days. I’ve heard it might not be before next July, which starts 180 days after that.

The Boy started remote 2nd grade 30 days ago, so we are in week 4. It’s becoming routine. If you had asked me before I just now looked it up I would have guessed week 5 or 6. Over the summer we had him FaceTime with friends a couple of times, but he always seemed sad when the call was over. Regular Zoom classes are making remote interaction seem more normal, but I know he misses his friends and it breaks my heart when I think about what he’s missing. Kids are resilient and adaptable, but I wish they didn’t have to be.

The Wife had been remote teaching until it was decided that all teachers had to remote teach from school in order to accommodate any kids that might need to come back. She had 1 that was supposed to show up, but they haven’t yet. So she commutes to an empty building to wear a mask and teach kids through her laptop.

The Girl has been back at work for months, getting used to cutting hair in gloves and chatting with clients through a mask. Business seems pretty steady. People with money for salons mostly still seem to have money for salons. I went to a car dealership with her last week to provide car buying support, which involved sitting in a variety of glass walled offices. There were two women working in another office in my line of sight for most of it not wearing masks. As long as I kept my focus on them I could imagine that everything was wonderfully, boringly normal.

I was going to post a new post for every book I read this year, but then I got behind and realized that I didn’t have a lot to say about all of them, so here we are. The main point for me was always to just have a record and see how many books I could read in a year, so here’s a summary for the year so far.

05/05/20 edit: I’m modifying this from a one time update to a list I will add to as the year progresses, just so I have them all in one place. Maybe I’ve always been this way or maybe it is age, but I notice that I’ll forget reading a book or watching a movie, etc, but if I see the title, on, say, a list like the one below, I can usually recall it and how it made me feel. I just can’t internally catalog it. So here we are.

Walks, yard work, planting potatoes and garlic, grocery pickups, restaurant takeout, working from home getting easier, drinking more, exercising less. I’ve been inside two buildings that weren’t my house in the past 5 weeks. Spending less money, but so far turning around and giving that away. I don’t miss much from my old life, but I feel guilty that I am so comfortable. I miss the girl.

Well that was all very weird. Everything feels slowed down (except the working from home hours) and going out feels like Austin in 1998, pre-boom, still a little sleepy.

We went on more walks. I made tortillas. Nate read and made art. There were strange signs and portents. And we all closed out the week with a Saturday night dance party featuring a remote DJ Mel.

Today Austin mandated all restaurants go to take out only and outlawed gatherings of more than 10 people. We’re worried about how everyone is going to make it through this incredibly lean time. I bought some gift cards to our favorite restaurant online, and we’re looking at ordering from different places, but I don’t feel like it’ll be enough to keep everyone afloat.

Last Monday (03/09) I went into work, met people in rooms, and shook hands with one of them. (Though I did felt weird about that and went and washed my hands a few minutes later.) The Boy went to school and The Wife went to work.

By Friday seeing groups of people close together on TV shows (shaking hands, clapping shoulders, breathing each others’ air) was jarring, as if I was seeing people from a distant time engaging in strange and foreign rituals.

Today, Monday 03/16, we are all working from home. Non-essential retail stores (Apple, etc.) are closing. School will probably be cancelled for the rest of the year. I haven’t compulsively checked the news as much since 09/11. We are trying to maintain routines, and create new ones.