Random Thoughts from the Plague Times

 

Puzzles are distracting. When I'm trying to match up a piece to the others in a jigsaw, I can momentarily forget that going outside the apartment is a big deal involving taking a small risk, gearing up with a mask, and making sure we have everything because multiple trips make it harder (getting an elevator alone, etc.). Same with the crossword puzzles and other variety puzzles I do (Ken-Ken, etc.). So while I'm not bored and have plenty to do there is something about puzzles in that they allow me to drift away from the current mess. (Above picture is my husband placing the last piece of a jigsaw we did.)

Other random thoughts from this time:

• While lots of people lost their jobs I think in Austin the people in construction and landscaping are pretty well-employed. Of course, there has been a spread of COVID-19 in these workforces so that's not good.
• I figure the companies that make take-out containers and paper sacks and all the accouterments of curbside dining and shopping are doing well.
• Bars "operating as restaurants" by adding a food truck is a joke. A Texas joke.
• It is amazing to get a call from someone inviting us to brunch. At a restaurant. Upon hearing that we are not doing that we hear that the person's spouse already had it (caught shopping) and so did the caller (from a grandkid). And besides "everything down here is wide open." (In their small town outside Austin.) 
• I no longer expect much from vaccination. My hope is that people who get it won't get sick or not as sick even though they may be able to pass it around. I hope to get one so that I won't get as sick when I get it. I'll keep wearing my mask so that I don't pass it along and avoiding contact and such after I get one, but I might eat in a restaurant or shop inside more if I thought I wouldn't get as sick. (I have made one and only one inside shop since mid-March. I hope that people I have been avoiding so that I don't give it to them might get a vaccine and reduce the risk of killing them.)
• I now realize that this situation will continue in pretty much the same way for us until it has been one year! Maybe longer. Shocking.
• I don't know if I will ever feel the same interacting with others. I'm an introvert anyway. Don't encourage me.
• I am well and truly never going to get my drawers, closets, storage cage, and computer files sorted and organized before I die. Having nine months to do it and making this much progress? Right.
• Our neighborhood walks (most within five miles of here, the furthest twelve miles) have proved to me that there is an infinity in this small space. I'd love to be traveling the world but there are lots of things to see. So close. And yet, sigh.
• My writing here on this blog, posts on Facebook, and scribbles in notebooks in longhand are not really writing or journaling. They are really just ways to keep my feet planted in the world so that I don't float away in this weird time. On paper, I make myself write the date out with the day of the week in parentheses and then Day XXX. Today: December 23, 2020 (Wednesday) Day 284. (Sometimes it's all I can write. But usually, I write what we ate, where we went, what errands we ran, and what we watched on TV.) Yes, 284 days in this isolation mode.
• We watch so many movies and series on TV that occasionally I will not remember what we watched the night before. Or I will remember snippets from a series and can't remember where it was set or what the name of it was or which streaming service or cable channel it was on. We have been working our way through "NYPD Blue," however. So when we are at a loss as to what to watch we simply revert to that.
• In the Before Times, I would get things done and get them out of the way so that I could travel or go out and about. Now I often think "oh, I can do that tomorrow just as well."
• For a while, I watched the clock and when 5 p.m. rolled around I would mix a drink (or get the hubby to do it). It was kind of symbolic. Now, I'm not so interested in it. (Not that I have quit drinking. Far from it. As the recycling bin will attest.)
• When I express doubt that we will ever again travel freely, dine out with abandon or go out to hear live performances, I really don't need to have people say "oh, yes you will." But, of course, someone always does.

I Meant to Post Yesterday

I spent a lot of time yesterday in my chair, working puzzles, reading papers and watching the interminable memorial for the 41st President. I saw Jimmy and Rosalyn looking at their watches. I'm a generation younger. I would have needed a bathroom break before the thing started. I have gotten our Christmas tree out. (Normal size ornaments are shown for reference.) I still have a few tiny rubber animals to put on it. Ho. Hum. Or Bah Humbug.

Anyway, I spent time with my injured foot up so that I could walk a mile or so down the trail and go to a joint called Pool Burger near Deep Eddy Pool to celebrate someone's 55th birthday. The burgers were really good. They mixed me a couple of Manhattans. There was a big crowd of a lot of locally-famous people. It was fun. We took a rideshare home street level and I put my foot up and watched episodes of "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel." What I didn't do was write a daily entry here. So soon to fail.

Off to play tennis on my injured foot again. I was pretty tentative Tuesday. I think it's better but still swollen and bruised. Sigh.

A Few Random Reflections

Shop window reflection courtesy of AuthentiCity on Congress Avenue.

But I was thinking more of reflections of the verbal, essay-like sort.

• Does a stock market rally that is HUGE percentage-wise really mean anything in this environment?
• Is it true that joblessness has caused a new surge of volunteerism because people have to have something to do and they have less money to give?
• I heard a thrift store (run by Junior League) on Burnet Road was closing due to competition from new clothes sold by Costco, Walmart, etc. Can this be a real trend?
  
• A friend who sorts collected donations for a charity's annual sale says donations are down. Are people not buying new clothes either and just wearing the stuff they used to give away?
• Above two remind me that there is a sack of stuff in my car that needs to be dropped at the thrift store. I patronize Top Drawer. I hope they don't go out of business. I hope they keep making enough money to stay open because they give vouchers to clients of AIDS orgs in town to shop for free. Free clothing and housewares seems good.
• I gave lots of stuff including toys and collectibles and housewares of some value to the above in the great downsizing. We gave away a lot of books, too.
• FFP has been looking for a book called Guns, Germs and Steel for two days. It never got cataloged but he says he once owned it. Maybe we gave it away.
• We were trying to sort and get rid of magazines a couple of days ago. I can't give away the Harper's Magazine or The New Yorker without first flipping through them. Too often this results in many minutes reading an article.
• We are going to the SXSW film festival. We claim to be film buffs but really we aren't. We like obscure docs. We have no idea about, for example, Watchmen and will be happy to never see it. Movies about young peoples' angst leave me cold.
  
• And yet we watch 24.
  
• We watched L Word. They spent the entire season teasing about killing off a character I hate. So, yeah, they did it. Ho. Hum. Not sorry to see them go.
• Have you seen United States of Tara? Inexplicably, I like it. That Diablo Cody really surprised me. She made me like a like some young folks and their angst and someone with an identity disorder.
• Speaking of young people (or maybe ALL people) have you noticed how people go out in groups in these sort of uniforms. Saw two guys in the Texas Chili Parlor, both in cargo shorts, tennis shoes with no visible socks, safari shirts (the ones with the vents and such), untucked, ball caps. Of course, FFP and I go out in slacks/blazer. You know what else? Young ladies go out in fancy party dresses with decolletage and lots of leg showing and high heels and are accompanied by guys in jeans, untucked shirts and flip flops. And all those tattoos and piercings you see. Although, I've got to say I meet more and more of the adorned young that are really great creative people. Diablo Cody. I'm just saying.
• Do you ever notice that when you don't have too much to do, you don't get much done? Lately I've had lots of free time really. Did I get stuff cleaned and organized? Not so much. Did I do any serious writing? You know the answer to that. No, instead when some appointment comes up I'm a little colicky even if it's a fun thing. I was thinking I'd have tomorrow free, but I was talking to Dad and he reminded me that I have to take him for a blood test and a haircut. I'm such a slug. Oh. Well.
• I'm upset at my coffee machine. It said it wanted to be cleaned I went through the cycle but it forgot we were doing it and went back to wanting to be cleaned again. This has happened before but somehow I got out of it. The only thing in the place I love more than that machine is FFP. But it can be frustrating loving stuff when it does you wrong.
• Which reminds me. I'm using this software I found called syncplicity as a third level of backup. (I have a local script backing up to a drive on the network and a paid-for Internet connected backup.) It is free. When it failed briefly this morning, it upset me. Ditto free scheduling software for the film festival. It's free. But if it's not perfect I can still get upset. facebook doesn't work to suit me? Same thing. People providing stuff for free are still held to the highest standards. I used to work for businesses that sold software. We had bugs all the time. We always acted sorry, though.
  

Yeah, random stuff. I'm going to do something useful now. Um.. Yeah.

Designer Me

I never really got the concept of designer jeans. Oh, I guess I understood that you could add some stitching, a certain fit (although Levis offers fits galore), some rhinetones, some creative fading and even some wear you wouldn't have to put on them yourself. I guess I'd rather design my life myself. I wear Men's 34x30 Levis in 550 or 560 fits. The former only fit when I weigh less than 165. They come in a white-washed blue, regular washed blue and black over dye. The latter are best for travel, showing little grime and topped with a nice collared shirt and blazer, able to sneak where their more denim-looking breathen will not.

This is a shop window reflection from the very high-end Julian Gold store on West Sixth. I've never been inside except when it was a very cool travel store called TravelFest in which we invested. (We lost our money. We weren't bailed out. But I digress.)

We are all designing our lives. We decide whether to go to the gym or walk the lake. (Or, you know, just sit here blogging.) We decide whether to put up with congestion or take an OTC drug. We decide, in fact, when to see doctors for tests and treatments. We decide what to wear, first by buying stuff and then by selecting. We decide on our haircut (maybe our hair color). Glasses? What style? Or...contacts. We pick a car, a place to live. We study for a certain career, take a job or not. We pick our hobbies. Tennis? Who will we play with? How competitive will we be? Will we take lessons? Bridge? Casual or serious duplicate for points? We decide what to eat and when. Coffee or no? (This morning our coffee machine, the expensive Jura E8 was acting up. I knew we had this problem before and couldn't remember how to fix it. We called the 800 concierge number and we were up and running in a minute.) Yeah, we decide what appliances to own. Coffee at home or out. (We could go downstairs in the morning now and get coffee at the shop in the building or one just across the street. I was about to do that when we got our machine working.)

We decide when we go out and when we stay home. We decide when to travel. (Maybe our employer decides, but still we make lots of decisions along the way.) Lots of people chose to be in Washington, standing in the cold watching that concert on the Lincoln Memorial. OMG, who was NOT there? Me. I was home watching it after the fact off the DVR. "Who is that?" Rewind. "Oh, Pete Seeger's grandson."

When we are at our computers, we decide what mail to answer. We decide what blogs to read, what news to watch. Today I decided to download some backup and sync software because I read about it in The New York Times because I decided to read the NYT last night instead of reading a book. We have the Times because we decided to subscribe years ago and are powerless to stop. It's an addiction.

What will I choose today and what differences will it make as I bump against all the other choosers (or is that deciders as GWB said?) and their choices?

Life is fascinating after the first couple of cups of coffee, huh?

Thank You For Not Smoking on Network TV

This picture was taken in 2001 of my friend Patrick Landrum at some event, outside smoking. I was just reading notes I took in an Austin Film Festival Panel called "Groundbreaking TV: A New Era." One of the panelists said that the biggest cultural change between the '70's and now was smoking! It's true, it looks shocking for people to smoke. The panelist said networks don't allow smoking. AMC's period piece Mad Men seemed to be mostly about smoking, drinking and office sex. It had a limited number of episodes and then went into reruns and we saw the first episode for the first time last night. They were just starting to address the fear that smoking killed in advertising cigarettes. It does seem odd now to see people smoking. Very subversive. Makes me sneeze, too. But it is not to be taken lightly. Because it's very risky.