Day 37: Tuesday, Endless

Today was a bit more stressful at work, as various items have come together to put me on a 7/24 call and work schedule. I am waiting for India’s day to start to work some more, and thus, I will be back at it early this morning. Another issue has been escalated to “very high,” and I am the contact for that too. Thus the chances for sleep tonight are low. But those are the breaks if you are an IT professional in today’s never-ending workdays at home.

This was contrasted by a card I received from my cousin’s daughter, Grace Bailey, and her soon to be husband. I had received a wedding invitation and was thinking of going to Michigan in June to attend. With the virus messing with all my travel plans, canceling trips to Australia and Florida, I had completely spaced the wedding! The card stated that the reception was postponed. The computer problems paled to this. My niece cannot have us there to celebrate her wedding.

I found a Christmas card, The Twelve Days of Oregon, crossed out Christmas and wrote in “Lockdown” and wrote a short note that I sorry about the virus canceling their event and that I was still working for Nike here in the center of the virus. I then wrote a decent check to Grace and sent it–I always write the check out to the gal. I hope the card, silly as it is, and the money will make her and Jeffrey happy and help with any expenses. I feel terrible that I had forgotten them with all the chaos.

And then to remind me of how silly I was, I fell out of my work chair. I dropped a pen on the floor and leaned over and the chair tipped and landed me on the floor and into a sharp edge of my desk. Yes, the computer architect of Nike cannot handle a pen and a chair.

It was so unbelievably stupid. I took a selfie sitting on the floor.

On the subject of stupid, the stock market is still going down, about three percent, as a reaction to oil prices. It seems, eyes-in-full-roll-mode, that oil is still being pumped and that there is no way to stop pumping it. Since we are not driving much and winter is over, the gas and heating oil use is down–I thought we knew this. Well, oil is still being loaded into tankers and pipelines, and there is no real way to store it. The price of oil is now about the cost of the barrel to put it in, $7USD, or so. And of course, that answer is not to shut down production but to give money to the oil industry to make up for the low prices they are getting. I think I should fall out of my chair again.

So the song for today is from Bob Dylan: I Used to Care But Things Have Changed. Bob’s most cynical song.

Lunch was from Wild Buffalo Wings, “Asian Zing” traditional wings and a kid’s cheeseburger with fries for Susie. I had that delivered. I made spaghetti and Italian sausage with Vodka sauce, from a jar, for dinner. We opened a bottle of wine from Purple Cow Vinyard, I said to Corwin and Susie, “We need to improve the quality of our drinking,” so we did. It was a 2010 bottle, and it is perfect. And that reminds me of this movie moment: This takes the sting out of being occupied.

The report is the worst so far in the USA. Over two-thousand eight-hundred people passed away from the virus today. I went with an Irish hymn: Be Thou My Vision.