Ponderings and Musings

We talk about “getting back to normal”, even though the COVID-19 pandemic is still here and doing its thing. I look around and wonder about the definition of “normal”. Always introspective, I ponder, “do we _really_ want things to be the way they were before the pandemic”? I feel like we missed some learning opportunities in 2020.

I get it, two many people are facing financial and other well being hardships because of lockdowns and the other precautions around COVID safety. But that speaks more to where our society was and what we depend on more than COVID itself. There are too many people that will simply not figure out a better approach to this societal existence. They want things the way they were before the pandemic. Full stop.

It’s never going to be that way again.

After we get through COVID-19, some other variant or similar type bug is going to come along and we’ll all be trying to figure that out. Luckily, I feel like we have a better leader in the White House to handle the next crisis like this. I fully believe we’d have still faced the challenges (opportunities?) of 2020 even if Trump did the right things (which he most certainly did not) but it wouldn’t haven’t been to the extent that we experienced.

At the New Year I tweeted, “if you thought 2020 was an awful year, you were paying attention to the lesson”, or something like that. There’s so many things we could be doing better now. Many companies are shifting their workers to full-time work at home status, but too many companies want everyone back in the office under their watchful, untrusting eye. Luckily, the company I work for discovered a huge cost savings on facility costs and a good sized increased in productivity when the teams work from the comfort of their own home. Even though around 15% of the workforce was already full-time work at home team members, there’s now a sizable chunk of folks that will never be going back to the office.

Less pollution from commutes, less dawdling for chit chat at the water bubbler.

I can’t understand why so many people are demanding to be seated shoulder to shoulder in restaurants. We’ve supported our community by ordering take-out when we can, but we actually saved a great deal of money by eating at home. It’s amazing to think of what can happen in your life when you save money by not eating out. I’m hopeful we’ll continue this trend when we move to Arizona next week.

There’s comfort in what’s known as normal, I get that, but there’s also a great deal of value in listening and learning.

I wish more folks had taken the time to do that. Because things will never be “normal” again, nor will things ever feel as “safe” as they did before.

Let’s continue to be vigilant with our masks and vaccinations. Let’s make that the new normal.

I didn’t ask my doctor about my tinnitus during my annual physical. We talked about what I’m calling my “COVID 10”, or the weight I’ve gained during the pandemic. Honestly, I could have easily gained more weight if I put my mind to it, but I wanted to make sure things were kept fairly reasonable. I get anxious about physicals and visits to the doctor in general, hence my blood pressure was elevated the first time they took it but much better the second time the put the cuff on me.

The lab took five vials of blood. Among the blood tests was an HIV test. I get tested every year whether I need it or not, I guess it’s the Gen-X/grew up during the beginning of the AIDS crisis in me that prompts a yearly test. I attended too many funerals in the 80s and 90s. I still remember.

She didn’t do a very good job of taking blood, though. It didn’t hurt much, but she left a mark.

I’m growing weary of businesses in our neighborhood closing down. In the past year we’ve had two comedy clubs, several restaurants, some barbershops, a couple of bars, and one or two other storefronts all close down. All of these locations are within a half mile radius of our home.

The pandemic has been hard for everyone, especially local businesses.

We’ve tried to support local business as much as possible during these COVID times. When safe to do so we’ve walked to pick up food. We’ve even picked up alcohol from a favorite local pub when they were doing that. The city of Chicago banned alcohol sales after 9:00 PM for much of the pandemic, and closed bars at the same time. This was to discourage people from congregating in groups. I’m sure many just gathered in their homes.

As restrictions loosen up I’m hoping to see businesses open up as well. Resilience. It’s what we all need. But it’s going to be a couple of years, at least, before the economy fully recovers. At least we’re heading in the right direction again. It was touch and go there for a little while.

I’m ready for whatever the new normal will be. I’m sure everyone else is as well.

My ears ring. My ears ring a lot. The left side rings more than the right side and it’s been this way for as long as I can remember. I have memories of laying in bed in our mobile home when I was a youngster and wondering why my ears rang so much. The ringing wasn’t as loud then as it is now, but I guess having ringing ears for as long as I can remember has made it manageable for me. It’s just there.

Years of DJing in clubs and on the radio probably didn’t help the ringing situation, but I believe the initial ringing may have been a result of having spinal meningitis as a kid.

As far as I can tell, there are no cures for ringing ears. We sleep with white noise going in the bedroom, which is more to muffle the sounds of the big city instead of my ringing ears, but the ocean waves coming from the HomePod in our bedroom certainly helps combat the constant ringing in my ears. I’ve always had white noise or a fan or something going in my bedroom.

Luckily, the ringing doesn’t overpower my ability to hear. I actually wonder if my tinnitus has actually made my hearing better, because I can hear the faintest of sounds as long as it’s not the same exact frequency as the ringing in my ear.

Perhaps the constant sound has contributed to my eccentricities. Oh well, it’s part of who I am, might as well enjoy the music.

I was reading an article about the HBO Max mini series “It’s A Sin” and stumbled upon comments posted below the article.

Our society is doomed.

Apparently there are people that believe AIDS was just a hoax, much like COVID-19 is today. I can’t believe people say these things out loud, let alone believe these things.

I’d like to say that it’s the Internet that has given a voice to all these crazy people, but back in the early 1990s a local newspaper had a page of comments folks could call in. They’d collect messages on an answering machine, transcribe, and publish a week’s worth on page two of the paper. Even back in 1992 there were some batshit crazy people out there and because they could say their asshattery anonymously, you’d see some really stupid stuff on the page. I’d be dumb struck by just how stupid people were and I’d escape to the beginnings of the World Wide Web where you had to be quite clever to get online and even more clever to exchange words with others. There was an understood code about online behavior, but then AOL and Windows 95 happened and all hell broke loose. Pile on social media 15 years later and here we are today, on the eve of what could be another attack on Washington, D.C. because some nut jobs think Trump will become president tomorrow.

I really can’t take the stupid anymore.

I did take a look a Twitter briefly this morning, and when I saw jubilant yet idiotic comments about Texas and Mississippi lifting COVID-19 restrictions, I decided I’d had enough for the day and closed Twitter. Then I deleted it off my phone. If I want to see what’s going on in social media I’ll force myself to use a computer to do it. I don’t need to let my fingers do the walking.

There’s no reason to read comments from stupid people. And unfortunately, there’s too many stupid people.

Grandma Country had many yearbooks from our school district. They date from way before any of her children graduated to several years afterwards. I think she liked following the progression of families in the community. She was a lifelong resident of our little town. If zip codes had existed in the 1920s, she would have had the exact same zip code her entire life.

I inherited these yearbooks as they were retrieved out of my dad’s attic when his house was sold. I went through many of them this week as we started sorting and packing things for our move to the desert. In some of the yearbooks were programs from graduation services she attended and some student guidebooks. I found this page from the 1965-1966 school year interesting in regards to the dress code and proper etiquette.

My how times have changed, particularly around the expected dress of teenagers.

Tomorrow we are scheduled for a tour of the house. I’m really looking forward to seeing the house in person for the first time; all interactions have been with the real estate agent via photos and video tours. I need to “feel” the house. I am confident that we’ll love it and we already have a contract on it, but tomorrow is inspection and tour day and after that is complete things will be full steam ahead.

Since we don’t have the code to the gate, we drove around the area best we could to get a sense of the lay of the land. We like it. We actually love it. We are minutes from Saguaro National Park East and Mt. Lemmon. The landscape is beautiful and just what I’ve always wanted for a desert home.

Three of the five of us are here; Chris flew into Tucson International Airport and we picked him up at lunch time. As an experienced pilot that can work iPhone applications, I was able to snap a photo of his arrival

We toured another home along the Rillito River. It was quite a nice home but not quite what we’re looking for. Interestingly, the house has an elevator that reminded me of something from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Augustus must stay away from the chocolates if he moves into this house.

I could never bring myself to get inside that tube. I’ll fly an airplane miles above the earth but I do not enjoy elevators.

We took a drive a bit up Mt. Lemmon today just to enjoy some desert fun in the nice weather.

Our stay here in Tucson is too short and with pandemic restrictions it’s not like we should be overly sociable at this time. However, when we move here in a month or two I’ll look forward to meeting up with folks that we’ve chatted with over the intertubes over the past decade or two.

I looked back on my blog entries here and realized that back in May 2006 I blogged about the fact that I’ve always wanted to live in the desert. It’s quite fun that we’re able to make that dream come true 15 years later.

I’ve been working through cleaning up my online presence and decided to tackle Tumblr today. Surprisingly, I had more than a dozen Tumblr accounts under various email addresses. I’ve spent the last hour cleaning all of that up. Do people still use Tumblr?

Following the Tumblr links back to my blog and then following comment links brought me to a couple of different LiveJournal blogs that are still active! This is exciting as I didn’t know LiveJournal was still around. I must catch up.

One of the things I found was a feed pulled from my original Instagram account, which contains photos that never made it to MobileMe back in the day. At the time I did not have an iPhone; between my original iPhone and my iPhone 3G I was working in a more rural part of Upstate New York. This area did not have AT&T 3G service at the time, so I had moved the family to Verizon. The iPhone 3G was not initially available on Verizon, so we all had the original Motorola Droid phones on Verizon. They worked well for what they were. Here’s a blog entry about the experience from back then. I’m happy we moved back to the iPhone.

It’s interesting to read about what I had to say about the original iPad and my state of mind 10 years ago. In some ways I may have grown older but am I wiser? Probably. I’ve accomplished a lot in these past 10 years and realizing this makes me feel better about my place in the world. I’m happy with the career choices I’ve made along the way and I enjoy my job much more than the position I had 10 years ago.

While I’m hesitant to say 2021 will be better than 2020 for the world in general, I am determined to make sure 2021 is better for my family than it was in 2020.

I’m slowly getting used to my new reading glasses. Spending 10 or more hours in front of a computer for work and then various recreational activities on my technological devices have taken its toll on my eyes; however, I was always destined to need glasses sooner or later. All of my relatives wear glasses; I’m lucky I made it this far with only needing occasional glasses.

The new frames are lightweight and quite comfortable to wear. I’m embracing my middle age. I probably need to drop a few more Dad jokes to complete the experience.