Ponderings and Musings

My body seems OK with getting up at 5:30 AM Mountain Standard Time for my weekday schedule. Truman stays quiet and still on the bed until I show signs of being awake. My husband doesn’t get up until later, but I tip toe around the room, do my business in the washroom, and then throw on yesterday’s clothes so I can tackle the early morning team meetings.

I wonder if my colleagues notice that I’ve showered, shaved, and changed clothes between my first and second meetings of the morning?

My mood has been surprisingly pleasant with early rising. I’m starting to feel this new routine and it’s not a bad feeling. I’m pretty sure I can do this morning thing for as long as necessary.

Someone just hook up a device to my Zoom meetings so I can be jolted awake.

Actually, I’m kidding. The only stumbling block I have with these early morning meetings, other than being unshowered and unshaven, is my speech patterns. Speaking coherently and trying to keep my mild stammer this side of outrageous in the early morning can be a bit of a challenge. Like President Biden, I have little tricks I use to try to keep things running in the same direction, but once in a while my words and phrases and such can go in six directions at once with a repetitive stammer.

I’m like Bob Newhart without the groovy theme song.

Once I get the cylinders firing on all thrusters, though, I’m in my element and not feeling any bad effects from being up so early. I used to think getting up early was a thing grandparents did.

I’m now shocked to realize I’m the age my grandparents were at when I thought these things about getting up early.

April Fools’ Day is my least favorite day of the year. I’ve never been a fan of the frivolity others find in pranks, lies, and other foolish things to celebrate the arrival of April. Even back when I was a kid I would dread the day because it just seemed unnecessary.

Now, this is not to say I haven’t found anything associated with April Fools’ Day to be amusing. Way back in the early 1990s, a local radio station started running ads and announcements that the United States had converted to Metric Time. They had ads from businesses announcing you could bring your microwave or VCR in to be reprogrammed for Metric Time. I thought that little campaign was clever. There’s probably been a couple others I’ve found amusing over the decades but since the Internet destroyed took over the world it seems like April Fools’ Day has just ramped up and amplified stupidity and idiocy.

I always look forward to April 2.

This has bothered me since the “Downton Abbey” movie came out in 2019 and when the trailer was suggested on Youtube today, it finally hit me.

The did something with CGI to Dame Maggie Smith’s eyes in the final cut of the movie.

In the official trailer, Dame Maggie looks like Dame Maggie, as regal and glorious as ever.

In the same clip in the actual movie, they modified her left eye a bit.

Subconsciously I knew something had changed but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Not that I would put my finger in her eye or anything, but I’m happy I’ve resolved this little niggling in the back of my head.

And I wish they’d do another Downton Abbey movie.

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.