Tuesday, January 5th, 2020
Our favorite Italian restaurant is now offering take out food, so mum and I have ordered some for tonight. For starters there will be grilled mushrooms and carpaccio. For mains I am having my favorite kidneys in mustard sauce and mum has opted for Lasagna. It will be yet another feast. Also, I am happy we can support the restaurant.
We have a long history with the original owner, Paolino from Sardinia. I have such fond memories of him and the restaurant. Every Christmas and for special occasions we have dine there. Polino's restaurant was the happening place for politicians and intellectuals when my dad was major of Hamburg. For forty years we have dined with them; initially at their location by the Alster and in recent years in his new location closer to home. After his nephew ran the restaurant for a while his daughter has now taken over. Paolino himself has retired and only comes back to Germany occasionally when he meets and greets patrons of “his” restaurant. Their awesome food will be the highlight of our day.
Today was mostly spent on helping mum with her filing. She feels overwhelmed with the paperwork. I have bought new folders and re-organized the filing system, hopefully making it easier for mum to find all the documents she needs. She is so worried about not doing it right, when at almost age 83 she actually does an amazing job of managing the house and the tenants.
Mum is such a fighter and forever trying to please all of us. It is always lovely to come home; it really is home. I like the steadiness I find here. Nothing changes really. In my life full of change it is nice to have a beacon.
I think EM feels the same. She is firmly grounded in Hamburg, the house. Just like my parents have always grounded us in this house during all of our travels I have done the same with EM; giving her a base. This base is now going to be my base again as I am planning to take over the second-floor apartment at the end of this year; irrespective of where I may end up workwise. It may just be time to come home. I have never felt like this before. It is noce though to have a landing place.
The US embassy responded to my email today. It appears they are working on EM’s visa renewal. It is getting very tight as her passport may not arrive back here in time for us to make our flight on Sunday. Chances are I will need to rebook, which I know EM will not be happy about. But, what can I do? The bags are mostly packed, nonetheless. I will decide on flight changes by Thursday, no passport by then means rebooking.
The election continues to be the domineering topic in US news channels. The moron in chief continues to spread doubt about its integrity, despite 60 courts ruling there is no proof of fraud, the attorney general he has appointed stating the election was not compromised and the head of cybersecurity at the department of homeland security on record stating these were the most secure elections ever held in the USA (for which he was duly fired by the orange Cheeto). It is really stressful to think about returning to a country on the brink of civil war. With 74 million people in denial of the actual results and ignoring all the facts. With over 100 congress representatives and more than 11 senators set to contest results of the presidential election, but of course not the results of house and senate votes, all of which were on the same supposedly fraudulent ballot. It is mind boggling to see into what a banana republic the US has turned; with politicians only interested in conserving their powers. I have lost all respect for the country. This so called most developed, richest country and greatest democracy in the world can not even organize vaccinating its people.
While millions of doses of vaccine have been procured, only a fraction (~15%) have found their way into people’s arms. The country is displaying an unbelievable level of incompetence. The US is far behind its target when it comes to vaccine rollout. At this stage there is a really danger that doses delivered may pass their sell by date before reaching people’s arms. Hence, there is no need to mix and match to make vaccination go further. Rather it is a case of organization and being able to use what has been delivered. It seems some providers are better at doing so than others.
I fail to understand why the roll out is so slow, supposedly there had been planning. Increasingly there are discussions about amending the vaccine doses or mixing different vaccines to make supplies go further. Given, only about 15% of the available doses have so far been utilized this is an odd discussion. So little is known about the vaccines though, that it seems like a dangerous idea to change the tested regimes. Therefore I am glad to see the FDA has now issued guidance to use them exactly as designed by the developers.
Total infections reported in the USA are at 21.4 million with an increase of 19k over the past 24 hours. While the daily increase is less than two days ago, I think the US is far from turning the corner.