Life in the Age of Corona

A Daily Diary

Tuesday, October 20th, 2020

Ghosts

Yesterday I had started to make ghosts for our Halloween decorations and struggled with the superglue. I found an interesting fix. Where the glue had made a hole I inserted cotton wool drenched in regular glue on top of the elastics I used as hangars and it worked!

My four hand made ghosts are happily swing in a tree out front and I am very happy with them. They have a cheerful element to them as they float in the wind. I will need to figure out what to do about Halloween.

EM had plans to build a candy shoot, but I doubt that will happen unless I harrass her about it and as I am still not speaking to her that is not going to happen. I believe she and her friends had plans for hanging out in the drive way around a fire pit, which means I would have the back garden to myself; including the fire pit seeing Anna has bought one for herself which she is planning to bring. I will need to decide whom to have over and when. Seeing Halloween is on a Saturday this year one could start one could start reasonably early, sort of as darkness sets in, which sadly is earlier every day. Two more months to go and then the days will start getting longer again!

Beyond that nothing special happened, I did not even cook, just reheated leftovers and left food for the obstinate teen on the kitchen counter. I still have no desire to hang out with her, not even over a meal. I am still feeling hurt. Every time I think of Sunday I just want to cry. I tried to work the hurt and the anger of in the pool swimming ferociously for 45 minutes at the alternate pool and thankfully there is practice in the park tonight where I can equally ferociously hit with the Jo. I just need to make sure to position myself next to practice partner I can lash out at, not with the intend to hurt, more with the intend to practice powerful on target cuts to work of whatever is eating me. Clearly this whole Corona thing is getting to me.

And of course, there are no signs of improvement. Mum said things are getting worse in Germany with Hamburg being declared a high-risk zone as infections increase rapidly. They expect to see rising numbers for the next two weeks until the current measures and appeals start to hopefully show effect. Like everyone else I am so done with this virus business. But it is what it is. We need to hang in there, maintain social distancing, socialize outside and with only few people at a time.

The USA is at 8.5 million cases out of the global total of 40.6 million. Given that deaths are about 300k higher than over the same time period last year the current death toll of 225k caused by Corona is probably underreported. More on the vaccine front.

It seems Pfizer is the most aggressive in pushing the envelop and may have a vaccine to market in January, which would be wonderful. It is still unclear though how often booster shots would be necessary and if this is really the best “shot”. At least there are now five vaccines in phase 3 trials and three being administered without completed clinical trials in China and Russia.

Due to the pandemic shortages of all sorts of goods persist, largely because companies did not place the right orders six months ago , expecting a sharp drop in demand, and partially because of high demand as people change their lifestyle. Bicycles and dumbbells are as hard to buy as outdoor heaters. Grateful I bought mine in August!

As the work of home and office merge into one glitches happen. Apparently a journalist specializing in law thought during a Zoom call that his camera and microphone were of and while everyone moved to break out rooms made use of the time to jerk of. Turns out nothing was of and the camera turned down to feature his penis to everyone on the call. Now that must have been very embarrassing. I did like this article though, which is very humorously written and points to the fact that presumably all of us do not always pursue perfect office etiquette while on calls.

I for one have taken my meeting to the kitchen to make lunch, nothing like multitasking!