Thursday, March 25th, 2021
I managed to get up at 02:45 today to join a full day workshop and stay on MS Teams until 12:30. I do have a bit of a Teams overdose now.
I am not sure I was at my most effective and alert between 03:00-06:00. I will need to rethink my attendance at next weeks workshop scheduled for 02:00 -05:00 my time. Waking up is not the problem. It is just very unpleasant to sit downstairs in the dark and cold. I suppose I could crank up the heat…. I shall think on it.
Overall, it was a very successful meeting and the team will follow up with a proposal. We even agreed on a tentative timeline. If it came through, this would be our first project in Sudan ever, which is quite exciting, and maybe one day I shall be able to travel to Khartoum as well.
As a result of my early start, tonight will be a very early night for me so I can catch up on my sleep and be well rested for tomorrow’s big day! In that spirit I should probably forego my nightly glass of wine. Chances are I will not.
Who would ever have thought that getting inoculated could be such a big deal? In the past I have never much thought about the shots I have been getting. I even got out my little vaccine passport to take along. This has reminded me to check when I should refresh some of my shots. I know I had a Tetanus shot in Dakar in 2017 after that fateful walk on the promenade. But Hepatitis and Diphtheria may well require a booster shot. Anyway, I very much hope I have filed the paperwork correctly and nothing will prevent me from getting the jab tomorrow. I have bank statements, drivers license, med prescriptions and so on to prove my identity and eligibility.
The afternoon, with the exception of my swim slot, was spent with sifting through my inbox and some strategy work. I did manage a brief scan of the news, but there are no material new reports related to COVID. So, no links or opinions about any reading today. The past twenty-four hours saw a 66k increase in reported cases, roughly 10k more than yesterday, to bring the US total count to 30.7 million with total deaths nearing 560k.
With Biden in office life has become very normal. No more political outrageousness. My Twitter feed is almost boring, focusing on tech mostly. There were really only two noteworthy items today.
President Biden gave his first press conference and up his pledge from 100 million to 200 million shots administered during his first 100 days in office.
The other is around voting rights and the obstructions of same by the GOP, most of who’s leaders have still not official recognized the election results.
The discussion of voter rights has me astounded. And yet again I realize democracy is not a given, certainly not in this country.