Monday, May 24th, 2021
Unexpectedly it rained overnight and persisted to do so most of the day. As a result, my patio cushions are yet again wet!
Given the emerging Cicadas, about thirty in my garden every day, I may not have an opportunity to use my outside office much tomorrow or the next few days anyway, hence can leave the cover of all day tomorrow for things dry.
There is one chair the Cicadas seem to particularly like, not sure what is wrong with the other chair or the couch.
After a weekend of celebrations, today spelled a quiet day back in virtual school. EM is complaining about frequent headaches and I just had an epiphany as to their cause. This was spurred by treating myself to a massage with an excellent therapist, courtesy of a recommendation by one of the Aikidoka.
Turns out many of my practice partners seek him out regularly. This was by no means a Spa massage. The therapist spent an hour working on some serious knots in my shoulders and my lower back, massaging toxins out of the muscle tissue. It was so painfully good I purchased a package of ten therapies and shall return to him next Thursday just before class where I shall undoubtedly cause trouble for my back and shoulders again.
Anyhow, I mentioned EM’s headaches to him, and he thought it absolutely plausible that they may be caused by neck tensions courtesy of a year of virtual learning. I shall try and convince EM to seek him out.
This was my first massage in 446 days! The last I had was in Addis Ababa during my last work trip from which I returned on March 7th, 2019. It seems like another lifetime. Both I and the therapist wore masks throughout even though we are both fully vaccinated and he had a special UV air filter, so it felt very safe. Looking forward to more of the same.
The USA recorded 16k new cases over the past twenty-four hours to bring the total to 33.9 million to date. As testing has slowed down cases may go unreported though and the Washington Post has found that in unvaccinated communities infection rates are as high as they were nationwide in January. I suppose getting the virus is another way to immunity. Still, overall new infections are down by 40% compared to two weeks ago. More than 50% of Americans have had at least one shot, which explains the decline in new infections and hospitalization rates are at an eleven-month low, the lowest since the summer of 2020.
The virus reporting is disappearing, so no interesting links today. In my view this is a good thing.