Amadea has COVID! Again! The rest of us in the house tested negative so she's isolating away from us for five days. She's fully vaxxed and boosted and experiencing only mild symptoms.
Oh no! Wow. How far apart were her cases?
1: what a bummer. Maybe the first was Delta and now she got omicron?
1: Oy! Glad the symptoms are mild at least.
Ugh! 3 is almost certainly the case given the timing. With any luck that means she won't get it again for another year or two.
My mom seemed much less depressed just now on our weekly zoom than last week. I feel deeply relieved.
6 is very good to hear.
I've talked briefly a couple of times to my mom in the psych ward. It sucks, it's a psych ward, but she's sounding more like herself. They'll keep her 5-7 days and then release her to stay with my sister. They're starting her on lamictal, which doesn't seem to match her symptoms but I guess options are few.
I don't think it's going to get better for her without some relief from the underlying mysterious pain/mobility issues, and I don't know what we do there. Call more specialists? Demand she be taken to the Mayo Clinic? Our whole household will probably go out there in February, once school is out and I have proper ID (I went to the DMV yesterday and they treated me right). Till then we sit tight.
I went to the DMV yesterday and they treated me right
That's a sentence you don't see very often. Congratulations!
10: Thank you! It's true, I keep being amazed by very recent policy changes at a number of levels that have made all this so much easier for me than it was for people doing this even a couple years ago. No doctor letters, no bullshit, all the staff I've encountered have been great and knew exactly what to do.
Also my temporary license says "Sex: F" rather than "Gender: F" which I know is just a database column artifact but pleases me as a thumb in the eye to gender-criticals.
Still here. Starting to get worried a tiny bit about the kid. She's waked up in the middle of the night (to be exact, between 2 and 5 AM) and come into bed with us something like five nights out of the last seven. If she comes into bed with us early enough, I let her go to sleep with us, or at least significantly relax, and put her back in her bed for the rest of the night. But if she comes into our bed right around 5 AM, there's no point in trying, by the time she goes to sleep again she'll be awake for the day if I move her so we just put up with a crowded bed for the next hour or two. When asked, she either doesn't remember the dream at all, or it's about the tailypo. Thanks, neighbors' kids.
Realistically I'm not worried, this is small potatoes, but it's gone on long enough that I hope there's something we can do about it.
How far apart were her cases?
The first started in very late September. She actually tested negative for that one at the time, but she lost her sense of smell and later took an antibody test that indicated she had indeed had it. I think it's definitely the case that that was delta and this is omicron.
12: I'd never heard of that before.
In other news, our drains are clogged and the plumbers are short-staffed due to COVID so getting the problem fixed is proving to be exceptionally complicated and drawn-out. We're also having new windows installed and yesterday we had a heating contractor come to replace a section of hydronic pipe that was leaking. Exciting times all around.
12: Thanks for the link, Cyrus. Now I won't be able to sleep either.
14, 16: As long as you aren't crawling into bed with me at 5 AM because you can't sleep, I don't care.
17: Cold!
Seriously, as a homeowner, 15 is more likely to give me nightmares. Good luck, teo!
Have you considered Nicole Cliffe's dog bed suggestion?
Our sump drain is frozen too. Been a hassle all week.
I last checked in four weeks ago, emoting about my wife's early-onset preeclampsia and our fear for the baby in COVID times. So far, so good! She gutted out another few weeks and delivered eight days ago, at 31w6d and 2lbs12oz. She's much better, the baby had a few scary days but seems to be sorting himself out, and we're getting pretty good at NICU stuff. Even the COVID angle hasn't been so bad: I'm pretty sure we had some nurses scrambled from other departments to cover for staffing shortfalls, and the delivery got delayed overnight because somebody on the delivery team tested positive, but boy had I envisioned some uglier trajectories than that.
That's wonderful! So glad baby and mother are better and growing. There will be some really lovely moments coming up for your family.
That's great to hear. Hope all continues well.
Congratulations Kymyz! What great news!
Hooray baby! And best wishes for continued healthy recovery for everyone.
15: Rory's gotten pretty good at DIY plumbing troubleshooting. I know toilet clogs involved dish soap and boiling water or something like that. She has a similar non-caustic fix for the kitchen sink--I'll have to see if she remembers.
Speaking of flushing things down drains... Mr. Positivity's sister is moving closer to the idea of pursuing a divorce. Her husband is an active alcoholic who apparently hits the bars after his AA meetings. Worse, he's hit her on more than one occasion and blames all of his/their problems on her teenage daughter whom he deems inadequately respectful. Not counting any chickens until the eggs are filed, but I am feeling more hopeful about her situation than I have in a long time.
15: Rory says: "Sinks/drains pack baking soda down the drain and then dump a good bit of vinegar a little at a time and rinse with a ton of boiling water."
I've tried boiling water and baking soda and vinegar, but it turns out this is a considerably more serious clog in the main drain line out of the house. The plumbers snaked it and determined it's most likely rocks about 60 feet down the line. They're going to bring in a pump truck to clear it out, but the pipe is misaligned so they can't fit the hose from the truck in. So today an excavation contractor is coming to dig up and realign the pipe (this is the part that they plumbers can't do because certain key people are out with COVID), then tomorrow the plumbers will come with the pump truck.
This is all going to cost thousands of dollars of course. Luckily we do have enough in savings that it's not a big deal.
Rory does not have one simple trick for that level of plumbing trouble! Good luck.
If I think it's likely to be grease or soap, I'll just start with boiling water and see if that helps, though I think the soda/vinegar/boiling water smooths out the pipes and slows the next occurrence.
I tried boiling vinegar once and while it might have worked slightly better, it was too horrible to be around.
Anyway, Amadea picked a good time to have to be isolating away from the house for a few days.
Hah, 35.
Rocks! How did rocks get in? Same thing as caused the misalignment?
Congrats, KM! That's fantastic.
How did rocks get in? Same thing as caused the misalignment?
Both probably have to do with frost heaving/freeze-thaw cycles (this winter has been exceptionally cold but with occasional much warmer spells). Once they clear out the rocks and the water they'll put a camera down to get a better idea of what's going on and what else might need to be fixed.
Congratulations KM!
My first reading of "31w6d" was "31 inches wide, 6 deep."
41.2: Haha! When I said we were "getting pretty good at NICU stuff," mostly what I meant is we speak in acronyms now.
31 inches wide, 6 deep
That's a hell of a dilation for a less-than-3 lb baby.
Babies don't stand, so you might as well call it width as height or length.
Good news! I just talked to the excavators and they are actually hiring a different plumbing company to do the pump truck work today. So that should be a considerable savings in both time and money relative to what I thought we were looking at.
Congratulations teo!
Also congratulations KM. I guess a baby is good too.
Somehow, only my mother has caught the covids and that was before any vaccines had been approved. I recently realized that in a 12-month span, I had received two shingles shots, two flu shots, the J&J vaccine, a Pfizer booster, and a Tdap booster. I should be developing a superpower by now, right?
So, the school district offers free Covid testing on Fridays. Jammies and the kids signed up. However, for some reason it takes five days to get the results. So we just found out that Hawaii was positive LAST FRIDAY.
Ah, um, er. Fuck.
I've been distant even for a lurker, and thought today I should check and see how you all are going. Thanks for the perfectly timed post!
Heebie, oh my, what do you do with that information?
AIMHB Quite a few covid cases in my son's school at the moment. One poor kid had it at the end of November and now has it again. Presumably Delta and then Omicron. So far, we are dodging it. Which seems miraculous given how often we've been exposed directly via friends and schoolmates and just via living and commuting through London during multiple waves. I almost don't want to draw attention to it, in case I jinx it.
Life is quite shitty in other ways: work is very busy and I'm already falling slightly behind on this year's projects, and I've only been back at work for 2 weeks.
On the other hand, my (relative) who has long term mental health issues is out of prison, and is doing about as well as he has for years. He is isolated at home, as his social anxiety is bad at the moment, but he is otherwise healthy, eating well, not using drugs or alcohol, is complying with his meds, and has a nurse that he likes and trusts. We also managed to go to Scotland and see my Mum for the first time in 2 years, which was great.
One and a half weeks into the semester and about 30% of my students are out with COVID or COVID-exposures. Utah is functionally out of tests so we're all just winging it.
Sister's healthy adorable baby arrived, but not without drama, as sister had hoped for a natural birth center delivery, but wound up with an emergency C-section which discovered a partial placental abruption and a placenta full of clots (old placenta? asymptomatic COVID placenta? who knows.). Everyone is fine but JESUS H. CHRIST that was close.
21: yay, baby! Babies are the best.
Hooray baby and hooray modern medical science! You'd rather not need it, but boy is it good having the full apparatus available when something goes wrong.
hahahaaaaa. Pokey and Rascal also came back positive last Friday. (Ace was negative.) Waiting on Jammies' result.
Now I'm wondering if I'm not just suffering from allergies.
HOWEVER I'm so glad for Kymyz Bybyz!
We've been hoarding one single OTC kit, which I shall now stick up my nose.
Pumped out and draining successfully! What a relief.
The plumbers are still coming back tomorrow to run the camera, which will probably find other things we need to fix, so we're definitely not done yet. But at least it's no longer interfering with basic daily living stuff.
One of the kids is feeling sick, though. I picked him up at school. He took a COVID test there and is waiting on the results. For now he's just isolating in his room.
... aaaaaaaand I'm positive. Womp-womp.
Very dramatic live-blogging.
Fingers crossed that the infection is less dramatic and that you all have mild cases.
I hope you stay feeling well. And the rest of the family too.
Jammies test from last Friday came back negative! His OTC test from just now came back positive. So 5/6 Geebies, and we're out of OTC tests so we can't re-test Ace.
63: Right up there with urple eating the Styrofoam cup egg.
That suuuuuucks, heebie. I saw a tweet go by along the lines of "well, the silver lining to the whole family being sick in the house with COVID is that we don't have to frantically worry about what happens if the whole family gets COVID," so congratulations on reaching that state of enlightenment. And let us know how we can best entertain you all.
Isn't having one kid with uncertain status somehow worse than that.
Congrats, KM and family!
heebs, I hope everyone has no/minimal symptoms. That's quite a testing system.
Congratulations KM and all concerned! Best wishes to everybody with Covid.
Why is moving house such an unholy faff? No single aspect of it should be complicated,, but taken together they all are.
Ugh, so sorry, heebie. Can you get groceries delivered in heebieville? Or can friends bring them?
That was my biggest fear about getting COVID living in a 1 bedroom apartment. There would be no way to isolate from each other or from people in the building. Cloth masks in the hallways and laundry room doesn't quite count as isolating. But more than that, I figured we would both get t and wasn't sure how to get food.
We did our walk-through at the house yesterday, and one of the sellers wanted to meet us which isn't really standard. The original owner died at 99 after buying in 1957. One daughter was there. The other lived in Maine. The son had been living there, taking care of his mother for the last 10 years or so. They are very emotional about selling their childhood home and very sweet about wanting to make sure that it is well cared for, so I said nice things about how well they had taken care of it. I guess looking young has its benefits, because they were so happy that a "young couple" were buying it. The son was too broken up about it and couldn't stay.
The family were in the nursery business in NJ, so their mother saved drawings of their garden plants which I do appreciate having. There is a laurel by the deck, and, of course, I thought of you all.
Yay babies and fixed plumbing. Good luck to everyone!
Houses are great. Good luck moving.
Very nearly gave in to the urge to drag an anti-masker out of the grocery store by his neck. Saved by a cashier pointing out the masks and him meekly putting it on.
Thought about waiting outside to continue our conversation but he looked rich enough that the cops might actually track me down.
He was arguing with you but respected the authority of the cashier?
76: I like to imagine this with you as an actual eggplant.
He was arguing with another customer but appealed to the cashier when I joined the conversation.
He was arguing with another customer but appealed to the cashier when I joined the conversation.
I guess he respects authority in all its local manifestations.
On the way back from dropping the kid off at school, I walked by a Planned Parenthood, and there were protestors, presumably warming up for the March for "Life". I held my arm high and flipped them off as I walked by. I realize it's not constructive and I'm not even sure they noticed me, I was just going down a side street rather than walking right by/through them, but I felt I had to do something and that was something.
God I really wanted to drag him out. Stupid complimentary masks.
I have those too. They say, "Nice haircut. "
Update: Both kids have COVID! They're isolating in their rooms. I tested negative, as did Amadea's dad. Also, I got overly ambitious once the plumbing was working yesterday and did a load of laundry. Turns out that was too much for it! It's now draining but very slowly. The plumbers will be back later this morning so hopefully we'll get it all sorted out today.
I need to get better at baiting people into taking the first swing. It's a real problem.
Thanks to my patchy facial hair I have discovered, in my forties, that after I lather I neither rinse nor towel off my chin and throat. Life is a journey.
Takes me back to my twenties when I first realized I had never intentionally washed the back outside of my ear, only incidentally doing so when washing behind my ears. Boy, that was a day.
90: I've always just assumed that shampooing my hair is adequate for washing my ears. Boy is my face red.
Can you imagine the discoveries I might've made if only I could grow body hair?
I am enjoying the fuck out of having cancelled my classes to stay in bed.
I am so cranky about teaching an overload this semester that it took me a while to convince myself that cancelling class was a normal thing to do when you have the 'rona, and not just me trying to play hooky. I really hate this semester, and it has only just begun.
White lace and promises. A kiss for luck and you're on your way.
White lace and promises. A kiss for luck and you're on your way.
Amazing cover by Curtis Mayfield.
Jammies and I both told our employers that we tested positive. My employer told me to stay home until Tuesday, provided I'm symptom free. Jammies' employer said he should come back Monday. (They're now out 8 math teachers in the high school.)
Also good thing Texas outlawed remote school. Wouldn't want those 8 math teachers to zoom in and continue offering instruction. The current system, since there are nowhere near enough subs, is that hoards of students get sent to the auditorium/cafeteria if there's no teacher for them in a given period.
Hypothetically, if those math teachers can't zoom in, why don't they just spent the day making meatballs and drinking red wine?
So sorry Heebie, good job cancelling class though!
Realistically no K-12 students were going to learn anything this month no matter what choices were made. Putting a bunch of them in an auditorium to watch movies is not an obviously bad option, at least their parents can work for the week they're not sick.
College is different, we should just all be online for the worst month because college students still learn something remote, and then they could attend if they're mildly ill.
99.2 is probably true.
We're starting F2F up again next week. I'm looking forward to it.
Plumbers are here! They're pumping it again with more powerful equipment than the guy yesterday had, so hopefully that'll clear it out for real. Then they'll put a camera down so we can finally find out for sure what's causing this.
Are you wearing a hot dog suit at the moment?
Anyway, there's now covid in my sister's household. I don't see how they don't all have it, but only one has a positive test so far.
99 basically gets it right.
Our kids' schools were among the last in the district still open*, but both announced Friday that they'd be closed this week. But then Tuesday turned into a snow day, and they're supposed to go back tomorrow, so it ends up just 2 days remote. Iris (HS senior now) does OK remote, but Kai (8th) seems oddly susceptible to tech issues, so who knows. But a few lost days hardly matter anyway.
*they've been doing rolling closures, so maybe some of the first schools closed had reopened? Not sure.
Another friend has breast cancer--the third in six months.
The plumbers' hose broke! They're off repairing it and they'll be back at some point. They're going to drop off a port-a-potty so at least we have something until this is fixed.
My whole family got it. I assume the vector of transmission was the Unfogged comment section.
Sick people going out into the yard to poop in Alaska in January seems very suboptimal. Maybe a chamber pot?
108: That's really concerning. If all at the school again, extremely so.
To forestall the need for the port-a-potty, they're now going to try to pump clean water in so it's clear enough for the camera to see what's going on.
You don't need a cameraman to know which way the poop is flowing.
||
Somebody here recommended Shetland and we sprung for season one and need some advice. I loved lots of things about it and may now engage in the traditional blog pastime of shopping for small Shetland islands for sale, BUT the one thing about the show that drove me batty was often ridiculous plotting (and yes I have read print mysteries so I am not that surprised). The finale of the last season 1 episode was just "Wait, WHAT? What just happened? None of this makes any sense!" and some of that leaked into the other episodes, too. Before we pay more for this - does the show keep doing this? The scenery and the personalities are great but before investing in more seasons I kinda want to know if they fix it or not.
Aside: this also killed Ozark for me. The plot device driving the whole show was money laundering and anyone in ten minutes on wikipedia could have learned that the object of money laundering is not to *get rid of all your money.* But whatever writing staff and multimillion dollar production budget they had, nobody spent that 10 minutes on the internet so even Laura Linney couldn't save it for me.
Advise me?
|>
I don't recall session one as being particularly nonsensical as far as those things go.
Last semester I fed my red-state college freshmen a low level but fairly steady diet of covid information. Cheerfully feeding facts and it didn't seem to backfire. I teach biology so it definitely fits within the courses I'm teaching. Other professors said they got complaints on student evaluations that they were "too political" or something about covid, but I didn't. I was going to update it this year for the omicron wave and a new crop of students but we're finishing week 2 and I still haven't. I think they need to hear it but I'm no longer perky about it, pretty worn down and can't get over the hump of putting together some 5 minute segments on it.
Maybe this will refresh your memory (not my words I just googled the episode and found discussion. Episode took place at the Fair Isle Bird Observatory)
[spoilers!]:
"Surely we can't be the only people left confused at the end;
Why did they withdraw the money, what was it for?
If Latimer died from a severe blow to the back of the head what on earth was the explosion and how did he escape whilst on fire (after suffering said blow!)?
Why did Latimer go out all night and stash the money - did he know she was dead?"
You aren't going to like the one where the killer was aliens.
115: we gave up at the point when it became clear that women's trauma was going to be a lazy plot propping trope - yuck no thanks. i realize this severely limits pop culture consumption options but oh well.
There's finally a plan to rebuild the Fair Isle Bird Observatory! There was a fire and then Brexit was making it really hard to get anyone to take the contract to rebuild it, but finally things are in motion.
It's good to have some good obscure island news, to balance out the tragic failure of mouse eradication on Gough island.
They think the cats should be able to handle a mouse, but really it's a kangaroo.
OT, but I hope that no one would be daft enough to make the same mistake as the BBC https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-60077773
A spokesperson for the US Justice Department said the four men, Leonid Mikalaevich Churo and Oleg Kazyuchits - the director general and deputy director general of Belarus' state air navigation authority - and state security officers Andrey Anatolievich Lnu and Fnu Lnu, remain at large in Belarus
Lnu is not, in fact, a common Belarusian surname, but stands for LAST NAME UNKNOWN.
"Your target, Bond, is an air pirate working for the Belarusian secret service. Location - Minsk. His name - Fanoo Lanoo."
(raises eyebrow)
"Quite the man of mystery."
"Now, report to Kwuh for your issue of equipment."
"To...?"
"Kwuh. You know, the Desmond Llewellyn character. He handles all the secret gadgets here at Mee Six. You'll be working alongside Felix Leiter from the American Seeyah. This isn't the first time he's gone up against the Kaguhbuh."
There's finally a plan to rebuild the Fair Isle Bird Observatory!
This is excellent news! The Selkie suggested spending our honeymoon there, until I pointed out that my parents had spent their honeymoon there and it might be weird, also it had burned down.
Plumbers did get the drains working! A permanent fix will require the excavator digging up a section of pipe in the middle of the back yard and straightening it out, which will be an expensive hassle, but that's not an emergency need. For now we have full service and no leaks.
124, 125 reminds me of this https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prawo_Jazdy_(alleged_criminal)
The travel gods are fucking with me. My alarm just went off -- 4 am -- to wake me up for my flight, eventually leading to Munich. I woke up at 3:30, though, only to find that my first flight, to Denver, has been cancelled. And they've changed me to a flight that leaves at 2:30 pm instead of 6:30 am. Yay!? Except that it's a group thing. A couple dozen of us were supposed to be on the now cancelled plane, and a couple dozen more, from around the country, are supposed to all end up in Munich at more or less the same time. So we can all take a 3 hour bus ride together.
I'm not in charge of this thing at all, and the people who are are busily scrambling about. I usually am the one doing the scrambling. It's kind of funny to be just sitting waiting to hear what's going to happen. I suppose I'll be able to fall asleep again in a bit.
129- NYT vs Globe pictures are quite a contrast. Ozzy Osbourne vs Bill Belichick.
126: There is no wat they would remember a bad check that long.
Thank you for not assuming that my parents were responsible for the fire.
124 reminds me of my late uncle Norman, known to the American authorities as Norman NMI Young. NMI signified No Middle Initial. This appeared on his immigration paperwork when he went to the US as an RAF attaché and apparently stuck while he was there.
Nobody called him Norman either; he hated the name. He was universally known as Bob.
Someone has quietly explained to the BBC what FNU and LNU mean.
My grandfather did a Harry Truman and just picked a middle initial to avoid trouble. Then he later picked a middle name to match.
My grandfather didn't have a middle name but started using his mother's maiden name as one when it turned out there was another guy with his same name in the same city in the same line of work.
Mrs ttaM tested positive today, so I did indeed jinx it.
I still don't have a middle name OR a middle initial.
It occurred to me I should cut my store tofu across its shortest dimension so the result would fit better in a burger bun after cooking, and from there, my mind brought me to the fact that we don't have a good word for such a cut: we say lengthwise and crosswise, neither of which covers this. The only phrase that surfaces is "like a sandwich". Do I owe Sandra Lee an apology?
I don't have a middle name. When I got to be around 10 or so this began to bother me, so I started styling myself "Firstname M. Lastname," with "M" standing for "middle initial." Relatedly, and around the same time, I began to wish my name was longer, and more American-sounding. I demanded that my parents call me "Margaret," which was ret-conned as the origin of the middle initial "M." I chose "Margaret" because although it was longer and Americanesque, it did not seem especially pretty or fancy so it didn't seem too much of a stretch for me. My parents indulged me for a while, and then my dad started to call me "Peggy," which put a stop to the whole thing. Anyway, that's why my initials are JMS.
Maybe you could let heebie use Margaret.
When I was in school, I used to tell people my middle name was "asterisk", except I was trying to make a joke about how there was always an asterisk on official forms, and no one took it as a joke, so eventually I gave up.
Mrs ttaM tested positive today, so I did indeed jinx it.
Finger's crossed for her.
And you haven't made a joke since.
141 the initials FML would have a different feel today.
147: Has that shopping area held up? It was always kind of ruin down if I recall the 90s correctly.
I didn't know MyPillow even had physical stores.
129: Mr. Loaf died of covid and was anti-vax. Which, after I read it, seems like maybe everyone but me knew or guessed.
You took the words right out of our mouth.
I drank so much beer while listening to Bat out of Hell. I have no idea why. It was ten years after the album's release before I ever drank a beer.
I didn't know, but it somehow feels unsurprising.
I was actually quite disappointed to hear that, because otherwise he was reportedly a pretty good guy. Eric Clapton, OTOH, has always been knows as an asshole.
They're pretty much equally talented.
155: Made me sad, too. The story about him coaching a high school girls JV softball team is entirely wholesome and gave me the warm fuzzies.
What does the B in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for?
Benoit B. Mandelbrot
155. A friend who has encountered him says that Earache Clapton is very generous with his time for people who are trying to learn the guitar. Also, despite his unrepentant racism, he regards/regarded people like BB King and Buddy Guy as friends. I get the impression that outside music he's as thick as two short planks and understands nothing. Fuck him for having the career that should have been Jeff Beck's.
I suppose the understanding nothing outside music also accounts for the late Mr Loaf. There are probably a lot of artists who are similarly tunnel visioned.
Yes, I have often thought about earache as a figure who is (a) absurdly talented in only one area of life -- although not of course genius level -- and (b) grotesquely rewarded for this financially and socially while (c) being in every other respect average or a little below and certainly not particularly intelligent or cultured.
Yes. It pisses me right off that Jack Bruce is dead and he keeps on and on.
What does the B in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for?
What does the H in Jesus H. Christ stand for?
Haploid.
161: Not that Jack Bruce was a model of intelligence, self-knowledge, and temperance himself. A good friend of mine was a friend of the man who had the job for a while in the Seventies of Bruce's minder, and the stories he told were pretty dreadful. They went some way to explain why Bruce is dead and earache still clean and alive.