tested
Shobhit and I both got COVID-19 tests this morning. Four months into the pandemic, and it was the first time for both of us. I had really seriously considered getting tested the week before we left for Long Beach in June, but at the time I was unaware of any easy, free testing site. But then, Stephanie S (the one I used to work for at PCC) posted to Facebook on July 14 about "easy COVID-19 testing" as one of her "Gratituesday" posts to list what she was grateful for, which had piqued my curiosity and I asked if it had been expensive, if easy. She replied that King County has free sites set up in former drive-through smog certification sites, and she had such a good experience there at the Aurora location she went to that she had to tell a friend about it who had had a far worse experience in another location.
This had turned out to be very fortuitous timing, because it was the 17th that Alexia, my neighbor, had gotten the text from her mother's hairdresser that said hairdresser had tested positive. This had given me the opportunity to tell Alexia about this site, because Alexia was having trouble getting through to her doctor's office to set up an appointment to get tested. She had even been at a doctor's appointment with her mother in Bellevue, and they immediately tested her mother right there, but they would not test Alexia. (Spoiler alert: they both tested negative.) Alexia thus drove straight from that Bellevue appointment to the Aurora testing site, and she later texted me she had gotten in and out of there in 19 minutes.
I'm not sure Shobhit and I were even there that long, although the whole time we were away was certainly at least about 20 minutes longer than it needed to be. We got to the location on North Aurora at about 9:10, and a police man in a car by the entrance, which was blocked off by traffic cones and a closed fence gate, got out and told us we could not wait there and they did not open until 9:30. Shobhit did a large circle around the neighborhood two different times before they finally opened the gates, which they did still do several minutes early, and then Shobhit was annoyed that even though he had at first gotten right to the gate there wound up being 10 or 15 cars ahead of us pulling in.
But, whatever. It's not worth getting that frustrated over. It was just a matter of timing. As I explained to Shobhit, if they just let everyone line up on the curb of Aurora Avenue to wait, they'd wind up with a huge line of cars blocking people access to other road and businesses.
Anyway, just as Stephanie had explained, the website asks for preregistration but they let you go in without having done that. They do still ask you to register online while you're waiting for your turn in your car, but once we got to that point, we both registered for the 9:36 a.m. slot . . . at about 9:30 on the dot. We had been waiting in the car for all of about five minutes even at that point. They said it made it a lot easier to process the information if we input our names, address and such into the registration before getting up to the first of the two people we spoke to. First was a young woman in scrubs and PPE who asked our phone numbers in turn, looked up our registry, and handed us vials with our name and birth date and asked to confirm their accuracy. We then drove up to the second window, where we handed the second young lady in scrubs and PPE our vials.
Shobhit handled the test a hell of a lot better than I did. I knew it involved getting a swab pushed uncomfortably far into your nose—both nostrils, in fact, one after the other—but Shobhit did not react much at all, except to comment on how much he hated it. Then the lady walked over to my side of the car. I pulled my face mask down to keep my mouth covered but my nose exposed, and she pushed that swab far enough into my nose to create a singularly weird and unpleasant experience. It was such a physical shock that my body kind of reacted involuntarily: I emitted several shorts sort of burst-moans. I probably sounded like I was getting murdered. The lady commented on how the body tries to reject it, being totally sympathetic between my first and second nostril swab. I still reacted exactly the same way after the second one. I was so glad when it was over.
It was still worth doing and would be worth doing again if need be.
Shobhit asked me before we got there, "What will we do if we test positive?" I said, "Cancel our trip, or at least postpone it." Obviously. I didn't want to avoid taking this opportunity to get tested just to remain ignorant of being positive, however unlikely that result may be. Also, I would have preferred getting tested tomorrow or the next day just to make the window even narrower, but this was the only time during their hours that Shobhit and I could go together, between his and my work schedules. So, there will still be relative risk with Shobhit's wok shifts today, tomorrow, Thursday and Friday. But, as I argued to Shobhit last night, it still narrows down the risk far more than the standard 14 days of possibly getting symptoms were we to have been exposed any other time over the previous two weeks. Four days is a hell of a lot better than fourteen. And I'll just feel a lot better having our being negative for COVID confirmed, even four days prior to our trip, than not knowing for certain at all. Furthermore, neither of us have ever had any of the telltale symptoms, but we also know there are many asymptomatic carriers out there.
We'll still restrict our visitation with family to mostly outdoors, and I still expect I'll actually see little of Bill. But, it's still better to be precautious.
They said the results will be available in 72 hours. But, both Stephanie and Alexia had gotten their results in less time than that. Stephanie said she got hers in two days, and Alexia had texted me her results in about two and a half days.
I met Shobhit at the Central District PCC yesterday evening, walking there to meet him after he drove straight there from getting off work in Northgate at 6 p.m. I needed to go there to get deodorant, and had several things on my shopping list, and guess what? I stupidly forgot to put deodorant on the list, shopped only from the list, and only realized this morning I never got the fucking deodorant!
We did see three guys there in short shorts though (no pictures, unfortunately), so it was totally wort the trip.
We came back home and made burritos for dinner. Shobhit sautéed vegetables for them and I think they were a key factor in them being delicious. And then we watched Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. That one was never one of my favorites in the series, but curiously, even after having seen it a few times over the years, I think I may have enjoyed that one more last night than I ever did before. It's not that bad—as in, back in its initial release (the first one to come out after I started writing movie reviews), I gave it a B-. I think now I'd give it a solid B at worst. I would still argue it's overlong.
So that was four evenings in a row with a Harry Potter movie. No time for The Order of the Phoenix tonight, though, as Shobhit works until 8:00. There's finally a new Last Week Tonight with John Oliver to watch this week anyway. We'll probably watch Order of the Phoenix tomorrow and Half-Blood Prince on Thursday, but won't get to the two Deathly Hallows movies until next week after we get back from Idaho. Shobhit works late again on Friday this week and I have my rescheduled movie night with Laney that night anyway.
That was one thing I forgot to mention in yesterday's post about the weekend, as a matter of fact: I had planned to Netflix Party watch the movie The Old Guard with Laney on Saturday evening, and she had to reschedule. I had a sandwich and a cocktail and the Netflix Party extension with the movie all set to go right at 6:00, and then Laney was nowhere to be found on Skype. I sent her a couple of texts, but after a few minutes saw her indicated as online on Facebook, so then I messaged her there. Shortly thereafter she texted me that she was still taking care of Jessica after she had recently thrown out her back, which I was suspecting to be the case. She thanked me for being flexible and I think maybe I just watched another episode of I'll Be Gone In the Dark or something.
And there's still one more thing I keep forgetting to mention! As part of the email we received from our interim CEO at work on Thursday, noting that at present there is no expectation of reopening the office before January 2021, we were also told we would be getting an extra $200 stipend on our August 7 paychecks, to help pay for whatever we need to improve our home work stations.
And a brilliant idea finally came to me regarding this on Friday afternoon. I might have even written about it in that day's DLU had it occurred to be in the morning, but I didn't think of it until after lunch. For four months now I have just been settling on this work setup where I just use my work laptop, set in front of my personal iMac on my personal home desk. (I have since started using a cushioned laptop tray designed for a lap but it at least elevates it a bit; you can see that behind Shanti in this photo.) At the end of my work day, I shut down the laptop and close it, then set the cushion-tray, the laptop and the keyboard all stacked out of the way on top of my defunct printer/scanner, so I have access to the iMac again.
But, with this $200 coming, I decided I could buy a new, smaller desk, and set it on the opposite side of the bedroom, on the other side of the bed, facing the bay windows. I even measured the width of the middle bay window and the smaller outer portion of the wall that surrounds it: 44.25". And I found a pretty great looking desk on Amazon with a width of 46.5", which means it will quite nearly fit perfectly into that space. And I have an old desk chair sitting right there already anyway!
On Friday afternoon I even measured the distance from the north wall to the north side of the bed; it just happens to be—and this was never precisely deliberate—the exact distance between the outer bay window wall and the south side of the bed. And with the width of the new desk being 19" as opposed to the 23.5" width of my personal desk, I'll even have a few inches extra space between the smaller desk chair being used there, and the side of the bed behind where I sit.
There are multiple other advantages to making this change. I'll actually have a view facing the outdoors through my windows all day, instead of just facing the north wall of my bedroom. This will also make me, finally, lit from the front instead of backlit, so I'll stop looking like a silhouette in a TV crime show whenever on work Zoom or Skype video calls. And! PCC finally got a finalized work-from-home policy drawn up, and as of August they will allow us to check out equipment from the office to bring home. And that means I'll finally have the ability to take home my much larger dual monitors, and actually have a place to affix them at home.
I am incredibly excited about this. I probably won't get to checking out the monitors until at least next week, but the desk assembly box from Amazon is set to arrive on Thursday. So I'll get that set up Thursday evening, and I'll have the new place to sit for working as of Friday. And I can just leave my computer where it is at the end of the day! Everything about this new setup will just be so much easier and more comfortable.
[posted 12:19 pm]