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As I write this, I have my dual monitors from the office at home and all set up! Well, almost: they are all connected, but for some reason the computer is not recognizing one of the monitors, saying "cable not connected" even though a cable is connecting them. Frustrating. But, as I said in my email to Andrew in IT—who happened to arrive at the office this morning just before I left—having just this one large monitor working is making a world of difference. I had gotten quite used to dealing with only the laptop screen for the past five months, but it's a huge relief having a bigger one back again. I can see everything without squinting! I really want to take a photo of my desk setup and post it to social media, which I will do eventually, but I don't want to do it until I have both monitors working.

Either way, I'm thrilled—even though I kind of underestimated how much space this would all take on my small desk I bought. The two monitors take up 95% of the width of the back little shelf on the desk, and the laptop now clicked into the docking station takes up so much of the desk space in front of them that part of it overhangs the edge of the desk nearest me. But, whatever, I can work with it; it still optimizes space usage in the bedroom here in the area of the bay windows.

EDIT: All the above was written before Andrew got back to me, to his credit in a pretty timely manner, and now I'm all set, and I am so, so happy! Both monitors are working, and I got so used to the laptop for several months that now everything seems huge. I can dig it.

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My family has planned a "family vacation," renting a huge, multiple-room VRBO in Leavenworth in late September. I already bowed out of the invitation; frankly I think it's insane. I would be much more inclined to go if it was a scenario where everyone had separate cottages and we could hang out outside, something like that, but the whole family staying inside the same house? I know they are all tired of not being able to visit like they used to—I've had even less occasion for it than they have, being in a different city from Olympia—but, still. What the fuck? I chose not to post this to the Facebook group about it, where I just politely declined while stating I would be terrified of the risks, but I honestly think of this as a reckless idea.

Now. Most of the family going comes from Olympia, where Thurston County is actually in Phase 3—which allows for gatherings of up to 50 people. I believe at this point 18 family members are confirmed to be going (that's 13 adults and 5 children). That's a lot less than 50. But! They are not traveling to a place in Thurston County, it is in Chelan County, which remains in modified Phase 1, one of only five Washington Counties still there; even King County is in Phase 2 now, but we remain the county with by far the most cases and I just think it would be wildly irresponsible for me to join on this trip coming from here, and sharing a house, no matter how big, with everyone.

And: this is the thing. In all probability, everyone will be fine. They probably would be even if I joined. The key point is that the risk is still much higher for everyone if they go than if they don't; and certainly much higher if I were to go. And if everyone is fine, they can all move on just saying, "See? We're fine!" But all I can think about is how it only takes one, and if one person stays in that house who is infected, they are quite likely to infect everyone else. Unless, maybe they all wear masks in common areas, which I don't think is likely. And by the way, Dad and Sherri are in a high-risk age group, and health-wise Angel is probably higher risk than anyone.

And I actually really wish I could go to this. I would any other year, and if this becomes an annual tradition as suggested (assuming everyone is still alive), then I almost certainly will join next year. Unless my attitude about things like this (and the police) has me alienated from everyone by then. Let's hope not—so far I've managed to keep discussions pretty civil with Gina, whose son is a cop and who herself works for the Olympia Police Department—but, who the fuck knows. Honestly that this trip got planned at all boggles my mind. Well actually, it could have been done in a safer way, allowing for effective social distancing, so it's the apparent disregard for such precautions that really boggles my mind.

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— चार हजार सात सौ चौरानवे —

As for the rest of last night, Shobhit had a Braeburn Board meeting via Zoom that took longer than he anticipated, after which he made aloo parathas to have with canned matter paneer. I'd like to blame that on my weight being slightly up again this morning but that blame really probably has to go to the two cocktails I also drank.

We watched an episode of the new Perry Mason on HBO, but just one. By the time that was done it was past 9:30 and I didn't want to be up as late as it would take to watch another. We have tonight; Shobhit has the day off today. In fact as I write this he's off getting his radiator fixed—he left for that as soon as he brought me back home again from the office this morning.

This has meant that I have not gotten nearly as much work done this morning as I would have liked, but, oh well. We'll all live. We can work with it.

Oh: and I have my iMac back, and it's working, though the guy at Computer Love has it on an older macOS, "High Sierra," which he calls a "solid" operating system. He told me my computer itself, the hardware, is in "perfect working order." Whatever was happening was caused by something in the backup I was trying to restore from.

He suggested just manually moving files I need, from the external drive back to the computer. He offered to do that himself but that would double the cost so I declined. I had already just paid $77.01. I have the computer back and it's working, just in an apparently better, older operating system. He actually seemed very aware of rampant issues with macOS Catalina, and suggested I wait a while to actually upgrade to that again.

The problem with that is my Office programs won't run unless I have Catalina, which I paid the annual fee to be able to use. He then told me about this suite of programs called "LibreOffice" which he says has versions of Word and Excel that are practically identical and will open my files saved in those programs; he even downloaded it to my computer for me right there.

I tested those programs when I got home and it looks like they do open vital documents I have on my OneDrive account (like my budget spreadsheet), although it takes a while. I also can't use Outlook if I don't upgrade to Catalina, and the guy said it's better just to use webmail anyway.

So, I don't know, I guess there's still some stuff to figure out . . . suffice it to say I have the computer working again, just running on an older OS. The guy at Computer Love said the persistent issues on Catalina are unsurprising with my computer as I purchased it in 2015 and they don't do testing on computers that old. Ditto Microsoft with the 64-bit version of Office that had necessitated my upgrading to Catalina in the first place.

In any case, as far as I can tell, I haven't lost any further data. I just have several programs to reinstall on my iMac, and I have already repopulated the music library in the Music (iTunes) app although it has resulted in tons of duplicates I will now have to spend a lot of time cleaning up, and I still don't have my playlists back, but I suspect I can get them. I just really need to learn to remember to create a backup of the Music library, including playlists, before I make any major changes like moving music tracks from one drive to another again.

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[posted 1:04 pm]