crystal ball
Work is a little mellower today, which is a relief. Yesterday I was trying to get a rather time-consuming task done and constantly getting emails that distracted me from it. So far today, the emails have mostly dissipated, right around the same time that large task (with a deadline of today) was finished. Funny how that works.
As with most days in the Pandemic Era, there's not a lot of new updates. Well, I suppose aside from how often I am seeing news stories about the CDC recommending we start doubling up on masks now that strains of COVID that are much more contagious are going around. I've already made the decision that I will now do that any time I go out. Transmission rates in my state are finally starting to go down again, but that may very well only be because the new strain(s) haven't quite hit us yet. It makes sense to do whatever we can to keep this downward trend going as long as possible.
I learned yesterday that Dad and Sherri are actually scheduled for their vaccines, as they are both over 65. But, the appointments are not until March, due to availability issues. At that rate, God knows when I'll be able to get mine. But whatever, for now I'm not going to worry about it.
Anyway. Shobhit had his second day off work in a row yesterday, and yesterday he didn't have an online class to attend either, so it was his one truly full day off. He did take his car to get an oil change. After I finished work, instead of watching a Netflix movie that Shobhit clearly had no interest in when I started to play the trailer on my phone (ironically, it's an Indian movie—but he has long been so intent on being as American as possible, he never has any real interest in leaning into any pop culture output from India), we finished up Bridgerton. We had three episodes left to watch and we burned right through them, thoroughly enjoying them. That accounted for roughly three hours of the evening.
I was awake far too late last night because, even though I managed to get into bed right around 10:00, I then wasted the next hour watching TikTok videos. Then I pivoted to Facebook and Twitter, finding even more to distract me there. Social media will be the death of me! Not really. Shobhit is already getting annoyed by the amount of time I spend on TikTok, irritatingly calling it "a waste of time," as if it's fundamentally any different from, say, watching a TV show or a movie, which he doesn't bitch about me doing. I've never understood his misplaced resentment when I get into a new social media platform; he was truly ridiculous about my interest in Twitter a decade ago. But, guess what? Twitter's novelty waned and, although I do still spend a fair amount of time on it, it's nothing like it was when I first got on it. Soon enough the same will be true of TikTok, which is already proving itself to be wildly inconsistent when it comes to applying its terms of service anyway, with bigoted original content left up and live while videos criticizing them get taken down for "hate speech" and "bullying." It's the same shit, different platform. But, that aside, there's just an astonishing amount of talent on display there, and I can't get enough of it. It was a quarter till midnight before I actually fell asleep. If I get too tired today though, there's an easy remedy: a cup of chai! That's easily partly why it was so easy to stay awake last night as well, as I had chai yesterday too. That stuff wakes me up in a way the regular tea I otherwise drink all day never does.
[posted 12:30 pm]