— पांच हजार एक सौ सात —
I keep thinking about the wide-eyed innocence with which we rang in the year 2020. The word "coronavirus" was already in the news; I'm sure I had already heard it once or twice by New Year's Day that year, but we were all still walking around in our mental cocoons of denial, blithely assuming it would never become the kind of big deal we could never have imagined, simply because it was something we had never seen, nor had anyone else for literally a century.
COVID-19 came at us with a vengeance only two and a half months later. COVID-19 has come at us with a vengeance
again, in different forms, at least twice in 2021, the second of those being what we're in the midst of right now with Omicron. But most of us are vaccinated which makes a very big difference—which was not the case when we rang in 2021 a year ago, making it a New Year's Eve unlike any other before in any of our lives, just like every other major holiday in 2020. Last year was the firs time I rang in the new year just at home in my pajamas since college (and, in college, I would have still been in regular clothes, not pajamas . . . not that that matters). I did watch the fireworks just from the roof of our building one year, ringing in 2008, but that was also a mini party: Barbara was with us; as were Gina and then-boyfriend Eric, plus Brandi and then-boyfriend David. There won't be any party this year. Hell, even Ivan is scheduled to work so he won't be home—but, I'm still holding out hope to come to the office, so we can both see the fireworks in person
and watch the augmented reality version, at the same time. I don't want to be stuck at home and no one else will be in the office anyway. I would have wanted to go to Seattle Center but they still aren't allowing crowds to gather, especially with the massive Omicron spike. I still want to see the fireworks in person as, after high winds canceling them for 2020 and then COVID canceling them for 2021, I want a return to some at least hybrid sense of normalcy for 2022.
In any event, a lot about the ringing in of this new year is more downbeat than any of us expected six months ago, because of this new surge of cases. Indeed, here we are, back under a directive to wear masks at the office again, regardless of vaccination status. In fact, it seems leadership asked each VP to email their departments separately, presumably because different departments have different needs when it comes to having to be at the office: Kwanteria confirmed via email this morning that her department, Social and Environmental Responsibility ("SER"), have been directed only to come into the office if they need to mail or print something, until further notice. The email that came yesterday afternoon from our current VP of Merchandising, though, began with this verbiage:
With the rise in COVID cases due to the omicron variant I would like to ask everyone who can work at home to work at home. If you need to be in the office I would advise you to wear a mask unless you’re actively eating or drinking. Also please postpone any in person meetings or gatherings at the office for the time being.
The phrase "if you need to be in the office" is where it gets into a gray area for me. It's not just that I hate working from home. It's also a far bigger challenge for me to work efficiently. As I have told multiple people now, there's this: I really need my dual external monitors, and I really don't want to have to dismantle them
again and get home stands from IT
again and transport all this heavy equipment home
again, only to bring it back to the office
again in probably four to six weeks (assuming Omicron spikes very quicky—albeit also very very high—and then plummets quickly after about a month, for which there is obviously no guarantee but which is kind of the expectation).
So, today for example, I am working at the office as always, but now I finally once again have a mask on. I'm wearing the disposable mask, which I find easier to deal with wearing all day, which seems ironic since people like to say these are more effective than cloth masks. Maybe because we throw them away? I don't know. My position as of yesterday afternoon was that, unless directly commanded that I
have to work from home, I'll just work here masked. Again, hardly anyone else is here anyway. Also, I quite legitimately can't expect much in the way of sympathy for the vast majority of the work force, who have been wearing masks all day at work every day all along. (My office was only different because it is not categorized as an indoor
public space, and the people who work here are vaccinated.) I tried talking about this with Ivan last night, and realized before he even had a chance to say anything how ridiculous it was for me to complain to him about it. He's a nurse who has to wear tightly fitted PPE over his face
and even a face shield over that, for the duration of all of his work shifts. Hell, all of our store staff have been wearing masks every day for months too. There was a brief period over the summer where those who were vaccinated could go without one, but that didn't last long.
However! Tracy did inform me a while ago that she figured out how to use her TV as an external monitor, and she helpfully clarified for me today that she uses an HDMI cable, of which I do not have a spare at home. I asked Andrew in IT about it over email, who referred me to Chris L who was still here, who hooked me up with an HDMI cable I can bring home. So, I still have made no definitive decision on this, but I do have a new plan now: assuming we come to the office for the fireworks tomorrow night, I will go ahead and bring my laptop, keyboard, mouse and headset home when we're done, and connect to the TV monitor using the HDMI cable. I will then work from home on Monday as a dry run, to see how comfortable that setup is. It still won't be dual monitors and won't be as workable and efficient as my office desk setup, but at least this way, a) I won't have to dismantle the monitors I have at work; and b) I'll still have a much larger screen to look at while at home, and won't have to squint at my tiny laptop screen all day.
Also, this will make the transition from office to home and back an easier prospect, far easier than lugging all my equipment home like I did last year. Now, granted, I
did work on only my small laptop screen for five months last year, from the time I started working from home in March 2020 until I finally got my at-home work desk I could put my work monitors on in August, but I have to tell you, once I had my dual monitors back, I marveled that I ever settled for just the laptop screen. I can't stomach the idea of going back to it again now.
— पांच हजार एक सौ सात —
— पांच हजार एक सौ सात —
So anyway, I suppose I could mention last night. Ivan and I actually had an outing: we went to Neko Cat Café, a reservation I had booked for 7:00 on December 29 since the 14th. Visiting sessions are 45 minutes which is kind of the perfect amount of time, and right now they have
twenty cats, all of them young kittens! Every time I've gone in the past, they were either all or mostly full grown. Being surrounded by so many kittens was amazing.
God knows how effective it would be if Omicron were in the room (I suppose there's a fair chance it was), but everyone had masks on, and I double masked. I've taken to double masking on transit again too. I suppose it's also a fair point to note that if I work from home, I minimize risk by not taking buses or Light Rail. So, I don't know. I may split the difference and work some days at home and some at the office, just so I can work on receivers daily rather than only twice a week, as doing it the latter way really fucks up my work flow—another of many things that make it easier and more efficient to work at the office.
But I digress! Back to the cats. I had been talking to Ivan about going back to Neko Cat Café for months, and I pressed the point about a month ago when I noticed, looking through the windows you pass by on Pine Street, that they had a bunch of kittens. While we were there, Ivan kept telling me to take pictures. He would pose and say, "Picture!" I took several but only kept ten; I went ahead and put them into
a dedicated photo album on Flickr. This also allowed me to add that set to the
collection of albums for each visit (now four sets, separated by year: two visits separately with both Ivan and Laney in 2017; subsequent visits with Ivan in both 2018 and 2019 during visits with me while he lived elsewhere; and now this visit in 2021—no visit in 2020 for obvious reasons). This was, of course, the first visit where any human in the shot had a face mask on. God, I long for the days when we don't have to wear masks anymore.
Experts are still "hopeful" that the "worst of the pandemic will be behind us" sometime in 2022. One epidemiologist I follow on Twitter feels it's likely the virus will finally become endemic in the coming year. But you know, who the fuck knows? We've been given false hopes with this many times over now. I suppose I should look on the bright side: we remain in a far better position now than we were in March 2020. That cannot be disputed. Presumably we will be in a better position yet again a year from now. Hopefully less than a year from now. Maybe even weeks from now! I had been hearing Omicron is expected to peak in January; some people seem to be predicting February. Gah. Bleh. If it mirrors what happened in South Africa (and I realize there's no guarantee it will; it's a very different population), it should peak in January. I guess time will tell.
That seems likely to be the overall theme of 2022. Time will tell.
In any case, there won't be a DLU tomorrow. I get paid holiday time off for New Year's tomorrow since the 1st is not until Saturday. I do hope to post a finished "2021 in Ten Minutes" tomorrow morning though, so be sure to come back for that!
— पांच हजार एक सौ सात —
[posted 12:40 pm]
